Self-Found (League) [Thread outdated!]

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Thaelyn wrote:

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snapple99 wrote:

So that turns their interesting points into "I'm right and you're an idiot"... which is frankly not all that interesting. Scrotie's answer to everything is, "Well, if you would just value the things I do and seek entertainment the way I do then you wouldn't have this problem."

Seriously? I find little value in that.

Here I have to directly disagree with you. Take Scrotie's opposition posts to this very suggestion and compare them to the "Damn scrubs just want everything handed to them, GO BACK TO D3 NUBZ" crap that gets injected all too often into this type of discussion. At least Scrotie addresses the issue being discussed here. Does he do so in a head-strong, and borderline arrogant way? Perhaps, but no more so than many of the rest of us. I don't think conviction is a bad thing unless it is accompanied by a steadfast unwillingness to be consider a counter argument on it's merits rather than summarily dismissing it because it's not in line with your own thinking. My individual experience with Scrotie has shown him to be willing to consider opposing views even if he isn't persuaded.

Exactly.

Regarding what should be: I believe that cooperative play actually should be rewarded more than solo play — as even compensation players for the hassles of dealing with uncooperative people when runs into them, and as a bonus for successfully arranging in-game relationships with other players which are functional and effective. But that doesn't mean I think players should feel forced into doing so. The ideal level of "social bonus" is at the level where the average player is neutral about seeking out "blind date" relationships with normal players, for grouping with friends, and against grouping with assholes. This means balancing the "social" bonuses against the level of frustration of dealing with the average (totally random) player, and goes for both partying together and trading.

Regarding what is: I believe the general tone of both this thread and the original SFL thread in Suggestions greatly exaggerates the extent of the problem; it's not like the game is utterly unplayable in a self-found mode, and are scapegoating all of their "solo self-found" issues onto trading when other issues are also contributing to their despair: IIQ/IIR, partying bonus, trying to go melee or some similar difficult-to-gear build, or simply strategic errors on their part. There's way too strong of a tendency in this thread to act like trading is the single biggest problem in this game, when it's not even really top 5 (desync, map affixes/enjoyability, IIQ/IIR, totems/minions, and party bonuses/mapcost, in that order). But that doesn't mean I think there's no problem whatsoever, and it still might rank top 10, which means it definitely merits discussion. I agree that the ways which items improve through natural, self-found-style farming and crafting is weak enough that it pushes players towards the social interaction of trading, even when it's with assholes, so it does fail the basic litmus test.

Regarding how to get to what should be: I believe that problems with the game should be fixed. What I don't believe is that problems with the game should be fixed for some, who choose to elect one option, while those who choose another option are stuck with the same old broken system. If players want to add challenges, that's fine; and for that separate leagues are a good idea. But Standard League should, true to its name, set the standard: nothing in any other league should be "easier" than Standard, only harder and at the option of the players choosing it. You might notice that I haven't said anything bad about Fourist's view from earlier in the thread; there's nothing wrong about it for me to attack, because he has precisely the proper attitude when it comes to the creation of a new League. I wouldn't really be into such a league myself, and, rather ironically, judging from the common views in this thread, I doubt many of you would be either. (To the few of you who are... thank you for taking the high road of true gaming hardcoredness. Respect.)
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So I find it interesting that I'm being referred to as "you-know-who" in this thread, like I'm some kind of anti-SFL boogieman. If anything, I'm a little sympathetic, because I actually agree that there are problems with trading vs self-found, and although I think GGG has bigger fish to fry, it would nevertheless be nice to see them fixed. Hyperbole still bothers me, and when I see posts making like the sky is falling because of trading I am inclined to call it out, but I am not dumb enough to think that there is nothing wrong with PoE and go into hardcore fanboy deny-all-changes mode (*cough* SL4Y3R *cough*). Sure, there's some failed diagnosing of exactly what all the problems are, blaming trading for things that aren't trading's fault, but that just means the problem lies elsewhere, not that there isn't a problem, and not that it isn't big enough to get a pair of 70-page freaking threads. I mean, threads this long don't just spontaneously appear.

