Season 11 Thoughts and Feedback and Season 12 Suggestions

Just going to share what I thought about this past season, what was done right, and what could be improved.

I felt that this Season was okay, not as good as Seasons 8 or 10 though. I am still not a fan of the shorter season, and this season especially had some really bad race times for me (US Eastern). Many races were in the middle of the night while the late evening slot was dedicated to PvP. The scheduling of these events really needs to be worked on. The events need to overlap so players have to choose whether to race or PvP (as there can't be that many players who play both), or stagger the seasons so they are not running at the same time. The race season also needs to be made longer again or just have races give more points than they currently do.

This Season's Signature race was one of my least favorite. I felt it was challenging, but playing it felt very boring. The race was short yes, but increasing monster life made playing this race boring. This mod also handicapped melee more than casters like previous Signature race mods. With the current state of melee in this game, just about anything you do to try to make the race more difficult makes it even harder for melee than it does for casters. I hope the Act 4 patch changes this for the better, as I am expecting serious balance changes for that patch.

I enjoyed the return of Descent, although that race has not been balanced in a very long time. Not realizing that the players have gotten better now and can reach the end, the last 3 zones shoot up in level and you cannot avoid the exp penalty. That race in its current state makes blue pack RNG and pack density RNG matter even more than in normal races. The gem rewards can also use a lot of work, as many of the newer gems are not present past the first chest. I also do not remember Rogue Exiles being able to spawn randomly in that race when I played it in Season 8. The league mods have stayed out of the Void League races for the most part, however exiles can randomly spawn which they really shouldn't.

The other races this season were okay. I liked the return of BLAMT as well as Brutal and Turbo as party races. Rogue was missing and Exiles Everywhere was gone as well, which I was disappointed with as those can be fun and challenging as well. The 24 min bursts should still be in a set of 3 so they don't get too boring and Ledge bursts, while a nice idea, should not be run again.

The prizes this season were better than previous seasons by a little bit. Maligaro's Gloves and Bino's Knife are nice prizes but the amount of jewellery as rewards leading up to it still annoys me, probably more than it should, but still.

Suggestions for Season 12

Most races should stay around the 60-90 min length, as I noticed there were a few more longer than that this season than last.

Bring back Descent and Descent Champions and run them in the same season. Why have you run only one of the Void League races in these past 3 seasons anyway? Also seeing the pattern from these past 3 seasons tells me that Endless Ledge will be ran next season. Do not do this. Endless Ledge is one of the things that made Season 9 so bad in addition to the absence of Descent and Descent Champions. Run one or both of the Descent races again but not Endless Ledge. I know some people like Endless Ledge but I'm sure there are more people who don't.

If I could design the Season 12 Signature race, it would be Fixed Seed Vaal Oversoul Kill. These past few Signature mods have made me wonder if we should go back to vanilla Signature races and most races have allowed for players to not progress in Act 2 and still do very well. The boss kill races are some of my favorite and I feel they can work well as a Signature race.

For other races, Turbo and Brutal are good mods to have in a party race, and bring back Rogue too. Also, bring back more than 4 of the BLAMT and Exiles Everywhere races. People seem to really like those and there are always few to none of them in these seasons in favor of more vanilla races and boss kills.

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Bring back Descent and Descent Champions and run them in the same season. Why have you run only one of the Void League races in these past 3 seasons anyway?

I believe the reason they've stuck to just one void league race is so that new racers can be exposed to just one at a time and learn that particular race type over the course of the season. I'm not saying I agree with this approach, but it does seem like the intent. You can see that in the rest of the schedule as well, since, as you mentioned, there are so few BLAMT, Turbo, or other difficult mods; instead it's a slew of vanilla races of varying duration.

You can see that they're making some effort to bring in new racers by reducing the number of unpopular boss kill races, removing difficult mods, etc. These efforts seem to be having the opposite effect, though, with less people racing (haven't done any research into this, just based on my perception), and some top racers just quitting (or playing less races).

The horrible scheduling and shortened season duration that they've stuck to doesn't do them any favors either. People will always have complaints about not being able to participate in enough races, but the way PvP and races have been scheduled these past two seasons seems to have made the problem worse.

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Season 11 Thoughts and Feedback

Well Season 11 schedule was a bit off for german people during the week. And in the evening they often started pretty late.

More races around the time during the evening like:
90m Turbo Party (S11C026)
1 Hour Descent (S11C052)
Brutus Kill (S11V070)