The Self Found League

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Hulkcore wrote:

I really like this idea and would love to see it implemented. However, I often level chars and do runs, etc... with a coworker. We share gear and low currency. If he's playing a caster and I find a wand that's an upgrade for him that my melee char doesn't need, I'll give it too him. If I'm out of chroms and just found a great upgrade that needs colors rerolled, he'll give me a few.

I've been trying to think of a way to allow limited gear sharing while eliminating the trading economy. What I've come up with is having a trade list of 3-5* other accounts that you can trade with per account. It would be permanent, so those 3-5 accounts would be the only ones that you could ever swap things between. I feel like this would allow players to add their regular playing partners without generating a trade economy. Even if someone had a Kaom's for trade, would they really want to take up a permanent slot to do a one time trade?

Thoughts? I haven't read all 50 pages, so perhaps something similar has been suggested?



*3-5 I tend to think that 3 would be a good number, but if you play with a full group you would need 5. So, I'm not sure what the number should be.

You got a really good point there. I do run in a party every now and then, but ALWAYS with the same people.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

This is a perfect example of why the Self-Found League should not exist; instead, self-found in the leagues we have should be fixed, so that every league is a self-found league, and a trading league too.

I'm fine with this, but I don't think GGG are.

The issues I see right now with self-found in a trading league are not;
Drop rates of rares.
Drop rates of uniques.
Drop rates of chromes, jeweller's, fuses, nor the mechanics they use.
These orbs have only one use and it works fine. I think they drop at a rate which is in harmony with their use.

I'm fine with all that, but have to add I'm only fine with it because I can invest silly time, for others I can see issues.

Where self-found breaks down in a trading league, is orb drops. i.e. the other orbs than what I mentioned above. Crafting and rolling maps (which is fkn content access and character progression) is at the mercy of trading. This would need to change drastically for self-found and trading to coexist.

Edit; Although, the point about a self-found, no trading player still being vulnerable to hacking and his account cleared out when everything could be untradeable, of no use to a hacker and thus safe, is very good food for thought.

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TheAnuhart wrote:

I'm fine with this, but I don't think GGG are.

I'm not fine with this. If they modified Standard to have the drop rates that would sustain Self Found League, it would ruin Standard. Trading in Standard would merely increase in potency, ruining the purpose of Self Found again. A Self Found / Crafting league is only viable if there is no trading at all. And if removing trading from Standard is what we're discussing, I'm not fine with that, either: it would ruin the play experience of too many (masochistic?) players who like trading.

However, if league diversification is proforma undesirable, I should like to point out that it might be technologically possible to have Self Found players as a league within a League. Self Found players who have to have 1) no trading; 2) no shared stash with their non-Self Found characters; 3) no ability to drop items on the ground; 4) no ability to pickup items dropped by other players; 5) some system of dedicated monster drops, so that the Self Found player has access to better gear, more quickly, than trading players.

I think a League is easier than what I write above, but it's not necessarily the only way.

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Courageous wrote:

A Self Found / Crafting league is only viable if there is no trading at all. And if removing trading from Standard is what we're discussing, I'm not fine with that, either: it would ruin the play experience of too many (masochistic?) players who like trading.

You're not getting it. The core issue isn't drop rates; the inability to have reasonable drop rates without destroying trading is a symptom. The cause is a faulty trading system. The fault in the trading system is the existence of universally utilitarian items, which we call "currency." A proper ARPG economy is based on currencies that are not universally utilitarian.

This is not just a solution for self-found. Overpowered effects in ARPGs, whether they are items, skills, or a trading system, all work to diminish enjoyment for both the haves and the have-nots. For the have-nots, it's the frustration of pursuing enjoyment and losing out on in-game reward; for the haves, it's the frustration of pursuing in-game reward and losing out on enjoyment.