However, while I may essentially agree on the problems, I cannot on principle endorse the proposed solution to said problems; it goes completely against the proper principles on new league creation. The "new league" thing is an essential part of what this thread is about. If it was the "self-found sucks QQ thread," I might actually enjoy and support it under the proper circumstances. But it's creating a new league for the wrong reason, so I must oppose, and rather vehemently, because we have a lot of people suggesting something horrible here.
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Of course, I write a nice long wall of text like this, and the next 5 replies are all "I would totally play a self-found league if it existed, GGG do this YESTERDAY, +11111111!!!" and that's extremely frustrating to me. I have lost my temper over it before, and I'd rather not do it again. It's like people can't separate the problem from the solution, and they don't know how to perhaps agree with parts and disagree with others, perhaps even the suggestion as a whole. I guess to be fair, I don't read everything in threads this long either, so expecting to be able to persuade everyone is probably not even close to realistic. I imagine a third of the people posting in this thread (not a third of the posts) didn't read anything more than the thread title, and made up their mind from that alone. People like simple.

So I guess I get cast as the boogieman. Thing is, I'm really not.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

[...]

However, while I may essentially agree on the problems, I cannot on principle endorse the proposed solution to said problems; it goes completely against the proper principles on new league creation. The "new league" thing is an essential part of what this thread is about. If it was the "self-found sucks QQ thread," I might actually enjoy and support it under the proper circumstances. But it's creating a new league for the wrong reason, so I must oppose, and rather vehemently, because we have a lot of people suggesting something horrible here.

[...]

I tried to modify the thread and the first posts into something which pleases both stances,
people favoring an own SFL and people favoring a global balancing approach.
If I failed on that, don't hesitate to give constructive feedback.
Same goes for the title of the thread!

I understand that the discussion already ran it's course for a long time in one direction.
I however hope that new participants might come up with more feedback or original suggestions.

Thanks for the WoT!
I hardly find anything constructive which you did not already mentioned in this thread.
I kinda grasp that it was more of clarifying your position rather than suggesting anything new.
If you want your post to be added to the Thoughts&Feedback packet nonetheless, tell me so.

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Nightmare90 wrote:

Spoiler

I tried to modify the thread and the first posts into something which pleases both stances,
people favoring an own SFL and people favoring a global balancing approach.
If I failed on that, don't hesitate to give constructive feedback.
Same goes for the title of the thread!

I understand that the discussion already ran it's course for a long time in one direction.
I however hope that new participants might come up with more feedback or original suggestions.

Thanks for the WoT!
I hardly find anything constructive which you did not already mentioned in this thread.
I kinda grasp that it was more of clarifying your position rather than suggesting anything new.
If you want your post to be added to the Thoughts&Feedback packet nonetheless, tell me so.

PM sent.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

I believe that cooperative play actually should be rewarded more than solo play — as even compensation players for the hassles of dealing with uncooperative people when runs into them, and as a bonus for successfully arranging in-game relationships with other players which are functional and effective. But that doesn't mean I think players should feel forced into doing so. The ideal level of "social bonus" is at the level where the average player is neutral about seeking out "blind date" relationships with normal players, for grouping with friends, and against grouping with assholes. This means balancing the "social" bonuses against the level of frustration of dealing with the average (totally random) player, and goes for both partying together and trading.

I've had this debate in many games of different genres over several years. And you kinda touched on the problems that 'extra reward' and 'incentives' produce, personally I don't agree that they should exist in the slightest.

We have people who like to solo exclusively.
We have people who like to group exclusively.
We have people who like to do both, to varying ratios.

What we hear, as you say in this quote, is that people should be rewarded/compensated for the extra organisation, cooperation and hassle. We also hear that it promotes socialising, rewards for socialising and makes for a happier, more intertwined, social community. I have problems here, here's why.

In a scenario where there are no extras, those who want to group do so when they want, those who don't, don't. People group with friends or with people who want to group because they like to group.

Once rewards and incentives are introduced;

1) A closed network of friends who always play together are rewarded for doing so, they would do so any way, they are playing how they always would, we should note, also, that while being social among themselves, they are often completely segregated from the rest of the community and in fact, as seen in many guilds, will outright deny access to outsiders.

2) People who have no intention of ever grouping will still not group and are not rewarded, this is effectively a penalty.

3) People who would rather solo, but could be tempted with incentives, may group. We are rewarding these people for playing such a way that they would rather not.

4) People who don't give a shit about anyone but themselves and as much fat loot as they can get, will group no matter what their personal preference is and without a care for anyone else who they group with.

5) People who would rather group but don't have a closed party of friends will group, as they would any way, being social with like minded people, they are rewarded for doing what they would any way.

Group 1 are being rewarded for doing as they would, any way and are closed off from the community.

