Self-Found (League) [Thread outdated!]

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MaSterX_BG wrote:

After 1.0.0 balance thread we can safely assume this will never happen. GGG goes all-in with huge benefits for playing in a party of 6.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

Well, we got some pretty significant self-found love with the latest update.

Perhaps the light at the end of the tunnel is not actually a train afterall.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

This might seem off-topic, but I assure you, it isn't...

Does anyone remember blitzball from Final Fantasy X?



Personally, I loved that particular mini-game. Once I found out about the Jecht Shot, I rerolled my entire game, not because I permanently missed some piece of gear or access to a spell, but because I wanted a perk for the mini-game. In the only game other than PoE which has a Skilldrasil, I spent more time theorycrafting my blitzball team than I spent on any of my actual characters. And I continued playing blitzball exclusively, long after the enjoyment of the actual JRPG part of the game had faded. For me, it was FFX's replay value.

Naturally, not everyone shared my love of the mini-game. After all, the core demographic of JRPGs are JRPG players, not wacky semi-turn-based sports strategy players. So a lot of players were frustrated by the fact that one of the characters in your party had their ultimate weapon gated behind Blitzball achievements, essentially "requiring" players to not just play the mini-game a little, but actually commit to it rather heavily, spending hours on it.

And I can't exactly blame them. After all, it's a mini-game for fuck's sake, not the actual game. Was blitzball a good addition to FFX? Absolutely; my play experience would have suffered if it wasn't included. Was it a good idea to require some degree of blitzball play to get Wakka's weapon? Actually, I'm going to say yes to this one too, because if it wasn't for gating access to the weapon I probably never would have gotten into it — this encourages players to actually try the mini-game.

However, there was absolutely no good reason to gate it as hard as they did. I wasn't halfway to the achievement before having a really solid idea on whether I enjoyed the minigame or not. Instead, they should have made it a relatively easy reward to accomplish, balancing it so that players would be encouraged to try the mini-game, but not feeling forced to continue playing even after they'd tried and determined they hated it.

What does all this have to do with PoE? Trading is the traditional ARPG mini-game. That is the healthy, proper way to look at it. You're not using your farming skills when you are flipping, it is a mini-game which, like most mini-games, uses completely different mechanics, tests completely different skills, and satisfies completely different player desires than the core ARPG gameplay of slaying monsters. It is a completely different game included within the larger game, and just like blitzball in FFX, it is not part of the core experience.

Some players love mini-games, which means some players love trading. Some players do play PoE as a trading simulator, and to those players I say: game on, brother. Seriously, there is nothing wrong with enjoying a mini-game at the exclusion of the core game. When it comes to what game genres each player decides to pursue, whether it's first-person shooter, ARPG, or market simulator, whatever gives you that warm fuzzy is just fine with me, and no player has a right to tell them "you need to play this genre instead, or you are an inferior human being." So if you seriously enjoy market simulators, then by all means, enjoy ours.

Not just that, we should be looking for ways to improve our mini-games. Could blitzball have benefited from more strategic depth, more balance between moves, and just flat-out being more enjoyable? Hell yeah it could have, even if it was pretty decent to begin with (by my standards). In the same way, we shouldn't be looking for ways to nerf trading and persecute dedicated traders, but instead for ways to make trading more strategically deep, more skill-based, and above all more enjoyable. I don't mean automating the entire process like D3 did, because that's not improving a mini-game, that's getting a bunch of robots to play a mini-game for you, leaving you to twiddle your thumbs like an idiot. No, I'm talking about serious game design effort which treats a mini-game like what it is: a game of its own.

That said, it's also true that some players hate mini-games, and those players have just as much of a right to choose their genres as the mini-game players do. I personally don't think players should be discouraged from trading completely, because exposing players to the mini-game, even if that means giving them a bit of a shove towards it, is just fine. But there are limits, and a good game designer realizes this, limiting the shove to a light push, rather than using a goddamn bulldozer.

I mean, you're a hack-and-slash-loving, SFL-league-posting, farm-til-you-drop trade-hater, and the game gives you even odds on dropping either the ES chest you need, or the equivalent +Life tri-res Armour equivalent, so you end up getting both in about equal quantities, and then on top of all that the game gives you piss all for crafting materials so you're not making anything yourself, and you're just staring at this Armour chest... no shit you get angry, because you know exactly why the game mechanics themselves are twisting your arm, trying to convince you to play a different game than the game you're playing now, and you hate that game, and you love the game you were playing.

And that right there is the essence of why the anti-trading crowd really hates trading. How about giving them less gear they can't fucking use, and giving them more crafting mats instead? Would that be so hard? Hell, do both at the same time and you might even manage to make them happier without making the game easier; just balance the "less gear" against the "more crafting mats" so that overall loot per unit time is still about the same value.

The other group that hates trading are the pro-trading crowd, who simply have gripes because they love the trading "genre" but the trading game in question does not meet their standards. So perhaps making trading a more fun experience for everyone isn't a bad idea either. Who knows? You might even get some of those mini-game haters to change their mind, if you can make a quality mini-game.

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Peacebringer wrote:

Alternatively: Balance the game so that when you play solo you still have chance of getting orbs/gear as when playing in party (with bis IIQ/IIR character).

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Evantis wrote:

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Peacebringer wrote:

Alternatively: Balance the game so that when you play solo you still have chance of getting orbs/gear as when playing in party (with bis IIQ/IIR character).

"/players 2-6" for singleplayers would be so welcome.

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MaSterX_BG wrote:

After 1.0.0 balance thread we can safely assume this will never happen. GGG goes all-in with huge benefits for playing in a party of 6.