The Self Found League

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Courageous wrote:

The expectation of Self Found League is simply that IIQ and IIR be boosted to a degree "sufficient to account for the lack of trading". Some folks in the thread have said "simply increase currency drops," which would have the main effect of everyone crafting their gear. I disagree with that, as I don't like the present crafting system that much (see my sig), and therefore would be relying more on drops. Whatever else is true, trading is cost effective, fast, and efficient and getting you good items fast. What that means is that the IIQ and IIR delta to SFL could probably be pretty large to end up being "neutral" to Default.

If people have more expectations than this for SFL, you are right. But you're making a lot of effort to project thoughts and feelings onto the SFL constituency: that's not gonna be very productive in the end.

If exalts and the like have to be buffed a lot in SFL in order to make it work for the "end game," so be it. Buff them. There is no economy to protect. The only risk of "harm" of doing such a thing is having all the players get good items too fast. That's a game design risk in and of itself. But that's a separate issue, and need not be discussed here.

And I am saying that the expectation that using IIQ/IIR as a tuning nob is going to give you that standalone item hunt you enjoyed from original ARPGs is overly optimistic.

To use my own anecdotal example, I've consistently gotten valuable items each week to trade with, but I haven't self-found a useful upgrade since probably early April and much of my gear is still pretty mediocre. Lets estimate that I see 20 items/min and I'm actively killing things on average 2 hours a day. That is 2400 items/day or 72,000 items/month. So in a rather conservative estimate there was no self-found useful item for me in well over 100,000 item drops. Yet, I've traded for at least 8 upgrades in the same span of time.

The IIQ/IIR necessary to put self-found anywhere near being on par with trade efficiency would likely be enormous, which is why I keep bringing up the game blinding players with gear not to mention situations such as CI characters ignoring any rare evasion, armor, hybrid, and/or low level ES gear because there wouldn't even be enough incentive for loot & look.

Realistically a SFL you desire that can sustain a healthy long term existence would require a lot of complex customization to various game mechanics and that takes a lot of time and resources that GGG may not be wise to invest at this point. It is basically asking them to write an alternative version to their game, which is well beyond merely implementing rulesets that already exist for races.

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The IIQ/IIR necessary to put self-found anywhere near being on par with trade efficiency would likely be enormous, which is why I keep bringing up the game blinding players with gear...

Indeed. However, the overabundance of the loot christmas tree is already an acknowledged game problem in the present permanent leagues. The devs are therefore considering mechanisms to calm the number of items while improving their quality. Presumably that issue would need to be repaired for self found to work at all. Consider:

Suppose a base IQ of 200%, and then player running IIQ gear, and then a party. Under the present system, the results would be absurd.

Other possibilities for SFL would be to slightly increase the socket probability and link rate of items. If crafting is your thing, you could increase currency disportionately, and even more disportionately towards higher end currency. And so on and so forth.

Point is, we're looking for a combination of things to make SFL work. Not not work. Hint hint.

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Courageous wrote:

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The IIQ/IIR necessary to put self-found anywhere near being on par with trade efficiency would likely be enormous, which is why I keep bringing up the game blinding players with gear...

Indeed. However, the overabundance of the loot christmas tree is already an acknowledged game problem in the present permanent leagues. The devs are therefore considering mechanisms to calm the number of items while improving their quality. Presumably that issue would need to be repaired for self found to work at all. Consider:

Suppose a base IQ of 200%, and then player running IIQ gear, and then a party. Under the present system, the results would be absurd.

Other possibilities for SFL would be to slightly increase the socket probability and link rate of items. If crafting is your thing, you could increase currency disportionately, and even more disportionately towards higher end currency. And so on and so forth.

Point is, we're looking for a combination of things to make SFL work. Not not work. Hint hint.

who cares about currency and over abundance of items and currency if you can't trade in the first place? the point is imo for a self found server is that you make everything yourself and obtain it all yourself, there is no trading so the more currency drop the better, shared stash tab for all your chars so you can experiment with many types of builds and characters. it's a great playing opportunity to play with mates and each get their own loot and currency, but also you could call it a test build server. aka self found server. there is no difference imo. you still got hc and sc for that too but if you really want to test better with more currency to make stuff then SF server would be the way to go.
Think about it though, GGG has races where no partying, no trading already how hard would it be to make it a perminent league? it wouldn't be.

also may I suggest Unlimited respec points in this self found server so we can fiddle around with builds change passive tree, etc etc.

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who cares about currency and over abundance of items and currency if you can't trade in the first place

We're talking about the ugly thing that happens when too many drops occur. It's an acknowledged problem in the present game, and would be hugely worse in SFL. Imagine a map boss dropping 80 items. The screen would fill up with labels. No good. Needs a fix.

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also may I suggest Unlimited respec points in this self found server ...

Well no one can stop you making a suggestion, however: NO.

