solo- & self-found leagues - why penalize solo play?

If you've played 400 hours, and still have trouble after act 2/3 merci. I'm very.... Interested in your builds and gear. I've never had this problem.

So you want a league that's the same drop rate as party play?

So instead of base, you want 350/6%. I'm sure they might be willing to make a league that's 58% drop rate.

(note that we're about to have parties with 100% instanced loot. We're also about to put 4+ socket items-the worthwhile white drops-as instanced. As such, unless you are in one of those rare parties with incredible sharing mentalities, you are only going to get the loot assigned to you: which is base*350%/6)

"But they kill faster." So you aren't asking for a better drop rate but a better KILL rate?

So a league with a 58% drop rate, enemies with 350% hp and you with 600% damage, which can be mimiced by the enemies having 58% health.



So a league that's about half the drops and about half the hp. That's pretty much as close you're going to get to party play without a Math major chiming in. I'm sure the real numbers would be different but it wouldn't get CLOSE to being above 100% loot.

Note, exp would be divided by 6 then given a 30% boost. That'll be 21% exp that you get solo.


So half the drops, half the monster hp, and 20% exp.


Sure. I'd +1 a league like that.

Just thought I could add a little perspective on this issue, with some caveats.

I never played any of the PC rogue-likes that pre-dated the dungeon crawler genre. I tried Nethack a few years ago and couldn't get into it, so I can't comment on those.

I've played quite a few of the PC RPGs (notably 2.0-3.5 edition D&D games,) which come from the same game systems that roguelikes aped. These are games where there is some sort of idea that dropped items are possible to utilize as you play, but in practice, buying gear is the only way to really make a good party.

I've played a LOT of Diablo 1 and 2--and let's be honest, those are the spiritual ancestors of PoE--and found mixed results.

In D1, nearly every piece of gear worth using is bought in town. Higher difficulties do not reward better gear and most dungeon gear, even uniques, aren't better than what you can buy in town. In short--loot sucks. Additionally, there is no respawn. The only way to repopulate the dungeon is to start a new game with your character, and there is no stash, so you better hope that you can fit everything you want to save in your inventory.

In D2, all of the base difficulty level is easily beaten--in fact, easily stomped--with gear bought in town, without even using gambling. Great gear is possible to find from enemies, and in fact IS needed on higher difficulty levels--but it's not going to fall in your hands. When people say something like "hundreds of Baal runs," they're not kidding. However, it is possible to farm for specific gear, based on either the boss you are fighting or the monster level in the area you are in, and monsters do respawn on re-load. I can't say if this farming is possible for PoE endgame, not being there yet. But it was possible in D2, but it took a LONG time. One important note though is that there were set items that could have pieces of vastly different item level, yet were still useable endgame because of the set bonuses they conferred. This was pretty neat.

Torchlight--what can I say? I played this boring masterpiece until the mid-20's, and I found some nice gear periodically, and whenever I needed an upgrade, something was almost always available for sale.

Now, I have played some other dungeon crawlers--Untold Legends 1&2 on the PSP, Breath of Fire Dragon Quarter on the PS2, Baldur's Gate 1&2 on the PS2 and GBA (not the PC RPG's, I mean) but they don't quite fit into the D2 mold that PoE apes.

Now, the reason I've written so long, comes to this. I can't honestly speak of PoE's endgame, not being there yet. But I can speak of D3's.

First:
I am not trolling.
I very much like D3.
I very much like PoE.
I have spent over 300 hours with D3 and can speak quite learnedly of its endgame.

I guess by now I should be honest: this is a "be glad you're not playing this" post.
(Some of this is supposed to change with the next update, and boy I hope it does, but the game has already been out for a year like this.)

D3's drops are COMPLETELY random. There is NO method to farm for a specific piece of end-game gear.
D3's high-quality (legendary) pieces have enough play in their stat rolls that MOST are worthless.
After over 150 hours playing endgame content on my main, I have found ONE item for him, and TWO sub-standard items for my other two characters.

"Be glad you're not playing this"...BUT

This is how Dungeon Crawlers work. They are nearly all based around the idea that serious time needs to be spent to get enough random item rolls that a few might be good. Each developer has their own idea of how much is enough, and thus the rarity of a good upgrade. And, of course, the more you upgrade, the rarer it will be to find another upgrade.

So yeah, any method that creates a faster drop rate and/or a better frequency of better drops is going to produce good gear faster. That's pretty much a standard of the genre. It might not seem fair, but RPGs were meant to be played with parties and ARPGs were meant to be played with parties of real people. You CAN play solo, but it's not nerfed; it's the baseline. You wouldn't buy a single-player wasteland like a COD and complain because it's mainly multi-player, right? Well, even though PoE SEEMS like a single player game, the meat and potatoes of the dungeon crawler genre has more often than not been in the co-op or multiplayer modes.

