Idea: Diablo 2 esk ladder system. (in General)

I have always been of the belief, as have others, that CB should reset on a regular basis, so that it becomes more of a race to see who could grow the fastest in a set amount of time. This idea is always met with much disapproval, and I can understand why. The idea of investing a large amount of time into a character and watching it grow, over years even, is what many people play the game for. And the idea of losing all that invested time, and money, is just enough to push some people to violence. I understand all that, and I don't seek to change it. Read on.

Those unfamiliar with Diabo 2 also maybe be unfamiliar with it's ladder system. I don't know if it's a system Blizzard uses in its other games. It works something like this: When you create a character, you have the option to make it either a ladder character, or a non-ladder character. Non ladder characters play the game exactly as the game is played now.

Now the ladder. In almost all ways ladder characters and non-ladder (NL) characters would not co-exist. Ladder characters and NL characters would not be able to fight eachother, trade items with eachother, or transfer money to eachother. When the ladder begins (think of it like a season in sports) you would have the option to start a ladder character. They fight eachother, for the length of the ladder. After a set amount of time, the ladder resets and you get another chance. Kind of like tournaments in CB1. Indeed, we could even have several ladders going on at once, each with there own funky rules.

Now, when the ladder ends, what happens to all these characters? Well that's easy, they get folded back into the rest of CB. They become non-ladder, and choose to fight it out with the rest of the group, or start over, in the new ladder.

This way, those that like to see a year to year character progression wouldn't have to change there ways at all. They continue to fight as they do now. Nothing changes for them.

Now, potential problems, aside from no one liking the idea:

FS/WTB: I don't want to completely different forums, one for ladder and one for NL. But either there would have to be a seperate FS/WTB forum for Ladder and NL, or items and requests would need to be clearly marked as being Ladder or non.

NUB: If your new, do you get your NUB in the ladder? How is that fair to the other ladder characters? Do you only get a NUB if you create a NL character? Originally I saw the plan for this to be that all ladder characters would recieve a "ladder bonus" very similar to the NUB. It would last the length of the entire ladder, and would end when your character gets folded back with CB. This would mean that ladder participation would be more profitable, but you would never make it all the way to the top by solely partcipating in ladders. I have no solution for this.

But isn't this just CB1 tourney's in a larger fashion?: Kind of, yes. In Diablo the ladder has only ever reset twice, in the 5 years the game has existed. I would propose a 3 month ladder. This is far longer than the 1 or even 2 week CB1 tourneys.

What if I want a ladder and a NL character? Can I have both?: I would say yes, but your BA limit does not change. There is no "ladder BA and NL ba" There is only your usual 10 per 10 (or whatever) and you spend it as you see fit. Partcipating in a ladder succesfully would mean putting your other characters on hold.

Can I have more than 5 characters? Say 5 ladder, 5 non?: No, you get 5 character slots, same as now. Use them as you see fit.

What about auctions?: Split them. There will be a seperate auction block for ladder and NL. Same as the store.

Can a NL character forge for a Ladder character?: No, as there is no transfers between ladder and NL characters, you can't forge one for the other. Also, if you wanted a bank character for the ladder, he'd have to be a ladder character.

I could go on and on, I've thought of this from many angles and the only problem I've forseen that I can't find a solution for is the NUB.

One last thing: Cash. R/L money. Obviously you can't stop it, nor do I suggest trying. But I think it would be very interesting to see if someone would be willing to pay money for a character that in the end won't be very large. I forsee very little to no USD spent on ladder items after a ladder or two.

I've written a lot of this using language like "when" and "It will" like this is guranteed. I think this would be an excellent idea, but I in no means mean to imply that it's so good it WILL happen. Just as I'm visualizing it out in my head, I see it as it's happening, which makes it seem real, which makes me type like it is.

Thank you very much for your time, I'd be more than willing to answer any questions you may have about my idea. Please keep posts on topic, and avoid simple "yay or nay" posts. Unless their yays, post those.

