Self found can use a bit of love

duplicate post

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Saltychipmunk wrote:

I gotta say after playing with the atlas for a bit , it is huge pain in the arse now to get things done. frankly the current drop rate doesnt really support exploring the tree at all.

the more you explore the more difficult it is to explore the rest and it feels like i get almost no maps.

I would love to play some of the cool new maps but ... i level out of the map tiers long before i can unlock them all.

There is a 125 or so maps right, so of course it is going to take a while to get things done or unlock your atlas. I climbed to red maps the first weekend (but the first character was an MF build so I stopped climbing once I had the currency to roll my current character)

I think I have around 30-40 of the maps unlocked, I just got some more ones from the other side of the atlas, that I got from zana, but I suspect I should be able to unlock more and more of the atlas once things get rolling with the build and I start pushing harder.

My strategy is unlocking every map, once that is done, assuming I still have at least one extra I don't mind 3:1 maps in order to force progression of the atlas and improve my map drop rate.


I don't care if my character is level 90 or level 75, I'll complete every map at least once to unlock it and improve my chances, sure you won't get much XP on a T3 marsh to unlock it, but it all adds up in terms of improving drop rates.

I don't understand why is there "SF could use xyz" every patch which essentially boils it down to make it as efficient as a trading/partying player.

Your map drops and gems are just the same as any other party/trading player, they don't have magically more RNG or better drops then you.

The difference is the efficiency is trading something they don't need for something they need. 20 hours of self-found grinding can equate to 5 hours of something "usable" because 15 other hours were drops or currency you cannot use or something not for your character.

But a trading/partying player can liquate the 15 other "hours" of farming into something usable.

It's nearly impossible to make it "easier" for a self-found player with all of the new additions such as master crafting, gem vendors selling 80-90% of all gems you would need, and all other features. Also frankly you can suck it up and trade like 1 alch for the gem you need, it takes like 30 seconds.

"Your self-found deal with it" doesn't stem from elitist, it's the sheer fact that if I trade and farm for 10 hours and you self-found and farm for 10 hours. You could find 10 mirrors in those 10 hours and because of your self-proposed limitation those mirrors are worthless to you, while my 20 chaos orbs could get me anything I want within that price range.

You could have farmed blood, sweat and tears enough to play all of the content and get all of the items you want in the game, but you want to stamp your foot and point that "it's unfair" when all of your hard work is just sitting in your bank rotting.

There's some magical switch in self-found players that makes players dissatisfied with their "hard work" if they trade their belly of the beast for a kaom's or something. If you want the actual feeling of it dropping, that's fine. But don't complain that you "never had a kaom's drop". You already earned enough to get a kaom's.

I want to thank everybody, even the people posting absurd straw man arguments who completely missed every single point made in the thread, for keeping the conversation alive. Thanks for the bumps!

Thanks for making a nice & clear post on this, I haven't reached the atlas yet but pretty worried for it now...

I don't understand people criticizing SF for wanting changes. Why think that trading is the way the game has to & wants to be. There's nothing more than a trade channel, just so that traders stop polluting the main chat thread. Don't see how traders can be so entitled to gather from that that the way they play is the only right way... o_o'

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RagnarokChu wrote:

The difference is the efficiency is trading something they don't need for something they need. 20 hours of self-found grinding can equate to 5 hours of something "usable" because 15 other hours were drops or currency you cannot use or something not for your character.

And I dont understand why you are against fixing things for Self Found. If GGG improves the SF game, it improves your game too... It means you wont have to waste as much time trading and you ll get to spend more time actually playing the game and fighting monsters since you would actually be able to find more of the loot you are looking for. Wouldn't you have more fun doing that? Of course trading will always be faster, but I don't get the critics of fix for SF as they help you just as well.

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brobbeh wrote:

Why think that trading is the way the game has to & wants to be.

Probably because the lead developer said that the economy was the most important thing to him.

Also upping droprates will make the game faster and easier for all people that are willing to trade, and will change the overal balance.
Having everything much cheaper on the market wold mean having all of your drops worth less, and means less meaning when those drop in front of you, less excitement also probably, etc ...

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Fruz wrote:

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brobbeh wrote:

Why think that trading is the way the game has to & wants to be.

Probably because the lead developer said that the economy was the most important thing to him.

Also upping droprates will make the game faster and easier for all people that are willing to trade, and will change the overal balance.
Having everything much cheaper on the market wold mean having all of your drops worth less, and means less meaning when those drop in front of you, less excitement also probably, etc ...

Master crafting, gem vendors selling 90% of skill gems you need, essences, ect ect are all ways that improve the game that also vastly improve self-found without catering to "self found" because it improves the game in general.

Making updates "only" for the sake of self-found is bad for the game because it focuses on only one niche over others, that effects how the game is played for other people.

