Self-Found (League) [Thread outdated!]

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DamageIncorporated wrote:

The point is though you can't compete as self found when the drops suck. The entire game revolves around trading.
That is unless you love stagnating and love wearing badly itemized trash. ( which is all that drops for the individual, pushing you to save up currency and trade)

Make the drops better, or self found is like beating your head on a brick wall.

Why do you need to compete. I don't even do races and I don't compete with anyone. I'm level 87 and someday maybe, I'll reach 100.

I'm in no rush for anything.

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Nightmare90 wrote:

From what I have read in the huge suggestion thread is that the need to rely on the overall bad trading environment (it is pretty hard to trade compared to other games, nothing near accessible) in order to progress is what concerns some players.

I don't really understand why people think trading is so hard. I've never had an issue finding an end game upgrade using shop aggregation sites like poexplorer. Spend like an hour and a chunk of chaos you just bought yourself a complete set of new gear. Sure it's not the D3 auction house where ultra end game items are thrown at you for free but I don't think anyone considers that a good thing.

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Qarl wrote:

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Amiag wrote:

four links and player expectations are the problem, seriously ?

You just negate what I said without anything to back it up, or explain why, seriously?

I am very happy to hear where I have it wrong, but your comment is essentially meaningless.

well for starter theres a 90-page thread in the suggestions forum where no one ever complains about being unable to top the ladder as self found (well as far as i can remember), so im not sure where you get that competition is the problem ? If anything people playing self found are not interested in competition cause self found is WAY slower especially once you get to act 3 merci and maps.

I think we can all agree that self found shouldnt be an easy mode but what is being asked is for it to be a more rewarding way to play the game

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Cronk wrote:

When people say they would like a self-found league, it's not as a result of a desire to compete - quite the opposite in fact.

Well, from what I have read, that seems to be exactly what they say. They use terms like "You just can't compete."

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The concept stems from the fact that many people don't like the trappings of competition, but, instead, would like to just play the game 'by their own steam'.

The use of the word league is just another word for 'different settings' and many wouldn't care if there wasn't a top XYZ players published at all.

That is an interesting concept I hadn't seen posted elsewhere.

We do know the players who care about ladders, really care about ladders. We also know ladders are important part of getting returning players.

I suspect if we do ladder-less leagues, it'll likely as part of paid leagues.

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In terms of time investment, yes, that is an area that GGG seem quite obsessed with, but, as it stands, solo-self-found plays more like torture than fun when functioning under the mechanics of an MMO trading league. The solo-self-found experience would be significantly different because it would provide an opportunity to actually experiment with different, more beneficial drop rates combined with player retention.

Unless there's a significant distinction in philosophy between the concept of player retention over time and the concept of making players invest time regardless of its retention statistics.

Largely, and I am very glad about this, our business model supports us making the best game we can.

We are planning to run the game long term, so we can't just increase player numbers at the expense of having lower churn. So, yes, we really do care about our players staying.

So we really do care about things that cause players to quit and not return. So this thread is interesting to me. For example seeing people report Act 2 Merciless as an issue, as its not really an area where we have identified as being a problem.

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Amiag wrote:

well for starter theres a 90-page thread in the suggestions forum where no one ever complains about being unable to top the ladder as self found (well as far as i can remember), so im not sure where you get that competition is the problem ? If anything people playing self found are not interested in competition cause self found is WAY slower especially once you get to act 3 merci and maps.

They don't talk about being at the top of the ladder, but they very specifically mention the play experience of those players, and their gear, and the parts of the game, and their effectiveness in those parts of the game.

I do appreciate you actually saying something in this post.

I want to be able to use currency for crafting items instead of feeling like I'm wasting it because the best way to get gear is to buy it.

Some of us want to play a game where finding and crafting items is the best way to gear up. trading just doesn't provide the same pleasure. For example, i used to use:

but then I found:

and when it dawned on me that id just found an item better than moonsorrow I nearly leaped out of my seat in joy. In contrast when I acquired:

from some stranger after beating my head against the desk trying to find a seller it just wasn't very fulfilling.

There was a time when I may have been satisfied with the status quo but ever since they introduced anarchy/onslought, I now realize what potential this game has to cater to different playstyles. Those of you who like the current model will still be able to play on HC / standard but this game would be vastly improved if it gave the many players asking for a solo league a choice.

My first character when Anarchy started was a Sweep Marauder. I played all the way through to the end of Merciless using completely self found gear. Half my gear when I killed Piety was composed of blue items and the other half were crappy-decent rares.

By that point I had saved up a bit of currency to actually buy some decent gear from other players which made farming into maps much easier but that's not the point. The point is that you can play self found quite successfully. It just takes effort. It's slow and you may die a lot and you may have to grind a lot but you don't need anything beyond 4-link gear with half decent mods to finish the game and that shit is readily available starting in Act 3 Normal.

I don't mean to say that the self found experience couldn't be smoothed out a little bit in some areas because I think it can and I think Qarl is on the right track in his initial post. But most of this thread just amounts to complaining that Nessa didn't hand you a Shavs when you got to Lioneye's for the first time.