As Rich noted earlier, there will be an update coming that will address some of the accessibility issues with the seasonal theme along with the interactions its having in set dungeons. Team is testing a few things and we will provide an update once it is ready to be deployed.
We greatly appreciate the feedback on all of this and the extra work that some of you have provided in captures, context regarding these accessibility issues.
I mean, I hear you but, that wonât fix this being a really uninteresting season buff. Just scrap it, call it a good try, re-enable cube everything for another season, your community will be vastly happier anyway, since that shouldâve really become part of the base game.
Reads like they are going to turn it off in set dungeons, and tone down the visual and auditory noise. Sounds fair.
Iâm afraid it isnât just interacting with set dungeons. Itâs interacting with the challenge rifts too. And can proc in town if you TP back just as the buff does one of its random premature resets.
Basically, it permeates everywhere. Wish those elusive rainbow goblins wouldâŚneed more deathâs breaths ATM.
Iâm not going to lie - this would make me so immensely happy right now it isnât even funny. At least that would help me rather than cause me issues. 
Leaderboards need to be wiped clean and âexploitâ fixed. Everyone starts at t1 with current gear/paragon.
Call it season 21a.
Now this doesnât matter for a change.
Sadly they want to address visual clutter (great) and set dungeon impact (people have done this by now probably) - but not a word of new GR150 âmetaâ with unlimited stacking in multiplayer.
Make the stupid set dungeons go away and stop making them required for season completion. No idea how anyone could ever think this was a good idea for a game. Kind of like Season 21 the Season of Awful Useless Buffs.
As I thought no fix for weekend, thats why there is this post. Seems Iâm gonna wait longer to even start that season.
Accessibility issues? As in issues of the handicapped? Please, donât try to spin it as if the problem is with us players who cannot stand the theme. Why use this cover term? Call the spade a spade. These are over-agressive lighting effects, not accessibility issues. Keep the game visible, this is not a special need.
Well, whilst itâs affecting everyone due to the horrible lighting effects, itâs especially bad for players with epilepsy, Iâd imagine.
Try to kill maltheal when that darkening is happening . I couldnt see him or his abbilitiesâŚ
Need to sync the themeâs timers as itâs already done for stacks. This will stop the exploit of infinite stacks 
Many people I ran with have switched to exploiting the season theme to do 150âs getting tons more paragons and gem levels. Saying they donât want to miss out on being able to get all those paragons. They seem to think its fine to exploit and that Blizzard wonât do anything. I hope Blizzard does not let them get away with it.
Yes it may be an exploit, and it has been raised many times now by the community. And all blizz is adressing is accessibility and interaction with set dungeons. Blizz needs to adress this âexploitâ and say it is an exploit and dont use it, we will patch it out and roll back lb, something like that. They are way past a point to retro active punish players for using it when they remain silent on the topic.
They can sort this if their intention was to provide players with damage boost buff as a seasonal theme.
They can simply remove all the environmental annoying visual effects and add a fixed damage boost amount (x) that is triggered every 90 sec.
( effect does NOT stack!!!).
An icon shows when the player obtains the effect for 7 to 10 sec duration which occurs once every 90 sec. ( without all the visual effects ).
I dunno if itâs already late to adjust the seasonal theme by now ⌠all I know is the game was not prepared for the seasonal theme to be having a broken mechanic visually as well as been abused in multiplayer game play by maintaining the damage boost buff more than what its intended for.
They should have a backup seasonal theme plan to implement when such a mess happens and deploy it on emergency situations.
Yeah totally agree.
There are actually two bugs that make the theme broken.
One is that you can avoid the stacks to be reset after 90s and also it will proc more often than only every 90s. With a lot of stacks you can then kill almost all elites with the theme alone and most of all the rift guardian at the end. The trash killer class is only for triggering this âsnowballâ effect. But wait you actually donât need a DPS char anymore because the other major bug apparantly is that you can accumulate stacks outside the rift and somehow make the theme proc inside a greater rift without losing its strength of the accumulated stacks. This together with the first âexploitâ you can clear 150 without any dps class. Now the leaderboard is already polluted by these exploit(s). No word from Blizzard about anything of that. I hope there will be consequences to those that abused these mechanics. But Iâm afraid Blizzard is not even aware of that. So please do something about it!
This indeed, becomes an accessibility issue when people with disabilities who were otherwise able to play the game, are suddenly no longer able to play the game due to their disabilities being triggered by the new effects.
Yes, yes, we know, they can play ânon-season.â Guess what? Why are we punishing people for having disabilities? Why are they suddenly no longer able to enjoy the same game with friends and family members, because they have a disability?
No, it doesnât work like that. Thatâs called âaccessibility.â Blizzardâs changes have caused problems for a lot of people, even without disabilities, due to motion sickness, lighting changes causing migraines, etc. So itâs not just a simple âif youâre handicapped itâs your problemâ issue. It goes well and beyond that. But even if it hadnât? Itâs still a problem.
Then again, Iâm still annoyed that this game has been out for 8 years and they STILL havenât put in a colorblind filter. I have friends who can barely play because they canât see half the ground effects. 
