Self-Found (League) [Thread outdated!]

The crux of the discussion is where your items come from. Playing optimally in standard leagues means your items will come from other players via trading. Playing optimally in SF/BOE means your items will either come from what you kill, what your party kills, or, pending the rules, what someone else killed and never equipped. Such rulesets slow item progression which many feel breeds a better experience. Slower item progression also means more expensive item progression and an appreciation for powerful characters as marginal improvement becomes all the more expensive and item wealth less fungible. I suspect more expensive marginal improvement would also lead to greater build diversity.

GGG's logic is "Trading is an essential part of the game" so why didn't you added gold instead of orbs that everyone uses like gold anyway. Only a small % of people actually spend orbs to craft. No Qarl, I'm not talking about people spending a few alchemy or a few chaos. I'm talking about exalts regals etc."

Also, if I had a say about the staff, Qarl shouldn't be the person to explain people what is what. Instead if explaining or discussing logically he picks out little words on the posts he doesn't like and writes a reply based on those words, thus making himself look stupid. He is also rude and seems like he feels offended when people tries to discuss something with him.

Qarl's ridiculous reasons;

-"Streamers will always be better then you"
Who cares???

-"Issue with 4L items around 40s"
Seriously???

About the "You can play SF on current leagues";
1- Playing SF is not rewarding with orbs' default drop rate.
2- There is no point when you are playing SF, working hard to craft your own gear etc, if then you see a player invested the same amount of time as you in his/her char that has much better gear because she just bought them with the same amount of orbs you had.

Now what part of this GGG doesn't understand. That is what I can't understand.

Even SFL is a good or a bad idea. There is no denying that there is a huge demand for it, so why not make a test drive for it. Make the league for lets say, 1 to 3 months of test period. To all those supporters and players, seems to me, you atleast owe them that.

Ps. **** Qarl

There appears to be two different camps as far as the SFL is concerned. Those who want it to be just SFL, which I would like to see myself.

And those who want SFL + high drop rates. Which I personally do not want to see.

I see no reason for the latter.

Why would the value of an item matter at all in an environment without trading?

You're painting the discussion black and white again by saying your items always come from trading in the current game.

This is very likely how you'll end up acquiring very good items, items that aren't necessary for your character's progression through the game. This doesn't mean that you will never find good items for your characters yourself. The nature of the game makes it a rarity to find top tier items for whatever builds you might be focusing on, and this is why trading exists in the first place. But don't forget that these items didn't poof into existence in someone's stash. The items dropped for someone.

If they buffed drop rates for a league to the point where finding or crafting a BiS (or even in the same ballpark as BiS) item set for your build was possible in any reasonable amount of time, you might as well think about removing gear as a factor completely, because most players are gonna have generally the same variations of the same items for the same builds in almost literally no time at all.

I have a feeling that players like Sl4y3r here will be very happy to see the introduction of guilds, because this will allow players to create a closed self-found environment themselves.

Another reason to consider SF/BOE.

It does not make economic sense to craft before end game. When open beta dropped I decided I encountered difficult content. I knew at the time I was better off trading or grinding, but boy did it make for a much better playing experience and item progression. Admittedly I was usually under leveled, but that added to the fun.

GGG made a fun crafting system but it almost never makes economic sense to use.

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Veta1991 wrote:

Another reason to consider SF/BOE.

It does not make economic sense to craft before end game. When open beta dropped I decided to play without that in mind and craft as I encountered difficult content. I knew at the time I was better off trading or grinding, but boy did it make for a much better item progression and playing experience. Admittedly I was usually under leveled, but that added to the fun.

GGG made a fun crafting system but it almost never makes economic sense to use.

If you're playing self-found, then why does anything economic factor in?

I've progressed through the game so far in the way you describe, burning some orbs on crafting whenever I hit some kind of wall. It really doesn't matter to me that I could've spent the time maximizing the value of the orbs that I burned by shopping around for something better than my craft, or that some other player is now slightly richer than me because I crafted.

If these things bother you now, then you have to ask yourself: would a league where your only option is to craft or grind really improve your experience? Knowing that, while it's now the most efficient means of item progression, it remains inherently inefficient despite the good feeling of finding or crafting it yourself?

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Subversus wrote:

would a league where your only option is to craft or grind really improve your experience?

Yes. How you must play in order to play optimally matters. That's why we have a softcore league and a hardcore league, for players who care about dying. If the way to play optimally involves doing something then your competitive player base will be forced into doing that something and if it isn't fun they will leave.

Some of us are competitive and don't like playing the trading game. Just as some of us are competitive and don't care about dying. The better question is why you are against a SF/BOE league. How would it affect you, do you have a vested interest against it?

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Subversus wrote:

I have a feeling that players like Sl4y3r here will be very happy to see the introduction of guilds, because this will allow players to create a closed self-found environment themselves.

I've wanted guilds for a LONG LONG time. Although not for this reason.

And to veta, it will NEVER make "economic sense" to craft vs buy. This is flat out impossible.

This is what I don't understand about this whole topic. People say they want SFL so they can progress without trading, which you already can btw. People say they want it to increase competition. Fine, I agree on this one. However, at the end of the day, there will be hav's and hav'nots. The hav'nots will complain again that x isn't low or high enough.

If you truly wanted a SFL, you wouldn't be saying things like, "It doesn't make economic sense to craft". Since this is a moot point for SFL anyways.

Too much flip flopping from a bunch of people who all think they want the same thing, yet for many different reasons. Some of these reasons don't even make sense anyways.

I'm all for a no-trade league. I'm against increasing orb drop rates by xxxxxxxx%.

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SL4Y3R wrote:

And to veta, it will NEVER make "economic sense" to craft vs buy. This is flat out impossible.

It's actually beyond that.

Even for self-found, it never makes sense to craft vs hoard. You could use your Chaos Orb on that ilvl 38 Grove Bow you just found, or you could hoard it and many, many play-hours from now use it on an ilvl 78 chest. Which one is better?

Simply put, orbs are like annuities, and using your orbs is like calling JG Wentworth. It might indeed be a lot of fun, but from a min/max perspective it's a trap that loses you money, until/unless you've reached the very end of the endgame.

The only way that rational people call JG Wentworth is because they have no other choice. In the same way, the only way that players actually use orbs, prior to the endgame cash-in, is that they are desperate: the content is too hard, they don't have an upgrade, it's too hard to find one on the market (this is usually true for difficulties in Cruel and early Merciless, and becomes nearly moot once you get high enough clvl to use items from Merci Docks, because Merci Docks is farmed like none other). Even then, as soon as they get something passable — not awesome, just passable — they go right back to hoarding.

You want players to actually use their orbs on items? The answer isn't making the game easier, it's making it harder; it's not about increasing drop rates, it's decreasing them, especially with gear. Imagine if your current chest piece simply wasn't there. You might actually burn some orbs then. I guess increasing orb droprates, as compensation for the lowered gear droprates, would be an appropriate compensation.

It's not crafting vs trading, people. It's crafting vs (gear) farming.