Self-Found (League) [Thread outdated!]

Got to page 11, and decided that was enough of a read. Few things people seem to be missing that are worth discussing:

1. Leagues outside of Standard / Hardcore are supposed to be harder than Standard / Hardcore

2. Being that, if they made a self found league chances are the drop rates would stay exactly the same or get worse.

3. If 1 & 2 hold true, then that means you are already playing in a self found league, if you decided to play that way in Standard / Hardcore. You just won't get the cherry on top of choosing it as a "League".

Of course, if the dev's decided to go another route, the self found league would have to have everything destroyed at the end of the 4 month period. Same as Descent.

Edit: Missed this. Felt it was worth responding to.

Here are my only issues with trying to play completely self found in standard or the other leagues.

1) Without trading it can be near impossible to ever find the specific uncommon uniques that you want for a certain build. This might not be an issue for some but for me it is since uniques are one of the best parts of the game and I plan builds around them. There is definitely no way that I could play self found in the current game and obtain what I want for my builds. Charans sword for example is something that I might never find even after playing thousands and thousands of hours.

2) As many have said in this thread already it would be awesome to have a no trading league so that people could have a better time trying to use the crafting system. Its hard to imagine effectively using orbs for their intended purpose with the current drop rates and without trading. Using orbs for crafting in the current game feels bad since you know that you could have done better just trading them for gear.

The self-found league idea is something that is brought up quite a bit around here, and as much as I think the idea is a good one to throw out there, I simply can't see it actually doing anything. I personally don't see the allure in having your own personal league of people who will never group or trade with others. If it's about simply talking to like-minded players, you'd get by much easier simply starting a community forum (or adding one here in the Index.) If it's not about chatting with each other, then the only thing left is competition against each other. So let me share my thoughts with you on a solution that wouldn't make a new league, but would do everything you guys want at the same time.

One other giant counter about this is that if you make a Self found league, you'd have to make 4 self found leagues, one for each type of current league out there or others will simply complain they are denied content. That's an insane load of time/resources for GGG that they don't have right now.

Many of the responses Qarl quoted, and many of the things mentioned here are stating that these players do not care about social interaction, at least game wise other than chatting, and don't care about competition. The problem with this is it's either entirely wrong, and they simply want to compete only against other self-found players, or they don't care about competition, in which case they can simply go on ignoring everyone else, and everyone else wont notice these players.

If I break this up into more of a middle-ground, I think there is a great way to solve this entire issue, without making a new league... Wait, hear me out first!

The first aspect is likely socializing, and not just with anyone, but with other self-found players so that you can show off the new item you found that might not be anything special normally, but when you're only going off self-found, it may be really good. The most simple way to fix this is for the Self Found community to dedicate a global chat group number to them selves, so that they can do just that.

The second and third parts are something GGG would have to do to help meet on the middle ground with all of this. First they need to help the low-mid level gear finding/crafting a bit by making it better, the same goes for linking items, or them dropping. This can be done in a number of ways, including buffs to crafting/drop odds of these things from level 1-50 let's say. The biggest hurdle in this game is going from Act 2 Cruel until beating A3 Cruel. A1 Cruel is easier than A3 Normal, and I think that should be buffed a bit, and the others brought down a bit (through the use of items and availability.)

The third part might be much harder to implement, but it's very important to this working. What if GGG made a system that tracked all "self found" players and their level, possibly across all leagues, but it might only be needed in Standard where I bet almost all play, and made a separate ladder command for this? All you do is add a tag to each player that shows whether or not they have ever traded before, or ever grouped before, and once they make one trade or join one group, they will not be on this list anymore. You can also start the ladder for characters above say level 25 only, to ignore all the alts and new players popping into it and clogging up resources for it. The one downside to this is that these same players would not be able to trade items to another account for storage, but I think this would be an amazing compromise between GGG and the Self Found community. Lastly you could also add an icon on their portraits or next to their name to indicate self-found.

TL;DR:

If you make a Self found league, you'd have to make 4 self found leagues, one for each type of current league out there or others will simply complain they are denied content.

Track all players that haven't grouped or traded on a separate ladder, and create a public chat room in global for all solo self found players. This way they can all communicate with each other, and compete with each other if they'd like to. They wouldn't need a new league because there aren't any special needs at that point. Possibility to add an icon next to a players name that is self-found?

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solwitch wrote:

Self found league= Anti-Social gaming, period. I am so sorry in your personal life you are anti-social, refuse to see the light of day, go out with friends or family etc... but please do not bring your personal life and dictate to GGG an absurd idea of a self found league. This has to be in all of my video game hobby history the most ridiculous concept ever. I mean I post some crazy crap, but this... my God my cornea was just raped.

Edit: I applaud GGG with their patience with this thread... God knows I would just have locked this thread.

