please get rid of MF, make players WANT to play SSF

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1453R#7804 wrote:

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Bacon_Overlord#1834 wrote:

So... I think what you're trying to say is: You want drops catered more to our builds and less general drops for trading purposes?

At least, that's what I got out of it.

He wants Magic Find/Rarity, which influences currency drop rates, eliminated from the game and currency drops rebalanced around SSF play as the expected default, so he can have the fun of slamming his own gear and still get to Endgame. Many longtime ARPG enthusiasts despise trade regardless of how good it is because to them, the entire ARPG Experience is about finding your own loot and making your character an unstoppable ubergod with it.

Example: over the holiday break I rolled my own new crossbow for my Grenadier Pathfinder. my brother found an Advanced Bombard crossbow with +6 to Projectile Skills (and 1-4 added cold damage), which he gave me. Say what one will about the ludicrous overtuning of +Gem level mods (personally I hate it); +6 to Projectile Skills is one of the most valuable mods a crossbow can get. I Regal'd it, got 22 mana gained on killing an enemy. Not great, but mana costs are a real thing in higher-level gameplay and mana on critter death helps keeps things rolling in maps, so I figured "Eh, still worth a shot". Exalted it, got 10-25 added physical damage. Cool! Base phys damage is the engine that drives the weapon, so we're hitting a minimum viable floor for the thing. Just need to try and get the Increased Physical roll and we're golden. Exalted again...7 to Dexterity. Sad Trombone sounds.

Had a crossbow at this point that was, as Jonathan Rogers said, "Almost Good". Had an amazing +Projectile Levels roll, a solid flat phys roll, and three forgettable-to-bad rolls. And I had Chaos Orbs. I could either patch the thing, or I could ruin it forever and scupper my entire investment if I Chaos'd off the +6 Projectile Skills mod. But the odds were in my favor, so click the button............and away goes the pitiful 1-4 flat cold damage, replaced by 76% Increased Physical Damage. Bingo. Had a weapon worth far more than the currency used to create it, and which effortlessly carried the character the rest of the way into endgame. Once I recalibrated to my now gargantuan mana costs and the idea that I only needed one or two sets of grenades to clear a pack, rather than a dozen salvoes.

That's an awesome story I'll remember for a long time. Unremembered: the many times I've regaled/exalted an item only for it to fail completely and wind up doing nothing but costing me useful currency without providing any benefit whatsoever, either turning into regal shards or getting thrown into a stash bin to rot.

Finding a Sapphire ring with 88 life and ~80 total tri-res on it on the ground? Amazing. Being completely unable to patch my resistances at endgame without trading because I need specific resists and randomly slamming gear until I get them is prohibitively expensive no matter how often loot drops? Opposite of amazing.

Seeing a really cool build interaction in this game about creating fun and interesting builds, then realizing it's completely nonviable for SSF because SSF literally cannot make ANY builds due to having to plan around having no access to ANY gear? A fantastic reason to never play SSF - and no, "fixing currency" won't make SSF attractive. does your build want any build-enabling unique item, no matter what that item is? no longer SSF viable, SSF builds need to be functional using white gear or they're not SSF viable.

Path of Exile, in general, is not an SSF-y game. It's designed more towards creativity and expression, and trade is a vital tool for realizing those ambitions. Eliminating trade the way Exsea is backdoor proposing would not make POE2 a better game. It would make POE2 a worse game.

I was just making sure I understood what he was saying.

I'm not opposed to targeted drops. It makes more sense to me anyway. If I'm a warrior, what am I going to do with a wand? Why would I even FIND a wand? It's that kind of lazy development and coding that makes trade necessary.

I get that SSF has better drops supposedly, but just getting drops more catered to your own build would indicate that GGG doesn't feel trade is a necessary evil and considering they simply ported over the broke bandaid they did so trade was possible from POE 1 instead of making a proper AH and integrated search function in-game for POE 2.... I think they don't care for it much.

Absolutely hate the fact that increased item rarity is on gear.

This is an awful, anti-fun mechanic, having to decide between using best gear but getting no drops, or massively nerfing your character to get way more item/currency drops.

Feels awful either way.

Considering not playing the game after release anymore if it will remain this way.

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Snorkle_uk#0761 wrote:

its not about being naive or selling stash space. they genuinely think it makes the game better and honestly they have a more thought out take than almost any player ive heard commenting on it.