--Undertow (despite what CB seems to think my name is)

What is it with these noobs and their long winded posts. Li, you need to play a bit more before making suggestions. This sounds like the sort of idea Undertow would have, what ever became of him?

I'll assume your joking stephen....

Was that a joke, DLS? o.O

I figured it was considering he is Undertow, and they have both been here the same amount of time. :P

Over your head and through the woods ;)

Firstly, I think Stephan's been a member of the CB community longer than me.. by a couple or a few months. Aug '04 yo.

Secondly, yah, Doom, duh, that was the joke. ;)

Thirdly, it's kind of a double meaning, because I'm totally one of the biggest believers in "wait 2 months before posting an idea."

Fourth, WAY TO GO OFF TOPIC!

Undertow: don't you think that was what the tournaments were...

Yes and no. Tournaments never lasted 3 months.

Other than that... yah... actually....

Okay, it was 3 am, I gotta stop doing that.

After making the post and stopped and remembered that Jon is trying to reimplement tournaments. Maybe I'll just wait and see what he comes up with.

The one big difference is with this system is that you would get to continue your "tournament" character after the three month ladder period finished.

Don't know if you would need two separate Auction systems though, just include two more tick boxes under the search bar on the Auctions page - "show ladder items" and "show regular items", just like the option to tick weapons and armor.

Also with tournaments being as short as they were, you didn't have a lot of time for character devlopment.

3 months is a lot longer than a week.

I'll make life easier for everyone. As someone who has hosted a tourney on CB2 I would only ask for these simple things:

1: Allow all players to make a tourney character much in the same way that they can make NCB players. The characters are normal characters with only 3 exceptions
a. Tourney characters always get normal xp and cash, no wacky times for them.
b. Tourney characters can be made by new players but come without a NUB.
c. The fact that the character is a tourney character is public. Just supply a tag in the same place that the NCB/NUB expiration date goes.
2: Allow an option to turn a tourney character into a normal character under the 'manage characters' page.

That's it. That's all I want. The rest can be monitored by vigilant people. Sure, I could think of a lot more like Li Li did, but I'm not going to ask for what I don't need just yet.

I don't think non-tourney characters should be able to fight tourney characters. Over a week it might not make a difference, but over a month, or 3 like I'd like, it could make an impact. I believe that they should be kept seperate.

Baby steps tow, baby steps. Let's just work on stage one of my plan.

a. Tourney characters always get normal xp and cash, no wacky times for them.

I don't know if you knew Vestax, but in CB1, tourney characters got twice the usual rewards, and I think crazy reward times still applied.

That's not to disagree with you in any way, simply stating a fact. If you're trying to get tourneys up and going, than by all means, do whatever you want :)

I exceeded a score and growth well beyond any of the other contestants in the latest tourney. Yet wacky time carried two players above me. I needed a score 78% higher then the top player to get even close. Wacky time favors those that can play at those times the most.

Sure, I wasn't greatly opposed to xp time before the tourney, but in a one week competition it was unavoidable to let people play those times out.

As for extra rewards, that can't happen if you allow tourney characters to become regular ones, or if you allow tourney characters to last a variable amount of time to accommodate longer tourneys. Yet if you really long for the good old days that badly then maybe the future further off can offer what you desire.

Let's face it, you can dream up a grand scheme, and of course we can all think of many bells and whistles that we would all like. In fact I'm sure many of you have even imagine tourney's with completely different game mechanics. The players of CB are notorious for thinking of both good and bad reasons why the game should change or work differently.

For a person like myself, working to make the game within the game exist now, rather then wait for some genie to make my fantasies appear, what I outline above is simple enough to please me. Even then I know ways of how I can carry out a fair and balanced tourney without any additional coding.

The next tourney will be 2 weeks long with a larger BA allowance and no fighting allowed during wacky xp time.

Wacky times were not available for tourney characters in CB1 due to the constant doubled rewards.
This concept should stay in new tournaments IMHO.