I personally don't really care too much if GGG ever implements anything like what people are asking for in this thread but your rude dismissal is ridiculous. There is absolutely nothing wrong with players playing this game alone and self found. I have no idea why you would want to dictate to them how to play the game and make them feel bad for not wanting to join other players or trade. You must have no imagination whatsoever if you can't imagine a player who is acutally a very social person but yet would rather play this game self found. There is nothing ridiculous about the self found concept but I find plenty wrong with your rude response to this thread.

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iamstryker wrote:

Here are my only issues with trying to play completely self found in standard or the other leagues.

1) Without trading it can be near impossible to ever find the specific uncommon uniques that you want for a certain build. This might not be an issue for some but for me it is since uniques are one of the best parts of the game and I plan builds around them. There is definitely no way that I could play self found in the current game and obtain what I want for my builds. Charans sword for example is something that I might never find even after playing thousands and thousands of hours.

2) As many have said in this thread already it would be awesome to have a no trading league so that people could have a better time trying to use the crafting system. Its hard to imagine effectively using orbs for their intended purpose with the current drop rates and without trading. Using orbs for crafting in the current game feels bad since you know that you could have done better just trading them for gear.

If it makes the game easier, it won't be made into a league. The only route self found has is going the Descent route, where everything is destroyed at the end of the league. They could actually mess with the drop rates then.

Crafting would be exactly the same, and those hard to find uniques would be just as hard to find.

I play mainly Self Found, and craft all of my own gear. The only things I trade for are skill gems.

The ability to acquire BiS gear through trading is inherently toxic to gear based games. Currently, the difficulty of trading acts as a stopgap but in a game all about finding loot the ability to trade for it diminishes the value of playing to get gear in favor trading. D3 was destroyed by the ah and poe is suffering from it too though just not as bad. Trading for things other than cosmetic or mediocre items is bad.
Imo look at the Wow trading system. you can get some items from trading but in the end if you want to seriously gear your character you have to do it by playing and killing bosses. In contrast D3 for a long time was all about playing the ah to get your gear and playing your character was a waste of time.

The trading system in PoE is just weighing the game down for those of us who fled here from D3. Its not game breaking but it is definitely sub-par.

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silvershadows wrote:

The ability to acquire BiS gear through trading is inherently toxic to gear based games. Currently, the difficulty of trading acts as a stopgap but in a game all about finding loot the ability to trade for it diminishes the value of playing to get gear in favor trading. D3 was destroyed by the ah and poe is suffering from it too though just not as bad. Trading for things other than cosmetic or mediocre items is bad.
Imo look at the Wow trading system. you can get some items from trading but in the end if you want to seriously gear your character you have to do it by playing and killing bosses. In contrast D3 for a long time was all about playing the ah to get your gear and playing your character was a waste of time.

The trading system in PoE is just weighing the game down for those of us who fled here from D3. Its not game breaking but it is definitely sub-par.

As I have never played WoW, are you saying that the high end quest / raid drops are bound per character, or can they trade for them as well?

I agree that if they don't adjust drop rates a self found league is really pointless (Just from my point of view of course).

I don't necessarily agree that a self found league with adjusted drop rates would be easier though nor do I think that people who want that league really want the game to be easier. If you can't trade then you are completely at the mercy of RNG so even if the game had increased drop rates your still going to get screwed over plenty. But people are fine with that because they will actually get a lot of nice drops instead of only trading for nice drops. It should really be an equal trade off, self found should NOT be inherently easier.

For example as I wrote above I make builds designed around uniques. In a self found league I would no longer plan a build and then make it. I would have to wait until I found cool uniques AND THEN make a build around them. This is because I can't trade for that unique so I have no clue when I will get it. I am at the mercy of RNG.

all I want is fukin free league from entire RMT FUKER
self found league IS the answer

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iamstryker wrote:

I agree that if they don't adjust drop rates a self found league is really pointless (Just from my point of view of course).

I don't necessarily agree that a self found league with adjusted drop rates would be easier though nor do I think that people who want that league really want the game to be easier. If you can't trade then you are completely at the mercy of RNG so even if the game had increased drop rates your still going to get screwed over plenty. But people are fine with that because they will actually get a lot of nice drops instead of only trading for nice drops. It should really be an equal trade off, self found should NOT be inherently easier.

For example as I wrote above I make builds designed around uniques. In a self found league I would no longer plan a build and then make it. I would have to wait until I found cool uniques AND THEN make a build around them. This is because I can't trade for that unique so I have no clue when I will get it. I am at the mercy of RNG.

I completely understand what you're saying. The concept of leagues though are based on the core leagues S/HC. If it makes any aspect of the game easier than those two, they won't make it into a league. Basically, if they made the league have increased drops, the drops would bleed over to S/HC. Currency farmers etc.

Now a 2 - 4 month Descent style (destroyed at the end) league is something I could see actually being able to happen.