True, but if people hadn’t worked that out, they’ve not been paying attention.
I just really dislike the “choose a corner approach”.
A lot of stuff is not black and white and our responsibility is to talk about how we personally feel about something.
And the devs’ job is to make something out of all those different opinions and either allign them with their own vision or at least considering them.
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Why would we get rid of the thing that pushes the developers to design new things to captivate new players into purchasing their game? Seasons are designed to do exactly that. Gives a start point for new players, a starting point for seasoned players to see what heights they can reach in corruption or arena runs. I would think having a end of season rewards would also be enticing. Not just “seasons over, here’s a cheap cosmetic!”
I always liked the seasons in Diablo and in PoE. They give developers time to develop and try out new ideas in a nonstandard format that can be removed when the season is over and implemented into the game if its popular, or just removed and forgotten like many PoE seasons have done.
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From a new content perspective thats really really true.
If you intorduce something that turns out horrible wrong in terms of balance after one or two weeks and you put it in permant online stuff
a) it will break the game “forever”
b) you rollback all players 2 weeks (may god save you from angry nerds)
c) you delete this stuff from all players if possible (may not be possible in some cases and even this will cause rage)
If you introduce stuff in a season you have some kind of extended test server with thousands of testers.
If something turns out horribly wrong here you let it go wild for some weeks till season ends and worst case delete the whole league after it.
So a seasons enable risky design decisions because you can undo them if they go wrong.
And only risky decisions lead to exciting new conent.
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First of all: The translator spits out just again so strangely crooked sentences… 
I have seen your smiley, hope I do you no injustice.
There you put however again something into my mouth, that the subjective-personal rail is no good you could know meanwhile also yourself. But be it as it is:
The main intention is and was to evaluate who has what to say/contribute to this topic.
Then I noticed that certain opinions/attitudes/arguments repeat themselves. I have then just summarized.
At the end I noticed that most of the argumentation chains are either a clear PRO or CONTRA, which I simply summarized again.
And if everyone writes exactly what he thinks about this topic, it is not reprehensible to “hold at face value” and communicate accordingly.
Honestly, I was a bit surprised myself because I rather assumed that the “PRO Season opinion” is much more widespread. Seems to me now to be a fallacy.
And yes, I would have guessed that it is almost something like a “poll”, I could have made it somehow and the results only shown at the end.
In this now us available way is the however in the future geartete result not really clean, it is enough for me however to see at least the tendencies under all involved.
Fits already, simply continue guys.
We could make/introduce such an extreme Temporal Timeline for 3 months only with new characters, without connection to the old characters/items/etc…
The next 3 months there will be a Temporal Timeline in which all characters can play.
And in the next 3 months you choose which of the Temporal Timelines will be played in which order, for example with different bonuses.
In addition, you could, for example, provide a Temporal Timeline with multiple hints that entering with “an old end-game character” only under the risk of resetting the character and only using “Temporal Timeline exclusive Chests” and so on.
This could even be made voteable at the end of the 3 months [not mandatory, only as an option on the behalf of EHG].
Just let your imagination run wild for once.
[EHG will come up with something.]
From the thought “something could happen, I just do it as always” has never developed anything for the better.
Translated with DeepL Translate: The world's most accurate translator (free version)
having 200 hrs play time in the latest 4 month season for D3 will tell you how much time i spend. Even with that i was able to play DPS Wizard in G140. Never been close to that non season so that is “compete”. I am not “competing” with other players i am competing with what i would like to achieve. So for me that is a reason to keep playing it. Without these latest few seasons i would never touch the game.
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For Diablo 3, we have 3,500,000 within the first 24 hours.
And over 30,000,000 sales in August 2015.
And about 15,000 estimated players are currently playing it all over the world…
Sounds somehow not that great, despite Seasons.
Has anyone considered a middle ground of resets after a significant endgame update. Since I’ve only experienced Poe, it would be like a semi permanent league for 4 cycles (assuming 4 per yr) that gets reset for the new endgamepatch.
I don’t know if I would like it but just spitballing ideas.
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The reason I wouldn’t like that is that LE’s re-spec is pretty powerful (sans actually altering your mastery, as it should be) and wiping a level 100 character when all I would need to do is respec is way too harsh.
I think leagues/seasons/whatever the term is don’t really need to be “separate” from the “main” game like PoE does it. I think, as long as EHG can turn a Season’s “stuff” on and off via a Feature Flag/switch/patch, they could roll them out, let them run their course and then either leave them in or remove them after. Players could use existing or new characters for that Season.
For Ladders, you only qualify for the Ladder if you roll new.
For special incentives, you only get them if you roll new.
That, IMHO, is the best of all worlds. New Content which comes and goes (or remains permanent) to excite us and keep us engaged, in the way in which we prefer to engage it (old or new chars).
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My only point of contention would be ensuring that you can play without the current season if you are not part of the ladder. Sure, it would be nice to have access to seasonal mechanics with your current characters and stashed items, but sometimes people really don’t like a league mechanic and just want to play the game without it.
POE had some really garbage leagues that they ultimately threw away because they weren’t even worth reworking. Others were reworked to be not so yucky. Either way, only a handful were good while they were live. If I hate a league mechanic, I would want to play LE without it.