SFL is not a place to dogpile on for every little community wish list item. We wish to be as broadly appealing to all play styles, except the trading playstyle. We also are friendly to crafters. So no request for solo, etc.

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Courageous wrote:

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who cares about currency and over abundance of items and currency if you can't trade in the first place

We're talking about the ugly thing that happens when too many drops occur. It's an acknowledged problem in the present game, and would be hugely worse in SFL. Imagine a map boss dropping 80 items. The screen would fill up with labels. No good. Needs a fix.

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also may I suggest Unlimited respec points in this self found server ...

Well no one can stop you making a suggestion, however: NO.

SFL is not a place to dogpile on for every little community wish list item. We wish to be as broadly appealing to all play styles, except the trading playstyle. We also are friendly to crafters. So no request for solo, etc.

and as for this so called "problem" you speak about. it isnt really a problem, it's more or less the QQers like yourself qqing over nothing.

Well the way GGG are talking about crafting, whites and getting 6 Links with quality gear, whites is where it'll be at so whats the problem dropping 80 items from a boss? all the more for crafting for not just your main char but for your alt builds aswell. no harm done there.

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and as for this so called "problem" you speak about. it isnt really a problem, it's more or less the QQers like yourself qqing over nothing.

Manifesto

Paragraph 6.

Chris at GGG is the one you are accusing of "QQ'ing".

Please keep your fingers off the "insult" key. It's annoying.

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Hackuseme wrote:

To use my own anecdotal example, I've consistently gotten valuable items each week to trade with, but I haven't self-found a useful upgrade since probably early April and much of my gear is still pretty mediocre.

This is exactly my point. The only useful drops you have had you are forced to use the trade to get any use out of them.

Where is the fun in having to rely on a trading simulator, I'm playing a hack n' slash, not an economic trading simulator. Every other argp I can think off manages to cope with giving useable drops, but here it's all about trade, trade and more trade.

Even the crafting guide says don't craft, buy it.

Plus with the trade almost every rare/unique is available if you have the currency. In a self found you might never get to find a lioneyes, or other godly item, but if you do it will feel far more enjoyable when it drops than just grind currency and go buy it from the trade.

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Jaknet wrote:

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Hackuseme wrote:

To use my own anecdotal example, I've consistently gotten valuable items each week to trade with, but I haven't self-found a useful upgrade since probably early April and much of my gear is still pretty mediocre.

This is exactly my point. The only useful drops you have had you are forced to use the trade to get any use out of them.

Where is the fun in having to rely on a trading simulator, I'm playing a hack n' slash, not an economic trading simulator. Every other argp I can think off manages to cope with giving useable drops, but here it's all about trade, trade and more trade.

Even the crafting guide says don't craft, buy it.

Plus with the trade almost every rare/unique is available if you have the currency. In a self found you might never get to find a lioneyes, or other godly item, but if you do it will feel far more enjoyable when it drops than just grind currency and go buy it from the trade.

You are neglecting the point of the example, which is that even though the game can consistently provide good end-game items the complexity and diversity of the loot pool means that the majority of good end-game (valuable) items won't be 'useful' to any particular character.

In other words it is not a preferable intent by GGG to force trade efficiency on the economy. It is the complexity and diversity of builds and the item pool market that necessitates it.

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Courageous wrote:

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The IIQ/IIR necessary to put self-found anywhere near being on par with trade efficiency would likely be enormous, which is why I keep bringing up the game blinding players with gear...

Indeed. However, the overabundance of the loot christmas tree is already an acknowledged game problem in the present permanent leagues. The devs are therefore considering mechanisms to calm the number of items while improving their quality. Presumably that issue would need to be repaired for self found to work at all. Consider:

Suppose a base IQ of 200%, and then player running IIQ gear, and then a party. Under the present system, the results would be absurd.

Other possibilities for SFL would be to slightly increase the socket probability and link rate of items. If crafting is your thing, you could increase currency disportionately, and even more disportionately towards higher end currency. And so on and so forth.

Point is, we're looking for a combination of things to make SFL work. Not not work. Hint hint.

Yes, and they will likely implement something on the order of re-balanced bonuses for group play towards adding rarity since the overabundance is the result of map+group+gear IIQ stacking. It wouldn't significantly shrink the base average of drops and doesn't resolve the issue that the average number of items the game needs to throw at you in order to produce something 'useful' in terms of general end-game is enormous.

In order to find a solution to making SFL work people need to first fundamentally understand what is hindering that play style in current leagues otherwise many suggestions won't prove to be very useful. What I am trying to do is illuminate people to the problem of proportionality when it comes to the game producing a 'useful' item per character.

Let's say that currently the game on average spawns 20 items/minute when actively playing and 1 out of 200,000 items will be useful to an end-game character (I'm just using hypothetical numbers though no unrealistic). That makes the useful item drop rate roughly 1 per 7 days played, which at 2 hours played a day would take nearly 3 months on average. An innate 300%IIR/100%IIQ wouldn't even reduce that rate by an order of magnitude and you'd still have unlucky weeks and months where you found nothing. It still wouldn't be healthy enough for a long term SFL.

