make 1 non-seasonal server, where you can farm bis gear and always come back to

[leaden nimbus]

let the community vote on this topic maybe

[mild radish]

They have already stated what the game is, give up on this dream, let the little horse die.

[rancid siren]

They actually stated that the system is open for discussion and that's why we are here.

[mild radish]

the game will follow a seasonal reset model; introducing new Dungeons, Heroes, Features, and heaps of things to chase each season

this is literally from the announcement they made like a few days ago

after all these appeared before the delete

[rancid siren]

That's what they wanna try. Axel clearly stated that they are open to make adjustments to that system or even completely change it.

[charred shore]

non seasonal will be dead in no time cuz no intent to play the game cuz you will hit a hard cap of what keys you can reach

and how you wanna do it with new dungeons keep old ones and get new ones?

[waxen elm]

there are 3 types of people:

bis gear in eternal after some weeks (gem grind <3), pushing super high to the max limit, they will reach this limit in a given season easily - the char cannot actually progress if dungeons are not nerfed or char is buffed - there is 0 reason to log in if you cant progress with optimal play any longer, happy with reset

people stuck in tutorial ( adept, champ, paragon ), the reset will not hit them "hard", they loose some char progression, but what they learned (or didnt, in the case of adept) will get them to their current league fast again - not happy with reset because it took them 100 hours to reach champ, its gonna be fine, they will do it faster next time, but they will also not be happy with no reset, because the playerbase will be so small (and bad) in the non seasonal gamemode, that queues will take forever and progression will be super slow

the rest from 0.1% to top 2% that has mount unlocked and has no aspiration of pushing more - or is at their skill sealing anyways, happy with reset

[charred shore]

on point

[rancid siren]

you missed all the casual people who play sometimes when their busy life allows it which usually have a premade with friends playing together or are open to find likeminded people in game or discord. Not happy with reset. Not having a permanent option is killing the game for those, since they will never be able to become stuck. Never be able to even reach a point where the game becomes too hard for their skill.

[pseudo beacon]

It'd be cool if they treated these seasonal resets similar to how D3 and PoE treat their seasonal wipes. All things created and obtained in the season get sent to their permanent leagues. In this case it'd just be items/gems/gold/etc.

While I am someone who enjoys the seasonal wipes, "race", and to get any achieves or unlockable stuff- I have friends who are very much in the casual boat and being able to play with them when they're unwilling to restart the grind is something one can only hope for.

+1 to this idea. Hope they find some value in it.

[copper gyro]

At the end of the day, seasonal resets will keep player counts higher. Once you reach the wall, wherever that is for your group, you will have no more reason to play the game. It's very simple.

I think you should just come to terms with the fact that you don't have the time other people do for a game like this. Also not to forget, Hamish has specifically said not to expect short seasons post launch. They want to aim for 4-6 months each. If you can't max the reward track in that amount of time, maybe time isn't the issue.

[rancid siren]

If you can't reach that wall, the whole game is a waste of time and the only solution is to quit if no option to be able to play as much as life allows it is provided. You can't measure peoples free time in month and they have already stated that this is just an idea they wanna try and are open for adjustments and even radical changes. That's why this threads exist. There is no coming to terms with something which is subject to change, is there?

4-6 month is news to me, got any source for this?

[craggy stirrup]

Do we know the % of people who got like 10k rating or to eternal? Because I can’t understand how you couldn’t hit bis after 4 months. I might be blind and completely off?

I know the general playerbase is usually very casual when it comes to most games. But how casual can one be?
This is an honest question not a dig at chill players!

[near gazelle]

How little play time are you assuming that someone wouldn’t be able to hit 10k in four months? That’s plenty of time for even casuals especially with a premade

[mild radish]

I read in another post that someone had like a couple hours a week

[craggy stirrup]

Yeah, i think eternal is around the 100 hour mark for a casual player. This would avarage out to 1 hour a day to hit eternal. While I get that some people don’t even have that, why should the game cater to people who barely play it

[mild radish]

I think there are just cases when this game won't be for them..

[craggy stirrup]

Yeah exactly, should the game really cater to the minority, is what I’m asking

[near gazelle]

The game already eliminates the barriers to entry that every mmo has for this type of content, so I’d say no. If someone is barely playing the game they’re not really losing anything on reset anyway

[iron matrix]

+1 there was a simillar thread before they archived everything and im still voting +1 now

[rancid siren]

Providing a non seasonal or persistent option is hardly catering. It's asking for the bare minimum.

[copper gyro]

this opens up another question. why would they WANT to cater to someone that doesn't have time for their game? lol if i was a dev i'd rather base design decisions on how they affect the 99%.

[rancid siren]

And there is literally no reason to be against this, it only makes the playerbase bigger and the game more sustainable in the long run.

[copper gyro]

its not the bare minimum. youre asking a small team to implement a system just for you so you can play a couple hours a week and feel better about it

[craggy stirrup]

Do you have the % of the rating distrobution? That’s what I’m asking for. I’m clueless as to where people are/will end up in the game. If the majority won’t make it past paragon then yeah sure. But I doubt that?

[copper gyro]

ill see if i can find it

[near gazelle]

Making this feature would take away development time from a very small team when there are much bigger issues with the game. It also splits the player base into different pools for queues which could be very bad depending on the distribution

[rancid siren]

You missed my point. It's the bare minimum to allow those people to even play this game.

[copper gyro]

you already get to play the game

[copper gyro]

based on the current leaderboard and quick excel math, 10k is 1.2% of the players in the game. that's the fastest stat i could get with whats available. i can't dive into separate statistics cause the rating isn't entirely tied to what league people are in.

[rancid siren]

There is actually no playerbase split here. People who can't or don't want to play seasonal, just won't play without some permanent option. With or without such an option, they won't be part of the season. But if you give them the option, and make seasons attractive to them, some may join a season here and there. Not always, but in the long run, having an option for those people to stick around will actually improve the size of the seasonal pool.

[near gazelle]

This type of player that you’re describing is basically not playing the game and won’t have a meaningful impact on the player base. Regardless if there’s more than one type of server available it will always dilute the pool available for queues to some extent. The product is simply not for the level of casual you’re talking about, they’d be better served by single player games

[charred shore]

if you cater to everyone you cater to no one. Its gonna be ass if you try to involve everyone

[pseudo beacon]

All of you guys act like just because someone is playing less than you they aren't a paying customer. If you spend 5 hours in a restaurant a day versus someone who takes an order to go what makes you more special than them? Assuming you both paid the same price for the same meal, you think they should just stop doing to-go orders because they aren't sitting in their restaurant for the same time as you?

It's not about people's achievements per season, it's about creating longevity for those who don't wish to dump time into something that'll reset- and I have many friends who are in that boat that I'd wanna play with when they don't join the new season with me.

And who knows, maybe the non-seasonal people buy microtransactions that help fund the next season. Think about it objectively.

[near gazelle]

The change suggested will affect the quality of experience for everyone, not just the small niche that plays a couple hours every month.

They’re still free to play however they want they just might have to play a few games back up to adept when they come back twice a year lol. I can’t understand the mentality of someone who doesn’t want to play a game but would care about losing the small amount of progress they made in those few hours they spent with it.

[rancid siren]

Of course they are. I've seen several premades like that. How do you know how many there are out there? Are you making that up or got any data? Would love to see it.

[near gazelle]

I’m not saying they don’t exist, I’m saying they’re not spending many hours in game and won’t have a meaningful impact on the seasonal pool.

[pseudo beacon]

So what does the seasonal pool have to do with the workload required to make a non-seasonal server?

[rancid siren]

That's hard to say without having numbers.

[near gazelle]

I mean logically, if you’re talking about a group of people playing so little that they can’t hit 10k in four months they’re not online enough to make a difference. And if they’re premade they’re irrelevant to player pools anyway

[rancid siren]

Well one may not make a difference, but if the amount of people in that group is big enough, they actually could. And the thing with casual premades is that they have limited time to play together, it doesn't mean that they don't have more time playing alone. And I kinda doubt they would spend their solo time purely on a non seasonal league. Seasonal queue times, if there is even a queue on non seasonal, is probably way better to play solo.

[near gazelle]

Someone who plays two leagues is not a casual and they probably wouldn’t care about resets

[rancid siren]

Why not? It's like playing two different games, why wouldn't that be casual?

Playing 3-4 hours a week with friends and 3-4 hours a week solo, sounds pretty casual to me. And of course they would care about resets

[near gazelle]

Why would someone playing 8 hours a week care at all? They’re easily unlocking everything before the reset unless they’re a complete potato.

[rancid siren]

You missed the part with the 8 hours being split between playing with friends and solo. Either you play two different heroe or half of the time is wasted due to the playstyle

[small grove]

I get not being interested in a permanent server for yourself, but why argue with people that want one ?

How does it change anything to you if there's one or not ?

It's ultimately CR / Arc decisions to open one, or not, but as long as it doesn't change a thing for you, why argue against ?

At least, be honest, and say "I don't want them to allocate ressources for that", but do not try explaining to people that how they play the game is wrong

[near gazelle]

Already talked about that above

[small grove]

Yeah, and that's the only reasonable argument. Everything else is just a matter of personal preferences but has no bearing on asking for a non-seasonal server.

[mild radish]

small team with limited resources being split between what would be the equivalent of maintaining two different versions of theg ame

[near gazelle]

And splitting the player base which is what brizina and I were talking about

[small grove]

Let's not exaggerate what having two servers where one does not reset entails ressource wise. I doubt the human cost will be anything more than spinning up a new server... but that's CR decision

[mild radish]

Okay so what happens when the nonseasonal has been up a bit, because they aren't reset they most definitely will hit the wall that is impossible

[small grove]

This argument was made and remade and made again. It either will has a negative impact, no impact or a positive impact, we cannot know.

I'm in team positive impact 🤷‍♂️

[mild radish]

The next logical step being them crying that theres no content for the nonseasonal since there is no increasing gear requirements

[near gazelle]

Do you know anything about infrastructure maintenance and upkeep costs for servers? It’s not cheap

[small grove]

Yeah, and so what ? They'll reroll another hero, stop the game, and continue having fun... that's a player issue 🤷‍♂️

[mild radish]

which if you were to add something like that in, creates a new power creep/ gear treadmill that needs to be designed just for that server

congratulations you have just created alot more work, and these are people with limited time they are rather unlikely to do that]

[rancid siren]

no one is asking to cater to non seasonal, just giving the option. Please make the seasonal with all the sinies, even better

[small grove]

Yet server cost has nothing to do with team ability... I am not saying it'll be free, I'm saying it won't impact development much.

And in the era of virtual servers, having 4k people on one server or 2k on two servers can be virtually identical with a little overhead.

(I happen to help manage an openshift cluster)

[mild radish]

and im a developer

im saying theres alot more to this than you're thinking

the ask "don't" stop that way

there has to be something for them to do to keep that section fresh

or the value of the work won't be worth the return

[small grove]

No it doesn't, people will just get stuck at some point ... you don't need to do anything for them. That's the beauty of it, it's just infrastructure cost

[mild radish]

these people are a very small subset who couldn't be bothered to even read about what the games premise was

before pulling the trigger, than lamenting a mistake they could have solved with 3 mins of attention

[small grove]

Yeah, that's my primary job description too, still I thing you imagine issues that maybe won't arise at all

[mild radish]

I think that normal design is to use big picture and also think of the most likely possibilities

saying people who are asking now

[small grove]

That could be said nearly about any thread here... the idea is to improve the game, not lamenting

[mild radish]

won't ask more is illogical

[small grove]

"Avoid the gem grind" should have read about the game.
"Give me my legendary" should have read about the game
Etc

[mild radish]

those are common things in any game with gear to chase though

theres always the shiny that requires a grind.

[small grove]

Yet, those are the most common thread on the discord, should we tell them that they should have read about the game or do we want improvements?

[mild radish]

The problem with that logic is you generally don't hear from people who are happy, so much as people with a gripe

[small grove]

If the contract is : we open a permanent server, but won't do anything specific, take it or leave it.

It's not like they'll have a choice 🤷‍♂️

[mild radish]

We can't even discern how many of them there are to even make it worth it, the devs probably have a betterr idea

[small grove]

Don't worry, "happy" people are very vocal too... you should read some threads about adding an undo button on the scrapper 🤣

[mild radish]

Also that would be a terrible look lol," they just abandoned the permanent server with no real updates!"

[small grove]

Same updates as the other ones... won't look bad ihmo

[mild radish]

It will because once you've said you will support it, people will expect it to be given something to make it feel fresh

If you go to a waffle house and order pizza no will support you because you knew what it was

if they concede and make you a pizza, now people are going to think its odd because you've done it before, why not do it now.

[void plinth]

I am all for this!

[rancid siren]

The majority of people interested in this don't care about it being kept fresh. They wanna play at their own pace with their friends... Gonna take a long time for them to even get through the existing content... with one hero. And to keep it fresh you just have to add new heros and dungeons to it after them being available on the seasonal for a while. That way they will hardly ever run out of things to do.

[small grove]

Your analogy falls short with what you are saying... the pizza will still be available

[mild radish]

no the analogy doesn't because the point is that pizza won't be an expectation because its a waffle house and they said no

if they did it, then by conceding they've created the option and also an opening for more ask, they set a precedent of concession.

[pseudo beacon]

Having non-seasonal servers is like going to a waffle house asking for the same order of waffles you've been ordering for the past 10 years without any change to it.
Seasonal wipes without a permanent server would be like doing the same thing but they no longer serve that dish and you have to have berries and whip cream on it.

Your comparison is illogical to the point of the post.

[small grove]

Anything they do following feedback is a concession then... that's just not how the world works.

Should they never add LFG to eternal because it's a concession ? 🤡

[mild radish]

the thing being asked for is a core conceptual change lol

the games fundamental is that its built on seasonal resets with alterations

[small grove]

OK boomer

[rancid siren]

No, it's not.. it's asking for an option. No one here wants to take your precious season resets away 🙂
You can reset every week if it comes to people interested in this.

The game should be evolving around seasons and their resets and all the shiny things and leader boards and whatnot... That's all fine and should be the focus of this game.

[pseudo beacon]

The game by definition is "Early-Access". Where is the concrete conceptual design of the game? I look at the summary provided in steam and it says "FELLOWSHIP is a multiplayer online dungeon adventure set in an exciting fantasy setting, with endlessly scaling dungeon runs."

They're asking and listening to feedback because they're unsure about where the pieces will fall in the end. They're trying to make the game more appealing to the masses, not less. If the desicision is not to make seasonal servers then so be it. However you're not providing any meaningful feedback as to why they shouldn't, only low iq personal ideals.

[small grove]

Why the clown emoji ? LFG for eternal was never part of the core for this game.... so I'd imagine you'd rather they keep it out ?

[mild radish]

There is a section where it does specific state seasonal lol

[small grove]

Yeah, does it states "LFG in eternal" ?

[mild radish]

what....guy I think you're losing it -_-

[pseudo beacon]

Yes it's seasonal and will have seasonal wipes. Where does it say that it will not have a permanent non-seasonal server? You have literally nothing beneficial to say here nor valid arguments against it, once again.

[small grove]

No I am not, they clearly stated previously that there was no plan to add LFG to eternal as eternal was made for premades.

Now they are working on it, due to feedback.

But as per your arguments, they shouldn't, because it's a concession and not part of the niche / core of the game

So, are you ranting against LFG in Eternal as much as you are here ? Or is your "not part of the core" rant just some coping you do because you can't accept a different vision than yours ?

[mild radish]

If a game is described as seasonal, why would you assume its not seasonal..?

permament server wouldn't be seasonal

[small grove]

And I think you're prejudiced about what seasonal means...

Seasonal means a variety of things across the industry. It can include full reset, new content, leaderboards reset.

There's not one definition of seasonal that everyone agrees of.

If the servers are called evergreen, but the leaderboard is reset every 4 month, are they seasonal ?

Is LoL a seasonal game ? Wow ? PoE ? D4 ?

[pseudo beacon]

My guy, you lack the mental capabilities to form valid arguments. Provide something other than undigested regurgitation and I'll actually listen to something you say with genuine interest.

[pseudo beacon]

btw

[mild radish]

You are just clearly not intelligent enough to have done the basic research, to understand what the game would be. I don't even need to touch on the fact you can look up wihat seasonal means in this capacity.

[mild radish]

Also resorting to personal attack is a sign you've lost the argument, thanks for playing.

[small grove]

Yeah, you still havent answered me about Eternal LFG.... are you in favor or against ?

[mild radish]

I don't care how eternal functions honestly, whatever works I suppose.

[pseudo beacon]

Undigested regurgitation again. "Thanks for playing" 🤡

[small grove]

Yeah, exactly, but what they did does not work, and they changed based on player feedback...

[mild radish]

Lol your picture is super accurate.

Thats not really a core system, thats a part of the games ladder

a gameplay aspect, things like that make sense

[small grove]

Also, is wow seasonal ? LoL ? PoE ?

Because they all have vastly different way of doing a season

[mild radish]

I imagine a legendary system revamp, and gems will happen eventually as well

these things make perfect sense

Yes Lol, resets elo, Poe removes chars effectively a full reset, and wow resets power to a fairly low point

[small grove]

So you'd agree that resetting the leaderboard is seasonal ?

[mild radish]

no because if you just reset the leaderboard and not the power

[pseudo beacon]

You realize PoE dumps everything into a non-seasonal server right?

[small grove]

So if we ask for an Evergeen server with leaderboard server, you'd agree it totally respects the core of the game ?

[mild radish]

the person will immediately go back to where their power is

[small grove]

Is there any kind if power reset in LoL ?

[mild radish]

Lol has absolutely no power retention in a game at all

Evrery single game is different

so there is nothing but that they can reset

[small grove]

OK, so power has nothing to do with being seasonal, this what you mean ?

[mild radish]

No thats based on the game

[small grove]

Oh ok

[mild radish]

this is a game where power is attached to thes eason

[small grove]

So Fellowship could be seasonal without resetting the power like poe, because they are different games ?

[mild radish]

no it couldn't because games like that handle that with exponential power game

gain*

[small grove]

So the meaning of "seasonal" is subject to interpretation?

[mild radish]

you would have to once again devote resources to create that cycle

thus it doesn't work with a small team

[small grove]

Fellowship always said they are a MODA, taking inspiration from MOBAs, so having just a leaderboard reset like other MOBAs is a valid interpretation of seasonal Wouldn't you say?