Iâm just here to say that Iâd much prefer the season theme to be outright, permanently removed. It looks horrible, it makes areas harder to see (many are already pitch black), the powers are random, the sound gets annoying, thereâs huge bug abuse (gr150)⌠and I havenât heard a single person say that they like it.
Next time spend less time on coming up with fancy useless name that not a single diablo player uses or knows (ââtrials of tempestsââ) and spend more time actually asking players, since youâre too oblivious. I mean every single player figured out how this would go after 5 minutes of playing.
That is all.
As the others above have said, the seasonal theme is busted. Not only is it an extremely uninteresting, the graphical effects are way too over the top and I speak for a group of 10+ friends who all hate the effects and visuals.
Right now, Pushing a high tier GR150 is about manipulating and exploiting a glitch where 3 members enter the rift, build a handful of seasonal buff stacks, and have a 4th member sit in town for 30~60 seconds to offset their timer in a manner that allows all 4 party members to keep their stacks at all times.
This involves waiting for 3 seasonal buffs to activate whilst the 4th member with the offset time stays 1+ screen away, and then that 4th member simply needs to group up with the rest of the team and watch monsters die for his own seasonal buff activation 30~60 seconds later. The rest of the team then leaves the offset player alone 5 seconds before his singular effect (now probably with 50~100+ stacks) activates and kills the rest of the monsters on screen, and thus begins a chain reaction where the entire team cumulates hundreds of stacks until the RG comes out and gets 1 shotted by a 500+ stack seasonal effect.
The only player skill or engaging gameplay aspect comes in tracking when seasonal buffs will activate and having at least 1 team member move away to activate the exploit to reset the glitch.
Alternatively, players can just use a high density area outside of the GR on normal mode to quickly build seasonal stacks and use that to start the snowball effect, or use such pre-prepared areas as a backup incase stacks get reset to 0 somehow.
These offset seasonal buffs start a snowball effect where no oneâs gear or paragon matters, and this exploit has been already been used by 4 support classes to clear GR 150 (by killing monsters in normal mode outside the GR, building hundreds of seasonal stacks in high density areas outside the GR such as the Cow Level, Fields of Misery, or Weeping Hollow).
Pushing 4 Man, 3 man, 2 man Leaderboards, and later, probably even solo boards, will be a completely uninteresting contest to see who can enter T16(so as to not prematurely kill the monsters) on a zdps class such as Ancient Spear-Rage Flip Barbarians to group an entire map of hundreds of monsters together next to a waypoint, going back to town, lowering the difficulty to Normal where those groups of 400+ monsters will get 1 shot for the season buff stacks as needed during a GR, and then entering a GR150, grouping monsters, and then returning to town, farming the prepped areas for stacks, and using the stacks to kill monsters and elites in the GR until a boring, hollow and unsatisfactory victory. Whats even worse is that once a game has 10+ maps pre prepared, even the worst GR rifts can be ripped by having a 2nd friend or an alt account sit inside game whilst you enter the GR solo until you find an open map such as Festering Woods, which can easily be exploited for a single floor clear. The pushing player can enter the GR solo (2nd player declines) and if the map is not an open map or has an unfavourable mobtype, the pushing player can go to the menu, and re enter the game, and as such the pre-prepped maps stay ready for use.
Not only is this an extremely uninteresting way to play, it completely ruins the sense of progression you feel throughout a season. There is no need to grind for paragon, ancient gear, or even augment your armor. You can clear GR 150 by just spending a couple hours learning how to manipulate this seasonal buff with this game breaking exploit. This is far worse than any other exploit that has been in the game so far, even the interaction with Marked for Death and Frailty wasnât this strong, the infamousHellfire amulet exploit, nor anything Diablo 3 has seen before, all of which have seen accounts banned or roll-backed for abusing.
As it already stands, this season is already ruined for players wishing to play the season legitimately.
As I type, it has been exactly 192 hours since season started (exactly 8 days). There already exist 2.6k+ Paragon seasonal players with 150 Gems, 150 Augments from head to toe, all gained through the exploits listed above, simply by clearing GRs 145+ with basically 1 trash killer Necromancer using the Grim scythe build(considered the most consistant AoE trash killer build right now), and 3 supports to aid in manipulating the buff or starting the snowball effect.
As of right now, there are already almost 200 players on the NA leaderboard with a GR150 clear, with the fastest GR150 being under 6 minutes. This is rediculous and normally unheard of by this point in the season.
Something needs to be done to address this. I wouldnât even mind seeing a rollback done on these exploited GR150 clears, but the fact of the matter is this exploit is already rampant and over-abused, hundreds of GR150s accomplished, and more and more people are learning about this exploit and putting it into practice everyday. This will only get worse until an official Blizzard statement, or punitive action on Blizzardâs part is taken against the exploiting players.
Edit: Another exploit in soloâs has been found where pets can also proc the seasonal buff effect. Desyncing with pets is simply a matter or equipping and dequipping the pet skill before going into the GR, or salvaging the pet item mid GR. Then the exploit works the same way, just be offscreen at activation.
The seasonal buff is here to stay. It will get adjusted as far as accessibility. But its not getting replaced. If thatâs not good, come back next season