Love playing PoE? Tired of trading or RMT - or do you enjoy either? Vote here!

GGG and their staunch supporters also said that loot allocation would never happen.They also said that their would never be easier leagues than the parent leagues (Ambush)and possibly future custom leagues.Softcore leagues by their very nature are easier game modes than hardcore leagues .....

And why would someone play Ambush if they only play hardcore leagues ?

I for one currently don't care what they do to improve the solo self found experience,but improve it must,because in the games current iteration it's just completely obnoxious trying to play in this style.It gives no sense of reward,accomplishment or satisfaction and leaves the player feeling frustrated,bored and mostly uninterested in even rerolling.

In comparison to closed beta with much less content far less players (/online = 200-300) and incomplete/in progress systems,the current game is actually far less enjoyable as an ARPG.

If GGG decides to change their selling points of POE being a hardcore ARPG and a barter based economy then perhaps I'd feel a bit different.Hell maybe I'd even start trading (yes I do/have played trade games),but then again POE offers a poor experience in trading as well and lacks the type of infrastructure to deal with it.

Over all it gives impression of a poor ARPG experience and a poor trade experience.They should choose one or the other because for in my opinion at least,trying to focus on both is bringing themselves and the game down.

=)

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

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iamstryker wrote:

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

time and time again it boils down to making the game easier for people who already dont want to trade.

There is nothing at all easier about having no trading. It will be more difficult, you know it, I know it, everyone who knows GGG knows it. No amount of increased drops that GGG puts into the game could ever compensate for not having the ability to trade.

right, I agree with what youve said here. I said the same in an earlier post, to give the players the exact same gear and crafting opportunities they would have to buff drops beyond all reason. But thats not the point Im making here, Im saying you want the game to be easier than the current perm leagues are, and you do, so what you just said, while right, is irrelevant to the point I was making.

This is all about making a league that is easier than the current leagues for solo self found players, if you cant even be honest and clear about what you want how can you make any solid argument for it? This whole SFL thing is just a cover, youre trying to get something else through the back door and that is drops balanced around self found rather than trade. Im not against that argument, but saying its all about the game being harder is a complete contradiction of the idea that we need an SFL, so you guys need to start being honest with yourselves and the rest of us about what it is you want if we are going to have a proper discussion about it that anyone who matters is going to take seriously.

What is wrong with self found atm? What is wrong with trade? This isnt D3 where its people who actually grind vs people who turn up with a visa card and RMAH bis endgame gear, trade in this game is legit, you have to find something of equal worth to the item you want to trade for. Does it make the game easier? Ya, if you are GOOD at it, trade in this game does take knowledge, a lot of it if you want to get ahead through trade. Sry if you dont like hearing that but its true.

I found a legacy Kaoms Heart, legacy Aegis, BoR, Voltaxic, several Lioneyes bows, untold alpha howls etc, Ive 6 linked a number of GG chest armours Ive found.... Do I have chars that have extreme endgame gear that was traded for? Yes. How did I afford it? By trading equally extreme endgame gear. Solo self found I would have characters every bit as powerful as the chars I have now who just piss all over extreme endgame maps, hey would just be different characters. I dont want to play a Kaoms build, I want to play different characters that use equally strong stuff, so I sold the kaoms, sold the bor, sold the voltaxic etc. Did that make the game easier? No, just more enjoyable. So waht exactly is the problem with solo self found in this game? Please tell me why this isnt a 'l2p' issue? Because in my experience, I just dont see it from an item point of view. If this was an SFL I would be so far ahead of most of you, because Im a better player right? No, because I played more and got better rng, if you arnt impressed one bit by me finding legacy kaoms, volt and all these other high end things then good, you shouldnt be, theres nothing impressive about it, and that is exactly why an SFL ladder would be utter bullshit with absolutely no meaning in the way a hc ladder does.


I see it from a currency point of view, the amount of posts I have made about how trade is virtually mandatory to run maps, how do you find 10-30 chaos + 4 chisels for every map you run? Its impossible. Did I give up? Did I say 'GGG will never change this because they love their economy so I better try and sneak what I want in behind calls for an SFL'? No. Now we have ambush, I have leveled 4 characters, one of them is a days hard mappin away from 92 and I have not alched a single map in the whole league. Ive fun them blue, thanks to the changes to map drops and the new dropboxes. They fixed it, they actually fixed it, they listened and did something about it.

high end crafting? Youre basically locked out of mass eternal exalting unless you are good at trading. Should this be changed? If so make an argument for it, but as far as I can see this is the only thing left now, this is the only thing an SFL could meaningfully change. You dont need it, you dont need to eternal exalt spam its only for extreme gear that is more for show than its benefits over lower tier gear that is still op. But do you want it? do you want to be free to just spam more orbs in general? I do, Id be up for that, but if that is what we are talking about then lets talk about it rather than talking about this SFL stuff which is just adding unnecessary baggage to the idea and making it unworkable.