GGG states in their manifesto that trading is bad.

Trading IS bad. The only reason many players put up with it is because the rest of the game is great. That's even the case for PoE2; even with its flaws, it's a lot of fun when your gear isn't holding you back. In any other ARPG, your gear holding you back means you start targeting that slot in some way, but in PoE1 you had to read a crafting dissertation which was ridiculous, and in PoE2 you have to roll a personalized jackpot on the affix lottery.

But even if we had the perfect crafting system, crafting the item I need from the ground up is boring. Why am I killing all these monsters, juicing these maps, and seeing items drop at all, if none of them will ever matter and I can just ignore them?

Item acquisition, as in the acquisition of items for your build, has never been PoE's strong suit, and it has been able to mask the problem with more and more crafting currency, but when you remove all of those bandaids, the original problem comes back and everyone realizes that it never went anywhere in the first place.

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Bacon_Overlord#1834 wrote:

I was just making sure I understood what he was saying.

I'm not opposed to targeted drops. It makes more sense to me anyway. If I'm a warrior, what am I going to do with a wand? Why would I even FIND a wand? It's that kind of lazy development and coding that makes trade necessary.

I get that SSF has better drops supposedly, but just getting drops more catered to your own build would indicate that GGG doesn't feel trade is a necessary evil and considering they simply ported over the broke bandaid they did so trade was possible from POE 1 instead of making a proper AH and integrated search function in-game for POE 2.... I think they don't care for it much.

Targeted drops suck giant donkey wanger, primarily because A.) it completely breaks any form of immersion to have The Gods of Loot hand-curate your entire experience just for you, and B.) people generally play more than one character. One of the biggest sources of replayability in games like this is "Oooh, this item is awesome! But it's for a different build... Huh...I mean, since I have it, maybe I should try that build?"

Again, happened to me - found a great mid-level Gelid staff that was a big impetus to me starting a Stormweaver and putting down my grenades until I rolled my Biggus Blaster. Would never have happened if they implemented a targeted drops system. And even if that sounds fine to you, targeted drops and co-op/multiplayer play are one hundred percent incompatible.

As for trade? It's extremely finicky, and essentially impossible to get "right." Different portions of the playerbase want fundamentally different, mutually exclusive things, and any change which aids one side infuriates the other. It's why last Epoch tried the whole dual-mode thing, where you could play SSF and have absolutely no trade access but get ridiculously ultra-stupid buffs to drops, or play trade league and have good trade but extreme and uncool item scarcity. A move which seemed genius in conception but seems to have utterly failed in practice, as far as I can tell. There simply is no "good" solve that satisfies everyone, and so Grinding Gear is stuck trying to balance trade such that it doesn't piss anybody off quiiite enough to leave.

Sucks, but what can ye do?

They need to get rid of the currency exchange. Prices right now are crazy over this.

It's not even worth dealing in ex orbs anymore.

In the last 5 days ex orbs have lost like 10% of their value each day, and then people wonder why nobody wants to trade for these anymore.

I used to have a 5ex tab. I took 2 days off, came back and as soon as I logged in, I get like 50 people messaging me about items, if this happens then you've priced stuff way too cheap. So no more 5 ex tab, it becomes the 10 ex tab, which is the lowest amount I'm even willing to waste my time trading for at this point. Then, I decided that there isn't a 10ex tab anymore, it's the 0.1 div tab, priced in ex orbs according to the ex:div ratio. If it's 110:1, then it's the 11ex tab, etc.

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MrSmiley21#1051 wrote:

They need to get rid of the currency exchange. Prices right now are crazy over this.

It's not even worth dealing in ex orbs anymore.

In the last 5 days ex orbs have lost like 10% of their value each day, and then people wonder why nobody wants to trade for these anymore.

I used to have a 5ex tab. I took 2 days off, came back and as soon as I logged in, I get like 50 people messaging me about items, if this happens then you've priced stuff way too cheap. So no more 5 ex tab, it becomes the 10 ex tab, which is the lowest amount I'm even willing to waste my time trading for at this point. Then, I decided that there isn't a 10ex tab anymore, it's the 0.1 div tab, priced in ex orbs according to the ex:div ratio. If it's 110:1, then it's the 11ex tab, etc.

