Seasons: Are they actually fun?

General Discussion
1

Every new season, you fire up a new character, rush through to 70 and get a free set.

Over time, you will have accumulated a long list of characters with repeats of the same class, soon to be forgotten once the new season hits, so you can do it all over again.

This is a hard concept to wrap my head around, because I simply can’t see how this is fun in an ARPG game. I know there are rogue-like games out there, where dying and starting over is part of the deal, but it works for those types of games.

For ARPGs, and especially for Diablo, I like to focus on one character for the long term and I have to imagine others like this concept also. The problem is that it’s hard to find games if you wanna do bounties, or GR push with others in non-seasonal. Everyone’s playing seasons, and this game was designed for group play, so much where playing solo you are at a disadvantage (less xp, etc). Maybe this is more of a problem of the game not being played as much in general these days, it’s really sad.

But back to seasons, that’s development time spent on a portion of the game that non-seasonal characters won’t experience. I remember in Diablo2, there were season specific runewords, so if you wanted one of those for your build, you rolled a seasonal and built that runeword, because you knew eventually when the season ended, that character would roll over to a non-seasonal character, and you’d have that awesome runeword. This was a great incentive to play seasons. Now it’s portrait frames and cosmetic items.

I’m just saying, maybe they could have done something different with seasons, or maybe make them last longer, etc. But I also think a big part of the problem is the core mechanics of Diablo 3 and how it was designed from the start.

I really hope the next Diablo game addresses these issues.

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2

I don’t see any sense to play every season. If u play every second or even third season, it might be refreshing to create new character and enjoy season buff.

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3

They stopped giving out special seasonal items because the NS crybabies whined too much and couldn’t be bothered to play out of their comfort zone.

Now we get recycled cosmetics.

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4

For me the start of every season is extremely fun and anxiously anticipated, but after you level up your hero and get on the 100Grs it starts getting boring. It becomes a grind.

Normaly around paragon 1200 I transition to HC or regular play. There are a few seasons that are the exemption like double bounty, free grandeur ring slot in cube, and a few others. These I play out the entire season.

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5

They used to create new gems for each season, and that was the main reason for some people to play seasons.
Get the gem, upgrade it as much as you can and when the season is over you can add it to your “main” character to make it stronger.

Nowadays, it people play season because they have nothing left to do in NS.

But what end up happening is that they rush to complete the season journey and GR100+ in a few days and then complain that there is nothing left to do in the game.

I think that they should go back to add season-specific items (not only gems, but legendaries/potions/whatever), in a way that after the season ends you can add it to your NS character and enjoy the improvement.

Overall I like seasons, it took me almost 1 month to complete the journey (as a casual/non-rushing player). But like people that rush the season journey, I stopped playing until the next season (ok, I play sometimes but not as often as when journey was not completed).

6

It’s about progression. A season is a fresh start for everyone. You start from lvl 1 all the way up to 70 and from Grs in the 30s up to gr 100+. You see how your character is improving. You have noticeable powerspikes.
In non season you usually have almost perfect gear, highly leveled gems etc. So the game becomes stale. There’s not much room to improve other than paragon level. And farming rat runs for 4 hours just to get 10 more paragon levels doesn’t feel that fun

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7

I find it refreshing to be using different skills than what we’re forced to for most optimal farming, and I can actually kill stuff with it. And when drops don’t suck as much, I get to try different legs. Different playstyles. That’s why I don’t request to be powerlevelled.

It’s when I get to 70 that brain rot starts to seep in because now I have to grind for that stupid optimal cookiecutter build in order to finish the season.

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8

Wait, was this seasons or nonseason you were talking about?

I enjoy the starting over of seasons, the super fast progression in paragon, gear, and power, and having specific goals and targets to work for. And once those are done, I enjoy going back to my nonseasonal characters and seeing how fast I can farm and how high I can push different builds. And once that gets too grindy, well then it’s time for another season. I’d be bored and have quit if there wasn’t the two mode to swap between.

9

They used to have seasonal exclusive legendaries but ppl complain so they remove them
The ppl playing D3 r not to ppl who played D2. I imagine D4 will he some kind of hybrid but moreso like D3

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10

Really, everyone I know who plays D3, played 2D for years. I am not sure what you are smoking.
Mr maintenance mode strikes again. :-1::-1::-1::-1:

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11

True. Seasons as a concept are completely against grinding as a concept.

