Ladder Participation Season 2

Is it just me or does it feel like ladder doesn't have a lot of participation this time around. It's been a few days and even the items being sold seem to be on the lower value side of things... I know the GC bug demoralized a lot of people but I didn't think it would be this slow.

Side note, I just found a

Flame Rift and was super excited about it. I'm considering of just switching my original plan of going blizzard sorceress just because of it.

Thoughts?

There wasnt enough new content implemented for me to justify a new play through.

perhaps they should pool the RNG chances according to amount of participants. as in, the fewer there are the easier it is to find killer gear. as there are more people the less easy...

but everytime i say things that mess with the allmight god of RNG, i think that is killing the game too.

rikus wrote: 2 years ago

perhaps they should pool the RNG chances according to amount of participants. as in, the fewer there are the easier it is to find killer gear. as there are more people the less easy...

but everytime i say things that mess with the allmight god of RNG, i think that is killing the game too.

And People printing skillers and bots... Im glad for ladder but I almost dont get the point anymore, only 40% of the player base on ladder is legit anyway.

Xanhast70 wrote: 2 years ago

And People printing skillers and bots... Im glad for ladder but I almost dont get the point anymore, only 40% of the player base on ladder is legit anyway.

That makes me sad. I started last ladder like a month late so I was behind the curve by a lot but grinded my way to at least have an Infinity and a decent lite sorc setup. I started this ladder on day one and it has been very underwhelming.

Xanhast70 wrote: 2 years ago

There wasnt enough new content implemented for me to justify a new play through.

It may be the reason (the fact that the devs promised new runewords each ladder and did not fulfill that promise this season doesn't help), but OTOH in legacy D2 each reset ("fresh economy" - as if it did matter in a bot-infested game...) used to bring many players back, even if it was literally just a reset, with no new content at all.

rikus wrote: 2 years ago

perhaps they should pool the RNG chances according to amount of participants. as in, the fewer there are the easier it is to find killer gear. as there are more people the less easy...

Do you mean participants in a game or in ladder overall?
If the former, they already do - /players X. But most often this mechanics is abused, either by soloing hard content (ubers), because it's easier or intentionally filling the game with mules to get better drops. I wish there was no such scaling in MP (possibly with SSF mode).
If the latter, I'm also afraid of potential abuse. As we know, in legacy D2 DC spawning was dominated by DC mafia, although it required a lot of effort.

Last season was my 9th though so it could also be some burnout as well, but in the future if they add more content I might do one more who knows

Do you mean participants in a game or in ladder overall?
If the former, they already do - /players X. But most often this mechanics is abused, either by soloing hard content (ubers), because it's easier or intentionally filling the game with mules to get better drops. I wish there was no such scaling in MP (possibly with SSF mode).
If the latter, I'm also afraid of potential abuse. As we know, in legacy D2 DC spawning was dominated by DC mafia, although it required a lot of effort.
[/quote]

You mean the economy in general its all a cartel of some sort even the 08 prepatch market on legacy had it dons.

Not enough new content & enjoying my endgame chars too much (still). RWs from season 1 weren't enough for me either. Maybe someday they'll find the right carrot to dangle..

I'm in only because the fokkers higher up decided I'd get nothing new on NL. I want to get myself some nice sunder charms, near perfect Flickering Flame and wait for migration to NL.

Not into the endless grind, roulette in finding value and neverending trading again.

Ladder feels pretty empty. From what i have seen many people don't even know the new ladder started. There was an announcement for the reset & date in june/july, but nothing after that. So many people just missed that. They announced patch 2.5 but not even the ladder start time/date in b.net.
( They just added it after the ladder started )
Missing new runewords. Great sunder charm beta testing. Game full of bots again, no banwave.
For eu folks the ladder started at 2am. Yea ... many reasons.

I only created a ladder character to take her to Hell and farm Sunder charms for my non-ladder folks. Once I get the ones I need, I'll just be killing DC whenever there is a walk. I do not intend to actually play one bit.

seras wrote: 2 years ago

For eu folks the ladder started at 2am. Yea ... many reasons.

