I’ve suggested a couple additions to ladder for incentive to play. Mostly cosmetic stuff (could be for your toon or even the merc as well since mercs never change appearance ever, so that could be interesting).
I would also be fine with ladder only items that existed only within that ladder season and disappeared once the season ended. Could be fun to challenge yourself just to get the new item/weapon/armor/whatever that makes you uber strong. However, I would not want these items to carry over to nonladder ever.
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Too late… They already made this change, seems high % wanted it without realizing the long term ramifications, but its done.
I think I would have preferred loot changes than ladder nerf.
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Since ladder characters become non-ladder at the reset, why shouldn’t the items and runewords be available in non-ladder? Why else do you play a character that will be wiped in 3 months other than to try and actually be ranked on the ladder?
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No worries, if you don’t see a reason to play ladder, you will still be alone in the non ladder world.
funny thing is , cow king will be probably one of if not the best spot to farm shako, so it does add a great farmeable super unique 
it could add 1 shared stash per ladder if you killed baal in hell mode maybe at the end of said ladder.
Though , it could become a rather huge number in a few years xD
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Blizzard is good at contradicting.
I would bet big money, future ladders will have incentives.
They said this game is a “Live” game, they will be adding things,
and it will be important to them, to have player retention.
First ladder will only be a race, but the next ones will be different.
I hope it doesn’t turn into D3 seasons.
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Ladder Only rune words like Fortitude, Grief, Insight, Oath and Spirit are core essential rune words for majority of character builds even within non-ladder. Having non-ladder runes mixed with ladder runes while non-ladder in D2:LoD 1.14D are unusable, didn’t make sense. Now, with this change, it’s VERY welcomed within the community. If you’ve done some research, the recent Closed and Open Beta Survey results included majority of players in FAVOR of allowing Ladder Only runes, rune words and recipes to be allowed in non-ladder specifically for D2R. Allowing one piece of content to have all the “goodies” for 6 months while the rest, Single Player and Non-Ladder could not benefit from the Ladder wealth, most players turned to play as Ladder characters without the care to “race” to Level 99. I sure as heck didn’t care about my Ladder rank even if I was Level 99 at one point. The gear mattered most as it does in non-ladder, so yea, the change was needed and warranted.
The main goal for Ladder is the race to Level 99 and to keep that position. I HIGHLY doubt, anyone is going to be outfitted with elite Ladder Only rune words to be “that good” to reach Level 99.
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but its important to note that this is only the content from //previous// ladder seasons in D2. Its essentially the starting point for D2R. They haven’t said that they wont have ladder unique content in future seasons. It really wouldnt make sense to relaunch ‘missing’ some of this content, but that doesnt mean they wont or shouldnt use (temporarily) exclusive content to promote engagement for future ladders. It would be extremely surprising (and actually pretty lame) if every future season is just a fresh 99 race. Thats no way to manage a game.
This is a very valid point I hadn’t considered yet. Was initially annoyed that ladder wasn’t available at launch, but understood the wisdom of that. Was even more disappointed when they unlocked ladder-only items - took a lot of motivation away.
But, perhaps VV has something in mind to add more incentive than just the weak “fresh start” or “race to 99” features. Maybe they will come up with something novel to draw in crowds.
Granted, I’m not expecting much from Ladder #1 other than basic game play. But, maybe for Ladders 2 and later, we’ll see something interesting to bring us in.
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I wouldn’t play SP without this change and I love SP it’s my favourite mode. Would just play Bnet ladder and stick to old D2 plugy mod instead.
Actually a number of folks are saying they will still play ladder. Mostly for the fresh start.
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I will for sure. I love ladder. Love fresh starts, fresh economy, fresh competition, and a chance to gear up and level quickly before others.
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You should not have to level a temp alt in ladder just to use the standard builds that everyone does.
Since you pay a 1 time fee and don’t pay monthly or for store cosmetics…why would they want you to stay… you already gave them every penny you are going to keeping you just raises the cost of supporting 1 more player
I mean they did it in d2 which was actually sort of the pioneer of the seasons / live service model. lots of ‘one time’ games still value player retention, it helps long tail sales tremendously. Active community = more players long term.
Its also like immensely cheap to add new items to the game, even moreso runewords.
They aren’t guaranteed to for sure, but i would be extremely surprised if there was no new content in future seasons after 1.
They should make an expansion pack with act 6, super hell mode that you can’t beat 35+ levels early, some more runes and gear, and oh what the heck bosses that you can’t bug out
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Yep. I only ever played ladder for the full item set. So glad to be done with that and I really hope they never go back to ladder exclusives, UNLESS they do it in a way where all of that ladder content hits NL after that one season is over. Meaning it can all be earned there, not just passed down like it works on d2 now.
Thats true.
But also the other changes are really great.
Thanks blizz!
This is why I still play ladder. I hate games that content lock things out just to play ladder/seasons. I’ve always played it for fresh eco, that’s it.
99 would be nice but I’ve never been able to in one season (HC + playtime available to me).
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I would personally hate this. Not sure about others but I only play for the fresh start and don’t really do NL in any game. Content locking new items for a season/ladder is so cliche and doesn’t do much other than fresh start + power creep.