Agreed. It is weird. This is Eisenhorn’s comprehensive well written input which is interesting since he has been around longer than most of these Seasonal Zealot revisionists who falsely claim Diablo has always been a Seasonal game. They’re wrong; this was clearly not the case in early D3— hope you enjoy the read:
I think this is a really fair set of observations.
I don’t know why they’re arbitrarily moving Level 100 Eternal Players to 50 instead of to level 60 and just giving them level 800 items in place of their 925 GA items. IIRC, one Dev said they wanted to give the Eternal players something to do but I don’t think Eternal players see it that way. I think part of the appeal was always that you didn’t have to do the leveling grind and could just jump into the new endgame (maybe weaker because of intra-season power creep but still competitive) and farm new uniques or better items/new Mythics, etc.
If the biggest part of the player base is Seasonal, it shouldn’t hurt their metrics on engagement if they throw Eternal players a bone – but I suspect that while maybe a lot of commentators here and elsewhere are seasonal players, there are actually still plenty of players on Eternal and Blizzard wants to engage those players just as much as seasonal players. We don’t really know because Blizzard doesn’t share stats like that.
Anecdotally, you can see that this might be the case in the hub towns and World Boss events. There are still lots of players there and trade is active and it’s not hard to find groups in Eternal if you’re so inclined.
I don’t actually see why they can’t just make Level 100 players level 60 players when 2.0 hits. They are actually giving you this option on the PTR: when you copy your current characters over, you have the option to go to the dancing demon vendor and boost your character from level 50 to level 60 instantly – so it’s technically feasible for them to do it. This is a decision the Devs are consciously making so it’s fair for Eternal players to bring this up and hopefully they can sway the outcome before 2.0 hits.
But just to give the Devs the benefit of the doubt: I guess one reason they’d need to default everyone on Eternal to 50 is because it’s vital for your character to be at level 50 so you can play the Expansion zones in the way they’re meant to be played – or maybe some new zones are restricted/locked to a specific character level and by making Eternal 100’s level 60, it’ll break the game because the questline demands that you play it to start at level 50?
Blizzard does have precedent for rendering Eternal gear superfluous. Prior to RoS, everyone playing D3 was actually on its equivalent of the Eternal Realm. It wasn’t until the expansion that seasons were introduced – and IIRC it wasn’t even immediately afterwards but several patches into RoS – after they’d introduced a bunch of new sets – that D3 Seasons came along.
In RoS, they raised the cap to level 70 and also the item level caps so that basically, all the gear pre-RoS became legacy/sub-optimal/crafting materials.
So, they’re basically just doing it again now if they insist on making Eternal people come in at level 50: when the expansion hits you have to level 10 levels and then all your gear is a step or steps below max power level until you get to the top difficulty level and get to farm max level gear again.
I think where a lot of Eternal people are pissed off is because:
- They just introduced a massive itemization rework with 1.04 that necessitated farming new gear; and
- They introduced a further re-work (of Uniques) with 1.05 that necessitated farming new uniques and non-uniques that worked better with updated builds.
And now, all the new gear they farmed in 1.04 and 1.05 are getting the shaft again. Basically, Eternal players have been co-opted into seasonal mode these last 2 patches (and into the upcoming one) – even though they explicitly didn’t want to participate in season-like resets to begin with.
I get it. This is a fair complaint. I don’t know why seasonal people are so triggered by it that they have to have really toxic opinions about it. This is a far more legitimate complaint than the bellyaching about Obese Druids or not having infinite re-tempers. By their own admission, these players wouldn’t touch Eternal with a 20-foot stick so why complain over something that doesn’t affect them?
Seems weird.
My response:
The tribalism is very weird to me also — it is also happening on Reddit and not exclusive to the forums here. I don’t get it at all; players should be banding together and supporting each other when they’re kicked to the ground. Also, there’s so much hate from those who are not playing on the Eternal Realm; it is like they’re getting actively involved in a different country’s election — could it be they perceive the growing voice as a threat to the Seasonal Realm subconsciously?
Maybe Eternal Realm players complained a ton about their character builds getting nerfed previously? I don’t get the zealous, instinctual hate.
Thank you for all that tho, very informative and enjoyed the read!