SSF Mode Needs Work In Endgame

now you might instantly think "well you signed up for the much more challenging and less rewarding SSF mode in the first place"

but it was less signing up for that and more just wanting to find my own gear like good old traditional ARPG gaming, receiving the resulting sense of pride and accomplishment

less wanting a challenge mode and do things harder, and more wanting to avoid just trading for your best gear, just buying whatever gear with whatever rolls on it as good or bad as you want, anytime you could ever want - as well as having to jump through the time consuming rigmarole to do so

it's not that i couldn't continue progressing, i got up to T5 maps and was going strong with the SSF gear i had, but through the 60 or so maps to get there i only found i think 1 upgrade, while checking every single wearable blue, using all my exalts, having a stash page dedicated to and named "Crafting Potential" etc you name it. literally having gone through maybe hundreds of pieces of potential gear, for nothing.

you live and die by especially Exalts, but after attaining decent gear with 3 or 4 good mods, you just need so exponentially much more currency/luck that it's insane (probably because of course it's balanced for trading) so even though exalt drops specifically could probably take like a +200% buff, even something like just +50% would be better than nothing (to be safe)

in my very personal opinion, PoE especially PoE 2 has made some masterclass design but its biggest (and probably only) downfall is the fact it's been designed around and balanced for trading - just buying your best gear later on. what a letdown, out of left field

even then, you can have a trading mode designed and balanced for trading, but also a self found traditional mode that's designed and balanced around playing an ARPG traditionally

maybe not only in currency drop rates, but gear quality/rarity/mod rolls etc

but yeah after getting to T5 and almost no change in gear, a stash page full of crafting potential but just not enough currency (exalts) to do so, having gone through hundreds of potential drops, as well as little change and improvement in skill setup (mostly due to lack of jewellers orbs, still having plenty of locked slots but that's for another time) it's just waaaay too much of a slog with almost 0 progression

SSF minimum needs an exalt drop buff, preferably some balance/design specifically for it - for people that don't want to just have to buy their best gear (crazy i know)

Edit: Trading sounds like a great, community involving mechanic on paper, but imo is the single most worst mechanic to ever come to a genre of game where its core gameplay revolves around gear drops. it should be the exception mode, not the rule.

Even other genres, there's a reason there's say bind on pickup in MMO's - imagine just buying your Mythic/Legendary gear off the auction house...

Bump

Actually SSF feels like it is more intended for PoE2. You get any decent Evasion or/and Energy shield gear from trade, and you can do T15(+2) maps effortlessly. Armor is bit of a bait.

Yea, you might be stuck at T6 maps, but at least you are experiencing challenge and reason to improve your build. I would give it 1 week, and couple build improvements, and youre doing T10s already. I didn't really experience any real difficulty difference between T6-T10 maps.

Of course you can always start a new character.

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AugerSpectroscopy#1884 wrote:

Actually SSF feels like it is more intended for PoE2. You get any decent Evasion or/and Energy shield gear from trade, and you can do T15(+2) maps effortlessly. Armor is bit of a bait.

Yea, you might be stuck at T6 maps, but at least you are experiencing challenge and reason to improve your build. I would give it 1 week, and couple build improvements, and youre doing T10s already. I didn't really experience any real difficulty difference between T6-T10 maps.

Of course you can always start a new character.

thanks for the feedback

i already mentioned i was going strong, being weak or challenged wasn't the issue

the issue was just same old grinding grinding grinding for hours and hours and hours for seemingly nothing, as i barely found an upgrade or 2 after checking literally hundreds of drops including blues, dedicating a whole stash page for crafting potential (which i don't have the exalts to try 80% of) even still checking the vendor each level heading towards level 80's

just same gear, same build, maybe +1 skill point a day from a level up, and then just same grind grind grind to T2, grind grind grind to T3, grind grind grind to T4, grind grind grind to T5 - then grind grind grind to T6? grind grind grind to T7? then T8?

what for? almost literally nothing but quest/endgame map progression?

the difficulty isn't the issue (in fact so far the endgame bosses die as laughably quick in seconds as the ones did in cruel, the only challenge coming from rituals, breaches, and damage mod oneshots), it's the brick wall lack of progression/monotony of the playthrough, while having far from perfect gear - so plenty of room to upgrade, theoretically

maybe i just hit the game too hard on release and needed to take a break, no longer continuing to get (SSF) upgrades doesn't help too but maybe i just hit it too hard for too long and i just lost the sense of enjoyment in general

going back over what i wrote i feel like i should add - i'm not after gear for the power, because i need to get stronger/it's too hard, just that it's half the fun and the whole point of an ARPG

what's the point in all that monotonous grinding if the character progression has stopped dead, where 99.9% of the loot is useless (thank god the amount of it got toned down for this, would've hated to have fruitlessly gone through hundreds more or even thousands of drops, slowing down gameplay and combat flow much more for nothing)

and i feel like upgrading map tiers should be a little more prestigious also, reading my issues put on paper - otherwise they're nothing more than a quest tick for way too long into the gameplay

maybe you have to unlock each new tier by completing an empowered event (boss with +500% health +25% damage, or a giant half-a-map ritual or all the white monsters in it are magic at a minimum instead, etc)

that way progression and sense of accomplishment is tied to more than just a quest tick and not-made-for-this-mode non-existant gear progression. the in-map events are cool, but not quite enough to keep going through the early tier grind

and i was thinking for the lack of gear progression endgame SSF, you know what could potentially fix it dead, in the most simplest easiest way possible? for SSF making rare equipment dismantle into the 1 regal shard AND 1 exalt shard! (2 shards for full 6 mod rares, a bit more of a refund on failed multi exalt and potentially other currency on top, use)

that boosts exalt farm by a relatively small amount, that might just be enough, while it being guaranteed and so no-one potentially falling victim to rng outliers etc

i know it's still early access and the game is still being developed, but early endgame and SSF progression definitely needs work. unless SSF is a small portion of the playerbase then screw me i guess lol