Since the game is no longer separated into regions, due to time zones, no matter what time they've chosen, it'd have been night for someone. And unless you plan to race against bots and no-lifes, starting a few hours later at more convenient time, say, Friday evening, should not be an issue.

ALLEyezOnMe wrote: 2 years ago

I only created a ladder character to take her to Hell and farm Sunder charms for my non-ladder folks. Once I get the ones I need, I'll just be killing DC whenever there is a walk. I do not intend to actually play one bit.

same

Trang Oul wrote: 2 years ago

seras wrote: 2 years ago

For eu folks the ladder started at 2am. Yea ... many reasons.

Since the game is no longer separated into regions, due to time zones, no matter what time they've chosen, it'd have been night for someone. And unless you plan to race against bots and no-lifes, starting a few hours later at more convenient time, say, Friday evening, should not be an issue.

I know this and for me it was no problem, i'm used to that from wow - but normally blizzard's global release time is 0am in the EU. It's just a minor reason & just one example from many.

I'm enjoying ladder, albeit at my own slow place. Into nightmare with a friend now. I enjoy the reset, not for new stuff but just because I enjoy playing untwinked through the game, so it's a nice excuse to do that whilst having a fresh economy to work with.

I meant the whole ladder community.

Trang Oul wrote: 2 years ago

...the fact that the devs promised new runewords each ladder and did not fulfill that promise this season doesn't help...

Much as I don't want to be the one defending blizzard and much as I love to hate on many (really most) of their development decisions, that complaint is flat out wrong.

They didn't promise new runewords each ladder. In fact, they very specifically stated that they'd like to introduce new stuff (not necessarily just runewords) with new season every so often but that it will more likely than not NOT be every season. (Part of the 2.4 dev stream)

As for the topic itself here:
Ladder does indeed feel super dead by comparison to last season. Can't say I'm really surprised though..
- The "novelty" that season 1 had as the first season is gone
- If S1 proved one thing then that unless you're a streamer for countless fanbois in your support network (and xyz FG on top), you will not even remotely stand a chance in the ladder race anyways so anyone but those same streamers probably couldn't care less about that whole aspect
-

Terror zones are available NL as well and a lot of folks are probably just going to prefer grinding existing chars to 99 instead since the race itself is pointless either way (see last point)

Really all that's left, other than for the few folks who genuinely enjoy starting over for no reason other than to start over, is gear. Mainly because gear differs from NL in 3 major categories:
1) Annis. DClone walks are bound to become super common in ladder once again and remain relatively rare once more in NL but since a ton of folks got tens to hundreds of annis in S1, that's hardly a sufficient motivation for many folks anymore.
2) S1 runewords. Now that they've backpedaled and kept them as ladder only, a handful of people might go ladder just to create those if they can't find someone to sell them in NL. Though since those RWs are generally quite lackluster, I wouldn't expect that to be too many people.
3) Sunder charms. For one, they'll hit non-ladder by the thousands come season end so a lot of folks are probably fine waiting for that and beyond that, seems a lot of folks still hate on their very existence so won't play ladder just to get the thing they hate.

Personally, I'm once again set up with 1 and only 1 ladder char for reasons 1 and 2 above. I enjoy clones every so often so having a char who can participate in them (and is now geared enough to actually do so solo again ^^) is worth it. And while I'd prefer sunders would've been replaced with a better thought out mechanic, I won't refuse to use them (or..1 of them across my chars) and hence plan on farming me some perfect ones throughout the season. Plus sunders actually do have one significant positive about them in that they open up some builds that simply weren't really viable before, one of which I've decided to play now so that wouldn't even be an option in NL.

Would that be Fire Druid ?

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

Much as I don't want to be the one defending blizzard

this is good logic there.
I would not risk starting over, after hoards of hours invested in gaining gear. this game takes ages(unless as said you're an avid 6-8 hours and up fan) to get really somewhere, so that's only logical people will be intimidated.

bottom line: i think ladder seasons shouldn't be that short like d3, which was for shorter span ppl.
I think each ladder should be like half a year.
saves them work too.