Challenge League Post-mortems

Fantastic!
I really think two analogous challenge leagues will be much better for the development of future leagues.
Cant wait! :P

Wow, impressive level of detail here, appreciate before and after perspectives on what the leagues were designed to do, vs how players approached them.

Love the idea of a standard/hardcore versions of the same ruleset, with maybe small differences. As a pretty casual player, the barrier to entry combined with risk/reward has always pushed me strongly to the softcore challenge leagues(as has the off and on trend of them seeming to have better loot). Typically I'll dabble in the hardcore, but usually not past a normal playthrough.

Have you considered moving dead hardcore characters to the softcore version of the temporary leagues, in conjunction with running 2 versions of same/similar rulesets? I won't claim to speak for a majority, but that would definitely have a strong influence on which temporary league to devote my time too. If the cost of dying was to still be able to experience challenge league content rather than return to the permanent leagues I'd attempt hardcore much more often.

I find myself rarely if ever playing standard or (normal) hardcore characters since 2.0. Before, the only time I played my characters in any of the permanent leagues was if I wanted to try a build whose gear/gem requirements were too steep to consider in the temporary leagues. With the changes to jewel access in 2.0, i really foresee only spending my (limited) time in the challenge leagues, and not in the permanent ones going forward. My stable of standard characters and dozens of tabs of gear/gems only see use after passive resets to test new build possibilities for the temporary leagues.

This is definitely the best dev manifesto post to date

thanks

I love your communication with the community. Thank you so much for all your hard work!

I'm still reading this, but having read through the Anarchy section I can already tell that I need to say this:

Great job with the increased transparency in recent months. It's much appreciated by many, I know.

there seems to be a theme of making the hardcore leagues harder because we like the difficulty. however, i have mixed feelings about this, yes i enjoy the challenge however the game provides this inherently as a base and at that base we like the rush of the challenge of not dieing. the hardcore leagues always push the difficulty beyond the base difficulty.

SC and HC are equally hard, i dont view losing progression as increased difficulty, if you take an instance of a shrine piety boss fight whatever league you are in the difficulty is the same right? there isnt a higher damage or AI shift in hc? so in a sense i see kind of see it as mutually exclusive...

that being said im not surprised of the fatiguing aspect in tempest, i would personally like to see something more innovate that doesnt revolve around the theme of making HC more difficult.

thanks for the insight though that was awesome, i love the development manifesto posts!

-HeaT

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The next challenge leagues will have a set of 40 challenges, which range in difficulty. Completion of specific milestones (every 10 challenges, for example) will reward you with a microtransaction. Regular casual players who don't make it to maps can still receive some prizes for their participation in the challenge leagues.

OH MY GOD.

I think I need a few happy tissues.

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As an aside, I've done an informal poll regarding Invasion which you can check out here (in case you missed it).

The general consensus is, albeit from a small sample size, that players would appreciate a stronger Invasion-boss presence in the game outside of just the vaal areas. Many people on reddit in recent days have also commented that they would at least like to see Invasion as a core map affix, rather than just as a purchaseable map from Zana, so as to be able to craft maps with Invaders inclusive.

You can read the additional reddit comments here and on the reddit poll thread, which is linked in my forum post.

My only gripe with challenge leagues is the delay between them.. Personally I'd love it if new ones started just weeks or a month after they end. I'd also be buying a lot more microtransactions if you guys could keep me playing more of the year.

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The Warbands league met our design goals. It didn't overshadow The Awakening, and it added meaningful group combat experiences. Its lore content was also well received. Feedback from players was that they wanted to encounter more Warband Leaders. These values have been increased as a trial for the one-month events.

LOL of course only the devs would be happy with warbands, you weren't the ones playing it

Thank you for aligning the leagues more carefully! I *really* would have preferred to play Tempest, but i don't do hardcore. Better to not gate the content behind a playstyle one would think.

Don't change the way the blue numbers are assigned! I think they're more meaningful as smaller numbers, so maybe only reward a number increase for every x challenges completed or the like.

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Qarl wrote:

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NeroNoah wrote:

...
Also, some leagues deserve a little more polish or expansions, like Beyond (so the monsters actually look eldritch rather than copypasted, and we can know more about the demons, fight more of them, or even go to their homeworld (?)).

We have at least a couple of designers wanting to return to Beyond, and really explore the story, lore and mechanics some more.

Great to hear!