Replay-ability / season longevity

I’ve played about 5 ladders over many years.
The 1 thing I always wished from every ladder/season is that more people would play throughout the ladder, not just the first few weeks. I run out of things to do, and reasons to play after about a month.

Here’s just some ideas the I think might keep people playing longer:

“Twink” items to incentivize people to roll another character. If you feel like rolling another character, but don’t feel like leveling; this would help those people breeze through leveling.

A level 1 cloth belt with the following stats after you kill Hell Baal:
Under level 100:

At level 100+:
Nothing. No stats given at all if you’re level 100+

Note: I feel like this needs to be account-bound somehow; so that only people that have earned this by leveling up a character can use it.

More endgame farming areas. Rebrand some of the already crafted zones and put some higher level monsters in there so that you can farm somewhere other than Labs or Scos.

For example: UBER Cows and/or UBER Fauz at area level 135 with some new Monsters.
You get the new UBER Cow/Fauz by cubing the normal Leg or Scroll with an enchanted rune.

I don’t feel like these need to have a Charm or any special drops like Labs and Scos; just another area with high level monster to mix things up would be real nice.

More reliable crafting results (shrine crafting kinda blows)
I’ve blown through 1000+ shrines over the years and I don’t think I’ve ever got anything great.
I don’t have any good ideas here. Redoing crafting is probably the biggest overhaul. Honestly, I stay away from builds where the BiS items are crafted. I don’t like it.

More Signets to grind.
IMO, the best, most interesting new Signet could be Signet of Magic Find. Each Sig of MF could be +0.5 MF with a maximum of Sig limit. (ie 200 Sig of MF = +100% MF, or 100 Sig of MF = +50% MF)

More cube recipes to not have to trash SU and Sets.
Cube 5 SU to reroll it as a SSU+
Cube 5 Set to reroll as SSU or Sig of MF

Just some ideas. Take them or leave them. Not offense if you think they suck

Edit: grammar

Yeah i agree that crafting could use some overhaul. It is very tough for casters especially, for example you will never craft a staff for an ele caster, since it is just impossible to hit a good one. Higher chance to roll pierce with the corresponding spell dmg, or something like that, but this is probably just impossible.

Istaryu wrote:Yeah i agree that crafting could use some overhaul. It is very tough for casters especially, for example you will never craft a staff for an ele caster, since it is just impossible to hit a good one. Higher chance to roll pierce with the corresponding spell dmg, or something like that, but this is probably just impossible.

It wouldn't be that hard to tweak, multiple stats can be lumped into 1 affix. It's already the case for some rolls, min dmg and ED for example, or cold pierce and ice lance on belts. Devs could potentially just lump spell dmg and corresponding pierce into a single affix then make it a bit rarer for balance.

Interesting ideas...

My contribution: Once every 3-weeks, dramatically increase the chance of encountering a Goblin AND up the drops from goblins. For example, if the base chance of encountering a Goblin is .1%, increase it to .5% on week 4-6, to 1% on week 7-9, to 1.5% on week 10-12, etc. Of course, those numbers might be way too high, but you get the point. And the drops on goblins are sub par compared to last season, so I would increase the goblin rarity drops ALSO every 3-weeks to incentivize continued play.

It is easy to longer the ladder life if u really want it: Just nerf drop rate of everything to 1/5 of what it is(SC only), then the season longevity may be 2-3 times than now.
Cube 5 SU to reroll it as a SSU+, will just make the ladder life shorter.
More endgame farming areas is good, but I doubt how well that will work for season longevity. Just say, Scos, it was added to longer the ladder life at first, but it turns out to be not that effective for season longevity, as we all know, especially when u trade in SC. Unless dev adds 4-5 endgame contents at one time in a season, which may be another case.
Most ppl may not agree on the idea of nerfing the drop rate of everything to 1/5 in SC, me included. Im fine with ladder being active just the first few weeks.

cnlnjzfjb wrote:It is easy to longer the ladder life if u really want it: Just nerf drop rate of everything to 1/5 of what it is(SC only), then the season longevity may be 2-3 times than now.
Cube 5 SU to reroll it as a SSU+, will just make the ladder life shorter.
More endgame farming areas is good, but I doubt how well that will work for season longevity. Just say, Scos, it was added to longer the ladder life at first, but it turns out to be not that effective for season longevity, as we all know, especially when u trade in SC. Unless dev adds 4-5 endgame contents at one time in a season, which may be another case.
Most ppl may not agree on the idea of nerfing the drop rate of everything to 1/5 in SC, me included. Im fine with ladder being active just the first few weeks.

