The Self Found League

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emtwo wrote:

In scientific terms, an "elegant" solution is one that sufficiently accomplishes the goal with the least amount of complexity. The less complexity, the less likelihood for unintended consequences. SFL is straight-forward and simple. It also gives a large group of people exactly what they want with little-to-no downside (save for wildly speculative doomsday prophecies).

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emtwo wrote:

All other solutions (like your solo MF buff solution) have a large amount of variables and become unnecessarily complex. They also generally only address part of the goal of SFL. One part of it is the poor quality of trading-based drop and crafting systems. Another part is the general distaste for trading simulators that generally detract from the substance and immersion of an ARPG. A third part is simply the added challenge and forced diversity when you can't simply face-roll with Unique-reliant cookie-cutter build.

Because all other solutions are needlessly complex and still fail to address the full purpose of removing trading, they are not anywhere near as "elegant" as simply creating a Self-Found league.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

After building a high-IIQ, high-IIR summoner and playing it solo, I've figured something out which eluded me earlier: You guys are blaming trading for something that isn't trading's fault. Your unwillingness to trade isn't what's holding you back; failing to stack IIQ and IIR is what is hampering your progress. Unless, of course, you group — in which case, some dedicated Culling MFer is rendering your lack of MF moot. But in any case, this thread is a bunch of solo players getting frustrated with crap drops and scapegoating the trade system instead of the true culprits (IIQ/IIR).

So really, this entire thread is predicated on a false premise.

Now in terms of the IIQ and IIR stacking problem, I refer you to another thread of mine.

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emtwo wrote:

Scrotie, I know you're smarter than this argument. Self-Found isn't solely about "crap drops," that's just a small part of it. Crap drops are also not solely about MF, you can't deny that the loot system is inherently balanced around trading.

Lastly, if your premise is that "trading isn't the problem, it's just your low MF" then that's still a HUGE problem. If you're going to be economically fucked unless you run an MF build (MF builds, by the way, are extremely limiting skill-wise and tend to be boring cookie-cutter builds), it is still awfully poor game design to require a high MF character to participate in the economy.

That is my premise. It is still a huge problem. And yes, even with trading you're economically fucked unless you run an MF build. A max MF character gets more than 8 times as many rares and uniques; this gives you the currency (even by the Chaos Orb formula, not even factoring in trading) to reroll high maps, unlocking the gated content.

Trading, in comparison, is roughly equivalent to the advantage of an account-wide stash. If you're an ES character but you find a Bringer of Rain, you have two choices: you can trade it off, or you can use it on a reroll. Both are equally powerful options if the reroll is assumed; the advantage of trading is at its strongest from a perspective of single-character accounts, and weakens the more rerolls the account has in the same league. So what kind of number do we assign to this advantage? Maybe a 3x multiplier, if we're feeling like rerolling is an utter waste of time? Still nowhere near the 8x that MF gives... and if we're not assuming single-character, the advantage grows smaller and smaller (although I imagine never disappearing completely, since you can't reroll every conceivable build).

The main problem with trading is not the advantage it gives, but the feeling it gives. Traders see their looting efforts boiled down to a stash tab of currency, which really detracts from the properly epic feel of hack-and-slash item hunting. Pure self-found single-account, on the other hand, sees amazing drops which their build can't use. It's not so much about comparative advantage as it is a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't system.

Trading could use some changes, but mostly about changing the feel of trading, making it more emotional (in a good way) and less of an emotionless, calculation-based activity. But when it comes to balancing things in the overpowered vs underpowered sense, working on MF is far more important than changing how (or if) trading works.

Agreed 100% with Scrotie.

As I said before, a self-found league runs away from the problem of tradespam and MF farming instead of fixing it, while only serving to spread the playerbase thin, decrease social interaction, and waste GGG resources.

MF gear should be nerfed, and a more efficient, fun and social-oriented trading system should be implemented.

Trading is paying for progression, which for me, makes a mockery of the game. That said, the current system is probably the worse I've come across and for those who favour paying their way to higher levels, I sure a major overhaul would be lost welcome.

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Novalisk wrote:

Agreed 100% with Scrotie.

As I said before, a self-found league runs away from the problem of tradespam and MF farming instead of fixing it, while only serving to spread the playerbase thin, decrease social interaction, and waste GGG resources.

It actually doesn't properly run away from the problem of MF farming; that would still be a problem under every version of this suggestion I've seen.

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Novalisk wrote:

MF gear should be nerfed,

...but not into oblivion; MF builds should still exist, but with more sane comparisons between zero MF and max MF. Some players play ARPGs because they enjoy MF builds; I don't want to alienate that population.