Removing the currency exchange doesn't actually help your problem at all. You realize there's a currency exchange on the trade site, right? All the in-game currency exchange does is provide automation which, by the way, is what everyone has asked for with items as well.

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Bacon_Overlord#1834 wrote:

So... I think what you're trying to say is: You want drops catered more to our builds and less general drops for trading purposes?

At least, that's what I got out of it.

i was using weapons as an example. its not easy to get what we want relevant to our build in the first place and it will be harder when the full game releases with 1001 different weapons that we dont use.

after thinking about it, what you mentioned is something i would want BUT i realize its not what everyone would want.

this morning i watched a ryhkker vid on the subject and he pointed out something i forgot.

LE SOLVED this issue.

you could play "SSF" or "Trade" as an opt in. if you played "SSF", there were ways to influence your drops so you could get more of what you wanted. while if you prefered to trade, you wouldnt get "tailored" drops but have access to trade and ability to use items from trading.

so what you mentioned is one of the many things i would want in POE2.

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1453R#7804 wrote:

Sucks, but what can ye do?

check out how LE balanced SSF vs Trade. they've already solved it.

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LaiTash#6276 wrote:

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drallcom3#6603 wrote:

"We know that trade is bad"
"But we allow it anyway. We even made a website with a one-click whisper! And a currency exchange!"
"No, allowing direct purchases goes too far"
"A loot buff for SSF so players don't have to deal with trade bad? Who do you think we are?"

GGG is either incredibly naive or they profit from trade too much (selling stashes).

You need more stashes on SSF anyway, too keep all the bases and stuff you may "later use on another character", and now with reforging bench it's so much worse. I keep every useless unique i find because yeah it's useless but hey if i destroy it i may never find it again and what if i find a use for it? Even if they aren't premium stashes the sheer amount of them should be enough to compensate.

lets be real a moment. GGG makes a lot of money "forcing" players to buy tabs. but lets not forget, many of us LOVE GGG to the point we end up buying cosmetics coz we love them/their game so much.

we've gone past the "GGG needs to sell stash" mentality a long time ago.

GGG keeps players happy, we make GGG happy. look at all the recent POE1 leagues. GGG gave us temp league specific stashes like candy.

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Polantaris#1920 wrote:

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MrSmiley21#1051 wrote:

They need to get rid of the currency exchange. Prices right now are crazy over this.

It's not even worth dealing in ex orbs anymore.

In the last 5 days ex orbs have lost like 10% of their value each day, and then people wonder why nobody wants to trade for these anymore.

I used to have a 5ex tab. I took 2 days off, came back and as soon as I logged in, I get like 50 people messaging me about items, if this happens then you've priced stuff way too cheap. So no more 5 ex tab, it becomes the 10 ex tab, which is the lowest amount I'm even willing to waste my time trading for at this point. Then, I decided that there isn't a 10ex tab anymore, it's the 0.1 div tab, priced in ex orbs according to the ex:div ratio. If it's 110:1, then it's the 11ex tab, etc.

Removing the currency exchange doesn't actually help your problem at all. You realize there's a currency exchange on the trade site, right? All the in-game currency exchange does is provide automation which, by the way, is what everyone has asked for with items as well.

the automation is one of the best things to ever happen to POE in years. fuck manual trading.

as for the inflation. i would point back to what i originally posted.

if players had enough currency to craft their own gear, they wouldnt need to trade. simple as that. inflation becomes irrelevant as players dont even need to rely on trading if they dont want to. all this can only happen if crafting currency is common enough.

mods pls delete this comment.

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Snorkle_uk#0761 wrote:

why would ssf be something they want to encourage? most people already dont trade, why would you want them to put themselves in a space where they cant have friends, cant interact with other players, cant party and be an active part of proper guilds etc?

SSF is an opt in. if you want to opt into SSF its a personal choice. i m not asking the game to FORCE players to SSF. i want the game to be generous enough that i can play SSF and not feel bad that trade leagues is much more efficient.

also, in LE, they solved this issue. theres a "SSF-ish" option where your drops are only yours but you cannot trade. you could even get drop bonuses and tailored drops if you chose this option, so partying with others comes with no drawback.

