The one major difference between Diablo 3 on consoles and PC, aside from a slightly different camera view and altered controls for gamepads, are Seasons.
Seasons have been a great way for players to start fresh characters, accumulate loot and gold, and even get Season specific loot, all while trying to climb the leaderboards. Consoles have been left in the dust when it comes to Season, instead opting to simply patch in the Seasonal loot into the game.
The reason Seasons have been absent on consoles are due to the title not requiring a constant online connection, thus allowing players to cheat their way through the game, which would completely break the leaderboards. However, that might soon be changing. Blizzard isn't ready to employ a mandatory online connection in order to ensure Leaderboards are correct, but instead maybe shift focus away from Leaderboards altogether, and simply provide players with some incentive to start fresh characters.
Speaking to IGN, senior game producer Rob Foote stated the following:
"The initial feeling was with consoles, because of the way it’s set up, it can’t support leaderboards and the online community isn’t the same – there’s a lot more playing with friends on a couch rather than in a general community – but it is something we recognise that a lot of players have given us the feedback in the last year. Sometimes Seasons aren’t really about the leaderboard, but having a fresh start, experiencing the game again and feeling like you’re part of a larger community than yourself where the excitement around Diablo is there. So I think maybe that’s something we need to re-evaluate again. We’ll probably go back and revisit that decision."
That's exciting news for those that might have shunned the console version due to the lack of Seasons. While it may not have the competitive aspect the PC version has, it looks like it will give players incentive to try new classes, or perhaps even reroll classes they had already leveled, in order to try some of the new metas with new armor sets and Legendaries.
Keep in mind that this isn't a hard confirmation, but rather Blizzard admitting that they realize that there is a demand for Seasons on consoles.
In other related Diablo 3 news, Patch 2.3.0 is set to release next week, bringing along a new area, as well as the game altering Kanai's Cube.