[mild radish]

That would make sense because a moba is nothing like this game.

no *

In a moba your power is attached to that individual game

[small grove]

Lol, have you read the steam page ? They admit taking inspiration from MOBAs

[mild radish]

to make them compare the dungeon itself would have to be you leveling up and gaining power within it

then resetting in between dungeons

Then their description and presentation don't match that

they also didn't use that in the games descriptions

so saying that while not technically advertising it isn't a problem.

[pseudo beacon]

Give me a summarized version of why this game shouldn't have a non-seasonal server if- by definition- a "seasonal" game is based on the game

[small grove]

So you can use the presentation when it fits your point ? But now it doesn't reflect that other thing that you like ?

[mild radish]

They have already stated the type of seasonal game this is lol, I can't tell if you're just being a bad faith actor lol

The description of the game matters, what they inspired it doesn't actually matter

its not a selling point, the description is.

[small grove]

And they already stated that they wouldnt add LFG to eternal, and yet they changed course

[small grove]

The description says Seasonal, and there are countless way to do "seasonal"

[iron matrix]

I dont understand people saying there shouldn't be a non seasonal server saying this side of the player base is lesser and dont bring anything to the table.

didnt we all paid 25$? Yes? We are all equal paid customers.

We all matter equally. The game is Not Free to play.

[iron matrix]

isnt the point of the game to reach the "infinite" difficulty dungeon scaling? We shouldnt run out of content any time soon

[hardy otter]

A game like this, splitting the community would lead to longer que times for everyone which in turn would lead to people losing desire to play the waiting game for each dungeon - Splitting communities is universally a bad decision.

[iron matrix]

Pretty sure it was said many times before but there is no such thing as splitting and the argument is null. Those who are unaware of incoming reset and will not play seasonal, You cant force anyone do play them and those who dont want them will already quit on the first one, so basically Forcing everyone into season = chunk of the playerbase quit right there and then, your queue are no different than if there was a non season option.

Those who dont wanna start over would probably play non season and theyll high likely stop playing on the first forced reset if there isnt the option to continue playing where they were in their progress.

Those in favor for non seasonal also almost all have their premade group so they dont care for queues time.

[hardy otter]

You're asking for a small dev group to split focus/man power away from the core game element to cater to a niche group of people who, by your own explanation, aren't interested in the fundamental aspect of the game.

[iron matrix]

Id say the nich group is the group thats not casual. So yeah, the non seasonal server would definitely be a benefit!

The hardcore group is a minority in most games

[hardy otter]

The hardcore players, as wow has proven, will always stick to the new season so that they can flex on things like leaderboards. A non seasonal server would be more for the casual player base who don't have the time or patience to re-gear each season and start from scratch. It also will lead to logistical issues where they have to commit developers to keeping balance in said server to make sure the people devoting the time to it stay satiated. Either way I see it as a diversion from the core of what the game is supposed to be.

[rancid siren]

If it does make financial sense, yes, they should commit resource to it.
The fundamental aspect of the game is not the seasonal resets. It's about doing dungeons with endless scaling which works with other systems too.

Not sure where this balance idea is coming from, but you don't need to make any big changes to it. Balancing is not important, there is no competition there. You could even argue that they shouldn't have leader boards. All you need to do is make a baseline of a game, which they are doing right now and then keep this version around for those who are interested in just playing there. As mentioned above, the content is plenty already, not much you have to do to keep those people happy. I'm pretty sure the people who blitz through every season in the first week will demand way more content than casual players can ever dream of. Just add some older dungeons and heros from seasonal to it and people will be happy.

[small grove]

Wow has to cater to hard-core players to keep their subscription... a game without subscription has a very different business model.

And I'd say people more invested in the "lore" of the game will spent more money in the shop that tryharder coming at season start for 3 weeks and then going to another game.

So it might make a lot of sense to do things to keep the more casual crowd

[quaint otter]

I don't get why people are so attached to their gear. Splitting the player base is always a bad idea.

[small grove]

Repeat after me : it won't split the player base because the people asking for a non seasonal server will leave the game otherwise

[quaint otter]

https://tenor.com/view/doubt-press-x-la-noire-meme-x-button-gif-19259237

[small grove]

It's your right, the fact is we don't know the impact it'll have.

And according to the feedback here, people asking for it, said they'd leave without.

[iron matrix]

im too far into it to get a refund but im definitely not starting over for seasons and my friend group playing also wont.

[quaint otter]

https://tenor.com/view/buh-bye-now-chris-brander-ryan-reynolds-just-friends-see-ya-gif-6955836149231105420

Talking about a refund after being too far in? It's quite ridiculous. Especially, how this game was initially advertised to be seasonal.

Again, stop getting attached to your gear and play with the rest of the player base at whatever level you play at. You don't need to be playing at the highest tier difficulty to enjoy the game casually. It's hard for me to believe that someone is so casual they'll take 6 months to get 330 and then what are they doing to do.... push eternal 40s? Not in a million years.

[rancid siren]

Wonder why some still don't get that other people are different than themselves and then tell them what they have to enjoy and what not.

[small grove]

Tell me you didn't read a single argument in the thread without telling me...

You've literally answered none of the concerns with your post

[quaint otter]

It's because what I initially said, it fractures the player base for no reason. These casuals who want non seasonal servers are the people who populate adept and champion queues.

[rancid siren]

and you really think they are coming back after a reset without the option to play at their own pace?

[quaint otter]

Why are they not allowed to play at their own pace with seasons? Does a gold league player enjoy a game less than a masters?

[rancid siren]

bad comparison, lol doesn't reset power on new seasons. The answer is simple, they want to get somewhere and the game is preventing them from doing that.

[quaint otter]

Again, it's hard for me to believe there is a significant portion of the player base who is so casual they can't get max ilvl in a season but at the same time has the ambition to clear content that is unforgiving, perfect playing and min maxing. Seems like an inherent contradiction.

[rancid siren]

I see, you are still not getting it.. it's fine hopefully you get it at some point.

[quaint otter]

So condescending... but ok

[misty galleon]

still a huge vocal group of players really do not want wipes. i know they want feedback, and here it is.

[quaint otter]

I hopefully will get your super advanced perspective some day

It's a vocal minority of crybabies. Everyone else is having fun. Take the guy who just threaterns to quit if he doesn't get nonseasonal server... i don't know what else to say but bye. This game isn't for you and there's nothing wrong with that

[rancid siren]

I'm sorry, but I can't make you to understand that other people have other intentions, ways to play a game and different schedules than you... t's a basic concept

[quaint otter]

I'm saying that their different way of playing isn't worth changing the game so that it fractures the player base. We understand eachother just disagree

[rancid siren]

I doubt that it is. If you can help figuring out how big it actual is, would be great.. There is no threat here.. you are just perceiving it as that because... why? Do you feel threatened? I don't. For me it's just someone giving feedback and that's totally fine

[quaint otter]

Huh? wtf are you talking about lol

[rancid siren]

What change? Nobody is asking to change the seasonal system

[quaint otter]

Ok...

[pseudo beacon]

You're failing to understand the concept of a nonseasonal server and that's fine. Move onto a different thread if you have nothing meaningful to provide.

[quaint otter]

I don't think im failing to understand anything. I'm sorry this angers you guys so much but it's just a dumb idea to fracture the player base.

[rancid siren]

And still the argument of playerbase split... I don't get it. Nobody has hard numbers on that so there is no proof and theoretical speaking, it is very debatable

[quaint otter]

My man.. you don't need numbers, just logic. If two different servers then the player base = fractured

[rancid siren]

On the other hand, what do you care about adept and champion? I guess you are doing Eternal right?

[rancid siren]

as said before, those people who would actually play on a non seasonal server, wouldn't be part of the playerbase to begin with if the game doesn't let them to get where they want to be

But that's all theoretical. Without hard numbers, we won't know.. the closest thing we got is some rough number from PoE which probably doesn't translate to this game

[pseudo beacon]

That's the thing. The server upkeep for the Standard league in PoE (non-seasonal permanent server) has to be outweighed by the population of players who continue to play and pay for things in their game. They've had the league since the conception of their game and has a vastly larger data storage requirement for continuing them up.

Those who are against a non-seasonal server are failing to understand the longevity of the game's health. The game is going down a microtransaction path- You think they want to lose paying customers by not providing somewhere they can continue to play their game their way?

Proposing this idea now while the infrastructure is still in development is the perfect time. Nothing is set in stone and changes can easily be made to how. Hence why they're asking for so much feedback and it being early access.

But sure, who knows how it'll affect the population of consistent players. The only thing they have to keep in mind is that they'll be currently losing many players now with their current model.

[rancid siren]

Correct... there must be aa reason to keep this thing going.

[pseudo beacon]

Because those players still consistently purchase microtransactions and support their game. Regardless. Closing the door on them would be shooting themselves in the foot.

[rancid siren]

That's the point of Early Access I guess. They always say that everything is subject to change. Wonder why people are so scared about it.

[pseudo beacon]

Because people are deluded in some sort of self-righteous elitist mentality who expect everyone to play like them and if they don't they can F*** off.

Which is completely asinine and low IQ at best.

[rancid siren]

That's a rough take... wouldn't agree with that honestly

They probably like the resets and think having an option for something else is taking something away from the thing they like... my best guess so far

[sturdy crescent]

Its not just about the cost though, although that is a very real and serious thing to consider.

And just a serious note here stop comparing Fellowship to WoW or PoE or D4 or any other game you can think of to justify things

PoE seasons work because they have constantly new supporter packs every season, then every major patch etc. Not to mention all of the other microtransactions that they sell with skill effects etc etc.

WoW M+ seasons are also a reset even if you dont want to admit it, and that game also doesnt have a queue for M+ but they have a built in LFG (which in a alpha build we had a built in LFG as well btw, you can see it on youtube videos)

Giving the devs complete trash comments about reset is not constructive feedback, having some sort of depth to you reasoning for not wanting reset and a GOOD solution is.

99% of these threads are essentially "you reset, i quit" type of threads Which does not help at all

that is why so many people, myself included, are so tired of seeing these threads about resets and eternal queues.

[small grove]

Who is the condescending one ? 🤷‍♂️

[pseudo beacon]

It's the sad reality of the player base. Hence why so many people leave lobbies when one problem arises.

[quaint otter]

Judging by your comments, YOU!

[rancid siren]

Wouldn't generalize here. Yes, there are some people leaving lobbies because they can and see a benefit in doing so. If that changes, the behaviour will change too.
On the other hand I met a lot of people who just wanna play and accept even without voting.

[pseudo beacon]

This comment has nothing to do with the idea of having a non-seasonal server. The majority of people here aren't against the game continuing to have seasonal wipes and seasonal content. They just want an alternative.

[sturdy crescent]

[hardy otter]

I agree with most of @quaint otter s points. It will divide the community, even if you have some kind of weird perspective that this isn't going to happen, it always happens, in every game, where you put divisions in the community. Also there is games that have the seasonal aspect, such as all ARPGS, and when you're no longer seasonal those characters bounce to non seasonal, and I don't have dedicated numbers for it but I can tell you the VAST majority of players don't use those characters anymore once the new season starts up.

There is also other issues you're not taking in by saying that those servers won't require updates, balancing or upkeep. They 100% will. There is gear that would be implemented in the new season, is this new gear supposed to be migrated to the NON season server? Why? How will it be balanced to all the previous gear? What if the new season has completely new sets, are these set bonus's supposed to be retroactively put onto gear that is on the non season gear as well? It's more work, for minimal to no gain.

[terse tartan]

Not to mention what happens if they add or revamp systems. What if they tear out gems and replace it with something else. What if they rework a hero and give them new talents and entirely new legendaries, change their stat weightings etc. Even if they do invest the developer hours into giving the Permanent server all the new stuff... Would you really want to log on the Permanent Realm and on to your Ardeos that has no functional legendaries, no weapon and whatever loot your Ardeos still does have has sub-optimal stat distribution. Isn't your Ardeos functionally reset at this point?

[hardy otter]

Exactly, unless like I said they're expected to invest time and effort into making sure these non seasonal servers retroactively keep these changes, which could screw with the entire balancing of the systems.

[terse tartan]

I just don't get the impression, with their small team, that maintaining two different versions of the game is something they will be able to do without it having a massive negative effect on the seasonal content.

I mean the permanent server could be permanently locked to a 1.0 version of the game with no updates, but 4 seasons later when the seasonal servers has entirely new dungeons and heroes how many people would realistically still want to play on the permanent server? How long until they ask for 2.0? Do you open another permanent server. Do you have permanent server classic and permanent server? Or if you wipe the 1.0 server and update it to 2.0 don't you just have a another seasonal server? Just with a slower cadence.

[small grove]

You know that all those point have ben answered over and over with multiple possible solutions ?

[void plinth]

There is absolutely 000000000 reasons why you should start from absolute scratch aka level 0 in this game!!! I agree to reset Eternal and Paragon but why the F would you want to deal with QP, Contender and Adept all over and over and over again???????

[patent forum]

I mean POE does the model with seasonal and non-seasonal.
While you don't play non-seasonal.. or I should say I don't. I still keep the charaters up on non-seasonal just as a show of "I achieved this"

And it's nice to sometimes go back to what was meta at the time and test out how different patches effected the build. Some people don't like the idea of resetting. So I mean I get both sides.

I personally like seasonal. But I get it 😄

[runic narwhal]

Im not sure if a bad player server would be a good fit for this game.

[rigid robin]

I've spammed first public play test and was excited for release (idk how many hours i put in but was doing +20 while having a competitive season of another game going) i was excited for release it being the first game giving me some form of mmo experience going meanwhile when release happened i found out on day 2 that there will be a hard reset and quit the game on the spot, i was watching most announcements and dev updates while being excited for the release i never saw a info about hard reset
I played multiple games that were "seasonal" and i could always enjoy content when i didnt commit to grinding but the idea of full wipe just killed my motivation for play and 3 of my friends aswell
Im waiting everyday to see if the announce non seasonal server
People like me for sure exist

I'd honestly not mind the seasonal reset as much if i didn't feel as it got announced out of nowhere because to most people maybe it was obv but it rly felt weird to find out through a random discord post about non seasonal server

[rigid robin]

Also im gonna add more since i finally got home
It really reads like most of people being against the seasonal server are scared of their "push" dying due to lack of players?
If thats the case isnt the superior way to play then NON-seasonal server?
If the "splitting" of playerbase happens the way u envision then the "better" way of enjoying the game will win in the end no? if you're so confident that you are the group that actually enjoys the game the way its meant to be and the game would turn unfun if there was no seasons then adding the non-seasonal server would be the proof of that no? the game is losing players either way pretty steadily so stop pushing feedback down over few straw hat arguments that make no sense
Another thing multiple people brought up is gear issue between seasons and rework of mechanics within the game that can happen (gems for example) You can legit make it so u are forced to choose 1/3 items from that slot to replace the ones that do not work currently and with mechanics like gem just ignore that and let them grind that? who cares its non seasonal

• monetization is also important in a game relying on microtransactions and if u dont want that to include buying gear u NEED casuals, every developer that has openly communicated from league/tft/overwatch says that the casual playerbase usually contains a lot of whales or even people who will buy multiple skins without putting the equivalent amount of hours
  how many people do you know that played tft for one season spend 50 euro on a cosmetic
  i know multiple
  how many people do you know who consistently buy skins for characters in ow/league/tft without putting in more than 20-30 games a season?
  i know MANY legit there is no way the game can survive without having casual players so stop trying to alienate them/attack them as if they're trying to bring ur game down

[prime tundra]

I believe that everyone who appears here and has purchased this game is a target user for the development team. After all, they chose to buy the game based on certain expectations and imagination. When the game’s content doesn’t completely match those expectations, they’re naturally motivated to offer suggestions for improvement—hoping to make the experience better fit their needs. Once these needs are met, these users will be satisfied and stay with the game, which is exactly what the game development team needs, and what matters most: the number of players.

On the flip side, if most of the target users really don’t like the idea of a non-seasonal server, they simply won’t choose to play it. That means it won’t have any negative impact on the operation or the vitality of the seasonal server. But if a lot of players do enjoy the non-seasonal server, then I think the development team would be very willing to reconsider exactly who their target audience is.

Ultimately, the definition of a target user should dynamically adjust according to the real needs of the player base.

[rigid robin]

fully agree

[knotty idol]

Im a degen tryhard leaderboard pusher who loves resets.

Let people have non seasonal servers if they want them. Doesnt hurt me at all, and it allows a huge audience of gamers to enjoy the game at their own pace. There is no room for gatekeeping, if someone cant play that much, they should still have a great experience.

[formal nymph]

I would say so too, if it wouldn’t be a resource problem for a small studio like CR
Not only do they need to maintain extra servers
They also have to do a system of sorts how seasonal chars go to eternal realm and so on.

And I think those servers will be dead anyway. Most will play the new season

[knotty idol]

100%. In the end its up to CR to do a cost/benefit Analysis. I just dislike it when people discount valid feedback from players who have less time or different preferences. Im honestly surprised how anyone can downvote optional non-seasonal servers. Do these people get mad at vegetarian options in restaurants as well, lol

[formal nymph]

I think doing vegan stuff is far more easy for restaurants then maintaining and supporting basically a second version of the game
Only way would be to have a dedicated team to do it and that either pulls away devs from seasonal or they need more people. So still either costing them a lot for (imo) a small amount of people or season has less devs and it is affected

If there was an easy way to handle this no one would be against it

[sturdy crescent]

This

[formal nymph]

The worst take I heard was let seasonals and non seasonals play together

[sturdy crescent]

As much as i dont like the non-seasonal crap, if it does not affect the seasonal gameplay or game as a whole and they can easily do it, then by all means let the casuals have their non-season server

[sturdy crescent]

yeah this is the common one ive heard too which is why i was so against non-seasonal servers

[iron matrix]

I wish i wouldn't get talked down on for not being able to no life games .

I am in no way against season, I think its good for the game's health and give the sweats something to do every few months.

Some of us on the other hand, can only play very litle and will never reach eternal if we dont have the option to play at our own pace even if it means we will not have access to seasonal rewards (No rewards is fine with me, I play diablo and POE and it never bothered me to not get them) what I care for is being able to reach the "Endlessly scaling" dungeon difficulty and push them to the max with my friends even if it take years.

Like im sorry I have more than one full time job, kids and a husband, I can play 2-3 hours a week if I am lucky and if it align with my group who also play but I am still playing nonetheless even if its on the long therm and not short therm.