Ok I'll be waiting for your stream doing the solo self found,no shared stash,no trade,no party,no lifting,no dodging,no infinite boss portals,no banging away on trivial content for an eternity,in a hardcore league and then taking out merciless Dominus with your self acquired gear.

This will be the opportunity that all the it's *easy peasy* crowd have waited for,a definitive time of truth that the current content can indeed be easily overcome with ... what you find and craft yourself with zero trade,completely off ones own back and before time itself is shattered by oncoming blackholes.

I'll be there (time permitting) to cheer you on as I really would like to see this done,I'm sure I'll learn a lot from it and will concede the fact that it's more than just possible,but in fact probable.

=)

The end of the poll is a lie.

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Nightmare90 wrote:

The end of the poll is a lie.

But we do have cake!

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Temper wrote:

Ok I'll be waiting for your stream doing the solo self found,no shared stash,no trade,no party,no lifting,no dodging,no infinite boss portals,no banging away on trivial content for an eternity,in a hardcore league and then taking out merciless Dominus with your self acquired gear.

This will be the opportunity that all the it's *easy peasy* crowd have waited for,a definitive time of truth that the current content can indeed be easily overcome with ... what you find and craft yourself with zero trade,completely off ones own back and before time itself is shattered by oncoming blackholes.

I'll be there (time permitting) to cheer you on as I really would like to see this done,I'm sure I'll learn a lot from it and will concede the fact that it's more than just possible,but in fact probable.

=)

this is the gear I 'beat' nemisis with and started mapping




I think I traded for the boots maybe, and obviously it was those op boots that carried me, couldnt have done it without those little boots... That char is still alive at level 74 in hardcore, that was a fresh start, fresh economy, playing solo, nothing in my stash, no excessive farming. Shit gear, but gear good enough to beat the game and start mapping. That was my first and probably last proper venture into hardcore, I could have just ground maps until the inevitable death but its exactly the same shit as softcore so the minute I 'finished' the game on merciless and it turned into a grindfest I just logged out and went back to the proper grindfest league.


This is the thing with talking about drops, why someone saying drops are bad, it doesnt mean anything unless they explain themselves and go into detail. Could mean drops are bad and someone needs to do something. Could mean theyre a shit player and need ridiculous gear to survive because they just try and facetank everything full retard mode. Could mean they have a rubbish build and farm at literally 1/10 of the speed good builds do, and thats why they get f all every day. Could mean they dont know a lot about the game and dont know what good gear looks like most of the time, they sell stuff in trade chat for 5 chaos that could have sold for 5 exalts to the right buyer if listed properly and feel like that was their 1 success of the week.

Racers somehow manage to play solo self found all the way to the end of merciless when the race permits, time and time and time again, Im a shit player compared to a lot of them and even I can make my way to the end of merciless in a fresh league. Helps that I dont roll an aegis ci critflicker binos build as my first char, I have a certain level of game knowledge and common sense so when I start a league Im on a character I know can finish the game with shit, easily found gear, and then can be used to mf merciless piety a bit to find the gear I need to kick off more fun build ideas I have.




I dont want to have a you v me thing with you guys, dont feel like Im saying you dont have legitimate problems with the game or I dont respect self found or that you must be bad players to have a problem with gear. Im not saying those things, but you know this is supposed to be a hard game and Im sure you can appreciate that when GGG read a topic like this, its hard to tell where theres a problem in the game and when someone is just bad at the game when thing slike buffed drops or slf come up as general ideas supported in a very no specific fashion. When I read about players having problems, I dont know if theyre shit, their gear is shit, the build is shit, their expectations are off.. theres so many factors. Item drops are bad? Well a bad item for this char is a super item for this other one, are we talking about bad drops here or are we talking about bad build knowledge? Or just a bad build in general?

