there's tons of perks from the altar that I wish were on non season. Auto pick up of db, yellow items, blues, whites etc, double primals is the biggest for me since I see it as an "upgrade" to any equipment I have. Like going from normal to ancient to primal. But the normal to ancient jump is only x10 rarer whicch should be x5 in my oppinon. But a primal is x500 rarer than a normal item which is absolutely insane and unreasonable. And extremely underwhelming. Primals should have ALL elements, it's not like it would make your character stronger since ALL builds rely on one single element for dps. It should also allow you to put any stats on the primal that you want. I mean considering the x500 drop rate. Again, not like it would make it stronger than an ancient item, an ancient can roll the same stats as a primal. And the whole wizard and weapon element thing synchronising with one of the passives is stupid. There's so man rolls on so many items and so many builds that it makes difficult. Especially with mercenary items. Too many items. At least on season I only make one character and got a whole lot of stash space. But if I play non season it's egh... so crammed... so little room... have to sort the items that were sent from season to non season YET AGAIN... very annoying. Wasting too much time sorting items. Season seems more simple sometimes.
As for playing with other people... I go in one pub game, I get irritated at people being stupid, they end up dragging me down, leeching, waiting in town 10 years, I end up going alone without my merc. Might as well go solo with my merc that gives me big buffs.
It's only worth it if you have friends and you have a good meta team... zbarb, zdh, tk, bk
Either that or you're the one being far too weak to make a difference. The problem is the way you find games is extremely stupid in d3. You're thrown in a random game with no filters whatsoever. And don' tell me "well I put greater rift so we're doing greater rifts" because they just open normal rifts. People don't know how to read.
On the other hand it's fun doing 1-70 traditional way on season with random noobs. Feels more balanced. Even the paragon 1-500 is kinda ok. Especially if you both have the same class, you give each other items. But 1000+ paragons going into pubs? Forget about it.
Even with the season buffs, they give probably like 5-10 gr boost. Sure it's a lot for a 1k-2k paragon guy but on non season with the 5000+ paragon guys, they all do 150. Doesn't make that big of a difference in my oppinion. And you can waste weeks or months gearing on season until you can do 150s. And then what, you need to find people who are good enough. People on non season already have gear and levels for 150s. Even though there's a lot less people, they're all ready for it.
Start season, and continue on non season.