I hate that every time I come here I get told I dont matter because I dont play as much. I dont know what to say, games usually have the alternative to play non seasonal (or standard in other words) and it seemed like this game was the same since it is advertised as being an endlessly scalling dungeon crawler game, so yeah im a little worried of being too far away from the refund window after finding out about the forced hard reset every few months on absolutely everyone with no option to just play casually at my own pace and speed with my friends, it is not the kind of game I will be able to continue playing if I am forced to start over in the middle of my progress and never get to see what its like to push the endlessly scalling eternal.l floors with my group as advertised.

Im not looking down on fully seasonal players tho and I wish we could both just respect each other's play style and be kind. This is a early access feedback forum and we are all here to gove our feedback and hoping to be heard equally and It make me a bit sad to see so many people trying really hard to shut down this specific type of feedback saying those of us who cant.play as much (despite buying the game for the same price) do not matter and shouldnt worry about enjoying the game.

Why is this community like this...

[knotty idol]

The community isn't like this, that guy is like this. Plenty of players, including high level ones, don't mind a non seasonal server at all. You paid $25 for this game, so you deserve to have a great experience. There was no way for you to know how big the time investment was that the game asks of you. Let the nincompoops nincompoop.

[knotty idol]

100%, I'm not a game developer unfortunately, so I have no expertise in judging how much effort a non-seasonal server would actually take. If it's not too much trouble, then i think they should implement it. But if it takes quite a bit of effort, then they need to look at how big the demand for a non-seasonal server would be, and then make their decision based on that.

[formal nymph]

Exactly what I try to tell people. It prob comes down to how high is the cost for those non seasonals and how many really uses them
I tried to get info on that from other seasonal games that have that but I don’t seem to find anything

[rigid robin]

ur another person i've seen (including myself) that didnt know about it having hard resets

it was really terribly communicated

[iron matrix]

My friends group is a server of approx 20 people and nobody knew until I found out and told them..

[rigid robin]

my friend who grinded the game with me and put in 100 hours in fellowship rn learned it recently aswell

its really weird from what i know it got announced properly in a random twitch Q&A

[iron matrix]

I dont have much free time... Im not someone who use twitch

[sturdy crescent]

I will never deny that they didn't make it known well enough, because while i do have the time to play i do not bother watching twitch streams. Why would i watch streams when i can play the game instead? lol

However! I will say this was on the discord before the game ever launched

What are the plans for new content?
Fellowship is a seasonal based game. How long a season could last is yet to be determined

And that was before EA, not after

So it was STATED but it was not CLEARLY stated what they mean by seasons

#📜f-a-q message

[knotty idol]

yeah i mean, whats done is done at this point

[sturdy crescent]

I do think they left it off the steam page so that they would get more sales tbh

[rigid robin]

i'd not go as far to say the left it off

[knotty idol]

yeah thats a bit tinfoil hat

[rigid robin]

could have been honestly the expectation of what seasonal is being obvious to them

[knotty idol]

yeah i think they genuinely just forgot, i dont assume any malicious intent

[sturdy crescent]

I mean honestly, i got 200ish hours out of the game, i got my $25 worth lol

[iron matrix]

I came here because my group was missing one person one day and we dislike queuing so we were looking for a +1 that would stick around for the hour. Fumbled upon the FAQ as I was already 7 hours of gameplay into it.

I buy my games on steam unfortunately, I had no idea about the discord and only heard about trying the game from a friend in FFXIV with whom I used to raid with years ago.

[sturdy crescent]

Again as i have said Lauma i dont think they communicated it well enough. But there is the other issue of alot of people did not do any kind of research into the game before buying it, which to me is a terrible choice especially in this day and age with games...

[iron matrix]

DamnI got the game day 1 im still barely above 10 hours

[sturdy crescent]

It would be like going to the store and purchasing pokemon legends arceus and expecting it to be a normal pokemon game and getting upset that it isnt. Its your own fault for not looking into it to a degree lol

Which btw.. happened more than you think...

Worked at Walmart when that game came out, i cant tell you the amount of people that returned it because it "didnt feel like a pokemon game"

[iron matrix]

if im buying a product I shouldn't have to search the entire internet to find out I cannot play at my own pace honestly... The steam page made it sound like it was a dungeon crawler with endlessly scaling difficulty best played in co-op with friends.

Other seasonal games all have a standard mode as well, I don't know any seasonal game that don't provide the alternative right off the start.

Like this wouldn't even be a concern for anyone if the option was there like every other paid game im fairly sure of it

[iron matrix]

Pokemon legends is advertised as standalone in the game series

Unlike the regular gens games

the pokemon moto is if it doesnt have 2 version of the same game then its not a mainline game...

[sturdy crescent]

Okay, and you also just confirmed that you heard about this game from a friend. Which is basically the common factor for ALOT of people here. Fellowship was not hard advertised like Pokemon games are

And yet EVEN WITH THE MASSIVE ADVERTISEMENT people still bought the game without doing any kind of research and got upset

For pokemon arceus that is

[iron matrix]

the fellowship advertisement videos from the devs still advertise it as everything "fun" from MMO with an endlessly scaling difficulty.. This isnt a pocket monster collector game and pokemon doesnt wipe your progress periodically...

[lilac bane]

I’m fine with seasonal resets if they go the Diablo route of having a non seasonal version that gets the newer content at the end and has seperate leader boards.

But if they just hard reset and I lose all my progress. I doubt I come back as someone who works 40-60 hours a week. I don’t have the energy to regrind to eternal every 3-4 months.

[sturdy crescent]

Okay, and again i already stated multiple times they did not communicate the season part well enough

[iron matrix]

but why are we arguing if you agree

[sturdy crescent]

Idk, i just made a point about people not doing research. Not my fault you took that as disagreement lol

[iron matrix]

I would go as far as we dont need a leaderboard on non seasonal but I agree, it would be the best way to handle it.

[iron matrix]

And my point is the player who buy the game shouldnt have to go through 75 social media outlets before buying a product just to see if its seasonal? Both argument works but the advertisement should be more straight forward and transparent

[lilac bane]

I get dividing the player base but a good portion of the player base will still disappear if they don’t like how the resets are handled anyway.

Theres no difference in dividing the player base and them leaving. In the end they’ll do what they think is best for player retention. I just want to be able to keep my progress because it takes me and the boys longer to push to eternal because we can’t grind out 10 hour days 4 days a week like a content creators

[sturdy crescent]

Okay, now you are just arguing to argue and im not going to stick around for it. Good luck

[iron matrix]

aye good luck to you too, Im not even arguing but just pointing out that both are valid. No need to get upset about the facts.

[sudden bobcat]

It says seasonal updates on the steam page.

[iron matrix]

many games do seasonal updates but they dont hard reset your progress. Its a misleading statement, the correct wording would be to change it to "Seasonal reset"

[sudden bobcat]

I'm sure it's been said here before but in 2025 the term seasonal is pretty well known to be a reset

Seasonal is a deliberate choice.

[small grove]

It's funny how people not having read a thing in the thread come here, tell the exact same thing that has been proved false countless times before, and are happy about it

[rancid siren]

Are we redefining language again to make an argument? Sorry.. I didn't have 2025 gaming speak in high school

[sudden bobcat]

Not gonna read 300 messages from afew days to post in a discord thread lol

[small grove]

Even chatgpt disagrees with you 🤷‍♂️

[sturdy crescent]

apparently you cant read chatgpt??

It specifically states in that chatgpt prompt that it includes resets lmfao

[sudden bobcat]

Yeah how does that disagree

[small grove]

I can, it states "ranked or competitive progress indicators" ... nothing about stuff or talents

[small grove]

Yeah, of competitve progress indicators, it's a big stretch to include stuff into that

[sudden bobcat]

Well this is the problem the selective reading and mental gymnastics to get to your point lol

[sturdy crescent]

Now you are just twisting words lmfao

[small grove]

Also, usually does not mean "always"

[sturdy crescent]

I usually agree with alot of your points Tk but you are 100% stretching your own words into what the prompt states

[small grove]

See, you use that word, usually, and it does not mean you always agree with me ...

[small grove]

The wording clearly implies that a fixed definition on which everyone agrees does not exists... but yeah

[sturdy crescent]

In gaming (2025), “seasonal” refers to a recurring reset cycle where a game periodically wipes or refreshes certain forms of player progression — such as ladders, ranks, inventories, or characters — to start a new “season.”

chatgpt

:)

[sudden bobcat]

You mean the talents on the middle path of the tree which are locked behind idk the competitive progress indicator of dungeon rating?
Not to mention the gear associated with those levels of rating

[quaint otter]

It's true what they say about the new generation. Can't do anything without chatgpt lmao

You guys are such dorks ❤️

[sturdy crescent]

I mean he used it to justify his definition so i just repeated the same process

But it also just goes to show that using chatgpt can give different prompts

[small grove]

And since he can give different answers, it proves that a single definition of seasonal does not exists.

So, as it was already said, the mention of "seasonal" does not automatically imply a gear reset.

We just proved that the word is subject to interpretation.

[sturdy crescent]

I mean that was obvious no?

what lmao

[small grove]

Ok boomer... I'm 40 btw

[sudden bobcat]

My guy your own chatgpt agreed with what a season is

[small grove]

Apparently not to our friend who just used this exact argument

[sudden bobcat]

You're just choosing not to read it

[small grove]

See, not obvious... he's still going on about the fact that seasonal is a clear cut word in 2025

[sturdy crescent]

I mean to be fair here, hes right, even your prompt mentions reset. But yes it is pretty freakin obvious that resets are different in every game lmao

[sudden bobcat]

Idk how someone could be so dumb that they think a reset would be clearing rating but not gear. Okay cool so I play for 4 hours and I'm to the exact same point I was before. Cool what a great season

[small grove]

Wow is seasonal and it doesn't clear gear, it just renders it obsolete by other means...

[sturdy crescent]

eh iirc most of tk posts mention not resetting talents, i dont recall (?) him saying not to reset gear

[small grove]

Yeah, i am in favor of the reset, I'd prefer to keep my talents but I can survive farming QP for 1h... I just don't like bad faith arguments that have been repeated over and over

[sturdy crescent]

Okay ive debated this point too many times, WoW resets gear to be obsolete and then the item level keeps scaling to infinity until the developers decide that damage/health numbers are too high and you spend $60 to reset your item level and health down to classic levels which is worse than just getting seasonal full resets.

[small grove]

Agree, I prefer a "clean reset", that the way wow does it

[sudden bobcat]

He said "nothing about stuff or talents" and if you already reset competitive progress indicators there's nothing else left beside gear

[small grove]

I'd also really like an evergreen server because it'll allow me to play with friends that don't have much time to invest into the game and progress at their own pace

[sudden bobcat]

Wows seasons would also be terrible for the new player experience in fellowship

[sturdy crescent]

Correct, WoW seasons only work because Blizzard adds in catch up mechanics for new players. That likely wont be implemented here

Ill be honest, the more Fellowship tries to follow a WoW path, the less likely i will be to play it. If i wanted to play WoW, ill play WoW

[sudden bobcat]

Yeah and having to do catchup stuff on your first character to get where everyone is playing usually feels terrible

[sturdy crescent]

Yep

Which ends up leading to players waiting for expansions that do a "squish" to start playing again

because at least then they are much closer on power level as they hit max level

[small grove]

So you agree that wow is seasonal, but somehow different than Fellowship, and that there are different way to do seasonal ?

[sudden bobcat]

I'm still fully in the mindset of a evergreen server just won't make them any money as people that pop on to play once every couple weeks after the games been out 6+ months aren't going to be buying cosmetics and it's just an expense to keep them

[small grove]

I think you underestimate the money some people are willing to put in a game that let them chill and play how they want.

I'm going crazy with some friends playing Palia...

[sturdy crescent]

Like i tried to get my friends to join me on WoW during the Legion/BFA and everyone of them said that grinding to 120 was going to be too much of a slog and instead they joined me in Shadowlands when the level got squished down to 60

[sudden bobcat]

My guy I'm not gonna debate exact definitions of wording with you all day. My point is seasonal means a reset in someway shape or form. Every game handles it abit differently but they are all the same at the core

[sudden bobcat]

Idk man most people I know if they do acouple dungeons a week aren't going to drop big money on a game.

[sturdy crescent]

Okay wait hang on a second. That would be like saying WoW and PoE do the same seasonal reset. When they do not. What are you getting at here? lmfao

[small grove]

A few things:

1. I agree that the end result is effectively the same

2. you need to consider that different form of resets lead to different feelings. We've had people debating that wow doesn't even have resets because they don't lose their stuff.

3. this thread isn't about debating the definition of a season or a reset, but asking for an evergreen server.

[small grove]

I am the one saying there are differences, hum ?

[sturdy crescent]

wait you want me to @ the person that thinks WoW doesnt reset? 🤣

Ill do it

[small grove]

Don't need to be lots of people buying the whole shop... a few whales is enough

[small grove]

I can name a few, I think they all blocked me

[sturdy crescent]

1 is in this chat ahuehuehuehue

Well, not currently, but hes following the thread kek

[terse tartan]

If the developers who needs to integrate the seasonal content onto a non-seasonal server and resolve any conflicts between the two are the same ones who makes new heroes, systems and dungeons (and based on what Hamish has said during his livestreams it would be the same devs) then you also risk not being able to produce enough content to keep the seasonal players coming back either.

[small grove]

This has been discussed to death also.

[sudden bobcat]

Do you just not understand it and keep wanting a evergreen?

[sturdy crescent]

Like ill be the first to say, if the devs add a evergreen server then cool. Not going to play it but whatever. However if they add 5 heroes and 3 dungeons on the patch before the evergreen, and then the patch after they only add 1 hero and 1 dungeon im going to be upset because then they are using too much of their resources to keep something alive for 10 people instead of the vast majority of us who actually want to see the new things that come out of seasons.

[rancid siren]

Wait what... is this a joke? Are you suggesting system designer and backend engineers are doing artwork too?

[sturdy crescent]

Ive never been against a evergreen server, ive been against taking away dev time from a already small team of devs just to cater to the absolute casuals that dont want seasons

[sudden bobcat]

Based off this comment that's what Hamish is suggesting

[terse tartan]

Hamish said during a live stream that character specific keybinds needed to be delayed because the developer who would be working on that was busy on the new hero. It's a small team, and every developer there is obviously wearing many different hats.

[sturdy crescent]

Also just to clarify before i get the whiners, when i say absolute casuals im not trying to make that seem as a derogitory term. Those who do not have the time to play seasonal games are casuals, no matter how hard they go for the 5 hours they can play. Not trying to be mean, just trying to be real

[rancid siren]

You still know which live stream that was by any chance?

[sturdy crescent]

Pretty sure hes said it in almost every live stream since people started complaining about no eternal queue to be quiet honest

[terse tartan]

I don't remember exactly but I think it was last thursday's stream.

[sturdy crescent]

Like do you understand at all the amount of work that goes into creating a program? Which gets exponentially bigger when its a game not just a program? And this is a team of 35 people of course there has to be overlap in what they do lmao

[small grove]

I think you all overthink the concept of evergreen servers... not saying there isn't an infrastructure cost, but the development cost is near zero.

Spin a server instance up, and when there's new item, there's new item, if a talent changes, it changes, if something is balanced, it is balanced.

Just do everything exactly the same.

By definition, evergreen players won't throw a fit about small balance changes that don't perfectly align.

[rancid siren]

Thank you!

[sturdy crescent]

The problem with this is what about seasonal changes? You going to do those to the evergreen as well? Which effectively makes it a seasonal-non-resetting server instead?

What i they add a new dungeon and remove 1 from the season, do you expect the non-seasonal to do the same??

[small grove]

Not necessarily, what kind of seasonal changes can you imagine that would cause "real issues" ?

The only one I can imagine is the star map changing a lot, but I guess that's something they'll need to accept.

[sturdy crescent]

Like there is so much the COULD be done or you could like you said, spin up a server throw the base files on it and pray it works

[small grove]

Either that, or let them access all dungeons, that's an interface issue that only need to be solved once

[sturdy crescent]

If they add a new hero, you want that to be on the non-seasonal

etc etc etc list can go on lol

[sudden bobcat]

If that experience is bad then you're getting constant complaints there

[small grove]

You mean like it's already the case ? People will complain, nothing you can do, or don't do will change that fact

[sturdy crescent]

THIS is the biggest thing i see happening with a evergreen server from THIS COMMUNITY

[small grove]

How I see thing is :

Exactly the same client and server code, just don't press the button that deletes stuff.

[sturdy crescent]

The button that deletes stuff.... you mean the database that stores everything...? lol

[sudden bobcat]

Giving them nothing and having them complain is much less hassle and will fade out over time vs constantly giving people things to cry about cause something isn't 100%

[terse tartan]

What if they decide to go crazy and experiment one season. No gear. All your stats are normalized, your item level is based purely on your dungeon score. How would they integrate that back into the non-seasonal? It's en extreme example sure, but it is something they could do on a seasonal server and it's an example of something that would be fundamentally incompatible with a non-seasonal server.

[small grove]

That would cause issues... or not, people on evergreen will have a score, so same system for them 🤷‍♂️

[sturdy crescent]

Because realize, if they make a evergreen server and want it to be similar to something like PoE. Everything at season end has to be copied from 1 database and plugged into the other, then with a game like Fellowship where we dont have character names you are going to run into the issue that you have 10 different Rimes, how do you pick which 1 you play?

[small grove]

You play "Rime" not "A Rime", and put all the stuff in the stash... and maybe there's no copy at the end of each season ?

[sturdy crescent]

Okay so now we are getting down to what COULD in theory be actually done here

[small grove]

You're thinking of issues that stems from what was done in other games. There are multiple ways to do evergreen without even having to fix those issues because they wouldn't exist in the first place

[sturdy crescent]

In theory, could they move the database at the end of THE FIRST SEASON into a seperate sever, very likely yes.

However, after the 2nd season, what then?

[misty galleon]

daily reminder I want no reset 🙂

[small grove]

Or just start an evergreen with a fresh db and never move anything... you've already fixed a bunch of issue without doing anything

[sturdy crescent]

THIS is a good option and likely feasible

However then the people like cough Vor*** *** will be very upset because he couldnt keep his progress from EA

[small grove]

If infrastructures cost is low, start a new evergreen on each season and let people chose which season of the game they want to play forever

[sturdy crescent]

nah, eventually that will end up being too many server options, i do not think this is worth it in any way

[sudden bobcat]

Do you want like 5 servers at the 5th league?