See I don't agree with this at all. As a casual gamer, I get both frustrated and bored when I can't find the gear I want to progress and in my mind, I weigh my enjoyment of the experience I am having playing versus the time I am spending and what else I could be doing with that time instead. During last season is when I played the longest on the ladder, basically until reset because I kept finding gear from the Goblins that got me interested enough to want to try a new build with that particular gear. Just my opinion.

fr0gbug wrote:
Istaryu wrote:Yeah i agree that crafting could use some overhaul. It is very tough for casters especially, for example you will never craft a staff for an ele caster, since it is just impossible to hit a good one. Higher chance to roll pierce with the corresponding spell dmg, or something like that, but this is probably just impossible.

It wouldn't be that hard to tweak, multiple stats can be lumped into 1 affix. It's already the case for some rolls, min dmg and ED for example, or cold pierce and ice lance on belts. Devs could potentially just lump spell dmg and corresponding pierce into a single affix then make it a bit rarer for balance.

This would be completely broken. I considered this too, but it would not be healthy for the game. The goal of this wouldnt be to craft gg items for free, but to make it a little bit easier for casters.

bring back character orb, make it endgame stuff
bam, easy paragon grind ala d3 for late game stuff

just make it required boss drop or some uber to upgrade
small progression every time you play the game

and you have something to trade to other
you can even use it as twink item (depend on level requirement on the item)
*cycle & treasure chest charm also similiar, but it relied heavily on farming same area over and over again rather than all incentive to do all ubers in the game

The reason is quite simple and it's not even that dependent on mod authors.
It's the market saturation.
Median XL came out in late 2008, which was a completely different time when it comes to action RPG's. You had Diablo 2, its other mods and maybe Dungeon Siege 2? Not much. Also the concept of endgame was pretty new, Median mod is the first popular mod that doubled down on this concept.

Today you have so many good ARPG's with endgame that Median just feels outdated.
2.0 made it a trainwreck of a mod for me. It's not playable, I'm sorry, I can't make it past normal. Not due to difficulty but due to how crap it plays.
Well.. Brother Laz is making a brand new mod for D2 Resurrected which is kinda like Median but not quite.

Taem wrote:
cnlnjzfjb wrote:It is easy to longer the ladder life if u really want it: Just nerf drop rate of everything to 1/5 of what it is(SC only), then the season longevity may be 2-3 times than now.
Cube 5 SU to reroll it as a SSU+, will just make the ladder life shorter.
More endgame farming areas is good, but I doubt how well that will work for season longevity. Just say, Scos, it was added to longer the ladder life at first, but it turns out to be not that effective for season longevity, as we all know, especially when u trade in SC. Unless dev adds 4-5 endgame contents at one time in a season, which may be another case.
Most ppl may not agree on the idea of nerfing the drop rate of everything to 1/5 in SC, me included. Im fine with ladder being active just the first few weeks.

See I don't agree with this at all. As a casual gamer, I get both frustrated and bored when I can't find the gear I want to progress and in my mind, I weigh my enjoyment of the experience I am having playing versus the time I am spending and what else I could be doing with that time instead. During last season is when I played the longest on the ladder, basically until reset because I kept finding gear from the Goblins that got me interested enough to want to try a new build with that particular gear. Just my opinion.

I can see what u mean. But the ladder longevity depends on not u or me, it depends on the whole market. The more items drop, the sooner ladder dies, it is just a simple fact. Thinking of 1.8 season, Goblins made the drop rate so high that ppl can easily get what they want. Ofc it is a carnival, but also a disaster to ladder life the same time. Goblins in 1.8 turned this mod into sth easy and boring, ppl killed sam and walked at ease in t10 very soon in 1.8 thanks to the abuse of relics and scrolls, and then they felt bored and left, and ladder died. So in 1.8, just 1 week, market died (price crashed). Just 2 weeks, the ladder died.