So offline players that don’t want the hassle of dealing with server outages like DDoS attacks, lag, competition to race, etc… must get left out in the cold. Because I don’t think there will be a PlugY for them if that change is reverted.
In D2 the endgame and replayability is new builds to try. I mean ones that are not meta builds. Could I make a Glacial Spike Sorceress that could at least beat Hell Difficulty?
I do believe that D2 ubers are harder to do than D3’s.
You have to understand that for some players a game never truly gets so old that they will never touch it again. Even though I don’t play PlayStation games anymore I still will enjoy watching videos of games that I used to play like RC Stunt Copter.
You may not see a good reason to play it without any restricted items, but others do see a reason that is viable for them. Everyone else is far different from you and haven’t done everything in D2.
I was thinking of a Glacial Spike build that would be able to at least beat hell difficulty. Don’t know if it would be strong enough to beat ubers to get the two special charms.
I am referring solely to ladder changes, not introduction of ladder items into single player. Non ladder is different and perhaps the problem is in the name ‘ladder’ for me not what it represented It was so much more than a ladder, and non ladder likewise was so much less. I’m sorry it isn’t explicitly and verbosely stated but I hope that’s clearer for you
well , the thing is glacial spike build wouldn’t be any different from a blizzard build i think considering all the cold skill are synergized together (except the frozen ball one) : usually people use blizzard + glacial spike together.
so yes it is viable.
but you can’t really solo hell with it (atleast not without infinity, and even with it some area will be not really doable except by relying a ton on the merc) due to cold immunes.
but in a group or in solo farming in non cold immunes area , it’s great.
you might beat Dclone with it (with infinity and good cold mastery) , but not the ubers though.
Lots of you still cannot grasp what sustains a games economy and it’s sad but shows me why game designers actually go to school for this instead of work at mcdonalds previous.
You need a high work = high reward system. If diablo2 stays on the ladder reset is no more then just first to lvl 99, within a year diablo2 will be dead. Those of you pretending you will still make ladder chars after the first couple seasons are not telling the truth. Although you think you might, making a sorc over and over for only 3 months with no reward is not going to sustain you.
always did though, not for the 99 level race but for the fresh start and higher difficulty.
Do you really think most people played ladder for so long solely for the items ? (i mean players that played every ladder they could)
if that was the case , except the ones that did it for the real money , most people would have stopped after one or two 6month ladder since it was usually enough to get everything you would want in most cases.
so yea , in my case i couldn’t care less for the items , i always deleted my characters or gave everything away for free at the end of each ladder in NL to then start directly once again in Ladder.
That being said , they could always give out optional portrait like they do in most season game.
or maybe an additional extra stash tab for NL if you kill baal in hell each ladder.
But in anycase no items should be specific to ladders. (unless it get added to NL pool right after the end of said season)
nowaday , no games actually gate items in season like D2 did in the past.
Especially not when season are only 3 month long.
Personally i mostly played it for the increased difficulty linked to ladder and the fresh start of the economy , my characters and everything.
The number of people that are extremely worked up over something that isn’t that big of a deal. Not just this topic either. I don’t think people are aware of how low the drop rates really are.
Sorry for the longer post. Well aside from seeing the one guy begging a forum user to have it changed back… there are people that are REALLY worked up over it?
And yes the drop rates on the good stuff are fantastically low which makes a 3 month ladder more of an endurance sack race(albeit some quite nice sacks will be around) to 99 for want of a better way of describing it
I have a suspicion that the bigger deal comes on non ladder when many people have got high level chars and resort to the most effective ways of looting. That has and likely always will be solo boss raiding in party games. I simply think that non ladder games, without any refresh are going to get bad beyond a point where everyone wants to mf p8 games and there are eg. 3 and 4 solo mfers joining every game, again and again, to raid bosses causing non ladder games to become a patchwork quilt of do 1 quest then make new game etc. That is going to hinder parties and mfers alike. If they gave p8 in non ladder I’d probably be reasonably ok with that but I’d still miss the restarts, monster dificulty increase, and yeah a few lil extras that were available to everyone if they played ladder … even those of us with families and jobs etc. which isn’t a great reason to make a game less despite many thinking it’s an advantage to do so.
with ladder mf’ing there was always a fresh start to allow natural games without that chicanery until however ‘later’ in the ladder season. It also represented another clump oof games to mf in and helped probably mitigate some of the mass of people raiding bosses. I can’t see many wanting to remake and rework a good mf char every 3 months with the downtime of getting back to Hell viability. Non ladder Hell, maybe even Nightmare, will just stay like it will be and get worse without any fresh start. I can’t see it taking too long to get to that state really…
I dunno if that sounds like a slightly bigger than none issue deal now? perhaps I havn’t communicated my concern well? Trying though
I understand your concern. I just never encountered that issue often in ladder or non-ladder over the years. There’s always a butthead somewhere. Usually, I just named the game what I wanted to run and people joined in to do that. it was common for somebody to come in and kill Diablo while we were working on Act 1 or 2, but I don’t recall many instances of people coming in to kill our objective. When it did happen we just went to a passworded game. There were a lot of people joining to say “need a rush” and then get people to Act 4 and say “so who’s giving their forge?” lol.
