I know many many many people are very thankful for the QOL changes and ladder rune words/events coming to non-ladder/sp/etc. But what purpose does ladder fulfill now? It’s been compressed from 6 months to 3 (as far as I can find info wise) and now no longer fulfills an actual purpose.
If you want players to play ladder you need to incentivize rewards. Please. And keep the 6 month cycle. 3 months is too short to accomplish anything meaningful aside from hitting 99. There is 0 reason to play ladder and that’s pretty disheartening.
I really hope the team is considering incentives for ladder. The decision has already been made to bring ladder rw to non-ladder (sp I could TOTALLY understand) so I’m assuming there is 0 chance to revert that decision (and I am 100% eating my own words being one of the people saying they never would do that), but what else has the team been thinking for a reason to play on ladder? I really hope to hear better news on this front in the coming weeks before or after launch.
There is 0 prestige behind it, and that’s a big bummer.
I’d like to keep this conversation constructive. The 2 sentence posts detract from it and just fuel flames.
I’ve played ladder for a long time simply for the fresh start, and I will continue to do so. I don’t care about ranking on the ladder. I have kids, I don’t have time for that.
For those who want the best gear without worrying about a time frame, non-ladder is perfect.
I don’t care over the changes to rw/etc. I’m over that and still kinda surprised. There isn’t an incentive to play ladder like there used to be. All I’m looking to see/hear is if there will be incentives to. If not, then yeah fine I’ll just play non-ladder and have 0 qualms about ever being reset. If there are, then cool I’ll give it my best shot and play ladder for a few resets and see if I can make it a meaningful experience for myself.
I read it before posting. You said that ladder needs incentive to play it, that there’s zero reason to play ladder now. That’s when I replied with what gives me incentive to play ladder… A fresh start, walking the path from zero to hero. That’s enough for me.
If your incentive is the fresh start then what reason do you have for playing the first season? Non-ladder will already be a fresh start at launch, there is no content gating anymore, and you won’t have to wait until Soon™ to start playing seriously. I was really excited for the ladder and I was seriously disappointed about the delay, and was essentially going to hold off on playing at all until it started. Now there’s no way in hell I’m playing ladder season 1, and maybe not even season 2 if I like my characters enough by then.
A lot of people will jump ship straight to ladder once they make it available, I promise you.
Why you ask? Because creating new characters is the spice that keeps Diablo 2 fresh and enjoyable.
By the time they implement ladder, I wholeheartedly doubt anyone will have made any significant progress in gearing their characters except for the Streamers who are paid to play and people who have no job or aren’t going to school.
Who knows, they may have something new in store to incentivize ladder play beyond just a fresh start… I wouldn’t count on anything prior to the official ladder announcement start date after the games release.
Same here (though i don’t have kids)
fresh start is a good reason enough
and if not , they could always give toggleable customized portrait i guess. but eitherway nothing gameplay/items gated. (or only temporarily for 1 season like most games do )
but personally i think fresh start is good enough
I’ll keep playing ladder on regular basis anyways, i dont need a reward, the fresh start is all that exciting new air i need.
I dont rlly need “prestige” or some awful achievements, just switching things up each season is interesting enough for me.
One Season i start it in the classic way with a sorc to farm items b4 i touch another char, the next season i’ll start without her etc.
I never liked to play solo/offline without ladder runewords, pretty much a dead Gamemode to me this way.
Plenty of incentive, fresh start, getting to 99 first, new economy. Locking people out of content because of ladder was a joke though, good that its no longer an issue.
I’m sure there are more juicy details to come for us to absorb. Some will like them, some won’t. Don’t forget, Blizzard is in the game to make money, they’re going to aim to please as large of a group as possible.