Ladder vs. Non Ladder

[Wulf]

The cotw level requirement was changed to 120 (as you can see on relics page/changelog). The non-ladder cornerstones shows as 130 because as the item itself shows, it has "+10 level req". Thinking it's a "targeted punishment" done to NL playerbase just seems childish, and resembles the sometimes SP mentality. There's a reason we offer these game modes for you to enjoy at your pace, as it would be both trivial and convenient to have ladder as the only mode, as other d2 mods do.

Question(s): What is the development team's mission/vision/goal for the Non-Ladder community as a whole? How are we tracking in regards to those expectations -- on track, slightly more or slightly less in that progression?

This was answered in my previous post. NL is provided "as is" and this is our vision. D2 engine is old and was never built with these issues (retroactive item changes) in mind. Investing already scarce engine dev time on NL functionalities doesn't seem like the best idea unfortunately with so much on the plate already.

There's going to be some coming changes that are going to be impactful to NL very soon, making nearly all items much stronger than intended. There is nothing we can do to stop it, so the real question is if it's worth to have NL at all. Maybe this is a question that you, the NL community, can help us answer.

You and the dev team are doing a fantastic job

I've been around for a long while, and every single patch makes the game better ♥

[Meddle]

There's going to be some coming changes that are going to be impactful to NL very soon, making nearly all items much stronger than intended. There is nothing we can do to stop it, so the real question is if it's worth to have NL at all. Maybe this is a question that you, the NL community, can help us answer.

i can only think of two ways the NL community can be unhealthy for the ladder community. 1; if the nl community gets in the way of updates either by existing (not wanting to tread on their toes) or by splitting the devs time and 2; if the nl builds get out of hand and crash the servers. i'm pleased to report that i have more on-hit procs than humanly possible and have yet to notice any connection issues... so my guess is nl builds are no more a burden than ladder builds. as for the first point, it sucks when stuff gets nerfed and it's a guilty pleasure when said something exists in its pre-nerf form on your nl build. it really sucks when something gets bricked. it sucks the most when your characters are just deleted, especially when the shop-feature to download your character is no longer a service.

i think mxl should do what is healthy for its players. i dread the day when the code monkeys have spoken and sigma 2.0 comes with deleted 1.x characters. i accept the very jankiest balance you can throw at NL until then. good or bad. buff, nerf, brick, just no deleto.

[Lynderika]

I wouldn't mind if non ladder is removed entierely, and the char putted in sp for exemple. Or maybe make them just last a season, so people can still trade and play together, before having their baby transfered to sp so they can have fun with magic. This feel like a good compromise, but I don't play nl myself so maybe I'm missing the point.

[Crosby4HyG]

The cotw level requirement was changed to 120 (as you can see on relics page/changelog). The non-ladder cornerstones shows as 130 because as the item itself shows, it has "+10 level req". Thinking it's a "targeted punishment" done to NL playerbase just seems childish, and resembles the sometimes SP mentality. There's a reason we offer these game modes for you to enjoy at your pace, as it would be both trivial and convenient to have ladder as the only mode, as other d2 mods do.

Question(s): What is the development team's mission/vision/goal for the Non-Ladder community as a whole? How are we tracking in regards to those expectations -- on track, slightly more or slightly less in that progression?

This was answered in my previous post. NL is provided "as is" and this is our vision. D2 engine is old and was never built with these issues (retroactive item changes) in mind. Investing already scarce engine dev time on NL functionalities doesn't seem like the best idea unfortunately with so much on the plate already.

There's going to be some coming changes that are going to be impactful to NL very soon, making nearly all items much stronger than intended. There is nothing we can do to stop it, so the real question is if it's worth to have NL at all. Maybe this is a question that you, the NL community, can help us answer.

