D2R Ladder is not 'Competitive'

General Discussion
1

Everybody with a functioning frontal lobe understands that The D2/D2R Ladders in their current form are in no way ‘competitive’. Ultimately it boils down to this: the streamer whose viewers are the biggest simps will appear as #1 in the current system, barring that the item shops set their bots to shrine hunt and 5% diablo instead of doing something profitable. All that is fine, let the streamers keep their D2R Standard Ladder, but don’t call it ‘Competitive’, because it’s not - but we can create a new optional ladder mode that is!

Follow these simple steps to create an (actually) competitive ladder.

  • Step #1) Rename the current ladder system from ‘Competitive Ladder’ to something more accurate, perhaps ‘Cooperative Ladder’, ‘Team Ladder’, ‘Standard Ladder’, ‘Simp City Ladder’, ‘Gieb Free? Ladder’, ‘Noob Pls Rush Ladder’, or whatever else you can come up with - only the name of the ladder changes.
  • Step #2) Create a new ladder system called ‘Competitive Ladder’
  • Step #3) Disable all trading in ‘Competitive Ladder’
  • Step #4) In ‘Competitive Ladder’ items dropped to the floor cannot be picked up by another player
  • Step #5) In ‘Competitive Ladder’, all quest progress is permanently locked in any game that has ever had a character other than the hosting character join.
  • Step #6) In ‘Competitive Ladder’, picking up new waypoints is disabled in any game that has ever had a character other than the hosting character join.
  • Step #7) In ‘Competitive Ladder’, all experience gains and drops are disabled in every zone that has had another player enter
  • Step #8) In ‘Competitive Ladder’, the shared stash is disabled until the next season.

“But most people are only bribed into playing the non-competitive ladder by new RWs, so who is going to play an atually Competitive Ladder when they are much more easily boosted and carried by the Simp City version” you might say. Here’s why.

  • Step #9) ‘Cooperative Ladder’ still gets the new rune-words, RMT community and bot users rejoice narcissistically.
  • Step #10) ‘Competitive Ladder’ gets an exclusive new R/W OR the value range on the juicy new R/W is increased by a factor of 0.7 to represent the 7 dead weight players that the competitors on this new ladder used to carry on the old ‘Cooperative Ladder’
  • Step #11) After season ends, these 0.7 rejoin the standard non-ladder, however they are ACCOUNT BOUND. RMT and bot users prepare to deliver inflammatory troll responses from their bot sock puppet forum accounts.

Everyone wins. Streamers still get to feel like they’re the best and have all their neophytes believing that their favorite content creator who tells them where to find Mephisto is the best player there ever was. The RMT community gets to continue mass botting (on a separate server structure) and running spam in public channels (on a separate server structure). Trades and forum users maintain their elite market where they can play with their wallet or perform farming runs for the people who want to play with their wallets.

"But wont RMT just bot the ‘Competitive Ladder’ with their neo sonics anyway, the scripts that auto-level and auto-gear magic find characters from scratch that have been around in the public for around a decade? Unfortunately these parasites still require a certain concession for humans to have a legitimate ladder so here are the final steps.

  • Step #12) CAPTCHA / SMS verification
  • Step #13) Active Leaderboard reviews
  • Step #14) Weekly ban wave, coinciding with standard maintenance

You’ll notice this setup completely prohibits rushing, area preclearing, quest gating, item selling, service selling, shrine seeking, and any/all forms of simp boosting. It does this while still allowing players to join each others games, show off their characters, duel each other, and ‘socialize’ by farming separate areas together in the same game. Which brings the final and best change:

  • Step #15) ‘Competitive Ladder’ allows the usage of the /players command, to justify solo progress confined to the team progress ladder time frame.

Special Bonus: ‘Competitive Ladder’ characters operate on separate game servers from ‘Cooperative Ladder’, so when the mass bots over-migrate to your region you won’t suffer the ping/stability penalty if you chose to participate in ‘Competitive Ladder’. However, you are allowed to migrate to a ‘cooperative ladder’ server game to give rushes, boosts, and drop items to others, so long as all drops, experience, quest progress, and picking up new waypoints remain disabled for the ‘Competitive Ladder’ character.