Otherwise I agree, that sounds fantastic.
How about making it optional?
Works for me.
The only downside I can see is that if the community is small for “Standard” then further fragmenting it will make it even smaller. In an ideal world, you could just turn league mechanics on or off. In reality, I highly doubt that things will be balanced that way.
The next best thing would be to have an opt-in by character. Of course, if that is too much work then at having “Standard” and “Standard with League Mechanics” would probably suffice. I’m guessing you would have to choose each time a new league came out and stick with your decision until the end of the league.
In ARPGs, there is always a steep diminishing return in character progression. The longer you play, the slower your character progresses. Eventually your character is in the 99th percentile of maximum strength and you’re just playing for that nearly-impossible chance to find perfect items so you can make miniscule progress. Most people don’t find that fun and quit playing at that point.
Seasons are intended to bring those players back to the game by wiping away that stale character and making them start fresh. Certainly there’s nothing stopping players from doing that to themselves in Standard, but it’s more fun when there are incentives and new content to sweeten the pot and the whole community is doing it with you.
My main complaint with other ARPGs though is that I do want there to be a little bit of cross-season progression. Particularly things that can speed up or skip the low level gameplay. Carrying crafting reagents forward might be nice.
Dont like seasons, but it doesnt bother me at all ALA there is an non-season option.
Idea:
- The Season is added to the main game.
- There is an NPC you have to talk to to “activate” the Season. If you do not do so, then that content doesn’t appear for that character.
It’s a good idea, so long as the NPC has something you have to click AND a confirm option (3 clicks, 1 to select, 1 to choose, 1 to confirm). I can’t tell you how many times I have clicked on beta NPCs in games and caused untold havoc for my poor characters. I’ve even clicked on an NPC by mistake and not realized it, then clicked to move away and that just happens to be where the confirm box is.
A nice bonus would be an option to turn it off as well, but again - that is probably not realistic and honestly there are probably better things to work on (though it would be nice to at least evaluate the feasibility to see if it would take much effort).
Also, for shared stash between standard and standard with league mechanics, most of the time items are not a problem because they are either just gear or would be non-functional outside of league/standard league. The main thing on the dev side would be to restrict the special, functional items to only functioning in the league/standard league. Gear between standard/standard league shouldn’t be a big problem even if it brings a few new gear pieces to regular standard (i.e. make gear ubiquitous and items esoteric).
Actually i dont hate season, they exist for a valid reasons that are being laid out in this thread and its just part of the genre “traditional”.
Hence i just dont play them and once im gated from too much content, i iust quit and move on, simple.
So no feelings hurt. Im not gonna be like
“*$$#?! I invested 30k hours into this game!!!”
and so on like most drama queens from coughs
I would argue there are two problems with your example
-
You played one game religously over a short period of time. You’ll complete every games content before they can release anything at that speed. And… that’s OK! For a free game getting 1.4k hours is exceptional. You will never get a better deal for your money.
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I think you’re equating content to, well… content. My argument assumes that a season generally has a very small gimmick in it, while yours assumes a season has a massive change.
This is why, and this might be insanely unpopular, but this is why I really do believe in the “games as a service” if they are done right. For a game I love I absolutely want content on a regular, continuous and quick basis! Sadly we have only seen aggressive monetization to this date.
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I see what you mean. I’m coming from Poe where leagues are massive. There were mechanics that were so fun and full of things do I played for the whole three months then still started the next league.
If dungeons deliver on the alt leveling process, would it make reconsider your stances on leagues? I would be willing to try a perm league but I’m not convinced it would lead to long term growth nor be the most fun i would have.
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Well, personally I very much like Seasons. And yes, it does give you that sense of keeping the game “fresh”.
It certainly does something to the game. That is for sure.
If it weren´t for the Seasons thingy, MOST players would play their games a couple of times, and then quite simply be more or less done with it. SOME titles will keep Players playing a bit more since it offers very good and fancy MultiPlayer or CooP player options.
Seasons is also a very nice way to introduce new Mechanics to the game and Tasks and certainly new Modes and introducing new Enemies even.
But when that is said, it is also important to keep the flow of IDEAS fresh. With that I mean - Do not make Seasons just for the sake of Seasons. Show that you have actually come forward with fresh ideas to make different enough Seasons, which is actually fun, and don´t make Seasons that looks too much like the previous one(s), because that doesn´t make Seasons fun and intersting enough.
And yes, unfortunately for some of the ARPGs out there, and I also point my finger to you Path of Exile. PoE is now today one very nce ARPG and have been so for a very long time, but also at the same time PoE is and have been going in the trap of lacking of fresh ideas, because what it is now and have been for far too long is a game that is having Seasons that looks way too much like the previous ones. Both in Game-like Mode, Mechanics and other things.
But when that is said, I also do like the fact that Seasons brings Challenges. Because it gives you that pleasure of getting some truly Unique Cosmetic and other useable in-game Items, which is only attainable through these Challenges during the specific Season.
What I also find to a certain degree both fancy and not, is this Season Specific Supporter Pack(s). They are totally optional to buy and all, some of them are Supercool, but in my book they are WAY and overly unnecessarily and in fact greedily overpriced.