At this point it's fairly known that there's some pretty busted builds and legacy items on the NL servers when compared with Ladder servers. I think it's hard to argue with this. The price that those of us on NL pay for the ability to continue using these items is an almost nonexistent player base compared with Ladder, and virtually no trading whatsoever. I think it's a fair trade off. We get to test builds and not worry so much about TG value of items, and you get to have lots of open games to join, trade for items much more easily and generally enjoy a more active social network.

I know that I personally would really love to play Ladder and enjoy the grind with everyone else, but the reality is that I don't have the time working 80+ hours a week, and with helping raise a young child. That's why I play NL, and I think it's a similar situation for many of us. I'd therefore appreciate it if we could dispense with this idea that NL players get a big treat or reward with these legacy items and unavoidable benefits from Ladder updates. I don't speak for everyone on NL, but I know a lot of us would appreciate having a more active group to play with more than we value our oldest items, (OP as they are).

With regards to Holtz's question; why was the CoTW level req changed at all? If I'm reading the 1.6 patch notes correctly, the CoTW jewels were removed from Ladder drop tables entirely and replaced with an entirely new item (relics). I can therefore see where he's coming from when he says this feels like a development choice targeted against NL, as it's a change that seemingly has no effect on Ladder at all, positive or negative. I'm not angry about it or expecting a change, just genuinely curious why this decision was made if I'm interpreting the patch notes correctly. I know most, (all) devs play Ladder and can see how it might be easy to see NL as a group of players exploiting the system, but I assure you that while I enjoy it, there are downsides to it as well.

Now for the final question, is it worth having NL at all given the very small playerbase? To answer this question, I recommend that you as Devs ask yourselves what kind of player community you want to have. While our NL community is small, we have some very passionate people who have been playing MXL for quite some time, (long before Sigma), and still enjoy the challenges it provides. I know I've put real money into buying TG to support the mod, and I'm sure I'm not alone. I try to answer questions on the forum for the new players when I can, and I appreciate the more knowledgeable people very much whenever I have a question of my own. Our NL Discord took a bit of a dive this last patch because a lot of us were feeling discouraged about the apathy displayed towards our community with this last update. This has been a tough year for the vast majority of people in the world, with the world rapidly changing seemingly every day. I personally think it's quite nice to have some small semblance of stability with my old MXL characters that I've worked so hard on perfecting, and I think that's likely a sentiment shared by at least a few other NL players. I'd be most appreciative if NL is something that the Devs continue to support, even if that only involves communicating with the NL community in the patch notes to explain decisions made which are beneficial or detrimental.

[Marco]

With regards to Holtz's question; why was the CoTW level req changed at all? If I'm reading the 1.6 patch notes correctly, the CoTW jewels were removed from Ladder drop tables entirely and replaced with an entirely new item (relics). I can therefore see where he's coming from when he says this feels like a development choice targeted against NL

In several years we haven't done a single (good or bad) targeted NL change, we've left all sorts of broken combinations, 100% avoid setups, and more. So how someone jumps to the conclusion that relic rlvl was changed because anything related to "NL balance" really blows my mind. Some common sense please.

If you have genuine doubts on the levelreq change or why old ones updated or how NL items work I'm happy to give a detailed answer, either on discord or B&F topic. But not here because as I previously mentioned the cotw changes have no connection to non-ladder whatsoever.

Now for the final question, is it worth having NL at all given the very small playerbase? To answer this question, I recommend that you as Devs ask yourselves what kind of player community you want to have. (...) I'd be most appreciative if NL is something that the Devs continue to support, even if that only involves communicating with the NL community in the patch notes to explain decisions made which are beneficial or detrimental.

a) The kind of community we want is one that understands we're on the same boat and that can sometimes give us the benefit of the doubt. Yes, ladder is always going to be primary mode because we think group play and trading are blueprints of the genre and our ideal game vision. This has been true even before TG was conceived.

