Self-Found (League) [Thread outdated!]

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Warmey wrote:

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Henry_GGG wrote:

Please keep your replies on topic and free from personal attacks.
Further posts that do this will result in a probation.

Huh, why was DarthSki44's post removed.

He didn't say anything bad, it was just generic stuff.

I was going to say something, but w/e. Moderation of my comment was outrageous, but not really worth pressing the issue.

I skipped after the first 10 pages tbh so i missed the whole "fight" xD, but i agree with qarl on the 4-linking being an issue, i would rather see that solved then a new league.

I also agree that it would split up the current players even more, which is unnecessary.

Do not forget we are in beta, and the current onslaught/anarchy league's are GGG's way of testing and gathering data.

Maybe after onslaught and anarchy are done, they could make a "no iqq and iir on items" sort of league, that way the items gathered here could stil transfer to there league's after it ends. But free's up the playfield for people to exually play a character, instead of mf'ers only.

hmm the only "reasonable" way to test increased currency drop rates, is to let all players at the end of the league transfer only 1 item to there default league, be it hc/sc. This would give people a goal to create X perfect item by the end of the league. like a stash tab that can only hold 1 item, and at the end of the league, the hero is saved without items and only the 1 item from that stash is transfered.

The bottom line for me is very simple:

If POE adds better self-found "support" (which for me at a minimum means disabled trading in exchange for greatly improved drop rates; that doesn't have to mean another league if it can be done without one), then I will continue playing and throw even more money their way. I do admire what GGG has created so far and I've had enough fun to make it well worth the multiple packs I've already bought. But if the experience for a solo self-found player remains the same as it is today, then I'll just be playing to pass the time until the Diablo 3 expansion comes out.

I don't give a damn about your "economy", and I don't care to be forced to interact with other people in order to enjoy my game.

I have much more fun finding and crafting my own upgrades and being pleasantly surprised with my drops and inspired to build new characters around them. The problem for me with any game that forces all of its players into one giant economic pool is that the drop rates necessarily have to be tuned so punishingly low that the no lifers don't flood the "economy" with their leftovers. This in turn makes the pace of rewards grind to a halt very quickly for a solo self-found player, resulting in a frustrating and unsatisfying experience.

I've got a bunch of characters, a couple in the 50's and 60's, and two that I've pushed to 77 and 80, but with most of the rest stalled in the 40's. Playing solo self-found through Normal is fine, while you're still finding regular upgrades. The pace begins to slow down sharply in Cruel though, such that it's not uncommon to go multiple levels without finding an upgrade. It slows to a crawl in Merciless though, to where it starts to feel pointless to even keep playing. I leveled from 70 to 80 literally without seeing a single upgrade, but I pushed on thinking maybe I just had bad luck and it would get better in maps. Instead, I can't even fill my inventory with yellows after clearing a map, and I know before I even look that 99.9% of them aren't worth looking at.

The result is that you're forced into trading if you even want to improve your equipment at all, and "Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny." - Yoda

Once you take that shortcut and trade for items, you've made it exponentially more unlikely that you will ever find an upgrade to your equipment, and nothing short of a miracle drop will ever be satisfying again. Don't kid yourselves that POE is any better than Diablo 3 in this regard just because POE doesn't have an auction house. An auction house is simply more convenient and accelerates this corrupting influence. Every time you ask for the trading experience to be improved, what you're really asking for is for the item finding process to become less fulfilling.

Now, paid leagues might be a solution, assuming 1) they're coming out any time soon, 2) they aren't priced out of the reach of solo players, and 3) you can raise drop rates to acceptable levels. I haven't heard anything encouraging about them to know whether they'll fulfill my expectations though.


I have a dream, that one day a character I'm leveling up will randomly find an exalted orb, I'll use it right then on a piece of equipment I'm wearing without feeling like I wasted it, and I will not be judged for my chosen play style but for how much fun I'm having.

