D3 had seaons.
Typically it was a mechanical change of some sort, like Kanai’s Cube allowing you to slot multiple items of the same sort as opposed to weapon/armor/jewelry. Sometimes a whole new subsystem would be put in. In any event whatever it was went away at the end of the season. The important part is this is not content in the sense of new dungeons or map areas to explore.
So it is/was extremely optional. It is not like not getting to go to Outland in WoW.
This is not an mmo, it is not WoW, stop comparing the two.
So another person who wants to be included but not participate? If you want in on seasons, you make a new character… don’t want to do that? Eternal realm is for you.
I agree. It would be great to be able to play seasons with existing characters and just not compete in the ladder when they add them back. It would have zero impact on those who choose to make new chars every 3 months, so i don’t see the issue.
Seasons as we know them in Diablo games are OUT OF DATE! We need another option for those wo don’t like this system anymore, we wan’t to play the game and enjoy all it’s features, including buying and completing a battle pass without the certain that our characters are MEANINGLESS.
Call Destiny 2 an MMO in a Destiny group and see what happens lol. Destiny is actually a pretty good comparison since it’s basically first-person space Diablo (diablo is better but you get the idea). It’s an item looter with small instanced areas and a low player cap per instance. I’ve argued for years that it’s an MMO and people get so mad, just like I argue that D4 is as much an MMO as tons of other games we’d call MMOs today. D4 has crossed the line away from ARPG with the instance-but-shared open world just like Destiny.
Heeey, it’s a solution for all those folks complaining about seeing other people running around!
Not anxiety at all, it’s disappointment. They introduced MMO elements, including the MMO seasonal format, and then kept an old rule that has no bearing at all on the game they’ve made. Makes me extremely sad to know that when more people learn about this in a few months there’s going to be a wave of confused, sad, and angry posts asking why they’re supposed to ditch their characters to continue playing this game.
Seasons started in Diablo 3, most assuredly not an MMO.
Please re-read my original post to understand the difference between the two. D2 seasons are a ladder format. D4 seasons are an MMO “new playable content” format. They aren’t related in any way.
If MMO “new playable content” was no new lands, no new dungeons, no new bosses…sure.
Mind you, I cannot say that is the form D4 will take. It is the form D3 took with its seasons. But neither can you assert what form the content will take.
Except that I would argue that what separates MMOs from ARPGs is in what you are expected to do. In MMOs the goal is completing specific super hard challenges in big groups. In ARPGs the goal is to reach super-high levels of character power.
New challenges can always be added, but adding new character power at max level makes previous character power less meaningful and makes the game daunting to new players. More importantly, it makes it very hard to drop back in if you miss a season because you will have missed all that power. It forces all seasonal content to build on previous content instead of trying new directions.
Periodic small paid expansion packs for max level characters, or content packs for subscribers makes sense, because you are generating revenue off of people wanting access to the content not off them actually playing it.
D4 seasons are not that: they are intended to get players back to playing the game, using the part that is the most fun: the leveling curve, where you are continually gaining power in a fresh economy. That is what ARPGs are designed around. They have been “live” games ever since D2, but they have never been MMOs because they are meant to be games about playing several characters. Seasons give players objectives around playing a lot and then sell them cosmetics to help the characters they are spending time with look cooler. How many ARPG characters have you played for more than 3 months? What percentage of the total characters you’ve played (and enjoyed) is that?
Skipped all the comments. Ill be 36 this year, so not far behind you, but dont try to trick your friends into it, man. Lol. This is by far the most popular diablo launch. If you or your friends dont want to do seasons, then dont. You dont have to. In another thread, I said I will give this season a try, and figure it out from there.
I’ll play on the Eternal Realm. My characters will never truly die.
I just got even more confused as to what seasons / battle pass actually are after reading this
I think you and your wife should cancel your pre-order and find a different game to play togheter, because diablo 4 is all aboard the season train baby.
No, I think I will compare the two, because it helps to show how confusing restarting every three months is. And the two genres are very similar, and they even added many typical MMO features to D4.
Without the restart once leaderboards is introduced, no newcomers would ever be able to catch up or having any chance of appearing on them ever.
moving on… to play other games… what kind of madness is that?
In Diablo 3 since 2014 you had to start over from level 1 to experience no new content(or not)
Now you have to start over from level 1 to experience the new content(or not)
If you want to use WoW as an example, take the Cataclysm expansion, completely revamping the old world. Taking your WotLK max character through, you miss out on 90% of the changes they’ve made. So many people I knew (myself included) rolled new characters to see how the leveling up process had changed.
D4 seasons are like that, every time. If that’s a deal breaker get out now it’s not going to change