Reconsider a Seasonal Reset

Hey just want to chime in here and provide some feedback regarding the future of the game, as I’m quite happy with where it’s at currently…

As someone who has been playing ARPGs since Gauntlet, I have noticed a rather disturbing trend as of late where Seasonal content is released and accessible only on newly created characters at the behest of hyper-competitive leaderboard pushing, something that perhaps not even 1% of the playerbase is remotely interested in.

Assuming I was crazy to not like this system, I took to my rather diverse group of friends and began surveying.

At the end of each survey, the final question was always, "What about RPGs do you enjoy the most?"
Overwhelmingly, the responses I received were as follows…

"I like creating my own character."
"That feeling of progressing…"
"Having an impact on the world."

Within my (albeit limited) survey pool, I learned that people care most about owning their character, about being a part of their world, and progressing through adversity. ALL of those things are thrown aside every time you are told to no longer use your character that you’ve grown with, in order to make a new character to experience new content, in seasonal ARPGs. Now I’m no marketing expert, but it goes without saying, that when people are detached from their characters, they feel less incentivized to purchase cosmetics for them, and are less likely to get into or even try a game… knowing they will need to restart their progress every three months.

What I would like to see, would be a focus on End-Game activities and quality of live improvements to expand our game for seasonal mechanics, and an entirely separate "ironman" setting for leaderboard pushing so those who enjoy that, can, each update.

this is planned for release. it already works this way in path of exile 1. every 3-4 months, a new 'league' is created that introduces a new 'league mechanic.' trial of the sekhamas in poe 2 was introduced in poe 1 as the 'sanctum' league mechanic, for example. if you create a league character, at the end of the league, it goes to 'standard league.' or, you can create a character in standard. league mechanics such as sanctum that ggg decides should 'go core' will show up in standard.

they've already said this system will exist in poe 2 after the game launches. you can play standard and get exactly what you're asking for.

Standard is where you create "forever" characters.

League is where you start fresh and play a character for a few months, that then goes to Standard.

If you're asking for "forever" characters that also get to experience league mechanics, they won't do it. The PoE series?...I dunno what to call it, but new league and rushing to do the new things and be first are some of the core concepts of how the games work.

Allowing people to use maxed out characters to see the new, hardest league content at minute 1 would completely invalidate all the races and hardcore deaths and things that hundreds of thousands of people flock to watch and be a part of.

Like, it's not inherently a bad idea, but you're asking them to take the jumping out of Mario.

As others have pointed out this is what standard the "eternal realm" is in POE. There's absolutely zero chance they will reconsider doing seasonal content, nor should they do so. Because you're looking at this content exactly backwards. No fault of your own not being snarky or trying to dunk on you: but you just lack context.

ARPG Seasons evolved as a way to give players an EXCUSE TO PLAY THE GAME AGAIN.

Seasons DO NOT exist to "Force players to start over". This is a common "cart before the horse" way of looking at this. This viewpoint lacks information about the history of Videogaming. Older gamers understand. This structure evolved out of earlier games that just did not have the monetization (aka Labor hour development budgets) to keep being a game forever, but wanted to give lovers of a particular game something to do, an excuse to play again. Of course without this context is appears to be some sort of leverage or coercion trying to "pry players away and make them buy a battlepass" but this is not actually the root cause so much as a cynical misunderstanding.

That said two things:

1. I've always felt that GGG has done themselves and players a disservice by almost completely ignoring standard in every way imaginable. The game would be better off if they had a couple guys devoted to spicing standard up and keeping it maintained with its unique QoL concerns that temp leagues do not have.

2. I don't think it would hurt anyone to release "leagues" for a month or two and then allow permanent characters to play that league content after that set timeframe in standard with their forever characters. I don't think this would really detract from seasons, and it would give players with very limited time and energy a chance to play mechanics they are quite honestly probably going to just skip anyway.

What you are suggesting is "Please reconsider making money."

I'm sure GGG would love to stop making money.

This is such a dumb post. seasonal content is literally the foundation of the ARPG genre. Diablo does it, POE does it, Last Epoch does it. If you want a permanent character play on standard? stop asking for them to completely change the genre because you dont want to start over

Thanks for the replies, not quite a fan of the presumptions and negativity but I’ll humor it nevertheless.