The main reason why Seasons exist is that they stimulate the players to return to the game again (because of the fresh start) and co-op easier finding new friends (because of the increased player pool at the start of the Season).

But you felt it right. Seasons are wrongly executed in current aRPGs like D2, D3 and PoE (where they actually use the Season as a PTR, before the new content becomes bug-free and part of the main game aka NS).

Why is that?

The nature of Seasons is that they are time-limited. This is crucial and fundamental starting point that the developers of current aRPG games don’t grasp completely in order to take full advantage of the time-limited concept and because of that to most of the players Seasons don’t feel as a well executed system.

When you have a time-limited concept what you are doing by default is that you are forcing your player base into a deadline. And depending on the deadline you will have players quiting at a different time before it, because you are not giving the players an option to select their deadline.

A well executed Seasonal experience should have these:

  • An option the user to select the length of his Season
  • An option the user to extend the current length of his Season up to the maximum allowed at first selection of the Season
  • An option the user to restart his Season on weekly basis
  • An option at every point of time a character to be transferred/retired to NS

An example for the above would be a Season starting at 1st of October with players being able to select it’s duration from 1 week up to say 10 weeks (aka 10 Seasonal stages). Certain players could choose to restart their journey each week, while others may play for 4 weeks and stop, or restart it, or simply continue with their characters at NS.

Such Seasonal experience creates the following benefits:

  • Massively enhances multiplayer and co-op because skilled players restarting may help slower players continuing into the weekly stages
  • The ability of players who enjoy the fresh start to experience it multiple times during a Season
  • The freedom to go playing NS at any time with your newly created characters in Season

Related to real life it would be like you are going to a vacation and depending on whether you like the place or not you can extend your journey, go somewhere else or return to your home town.

This then would be Seasons done right.

12

Adbsolutely no reason to attack people mate. Most D2 players i talk to abandon this game long ago for that rubbish they call PoE . Anyone with half a brain however can tell this game caters towards the casual and isn’t at all punishing in the same way D2 was and personally the further from D2 D4 is the better

13

First season ever for me…just doing it to get a new stash tab. If this s&^tshow is an example of what seasons are, I see no reason to do it again.

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14

Was against seasons when they first hinted them. Still am, really.

Of the cons, we had exclusive items locked to them. We eventually had stash tabs gated. We now have patches limited to 3-4 month cycles unless there’s something super egregiously beneficial to players that must be patched ASAP (detrimental bugs, on the other hand…). Myriad conquests no one really ever seems to like. “Pros” constantly whining about the set gift. We’re now seeing “themes” that further discourage non-seasonal play. The “fresh start” propaganda tricked way too many into thinking they could compete with no-lifers, exploiters, and bots. And likely more I’m forgetting off the top of my head.

End of the day, what the game needed to consistently renew interest was new content. That’s the secret. If you want people playing for long periods of time, you need to keep giving them new things to do. Just a new item here and there doesn’t cut it. GRs were old when 40 was tough, nevermind over 100. We probably should’ve had another legit expansion by now, and with that all the new areas, monsters, and the like to follow. Instead, seasons… fk 'em.

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15

Are seasons actually fun? Welp, fun is subjective so yes for some, no for some.

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16

I play season for wings. pet, or stash tab (no more of those for me). If the season has a good (subjective) theme then I’ll possibly play for that.

Otherwise, meh.

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17

At first I was dead set against seasons. After all the time I had put into my main characters, I didn’t want to start all over from scratch.

The first season I played was Season 17, to get the Cosmic Wings, since RNG was determined to not drop them for me. It was irritating to start all over again, but at least I had a concrete goal to work toward. And, it was nice knowing that I had a concrete reward for my additional time and effort. The stash tab was an incidental.

I played Season 18 to completion. At first, it seemed like it would be fun with the Triune circles, but I continued until I unlocked the stash tab. I wasn’t planning on finishing, but I caught a good Nephalim Rift and unlocked my third conquest.

I’ll wait and see what next season brings to decide if I’m going to play it.

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18

I really miss the season items when they had them, made playing seasons a lot more fun, the items would start dropping in ns once the season was over. to bad a lot of people complained

19

Biggest plus for season is the fact that there are more players available for group play across all level.

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20

Fun for me. If you don’t like it, don’t do it.

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