Also do you think people spend hours trading or something, it takes less then 10 mins to entirely gear out your character with a starting amount of orbs.

Why are you wasting hours of your life playing self found instead of trading?

Game was built upon the idea of stimulating how D2 was played, which is heavily trade + based on the economy of items. You're free to join along the ride, but you're choosing the harder path in the game. The line stops when you ask for easier improvements for your specific playstyles only catered to your playstyle.

This is like people asking for an auction house in Diablo 3, a game based on only finding your own shit.

Like I said earlier, the #1 thing which can be done for self-found is higher vendor offers. Let me explain that.

1. The market value of any item is always between vendor offer (minimum) and perceived average crafting cost (maximum). If the market value was lower, the seller wouldn't need the buyer; if it was higher, the buyer wouldn't need the seller.

2. Forces of supply and demand move prices within this range. As supply increases (loot drops) and demand decreases (being a "next step" upgrade for fewer players), prices decease; as demand increases, prices increase.

3. Lower prices encourage buying; higher prices encourage selling.

4. For most items, increased supply and lower demand cause the item to lose value over time. This means the longer a league goes on, the more buying is encouraged. It also means trade acts as a gear "catch up" mechanic, because acquiring better gear becomes easier and easier as a league progresses; conversely, selling becomes less profitable as a league progresses, so those in front develop sizable currency leads.

What this means for the highest-supply lowest-demand items is:
A. if it's an upgrade for you, the pressure to buy is tremendous because prices are absurdly low, and
B. the ability to sell at a significant profit is marginal, and while it does make more than vendoring items, it does si in a "nickel and dime" manner which encourages minimum time per transaction and overall feels like a lot of work for meager profit

I think Point A is great. Buying gear should be a catch-up mechanic, and having it catch you up a lot at very low cost is great.

However, Point B is a real problem. This who get decent gear drops early in a league can sell them for much higher prices than those who come later. The recent server issues and queue outrage shows that many players have figured this out and we're maddened by how their economic strategy was thwarted by forces beyond their control. And yet even after these sales are significantly devalued... still better than vendor.

Going back to Point A, massive supply and scant demand has domineering returns. Demand for best-in-slot items, usually uniques, never really drops based on the average buyer's current upgrade level, as they cannot be upgraded past. Therefore, the only items which massively drop in price are those which can be upgraded past. This means that for each "super bargain" buy, there's another superior item on the market which is decreasing in value over time but at a somewhat higher price point. Is denying a 1 Chaos item Therelate-starter to a league a horrible thing, when a 3 Chaos item is also available? How particulate need we, or should we, make upgrading-through-trade?

That's why I advocate increasing the vendor offer intelligently on items, to include vastly higher offers on items of significant value. This would raise minimum market values, pushing the cheapest items off of the market entirely. It would limit but shouldn't destroy the push to buy of Point A, and eliminate some Point B sales completely by just having the vendor give the currency instead of needing to jump through trade hoops - while also narrowing the maximum gap size between early league sellers and later league sellers. This also would directly benefit self-found players in a tangible, non-illusory way.

Hope you guys enjoyed the logic, and sorry it doesn't directly pertain to maps. (Although it does a little; I've been an advocate of better map vendoring, so lower map drops don't feel like as much of a waste, for some time now.)

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Jennik wrote:

I want to thank everybody, even the people posting absurd straw man arguments who completely missed every single point made in the thread, for keeping the conversation alive. Thanks for the bumps!

Mind responding to them, instead of vaguely calling opposing arguments bad? Because it seems you have nothing to counter them with.

Also:

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Jennik wrote:

2) Map diversity: Acquiring a diverse selection of maps without trading is a nightmare. If there's a recipe for the next map up, your best bet is to skip running a map until you've saved up enough for the vendor recipe. This can take a really long time, during which that section of the Atlas is cut off completely. Since most of your highest maps are in this category, this means you should never be running your best maps and should instead be grinding the lower tier maps over and over and over again.

No. You're supposed to run your highest maps, as soon as possible to unlock as many maps as possible. You get more bonus from the Atlas, you get highest maps, you progress.

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RagnarokChu wrote:

... you ask for easier improvements for your specific playstyles only catered to your playstyle.

?? can't speak for others but myself, I was simply stating that the Atlas adjacent rule reduces map diversity overall, and for SF players in particular. This also affects unique maps and therefore shaper's orbs. Trade overcomes the issue, while SF struggles A LOT MORE THAN IT DID BEFORE THE ATLAS.
So we tell GGG the issue, and hope that they'll look into it ( which in part they did already, Zana selling maps you haven't unlock yet is a good thing imo).

@Scrotie: I too feel that vendors' offers are lackluster most of the times.