Those ways to solve it, adds new runewords and/or uniques to ladder, increase monster level on ladder etc is not a solution at all, because it disadvantages non-ladder players enormously. Splitting community is not bad. Splitting it unhealthy is bad. Ideal would be if neither part is a ghost town. By letting Ladder have nothing might result in making it underpopulated. With old-style restrictions on same stuff with every ladder reset you have more and more stuff on non-ladder, they are definitely gonna be less common there, but being less and less rare every reset. As it should be spirit in non-ladder is going to expensive after first reset. Cheaper with reset after reset to a point where it’s not luxury anymore.
New RWs every ladder makes it so you will never have enough pieces on the non-ladder market, because every few months you have new stuff will make them on non-ladder constantly luxurious. Also new stuff potentially entirely flips power levels or break the game completely. My fear is that if you are constantly giving ladder new stuff all the time that is meaningful and every few months you’re just forced to play ladder to get might make non-ladder dead.
Monster level up to such ridiculous values is really bad idea, it removes any depth, brainlessly grind easiest places and get goodies from haven. It just makes it so people can just farm act 1 till the end of time. On Cold Plains you have superunique, you have good density of mobs and nothing is even remotely threatening, Inner Cloister has superunique and usually bunch of very close clumped mobs with multiple champions and uniques… Area levels are well made, because there is not many of them, each have different immunities, different mob density, different travel & clearing time.
Rifts-like stuff? Come on man, you have Diablo 3 for such things. Why so many people try to come and just shift the game into it’s already created threequel? We don’t need two versions of Diablo 3.
And people are not triggered over nothing, most people who are voicing their distaste for that idea come from veterans (and I don’t say all veterans do are against it, I just say those who raises this are from that group). I played both ladder and non-ladder many times over the years and I am really afraid that ladder can become wasteland. Not necessarily right away, but eventually. I probably won’t go ladder once with restrictions lifted, scoreboards aren’t for mere mortals like me so what business do I have there? And if someone want to return with “fresh economy” it’s complete myth refuted by existence of things d2jsp, when your “points” carry over seasons economy is only fresh the first time. Later it’s just like life, some start rich and others start poor.
Sounds better to make it a general change then, of course only as long as there are two separate realms; “classic” and “new”, since this would be a drastic change to the gameplay.
But there is no reason to keep it behind ladder. That would be the D3 disaster all over again, with its season themes.
Rifts should never ever happen imo. Not even in a separate realm. Such a system is pretty much anti-D2. Content should be out in the game-world.
It would definitely have to be done extremely careful, and if added to easier areas, those areas would need to be made harder, beyond what the monster lvl would do.
Yep.
It doesn’t though. Not all players are cheaters. It would be like arguing that people wanting low droprates is a myth because of botters and dupers.
The concept behind the ladder surely is a fresh start. Besides, even for the cheaters, who might carry over wealth, the supply side of the economy has still been reset, requiring people to find those sellable items again.
Let’s imagine it did become a wasteland. If nobody want to play it, that is not a problem? Nobody would be affected by it being a wasteland.
Not that I for one second believe it would become a wasteland.
I also only played Ladder for the LO-RW. Hearing this actually made me happy since with shorter D2:R ladder duration, and the fact that I have way less free time for video games now than I did 20 years ago when I was in high school, it makes it easier to just choose non-ladder and not worry about it.
A lot of people like the “fresh start” aspect of ladder. For legacy D2 I can certainly understand that with all of the bugged/duped/hacked items that ended up in non-ladder over the years. D2R will already be a fresh start, at least initially. Hopefully it won’t have the hacked/dupped item problems, so one less reason for a fresh start for some people.
With my limited play time I like the idea of not having to “abandon” my unfinished ladder character after it expires, in order to keep making new LO-RW, or unlock ladder only content etc.
It will be interesting to see how the player base is divided though. These days playing D3 in NS when there’s an active season (at least in the beginning of one) is often a ghost town (at least compared to games available in season). If the only reward is the fresh start and running up the ladder for D2R, I wonder if the non-ladder servers will be more populated. Good for someone like me who doesn’t care about running up the ladder, but maybe not so good for those who do enjoy that. Hopefully there’s enough people playing that both versions will be well supported!
With how much I’ll be able to play these days I totally agree, which is why for me, not having to even bother with ladder was a nice solution. I wasn’t sure if the people who were hard core enough to put in a lot of time might do fine with 3 month ladders, but it does feel short. Feels like an eternity in D3, but that’s a very different game.
I think with this change, the playerbase won’t really even interact with each other much aside from the occasional trash talk in lobbies. You make a valid point with the shorter seasons. I was against the idea initially but after seeing shorter seasons there wouldn’t have been any way I had time to collect those LO items.
This change is for the better but now (since I’m not really interested in the ladder leaderboards) I’m stuck with “why would I even want to play ladder?”
I think initially I may play ladder since it’ll be a bit easier to level up my initial characters but after reset I’ll play NL
That’s where I’m at as well, but am “okay” with not having any reason to play ladder anymore, unless I decide I want a completely fresh start. You can still choose to not share gear/gold with any new characters you create, if you want a fresh start, although nothing “holds you to it”.
I was also thinking of starting ladder (because why not?) but then just not continuing to play the same characters once the ladder ended. However it sounds like ladder isn’t going to be available at launch, so if I buy the game before ladder is available, I’d start on non-ladder (as it’s the only option) and then likely not bother to do anything with ladder, now that there aren’t LO-RW.
Why change it at all? Current state of affairs works.
If you want to have fresh start yourself just create a character and make it fresh start. Economy isn’t about what you do personally, it’s about how server behaves as collective. So you can have fresh start even without reset if you want, but you can’t have fresh economy even with, as long as those tools to bypass it exists.
Because I care about people who do want to play ladder, even if I won’t be one to play it.
Starting over alone is not remotely the same as starting over as part of an event, with a bunch of other people.
Part of the economy is reset with ladder. All existing items are gone.
As said, yeah, tools to bypass the wealth reset exists, but some people cheating does not take away the entire game. Otherwise you could also increase droprates by 1 million % and it would not matter, since bots and dupes exist anyway, as tools to bypass the droprates. But that would not be correct either. You shouldn’t design a game around what cheaters do.
Yeah, same, but if nobody want to play, there are nobody to be concerned for.
Anyway, I bet there would be plenty of people interested in ladder. At least more than in D2 currently. Enough for people to get that ladder experience, if they want to.
For better or for worse. I don’t think game needs it at all and I just think it would be for worse.
I am not designing anything to bypass cheating here, all I’m saying is that “fresh economy” is not a real thing, that’s all. It’s just misleading term and I don’t like it being thrown around like that.
I didn’t say nobody, I said not enough people to have thriving community. Nowadays D2 still gets it’s fair share of players for a 20 year old game and those people are highly engaged. In D2R engagement level will be lower, because it can’t be only about most dedicated players, new release will definitely have more random clickers who just got abroad the hypetrain. Ladder population can hurt those who want to actually play it. Also restrictions create different non-ladder meta, especially during early seasons.
Yeah I will not play ladders no point unless they add new ladder only stuff in the future. I mean I may get bored in a year or so and play a ladder or 2. I am concerned if dclone spawns ladder it wont spawn non ladder so that could suck if the non ladder community is small.