Self-Found (League) [Thread outdated!]

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Qarl wrote:

I can give my current thoughts on self found.

In the existing leagues, there is nothing stopping anyone from playing self-found, and we know many of our players do. We also have players that only engage rarely with other players, trading and partying occasionally.

So, as you can play self found in an existing league, I doubt we need to separate out the leagues. The question then is, are there progression problems with self found. I think there are two parts to this:

Can you play through self found? Currently there are issues with this, especially around the 40s. One of the main problems here is the availability of 4-linked items. Gear progression gets hard here, as replacement gear requires both beating existing gear in stats, and in skill support. This isn't usually an issue earlier, as you aren't needing full skill sets, and can skimp on stats and still progress quickly.

If we are going to make changes, it will likely be on the ability to make or the availability of 4 linked items.


The second issue is, what is the player expectation of self-found play. In general the main issue comes when players look to the top of ladders and to streamers to direct what their play experience would be like. This gives players a very distorted view of what they should be able to achieve. In general these players are pushing every advantage they can from trade, long play, group play.

Often, when I get told - "everyone is doing X", and I have a look, there are often only a handful of people doing, its just often these are the most visible. An example of this is 6-link Shavronne's. If I look at over level 90 characters, in all leagues, played in the last month, well under 50 players have Shavronne's Wrappings equipped. And if I look at the stats, if you want to die, wear a Shavronne's.

We will not be making a league to make it possible to replicate the play of these players. 1) We don't think its needed. 2) From past experience, if we make accommodations to make it possible to replicate these players, these players will still beat you. If we made a self found league with competitive advantages but solo play, you'll see the same players on top of those leagues, and we'll get a new set of complaints from people who want to replicate the achievements without the same investment.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Like almost all of the "SFL" suggestions, the Eternal Orb was a frantic stab in the dark which set its sights on a problem and, utterly ignorant of what actually caused the problem, would have done more harm than good. The difference is: the Eternal Orb actually became reality.

I was against Eternal Orbs 2 months before they were created, back when it was just a suggestion by the SFL-supporting, Suggestions forum regular Courageous. I think my reasoning at the time for said disagreement was kind of sloppy and borderline wrong, but I can't be prophetic all of the time; at least I had the right gut feeling.

Once the Eternal Orb was announced as an upcoming 0.11.0 patch addition, including more details on how exactly it would work, I had this to say:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Eternal Orbs are not good for "reroll" orbs, to include Jewelers and Fusings -- the only exception to this is during a mirror service, for example using Chromatic to change colors first. What Eternal Orbs are good for are "add a stat" orbs -- Regal and most notably Exalted.

Outside of Fairy Tale Land, the only thing this orb will be used for is replacing the functionality of Orb of Scouring in the whole Regal->Exalt crafting scheme.

Pretty sure I nailed that one, still 4 days before it was released... and having no idea what their drop-rate would be like, because it was irrelevant — people will tend to use Orbs for their most value-gaining function, regardless of how scarce they are. Which, by the way, is why the "increase orb drop rates" suggestions are all shit.

When describing the benefits of his Schematic idea, Courageous had this to say:

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Courageous wrote:

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The current system is not broken so don't try to fix it.

No one called the current system "broken." Rather, there's a portion of the player base who doesn't like certain features of the current system. This side-system would let those players play a little bit more the way they like. That is all.

Did the Eternal Orb really fill that expectation? Hell no it didn't. Instead, let's be honest about what it really was: a buff to Exalted Orbs, and a nerf to Scourings. Is this what the game really needed?

Personally, I'd like to see Eternals removed from the game. They still don't do anything that a sufficient quantity of other crafting materials cannot do (Scouring); it just does what it does at a discount (hard to believe given its high cost, yet true). Since crafting is still almost exclusively the province of ultra-endgame, itemlevel-78 type players, it utterly failed as "A Fundamental Change to Crafting," not just keeping power in the hands of the elite but actually intensifying that power and widening the gulf. (For a more thought-out idea on how to possibly have a fundamental change to crafting, check this out.) And we really, really don't need more godly rare power creep if we actually want the game to have a nice long ten-year lifespan; power creep kills game prematurely.

Bad idea then; bad idea now. And yet another reason not to listen to the SFL, and — to borrow a line from Jim Sterling — to thank God for me.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

A cross-post from a thread on Eternal Orbs, because I want the people who support this thread to understand the difference between intent and effect. It's not that the SFL supporters have bad intent — I agree there are problems with self-found currently. It's just that your suggestions on how to fix said problem all suck. Hard. And to demonstrate that, I'd like to revisit what happened when a suggestion from one of your own was actually implemented into the game.

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We've added a new high-tier currency item! Eternal Orbs are extremely rare but provide a very useful function in the crafting system. When you use an Eternal Orb on an item, it stores the properties of the item in an Imprint which you can later apply to the original item, retrieving the saved properties. The imprint can only be applied to the original item and cannot be traded to other players.

Here are three examples of how to use an Eternal Orb:

You've saved up the 1500 or so Orbs of Fusing to potentially six-link an item that you currently use, but are worried that if you use all the orbs you might end up with less links than you started with, rendering your character unusable. If you use an Eternal Orb on it, you're able to lock in your current sockets and restore them if the fusing operation is unsuccessful.

You're trying to craft an item using the Transmutation/Regal/Exalted method but are worried that, after significant currency investment, your last Exalted Orb will add a mod you don't want. The Eternal Orb would allow you to (at a cost) back up your progress for restoration after an undesired result.

You have an excellent item that someone wants you to Mirror for them, but with a different socket colour configuration. You can now back up your existing sockets, roll the ones they want, Mirror it for them, then restore your socket colours.

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BloodReign wrote:

I'm not sure where you got the idea that Courageous is the one to blame for whatever delusions you had the eternal orb would be, but it is working exactly as GGG intended.