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you are all on these forums, something in you wanted to reach out and communicate with other humans that share your interests. we are inherently social animals and all we have achieved as a species has come from working together, forming social groups. its how we derive most of the meaning in our lives.



why would it be a good thing to encourage players to wall themselves off from playing with other people?

semi agree with you. me and my guildies from poe1, are friend IRL, but due to our busy work schedules as well as our choice of builds we tend to play SOLO unless for boss clears. that does not invalidate your pov. for sure players like yourself exist who want party play. in fact i've been partying with one forummer recently just that my connection is bad so i've resorted to going back to soloing (hi SS!).

i do not want to take away the ability for you to party up nor his.
whether or not trade exists, players who want friends/guilds will seek others out.

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you dont have to be ssf to not trade. im not trading in poe2, do i want to be in ssf? fuck no, i want to play with my friends, i have friends who have never played arpgs who will be interested in this game when it goes f2p. should i say yeah play, but sry i cant play with you i have to play only solo?

why would i do that? why would it be good for the game to make players think and act like that?


it would be awful for the game. poe1 lived on its community. look at anything big, magic the gathering, warhammer, its all about community, friends, people interacting and sharing their hobbies together.

forced single player is bad, forced partying is bad too. as mentioned i dont want that and actually its not even a point i wanted to bring to this entire discussion. i just want drops to be good enough that we're not forced to rely on trade.

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not trading, yes, not trading is probably a more fun way to play the game. thats why they dont make an AH, its why they dont have super easy trade within the game client. they definitely need to do better in terms of the loot right now, i dont think its more loot i think its more alchs, more essences and they need to rethink a lot of the mod pool changes.

but the concept of an ssf mode encouraged by increased drops is absolute cancer.

hard disagree. AH was cancer because it made the best way to get upgrades is via trade. in d3, i remember farming hours, not really caring for drops, but instead gold/hour. i had to farm millions of gold to get my next upgrade.

i've seen you on the forums for a long time. you should be a veteran like me. you should know that poe1's trading system is archaic because it was based on how d2/other old arpgs/mmorpgs were like "back in the day".

GGG themselves are distancing themselves away from this archaic practice. in fact, players are STILL getting scammed in poe2 because of this archaic system. its a "hard QUIT" moment for some players.

maybe you have not played LE. with enough time spent, i could reliably grind and make myself a good pair of boots that is akin to 60-70% mirror tier boots in poe1. many people are lauding LE's crafting system. but one should realize that LE's crafting system is paired with its generous crafting material acquisition. if it was as stingy as POE, it would still be good but players would enjoy the game a whole lot less.

there of course is an argument between how much is enough. but as is, it's definitely not enough for the regular player.

if you really want to say "more drops are bad". do you realize how many drops players are getting from juiced maps? they're dropping a lot of ex's PER MAP.

why arent you being vocal about that then? POE1 is like that too. you dont juice, you get shit. you juice up, its like being showered with loot.

you mention a lot about the importance of playing with friends.

you have to realize, not everyone of us are "hardcore gamers that play 25 hours a day". some of us are gamer moms/dads/poorfolk sneaking in a few mere hours to play the game.

keeping drops shit, makes those players enjoy the game less. speaking from experience. i played a butt ton of hours trying to find upgrades but simply failing. i crafted a huge lot. some wins but mostly losses. i COULD NOT fix my resists even tho i was over level 80. UNTIL i resorted to trade.

i died like fuck coz i was using a "trumelee" build. yet i soldiered on. because i m NOT the average gamer. i m passionate.

if i was a casual. i would have quit a long time ago. "pfft shits, poe2 drops are shit, i cant get any upgrades, all my crafts are shit".

grimdawn/tq are old ass games but their drops feel way better. if you truly want MORE players to play POE2. having more drops actually helps more than it hurts.

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its not about being naive or selling stash space. they genuinely think it makes the game better and honestly they have a more thought out take than almost any player ive heard commenting on it.



its extremely rare to see a player talk about the trade/drop rate debate in the forums who even understands GGGs position on it. ive yet to see anyone able to offer a convincing counter argument.

its more like you have a strong bias and refuse to entertain opposing ideas.

there are tons of people who have many different counter arguments, you simply disagree and thus find it not convincing.

people who agree with me would find my arguments convincing. people who have strong biases would brush it off and say its not convincing because you're already having a set mindset that you just dont want to see it any other way.

i definitely dont speak for everyone, but i m pretty sure i m not alone. heck some streamers, and many IRL friends do agree with me or have some manner of alignment.