Diablo 3: What It Would Take For Me To Play Ladder

by Malero on Sept. 7, 2014, 10:34 a.m.

If the 16-22 year old me that was a Diablo 2 addict read this article and had access to the present me's pelvic region, I would be in a lot of pain and most likely be infertile right now.

I'm now 30 and I've changed quite a bit since then. So has my schedule and the time that I can allot to playing video games each week. I'm a competitive person. I enjoy competitive games, mainly in the strategy and action RPG genres. But at this point in my life, there is no way for me to compete in the new Diablo 3 seasons that were released with patch 2.1. I'd love to try, but I'd get nowhere near the top 100 or even top 1000.

One of the main reasons that a lot of people(myself included) would start a new Diablo 2 ladder character was because it meant the game economy would completely reset. If you were into Diablo 2 PvP, ladder was more competitive and balanced for the most part. Since there is no trading in Diablo 3, an therefore no economy, it just adds one more reason for me not to participate in any Diablo 3 ladder.

So the main perk of the first ladder Diablo 3 season is the legendary items that can only drop while playing on a ladder character. Let's take a look at them:

New Diablo 3 Season 1 Legendary Items

Bottomless Potion of Rejuvenation Meh. If the breakpoint was a bit higher than 25%, I could see it being quite a bit better.

Krelm's Buff Belt The secondary legendary bonus is pretty good, but I think that there are better belts with higher DPS affixes that most people will prefer.

Krelm's Buff Bracers Meet all of the multi-boxers' new best friend. If you've every multi-boxed before, you know how badly knockback and stun can mess up the synchronization between your characters. Other than that, I really don't mind getting knocked around too much.

Aether Walker Doing bounties? Yes, please. What about Greater Rifts? No thanks! There are much better weapons for Wizards than Aether Walker. I do think it's a fun idea, though. If Blizzard ever decides to implement weapon swapping, I'll be using this in my 2nd weapon slot for sure.

Frydehr's Wrath This is probably the worst Diablo 3 Season 1 Legendary. Condemn is good, but I can't see it dealing even close to as much damage as some of the other spenders. Maybe I'm wrong? I haven't seen this one in action yet. With an extremely tanky Crusader doing higher Greater Rifts, it might do alright. That's just a guess, though.

Leonine Bow of Hashir When I first read this item, I thought it meant that it pulled targets towards your location. I /facepalmed. But the way it actually works is that it pulls enemies in towards the target that procced the effect. That's pretty awesome.

Remorseless This item could definitely be built around some really fun and decent builds, but as of right now, there's not a single Barbarian using this item in the top 50 Greater Rift leaderboard.

Sacred Harvester 20% more intelligence is nothing to scoff at, but there are still much better weapons for Witch Doctors.

Vengeful Wind Sounds great in theory, but there are still much better weapons for Monks.

New Follower Relic/Token/Focus Not too shabby.

None of the season 1 legendaries are jaw-dropping, but I think a lot of them could be a lot fun to play around with. I think that's probably what Blizzard was going for when they created them. But for me, none of have them have made me want to play ladder.

What It Would Take For Me To Play Ladder

Timed Competition is More Fair

In seasons, people with a lot of free time to play will most likely have the best chances of jumping to the top of the ladder. RNG will also play a roll in it too, but more time = higher rank. If you've ever played Path of Exile or Anno 2070, they both have timed events where everyone gets the exact same amount of time to compete. In Anno 2070, there are events that would last a week or so, but you could only play a specific number of hours during that time frame. Everyone plays the exact amount of time, the people with the best strategy win. The same goes for the shorter events in Path of Exile. Those are so damn fun to play, even if you don't get to keep any of the items that you find.

Trading

If they allowed ladder characters to trade with other ladder characters, there would be a huge explosion of bots and sites that sold items. Instead, why not allow people to trade items with others that have met a certain set of criteria, such as: Play 10 hours together, complete 500 bounties together, etc. I miss being able to trade with my friends.

Higher Legendary Drop Rates

If Blizzard increased the legendary drop rate in Seasons, that would definitely make me want to play a seasonal character.

Make Legendaries Season Drops Only

This suggestion won't be popular, but it would make me want to play a seasonal character until I found each one of them. As of right now, when season 1 ends, all of the seasonal only legendary items will be added to the non-season legendary drop pool. In my opinion, exclusive and legacy items are great ways to keep people playing your game. I loved having more powerful legacy items in Diablo 2, but I can also see why people disliked them.

End of Rant

I'm sure most people will disagree with me. It seems like ladders are pretty popular without the things I've mentioned. When you get older and have less time to play games, starting over with no chance of being competitive with people that have way more time than you is very unappealing. D3:RoS and the latest patch have made the game so much better and I've been having a ton of fun doing 3-4 rifts while I drink my coffee in the morning, but the way seasons are currently set up, I see no reason to play them. For the people that are like me, what could Blizzard change to make you want to play a seasonal character?

tldr: I'm getting too old for this... stuff.