[small grove]

Depending on your server code, you don't even need to spin new servers, just keep the "version" on the character

[sturdy crescent]

Nah

[small grove]

I don't "want" anything, I'm just saying it is possible to do evergreen with minimal maintenance cost

[sturdy crescent]

I think the BEST and EASIEST solutin would be them to make an announcement that they are going to create a server, that never has seasnal updates, never has resets. And they do absolutely nothing to it outside of balance changes. But NONE of your current progress gets put onto it

So, for the casuals, they pick that server and go nuts

For the seasonal players they accept that their work will be reset after X time

[small grove]

Everything is already instantiated, even the stronghold. It's feasible to have multiple people from different version of the game in a single database.

[small grove]

You could probably put new heroes and dungeons to the server at minimal cost

[sturdy crescent]

My point is, instead of wasting time merging the current server with a evergreen one

they just make a new server that gets no resets and bare minimum attention

[small grove]

Yeah,exactly, everyone is happy...

And everyone will complain about anything anyhow. So no change on that front

[rigid robin]

that has been proven wrong btw

by every game that has microtransactions

every single dev who spoke about these topics publicly

it is actually very common for players who do not put in excessive time to spend money

also why tf is everybody making it so complicated

just make a evergreen server where there is no reason

reset

if content included in the game gets changed

just delete the pieces of loot that doesnt allign?

and leave rest alone

not that hard

and if that is too bad then just make it so u get random piece of loot or 3 choices from that loot headgear etc that u can choose from the new content?

on the same ilevel

boom problem solved

the biggest time sink would be MAKING a second server but not upkeeping it wtf

[rigid robin]

yes just remove it lol?

ur still playing the same game move on hello

[rigid robin]

that will never happen?

actually NEVER

so wtf are u even arguing

like half of the points are complete stupidity

also i'll do ONE better for you and give u ideas how to move people to a seasonal server and give incentive to play on it

lock specific cosmetics behind server with reset

lock content for first 2 weeks onto main server

[small grove]

It's nice having someone else saying the same things others have already said. Means we are not completely out of touch ahaha

[terse tartan]

If you're saying casuals are a valuable customer segment, then yes. But if you conflate casuals with non-seasonal players I would disagree. I think even most casuals will end up playing on the seasonal server. And also if you claim that standard server players in games like Diablo 4 and Path of Exile are more lucrative than the seasonal players (even on a per player basis) I would need to see a citation, because I find that hard to believe.

[sturdy crescent]

Actually yes the aliens did come to the US, they are in Area 51

[rancid siren]

Well those server seem to make them clearly enough money to keep them running.

[sturdy crescent]

my point of doing this is nit picking specific lines for your own agenda. Read the whole conversation rather than recating to only 1 point of it.

[sturdy crescent]

The standard servers likely dont make them much money at all, but the operating costs for them are also likely low especially for blizzard

But you are also comparing a game that is basically a solo game vs something that reqires 4 people

[rancid siren]

So? You think people playing there don't have likeminded friends?

[sturdy crescent]

Never said that?

[rancid siren]

Well you are implying that the 4 people requirement is somewhat of a problem making it financially not viable

[sturdy crescent]

40k players vs 1m+ makes a huge difference in revenue bud

[rancid siren]

and a huge difference in server cost

[small grove]

In our world of virtual infrastructure, infrastructure cost increase more or less linearly with number of users, so I'd have to agree that player count is probably irrelevant

[terse tartan]

Found it. https://www.youtube.com/live/TF4AgtDIV8Q?t=5063s

[rancid siren]

Awww.. thank you 💙

Still don't think they do much expertise field overlap. Per character keybinds probably involves some client software engineering and some UI changes. I can see this being used for heroes too.... For dungeons probably not that much except some UI things with new icons and images.
Coming back to having additional servers. This is mostly devops, backend engineering and some design work. Don't see much overlap there regarding new content. Maybe a bit on the backend side, but it is rather minor. It will conflict with things like guilds and eternal queue to mention some current topics.
In the end I don't see why it would impact developing new dungeons and heroes that much and that's what people expect as content.
Will it have an impact, sure, won't be 0. Question is.. will it make sense in a financial way and I think it would.

[terse tartan]

Chief Rebel have yet to prove they have the ability to make seasons that feel fresh enough to draw back players even when it is their sole focus. I suppose we just disagree on the extent to which maintaining two versions of the game is likely to impact the seasonal side. I am a lot more concerned about that than you are, but ultimately the ones to answer this question will have to be Chief Rebel themselves.

[rigid robin]

fully agree

in the end its not on us to answer that question

[rancid siren]

You are right, they have to bring enough new things to the table when doing their resets and I doubt they will to justify all the grind people have to do again. Personally I don't care that much, I will be happy even if they don't bring any new content for the next 6 month.

Totally fine to disagree on that topic but what you are saying explains quite a bit why people are so much against it. if I was worried about not enough content, I wouldn't want anything deter them from making more. Guess it is kinda understandable. People like the game, people want it to be great, people are afraid it won't be and trying to shoot down everything which in their mind puts things into jeopardy. I can understand that.

[rancid siren]

True. In the end our job is only to raise awareness that something like this is desired by a large enough group of people.

[mild radish]

The first part of that is the only thing that's accurate, you don't know if its a large enough group of people

[rancid siren]

Not sure what you are talking about, there is only one part. You probably didn't get my point, I'm not saying that the group is large enough, I'm appealing to players interested in this to voice their opinion and desire to have an option like this. The outcome will show them if the group is actually large enough or not.

[hardy otter]

Don't think these channels are well known enough to get a proper consensus for that. Also the people advocating for this kind of a server in my eyes are more of the casual types who are even less likely to take the time to delve into development or game idea channels in a discord.

[rancid siren]

That's true, but how else can we even put this thing on their radar?

[hardy otter]

Still think it's a waste of resources personally. Even when given the option in other games these options are rarely used. Pretty much every ARPG uses this system and once a character is migrated from seasonal to non seasonal forever servers, that character is essentially DOA

According to AI searches in those 3 games (D4, PoE 1/2) 3-5% of players have "Played" their eternal characters, but it doesn't say if those are active players on those characters or not. It also says that around 85% of characters migrated to Eternal realms, are deleted.

[rancid siren]

Ever wondered why they even use a system like that? If it would just cost them money, because no one uses it, there is no financial incentive for them to even have an option like that.

In the end neither you nor I know the exact numbers, but since those options are around, there must be a reason for them to keep doing it.

[hardy otter]

Ya because removing the characters completely can be a pain in the ass for them becasue a lot of players will log on to their previous characters to mimic gear or specs

Also those companies are vastly larger with near limitless resources compared to this development team. I said this before to this exact topic - Asking a smaller development team to delegate resources and time to this when it's proven in other games with similar, not identical, systems that it rarely gets used is just a waste imo.

[rancid siren]

Bold claims you are making here, please share the proof.

[hardy otter]

I just said I used AI to look it up. Also, I have eyes, and play all of these games extensively. It doesn't take a lot of observation to see that when you log into an eternal character, you're logging into a ghost realm.

[knotty idol]

let them play on a ghost realm if they want. even if there are only 4 people on that realm, im sure they'll have fun.

is it worth the resources? not for us to decide. we are players. we aren't stakeholders in the company. we have no right at all to suggest whats worth the resources, and what isn't. that's up to the devs and the investors

[rancid siren]

Then please share the AI response with the sources it used.

Your personal experience doesn't mean much for the greater picture and that's what we are talking about here. It's just anecdotal evidence from one player spending a tiny fracture of their playtime on it.

[hardy otter]

True - However companies will sometimes heed to a loud minority and use resources that could otherwise be used on the game itself.

I already closed the window, and I'm not being baited into you picking apart how I asked the question to the AI because everyone will have a different version of what they view as proof. If you want to word it however you want and ask an AI about the eternal realms - feel free.

[small grove]

Server cost would be a a couple thousand bucks at most per year, hardly a dent on the whole budget... and related development cost are also probably minimal 🤷‍♂️

[rancid siren]

If you can't provide the proof you based your argument on, I can't take your argument seriously. And it's not about how you phrased the question, it's about the sources the AI used to answer it. That's what I'm interested about, I would love to see those sources

Because I don't have any sources for that

[knotty idol]

I'm pro non-seasonal servers, but let's not make up random assumptions. We have no idea how their server infrastructure works or what their codebase looks like. There's no way for us to know how expensive it would be, both to develop and maintain a non-seasonal server.

[hardy otter]

AI Overview
+4
Running a game server for 50,000+ players can cost anywhere from
tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars per month, or millions per year, depending on factors like the game's complexity, infrastructure, and the number of concurrent players. This cost includes server hardware, bandwidth, electricity, maintenance, and other operational expenses, with popular and complex games like MMORPGs costing significantly more than simpler games

Wut?

also the number 50k came from one of the latest numbers on steam charts - Assuming that the games launch will bring more players

[small grove]

So, which is it, 50k people or 100 ? Can't be both...

[hardy otter]

To limit the server itself to 5k players it says anywhere from 15-35k a month

I don't think you can limit a server to somethign that small just because you want to, you have to have it all tied together

It's not like it's a seperate entitity

[small grove]

Are you an infrastructure or network engineer?

Because managing an openshift cluster is part of my job description

[hardy otter]

You're also not keeping in mind that this is a game run on multiple servers across multiple countries

Each one of those would need an eternal realm

[small grove]

Not necessarily 🤷‍♂️

[hardy otter]

Of course you would, people wanting an eternal realm don't want it to play at 900 ping lol

[knotty idol]

This is the problem with AI. It misleads people.

Have you heard of "fixed cost degression"?

Yes, running a server for 50.000 people is expensive.

But taking an existing server, and creating an extra shard on it for a few thousand people who want to play without resets, costs way less.

[small grove]

If having 120ms ping is a prerequisite for people because there's only one single eternal server, I am sure people will take it

[small grove]

Couldn't have said it better

[rancid siren]

yes, and each stronghold instance is one server and each dungeon is one server in virtual environment starting up and shutting down on demand They only cost money when they are running

[small grove]

Stop trying to use AI to make a point and listen to people working in the field

[rancid siren]

Nowadays servers are not physical machines staying idle if there is nothing to do

[hardy otter]

This is a group advocating for a special realm for them to do what they want outside of the normal already,and you think they would be okay with having a sub par realm just to be able to play it? Doubtful

[small grove]

They already stated here they'd be ok with it, so checkmate ?

[hardy otter]

I have no way of knowing if you're actually in the field just because you said it, what a strange assumption

[hardy otter]

"They"

[knotty idol]

here's what your friend AI has to say

[hardy otter]

Do you have numbers to prove that the majority of the people advocating for an eternal realm would be okay with connection and ping issues?

Or is this you trying to speak from a point of authority to validate your point.

[small grove]

I can name at least 5 that interacted on this thread, and me, so at least a full group to run a dungeon 🤣

[hardy otter]

It's not a good argument to say you want a server dedicated for 5 people who want a fringe experience ;\

[small grove]

Do you have proof of the contrary ?

[hardy otter]

Yes, Optics.

No one wants to run with connection issues or ping issues.

[knotty idol]

LOL

[hardy otter]

Should we bring up forum posts from the last server issues?

When people couldn't log in, and how much turmoil there was?

No one wants that -_-

[small grove]

I have at least a few people that said it, you on the other hand have only AI answers and imagined issued without anyone backing it

[hardy otter]

No I can bring up the point I just did, on any online game, in history lol

No one, wants to play with lag, high ping, or connection issues to a server.

The number is zero

[knotty idol]

Obviously people don't like server issues. Why would there be server issues with a separate shard that hosts non-seasonal players.

[small grove]

No one wants to, doesn't mean they wouldn't if it's the only way

[hardy otter]

because their argument is that you wouldn't need multiple eternal servers for Eu or NA

playing a game that is heavily reliant on not lagging, for things like interupts, mitigation, or healing, attempting to play with 300-900 ping, is going to result in you accomplishing nothing.

I.e. You would need servers closer to the sources of the players, meaning, you would need multiple eternal servers.

so I have one of you saying you're a server expert and that people would be okay with lagging if thats there only option (an obvious lie) and the other one agree'ing that no one would want server issues O.o

[small grove]

I currently have under 200ms with all available servers and we played wow for years with 300+ pings.

It's a gcd heavy game, not a fps.

And please stop projecting your own invented issues on what other people want to win a point

[hardy otter]

You can want eternal realms all you want, but no one is giving a valid argument for having them with any kind of proof that they would get used. And regardless of how you want to spin it, you would 100% need multiple servers or shards to accomidate this. From a dev team of 34 people.

[small grove]

Being able to play in degrade condition is better than not playing at all

[hardy otter]

I can do that too lol

[knotty idol]

i mean, just with this thread alone, the ratio of thumbs up to thumbs down signifies that there is a noticeable % of the playerbase who is interested in non-seasonal servers.

[hardy otter]

Sure

[knotty idol]

And if you looked at Reddit the past weeks, the whole "seasonal vs non seasonal" was hotly debated

There are definitely a significant amount of players that will quit this game if there is no option to play non/seasonal

[hardy otter]

Ya, loud minority vs uncaring majority lol

[knotty idol]

you definitely sound like someone who cares

[hardy otter]

People asking for eternal realms are naturally going to project their concerns and wants into the conversation, people who don't care aren't going to take the time to get involved.

I like to debate

[knotty idol]

I wouldnt be surprised if most non seasonal players have already left the game and arent here to share why

[hardy otter]

Possibly

But that doesn't make sense because the season is still on that they don't want to let go of, and is here for another 3 months.

[knotty idol]

Yeah but they dont want to bother because they dont know if they'll get to keep their progress

If CR announced "Non seasonal servers are coming" then those people would play

but its vague right now

[hardy otter]

That's dangerously close to proving the point the shards are a waste of resources.

Whimsical people who will fold at the slightest inconvinence to their servers, no?

[knotty idol]

But you are downplaying their concerns

[hardy otter]

Even the THREAT of not getting what they want, causes said people to jump ship?

[knotty idol]

you are calling their concern the slightest inconvenience

what do you mean threat

they just dont want to play

its simple as that

"give me non seasonal or i wont play"

thats valid

[hardy otter]

You have no guarantee that either will happen, still an invalid argument imo.

[knotty idol]

its up to cr to decide whether they want to keep those players or not

the problem is that you are completely shutting down the suggestions and concerns of a non-negligible portion of the potential playerbase

all they are asking

[hardy otter]

Yes, because this isn't a company that has the resources to cater to every demand they get

[knotty idol]

"pretty please cr, if its not too much trouble, i really like your game, but i dont want my progress to reset"

[hardy otter]

All they are asking for is special treatment, ya I know.

[knotty idol]

but you dont work for cr

who are you to make such statements

im not saying they have the resources

i dont have a clue

maybe they do, maybe they dont

[hardy otter]

They have said it in their vlogs...

Tehy are only 34 people, that have limited resources lol

[knotty idol]

every company has limited resources

let them speak for themselves

[hardy otter]

That is them speaking is it not? O.o

[knotty idol]

then link the official comment if you want, but you are invalidating other peoples feedback. thats the whole point of this channel, to give feedback. you have already voiced your disapproval. but you are hell bent on having the last word lol

i dont have a horse in the race, i only play seasonal, i dont care about non seasonal

[hardy otter]

Tariq players were unhappy about a nerf to chain lighting. It took them how many hours to realize the mistake and change it back? They know what goes on in their discord, they full well know there is a group of people asking for eternal servers.

[knotty idol]

if they add it, im happy, if they dont, i dont mind

[hardy otter]

You said it yourself, no comment.

Their lack of comment, might be all the comment they need to make, no?

[knotty idol]

not commenting on something is very different from officially declining something

im pretty sure that its one of the conversations they are having in their game design meetings

[hardy otter]

Now who's making groundless assumptions lol

[knotty idol]

im saying im pretty sure

words are hard

[hardy otter]

Clearly since you reprimanded me for a similar comment and said that I shouldn't make assumptions about what the dev team is doing or how they're allocating their resources, but you are allowed to make broad assumptions about what the game design meetings are about.

Rules for me, and rules for thee, eh?

[knotty idol]

This, is a definitive statement

No where did you clarify that you were speculating or guessing. You were just talking as if you knew for a fact

[hardy otter]

Ya, and we'll pretend that if I said "Im pretty sure" in that comment, you wouldn't have said the exact same thing, Uh huh.

[knotty idol]

If you said "I'm pretty sure this isn't a company that has the resources" then that's different

[hardy otter]

And you wouldn't have cared, and would have made the exact same comment.

[knotty idol]

pointless discussion, im out

[hardy otter]

But you're attempting to retract, because you got caught doing it.

lol

[small grove]

Problem is, your argument is invalid.

It's a ROI decision, it's not a "don't have enough ressources" decision.

In a business, you allocate ressources depending on what will bring you money. If they decide that an eternal server will bring more money that something else, they'll prioritize it accordingly.

[hardy otter]

Why is my argument invalid, because you've determined it to be? That hardly seems fair.

[small grove]

If we consider the votes on this thread and the general uproar about resets (which are biased for sure), we are talking 30% of the player base more or less.

Prioritizing something that 30% of the players base (if the figure is correct), is not catering to the minority

[hardy otter]

I can easily say I think all of your arguments are invalid because you don't have the playerbase to allow the allocation of resoures to something with zero net benefit outside of keeping 100 players out of 43000 happy.

Nah you can't make that claim. If you actually think 30% of the player base wants eternal servers you will need to give SOME KIND of qualifier in a like minded game as some kind of a basis.

Which you can't, because it doesn't exist.

[small grove]

Your argument is invalid because it is incomplete.

They don't have enough ressources to do everything, but they have enough resources to make eternal servers a reality of they decide the ROI is good enough.

[hardy otter]

You're making broad sweeping assumptions to try to add weight to your request.

Okay, your argument is incomplete because you can't give a single solid qualifier as to why this isn't a waste of resources.

Even if it costs them 50$ a month, you still can't equivocate the use of the any resoureces to this.

[small grove]

No, I am just saying you cannot make this argument. I only ever said that it's CR decision and that we should stop talking about resources.

[small grove]

Because I don't have too, it's CR choice to allocate ressources or not

[hardy otter]

I can make any argument I want. I just did, and you can't take away the validation of it with a magic wand.

And trying to find some kind of equality towards Eternal que servers and servers for people who don't like seasonal? Come on, not even close

[small grove]

I made arguments in favor of eternal servers, which you probably didn't read because they are way higher in the thread.