Personally I dont find gearing up a problem from drops. I play chars I know I can find gear for and then 1000s of hours later Ive found gear that can do a shitload of different things. This is another aspect of the problem, in order for the game to have 1000s of hours play theres got to be new things waiting for you 1000s of hours in. So you add them, and then players who only want to play 100s of hours see these things and feel like they NEED to have them too, but if you change the game so that you get everything in a few 100 hours, you rob the people who want to play for 1000s of hours, you take away the longevity. So then you would need to add more shit, more gear and build enabling things that add back 1000s of hours play, then the 100s of hours guys want that shit too... at some point you got to put your foot down and tell the 100s of hours players to learn to live with the fact they dont have all the shit the longer term players do, otherwise you end up with an easy, limited, nooby casual game.

What has to be addressed is specifics, what is specifically wrong with self found and drops atm? Where are those gear walls? Is there a gear wall at all? Is it more orb starvation? I see a lot of calls for SFL, but SFL is a solution, I dont see people really being specific about what the problem is that we are trying to solve. The call for more drops as a general topic is like a minefield of 'learn to play' issues, I know a lot of you guys Im talking to atm are serious people, serious players, vets of the game and have real concerns. But if that is true then you must appreciate the issues Im pointing out, you must see that theres a ton of noobs in this game who simply need to get good rather than calling for the easy switch to be flipped, and its hard to tell who is who. GGG arnt big on adopting suggestions, more often that not they seem to appreciate what a suggestion is trying to achieve and then find their own solution that works without breaking all the stuff the suggested solution would, they have their own take on ideas they adopt. I think if you drill down to the specifics of what it is that you feel is wrong with self found atm they will listen and youll see changes. But that change may not be an sfl, probably wont be, and I think you guys need to be open to the idea of GGG fixing the game for you in their own way, in a fashion that they are comfortable with and makes sense for their model and resources.

Thats all Im trying to say, Im not trying to get in a beef with you guys over how you feel the game is unbalanced because I have a completely opposing view, I dont.

Now, once this poll is closed you need to put up another post in the Feedback forum with the poll results and see if you (we) can get the GGG devs to:

1. take notice of the poll results
2. get a serious and clear response (nothing wishy-washy)

With the very little feedback we get from GGG on this subject and with a clear majority of those participating in the poll in favor of an SFL of some kind, we are not happy with Chris' stock reply of "it's not the kind of arpg that we'd like to play". While I clearly concede that it is GGGs prerogative to make PoE any way they want, the central important message that we need from GGG is to explain why they turn their back on what is clearly a large group of arpg players that love PoE over other arpg's but are not traders and mostly play solo. The other stock reply that you can play SFL style in the current leagues so there is no need for a SFL doesn't cut it either as the zone clearing time is higher playing solo thus the crafting orb acquired per hour is much lower. Also the current crafting orb drop rates are clearly insufficient to be able to do any appreciable self-crafting. I would cut GGG much more slack and overlook other technical problems if there was an SFL. My feelings here are probably reflected by thousands (millions maybe?) who like PoE but want more value with solo playing for time spent here.

I am ready to become a Champion supporter immediately upon getting a league that does not actively penalize me because I choose to go it alone and self-craft my own gear. Does GGG have a Daddy Warbucks financial backer so that they don't need to be concerned with generating more revenue? Do they get enough daily microtransactions from the current player base to keep them in good financial health?

+1 to SFL all the way.

LOVE PLAYING, HATE TRADING

It's a typical response by those who are in disfavor of a SFL to over-exaggerate what we are asking for to belittle and discredit our concerns on this topic. To take what we are asking GGG for and then go way off the rails to say "well then you want an easy-peasy wimpy arpg where everything is handed to you". That kind of troll response is clearly nonsensical and disrespectful to those who voted yes for the SFL. There has never been, and is never, a desire to water down the difficulty factor of PoE. PoE as a hardcore arpg is great the way it is right now (minus desync of course). All we want by way of the SFL is to get a league that rewards the solo self-crafting player better than what the 2 permanent leagues currently offer. Plain and simple. No, we don't want a faceroll everything arpg, no we don't want loot drops that fill the entire screen with their descriptions. No one is advocating (or at least shouldn't be) an avalanche of loot with every rogue or boss kill. Too much is just as play ruining as the too little crafting orb drops that PoE currently gives to the solo player. We will accept the fact that cross league trading is banned to keep the higher crafting orbs we get from flooding the other permanent leagues. The debate over whether a SFL should allow or ban trading is still unresolved but I personally don't care either way.

