What is the appeal of starting over each new season?

PC General Discussion
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As far as I have understood, every season you start over from level 1 with each character you make.

So my question is:
What is the appeal of leveling a character over and over again each new season?

Don’t people get bored of the leveling process?

I’m asking this because (other than people who rush/can rush to level up) you already spend lots of time leveling a character (let alone if you like multiple classes and even worse if you like multiple branches of same classes) doesn’t this make you spend less time in end game?

Another reason why I am asking is because season 2 is coming soonish and I still don’t know what I should do. A.k.a start new character(s), or continue playing in Eternal with my high level characters. And if I make new character for season 2 I am not decided between Rogue or Sorcerer.

I’m just trying to understand how people do this in each season without getting bored of the leveling process of the same 5 (or less) classes.
I know that each class has different branches that plays differently. But we have 5 classes only, and the branches are not that radically different to warrant playing the same class or classes over and over again for months or years on end.

I will give examples of the 2 classes I play the most currently for my personal standpoint.
I play Rogue and Necromancer. For Rogue, I like Twisting Blades with shadow imbuement, so I like melee side of this class a lot. So taking this class only, since I am not interested in Archer (distance attacks) builds for this class, this limits my options for melee builds of the class only. In my honest opinion (I know there are many different builds within melee branch, I know there are poison builds too for example) the melee builds within this class don’t radically play different for me to warrant keep making Rogue every new season.

As for Necromancer. I like Bone Spear (no minions) build for this class. I attack from the distance. I am not interested in minion builds for this class. Once again, I do know that there are several different builds for this class as well like blood builds (melee builds) but once again I’m not interested in those.

I like pyromancer sorcerer too but sadly most viable/good builds are majorly melee which I don’t like.

So as you can see, my options are quite limited. I would understand a bit more if we had like twice the amount of classes with their own different branches but that’s not the case. It also doesn’t help that we have 6 buttons only on our hotbars where we can assign our spells/skills.

EDIT:
I play FFXIV and I’m new to Diablo games, started playing less than a month or so ago.
Currently have a level 71 Rogue, level 96 Necromancer and level 55 Sorcerer and desperately trying to level my Necro and Rogue to level 100 at least to reach and play the end game before Season 2 starts.

EDIT 2: My personal point if anyone is interested to read.

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There is no end game.

So the appeal of seasons is that starting over is something to do as opposed to sitting at 100 with nothing to do.

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Welcome to an ARPG genre, and now WoW.

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In the beginning of D3 seasons the appeal was new sets, revamped set, and or new/revamped legendries. These things passed on to the eternal characters post season. Later borrowed power started to take over seasons and these were not passed on to eternal. New sets or revamped sets became less common.

All of the above allowed new builds/metas to play on a new or same class.

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Sorry to burst your bubble, but you’re already experiencing the end game. Apparently, Blizzard’s idea of the end game is not change in quality, but just change in quantity: you’ll be hunting the same gear pieces, with the same affixes, but this time Sacred and then Ancestral; and you’ll be doing the same activities, but with bigger numbers involved.

So, you’re going through the end game, but Blizzard inflated leveling and items as means to prolong what’s already final, so as to give the illusion of progression.

And their idea of “Seasonal content” is we all pretending that fixes and hotfixes are “content”, rather than… fixes.

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But during the leveling process your class is not finished yet, so you haven’t reached its full potential yet. Wouldn’t it be more fun to reach the full potential of each class you play and do end game with them?
A.k.a wouldn’t it be better to ask for new end game content so instead of starting all over we play different end game content every new season on our well established characters?

I am just struggling to understand this backwards logic, but I’m trying though.

Thank you :smile:

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Yes, absolutely. Not sure why Blizzard doesn’t seem to get that.

To be clear I wasn’t defending the current system just stating what it is. I would much rather it be like D3 where I played eternal for over a decade.

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Oh no, I didn’t see your comment as defending Blizzard, my apologies if I came across as such hehe.
And I agree with your second sentence.

Also to other readers, this is not a complaint thread as I am having fun in the game currently (probably because I’m new and this is different than FFXIV).
I am just trying to understand what the appeal is for starting over and trying to decide what I’m gonna do next season.

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So your options are: (1) play the same build you’ve been playing, where you already have lots of good gear and therefore have less and less to gain from new drops, or (2) play a new character with a different build (even if it’s only slightly different) and get to collect new gear and gain skill points and early paragon, where the power increases are big.

And you only have to choose on a session-by-session basis. Unless you’ve already made 10 characters, you don’t have to abandon one to play another, only set it aside for a while. You get access to all the endgame stuff except NMD right away too, so there’s no need to level to get to them. You can start imprinting codex powers early on and you get 10 skill points right at level 1 (if you’ve done renown), so you have tons of power, making the early game pretty fun and meaning that you can get a significant portion of whatever new build you want up and running early (you start with a basic skill, a core skill if you want, with enhancement and rune, and either a 3rd-cluster skill or extra points in your primary damage skill).

We don’t know what the S2 powers will be like, but the malignant hearts change builds significantly. My Necro was already running powers at level 15 that made him play differently than an eternal necro. Hopefully the vampiric powers a for all classes create new builds like that, since that the promise of seasons: not just an excuse to make a new character, but a source of character builds that don’t exist in other seasons.

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It’s pretty much what was forced upon arpgs players and for some reason people were ok with it, I’m lost also on understanding it. I know why the company does it, more monetization every season but for as why players accept reskins as content I have no idea

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it works when the game is fun.

gonna need a lot of work to be a good option here.

want me to do the same thing again and again? i’m down, but it better be fun.
as it is it’s simply not tempting.

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I’ve not played WoW in 10+ years.

are you saying WoW is doing the same thing now? Seasons having players start over all the time?

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Yep they started seasons and lost most of there players also, not sure why they think this is a good system. The only game that has done really well with this is PoE and I think it’s mainly because it’s free

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They’re young and have nothing better to do?

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Holy S, thats hilarious! Seasons in WoW… WOW!

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This game is designed for the journey to be the focus not once you hit 100. Eventually you run out of things to do. Who knows if they will change it in the future.

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You could be a masochist.

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Weird seems like every other arpg it focuses on end game, because it usually has the so called new content yea? So I’d have to agree with op, what’s the point of re leveling the same character over and over for a small new mechanic you can only try at end game?even D4 did really, had to beat the story line before the seasonal quest

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The actual reason seasons originally existed in ARPGs was to reset the economy. Basically it’s way too much work to design an in-game economy with enough money sinks that item costs don’t spiral out of control in a few months, forever denying all but the most hardcore players access to decent stuff.

Diablo 4 doesn’t have an economy, and neither did Diablo 3. So whatever reason remains is basically down to Blizzard wanting to keep you coming back for more. Basically calling it a season is more hype-worthy than just saying it’s a new patch.

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In Diablo 2 seasons (ladder) they would release new runewords. The character, with your runewords would go over to non-ladder so you could still use it. Now with Diablo 4 you lose the seasonal content when the season ends.

Seasons in D4 is a horrible idea. They should have waited to do it if anything because it’s a waste of my time

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