I believe it really would take a significant customization of itemization in general to provide a foundation for a SFL. They could for instance implement a floor much in the way there is a ceiling when it comes to what base item/affixes the level of the content can drop. In other words maybe merciless difficultly shouldn't be able to spawn/roll items you could find in normal difficulty. That would eliminate low tier items from the end-game item hunt.

Of course as I said such a change would require significant time and resources and at this time maybe not the wisest thing to prioritize at this moment.

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An innate 300%IIR/100%IIQ wouldn't even reduce that rate by an order of magnitude and you'd still have unlucky weeks and months where you found nothing. It still wouldn't be healthy enough for a long term SFL.

8X. That's 3 whole base-2 orders of magnitude. ;-P

Anyway, this is why (I think) I said 200/200 (9X) earlier in the thread. A lot of people thought that would be too much, but I instinctively already believe as you do. See, I'm not really against trading, and do so to play Default league (let's say I do so under mild duress, but indeed am a good buyer). So I know just how easy it is to get decent-good gear as a trader. Here:



Chest: 5GCP
Each sword: 4 chaos.
Time invested: game play for currency plus 2-3 days of delayed search and negotiations for the items.

You're right about the best answer being something to do with item budgets (and perhaps a bit to do with currency). IIQ/IIR are not the best way to do this. But to ask for item budget changes is asking a lot, as you already observed.

You know that new "Lucky" modifier they recently added, where you roll twice and take the better of the two rolls? Imagine it could apply to item drops. Thing is, you'd need instrumentation in place to know what a good item is. For sockets and links, we already have that, so I guess it could be done for those right away. But for the rest of the mods on an item, there's not even a universal definition of "good." So it can't be done trivially. I suppose you could roll twice for mod count and pick the better of the two? I'm not sure that would good enough, but it could help a lot.

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Courageous wrote:

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An innate 300%IIR/100%IIQ wouldn't even reduce that rate by an order of magnitude and you'd still have unlucky weeks and months where you found nothing. It still wouldn't be healthy enough for a long term SFL.

8X. That's 3 whole base-2 orders of magnitude. ;-P

Anyway, this is why (I think) I said 200/200 (9X) earlier in the thread. A lot of people thought that would be too much, but I instinctively already believe as you do. See, I'm not really against trading, and do so to play Default league (let's say I do so under mild duress, but indeed am a good buyer). So I know just how easy it is to get decent-good gear as a trader. Here:

Chest: 5GCP
Each sword: 4 chaos.
Time invested: game play for currency plus 2-3 days of delayed search and negotiations for the items

You're right about the best answer being something to do with item budgets (and perhaps a bit to do with currency). IIQ/IIR are not the best way to do this. But to ask for item budget changes is asking a lot, as you already observed.

You know that new "Lucky" modifier they recently added, where you roll twice and take the better of the two rolls? Imagine it could apply to item drops. Thing is, you'd need instrumentation in place to know what a good item is. For sockets and links, we already have that, so I guess it could be done for those right away. But for the rest of the mods on an item, there's not even a universal definition of "good." So it can't be done trivially. I suppose you could roll twice for mod count and pick the better of the two? I'm not sure that would good enough, but it could help a lot.

Base-10 or go home. :P



Wand = Found
Shield = Trade
Chest = Found Mirror + Mirror Service
Helm = Found
Gloves = Trade
Boots = Found
Rings = Crafted
Belt = Trade
Neck = Chanced first week of OB. (lol)

I've actually stayed away from big time trading as the majority of my gear is found or crafted. Of course I got a Mirror and chanced an Astramentis while playing a strength based EK build struggling with Int/Agi requirements and so I feel like I've landed on the far edge of the luck rolls. I also play more than the average person. However, even I have hit the progression wall when it comes to finding upgrades, but I am not struggling to accumulate wealth, which means I'll have to start doing bigger trades.

It comes to this because the game's loot has to support a vast array of build diversity. You need gear for CI builds, High ES RF/PA builds, EB builds coming from both the strength and dex side of the tree, IR builds, Non-IR Armor builds, and on and on. The loot pool simply become massive and there is no way for a game to decipher what the player intends to be their desired gear.

All I think they can really do is try and find ways to select against universally 'bad' gear i.e. low base items and/or lower tier affix mods. For example, maybe an item shouldn't be able to roll the mods below half its item level or be a base level that is 5 tiers lower than its item level, i.e. an item level 79 pure armor chest could never be a Colosseum Plate or lower nor could it roll below the ilvl 44 life mod 'Virile'. This way they reduce the lottery enough the game doesn't have to shower a player with thousands of rares to increase the rate of finding useful items.