Anyone expecting a SFL to be easier than the current game has no idea what they are talking about. They would simply try it and once they see that trading is still easier they would go back to that.

I don't think the OP and everyone else in here can be any more specific about why a SFL is a welcome league and why people want it.

Just read the Snorkle_uk post and he does have a few good points. First and foremost, we all need to understand where those in favor of an SFL are coming from. For players like Snorkle_uk to be completely happy to sink more than 1000 hours into PoE to acquire enough orbs and gear to grind level 78 maps ad infinitum, they view playing PoE as almost a second job. Those who are trying to convince GGG that a SFL is a good league to have to add playing diversity and not need to sink vast amounts of time into, GGG should know that we are not all newbies that don't know anything and thus make crap builds that can't farm efficiently enough, that we do have knowledge on what builds work well, and that we are not just bad gamers in general. We've gone through the newbie phase some time ago, have watched many videos from the elite masters, have learned to make good solid builds, and are more often than not passionately loving the particular spin that GGG put into PoE.

Now specifically to answer Snorkle_uk's question of what constitutes a bad drop, let's get a few things clear. No one should expect that each and every drop be an upgrade to our existing gear. That would be shear lunacy and just crazy if any one would think that way. For me a bad drop is any item that is of a very low item level to the level of the character I'm playing. For example, an item that is 10 or more levels below the current build level. While low level items are sometimes useful to be saved for a future new build, once you have done that 101 times you have enough new build leveling gear to last forever and don't need any more. Then the hunt is on to find new gear that makes an improvement to the current build. Anything else is mostly vendor trash or trash that is never picked up. The current state of PoE for the solo player is weighted toward the vendor trash end too much and many have quit playing for this reason. Secondly, if the critical crafting orbs (fusing, jeweler, alts, etc) are too few and far between for the solo player, then this is also viewed as a failure as the time required is too steep. Since Snorkle_uk is ok with a very high grind time to get the "critical" crafting orbs to drop (1000s instead of 100s of hours), he sees the SFL as a league that would make him run out of things to do in a short time.

This is where he (and everyone else) who loves the fact that PoE takes 1000s of hours to acquire wealth and anything less then that time grind makes for a failure, this is where he makes a fatal argument against the SFL. Snorkle_uk is equating his love of the long time to reach high value gear and thus ensuring longevity of playing PoE as a very important reason why a SFL should not be created. Too short of time leads to item maxing and then quiting because he has the top gear and a level 100 build. But he is failing to see that the SFL is not a league to replace any existing one, it is to be a new league specifically for the PoE lovers that don't have 1000s of hours of free time to make a high level build. He or anyone else wanting to take that much time should never ever play in the SFL. For the same reason as I don't and won't play Invasion league as I'd die very quickly to a rogue and rage quit, he should never ever play the SFL for it would shorten his playing time to get to the top way too much. But with millions of arpg players that don't have that much time (or for whatever reason don't want to sink that much time) the SFL is the perfect way to get the PoE fix we enjoy by playing for 100s of hours and not need to grind for 1000s of hours. Most in favor of a SFL are not playing PoE as many hours per week as Snorkle_uk or any other uber hardcore player does. For them to insist that we must play for 1000s of hours is just as bad as an SFL proponent insisting that they must play in a SFL for a only 100s of hours. Furthermore, the fewer hours of playing PoE per week still works out to be enjoying PoE for a very long time. Meanwhile, he plays the standard leagues at the higher time grind and both groups are happy. He stays out of SFL and I stay out of Invasion (or any future 4 month hardcore league). GGG can keep the drop rates as is in his favorite league to extend his playing time, ramp up the drop rates for the SFL, and neither shall play the other league with the knowledge that if they do and don't like it they can't bitch to GGG that the league sucks. We are forewarned in advance.

As far as GGG HR resources are concerned, I'm already on record to become a Champion supporter when there is an SFL and most likely many who have quit would come back and more new players would come in as word spreads that PoE is more rewarding for anyone with a desire to play with a lower time requirement. More players would/should translate to more microtransactions as the happiness quotient is higher, and thus more revenue for GGG would allow for more devs to work on the increased quantity of leagues. No reduction to the hardness of the content is needed, so PoE stays the same hardcore and only the time to better items is reduced. Only orb drop rates and item scaling adjustments would need to be made, not a complete overhaul of the item and monster database.

If GGG would do this and add an SFL, then they will surely achieve arpg greatness and fame.