I’m sure Blizzard don’t care if you play season or not - or play at all since you already bought the game. Season is a free service provided to all of us. And don’t forget that non season isn’t that stagnant because each new patch also applies to non season.
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Except for the part where we’ve had some themes that don’t apply after the fact that lead to a build no longer being able to be reproduced or GR highs being harder to acquire.
Well… They need Monthly Active User numbers to reflect on their quarterly reports and planning a mobile Diablo game released by the end of this quarter, they have to keep a potential going.
Yep. 45mph in town feels very slow after doing 75 on the Freeway. 
I actually played the first 3 or 4 seasons in Diablo III. At that time, I would play a good bit of non-season as I only played non-hardcore at that time. But, everything got boring, even the few seasons I attempted to play after that before I took a very long break from the game (about 17 seasons - I played one season between that entire time and I lasted a few days then quit). Now, I really only enjoy hardcore seasonal play. I suppose my reason for liking hardcore only now is because it forces me to get better or else I lose everything I worked for. On top of that, it just gives me that feeling of fun that I lack to have/create on a non-seasonal or non-hardcore character. In addition, when you do die in hardcore, as long as it isn’t often, you get that satisfaction out of getting simple upgrades again as if you are working toward that end-game goal but still haven’t found the perfect piece for a given slot that you would save forever, if that makes sense - items just seem more valuable and upgrades feel more satisfying.
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I never play non season, ever.
I will only salvage all the gear from season in 15 min or so then wait patiently for Friday night new season.
I have been known to play in both.
Usually if a season looks interesting I will try it out if not then I play NS.
There are times when I play NS and Seasonal both.
There are other times (usually due to RL situations) where I might not play at all for a season or even two.
D3 debuted on May 15, 2012. I appreciate that even after all this time, changes are being made to the game.
There is a real question about how long a game should be supported by the developer. I think Blizz strikes a decent balance. I think anything after 7-8 years is a bonus, games aren’t going to be supported into perpetuity… Meanwhile, when I divide the money I’ve paid by the hours I’ve played, I’ve gotten my money’s worth.
They have not added new “content” lately, in that the floor tiles and enemies are pretty much unchanged lately. But they have updated items and those updates do have an impact in non-season. Some are buffs, some are nerfs, but they are real changes.
Even the lowly WD has seen a number of buffs in the past 3 years, although not enough IMO. But there have been real changes that show in gameplay, the game has not been static in non-season. I do play my NS after the patches to see how they work (and to see what I can do with the extra paragon I get after the season ends).
Myself, I see the season buffs as entertaining, they change the game enough that it’s interesting to play the same content. If the season buffs were made permanent, the game would be way overpowered, so I understand why they are seasonal.
So, seasons are a thumbs-up for me.
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Unfortunately, playing season is a must to enjoy the vast power increase the seasonal theme brings.
I’d prefer to play non season, tbh.
Got plenty of gems there waiting to be leveled up further and used for augmentation.
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LoLthere are super trolls stalking people on these forums. It’s not an accusation it’s a fact 
True:
First thing : I play 95% solo.
I play in season if my toon can benefit from it afterwards, if the bonus allows me to go up in GR and to have a real gain concerning paragon, or new/reworked items.
(and for the “stupid” wings / transmogs / pets, but that’s a weakness on my part).
Otherwise, I play non season.
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How do you hide your profile? 🕵♂ Can anyone hide their profile or do you have to be special?
What are you hiding for?
What’s the point? 
Must be something weird if you gotta hide.
- Click on your avatar at the top right of the forums.
- Click on Preferences
- Click on Interface
- In the Other section, tick the box for Hide my public profile and presence features
- Click Save Changes
It’s due to a lack of granularity in the permissions I can set as to what I want to allow others to view. If I could set permissions so that others could view my post activity (i.e. search for my posts) and view my Armoury page, that’d be fine, as I couldn’t care less who views those.