For example: Diablo 2. A very high amount of Magic Find for that game was 1150%. Sounds crazy, right? 12.5 times as much? Not really. There was a diminishing returns formula which meant that crazy number actually provided 4.94 times as many rares, 4.48 times and many set items, and 3.05 times as many uniques. Even in Diablo 2, insanely maxed-out magic find was less effective than it currently is in Path of Exile! That's why in my "halve MF" thread I'm pretty happy that halving IIQ and IIR would mean 4.02x as many rares, roughly equivalent to what Diablo 2 MF builds could accomplish; matching Diablo 2 MF build standards is sufficient, there is no logical reason for us to exceed them.

It might even be prudent to put a small diminishing-returns into IIR in terms of acquiring uniques; on the one hand, I'm not a fan of hidden values or complex formulas which players need to wiki in order to understand, but on the other hand 4x uniques might be just a little too good (3x or less would be more appropriate).

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Novalisk wrote:

a more efficient, fun and social-oriented trading system should be implemented.

I definitely agree with the fun and social-oriented part. But trade efficiency is a tricky pickle; look at Diablo 3 for what too much trade efficiency can do.

(If you don't like how this next paragraph goes, keep in mind the one after it starts with "However.")

For a long time I've advocated making orbs untradeable, along with giving maps intrinsic mods and a map affix revamp to make map valuation more build-dependent, in order to promote an economy with far more independent valuation, where your build plays more of a role in the value of what you're trading for. This would be a stark contrast to the current system, where everything's value is either converted to or converted from orbs, which are lifeless in their lack of build dependency and general utility for everyone. The map changes are obviously in anticipation of maps becoming the "new orbs" immediately after making orbs untradeable; unlike orbs, I think maps could be made into build-dependent items.

However, for all the nifty advances such a suggestion would make towards a more true-barter system, it would also make things a lot more inefficient; adding more elements of critical thinking and less reliance on conversion ratios doesn't make trading easier, it makes it more intimidating and more of a headache. So I think it would be important to truly embrace efficiency tools in conjunction with such a suggestion: you'd want official GGG versions of shop indexers, possibly something like a public stash tab that players could search for in-game, pretty much every time-saving measure one can think of short of offering automated, instant-delivery buyouts (some degree of buyer-seller face time should remain). Under such a barter system you'd want tools like poe.xyz.is to not be some niche thing some gamers know about, but a part of the game that everyone uses.

Plus, like it or not, third-party site indexers will continue to exist and prosper until and unless GGG subsumes that role themselves. So it's best to get with the times and embrace a certain degree of automation. However, with embracing that motivation must come some form of hard restriction on trading that prevents us from repeating the mistakes of Diablo 3. Although they tried, PoE's currency system is still too "gold-like" to withstand such automation without significant degradation of the play experience.

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Vakirauta wrote:

I'm definitely interested in knowing what the serious problems with self-found are. If it is that he's afraid of the playerbase divide into different servers, they already are, and the lesser leagues (Standard for example) are completely dead.

It's already bad so why not make it worse? Is this seriously your logic?

You've been given numerous reasons as to why a self-found league isn't a good solution to the problem. Instead of repeating the same old rants, why not actually try to debunk what Scrotie just said?

Self-found would be a disaster. Community divided, and those who played self-found would stop after a few month, just like any other singleplayer game.

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Vakirauta wrote:

..what the serious problems with self-found are..

I am curious about this too.

Things that I consider to be serious (but who am I but an exile?):

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MoxieGrrl wrote:

Dude...I played Diablo II self found for *years*, not just months. So did a lot of other people. That argument is old.

Did Diablo II having a single player mode divide the community? No, because those who played it were never a part of the community in the first place. What a self-found league would do, basically, is take those who are already playing this way and give them a better gameplay experience.

What people bitching about the economy forget is that most self-found players don't participate in the game economy anyway. It will not ruin the economy.

Dude...I played Diablo II self found for *years*, not just months. So did a lot of other people. That argument is old.

Did Diablo II having a single player mode divide the community? No, because those who played it were never a part of the community in the first place. What a self-found league would do, basically, is take those who are already playing this way and give them a better gameplay experience.

What people bitching about the economy forget is that most self-found players don't participate in the game economy anyway. It will not ruin the economy.

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MoxieGrrl wrote:

Did Diablo II having a single player mode divide the community? No, because those who played it were never a part of the community in the first place. What a self-found league would do, basically, is take those who are already playing this way and give them a better gameplay experience.

Do you know how many players actually play PoE self-found?

Assuming there are very little, then their gameplay experience will be worse as they won't find anyone to play with.

Assuming there are a lot of them, then the gameplay experience of other leagues will suffer for the same reason.