Not to say there aren’t problems, or even to minimize them, but I think they are being exaggerated.
Ladder does need something though. While I know there are people that enjoy just the restart (including me, sometimes), I don’t see most people being willing to do that just because.
I REALLY feel like they made the ladder stuff non-ladder because it’s possible we could have a WC3 issue where ladders don’t come out for a while. It makes me wonder if it’s intentional in that regard.
As far as items being ladder only… I’ve never cared for that. I don’t know what they could do differently though.
Yes I know you and others have to have those exclusive items to remain that way in order to feel special. Where you must get them before non ladder.
But those items will still retain their true in game value on the ladder due to the resetting of the economy.
Besides introducing once ladder only items into offline mode is part of the changes. Otherwise how could they truly be ladder only if Offline Mode players can get them. This is why reverting it would change it for Offline Mode. Saying to them how dare you play offline.
So the ladder only items are the only things holding the ladder together. He is saying to all you don’t like to see your name on the leader boards. You don’t love the fresh start and the reset to the economy only the items like he does. That is silly to say that to players you don’t know. Stop trying to talk for them. Time will no doubt tell you that you are wrong and players will still be playing ladder well after the first start of it.
If D3 is any hint that ladder doesn’t need any ladder specific items then I don’t know what is. Also for the longest while after season 4 there wasn’t any season themes to keep players interested and players still played seasons.
You just don’t understand that there are players that love to compete against other players.
Ok you understand and that’s cool, thanks for taking a read and at the very least thinking about it.
Do what just because? kill your objective? I agree that’s a pretty >.< thing. I personally never tried to mess anyones game up like that unless they hostiled me for public game mfing lol
Unless they do ideas like D3 does. D3 current season introduced Etheral items which are Powerful items you find on ladder but only can be used in ladder.
Meaning once your character becomes non ladder that item no longer exists.
You know me whaaa? For the very fact I was and still would be prepared to shed all ‘wealth’ to an account that I didn’t use for more than around 5 minutes(to retain what was effectively a couple of showcase accounts/ongoing SF Holy Grail type etc.) most seasons and started again for nearly all d2 seasons I think you are a little off mark.
Nobody ‘stopped you’ bar ‘you’ from going ladder mode if you saw them as items you couldn’t get, any gate was ‘in your head’ as is the ‘feeling special’ thing. Or you could trade for them whatever, I am not disputing that they should be available essentially to anyone on non ladder. They were available to all multiplayer… with a little choice to get them.
I also wouldn’t remove them from SP. That is fine in there. But non ladder is only really a good thing for that handful of extra items as it will be 3 months ladder now… and oooooo impatience driven by people who can’t wait due to ‘having families and jobs’ which is a terrible reason/massive smokescreen excuse to introduce poor change to a mostly good game.
I think you actually miss the concern I have voiced. I hope I am wrong about that concern, but I played enough on old bnet to know from missing the odd ladder that there was a distinct difference in the games on both over time.
Then there IS a liklihood that bots will appear again, maybe even duping… the ladder ‘as it was’ represented some point of ‘landscape/loot reset’ for that in it’s own bounds… at 3 months even that seems borked now with respect to getting anything like a well decked out char mf or otherwise etc… I hope I am wrong about that too but I fear I won’t be…
Thanks for trying to consider some stuff I wasn’t even aware I was going on about tho
I got one of those pootling on it with a friend last weekend… Hard difficulty new chars and got a grandfather inside 10 minutes… they got some DH bow… we were both so totally op we reset the difficulty to torment 4 IIRC to keep it a challenge lol… it was so broke!
How did you find ethereal season so far?
I so hope D2 doesn’t do ethereal season ala d3 if i’m truthful after that experience lol…
It added for some new interesting builds made it little more fun.
They could do it for ladder but in the sense of beta testing things to see how they do. Like what if this ladder only item gave splash damage to melee or made inferno skill good. Stuff that would change builds up and make ladder more interesting.
