Stash Tab Details

Thanks for the clarification Grimiku.  Now that this is known (just 1 stash tab per season) with the specific objectives being vague at this point, this IMHO is not the best way to execute it.

Why?

First of all, you folks are gating the entire process with what looks like an ulterior motive to force seasonal game play.  Mind you, I don’t have any set way that I play as I do play both (though this season, I stopped once I finished the first four chapters).

If the decision is to reward the singular stash tab in one of the later chapters, then the ulterior motives of the designers are going to be even more obvious; that they are trying to not only force players to play seasons (something that you folks also deemed as being optional – if need be, I will source every single one of the interviews pertaining to this later), but to also play seasons in a way that they may not necessarily enjoy.  The first 4 chapters for example are doable by anyone so the gating there isn’t that bad.   Chapter V also isn’t that bad.

From that point forward, it could begin turning off those players who normally do not play the game that way.  You folks have the statistical breakdown that shows how many really casual players there are who still have trouble getting to and playing at Torment VI.  I still run into players who don’t even know what Greater Rifts are and how they work within the game.

Remind Wyatt Cheng of what he mentioned when Monster Power rolled out in patch 1.0.5.  Here, I will provide what he said when asked in an interview:

Are there any new achievements planned for, like, the guy who beats Inferno by himself on Monster Power eight? Or anything like that?

Wyatt Cheng: No, and I’m super glad that you asked. Because part of the messaging we’re trying to get out to people – and this is a challenge on our side, of how we communicate this – is we don’t want Monster Power to feel like a mountain you have to climb. And we feel like if we had an achievement for it, people would be like, “Oh, I like to collect achievements, I guess I have to go and do this thing.”

It’s very much, different people like to play different ways. If you like building your character to tank lots of damage and slog through, and feel very triumphant, and get rewards for doing so: great. If you’d rather build, for example, a glass cannon, turn the difficulty down a little bit. And maybe you’re not getting as much per monster, you’re killing twice as fast. So, more power to you.

And because it’s really dependent on the player style, the gear level, the amount of challenge that you want, we don’t want people to think that they have to do it.

Source: http://www.pcgamer.com/diablo-3-patch-1-05-interview-with-jay-wilson-and-wyatt-cheng/

So how is trying to attach a reward like 1 single stash tab based on some currently vague seasonal objectives, any different from the above IF those objectives one must complete, entails forcing some players who may not enjoy playing the game that way (at the higher chapter levels of a seasonal journey)?

I’m not talking about the achievement angle.  What I’m referring to is the parts I italicized in relation to the planned implementation of the stash tab unlocks.  And in the first italicized sentence, replace Monster Power with Seasonal Journey Chapters.  I’m looking forward to anyone of the designers response on the complete 180 on that prior philosophy.  Thanks.

-AND-

Anyway, I said earlier I would source some of the things they said specifically about Seasons being optional; here is what the patch 2.1.0 PTR notes said:

No Seasons? No Problem!

Not in the mood to start from scratch? You’ll still benefit from Seasons (which, by the way, are completely optional)

Source: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/14244559/patch-210-ptr-preview-6-17-2014#seasons

Here is what community manager Nevalistis posted (basically relaying what the design team stated):

Seasons will be optional. Similar to how you flag a character as Hardcore, when you create a character, you have the option to also make them Seasonal.

Source: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/13019672481?page=3#48

John Hight (Production Director) said that “Seasons are a shard of the existing game where everything is a fresh start.” where I underlined the pertinent part.  Shard is that; a piece/fragment of.

Source: http://www.shacknews.com/article/84210/diablo-3-dev-team-discusses-reaper-of-souls-and-answers

But they’ve slowly tried to move away from that original intent of Seasons by putting in more of these extra incentives besides cosmetics (which should be more than enough) into the mode.  It started with just a few legendary items.  Then eventually to legendary items that were pertinent to builds.

If Seasons were meant to be a shard of the existing game, then something like stash including all unlocks, should exist within the base game (and not in the optional part).   Gating something like stash space acquisition behind an optional game mode is as contradictory as it gets.

The “giveth and taketh” in this regards is with removing seasonal exclusive legendary items and conveniently having stash tab unlocks take its place which is much less burdensome for the devs (not having to design all these items for the next season), plus is purposedly drawn out to take up the next year since that is probably the timeline they are looking at for the next expansion.  It’s trying to artificially create longevity.

My take is that any game mode should stand on its own merits without having to resort to excessive amounts of “carrot on a stick” sort of designs and rewards.

***** In another thread, I posted the following since some folks are turning this into a black and white (seasonal versus non-seasonal thing).

I play ALL the game modes (softcore, hardcore, non-seasonal, seasonal based on how I feel I want to play.  Season 2 was the only one I played from start to end.  Season 3, I played for the cosmetics and stopped playing the game completely to do other things.  This season, played just for the cosmetics and playing non-seasonal on a character class that I had barely played since launch.   So I don’t look at this as a black and white issue.

It’s not about entitlement.  It’s about how the reward mechanism is being gated/walled behind one of these specific game modes which was deemed as being [b]optional[/b] by the game designers.  See for quotes and source: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/19649636026?page=8#149

Seasons as a game mode should be able to stand on its own without having an excessive amount of incentives tied to it.  There aren’t special exclusives for hardcore for example.  People enjoy playing it since the single life aspect (keeping your character alive for as long as possible while pushing its limits) is more than enough incentive.  The incentives for seasonal play should be as John Hight originally stated in one of the sourced interviews I linked in the above post; that fresh start feel.  The other of course is the supposed starting from that fresh level playing field for the leaderboard aspect (which I know is tainted by those other hot topic issues that is outside the scope of this particular topic).  The other final incentive is the cosmetic rewards.

I have ZERO problems if you can earn them the exact same way in non-season.  Furthermore, drawing out that process to what will take an year, speaks volumes about the ulterior motive of the designers; basically here’s a small piece of the carrot that you can get if you return to playing each season for the next year since they are trying to decouple the patching of major content for every single season (now more so with the removal of seasonal exclusive items).