However, I don’t feel anyone other than me is entitled to view my Summary page, which shows days visited, reading time, topics viewed / created, posts viewed / created, likes given / received, and solutions provided.As the permission system only allows me to grant people access to all of it, or none of it, I choose to grant access to none of it.
But, hey, knock yourself out…
EU Armoury Career Page
Post History - US forums
It’s not hard to find armoury pages and post history anyway, even for people that have their profile hidden. If you hover your mouse over a forum poster’s name or avatar, your browser will preview a URL of the page it would take you to. That URL includes the poster’s Battlenet ID. Visit your own career page, and enter their Battlenet ID instead of yours in the URL bar. In a similar fashion you can get a post history too.
2 Likes
The only thing that you can’t see when a member hide they profile is:
- The numbers of “likes” given/received.
I played non season up until seasons were introduced. Never since. Also never played soft core or group play.
I like games to have at least a little challenge.
This is generally where I would push for the 1.5-2 year expansion cycle. I’m not one of those people that believes a particular chunk of content should be designed to last forever and that if it doesn’t, it’s failure as content.
Pragmatically, I’d say some of the seasonal themes we’ve gotten would fall into the “should never exist” category if we looked at development through the lens of incrementally added content. Because, let’s be real, the intent is literally “disposable play” when things are meant to disappear after. “So bonkers OP that it’s okay if it vanishes after!” is also not reflective of good content, and in the absolute best case scenario, treats the players as beta testers if it somehow returns later.
In the end, we should figure longevity is best achieved through skill variety, equipment options, and the combinations of those two within varied content. A subset of build variety would be the addition of new classes, and with them new skills and equipment needs. D3 could have had more of all these, including an “endgame” besides GRs. Instead, I posit Blizzard takes the lazy way out through seasons, just as the cancerous Classic fad has rolled through MMOs, because it’s easy to recycle old things. Why pressure the devs to be active and make new things when they can just push a few buttons every 3-4 months to reset everyone, with some players defending the practice? Seasons, in their majority, have not implicitly led to new permanent additions.
All of this is without touching issues like the mere existence of ZPDS metas, how split bounties shouldn’t exist, or even the abandonment of Brawling for those who do like a little PvP from time to time. I don’t think it’s an unreasonable expectation that if a game forces online play, it should at least provide a fairly maintained experience. Once glaring imbalances are smoothed over and no more plans for expansions are on the table, that’s when things can transition into a healthy form of maintenance mode, and by then, ideally the next sequel soon after.
I can understand folks out there not really comprehending how much better the Diablo experience could be as a consumer. Yet, I can’t help but notice we’re only 3 games in after like 25 years and none have had more than one expansion. The industry has done a good job of otherwise conditioning people into believing the lowest possible effort for the most optimal profits is just how things are and should be. Day after day, predatory microtransactions get rationalized as a need for games to function, when games existed just fine before these greed vacuums. Are games truly better for it? I’d argue not, as those that go more aggressively down that rabbit hole just die slow deaths. And far as mandatory online goes, that eventually translates to literal inaccessibility. “But Blizzard will keep the D3 servers up!” should never be a “good enough” scenario for us. Just like certain seasonal themes, the notion that a game could one day just up and vanish shouldn’t exist. We’re already in a timeline where Blizzard may not even exist in a few years if the scandal stuff keeps up.
So, yeah, far as I’m concerned, seasons enable a myriad of bad practices that don’t actually make games better.
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I did for ages, seasons used to not be a big deal, till the seasonal powers just got too good to pass up. Furthermore seasons used to be a real Pita to level, now it’s a breeze. NS is way too handicapping these days compare to before S18 ish and excluding of course S23 which was the first no theme in quite awhile.
i only play non-season. never made a season char yet
I would have if I actually stuck to my plan of seeing what my build is capable of without season theme but higher paragon and improved skill. But the time between seasons is basically what I use to get refreshed and excited to play again so don’t ever get around to do it.