D2 did essentially this with their last patch... they made it so that players could expect to get drops of Ber and higher runes though solo play. I played long enough to make me a Faith bow and a Grief weapon... and then quit. The game was no longer fun for me. Six years of playing was ruined in a matter of weeks by short sighted developers ruining a good balance they had going for years.

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I don't give a damn about your "economy", and I don't care to be forced to interact with other people in order to enjoy my game.

Basically this (but in not so hard words!)

I play self-found and think it's straight up stupid to complain about self-found.

It's like refusing to use your legs and crying at all the people who are still using their legs.

Path of Exile is designed to be an online game, and every game in history with a multiplayer option has always been optimally played in groups. Besides outright restricting or punishing groups, that's how it will always be.

I don't have a problem with self-found being a sub-optimal way to play because I'm not a "min-maxer" with a stick up my ass, I chose to play that way because that's the way I have the most fun playing regardless of the results. If you don't like it, then maybe stop playing self-found.

Qarl,

I don't know if you've kept up with the SFL suggestion thread, so I'm going to re-post my current thinking on the matter here. Apologies in advance if it's an unnecessary redundancy.

I believe that the issue creating the roadblocks to self found play, particularly for those of us who like to solo, lies in the way crafting orbs are tied to the economy. Given GGG's stated focus on ensuring a workable economy, I understand that you must control the rate at which currency (i.e. crafting orbs) enter into said economy. Based on my own, admittedly anecdotal, experience over the past 8 months this leads to an environment in which crafting gear upgrades is a reward for those who trade and is effectively locked away from those who don't. This is exactly the opposite of what it I, personally, think it should be. Crafting should be the alternative to trade.

4 linking is an issue, yes, but it's far from the only issue. While at higher levels of play links tend to become more of the focus when evaluating a piece of gear, mods play a less than trivial role. A 5 or 6 link chest piece will only get me so far if it is covered in mods that are counter to my build or are all of low tier. In 8 months I have seen about a stack and a half of chaos, 3 regal orbs, 3 exalted orbs, and 1 eternal. Given the randomness of crafting outcomes this is far from a reliable way to improve my gear. While it is true that alts and augments are easy to come by and allow for more targeted mod acquisition, the regals and exalts to take them further are very difficult to get without trade.

If we also look at links it is equally frustrating for (solo) self found players. In Chris' announcement thread about eternal orbs he used the example of saving up 1500 fusings to attempt getting a 6 link. While I know a 6 link is a luxury and that it's not required for current content, if we take this example as what one should expect then that number is insane if you're not getting those orbs through trades. Again, in 8 months, I've probably seen less that 150. I'm less concerned about this, however, than mod crafting orbs, because I can reliably (even if painfully slowly) build toward such a goal.

I'm perfectly fine with the rate at which gear drops and with the wild randomness that comes with crafting. What I struggle to understand is why choosing not to trade means I should be effectively locked away from the alternative.

Understand I'm not advocating a separate league or any increase in gear drops or rarity. I am interested, however, to know if GGG consider what I've discussed here to be an issue and, if so, what can be done to improve the situation.

First off, for those who don't know, I am against a self-found league. I've explained my reasoning in great detail in the Suggestions Forum thread... and then I got frustrated with the group and cussed them out (complete with mod edit). Oops. I don't post there anymore; I'm only posting here to respond to dev responses. But I know I was pretty rational prior to that, so the reasoning for my lack of support should still hold up, gentle reader, if you care to peruse it.

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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.

There's no doubt that this can be an extremely frustrating issue. I've been rerolling a Ranger (currently level 50), and I decided to 4L the Aurseize gloves she was wearing (twinked from a witch). About 65 Fusings later, 30 of which were painstakingly bought from Clarissa 4 Jeweler's at a time, my stash is completely dry of both Fusings and Jewelers, and the gloves still aren't 4L. I don't have high expectations on gear for a character in Cruel, but I would have hoped I could at least get the basics — I'm currently running a 2L chest, the only thing I have 4L or better is my Peregrine helmet (also twinked, but twinked as a 4L). With no Reduced Mana support for 3x Auras coming anytime soon, I'm a more than a little bummed about it; stopped playing and went back to the forums.