Then they have more data on how to buff underused skills.
Fair enough I can’t actually say we didn’t have some fun… it was aight when we got the dificulty to a point where it wasn’t a cakewalk. Thanks for appraising me that those weapons don’t stick about… it’s kind of a shame… it is a pretty looking sword
So in D2 players on the ladder don’t get them first before all non ladder players? Offline mode is screwed without using PlugY, which will not exist for D2R. Without either playing ladder or trading with those that play ladder. Or worse getting them as gifts, which I would except but not entirely love it. I am a type of player that has to earn what I get when I am playing a game. I earn it by putting in the effort towards defeating hell’s minions if I would be in a party of players.
Without playing ladder, trading with those that play ladder, or using PlugY for offline you will not get them. Those are not items behind a gate. Say that to those that don’t want to trade due to the fact that not everyone you would trade with wouldn’t scam you.
Say that those that had lag so bad that the monsters that I beat didn’t show it until I was ready to hit them again with my weapon. I guess if other games that would have offline mode and supported ladder you would love having that kind of lag and play it anyway huh.
Also this is beginning to get me to feel like saying how dare you play anything else in D2 other than ladder. You had to play ladder in order to be a D2 player. You would also have to play in open games and love getting ganked by other players. Love PvP, love trade, love Ladder, love the scams, love it all right. Okay then how much time does a player have to put in playing D2 that way, in order to have actually played D2 in your eyes.
There is still a choice in how you get those items.
1.) Offline mode: This is for those that don’t like the idea of dealing with any lag. They don’t like the idea of having to put up with servers being down due to maintenance or DDoS attacks. They don’t want to play with others for whatever the reason. But still they can get those items on their own. At their own pace. Not needing to stick to someone else’s schedule. Or finding others that just happen to have the same schedule as you do.
2.) Non ladder: They can get them without needing to worry about remaking characters to get them. Since the non ladder never resets they can take their sweet time to get them. It would be called long term goals. Also it is there for those that don’t care about the true in game value of items. So what if Fortitude cost three Ber runes (made up price). They don’t have to worry about trying to compete to get to level 99 first.
3.) Ladder: The once ladder only items still retain their original in game value only on the ladder. Players still will play ladder because they also love the reset of the economy. The fresh start, the race to level 99. This is what some of you don’t get yet. There are a lot of competitive Diablo players.
Add in trading with those that have them in either non ladder or ladder you will see you still have a choice in how you get them. So no choice is being removed.
The only thing being removed is they are no longer ladder only. Which is the only reason why you played ladder in the first place.
Wait till we ladder players get it first. How dare you non ladder players want to find it on your own. Playing at your own pace, which btw takes a lot of patience to do. Then wait till we trade with you to get them.
Why didn’t Blizz make non ladder only items and recipes and the same for offline mode. That way each can have their exclusive loot. After all you must have exclusive loot to play any mode. No way you could have any other reason to play then for exclusive rewards right.
Non ladder players can still wait for ladder players to get them and trade with them if they wanted to. They are not forced to wait to get them.
Actually there is nothing that says it will be three months. All it said was it would be shorter. It could mean 4 or 5 months and that would be shorter than 6 months.
As far as botting goes I am sure there will be bots. That is something that no one can put an end to. Sure you can and should try to do so. But the most anyone could hope for is to have such a small bot population that it is virtually zero in the eyes of players due to them never seeing a bot in any of their games.
Duping might be a thing of the past on the new battlenet at least that is what I hope will happen.
I actually have been having fun with the ethereals in season 24. I am a goal oriented player and I want to see just how far I can take a GoD DH Hungering Arrow build in paragon and in GR levels. I have already cleared a GR higher than what I can do non season, at least seven GR levels higher.
I doubt that D2 would have a special ethereal season because they already have them.
What they could do to spice ladders up is do some really crazy stuff. Some things that would never cross over to non ladder. Others that might cross over.
No you would just trade Enigma for the jewel. Teleport should’ve never been on Enigma to begin with.
That’s a nice wall of text you worked on! I can’t really say I’m following much of what you put. Do you mind rewording it all a bit more clearly please, while missing out the superfluous hypothetical fluff, and bit’s you seem to have invented that you are attributing me with?
@Azzazzel, what do you have problems understanding someone that doesn’t agree with you. I guess if we agreed then you would have perfect understanding. Don’t see how I could explain it better. So I will have to take it like I said you say you don’t understand just because I don’t agree with you.
It was so much more than a ladder, and non ladder likewise was so much less. I’m sorry it isn’t explicitly and verbosely stated but I hope that’s clearer for you 
