End of the day, Blizzard arn't dumb and they know that without player-interaction seasons are pointless. They gain nothing from you, who has already bought the game and don't have the same sort of loyalty and care they used to have for there games/customers. This is why stats like MF existed to allow a gear set that would be considered BiS for a character but not OP meaning it didn't have to be insanely rare and thus creating a curve where finding mid-rarity items weren't just instant junk so even though you only get a HR once in a blue moon that's ok because the mega-rare arn't the only viable items.Д3 has seasons because people said they wouldn't buy the game unless it had them, everything Blizz put into the game is to try and get the few that haven't bought it to buy it. Also the gear curve in D2 was much better, going through multiple stages from building an MF character > mid-pvp > key farmer > smiter > hdmin > mlvl 85 > OP dudes. Even the non-season is more competitive than the season imo because most people have reletively balanced gear and the higher ups are more based on skill than RNG.Д2 had ladders because eventually the trade market would become stagnant and PvP would be everyone in nigma so it would reset revitalizing PvP/Trading. This is something people said since seasons were announced though it's like doing a hard-reset in a single player game when the state of every other player has 0 effect on your game a reset is pointless.

Clan trading could also exist as long as you had to be in the clan prior to starting the season. Seasonal PVP could definitely improve the situation, as that would add a longer term objective. This is what I mean, the season was effectively over within hours of starting as 'top players' had filled all the leader boards and everyone else was just doing a fresh run for literally no point other than to have no gold and awful gear.

Diablo 3 seasons