But this doesn't mean that through punishment we are going to try convert players over. We welcome all players to join us, as we believe that even someone that plays SP/NL may like the mod enough to recommend it to someone that may eventually be interested in joining the community as well. Considering our marketing is close to none, recommendation has always been the primary source of growth. We have no benefit in providing a game mode that's no fun for you.

b) The communication issue you raise is a great point and often the issue, so I'm glad this topic exists.

Unfortunately, as long as Median continues to receive such large updates (compared to vanilla where NL was more functional) there isn't much we can do to address legacy items. We've worked a bit on a system to update uniques for NL/SP, but it's complicated and only covers uniques, by just rerolling them. If we start talking about backwards compatibility for crafts or recipes/MOs, oh boy. The game doesn't even track where each stat came from, the stats are just impregnated into the item.

That said there is just no balance compromise that makes sense doing. In current and upcoming patch we have fixed probably the 2 largest unnoticed damage bugs since sigma. Fixing them will require some drastic changes. Over these 2 years we have discovered more and more bugs since the new engine, which gives us some perspective on how broken 1.0 was compared to current. We want 2.0 to be as polished as we can from the get go, but this means there's going to be a shaky period with compatibilities. After this new start we'll try to reduce these changes to a minimum.

We don't consider OP legacy items to be a blessing to the players. I'd expect most wouldn't be happy about an item that becomes bis for your char because it has 2x the stats it's supposed to or a bugged interaction. Which is why we would never consider this as a reward system. But if you do see it as such, then good to hear.

[Holtzhammer]

With regards to Holtz's question; why was the CoTW level req changed at all? If I'm reading the 1.6 patch notes correctly, the CoTW jewels were removed from Ladder drop tables entirely and replaced with an entirely new item (relics). I can therefore see where he's coming from when he says this feels like a development choice targeted against NL

In several years we haven't done a single (good or bad) targeted NL change, we've left all sorts of broken combinations, 100% avoid setups, and more. So how someone jumps to the conclusion that relic rlvl was changed because anything related to "NL balance" really blows my mind. Some common sense please.

If you have genuine doubts on the levelreq change or why old ones updated or how NL items work I'm happy to give a detailed answer, either on discord or B&F topic. But not here because as I previously mentioned the cotw changes have no connection to non-ladder whatsoever.

We didnt jump to any hasty conclusions, we exercised discretion and we discussed these new challenges among ourselves for a long time before presenting everyone with this topic -- we would never jump to any conclusions without understanding everything. I sincerely apologize if anyone took it negatively as that was not the intention. Our issue was one of customization and optimization -- I know Crosby and I spent 3-4 weeks solid working on one item and its item-level was suddenly increased beyond any current methods for lowering it (via OEs or anything else). To US we saw our time investment get slashed, but the fun we had never diminished and that alone is one of the top features of NL. We completely understand the hands we get dealt in terms of balance -- which is fine -- and all we want to do is talk about things.

Now for the final question, is it worth having NL at all given the very small playerbase? To answer this question, I recommend that you as Devs ask yourselves what kind of player community you want to have. (...) I'd be most appreciative if NL is something that the Devs continue to support, even if that only involves communicating with the NL community in the patch notes to explain decisions made which are beneficial or detrimental.

a)The kind of community we want is one that understands we're on the same boat and that can sometimes give us the benefit of the doubt. Yes, ladder is always going to be primary mode because we think group play and trading are blueprints of the genre and our ideal game vision. This has been true even before TG was conceived.

We very much appreciate the work that gets put into this game the team and try to do our part through Patreon and Trade Gold to support that initiative as best we can. We (for the most part) are a very inclusive, open, and understanding community and fully are fully aware that our goals (NL/Casual) are aligned with your goals (Ladder/Competitive). There is a place at the table for both as the system exists but again we dont want to increase the amount of programming required just for our sake because that diminishes the entire game as a whole. WE will ALWAYS give you all the benefit of the doubt, but until this thread we had no recourse for discussing such issues -- now we do.