And then I contradicted you when you talked about costs.

[hardy otter]

I might have misunderstood what you were talking about and that's not what you were doing, if so thats my bad.

[small grove]

I am pretty sure there are less people in Eternal right now that there are people interested in eternal servers... but that's a gut feeling

[hardy otter]

There is no valid argument in favor of non seasons servers outside of "This is what we want, give us what we want"

100% not even close

there's been half a dozen posts about eternal que servers, all of them have 100+ upvotes

[small grove]

There are no valid arguments in favor of eternal queue outside of "this is what we want, give us what we want" 🤣

[hardy otter]

There might even be more than that.

[warped harness]

the player base already halfed in the last 3 weeks. because people are "done" with their grind/goals. i dunno why people want to keep their character so badly. its not wow.

[hardy otter]

Ya there is, it goes into the very core of the games design.

There's no argument for it aintno

They're fighting a ghost

Something about, non casual, forever pushing, something something

[small grove]

There are dozens of arguments that were given in this post.

Ans since you like mentioning other games, PoE and D4 didn't make them out of the goodness of their hearts. They are gaining money from keeping them, otherwise they'll stop paying for them.

[hardy otter]

Also you invalidated your own argument with that statement TK, Because the developers have straight up said their most dedicated project right now is eternal que servers, so if they cared about non seasonal servers or if it was anywhere close to a big deal, how would they have said nothing about it?

i challenge you to log onto any of those games, on a non seasonal character, talk in global, and take a head count 🙂

I already did it with PoE 2 at the start of this btw

12 people, FYI

That's in a non team, solo oriented game. Not something that you could, say, need a certain amount of people on, all at the same point in the game, or you could be sitting in a forever que, waiting for enough people to long onto a non seasonal server just to be able to run a dungeon.

[small grove]

Just so you know, they back pedaled on eternal LFG. Because the initial idea was to not have any kind of LFG for it.

And they changed course, rightfully so I'd say.

And you are right, they also said that evergreen servers weren't considered right now.

Doesn't mean that asking for them is not a prerogative of players.

What for sure is not our prerogative, is deciding if it's a good resource investment for CR or not. Only them can decide that 🤷‍♂️

[thin palm]

anyone else having terrible lags today?

[hardy otter]

There is also a huge problem with how the very game is set up. Look how the interactions work between swapping from helena to any other character.

[small grove]

My only question for you, is why do you care so much about this topic ?

Don't you have enough confidence in CR to make the right decision ?

[hardy otter]

YOu don't log out for this, you don't relog in etc. It's all done on the one shard, so creating non seasonal servers, would mean you need a completely different log in for this to work

[small grove]

That's a wild assumption without having any kind of idea about their architecture

[hardy otter]

It's not an assumption, it's more of a question.

Like if you look at something like PoE 2 or wow

You log out

pick a character

log back in

There's load times, server log ins etc

How would you swap from a sylivie seasonal to non seasonal?

Keeping in mind that from an outside perspective, it doesn't look like this is set up to do that, at all.

So i'm legit asking

[small grove]

Stop trying to win a point by inventing issues that might not even exists.

For all we know it might be as easy as spinning a new virtual machine.

Or it could take month of development.

We don't know, and there's no point in arguing semantics

[hardy otter]

Im not inventing anything, read -_- I'm asking a question.

You said you were in this field, did you not?

[small grove]

Missing some questions marks then ...

And the answer is : nobody knows besides the guys that implemented it in the codebase

[hardy otter]

You acted before like you were a point of authority on servers, has this changed?

No I scrolled up, you said that.

So shouldn't you know at least somewhat the logistics behind doing something like this? Its why I said, I'm legit asking you a question.

[small grove]

No, but I don't know their architecture, their network code, database schema.

I don't know a single thing about the codebase or the infrastructure.

It could really be as easy as adding a new server and change a configuration value.

Or as said, it could take month.

[hardy otter]

btw I love that we're at odds in this thread, but 100% on the same side in the public shaming one 🤣

Either way, my personal point of view on this, and why i'm passionite is this. I really like this game, I've been a wow m+ guy for years but the game itself is just too much work to validate playing m+ and a monthly sub is garbage.

I don't like the idea of any kind of pressure on a small development team for things, that to me, seem unused and kinda pointless, when it could take away from any real development on the core game itself.

I've seen too many dev teams spread too thin on games making stuff that doesn't matter when the game itself suffered.

To me, in regards to fellowship. More dungeons, raids, gear, more heroes, is vastly - VASTLY more important, than a nonseasonal realm I don't think would have any real value.

[small grove]

I'm more in the "have confidence in the dev team to prioritize" crowd 🤣

[small grove]

100% agree, new content should be top priority.

[knotty idol]

To be fair, the Public Shaming thread itself is the only thing that should be publicly shamed 😂

[rancid siren]

Well being scared that the part of the game you like is falling short, because resources got moved to a part you don't care about, is a valid argument. But this is as valid as someone saying "I don't want to or can't play seasonal" for whatever reasons.

Totally understandable to think feel that way, but it's not a financial argument for them to do it or not. If it does make financial sense, they will do it.

[hardy otter]

Ya it took a bit but I got to the bottom of his problem, and it's not what he made the thread about >_>

I just don't get the argument, @rancid siren, People have shown that they can go from contender to eternal in a day, it's not like the game is that grindy even at a seasonal start.

I assume you'll keep your cosmetics and mounts, so other than the core aspect of the game, running dungeons and getting shiny's, you'll just be doing what the game is meant for imo

[rancid siren]

this is a small subset of players with enough skill in a small subset of players who have the time.... Not everyone is like that and they want to play that game too

[hardy otter]

There's vids of people doing that climb in one day pugging the whole thing >_>

[rancid siren]

and there is an even larger group who doesn't. If it works for you, than great, but it doesn't work for everyone. And, financial speaking, if you focus on just this little minority, your game won't survive, because the 0.1% is not who wanna cater to.

[hardy otter]

It's not the minority that wants to progress in the seasons, sorry I completely disagree from that framework, even with the up and down votes on this thread, that's disproven.

its def a minority to do it in one day, sure

[rancid siren]

I was referring to your "some people can do eternal in 1 day"

[hardy otter]

Ya

Average people can easily take a few weeks to do it.

Theorically a season will be what, 4 months?

[rancid siren]

To be accurate you have to measure it in hours playtime, not weeks with x% playtime and y% non playtime.. There are people out there who don't play that much, and those like the game too

[hardy otter]

Okay but if you have 4 months to get there, if not longer I don't know how long their seasons will be, isn't that kind of.. validiating my point, that these people don't invest enough time in the game to have servers dedicated to their playstyle?

4 months is a long time

like that's... over 2900 hours lol, if you can't get to your cap within that amount of time, I think you either don't realize you're reached your cap, or you're just not interested in the task.

Again not sure if that's the length of a season just ball parking

[rancid siren]

This would be true if server cost was flat, but it's not. Nowadays server costs is pretty much linear to concurrent users.. If there are a lot people playing, the cost goes up, if there are just a few, cost goes down.

[hardy otter]

Nah nothing to do with costs or anything like that. I'm saying strictly from a player time/usage of the server aspect

Game isn't that grindy, not till you're like, end game gem farming and what not, which has had a ton of complaints and will probably get changed.

if you have 2900 hours over 4 months, to get your seasonal character to where it was before, and beyond, unless you're essentially not even playing, you'll be able to get there easily.

and im saying that if those people are in my analogy, barely playing, how can you validate creating a server for that?

Not even about cost just about... it even having a legit purpose

[rancid siren]

Are you suggesting there should be a minimum requirement of hours played per week to play this game? I hope not. On the other hand you have to consider that even if they play not a lot in an absolute perspective, in their relative perspective, they do. So you are having a person who doesn't have much time and is only playing this game, on what game are they going to spend their money on?

[hardy otter]

My wife is one of the most casual gamers in the world, hasn't played a game in earnest in years and anything like this since wow Wotlk

she's mid paragon in 2 weeks >_>

You're dancing around the premise of my argument.

2 weeks is 336 hours, 4 months is 2900 hours. Average player can get to champ/paragon from scratch in 2 weeks. Good player can do it much shorter. There is just no way that even having barely any play time, even a few hours a week, that you can't get to your plateau in the time of a season and start getting sick of what you're doing

I was new to the game and i have 4 characters past the paragon capstone and have 300 hours into the game

[rancid siren]

Maybe I didn't get it. I thought this was your point:

Okay but if you have 4 months to get there, if not longer I don't know how long their seasons will be, isn't that kind of.. validiating my point, that these people don't invest enough time in the game to have servers dedicated to their playstyle?
I read it as "user time spent on product = money for the company" and I don't think that's how it works.

[hardy otter]

nah just saying that to me, you're advocating for a group of people to have forever servers, that you're admitting these people don't have any real time to invest into the game, because even in a fictional time frame of 4 months, they can't accomplish something the average player could do 10 times over?

So how does that create any... desire to house these players?

[small grove]

Let me tell you a story.

I have a group of friend, we play Valorant together maybe once or twice a month for 3-4h.

I was really excited to play Fellowship with them.

But with full resets every 4 month, that means each season we have 30h tops to have any meaningful sense of progression and then we'd have to start again.

Also consider 2 of those friends have no MMO experience, so it's out of the question to be anywhere near eternal in 30h. (This could improve with each season, but still...)

[hardy otter]

I have real life experience with the contrary in regards to my wife, she hasn't played MMO's in like 15-18 years, has no direction experience, has adhd, and is a rampant troll in dungeons when something goes wrong she makes it comically worse.

less than 100 hours, paragon 5

[quaint otter]

All of this largely depends on how the developers actually envision this game and they really should be clear about where they're going with it. Just by playing the game, it does strongly seem like they're trying to mix the M+ gameplay with some sort of moba overlap. It's the reason why your character isn't an avatar where you chose a race, class and lore combo but instead, you select a predetermined hero and play them.

I think the objective of this game is to just see how much rating you can push in a given season. Just like sc2, a moba, or M+ all we do in a season is push rating. I think a lot of the concern comes from the fact that this new genre where it seems very similar to an MMO and where players are used to committing and investing in their character.

Again, the non-seasonal server just doesn't make sense. Not to mention all those game balancing problems that were previously mentioned, but from a gameplay perspective what is even being accomplished? As soon as you're in adept you have more or less the same content and mechanics as in eternal. The big differences are mechanics that are barely noticeable in adept but will punish you in eternal. For example, in adept a coldheart assassin's wicked strikes is barely noticeable whereas in eternal it will destroy a party member if not interrupted.

I think my point is: all of us fellows should be playing together regardless of rating. The game is fun at all levels of play and the point of the game is to not to guarantee that everyone will have the chance to run E40s but to see how far can you get in a current season. The more you play, the better you will get. It's the reason why if you're a M+ degenerate already this game is really easy to master quickly whereas if you haven't spent thousands of hours in M+ already, it will probably take you more time to get the hang of it, but if keep playing you will improve upon your previous rating.

[rancid siren]

even if that is the case, and I don't think a rational motivation is the sole reason, time invested doesn't mean it's a good thing in terms of financials And the financial side is what counts here.

But getting into your whole argument: They may or may not be able to do that, but people play differently, some people jsut play for fun, others climb ladders, some are going as fast as possible, others just chill. You can't extrapolate one play style onto the whole playbase.

[hardy otter]

I can extrapolate that if you use this analogy with almost anything else the basis of your argument will fall apart. If you weren't incredibly wealthy, would you buy a car that you only drive 15 minutes a month? Probably not. Would you invest in karate lessons for a child that only goes once every 6 months? No.. Would you buy a pet that you only interact with 1 minute out of a 24 hour session? again, no..

[small grove]

I am talking 30h per season...

[hardy otter]

Will you concede that your friends, are a very very fringe minority

[small grove]

Yeah, absolutely, but it's a shame they'll never experience the fun part and that I won't be able to do it with them...

[hardy otter]

Because only having 30 hours to play in a season that lasts (again its a guess) 2900 hours, that to any realistic view point is just people who aren't interested in the content.

[rancid siren]

Cosmetics are not the price of a car, so if you calculate it down to the price of a cosmetic, you don't have to be that wealthy to consider it being covered by your disposable income.

[small grove]

Or people that haven't much time to play and sadly a lot of games require grinding.

I hoped Fellowship wouldn't.

Having to refarm stuff and talent points is really a pita in this scenario.

But yeah, it's niche, and totally not the expected audience, I get that.

[hardy otter]

You're not losing the cosmetics, if you wre they wouldn't have given us holiday cosmetics.

[rose pilot]

HEY 😠 callin me out in here. grinding dont feel like grinding in this game and at first I agreed w you on the eternal server but then I realized we'd just run out of things to do and the experience would get pretty boring

I cant stand quickplay tho

I hope we dont have to do that on reset 🤮

also casual players are just bad w mechanics, I die in the dumbest crap

[rancid siren]

Is this a reaction to what I wrote? If yes... I was responding to a specific thing you mentioned as an argument. "Loosing cosmetics" doesn't make sense in that context.

[prime tundra]

I believe that regardless of whether a player spends a lot of time playing or only a little, everyone has a reasonable motive not to want to lose the equipment they've worked so hard to obtain. I think this is not really controversial, because it's human nature to avoid loss.

The proposal for a non-seasonal server actually reflects a group of players who enjoy crafting and investing time in their gear, and who don't want their efforts to be in vain. This is unrelated to how high a level someone can reach or how skilled they are. Regardless of how much or how little they play, everyone's time deserves to be valued; the worth of time is highly subjective—some feel that playing 100 hours a week is nothing, while others cherish even a few hours.

If every season requires a complete reset and there isn't even a non-seasonal server to play on, it's essentially telling some players: “Hey, this game wasn't made for you; at best, you can only play for one season.” Is this really a good thing for the game? I think it’s worth considering.

Honestly, I don’t quite understand the reasons for opposing a non-seasonal server. It’s not about turning all seasonal servers into non-seasonal ones, but about providing options for different play styles. If you enjoy resets, that’s great—go play on the seasonal server. But don’t limit others who prefer more choices. I've also noticed that people cite the 'likes/dislikes' ratio as evidence of opposition. But at the moment, the ratio is 40:101—meaning 40% of engaged players actively support this feature. Ignoring the voices of 40% of your community isn't just unkind; it's strategically problematic for long-term game health.

If you believe that players moving to a non-seasonal server will affect seasonal server player numbers, please don’t worry, because if there is no non-seasonal server, you will lose those players anyway.

[hoary lichen]

I'm trying very hard to understand the hubbub about the seasonal reset. I'd like to preface this by saying im not against a forever server. I think the common fear is allocating man hours to a forever server when the game itself needs more work. I think it's a fair concern since the game is in early access.

Furthermore, in many games an increase in power level, item level, base levels, whatever, makes everything you collected obsolete. There may be niche cases like WoW you want to save items for transmog and show off, but it's not possible to effectively use said items going forward.

Speaking from experience, MMOs like WoW, every raid tier and every expansion is a reset. I heard that games like PoE and Diablo have resets. Even Once Human effectively has resets because you just play on new servers; people don't stay long when the content is done.

So what am I missing?

[knotty idol]

Hey, i'm in th same boat as you. Not against it, but also wouldnt play on it.

I think the main difference between a full reset, and just adding new higher item level gear, is that the latter doesn't affect your power level, while the former does. You would basically go from your fully build character, to losing most of your abilities, playing with low stats (especially low haste can feel pretty garbage after playing at high haste for a while). You'd also lose access to talent points and the legendary you are used to, as well as gem powers.

So they are worried that they basically have to go through that whole grind again that they already did, before they can get to the new high level stuff they added. they are fine with the power level overall increasing, they just dont want to be set back. to them 100%->120% is fine, but 100%->0%->120% is a step that they think is unnecessary

[misty rover]

What becomes the boring part of the game if the boring part of going from 0%-100% is removed? Food for thought.

[small grove]

I think, for me at least, it all boils down to the time you are able to invest into the game during a whole season.

If you can invest the necessary time to get "the content done", resets are fine, even needed.

If you plan to play with friends than can invest at most 10-15h a month into the game, you'll never be able to experience the whole experience (BiS weapon, gems, legendaries). A soon as you'll be getting to Eternal, the games reset and the grinds start again.

This kinda makes the game not fitted for a very casual audience, and it's ok, the game does not need to cater to everyone.

I was hoping that Fellowship would be a game I can play with those kind of friends, maybe 3 to 5 dungeons per month, and we would be able to slowly progress to the end game, but with resets, this isn't possible.

Guess we'll have to stuck doing a few games of Valorant each month instead 🙂

[rigid robin]

Some people in this thread need to take a reading comprehension class asap because its just tragic

[rancid siren]

All the examples you mentioned have solved this problem.

WoW has a rather clever design. You are not wrong with there being a reset, but in the lifetime of one expansion it's only in relative power, not absolute power. Each patch builds on top of the old one by only adding to your characters capabilities. For example when a new expansion comes out in the base version you can go from 0-10% haste, next patch you can improve your character and can go to 20% haste and so on. Content scales with this power increase, that's why it is a relative reset, but the way a character plays just keeps improving. Only when a new expansion comes around, this power is taken away, but this takes quite some time like 2 years or so and comes with a lot of new content to make up for it. This is a very long time giving even the most casual people to see quite a bit the expansion has to offer.

PoE, Diablo and Once Human solved this problem by giving people the option to keep playing. None of those games forces a hard reset on you without giving you an alternative.

So if there comes a game around which has power gain over a longer time period (weeks/month) but not long enough to give almost everyone enough time to go through it/get satisfied with it and then takes it all away, without giving an alternative, affected people will and should make themselves heard.

[sturdy crescent]

Im so glad you mentioned the WoW design for this, didnt want to point this out but since you decided to lets break it down a little bit shall we?

In WoW's case they do "soft" resets every season of an expansion, and while true you dont LOSE the gear every season you have to regrind quite a bit to get back to the same "level" of gear. Howerver you pointed out the 1 REALLY big thing that happens in WoW that would be DEVESTATING to Fellowship. WoW has a funny way of occassionally making classes INCREDIBLY strong and others INCREDIBLY weak. This is called FOTM, and it its REALLY bad for a game design like Fellowship.

Lets take your example of haste. What happens if we go with WoWs model and on first "season" ardeos only has 10% haste? He will be complete trash! OH BUT WAIT season 2 now he can get 20%, well now hes meta. Season 3 he gets 30%! Now hes strong! Season 4 he gets 40%, okay NOW hes basically a must have in every dungeon because hes OP.

