Will you play season 2?

Udyret wrote: 1 year ago

the new items were not locked to only ladder. you also get the new items on offline mode. and you can get them on non ladder eventually. with a ton of the active players on jsp hoarding Wealth from previous ladders you're not really getting much fresh either.

Well, the new items are initially locked to the current ladder season. Of course stuff like balance changes and buffs/nerfs will be available throughout, but stuff like the new rune words, if such will be introduced in Season 2, will also be initially locked to ladder. So you'd have to wait another 4 months to be able to use them in non-ladder.

Also JSP Hoarding just shows how detrimental that site is to the game overall. Luckily not every D2 Player is on JSP either. The whole JSP issue however isn't anything you can blame on Blizzard for once.

Lots of different views revealing our different motivations for playing. Very interesting seeing what gets people playing this game.

Since I already answered the original question with most likely not playing season 2, I'll say that the concept of ladder seasons in this game is a crutch for bad endgame design. Why is it such a big deal for some people to have a fresh start? Because there's nothing else to do.

The only competitive part of the endgame is to reach as high a level as possible before other players, which is itself fine, but the means to do so has to be one the most banal activities in all of ARPGs. I'm very reluctant to get into serious top 2/top 4

Baal grinding like I've seen other players do in public

Baal runs. I've seen some players who have been at 98 for a month. I was joining their runs back in late-June and I'm still joining them now.

I will make an Enigma at level 96 or 97 when top 2/top 4 + Diablo becomes the new optimal

Baal grind for me, but I'm not sure how much I'm going to enjoy it because it's a form of speedrunning, which I've never been good at in any game. I may decide 97 is enough, especially when I have three characters I want to reach that level with. On the plus side, in theory I shouldn't have to wait for Azrael and his stupid ass getting in place for

Conviction to activate on the monsters anymore.

There's just nothing to do in the LoD/D2R endgame. While D3 is the second-worst game I've spent considerable hours playing (mind you, I quit in January 2015 just before the end of the first season because Blizzard screwed me and many others over on the top-1000 greater rift leaderboard with an asynchronous content patch a few weeks before the end of the season—yes, I'll be forever salty about that), at least there was a variable challenge that could be tracked on a leaderboard and keep you occupied in the form of greater rifts. Endgame content is also something that the various third-party mods for LoD have implemented as well.

There are essentially three things to do in the D2 endgame, and they're all awful in their own way.

• Leveling: Issues with ultra-high leveling outlined above.
• Loot grinding: I have no attachment to finding a bunch of useless gear or gear that I won't use. This is a lottery, which also doesn't interest me in real life. When the Mega Millions and/or Powerball jackpots get big, I have to feign interest in them instead of telling people who get carried away that they're bad at math. At least it's only $10-20 of daydreaming for those of us who aren't compulsive gamblers. For those that are, there's Diablo Immoral.
  Anyway, at least I can trade some of the gear I find to acquire wealth, but that's wealth that I don't really have a use for after I'm done outfitting my characters. Also, I don't have the time or interest in MFing when I have much more important and interesting things to do outside of this game.
• Ubers: The reason I've still only done one uber run in D2R (with a friend's keys and him carrying as a smiter) is because
  The Summoner is a cheap bastard and running
  The Arcane Sanctuary sucks for targeting him.
  (
  Uber Tristram itself is a fun challenge at first, but it can also get old due to a lack of randomization, so I had to really challenge myself back in the LoD days by taking my physical eBotD spearazon there. I'll say that
  Dracul's Grasp really is one of the holy grails of uber fighting for melee characters because I don't think she otherwise had any business soloing that place and succeeding.)

So to circle back, the reason I play is to min-max characters that I originally created in 2001 and have since remade in D2R. The amount of specialized knowledge that players have uncovered in this game outside of the in-game character sheet is massive, so I'm trying to optimize builds that I didn't put together or understand very well back in LoD. This means using better runewords and gear that I didn't use and skill synergies that I didn't understand back then.

So while I continue to optimize my main characters, without better endgame content or new challenges, there's no reason for me to play another ladder season. New runewords? Come on, none of them have been truly innovative or game-changing since 1.10. The most useful 1.11+ runeword is Treachery, but that doesn't help the fact that my merc is still a dumbass.

It all kind of falls in line with my philosophy on many things in general: I don't care about new; I care about good.

Probably not.

If they dont add more characters slots , then no.

Absolutely. Ladder for me was never to compete in the top spots on the leaderboard. How could i? I have a life, with a job etc. xD

And new items/runewords are just a nice bonus, but before D2R we had countless ladder resets without any new items etc.

I will play S2 because i like starting fresh, with a fresh economy etc.

I like the leveling part and i think, maybe this season i will have more drop luck.

100% will be doing Ladder S2 - Majority of Hardcore players tend to stick to Ladder vs. NL in clean slates. Plus I value the clean start and fresh economy.

I will - but i will make just one char for dclones, that's it

My expectations for a new patch are way too high i guess... but... i believe

i guess i will have some time for an early season 2 but not sure about after summer time
i want to see the increase of active players in d2r to be honest