We, too, think that group play and trading (or lending in our case) is at the core of exciting gameplay. Like our Discord server says -- we look at our role as a "Welcome Committee" -- to help new players migrating in from SP, but "not prepared" enough for Ladder. Non-Ladder is a training ground where you can take your time, work with folks like us to learn the basics/discuss things, then take it to the next level -- which is why we run things like the End-Of-Ladder Item Donation Drive. The new changes to relics were very, very exciting.

But this doesn't mean that through punishment we are going to try convert players over. We welcome all players to join us, as we believe that even someone that plays SP/NL may like the mod enough to recommend it to someone that may eventually be interested in joining the community as well. [font=Lucida Console]Considering our marketing is close to none recommendation has always been the primary source of growth. We have no benefit in providing a game mode that's no fun for you.

Well we might be able to help in some way with the marketing by understanding what makes a good "Community". Our Mission/Vision/Goals follow this simple aspects chart, and its helped us grow and expand to not only converting Ladder folks to NL, but gaining new players overall. Essentially we have been studying the MXL community as a whole, comparing actions by folks to our chart, and seeing where things fall short of expectations, on track, or are ahead of the game. "Healthy" communities in and out of MXL typically follow these aspects, so its an easy analogy.

So, by doing what we do and keeping our vision & goals aligned with these tenets, we are increasing the presence MXL has in a positive manner. Little, if any toxicity exists in our community which is a difficult feat.

Community was based on:

Most important aspects:
1. Need
2 Communication

Secondary importance:
1. Reciprocity
2. Environment
3. Time (sharing time as well)

There's are lots of collections of people at a place at a time, but not a "community". Season ticket holders are a "community"; you get to know the people around you, --you develop a "sense of community". How do you differentiate between people at a like place at a like time? Everyone driving from Tampa to Atlanta -- they share time, environment, & need, possibly communication (not deep communication) -- no more reciprocity beyond turn-taking, but are not considered a community.

Community is a felt reality.

b) The communication issue you raise is a great point and often the issue, so I'm glad this topic exists.

Unfortunately, as long as Median continues to receive such large updates (compared to vanilla where NL was more functional) there isn't much we can do to address legacy items. We've worked a bit on a system to update uniques for NL/SP, but it's complicated and only covers uniques, by just rerolling them. If we start talking about backwards compatibility for crafts or recipes/MOs, oh boy. The game doesn't even track where each stat came from, the stats are just impregnated into the item.

That said there is just no balance compromise that makes sense doing. In current and upcoming patch we have fixed probably the 2 largest unnoticed damage bugs since sigma. Fixing them will require some drastic changes. Over these 2 years we have discovered more and more bugs since the new engine, which gives us some perspective on how broken 1.0 was compared to current. We want 2.0 to be as polished as we can from the get go, but this means there's going to be a shaky period with compatibilities. After this new start we'll try to reduce these changes to a minimum.

We don't consider OP legacy items to be a blessing to the players. I'd expect most wouldn't be happy about an item that becomes bis for your char because it has 2x the stats it's supposed to or a bugged interaction. Which is why we would never consider this as a reward system. But if you do see it as such, then good to hear.

Believe it or not, the incitement of bugged items is not as large a draw to NL as one may believe because that requires a fore-knowledge of the game, its mechanics and items, as well as other factors that a large part of our community just doesnt know. Some of the high-end grinders definitely utilize/enticed by this, but by in large the day-to-day NL player is just someone new to Median looking for people to play with who are nice and understanding, they are maybe embarrassed/intimidated by their lack of knowledge in the game as compared to others, and just wants to grow. We try our best to serve/provide them that. The truth is most of us dont know which items are bugged or how to tell -- we just want to experiment with different things and we are extremely busy with our jobs, families, and life. Knowing that we can come back 1 week, or 4 months later to NL and still have our "progress" saved is a huge factor to keeping us around.