Group 2 are penalised.

Group 3 are doing what they would rather not.

Group 4 are just out for themselves and are the 'uncooperative people' mentioned in the quote. And hey, look, they now get rewarded for being douches.

Group 5 are being rewarded for doing what they would any way and compensated for putting up with the people that they now need to put up with much more because the compensation/incentive system is in place to start with.

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However, while I may essentially agree on the problems, I cannot on principle endorse the proposed solution to said problems; it goes completely against the proper principles on new league creation. The "new league" thing is an essential part of what this thread is about. If it was the "self-found sucks QQ thread," I might actually enjoy and support it under the proper circumstances. But it's creating a new league for the wrong reason, so I must oppose, and rather vehemently, because we have a lot of people suggesting something horrible here.

Why not to create the new league?

It will introduce Diablo 1/2 single player like style of the game.
No partying. No trading. Properly rewarding system of drops.

We may even go as far as demand the server code to be actually run on the client machine -> desync solved for us. We don't care about ladder or cheating in such mode. As the person doing that would be cheating himself. :-)

We will still get any new uniques, content update, etc... and for that will happily support GGG. :-)

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Filousov wrote:

We may even go as far as demand the server code to be actually run on the client machine -> desync solved for us.

This is a dream that one day will be fulfilled. Not today, not tomorrow, but one day...

Hi

SFL temporary 1-4 month non-competitive game play

SFL:1)No trades with players.2)Increased Orb drop rates NOT items.3)No mf rolls on blue or yellow items.4)No loot allocation timer(what drops for you is yours alone),No increased party drops.

GGG needs to fix things I agree, but GGG needs to start fixing things by experimenting in set closed environments(leagues) which they are currently doing. The information they gather from these constant races and leagues is invaluable.

What bothers me most though is there is quite a varied amount of people that want a separate league and GGG is ignoring it just like the other issues that plague this game, we are all right in this understanding:some thing needs to be done.

A separate SFL would/could be the stepping stone in finding a reasonable solution that then can be administered to the rest of the game once properly tinkered...but to attempt sweeping changes to the whole before tests are concluded on small test groups could be detrimental to POE's already current state, We don't want a out break do we? because I sense this is why GGG fails to comment on this idea beyond suggesting it to be a paid ''niche'' league.

1+ SFL

cheers

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

I believe the general tone of both this thread and the original SFL thread in Suggestions greatly exaggerates the extent of the problem [...] and are scapegoating all of their "solo self-found" issues onto trading [...]There's way too strong of a tendency in this thread to act like trading is the single biggest problem in this game, when it's not even really top 5 (desync, map affixes/enjoyability, IIQ/IIR, totems/minions, and party bonuses/mapcost, in that order) [...] Hyperbole still bothers me, and when I see posts making like the sky is falling because of trading I am inclined to call it out

It's not really in the top 5 for YOU. I assume, given the tone of your posts, that you do not play self-found. Perhaps your playstyle has something to do with which issues you perceive to be the most problematic, eh? I personally don't really have a problem with 4 out of the 5 "biggest problems" you listed. I do, of course, think desynch is a problem, but even that isn't as big of a problem for me as the lack of drops playing self-found.

I have played this game for almost a thousand hours since OB. That's an average of around 30 hours a week, every week, for almost 8 months now. Here are the two 5L ES chests I've managed to craft for myself:


Hundreds of fusings and dozens of chaos have been spent to get this crap. Spending hundreds of hours building up a decent amount of orbs to try to craft something with and then coming up empty handed is EASILY the biggest problem in this game for me.

That being said, I understand and respect the fact that, from your perspective, there are larger issues that need to be addressed. I encourage you and support you in creating/participating in threads that seek to address the issues that matter to you in this game. By that I mean I will not come into those threads and express my opinion in a way that marginalizes yours. I would appreciate it if you could do the same.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

There's way too strong of a tendency in this thread to act like trading is the single biggest problem in this game, when it's not even really top 5 (desync, map affixes/enjoyability, IIQ/IIR, totems/minions, and party bonuses/mapcost, in that order)

I rest my case.

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snapple99 wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

There's way too strong of a tendency in this thread to act like trading is the single biggest problem in this game, when it's not even really top 5 (desync, map affixes/enjoyability, IIQ/IIR, totems/minions, and party bonuses/mapcost, in that order)

I rest my case.

Your case has been rested.
You gain +1 to Endurance for 8 hours.