It is extremely disingenuous to claim that hundreds of thousands of fans tune in to watch Hardcore runs, as peak day one spikes simmer to an average of ~20,000 viewers through the month. Your average player couldn’t care less. Building a game for the .01% will result in a game played by the .01% and as an investor in PoE 2, I would like to see them avoid this fundamental failure in player understanding.

https://twitchtracker.com/games/29307

There were 3,325 average viewers October 2024, and 1,042 November 2024, right before Path of Exile 2 was about to hit early access. People completely lost interest in Path of Exile 1, as they do with all ARPGs and their lack of a working Live Service model that respects RP of ARPGs.

All of that said, I have nothing against people who respect World’s First for patches or look forward to watching their buddies stream Hardcore runs, with Ironman day 1 patch runs, those competitions would still exist. What I’m asking for is equal support for players that don’t want to start over every few months, not to remove seasons altogether; just rework the way they are implemented to accommodate EVERYONE, or more importantly, the majority that are being left out.

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The Titan Tim#8259 wrote:

Thanks for the replies, not quite a fan of the presumptions and negativity but I’ll humor it nevertheless.

It is extremely disingenuous to claim that hundreds of thousands of fans tune in to watch Hardcore runs, as peak day one spikes simmer to an average of ~20,000 viewers through the month. Your average player couldn’t care less. Building a game for the .01% will result in a game played by the .01% and as an investor in PoE 2, I would like to see them avoid this fundamental failure in player understanding.

https://twitchtracker.com/games/29307

There were 3,325 average viewers October 2024, and 1,042 November 2024, right before Path of Exile 2 was about to hit early access. People completely lost interest in Path of Exile 1, as they do with all ARPGs and their lack of a working Live Service model that respects RP of ARPGs.

All of that said, I have nothing against people who respect World’s First for patches or look forward to watching their buddies stream Hardcore runs, with Ironman day 1 patch runs, those competitions would still exist. What I’m asking for is equal support for players that don’t want to start over every few months, not to remove seasons altogether; just rework the way they are implemented to accommodate EVERYONE, or more importantly, the majority that are being left out.

reading thru i really feel sad that some forummers choose to reply to you in a toxic manner.

shame on them.

its ok to have different opinions but its not ok to insult or condescend.

people have mentioned "POE1, D4, LE" does seasonal content.

but i want to point out LE does something different. in their temp league, its the same as others. start fresh. complete challenges etc.

but for their "standard"/permanent league, they get too experience the league content too!

like how the fucking awesome is that? you dont need to reroll, you dont need to waste time. and its exactly like how you said it. if i m attached to my character and gear/wealth, starting from scratch is something I DONT WANT to do.

LE solves this so beautifully. the caveat is the end game league content such as league specific bosses are LOCKED behind temp league progress. if players in the temp league have not killed the boss in the temp league, access to the boss is restricted in standard league. in other words until ANYONE playing on the temp league kills the temp league boss, standard league players have NO ACCESS to this boss. but once a temp leaguer has accomplished this, standard players can now enjoy the league content fully on standard.

i've suggested this a few times and i really hope GGG picks up this suggestion. coz i really DONT FUCKING WANT TO MAKE A NEW CHARACTER WITH NO GEAR/GOLD/STASH.

i did that for POE1 many leagues and i do that if and only if i see gear that i can get from the temp league that could make me stronger in POE1. and i can tell you. i HATED the experience. FUCKING HATED it. temp leagues is not my thing but if it means bringing a powerful piece of gear back to standard i "might" force myself to play it.

but after doing that for 10 years. FUCK temp leagues.

Asking GGG to reconsider league resets in PoE is like asking Epic to reconsider PvP in Fortnite. It's such an integral part of the game.

But also, you have Standard. If you want to play a permanent character, that is an option. But you will not have access to the current league, and since not all league content goes core, you might never experience certain league mechanics.

Trading is Okey. But crafting should be more useful to make trading a bit less attractive. But i think also: currently Trading feels like Cheating and Cheating destroy the magic.