In regards to our upcoming "shaky period" we understand that as you explore and alter the architecture of the game you will polish and improve it -- an aspect we very much appreciate -- but we will weather it as we have done every patch and inform all existing and future NL-ers to it. We dont want to hinder development and in a post-2.0 world it is deemed that NL doesnt need to exist we can accept that too because we are all a team and know that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. By simply replying to this thread in a professional and constructive manner and letting us into the process "bad news" or news outside of our expectations can be better accepted and understood.

I look forward to discussing things in discord if you'd like.

[Mr_Bill]

I'm wondering if we can create a friendly dialogue about the separation of Ladder vs. Non Ladder players, and the effects of MXL season updates across both.

Like a few people I play Non Ladder exclusively, essentially because I work too much to be competitive on Ladder; and also because of time obligations to my family. Generally speaking, I can play for maybe a few hours a week at most, so I enjoy keeping the same chars/gear permanently rather than starting over every 6 months.

What this means however, is that the chars I play are lvl 140+ and subsequently so is their gear. When an update such as this one adds +25 lvl req to an item like

Natalya's Deception

Natalya's Deception
Quilted Armor (Sacred)
Defense: 2263 to 2331
Required Level: 80
Required Strength: 500
Item Level: 120
Orb Effects Applied to this Item are Quadrupled
Socketed (6)

it puts some of the best gear I've got out of the realm of possible use permanently. Given that this is one of the rarest SSUs in the game I'm a little saddened by this. The same goes for the additional +10 lvls to CoTW. These are end game items, generally it's a good idea to use them at their highest possible level. Is item lvl req something that's impossible to separate between old items and ones that are newly dropped on Ladder? Genuinely asking because I don't know the answer.

I understand the reasoning for the item nerf, Nat's was objectively too good before the update. As much as I truly appreciate the hard work from the devs, it just feels like there's a general apathy for the NL community from a dev standpoint with changes such as this one. I should also add that the vast majority of this update is awesome, relics seem like a fantastic addition. One final question I have is regarding the henchman change this update. I notice that the lvl req dropped by 10 for all of my henchman pieces, but the double MO bonus remains. Is this intentional by the devs or is it not possible to alter that aspect of the set? Thanks for reading.

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I strongly support these comments. I mostly play Non-Ladder because (like you) I have family and work obligations that make the kind of obsessive devotion of time to a specific game (Median XL in this case) that many players seem to think is "standard operating procedure", completely out of the question for me. "Earth Calling Mars", folks : many Median players cannot spend days, weeks or months of continuous time on this game, at least not if they don't want to get divorced.

The most annoying thing about this, however, is that whenever a new update accompanies the retirement of the "old" ladder and the start of the "new" one, I have noticed that the level requirements of (particularly) low-tier rare (yellow) items just goes totally berserk. For example you had one of your mules wearing a rare item that (pre-update) was Level 10 requirement; now it's Level 68(!). There seems to be little rhyme or reason to why this occurs. I have never seen a good explanation of why it is necessary.

Also, when there are patches that significantly change the skill trees of a given build (for example Druid in the case of the upcoming one), if you have existing characters of that class, you either have to live with wildly inappropriate distribution of points (in a non-optimal way, because the skills that you put the points into for the "old" build are now "new" skills that don't synergize or support each other), or you have to burn an Akara respec, or you have to hope to find a Belladonna Elexir. I appreciate the designers trying to improve the game, of course, but I think it is only fair that if they do this, then they (for example) give affected, existing characters an extra free respec, so that character isn't completely crippled by the patch changes.

[Marco]

"Earth Calling Mars", folks : many Median players cannot spend days, weeks or months of continuous time on this game, at least not if they don't want to get divorced.

It's understandable, but you'd also expect development to revolve around people that play the game the most, not the least. That would be both more fair and efficient. Besides Idle games, I think pretty much every game has this "dillema".