So WoWs design has the HUGE flaw of being really bad until they do an expansion and stat squish WHICH IS ESSENTIALLY a "hard" reset!

[rancid siren]

For a system like this to work you have to design your characters around it. You can just take it and slap it onto something else. So putting some existing character design onto something I came up with in a minute to explain the concept, doesn't work obviously. But yes, you are not wrong, it creates new problems, but that's how systems are. Nothing is perfect. All you can hope for is solving a bigger problem by creating smaller problems. I personally don't like the wow system either, but avoiding hard resets with it over 2-3 years seems to be working for most people.

Do I personally want something like this in Fellowship? No. The impact on everyone who wants to have resets and on the general design principal would be too great. I'm in favour of the solutions other games have used by giving people options. This has little to no impact on the overall game design.

But in the end, Fellowship seems to be the only game in the category I mentioned above, which has that problem while other games have solved it.

[elfin bolt]

BiS gear will change gradually in each season. Whats the point of having an "eternal" server like D4

[rancid siren]

To give people with limited time to play at their own pace and giving them a chance to experience the whole content

[misty galleon]

i dont see why it's still a issue. perm characters, new 'seasonal content' like more affixes, new gear, dungeons get scaled up. that's it. I dont want to start at bloody level 1 every 3 months and 're-level' for a few hours

[mild radish]

the dungeons whaving to be scaled would me dev time, new gear that would be worth chasing would be dev time, even the persistence requirement for the gear of your chars would require dev time

[small grove]

What would you have to scale anything ? Or add new gear ?

[terse tartan]

I am starting to think we might just have different expectations or hopes for what they can do with seasons.

If all a season does is add some heroes and a dungeon and some loot I am going to be so incredibly disappointed. With seasons and resets I would hope they experiment more. Here's just a few things I can imagine for a season that would be difficult to reconcile with a permanent server and your stated desire to keep your items and characters.

• Complete removal of systems that people are unhappy with in favor of something else. If the new system is worse, then they can just try something else or change it back next season. For example complete removal of sockets and gems. That is something you can do one season if you don't need to consider the impact on permanent characters.
• Borrowed Power systems that are meant to just be there for that season. If they prove popular enough they can be included into the core game. How would you reconcile this with a permanent server?

The thing with seasons is that If they can get a good track record going and build enough trust the players will forgive them and come back next season if they decide to try something risky one season and it doesn't quite land.

[zenith thistle]

Honestly this game doesnt need spliting their playerbase. Seasonal reset is the best way how to aproach this kind of game.

However i am afraid that they might not have enough capital to continue in a while. The game is dirt cheap and if they dont introduce something to spend money on soon it will will be discontinued for sure.

Thats just a natural course of things and i am very afraid if they just want to sell cosmetics.... they are very generous with rewards already.

A thing to consider...

[sturdy crescent]

Plenty of games have made only cosmetics work, however most of those games have had entire development teams focused solely on creating cosmetics. With the small team we have here i HIGHLY doubt they have a full team doing just cosmetic development. Problem is if they add something else that people can buy with $ it will also cause issues with the playerbase and "pay 2 win" options while good in the short term loses you players in the longrun. This game 100% will struggle with monetization and development costs at some point, unless they can make a serious splash with full release

[lilac aspen]

Splitting the playerbase between seasons and "standard" is a terrible idea because it cucks queue times (and time to form groups via discord due to less people available)

If people want to quit over this, let them. There won't be so many that it's very impactful upon total population, and it's certainly vastly better than what would happen with a server split. Seems to be the hyper-casual "we don't actually play the game more than bi-monthly" crowd taking issue with it more than other outliers anyway, so their loss won't be felt

The big change that needs to happen to assuage most grievances is that the initial grind for basic abilities and character functionality via starting talent points should be removed, and given to us baseline at season start. That's all.

The most common complaint is "i don't want to start on a naked, dysfunctional character at level 1," so address that and it's gg

[rancid siren]

How do you know? Got any data or is this just something you made up?

And why is this alleged "split" so bad if people who could only play on "standard" don't matter as you said. Wouldn't make an impact at all would it?

I love these contradictions in arguments where a subsection of people is essential and very impactful in one part of the sentence and in the other part it's totally meaningless.

[zenith thistle]

@rancid siren just because you dont understand the statement it doesnt mean its contradictory. its clear as a day that not too many people will quit because of resets but they could move to the pernament league and then youd have issues. for both sides aswell btw. only full premades dont care about either scenario

[lilac aspen]

Nothing of what I said was contradictory, you're just confused. There isn't only one subsection in question.

It doesn't take a genius to identify that by providing the option, a lot more would take it than just those who would quit over not having it provided at all.

Meaning, we're weighing the amount of playerbase lost from quitting a season-only scenario vs. the amount of playerbase lost from willful choice of provided option to play on standard who wouldn't have otherwise quit the seasonal-only scenario.

In other words, "those who would play on standard" is a bigger number than "those who would quit if forced into seasonal," and it doesn't require any hard data to reach this obvious conclusion.

One is numerically significant, the other is far less so and potentially irrelevant.

[summer skiff]

If not too many people will quit due to resets, why is it such a persistent topic?

[lilac aspen]

I take it the term "vocal minority" isn't lost on you

[summer skiff]

It could be. I don't have hard data either, and no one really does until after the experiment.
Anecdotally, about 50% of the players I've introduced to the game would be interested in a persistent server for various reasons, mostly do to with the amount and cadence of their playtime.

[lilac aspen]

All totally valid. I think it's also such a popular topic because it's naturally just the question of what ought to happen when the season comes to an end, and so it's a necessary talking point now that a season reset has been promised

I can see the merits of having static or "standard" servers, but unlike most games that do such divides (poe for example), this is a community-dependent game, not a (mostly) single-player experience, so any designed divide in playerbase does innately hurt those players

[icy knot]

imagine u did grind all the gems gold to upgrade and gear, to lose everything and farm it again. imagine u have a big stash to fill it up with whatever stuff u want because u thought "oh hey i got so much space" just to lose everything. imagine u start with buying white gear again and again and again. and imagine all u keep is mounts with bad texture and gear with bad texture. imagine after all u find out that the goal of climbing the latter is just for some mount and skin. great i wish it was mentioned on the steam shop so i could avoid the game and save my time

[summer skiff]

The dividing the player base point would be more persuasive if all of the current players would actually be interested in seasonal play if it is the only option. For many I surmise it is persistent or bust, due to time availability and cadence. I totally get the game is the climb, and am shamelessly enthralled with the game, and will play whatever they do, but know that a good chunk of my friends just cannot experience the game on a seasonal reset.

[rancid siren]

Thank you @lilac aspen for clarifying. I find it rather interesting that you and @zenith thistle actually acknowledge that the group interested in playing a non seasonal version has a significant size. This is actual an argument for providing that option to those people. So far I only heard "no one plays there anyways" argument. Wouldn't it be better then to have such an option to give people a base satisfaction with the game and rather give them incentives to play seasonal?

[lilac aspen]

I think the incentive structure (reward scheme) needs a lot of work, as well as the anatomy of the progression itself - mostly gems and legendaries - before seasonal resets will resonate well with the playerbase at large, though we can already see the ratio of upvotes vs. downvotes on this static server idea's thread is 46:141 in favor of seasons currently. That's 1.15 : 3.5, about a quarter of the population that even somewhat wants static servers. Even if we generously assume 50% of those people would quit over not getting their way, that's only a 12.5% population loss. Acceptable.

Then, for fun, if we assumed static servers went through and these numbers from this sample are any way representative of greater reality: 75% of the population would lose 25% of its queuing companions, and 25% would lose 75%. Is that even sustainable for the minority group on the "standard" server? I'd love to better understand the rate of player decline correlate to longer queue times so I could sink my teeth in a bit deeper on this.

@rancid siren my answer is that in your scenario, both sides suffer an amount that is, unfortunately, severely more detrimental than the alternative (forced seasonal)

[summer skiff]

I don't think that sampling is reasonable; those interested in persistent are less likely to be glued to discord. Many of those interested in persistent want a structure more like (Deep Rock Galactic, Helldivers, etc.) where it's a buddy game; they play when their friends are on and are not even interested in using a que.

[lilac aspen]

All valid observations

[summer skiff]

(No one has any statistically rigorous data here)

[lilac aspen]

Though we can surely agree that the facilitation of this game becoming aligned with that "buddy game" dynamic is definitely far off, requiring more than just static servers, and those of us that want seasons so we can enjoy the game more rigorously and readily can easily have our needs met by comparison

The root question Chief Rebel needs to answer here is: would the gain of the addition of static servers ultimately justify the cost to the experience of the seasonal players? ("Cost" meaning group formation time increased, queue and discord alike)

@summer skiff and there's also the angle that, if what you said about those interested in persistent are less involved in discord, I think it's also fair to say that playerbase is less invested in the game overall, so catering to them shouldn't be prioritized. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be considered and taken care of when possible - just not to the expense of the regularly-playing community that's more involved

[rancid siren]

You kinda might think loss is acceptable but this game is so niche already and loosing paying customers can be rather problematic. The casual crowd is rather big and most of them aren't even here in discord. Queue doesn't really matter here, it's about paying customers to keep the game running and in pretty much any case, you always want more.

The down votes themselves don't matter much, since there are no real arguments verifiable with data against a non-seasonal option except "I'm scared it takes away too much resources from the thing I like" but that's not a financial argument. All we have right now is anecdotal evidence. The only thing that the votes show is that there is interest which is likely more dominant in non-discord players. The tryhards are all here because they have to with few exceptions, the casuals are not because the current state of the game give them enough tools to play wiothout discord

The thing with people interested in non-seasonal gameplay is that a big chunk of those will bring friends, people who wouldn't even play the game otherwise because seasonal is nothing they can or wanna do. And financially speaking, you will always want more people. Yes ofc there are solo players too and those who usually play with friends but not always... I can see this becoming an issue, but I can't see why discord and upcoming social systems couldn't alleviate that problem. Sure lower population makes it harder but the nature of those types of communities is that they are more social than others anyways.

And I agree with you that this game lacks a lot of incentive systems and those have to be added to make it work for resets. I can already see the reset being a rough experience for all involved.

[patent forum]

As soon as I heard, in the interview, that they were going to do a reset and wipe everything but cosmetics and purchased stuff, My 1st question was "Should I keep playing?". I had all these plans to work on other character gear, grind quick plays to start them up and climb them all to Eternal as time insisted. Now that they have confirmed a gear wipe, I don't know if I want to play the game.

I understand the reasoning, especially from a development standpoint. But from a player standpoint, it's kind of upsetting (at least to me). I used to be that tryhard that preached "They should endure the grind as I did." mentality. But I've grown up over the years. I have less time, even more so now than ever. The resets don't align with my long term wants.

I hate to use WoW as an example. But when I was a very active addicted player, I would just use Dungeon finder and Arena Finders all day. Back to back to back. It was what I liked, just constant running dungeons, not having to form a pre-made. Just mind numbing running and grinding. This game has that, but if you told me that I had to redo every dungeon and progress my gear score every time a new expansion hit, I don't think I would have put thousands of hours into that game. And if you told me there was no incentive other than some trims or outfits, it would only solidify my will to not play the game.

But my hopes are still high for the game. It's early access. I will probably keep playing and just grind out my 2 mains over and over until they get deleted. But this is just my opinion, not that it matters 😄

[dapper swan]

this philosophy of the game doesn't matter and isn't fun until i'm in the top 0.1% has got to go away.

also, you literally are regrinding everything every time a new expansion or season hit in wow. wtf are you talking about.

[terse tartan]

My 1st question was "Should I keep playing?". I had all these plans to work on other character gear, grind quick plays to start them up and climb them all to Eternal as time insisted.
Maybe you shouldn't. If you don't find the process itself enjoyable, maybe put the game down now and come back later and see if they've managed to make something you think you might enjoy.

This game has that, but if you told me that I had to redo every dungeon and progress my gear score every time a new expansion hit, I don't think I would have put thousands of hours into that game.
Isn't this exactly what you have to do every new expansion, though? And what's more that part is actually a large part of what makes playing the first few months of the new expansion fun and exciting.

[meager peak]

idk why this is a confrontational take. Its literally the basis of every seasonal ARPG. Its nothing new.

Seasonal vs Standard. Seasonal resets to Standard when seasons reset. I don't see why this would be a problem for anyone. You're still just gonna play the new season, and the people who want to keep their characters still have them on standard.

[terse tartan]

The casual crowd is rather big and most of them aren't even here in discord.
I would be hesitant to claim the casuals for your side of the argument. You yourself is not a good representation of the casual crowd either, the only casual thing about you is your time commitment. You are hardcore invested in the game and your progress. Most casuals will have already moved on to other games by now and are waiting for the new season to so they can join in on the hype and excitement again and mess around in contender and adept for a few days.

Most casuals don't play on standard servers in PoE or Diablo. They play seasonal. You can see the same thing with new WoW expansions. The casuals come back for the new expansion and then move on to the next game when the shine wears off.

[summer skiff]

Are direct comparisons realistic, given that most ARPGs are largely solo activities, and this is a group activity? PoE is all about how much build/character/economic knowledge you can bring into the new league and get maxed out faster than every before; solitaire really. Not knocking it at all. Here, you may be constrained based on the friends you want to play with; they may not have the time or the cadence to ever get anywhere in the game.

[dapper swan]

the issue is that in arpg's you aren't matchmaking with a playerbase, its mostly solo our premade group play. in fellowship the playerbase being split will create issues. also, would this require them overhauling their server structure? the game wasn't designed to do that. anything in a game has echo consequences, its not just "it doesn't affect the people who don't want it so why do you care". something like splitting off part of the player base WILL impact the people that stay in seasonal.

[summer skiff]

I still don't understand how it's a split if those people are essentially out the door if there's no persistent option. How can you have players split if they are gone?

[meager peak]

I feel like it would be such a minority of the playerbase. In most seasonal rotational games, standard is not really the "hot" spot.

So I don't think it would effect queues, not for seasonal at least. lol

I play seasonal only, but I'm not mad that people want a standard.

I think overall the M+ community is very small and I don't think this game really retains any new non- M+ player. Maybe rarely some. Its also going to be in some ways competing with WoW itself and player numbers will drop significantly during those times. I'm sure 90% of the WoW M+ community will be be swapping between the two each "new" season. Similar to how people hop from ARPG to ARPG.

so que times are always going to be an issue with a playerbase of this size. Unless you play tank.

(even if standard never exists, which it probably won't. But whatever)

[terse tartan]

Queue times on a permanent realm are likely to be worse. You'd already be a minority of players. You would also have players scattered all around the leagues, maybe even unhealthily weighted towards the higher leagues because you can in some ways out-gear the content. And you'd have no resets so you would have no common starting point/time when the lower leagues would get an influx of players. The new player experience on the standard realm will likely not be great. Then you'd see people quitting because the queues are too long, or just longer than on seasonal and the queue times would get even worse leading to even more players leaving.

[meager peak]

I wonder if a seasonal recap would be a middle ground for those players who don't want to lose everything. Wouldn't really help in sense of keep your items, but something like a seasonal profile recap. Which keeps your previous seasons history stats. Just a profile of of previous achievements.

Season: 1
Helena - Ilvl: 330 - Dungeon rating: 11k
Rime - Ilvl: xxx - Dungeon rating: xxx

etc

[terse tartan]

Sort of like a Hall of Fallen Heroes kind of thing you sometimes see in games with a hardcore mode where characters can die permanently?

[meager peak]

yea pretty much

[terse tartan]

Heh, now I am picturing a literal hall in the Stronghold. With statues of your former heroes lined up along the wall. Statues you can inspect or some such.

[patent forum]

Well when you put it in the POE perspective, I guess it does make more sense to operate it this way. Now I'm just Torn. But when I had time, I played POE and didn't care about resets. But now that I don't have time, I don't play PoE Seasonal. lol

HOWEVER, I retained my PoE Characters with an online profile to show my previous characters (Be it I never played Standard) you could see what my progress was on past seasons. So I guess, in reality thinking deeper into it. My issue may not actually be a hard reset, it's the reset to wipe any history of completion? Not really sure how to phrase that.
Umm, like Let's say in PoE I made Frost Nova Cyclone in it's premier league. I have that character and can easily point people to my online account or reference my build. Kind of a "Hey I did this" type of thing.

Completion satisfaction?

Hostorical Gratification? Even in wow, new expansions, when I would switch mains, I would log into an old main if i wanted to play it with all of the top end gear and get hit with nostalgia. Which is a sort of dopamine hit. Now this is biased to my feelings, so it doesn't mean much. but it's just an opinion

Maybe the real issue is I'm thinking of progressioal gear grinding. And just having it deleted rather than stored? which may be my entire issue with a hard reset
Hey guys, I made it to Eternal X+... DELETED Start over!
Here's a cosmetic.

[rancid siren]

I don't have to be part of a group to make an argument in favour of that group. By your logic you can't even make an argument in favour of that group because that group wouldn't make that argument because they already have given up?
Geez... what a twisted logic and I'm not going into anything else you claimed because of that. Just this one thing here: You are wrong with literally every assumption you made about me 🙂

[rancid siren]

You are not alone with this. There are so many like you interested in this game and it would be kinda crazy to not give those people something they can work with.

[obtuse turtle]

It's wild to me that you've played WoW for years without realising they do exactly this - always, since release. They reset your progress with every new release of gear while all you keep is cosmetics

[patent forum]

No, I still have that gear, it's held on the character and on the onlione profile , I quit playing after illidan release. So maybe things have changed or I can't remember exactly 😄

[obtuse turtle]

But its obsolete. Did you keep your adept gear too?

[patent forum]

Yes 🙁

[quaint otter]

If you want to create an emotional connection with your avatar and gear, then go play wow. This isn't an MMO and it isn't the point of this game. The point is to push rating within a given season - it's the design philosophy as confirmed by the devs.

[obtuse turtle]

I mean: I get what you're talking about. You can now log back in and be lookin hella sick with your illidari mask and warglaives. But in the same way you can log back into fellowship S2 and showcase your top 0.5% skins from S1. The gear from S1 however is gone - in World of Warcraft it's there but 'useless'. It's a reset too - and it's in any game like that. It's just not called a reset but a content patch

[rancid siren]

Why are you so scared about people playing their games how they like? You know, people are allowed to have different reasons and motives to play the same game, it doesn't make your reason and motive invalid.