In short...deal with it.

I play mostly solo. My best friend and I like to duo a lot, otherwise I solo. I played in groups for much of the early weeks of OB. The drop difference is an issue, but not a huge one in standard leveling and progression. But even in groups, I feel orbs are just too rare.

I don't care if it requires a Solo League or not, I really wish currency drops were tuned more for playing the game and less for hoarding and trading. I think a lot of people get hung up on this "economy" thing and feel we have to control the market and all that. Honestly, it is an ARPG, we should be able to play the game and accomplish our goals in some reasonable time frame. Also, if I hadn't traded my Exalted Orbs for tons of Chaos orbs my gear would never have been good enough to map.

Honestly, I'd like to be able to make a 6 link without 1500 fusings. And if it is going to take that many, I'd like to have a chance in hell at ever finding them. I'm well over 300 hours and I've actually found probably 50 of them. If we include the vendor recipes, I've used maybe 125 tops. So 3,000 hours per 6 link? Give me a break.

If we start talking about Maps, solo play becomes an even larger issue. I really hope that we see changes down the road. I don't want to remove the challenge, but I do want to remove this feeling that I'm wasting my time.

"

ggnorekthx wrote:

I don't care if it requires a Solo League or not, I really wish currency drops were tuned more for playing the game and less for hoarding and trading. I think a lot of people get hung up on this "economy" thing and feel we have to control the market and all that. Honestly, it is an ARPG, we should be able to play the game and accomplish our goals in some reasonable time frame. Also, if I hadn't traded my Exalted Orbs for tons of Chaos orbs my gear would never have been good enough to map.

Honestly, I'd like to be able to make a 6 link without 1500 fusings. And if it is going to take that many, I'd like to have a chance in hell at ever finding them. I'm well over 300 hours and I've actually found probably 50 of them. If we include the vendor recipes, I've used maybe 125 tops. So 3,000 hours per 6 link? Give me a break.

If we start talking about Maps, solo play becomes an even larger issue. I really hope that we see changes down the road. I don't want to remove the challenge, but I do want to remove this feeling that I'm wasting my time.

+1

"

ggnorekthx wrote:

Snip...

I don't care if it requires a Solo League or not, I really wish currency drops were tuned more for playing the game and less for hoarding and trading. I think a lot of people get hung up on this "economy" thing and feel we have to control the market and all that. Honestly, it is an ARPG, we should be able to play the game and accomplish our goals in some reasonable time frame. Also, if I hadn't traded my Exalted Orbs for tons of Chaos orbs my gear would never have been good enough to map.

/Snip...

+1

I completely back this thread.

Solo game difficulty is completely umbalanced.

lets apply the law of effort/reward here, the harder something is the better the rewards should be.

solo is much harder than going in groups so is not crazy to asume that solo should be having better rewards.

"

SL4Y3R wrote:

If you've played 400 hours, and still have trouble after act 2/3 merci. I'm very.... Interested in your builds and gear. I've never had this problem.

Well I have a Freeze Pulser (Templar), an Elemental Cleave Melee Toon (Duelist), and an Ice Shot Archer (Duelist). Those 3 should work out OK. The first toon I tried Merci is an awkward Maurader build that relies on Endurance and Frenzy charges (Flickerstrike & Discharge). This one I can probably delete (not enough armor and life).

Right now I'm leveling a Infernal Blow Templar and CI Crit Dagger Shadow (Invalesco)...

Can you link toons here in the forum?

1. if you solo, you get more drops compared to group play (especially if u run IIR/IIQ ofc).

2. monsters have more HP in group instances, so they are harder to kill, ergo the XP reward is justified.

the real cool thing about group play is if u got stuff like elemental equilibrium working in your favor and specialists for specific tasks (tank/dps source/IIR IIQ guy/multi curser/summoner).

and yes, this makes u able to do stuff like high maps, but gl getting there solo if u say u dont got the currency to 4L your items...

€: i like the idea of those leages (coz the current good leage rewards are kinda hard to reach and not rly giving me a reason to play them), but they would have to take place at a time where most of the ppl got time to play them (e.g. sundays w/ ~8-12h inbetween so most of the globe gets a shot at this), coz if u can run solo at a minimum of 250% quant every1 wants to do that obviously (even pure default players cud still convert nice (currency) finds afterwards).

obviously those leages shudnt take longer than max 3-4 hours, coz no1 cud play anywhere else (from a currency drops point of view) if we had 1month leages like this.