However, this doesn't really resonate as a reason why players would support a self-found league suggestion; for one, it's just too specific, and more broadly I'm sure there are plenty of supporters of that suggestion who have several 4Ls and don't plan on rerolls (unless their suggestion takes flight). So let's move onto the next reason you suggest...

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Qarl wrote:

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.

I think this is a much bigger factor in self-found league suggestion support than your first hypothesis. However, it would be a mistake to assume that it's purely from watching streams; I'm sure a great many supporters of the suggestion never have, and perhaps look at stream-watchers with disdain. However, streams are not the only method for picking up on what techniques high-level players are using — these forums are a great source of potential envy, from the suggestions for currency expenditure on high-level maps in the Map Management Resource, to arguments over the power of Shavronne's Wrappings that most players will never be able to have an experience-based opinion on, to discussions on the efficacy of the Culling MF strategy.

A lot of high-level play involves dedicated farm characters with high IIQ and IIR, and/or group play, to include map running and position playing (with the most notable position being a dedicated IIQ/IIR character with Culling Strike), and/or trading of one resource for another. These are precisely the types of activities which the self-found league supporters do not desire to engage in, and their proposed solution is an environment where such activities are prohibited... and the benefits they grant are automatic.

This is the core psychological root of the self-found league suggestion, and GGG is right to oppose it.

However, while I firmly disagree with their proposed solution, I don't think they are complaining about nothing. While I firmly believe that trading, MF stacking, and group play are all activities which take time to organize and theorize and thus should be incentivized with increased in-game efficacy, asking "How much benefit should these activities provide?" is a valid question.

The answer to that question in several areas is likely "too much."

1. Should running maps in groups be more efficient than running them solo? Yes; encouraging social play is a good thing.
2. Should maps effectively cost 5 times as much for a solo player as they do for a five-man mapping group which splits mapping costs equally? No; the benefit is too great.

Let's say a player wants to go melee and focus on survivability, forsaking MF affixes.
3. Should joining a four-man group (five with him), including a magic-find specialist, increase his drops? Yes; specific party roles, including support roles like Culling MF, add an actual roleplaying element to group dynamics.
4. Should he get 5 times* as many rares and uniques allocated to him (and 20% more currency) for doing so, compared to playing alone? No; the benefit is too great.

Trading gets scapegoated for a lot of these advantages, while in truth it rarely provides them. I believe this is because trading has several frustrations of its own — player difficulty in unloading low-grade gear (which is a holdover from Diablo 3's auction houses and it's actually a good thing they can't do this, but it still is frustrating that they can't), and economic determinism (which currency was supposed to avoid according to the Dev Diary, but has been firmly established via commonly-accepted exchange ratios and standardized gear pricing, assisted by sites like poe.xyz.is). Frustrating? Sure. Overpowering advantage for participation? No.

The supporters of the self-found league say "no" to all four of those questions. They see these large advantages, and rather than engage in OP behavior themselves (which is what I usually do, even as I'm speaking out against it), they either demand the same benefits without the behavior, or suggest just removing them completely with no compensating force, which would essentially make everyone as miserable as they are.

To use the parlance of our time, they are haters.

On the other hand, it's not like the answer to all four question is "yes." Solo vs group play is still an important balance issue, and merely dismissing haters as haters because they are haters isn't going to fix the issues which these haters bring up — because on some level, these issues actually exist.

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OverUsedChewToy wrote:

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I don't give a damn about your "economy", and I don't care to be forced to interact with other people in order to enjoy my game.

Basically this (but in not so hard words!)

What do you mean by 'enjoy your game' here?

Go read Qarl's posts.