[obtuse turtle]

People are always scared when it comes to splitting the playerbase for good reasons

[quaint otter]

You've been going on for days about how this 'scares' people to validate your argument. This isn't anything to get scared over. It's not the intent of this game and you need to accept that. You've boxed yourself into thinking that the only way to enjoy this game.

[rancid siren]

It obviously does or people like you wouldn't try to deny others to play games how they like to play them. There is no other explanation. If you weren't afraid of the game failing, you wouldn't care about how someone would like to enjoy the game. It is actually you who thinks to know how everyone has to enjoy this game. Which is conveniently exactly the way like you enjoy this game. But that's not how it works, every person has their own ways to enjoy things and a right to do so. You are in no position to tell them otherwise.

[quaint otter]

https://tenor.com/view/eye-roll-duh-whatever-gotta-go-interview-gif-17895414

Yes, im very scared.. lol

I mean idk if you saw what the developers stated yesterday or the day before, but it's literally the intention of their game for it to be enjoyed seasonally, not in some noob server by yourself.

[small grove]

They said they might consider it in the last dev update, so it might actually be their intent

[dapper swan]

No one cares how you play the game. They care that you want to change what the game is to suit your needs. That's not the same thing. If you won't enjoy the game unless they change the core idea of the game then you don't like this game. That's it.

[summer skiff]

It's not a zero sum; they could keep both types happy.

[rancid siren]

No one is asking for that, if you made the effort to actually read the thread or even OP, you would know that.

[terse tartan]

I don't have to be part of a group to make an argument in favour of that group.
And nowhere did I claim you had to be. I just pointed out that the group you claim to advocate for does not exist as you think it does.

When you said the following:

You kinda might think loss is acceptable but this game is so niche already and loosing paying customers can be rather problematic. The casual crowd is rather big and most of them aren't even here in discord. Queue doesn't really matter here, it's about paying customers to keep the game running and in pretty much any case, you always want more.

You implied casual players would prefer permanent over seasonal. That is not borne out by any other game I can think of with a seasonal model. All players, casuals included, heavily prefer seasonal. You're going "Why won't anyone think of the poor casuals?" when the group you're actually advocating for is a subset of players who fall in a category of being both a casual and somehow being more attached to their progress than the average casual to the point that they would be willing to give up all the other many benefits of playing on a seasonal.

By your logic you can't even make an argument in favour of that group because that group wouldn't make that argument because they already have given up?
I didn't say they have given up. I said casuals would have already moved on to the next game and that they would be back next season. That is just the seasonal model working as intended.

Geez... what a twisted logic and I'm not going into anything else you claimed because of that.
I am not surprised you find the logic twisted. You either misunderstood or purposely misconstrued it. You'll forgive me for leaning towards the latter when you use it as an excuse to refuse to engage with any of my other arguments.

You are wrong with literally every assumption you made about me
I made four assumptions about you.

• You are not a casual
• You are invested in the game
• You are attached to your progress
• You have limited time to play
  Sure, the last two might be wrong, but the first two are certainly not. otherwise you wouldn't be here arguing this fervently.

[rancid siren]

This group very much does exist... I have friends like that, I met a lot of people here in discord who are or have friends like that and I met people in game who are or have friends like that.. What are you talking about? Is this some form of gaslighting?

Of course not everyone of the people I'm putting in the group of "casual" is like that, but the interest for such an option in that group is generally speaking bigger than in the group I call "tryhard".

You are trying to compare different genres to this because they have the seasonal model, that doesn't work. People are not drawn to this game because it has seasons, they like the dungeon experience. Your argument about that doesn't make much sense.

So if you keep insisting that I'm hallucinating and making all those things up, I would like to see something more than just words, got anything?

[lilac aspen]

Because there's an obvious (no offense) difference between population sizes of those that would a) quit over not being provided their want of standard servers, and b) those who would choose standard if provided but would continue playing seasonal if the option weren't available. B is a larger playerbase loss than A, hands down, no hard data required to conclude fairly.

Another aspect I think needs to be addressed is: if there's a subsect of players that would quit playing over such a game design decision, they clearly don't enjoy the game very much for what it is in the first place. They want an infinitely progressive grind, they don't care what form it comes in, but they'd like this game to be bent to fulfill that desire. Should that group of players be prioritized in any way over those that actually like the game and want to play it regardless of whatever the gameplay loop is?

It's clear that one group is your core audience that actually cares, and the others have one foot out the door and want their needs met as requirement to their continued support. What would you do with that information, as the developer?

[summer skiff]

Still not convinced it's zero-sum like that, or that any of us mere mortals have actual data to back anything up beyond our personal anecdotes. If there were legacy servers, I'd only play on them when friends without the time budgeting or cadence to play seasonally wanted to play, and seasonally the rest of the time. Surely there are going to be new features in new seasons that won't be available on the legacy server for 3-4 months, also pushing people to play the main game - seasonal with resets.
Totally anecdotally, a large chunk of people I introduced to the game won't be playing season 1, or 2, or 3, etc; time budget/cadence locks them out of meaningful participation within a season, and they are more concerned with being able to play with friends when schedules align than getting the current chase mounts/trims/cosmetics/status.

[terse tartan]

I said 'exists as you think it does'. As in some great untapped potential instead of as a highly risky group to try to cater to at the expense of what is clearly a majority who thinks seasonal is the way forward.

The question isn't whether you exist, it's whether you're a large enough pool of players that it is a sound investment to cater to you. I don't know where you've got the confidence that CR can cater to both crowds, I certainly don't share it. For the upcoming reset all I've heard we're getting is a new hero, maybe two. That is not a season, that is a reset with a consolation prize. It'll be enough while the game still feels new, but that won't last. A season needs to be transformative enough to draw players back season after season. There needs to be more. More dungeons, maybe a dungeon rotation, new dungeon curses/rotations, new systems to engage with etc.

Maybe when they're not also busy trying to complete the game and they've got making seasons good down to a tee it could be worth revisiting a permanent server solution, but doing it now just looks like a huge risk for very questionable gain.

As to your different games argument. The closest comparison to fellowship is WoW. When they introduced M+ in Legion they saw player retention among dungeon enjoyers go up. When they codified the soft resets each new tier already brought to the game into seasons in BFA retention and returning player numbers again rose, the same again when they introduced the dungeon rotation at the end of Shadowlands and start of Dragonflight. These have been successful changes to WoW M+ and if they didn't work Blizzard would have gutted them by now. The fact of the matter is WoW has resets, they're just couched as new tiers. They are functional resets. The seasonal model works across different game types. People like seasons, even people who are drawn to dungeons.

I'm not sure what kind of hard proof you want from me. I could turn around as ask the same of you. The way I see it you're the one arguing from the minority position, you're the one who needs to justify you're worth catering to. But the only ones who can realistically do that is CR themselves, they're the only ones who know their capabilities and the only ones in a position to conduct decent survey.

[terse tartan]

Furthermore, I'm not convinced pure permanent enjoyers are a large enough player base that even if you somehow got the best Permanent Server solution they can manage that you would have enough players to make up a healthy realm in the long run.

Players in multiplayer games gravitate to the highest population servers (see high pop WoW servers before cross-realm guilds, and faction imbalance before cross-faction). In addition to that you'd be in direct competition with a seasonal server for new and returning players. Even players who have enjoyed permanent in the past. The further you get in time from the last time you played a hero the less attached you will be.

Do you think a new or returning player is more likely to want to join a mature permanent server or are they gonna want to join the seasonal server at a time when everyone starts from scratch, that has the higher player base, all the hype, all the streamers, and all the other new and returning players who forgot you need to tether to the mast in Sailor's Abyss to hide among?

I fear the permanent server will just have an ever decreasing number of players.

I'm not unsympathetic to your cause. It's not that I want you or your like-minded compatriots left out in the cold out of petty spite. The best scenario would clearly be that I am proven completely wrong on all counts. But I rather think that is unlikely, so these are my concerns and why I think the way I do. You can do with that what you will.

[summer skiff]

Depends on the new/returning player. Some people aren't motivated/persuaded by the whole ersatz, synthetic hyper-advertisement that is streamer culture, or chase the latest trendy thing. They simply want to play games with their friends, and the medium is quite negotiable.
If I have my history right, this game started out as a PvE moba before evolving into a MODA. Given that flexibility and dynamism, it seems hard to believe they can't make the game for both niches; the buddy game you can play with friends when time allows, and the red-queen treadmill of doom that some here secretly love.

[mild radish]

I think the problem is just, what happens when people on the nonseasonal server are at max level, there is no increasing power, it would be a version of the game thats completable

the amount of people that are playing with friends who have little time is unlikely to be enough to fill a server

[small grove]

Why do you care and how does it affect you in anyway ?

Don't you own games that you have "completed" ?

[small grove]

If they have 3 friends, it doesn't matter if there is enough people to fill a server, they are a premade, they can play even if there is only 4 people on the server.

Having a non seasonal server or not boils down to only two things :

• does CR have the man power to do the initial development
• what are the server costs compared to the revenue it'll bring

And we don't have any idea about neither of these two things.

There's no point in trying to convince people asking for non seasonal that they don't want one 🤷‍♂️

[iron matrix]

The game is advertised as endlessly scalling dungeons adventure

[mild radish]

In live service games, to continously do anything requires development time

You wouldn't get endless scaling on a non seasonal server because inevitably there is a point when dungeons simply won't be doable with available equipment

this means that people on non seasonal servers (especially considering the type that have mentioned it) will hit a point where they can't progress with their power and will ask devs to invest more time in that server when its going to likely be for a minor amount of the population (most people read or did the many beta's and new what this game was)

[small grove]

Same on seasonal, max doable lvl is often done before end of season 🤷‍♂️

[small grove]

Wrong, might be only infrastructure cost

[small grove]

And why is it an issue? Once you're done, you stop 🤷‍♂️

[terse tartan]

Just to be clear. When you're talking about a non-seasonal server as a one-time initial development cost you're talking about a server that does not receive any of the seasonal content unless it is trivial to implement? Less than a day's work let's say?

[mild radish]

you work under the assumption that people live under the premise of "enough"

human nature doesn't do "enough" the always want more

also it won't just be infrastructure, you clearly don't understand the development process -_-

[small grove]

Ok, I'll talk to my boss which has me managing openshift clusters that I am not fit to do my job 🤣

[small grove]

Same client codebase, same server codebase, just don't launch the script that does the reset 🤷‍♂️

[small grove]

That's true, but people will complain with or without non seasonal server...

If you get more complain, it means you have more players, which is a good thing

[terse tartan]

But that would impact me as a seasonal player. It would limit seasonal content to being purely additive. Any sweeping changes they want to make would be constrained by the need to not overly impact the non-seasonal's progress.

You couldn't easily rip out systems and replace them without risking bricking non-seasonal players who have built and geared their characters around such systems. By systems in this case I mean legendaries, weapon powers, gems, and any future systems they might cook up.

With resets they are afforded the opportunity to more easily and more freely experiment.

My hope for Fellowship seasons is that they take a page out of PoE's book. Introduce season mechanics unique and themed to that season. For example a season centered around dungeon curses. Pair it with a borrowed power system. Enchantments you can add to your gear that lets you interact with curses in new and interesting ways.

You need to be able to remove such systems, otherwise you risk the game becoming a bloated mess impossible to balance.

If you tightly couple the seasonal and non-seasonal code-base like you suggest the chances of them ever doing something like this go down the drain.

[mild radish]

Friend from the way you talk i can tell you're not an actual dev because no developer ever says you just do something

Nothing ever works that way

Ive worked with and deployed things on openshift you sound like someone who watches the ui

[small grove]

Never said that... but you do you, there's no point arguing with people only here to "win"

[mild radish]

I write actual code and nothing works that way lol, there's always more that's why developer will always double an estimate

Things occur and there's always need for time to flex accordingly

[small grove]

If the "contract" is clear enough (ie: you play non seasonal but when we do a change you might lose some things), there's no issue.

Exact same changes on both sides.

People might lose stuff, but this happens in game with soft resets also (ie Wow)

[mild radish]

Yeah im done with this conversation lol, its clear

[small grove]

Just tell me, if they have the exact same code base for both client and server, and the only difference is that they don't run the scripts that reset players every 4 month, what "big difference" is there between both seasonal and non seasonal?

Seasons are data, in a database.

Code can be 100% identical between both servers.

(A bit like a software deployment that is done on two clusters, one for production, the other for QA)

[shell knoll]

Its will basicly become one steaming pile of broken shit very quickly

[terse tartan]

In WoW they do try to limit reworks, and big, sweeping changes to expansion boundaries though, when everyone is brought down to roughly the same level. And the cadence is different. A WoW tier is usually 6+ months and an expansion roughly 2 years. If we take the upcoming Fellowship reset as representative of their desired cadence we're looking at 3 or 4 month long seasons. That's a lot of potential turbulence on the non-seasonal side.
I'd be curious to hear if your fellow non-seasonal proponents would also be willing to accept such a compromise. They would effectively be signing on to be second class citizens of the game, and that doesn't feel great. Unless you used to be a third class citizen, I suppose.
I'm still concerned CR would be opening a can of worms by doing this though, but that is their problem to figure out.

[small grove]

Nearly every proponent on this thread stated multiple times that they wouldn't care one way or the other (not having the cool new toys, or being suboptimal due to changes)

[shell knoll]

To have a simple example:

Let's say they remove a chestpiece for balancing reasons.

On a seasonal reset it doesn't matter.

On the non reset server, you get a lot of questions:

• What if players have it equipped?
• What if it has a gem? What if it has essence bonus?
• What if the player has it in their inventory? What if that item has a gem in it?
• What if it is in a stash unit? What if it is in a second tab?
• What if it is upgraded?

All of these need to be tested and potentially bandaid fixed, costing time. Not to mention the amount of other non obvious connection that will be in the code base that can break the game.

[small grove]

No, you just let them keep the piece, and that's it... nothing to do...

Leaderboard is meaningless in a non seasonal server, so by extension balance is also meaningless...

Stop projecting your own issues that only arise on seasonal servers to non seasonal ones...

People just want to play with their friends at their own pace... they don't care about all the issues everyone raised

(and they said it multiple times here on this very thread....)

[shell knoll]

But then it is not the same game, so maintenance will cost time and over time the technical debt of the game will build up and cost more and more time.

[small grove]

• queue times .... don't care, I play with my 3 friends
• balance ... .don't care I play with my 3 friends
• having to respec every so often due to sweeping changes ... don't care I play with my 3 friends

[small grove]

it is the exact same game... you just have to keep the item in your database, it doesn't cost a thing... it's doesn't take any development time.

[small grove]

if keeping an item in your database incurs technical debt, you have way more issues than a non seasonal server in your code base... items are data, items are not code

[shell knoll]

Anyway, legacy servers running specific patch indefinitely can definitely be interesting if CR goes for it.

But in the end the game stays the same, and by playing more you will get better. So even if the season reseta the next season you will blast through earlier dungeons a lot quicker with a lot less gear.

[shell knoll]

This is true for IT code, not perse game code. These items can be referenced throughout the game in different ways. Making the item become part of the code.

What if code references an item that doesn't exist? Game systems are so complex and overtime become riddled with tech debt that it will near impossible to be cost free after a period of time

[small grove]

That's right, but I doubt having to keep a few items around in the case they really wanted to delete it for balancing reasons will be so detrimental to the code.

If we are realistic, they won't do huge changes every 4 month, most of the changes will be new heroes and new dungeons which can be easily be added to two servers.

If they change the star map, you just reset it on non seasonal and people have to click again on unlocked nodes.

If they change stats on some items, no big deal, you just have other stats

Most of the changes can be ported "as is" to the non seasonal servers and for the little few that can't, it's an ROI analysis, if the non seasonal server brings more money than the development cost, it makes sense to have one.

Everything boils down to a single question : Do non-seasonal servers bring money ?

Everything else is just us, players, projecting our own fear and desires.

[terse tartan]

There's less than 50 minutes between these two statements:

If the "contract" is clear enough (ie: you play non seasonal but when we do a change you might lose some things), there's no issue.

Exact same changes on both sides.

People might lose stuff, but this happens in game with soft resets also (ie Wow)

and

No, you just let them keep the piece, and that's it... nothing to do...

Leaderboard is meaningless in a non seasonal server, so by extension balance is also meaningless...

Sure the example given was deliberately minimal, but you can maybe see why that doesn't exactly fill me with confidence that opening this door is a good idea. It didn't take you long before you tried to get out of the contract.

[small grove]

I don't see how how I tried to get out of the contract.

One is a broad statement that can serve as a fallback in case someone complains.

The other is a possible solution, incurring no development time, to a precise issue that was raised.

If there is a way to make everyone happy that involves no extra cost, why delete a chestpiece for non seasonal players if it can be avoided ?

Honestly, stop trying to "win the argument", if everything you can answer after this whole discussion is "haha you contradicted yourself", it really means you don't have much to say on the topic.

[misty galleon]

gotta admit, been f un grinding with multiple toons with the core-friend group. will be sad when we have to re-level after a reset. i'd take this non-seasonal server all day now

[small grove]

Instead of trying to find issues based on wild assumptions about what the dev have in plan or how the game is coded or how it will hypothetically affect uninterested people, try understanding why people want a non seasonal server.

We have no idea about what CR needs to do to have permanent servers. We also don't know how they plan to manage their resets. For all we know, it could honestly just be running a new server, there's no point in speculating.

Arguing against a seasonal server with anything else than "I don't want them to spend time on this I'd rather they work on something that benefits me" is wild to me. And this argument is also really self-centered, but that's a whole other discussion.

[rigid robin]

I think this is a fair point and has not been coinsidered properly from Tk

but the real answer is

U already have arcane items at blacksmith

if a piece is missing after expansion it gets randomly replaced with a other piece from that tier or u can choose 1/3 whenever u go to blacksmith/dedicated npc that wont take much to make

its a really simple solution that doesnt break the game

and i'll go as far as to say

there shouldnt be a seasonal server.

there should be a non-reset characters

because all this discussion about splitting playerbase is pointless

just make it so u can tick a box on a character pre picking it (yeah that is actually difficult because u might need to rework the main menu)

and that character doesnt get affected by reset

What about people who'll just push on non reset characters servers of playing on seasonal one?

simple disable people getting access to their characters with average rank untill certain threshold has been met on seasonal server

so let say u character timed paragon 3 with idk 120 Ilevel average

[small grove]

I hadn't considered that with the existing mechanism. But I am pretty sure I said that it could be replaced with another random piece a few times already prior to today.... Everyone is always bringing this "what if they delete an item" issue as if it's some kind of gotcha, and this particular issue has already been answered countless times before.