Here's what I propose, instead of adding new leagues to compete with the current ones:

• Make orbs untradeable (and thus no longer "currency"). This works out naturally, since players who want to "trade" their orbs can use them on gear, and then "trade" the now-improved gear.
• Rework the map affix system to make them much more build-specific. Example affixes would be "monsters have 100% cold resistance," "monster attacks cannot be evaded," "monsters deal additional chaos damage," and "monsters reflect physical damage." No universally utilitarian map affixes would remain; the idea here is to prevent magic maps from becoming the new universal currency.
• Give all maps intrinsic mods so as to make them much more build-specific, using much the same logic as the affix system. This would make even white maps build-specific, and thus not universally utilitarian.
• Give the affix system for gear a similar, but less exhaustive, overhaul. The major feature here would be either the removal or severe nerfing of the IIR and IIQ rare affixes (which are hugely universally utilitarian).
• Drastically increase drop rates.
• Provide official forum and in-game tools to better facilitate trading, stealing the thunder from third-party sites such as POExplorer.com.

This would lead to a much more sane barter economy that would be more fun for everyone. There would almost definitely still be some established currency (Diablo 2 had its Stones of Jordan, then high runes), but there would be far more personal attachment to said tradeables and much more subjective evaluation involved.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

This would lead to a much more sane barter economy that would be more fun for everyone. There would almost definitely still be some established currency (Diablo 2 had its Stones of Jordan, then high runes), but there would be far more personal attachment to said tradeables and much more subjective evaluation involved.

Yeah. If the objective of orbs was, at first, to "not be gold," then orbs have failed. But what's to prevent players from adopting drop only skills as currency? They are small, valuable, and are a perfect alternative to orbs. We would all be trading Portal, GMP, and a few others for our items, no? ("yes," hint hint).

I like where you're going with this. Thing is, I'm ahead of you, and already at the last port of call. That last port of call is the "no economy port." I'm be waiting for you there. ;-P

Bad idea and requires needless development time to be spent on it. Want self-found? Don't trade. The end.

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Mistform wrote:

Bad idea and requires needless development time to be spent on it. Want self-found? Don't trade. The end.

Hi, Mist. Self Found is not about restraint. Read the thread. The end.

Portal is perhaps the closest to universal there; hadn't thought of that one. Most drop-onlies are much more useful to certain builds than others, so GM isn't a problem. I think trades in "pure portals" won't work as long as it's the only non-build-specific available.

What you are proposing here is not the ultimate endpoint, except in the way that giving up completely on a core mechanic is an end (defeat, via surrender). What you are proposing here is forging a schism between PoE with trading and PoE without trading, while leaving PoE with trading to rot; you care not one iota about anyone but yourself and your little band of separatists, at least as far as this suggestion goes. You justify this to yourself by saying that it doesn't matter what I suggest, trading is still trading and thus wrong by definition; you say no matter what modifications are made, the system will degenerate into the shit we have now. This is a falsehood; there are real things we can suggest and GGG can adopt to make the situation better for everyone, not just your separatists. Just like with the loot options bullshit, if we allow separatism here, the real underlying issues will never get fixed because everyone who would complain about them would be told "piss off, go play some other mode." The end result would be virtually as if one of the two modes didn't exist; my guess would be that only masochists and tycoon wanna-bes would stick in the trading leagues, and virtually everyone would enjoy your little creation. The end result of this suggestion is the near extinction of ALL trading in Path of Exile. And THAT is the final port of call for the ship of Captain Courageous. It's not a place I want to go.

Well, Scrotie. Traders will find a way. We can, as a community, identify rings with certain properties as currency dejure. When given an economic incentive, humans are exceedingly crafty. If I could come up with a notion of alternative currencies for a plan you consider to be well-formed in 10 seconds or less, the plan just isn't well-formed.

In short, I don't believe you actually can fix the game in the context of trading. Feel free to submit more suggestions, but you're going to have to come up with something believable before you can really get my ear.

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The end result of this suggestion is the near extinction of ALL trading in Path of Exile.

If you really think that many players would flip to Self Found League upon creation, then this is a glowing endorsement of Self Found League. Although I gather you didn't intend me to interpret it this way... there we are.

Calling that an endorsement is kind of like saying I endorse the creation of Kaom's Heart for its glaring overpoweredness in bow builds. Or that I approve of loot options and permanent allocation, which I hate with a passion.

The removal of meaningful choices, not by fiat but by overwhelming (dis)incentive, is choice by technicality only, and is in fact antichoice. Therefore, this suggestion is antichoice.