I can make this in a day, start of ladder. That’s not stressful…
By definition they are a participation trophy, access to ladder only recipies/drops/runewords is a trophy (reward) for participating in (playing) ladder.
Yeahh no. A participation trophy is a trophy that is given when you participate in something, probably like the trophys you got as a kid for playing a kids sport.
In Diablo 2 it’s kinda like a professional sport. Just because you participate in ladder doesn’t mean you get a trophy. You have to earn that trophy by playing and winning.
Lol. Nice try though.
Edit: Honestly after reading your message again your logic is quite perplexing… recipes/drops/runewords are a potential of playing ladder. Why you think ladder correlates whatsoever to a “participation trophy” is beyond me.
Seems to be that anyone for major changes to diablo 2 have quite the odd logic, similar to this.
I’m predominantly a ladder player myself. And this is just crushing. The ladder experience is now just for lack of better words dead.
The worst of it is the 3 month season. As I’ve said in other threads: This is roughly how long it takes to gear up a character and then it’s time to roll it back ???
If botting returns it will make the econ so incredibly awful. Like without ladder exclusives any and all items will just be mercilessly farmed out. So the market will just plateau in a very stagnant way.
It almost seems like a no brainer to not change…yet here we are!
While there are the type who want to sell that EDC to loaded melee duelers on jsp. For most selling Spirits/Fort’s was like their bread and butter…
Goodbye to ladder IG 
There’s definitely gonna be some early ladder burnout when exclusives removed combined with the much shorter ladder season. Last I heard it was something like 90 days. This game has items people don’t find in a decade and somehow 90 days is good enough for a ladder season? 6 months at a minimum really. Anyways non ladder looks very attractive rather than reseting every 3 months and no item that cant be crafted.
I find the season length to be more detrimental though. Diablo 3 style seasons, but Diablo 3 has insane drop rates so it works in that situation. D2 doesn’t have rift guardians that drop 10 legendaries(uniques) at a time. Not saying I want rift guardians but they didn’t analyze season duration from a drop rate perspective. More like someone who saw D3 season duration and thought of making the game more like that, which is a terrible idea.
I’m not sure what the solution is regarding ladder exclusives though. As of right now there’s really no reason to play them unless you feel the economy needs a reset and you’ve achieved what you want. That won’t happen for most players until 6months to a year later. Racing to 99 isn’t much of an achievement as people do that via botting and bots don’t take breaks. Even if there aren’t effective bots the first season, you would still have to no life it with no sleep. Basically ladder is worthless now unless you’re planning to no life the game.
i agree , especially considering this change i think the ladder only removal is a good thing.
it would’ve make many player simply stop playing if it was combined with the 3months duration.
personally i never played ladder for the items but mostly for the fresh start (like most games do) , so i’ll still be playing ladder. The only thing that might make me not play ladder some seasons is this 3 months duration thing , especially during months where i’am scheduled to be working a ton.
TLDR : what is detrimental for ladder isn’t the items being not gated anymore , but this 3 months duration in my opinion.
As for more incentives they could always provide toggleable portrait that you can win each seasons by killing hell baal or something (toggleable so that players that don’t want to see them can make it so they can simply see the vanilla’s ones)
Yeah my primary reason was always for the economy reset, but here’s the thing…
Why would we need an economy reset if it launches a week after the regular launch, or two weeks after, even a month? There’s no reason to jump on it unless you’re racing to 99 because you will have access to everything and the economy will still be very fresh. The economy will only be fresh for 90 day intervals anyways, seems really stupid. If the average enigma takes 2000 super chest runs how many players are going to even complete an enigma before it just rolls into the old economy, not many unless they buy from jsp. Shorter seasons almost seem like a gimmick to encourage people to buy from bots to actually acquire semi decent gear before it ends.
well , i half agree with it , considering there’s still indeed the race but also the higher difficulty that is unique to ladder (ladders monsters has 100% more def , higher HP and better A.I)
in my case it’s the difficulty thing that attract me.
that being said , i agree that it won’t be very attractive to many for the very first seasons , but that’s only a “problem” for the very first 3 months of the game.
sure the very first 3 months will have less ladder players , but starting december/january it’ll be a good fresh start like old time once again.
but i do think they should simply report the first ladder for january or something.
Oddly enough that’s one thing I was unaware of until recently, that non ladder mobs were weaker. That doesn’t make sense, but I always played ladder so that’s kind of why I never noticed. If both versions have access to all runewords, there’s no reason for mobs to be easier in that case.
I personally knew it since i played diablo 2 and that was also one of the reasons why i only played ladder.
But i think so too , i hope that NL will get the same difficulty as Ladder.
i mean , i will still be playing ladder but for the few cases where i’am too busy and can’t play ladder some seasons , i’d like the difficulty to be the same…
ladder is already easy enough in my opinion.
I like having all the content in NL, but what you say rings true. I believe that after 1-2 seasons of Ladder, we might get new content, like rune words that are exclusive for Ladder, and that will breathe fresh air into the game. I know they haven’t said anything like that, but they haven’t fully denied it also. And I believe this is what’s going to happen. They even said they are open to changes in the future, depending on community feedback. Unless D2R is only to kill time until D4 releases.
I do feel both for and against this change, it is hard to say which would have the more positive/negative result, but mostly I would like to thank you for actually having a well thought out and well written post. You took the time to write it, and I read it in its entirety even tho I only quoted the tldr section.
As someone who played a ton of LLD pvp, I know that there was seperate communities on nonladder and ladder, and I would have to play the ladder to trade for the elite LLD items I would want for my builds, or later on we had jsp for that. The main variable I saw, was the desire to play nonladder was (in my experience) exclusively for PvP reasons. I would always look at a new ladder as a fun fresh gameplay, and I wouldnt play it for the new items, I just found it fun to race and mf up until the mid 90s (i only went for 99 once).
I think that it is a good change for the sole reason that if your friends play non-ladder, and you want to play nonladder, you can still make insight/spirit for leveling. I hated not having access to spirit swords for leveling on non ladder.
Saying that, I am also okay with a no change, it doesnt seem detrimental to me either way.
edit: Those personal loot promoters on the other hand… (blash bodash, yes you), I would vote for no changes simply to reduce any chance these two people have from getting that ridiculous personal loot change they want.
Why did you hate it?
Because you hate difficulty! A common characteristic amongst people supporting this change.
You missed the point, I am not supporting a change.
Using ladder runewords is more fun, it’s not just about difficulty. I was for the change to be made to single player, but against it in non ladder.
Oh well. NL will be extra saturated with fathoms and griefs, for sure.
Yep, there will be more people shying away from ladder than ever, and nl will be super saturated, making everything easy to get.
You cant see how that reduces the game’s longevity in a big way?
Of course. Why do you think I was against the change.
Nothing I can do about it tho, there are still going to be very difficult items to acquire for PvP, like skill lifers and 3/20/20.
Having spirit sword on single player is clutch.
People will play the ladder regardless, not because they want the item they couldnt get, but because they want to start again with everyone not having the item.
Again I am neither for or against this change, but it is one of the more insignificant changes that has been suggested.
As long as they dont change anything else, I could accept this change.
There are TONS of ex-ladder players who have been telling you guys the exact opposite thing, but you guys just keep saying this. Its like their words dont even render on your screen. Ladder will be much less populated than it should have been.
I havent read up on this anywhere else, just here and now.
I am simply expressing an opinion, I am not trying to change anyone elses opinion.
And again… I am not asking for any changes