[rigid robin]

untill 100 or idk 200 people on "reset" characters achieve 150 Ilevel u are unable to play that character

or u are scaled down like u would be if u Q lower dungeons instead of locking character out

but if u wanna mesh the players u gotta have some locking mechanism otherwise it'll just end up being reset server dying.

I'd love to hear some counterpoints to characters being non-seasonal instead of it becoming a new server

I have thought about it for a while and i dont see any major downsides that dont come with the upside of never splitting playerbase and making a solution that pleases most people

and yes ofc non reset characters dont have a leaderboard

[small grove]

It's an interesting idea... and as you said there are already a few mechanism that will allow that to be done.

For it to work for me, I'd need to be able to play the same hero both a a seasonal hero, and as a permanent one, and that could prove difficult.

But yeah, it could definitely work, there'll be some different challenges than a "full" permanent server, but it might be a way to do it.

[rigid robin]

I just dont see a reason to not do it if anything like that would be possible

It instantly comes with the downside of having to "rework" main character selection to as u said be able to play both seasonal and permament

[terse tartan]

It was less about convincing you, or "winning the argument" by catching you out in contradiction as you say, than it was to highlight the risks inherent to seasons in catering to non-seasonals. You're not gonna be happy with a low impact compromise. The goal posts moved immediately.

I don't know where you got the idea that I have done anything else but say that the reason I don't want them to work on non-seasonal is because I would rather they work on making seasonal the best it can be. And yes it is motivated by self-interest. Yours aren't? All the suggestions I have seen out of you would require ongoing additional dev time, both minor and large, that I think could be spent elsewhere.

[viscid portal]

You can hope for all you want they have already said it's not happening

[small grove]

You should check your sources about that 🤣

[viscid portal]

I've watched their streams. He's said this game isn't that

[small grove]

That's absolutely not a definite "No"

[viscid portal]

Not much intent on our side to do that.

Its a no man.

[small grove]

The "initialy" changes the signification heavily as does the next sentence 😉

Let's say it keeps the door open, at a minimum

Which in the current context, if they have absolutely no intention of doing it, they should definitely say no clearly

(Or Hamish is really really bad at managing expectations, which is also a possibility)

[summer skiff]

Intent is a funny thing though. Remember their intent was to make a pve moba, which then morphed into a moda. An excellent evolution of a new genre. Maybe the format was intended to appeal to a single niche of gamer psychologies, but it could resonate with two or more.

[misty galleon]

the amount of blocked messages i have in this chat now is hilarious. the toxic trolls are so out trying to just crap on people's days. utterly depressing how much some people go through.

[patent forum]

Yeah, it's pretty bad. But I feel like every game with any competitiveness goes through this.

[misty galleon]

'why do we have no community'
can't imagine why we dont

[small grove]

If you'd stopped blocking everyone that civilly disagrees with you every time, it'll probably be a lot better I agree.

If I remember correctly, you blocked me because I was trying to explain to you how resets in Fellowship are somewhat similar witht he ones in WoW.

Blocking people when they disagree with you and calling them toxic for sure isn't the best way to foster a community.

Writing in a thread which has been more or less civil and constructive that it contains a lot of toxic trolls is also probably not the best way to engage with a community.

[patent forum]

But referring to the OP, couldn't there be something done also? I mean it's a split community about this subject rn.

There has to be a way to make both parties happy.
Maybe a soft seasonal reset with Gear scaling. Like 10ilvl each season, Locked between additional eternals? They should have enough sample data to know where players struggle the most and stop.

Rather than having seperate servers, they could do a few things.

Soft resets Just resetting leaderboard.

Ranked vs Non/ranked (Locking non-ranked behind not having scores but then you'd have to create a UI for ranked/non-ranked. or find a way for ranked players to only play with themselves and same for non-ranked. Non-ranked with Ranked would = non ranked dungeon maybe?

Soft Reset with seasonal ilvl increases for each season. (Yes, similar to wow)

Ranked/Non-Ranked Servers More resources, more time, is the value worth it for a non-sub'd game?

I mean i understand why a reset would make the Dev's lives easier for implementing new things to an extent. I don't understand how it would allow for new things not to be implemented.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the reset, but I can see how it can be beneficial and destructive to the community at the same time.

What I see with hard resets are simply (do I want to play this season? Yes/No). But does that matter? it's not sub'd they already have my money.

If you remove that entire mindset, and allow incremental scaling across seasons, would ranked vs non-ranked even matter?

[viscid portal]

Its not that split. Every time it gets brought up it's almost unanimously rejected.

[misty galleon]

i dont see how they can't just have a selection to retain characters, or on a new character just have an item that grants you all the left side of starmap. you can just boost up to 135 with supplies fast and done

[patent forum]

I can't really agree with that, Most people rage about not having a hard reset, most with no input value some with some. But just scroll through the feedback posts. There are a lot of people against it.

Yeah, but at the same time, you're just repeating the same content (assuming the base content doesn't change much)

Now if they roll in new dungeons and gear every season, then we're talking something different. Which would make the OP more valid. Less repeatable, more variations.

I guess the real question is, are new seasons going to roll in new dungeons on top of the old or will it be an additional set of keys?

[terse tartan]

Is this where CR failed to convince a lot of you on seasons I wonder? Now that I think about it I don't think I have seen them clearly state what they hope to do with seasons. Most of my understanding for seasons I have gotten from Hamish's livestreams. And assumptions based on what other games with seasons do.

• I have seen them mention hoping to release a new hero every season.
• I have heard Hamish say he's confident in the team producing new dungeons quickly (he did not define what quickly meant in this context).
• I have seen Hamish say they want to experiment and make changes to the game. But no specifics.

If the game looks almost the same from season to season it will eventually struggle to kindle any kind of excitement among returning players. And it would thus be increasingly more difficult to convince them to purchase any cosmetics to fund further development. That would be a death knell for the game. At that point maintenance mode is not far off. So I have been assuming that seasons need to be rather meaty as a matter of course.

[small grove]

And which one of your 3 list items cannot be done in a non seasonal setup ?

Seasons are good from an engagement pov not because they bring new content (that can be done without seasons), but because they wipe the leaderboard. Encouraging people to compete again for score. They can also be seen as a way to start over which gives a perception of freshness.

New content and even drastic changes in game mechanism can be done without seasons.

Saying season are needed to have new content or changes to talents or other game mechanics is coping.

[terse tartan]

Oh, I am sure they could do all three, and more besides. The issue has always come down to the cost of doing so. When renovating a home sometimes the quickest and cheapest option is to tear it down and build it up anew. When you promise to make the house livable for the occupants for the duration you've added costs and probably entirely ruled out some possibilities.

[knotty idol]

First off, I'm in the camp "Let them have eternal servers, even though I won't play on them".

Some problems that could come up with non seasonal servers:
-What if they redesign a hero? If Rime's Bursting Ice gets replaced with a new ability, then her boots legendary wouldn't make much sense. With seasons they can freely remove and introduce new abilities and a new set of legendaries, but on eternal servers maintaining all the legendaries that ever got released is difficult.
-How will dungeons work? Let's say they introduce a new capstone dungeon, with a new set bonus. In a seasonal system, a new dungeon entering the dungeon rotation would simply replace one of the old ones. But what happens to the set from the old dungeon? So you either remove the old set from people, or you maintain every single set from every dungeon thats ever introduced, which would be impossible to balance. Eventually non-seasonal servers would have hundreds of sets and dungeons to maintain. With a reset they don't have to worry about legacy items, if a dungeon and its respective set leaves the rotation, it doesn't matter because everyone starts from 0 anyways.
-How would the leaderboards and dungeon rating work? If they don't rotate dungeons, would people reach 100.000 dungeon rating because eventually they'll have a hundred dungeons to run? Imagine you are a new player starting and you have to play up 100 dungeons.
-How would the Star Map work? Would players on non-seasonal servers just instantly unlock the entire new star map? What if they make gem changes for example, what happens to the gem rewards on the star map?
-What if they rework how weapon traits work without resetting people? People would just invest 30k gold into a weapon, but then they completely change the system. Do the old weapons and new weapons coexist, diluting the loot pool?

Basically, resets allow the devs to freely replace items, systems, abilities etc, without having to worry about what will happen to people who already have these things.

Imagine there is a non-seasonal server, and you don't play for a year. Then you log back in. What would your S1 character look like in S4 when you log into them? Wouldn't they be completely bricked?

Again, I'm all for non-seasonal servers if there is a way to get them working. But at least to me, it's also very obvious how much more design space they get from knowing that everyone starts from scratch.

For reference, non-seasonal servers in ARPGs are usually very lean versions of the game, because most of the interesting stuff happens with the seasonal mechanics. ARPG players who do not play seasonal get very few updates if any, so the game just gets a bit stale after a while.

[livid scroll]

I hate reading these threads man It almost feels like every single person advocating for Eternal servers cant think of the downsides for everyone including themselves the journey to gearing ur character is as much if not more fun then just pushing rating. But if they do introduce it I hope u enjoy yourself over there whilst me and my friends are gonna have a good time in the new season.

[small grove]

I hate reading those kind of answers because every single personne advocating against eternal servers can't give a single valid downside for everyone except the obvious "it will take development time away from other things" ...

[livid scroll]

i think iostux summed it up really well.

[small grove]

@knotty idol all very valid points, but those are more like little kinks to fix or decisions that have to be made. Nothing serious enough to make permanent servers non viable.

[small grove]

I don't see any downside for seasonal players in what he said, only issues for permanent servers themselves

[knotty idol]

Oh yeah i agree, it's not like these are all dealbreakers that make them absolutely impossible. Just wanted to play devils advocate, so people understand that there are some challenges the devs need to tackle and invest resources into. I think some people are under the false assumption that "not resetting people" is as simple as spinning up an extra small server for people to play on. But there are some tough decisions that need to be made, so I can understand if the 40 people at Chief Rebel don't quite have the manpower yet to deal with those decisions, while also designing the new seasons and content at the same time.

[livid scroll]

I think eternal server will have horrendous queues as well imagine 10.000 players play this game and lets go off the up and down votes of this threat 20% of those players play on the eternal server (which i think is high already i think it would be lower no numbers tho just feelycraft). In the current tank economy wich is likely to stay the same as well those eternal servers will have about 50 tank players to play with because a lot of tank players are moved to the seasonal servers. How do u expect to keep a balanced community going around that? The gear is not that important in my opinion the journey and the friends we make along the way are.

[knotty idol]

I used to HATE seasonal games with a passion. I thought it was a fad, and i was hoping for it to be over one day. But then i first tried seasons in Diablo 3, my first seasonal game, and after seeing what kind of cool and crazy stuff they could do, I got hooked.

I think the first priority for Chief Rebel needs to be proving that resets are worth it. That all the design space they get is actually being fully utilized to create really fun new experiences. And only then, if people still aren't sold, can they think of ways to address that portion of the playerbase that, even after seeing what Fellowship Seasons are like, would still prefer to play on a non-seasonal server.

[knotty idol]

To be fair this is actually a common misconception. Queue times have nothing to do with playercount, but rather the ratios in the role distribution. I would assume that the ratio between seasonal and non-seasonal players is roughly the same amongst all roles, so queue times would be largely unaffected by having a smaller playerbase.

[small grove]

again, you are talking about what will be issues on Eternal servers... if you are not interested in them, those issues don't concern you.

I think people asking for them are well aware of the possible queue issues.

My question is, how does eternal servers affect you in any way as a seasonal player ?

(yeah, development time... but that's true for all suggestions and feedback...)

[knotty idol]

Yeah I'm a bit surprised that some people are so against non-seasonal servers. It's not like non-seasons have shot your dog. I think arguing the pros and cons in terms of resource costs is interesting. But realistically, the only relevant thing that needs to happen is that a:) Chief Rebel needs to collect data on the possible demand for non-seasonal servers (How many people would actually play them? And how many of them wouldn't play the game at all if there was no non-seasonal option?), and b:) Would the resources that have to be invested be worth it from an economical standpoint?

And those are both questions that we, the community, can't answer unfortunately.

[livid scroll]

Ill have less people to play with since some stuck to eternal server. And I could see alot of future drama posts about stuff like seasonal chars get X i want X as well in eternal server.

[small grove]

People will complain, with or without permanent servers... complain are a function of number of players, not features.

And you'll have probably around the same number of people, because people not interested in seasons will probably leave without permanent servers.

And there are been some interesting suggestions in this very thread to make cross queue work, or even allow seasonal and non seasonal people to play on the same servers.

[knotty idol]

Yeah i get that, but that's a bit like being angry at your friends for going to a different university after high school. If those players have more fun on a non-seasonal server, who are we to deny them? Of course I want tons of people to play with on seasonal servers, but I also want other people to be happy, so if playing non-seasonal makes them happy, then I am glad for them

[livid scroll]

I would be against cross que tho imo if u play eternal server thats fine but theres a saying u made ur bed so lie in it.

[terse tartan]

I mostly agree with everything you've said here today. But this particular statement I am not so sure about. Player count does affect queue times, you can observe this even now by comparing your queue times at off-hours to peak-hours. There's also a few more compounding factors for non-seasonal queues. There's the distribution of players and roles across leagues to consider. Tanks climb faster, they would be out of the lower leagues quite quickly and they would never be back. So while a queue at Eternal might be fine, one at the lower leagues might not.

[knotty idol]

Yeah I can understand your skepticism. What I was trying to get at, is that even if only 40 people are playing, as long as 10 of them are tanks, 10 of them are healers and 10 of them are dps, everyone should have insta queuetimes. So you can get fast queue times, even with very small playercounts.

What you are correct about is that there are a lot of factors that influence this ratio, especially in lower leagues towards the end of a season. This is just gut feel, but it's probably the case that DPS players are less likely to choose a tank as their alt later in the season, while a tank is more likely to choose a DPS. So once lower leagues are mostly Alts, I can see why there might be more of a tank/healer shortage compared to the higher leagues where most people are playing on their mains.

[patent forum]

Possibly? They didn't go into detail on the resets other than a hard reset as it would be easier for the dev team. But without a recurring subscription. How far can this go? Obviously its previewed micro transactions are there, but if the content will just be a repeat of the last seasons content withan additional dungeon or hero and some modifications then this game will slowly burn after a few months imo.

Now if they overhaul and replace dungeons so every season is different, this would really kick it up a notch. But again, no recurring subscription or other means of MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenu), then I don't think they would be able to afford this for too long.

I have the same information you do. I am trying not to assume anything as it is early access and CR may already be thinking of this from a business standpoint. I think simply a road map of what to expect at least for 6m to 1yr would do a lot of people justice to see how the game is going to develop.

BUT.
If they made this as an MVP and are going full adhoc. Then I obviously worry. WTB Roadmap

[terse tartan]

I would imagine they do something similar to what GGG does with PoE leagues. Every season has a theme. Maybe a dungeon or two in that theme (preferably more). Some supporter packs with skins matching that theme. I have not played a single PoE league where I have not also at least once checked out that league's supporter pack skins.

This game's long term success hinges on seasons. Not to put too fine a point on it, but seasonal players are the easiest cow to milk, to milk repeatedly, and also the largest cow. That's likely a large part of why you're seeing this kind of push-back to non-seasonal. They need to get seasons right, and with such a small team it's reasonable to be concerned about split focus.

If seasons fail it's very likely that it will prove impossible to sustain any kind of significant ongoing development. At least without predatory monetisation methods.

[patent forum]

Agreed. I just hope they don't put in a form of in game seasonal currency bloat like PoE did.
Every League a new currency to manage that just gets stacked on top of another creating a cluster of understanding for new players to not understand until their 3rd to 5th revisit

[terse tartan]

Yeah, all the different currencies in PoE can be a bit much. It's kind of compounded by the crafting system though. Almost all currencies interact with items in some way or form. Shouldn't have that problem in Fellowship. The analogue is ingots you use to reroll items etc.

[summer skiff]

PoE is largely solitaire though, whereas this is nominally a social/team game. You can work/sell at the level of an individual player, wheras this has the extra consideration of needing a team.

If a friend takes a break from league A or B in PoE, no effect, I can grind/trade with no consequence. Here, if a friend says no, that may also mean I say no.

PoE also teaches you not to miser over your gear - one treasures the temporary because the bigger skill is knowing how to grind/trade for your next build, and you take that knowledge with you to the next league. Some of the aversion to resets is tied up with how powerless people are to gear their characters here, as it's total RNG, whereas there's trading that mitgates this in PoE.

[patent forum]

For now it's that way.

[terse tartan]

That is also true for non-seasonal though, except that they are maybe even more likely to say no to playing if their friends aren't. It would likely be harder to be a solo player on a minority realm without resets. Unless I misunderstood your point?

[summer skiff]

You totally understood it yes. It's just a playground for the buddy gamers that care more about who they are playing with than the current balance of the game.

[terse tartan]

I am sure you'll get quite a lot of support among pro-season players for systems that help mitigate RNG variance.

[patent forum]

Yes, but the learning curve is real. I understood this after 3 leagues of playing. Where Learning something new from different leagues every time I revisited the game. But even then, it is very complicated.
Not arguing, you're correct.

I am curious on how this game will go. If the game is just simply grinding gear, repeat same dungeons with some variance in new dungeons or capstones. This would be upsetting as I assume the original gear would still be in rotation.
Essentially forcing you to regrind the same gear with the exception of the newer variant gear.

And this is all speculation.

oh and new hero 😄

[terse tartan]

If they do mess up and bloat the game.. Well that's what resets are for 🙂

[patent forum]

Can't argue against this point ahaha

Throne of Liberty had a decent system

Maybe it will be as such (Dreaming of a larger system)

[viscid portal]

Do you guys think a season is just reset everything, change nothing, and do it all again?

They will make big changes, add items, add heroes, swap dungeons and make new affixes

[patent forum]

big changes Not confirmed

Changes, sure. But we don't know the model yet. They've not really explained in detail how it will work other than there will be a hard reset and new hero on a reset

[viscid portal]

This reset is not a seasonal reset. Everyone needs to remember that. This is a testing reset. I'm not even expecting different mounts/skins

They are getting data

We're in a legit early access. This is testing

[patent forum]

I believe this point was stated multiple times throughout this thread. But the interviews stated that's not what the resets are intended for. (Did you watch)

A lot of us are just theorizing tbh. There's no banter or confliction there