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2

Sorry but no.

Just make a solo ladder for sc and hc, that is enough. Everyone else can play at the “normal” ladder.

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A discussion with Hakku-2616

Sorry but no, I want my solo ladder character to be able to interact with and duel other player’s solo ladder characters.

Thank you for your contribution.

4

What a profound observation. Ive only been saying this since the first season, I give up!

The only way to ensure competition is to limit game creation/join per hour as LoD does.

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A discussion with rod-1442

Absolutely not, never again.

Blizzard should not ever again impose playtime restrictions on any product.

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6

For some reason this made me laugh more than it should have. Thank you.

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7

Seems that TS doesn’t know how to “compete” and blaming others in his own incompetence.

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A discussion with billibobc-1142

Speculation on anyone’s personal views regarding streamers is off topic.

I’m not giving Llama any flack here.

Llama is not being referenced in this discussion. Off topic.

Thank you for your contribution.

9

+1 for Simp City. That’s hilarious.

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10

how about go play a different game? ladder was never competitive, the people at the top were always no lifing it, streamers are just getting paid to be no lifers.

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Imagine if you spent as much time playing the game in a competitive nature as you do on making posts like this. Perhaps then you too could attempt to be competitive.

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Man people really have some inferiority complexes when it comes to streamers wow lol

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It is just a mask to disguise the real issue. They know they could never hit 99 first because they’re not competitive in nature and are bad at the game. Streamers are everything they wish they were and could be.

14

Its funny too cause Llama wasnt even #1 on ladder this reset lol so idk why hes catching flack for all these supposed free drops to get to the top.

15

They need the issue with how they hit 99 first otherwise they’d have to admit they suck. Llama/Teo/Whatever organized played would all destroy you in SSFL as well as this one. Why? Cuz it’s their job and they’re more willing to sacrifice sleep than you are.

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A discussion with DizzyDwarf-1269353

Your baseless speculation about who can or cannot reach 99 and who is or is not bad at the game is not relevant. I’ve had many level 99 characters since I began playing D2:Classic on patch 1.04. I suppose you’ve guessed wrong.

IDK man I just want a mode where my character can interact with other characters who weren’t purchased, that’s really all I’m trying to look for here. Honestly I DGAF about the ladder, I just want to play the game in a legit environment. I don’t expect the people who enjoy the current bot-fed system or who want to buy their character instead of play through to understand.

How does this optional ladder mode negatively impact you in any way? If it truly is a skill issue then surely the skilled player will be able to top either competitive or cooperative ladder types. Maybe the same streamer wins again, that would be a great story. Or, they could have the consolation prize of a 70% bonus on the hot new super gear.

But it does, purchasing characters with gear farmed from a botnet on the first day of the ladder season. That’s not any sort of competition I’m interested in entering.

Please review:

Please review:

We are going in circles here, I don’t want to compete, I’ve said what I want in the quotes above.

Incorrect assertion, please revisit.

Expanded:

  • Purchased
  • Rushed
  • Boosted

I would like to play a seasonal ladder that 100% guarantees this type of interaction. Characters who can not meet this prerequisite should relegate themselves to the same ladder they have always had that functions in the same way with the same reward system.

Please revisit this idea and try to keep it in mind if you want to further discuss this with me.

^^^ Without this, D2R may as well be deleted for me.

Instead, let’s try the above optional system and see what happens. If you don’t want to play on the ‘Competitive Ladder’, then ‘Cooperative Ladder’ will still be there for you. Win, win.

While such speculation may seem intriguing, let’s give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are competent, have integrity, and value their customers.

We can agree that you believe Blizzard to be incapable of holding a legitimate competition. Implementing the described steps is possible and would result in a very different very much more competitive ladder, if that’s not your thing then feel free to continue playing on the existing cooperative ladder.

Oh yes, I can imagine it. Unfortunately the competitive version of the ladder has not yet been implemented.

Thank you for your contribution.

18

Caring what others do in a game that doesn’t affect you is your first mistake.

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But you just said you’re not competitive, so why does it matter?

22

So play in a legit environment? Your play is legit so your environment is.