Don't get me wrong, we welcome and want casual players to enjoy MXL, but you also can enjoy the game while not completing it. People that play rather casually can set goals for each season and try to beat them next one, such as completing 120 bracket, then 125, and so on, while also testing different builds out and gaining more understanding about the game each iteration. The very last content is extremely difficult and out of reach for most people that aren't casual as well, so there isn't an agreed upon "you beat the game" goal, you set it yourself and try to push further every time.

For example you had one of your mules wearing a rare item that (pre-update) was Level 10 requirement; now it's Level 68(!). There seems to be little rhyme or reason to why this occurs. I have never seen a good explanation of why it is necessary.

It's a bug in our backlog.

I appreciate the designers trying to improve the game, of course, but I think it is only fair that if they do this, then they (for example) give affected, existing characters an extra free respec, so that character isn't completely crippled by the patch changes.

Knowing that this happens and that it's specifically a NL/SP issue, you can circumvent it by just saving bellas ahead.

[Mr_Bill]

"Earth Calling Mars", folks : many Median players cannot spend days, weeks or months of continuous time on this game, at least not if they don't want to get divorced.

It's understandable, but you'd also expect development to revolve around people that play the game the most, not the least. That would be both more fair and efficient. Besides Idle games, I think pretty much every game has this "dillema".

Don't get me wrong, we welcome and want casual players to enjoy MXL, but you also can enjoy the game while not completing it. People that play rather casually can set goals for each season and try to beat them next one, such as completing 120 bracket, then 125, and so on, while also testing different builds out and gaining more understanding about the game each iteration. The very last content is extremely difficult and out of reach for most people that aren't casual as well, so there isn't an agreed upon "you beat the game" goal, you set it yourself and try to push further every time.

For example you had one of your mules wearing a rare item that (pre-update) was Level 10 requirement; now it's Level 68(!). There seems to be little rhyme or reason to why this occurs. I have never seen a good explanation of why it is necessary.

It's a bug in our backlog.

I appreciate the designers trying to improve the game, of course, but I think it is only fair that if they do this, then they (for example) give affected, existing characters an extra free respec, so that character isn't completely crippled by the patch changes.

Knowing that this happens and that it's specifically a NL/SP issue, you can circumvent it by just saving bellas ahead.

Thank you for the answers, they confirm pretty much all of what I had already assumed about each of these subjects.

In all fairness, I do have to acknowledge that NL on Median (at least on the TSW Realms) is far superior to NL on classic BNet LoD, what with its extensive lists of "Ladder-Only" items (particularly elite Runewords) and other crippling restrictions that made NL a kind of pale imitation of Ladder play.

The other thing that I would like to commend the MXL developers for (both on- and off-Ladder) is "removing 'non-consensual hostility'" from multiplayer instances of Median; Blizzard's obstinate refusal to do this basically ruined multiplayer D2, especially in Hardcore, for over a decade, as the Battle.Net realms became infested with punk "PKers" whose only goal (engineered, BTW, by a long list of illegal hacks and cheats, most notably but by no means limited to the infamous "TPPK" cheat), was to cyber-bully newer and less powerful players and to generally ruin the playing experience altogether. It got to the point where my wife, my daughter and I gave up on Diablo altogether... we now play Median, when we can get a few spare moments of time from work and life responsibilities.

Getting rid of this worst example (ever!) of spectacularly bad judgment in game design didn't get a lot of congratulations when it was done, but let me give you a call-out about it today. It has made Median (on TSW) a much more fun game to play.

So keep up the good work. Unfortunately by now I have built up such a long list of non-ladder characters from earlier Ladder seasons that I fear I'll have to retire some of them, but, as the saying goes, "their Deeds of Valor will be remembered".

[Crosby4HyG]

I wanted to resurrect this thread briefly. I still plan to play Non Ladder for the foreseeable future, as do several of my friends. My reasons are at the beginning of this thread. Are there any development plans on the horizon that could require another full realm wipe? I'd really like to know about these plans sooner than later from the dev team if at all possible. Thanks for making such a great mod, 2.0 has been awesome thus far.