Seasons

Ladders rank the position of players based on set metrics such as kill score and/or character level and they usually run for a period of time (season) after which time the ladder is reset.

Ladders and seasons have been confirmed by Blizzard to be coming to Reaper of Souls.

... we’re still working on them, but the general gist is that you’ll be able to level up a character, we will have specific ladders for seasons, and also some goodies that will drop along the way. There’s more information of that to come, and we’re not making an announcement of when, but for sure Seasons are coming to Reaper of Souls. Yeah, the secret is out.

Details So Far Confirmed

In an interview in April 2014 John Hight fleshed out more of the details of how Ladders and Seasons were shaping up during development.

• Each Season begins with a fresh characters
• No access to existing stash, loot or shards
• When season ends all experience, items, gold etc is rolled back into your normal non-ladder roster
• New, powerful legendaries that drop only to ladder characters
• Leaderboards will rank progress by various metrics such as region, clans

Seasons are a shard of the existing game where everything is a fresh start. You start with a brand new character without access to any of the gold or items you collected with your primary account for the length of the season. We plan on creating brand new, powerful legendaries that only drop within in the season. After the season ends, all of your progress — your experience, your items, your gold, etc. — will be rolled into the main roster. The goal is the fresh-start feeling — so many changes and tweaks have happened since the launch of Diablo III — it is really energizing and fun to recreate that ‘first-moment-in-a-new-game’ feeling. We’ve also added leaderboards. Players can race on a variety of metrics to try to become the leader in their region or the top of their friends and clan lists. That friendly competition angle lends itself really well to Diablo games. - John Hight

History of Ladders in Diablo 3

Ladders were one of the first things fans asked for when Diablo 3 was first announced and it's always been Blizzard's desire to include such a thing, although they have run hot and cold on the subject in some of their responses over the years.

14 September 2013

Travis Day speaking on Paragon experience being reset with new seasons,

Travis Day

Paragon experience will be account but will also be broken out by game play mode. Players who play in Hardcore will have a separate hardcore paragon level from their non hardcore characters.

When a season ends all of the paragon experience you have earned will be rolled into the appropriate pool of paragon experience for the account and you will be able to start at 0 again in the new season.

This is all still a work in progress and subject to change but that is what we are currently intending.

13 June 2013

Blizzard community manager asks for input from gamers on what they would like to see in a ladder system in Diablo 3.

Lylirra

• How would you ideally like that system to work?
• How long would you like the resets to be?
• How many characters do you think players should be able to create for ladders? (Do you think they should take up the existing slots you have?)
• Should there be an auction house for ladder characters?
• Should there be any special items or perks for ladder-only characters? If so, what kind?
• What kind of restrictions, if any, should be placed on ladder characters?
• Do think players should be able to bring their ladder characters into “non-ladder” once a reset is complete?
• Is it necessary for ladders to be competitive, or is it enough for players to just see for themselves how far they can go on their own?
• Why would ladders improve your in-game experience?

15 May 2013

Wyatt Cheng in a video stream back in May of 2013 addresses the issue of how a ladder resets the economy.

Whyatt Cheng

There are two aspect of ladder, both of which I think are interesting. One is the competitive ladder aspect, the race to the top. The other is the economy reset, this fresh sharded off economy where everyone begins clean. ...(snip)... So I think one of the benefits of a ladder is just this idea that it's really fun to start fresh, and experience this rapid rate of upgrading, again. A ladder is a great excuse to do it. Sometimes we all want to do it and we can choose to do it, but sometimes it's nice to do it together, as a global community. Or have a recognized badge of honor, for having done it.

And later what excites him about ladders and how it could not happen until and expansion.

We're definitely looking into the possibility of a ladder, or something like that. I personally -- this is just me speaking and there are other people on the team who would disagree with me, so I'll say that, it's just my opinion -- I'm more excited about the reroll and clean economy aspect of ladder seasons, than I am of the race. I know the race is exciting too, and there's pictures of people who are getting ready for the new season. They have all their caffeinated drinks on their desk, and I think that's epic and awesome, if not always healthy. But realistically, yeah it's something we're cool with. It wouldn't be viable until an expansion.

Travis Day also chimed in with enthusiasm but still, stresses the fact they will happen later rather than sooner.

Travis Day Ladder is something that is not out of the question. We talk about it, we're investigating it, you might see it one day. Not making any promises on when or how, but it is certainly something that we talk about a lot. A lot of the talk we do, or sometimes do, is like -- Diablo needs to live on well beyond the point of which we're working on the game. D2 had some support, but you're not going to see (and I'm pulling time frames out of butt, but): Five years from now, you're probably not going to see us making huge content patches, or class updates. At some point we'll set the game aside, sort of leave it as a work that we've completed, and move on to like Diablo 4, or whatever, right? Ladders is absolutely one of the things that helps the game stay fresh for people 5 years from now, or 3 years, or 2 years, or whatever. Ladders are cool, ladders comes with a lot of baggage when I say "ladders"; but the idea is of sort of a fresh economy and a fresh system for people who choose so, to opt into leveling all over again with a clean slate, with other people who want the same thing. That's really important and it's really compelling, and we probably want to have that one day, but I don't know how we'll implement it, or what it'll look like, or when it'll go in.

September 2010

A community manager pours a bit of cold water on the idea.

Bashiok (community manager)

As far as the e-peen meter goes for showing off a higher level character, we think a proper achievement system is much better at this. There’s more variety, they’re more interesting and compelling for people to work toward. One important point of note is that our achievements are cross-character, meaning we can give achievements for things like leveling 5, 10… hell, 20 characters to 60. Certainly a bigger feat than a level 99, and we can give tangible rewards for it too.