Solo Self-Found Support in 2.6.0

VERY excited about this. For me, this fun league variant will become my standard.

Instead of watching guides, seeing something ridiculously overpowered, and then picking up the pieces to build it, it becomes almost a "deckbuilding" exercise.

"Oh, look, I got an early Facebreakers... worthwhile to look up cool facebreakers builds"
"An 18-quality spark? Lemme see what interesting things I can make work with it".

All the current builds usually rely on very particular pieces of gear, and this would change all of that. You won't make it as far or as fast for sure, but for me, the fun will be taking your accumulated gear, and trying to make lemonade out of those combustable lemons.

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Arcis wrote:

afaik, the main reason people want a SSF league is so the game doesn't have to be balanced around the fact that trading will always be much more efficient than soloing. if there are no additional benefits to playing SSF, i think this has missed the point.

This. Frankly, I resent LIKE HELL that the game is deliberately balanced around the presumption that players will trade and party extensively. (I also intensely resent the internet connection requirement, but that ship has long since sailed, wrecked upon the rocks and had its crew eaten by cannibals.) When I do use trade, it's to get around the ridiculously low drop rates for currency and maybe the occasional item. Frankly, I don't want my play experience to be contingent upon the participation of others, mainly because it's been my experience that gamers can be a rather unreliable bunch.

When a new league starts, and there's the constant stream of "So-and-so is the first to such-and-such" messages, it really drives home how much the game is geared toward multiplayer cooperative, mainly because people are mapping in a matter of hours while I'm dragging my sorry carcass into Cruel, and, much like NASCAR, it's the same names over and over again in those first few hours.

What I would hope for this proposed SSF system, is that some very telling data would be gleaned from its implementation... specifically, that the game has ridiculously disparate difficulty levels for party/trading players than for SSF players. (Whether the powers that be do anything with that data is another [vain?] hope entirely.)

Shame this doesn't have guild support. Be nice to have an option to do this with your guild.

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This is great news, and maybe a first step toward a single player mode for those of us who do not want to rely on internet connexion and servers? I hope so.

THIS.

nice!

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PlatoniusIII wrote:

On the one hand I wouldn't mind some tweaks to the drop system for SSF (like a higher chance of class related drops). Tweaked drop rates would be difficult, because if drop rates for good items are higher in SSF, people would just create a SSF MF character to farm and use/sell found items in normal league.

No need for higher droprates, really. We're used to the existing ones. As the OP says, it's more challenging not being able to buy success. That's pretty much the point.

My only issue is not being able to party with guildmates, but I don't see a way around that. Obviously SF players can't take from guild stash, and it's easy enough to mule stuff in, but I can party up occasionally wtih guildies so although I'm pure SF it's not necessarily SSF. Can be, not always.

Still, I'll be joining this. (And I keep a separate account purely for partying anyway, we play only group-found).

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Exile009 wrote:

Would it be correct to assume that temp league SSF players will not have to accomplish the same number of temp league challenges in order to qualify for the challenge rewards? Only about half of the challenges are really feasible in SSF mode and so I kinds feel that the challenge list ought to be either halved or altered for them for them so as to allow them a decent shot at challenge completion since they don't have the outsized advantage that trading and partying gives you in completing some of the challenges in the main game (and they shouldn't be forced to play a league they don't like just to gather challenges).

Well, more than half are accessible, as my number shows. This league actually has been pure SSF: 22 now, another 2 in a level or so of grinding, and one whenever I care to crack open a breachstone.
It doesn't really matter anyway since challenges are over the whole account, though, not just by character. Someone could get all 40 on a main, delete it and start a new character SSF... no sign they've done that. I'd like it if SF challenges could be separately recorded but I see no good way to do this.

I signed onto this game very early, and have never traded a single item, nor have I partied once. This game to me has always been a SSF game.

Admittedly, this season was the first I have actually approached end-game, and that with a totem build. But finding a Bino's or a Cospri's, 6-linking that Belly of the Beast, it all feels so much more rewarding as SSF.

SSF is not as difficult as some are making it out to be, at least not early. If you are opting out of SSF by level 20, you are definitely not playing ARPGs right.

I, for one, cannot wait for this option, since it is the way I have been playing it from the start.

I wonder where level 90, Tier 15 maps would get me on the ladder at 5.5 days played??

4 years without Shavronne Wrappings drop (in-party, solo mf, full party mf), so... SSF? Pretty fine way to challenge myself again! (sarcasm)

While I applaud the fact that this will be introduced, which was long time due, the implementation is a bit lack lustre and basic. I get that with 3.0 and XBone release, adding new and more complex systems instead of leveraging the current system is a sensible choice due to resources constraints. But what I would like to see eventually is a customizable (either from the playerbase, or from GGG, or both) TAG system, to a point (parameters would have to be decided by GGG) which gets us closer to the idea of custom leagues without fragmenting the community.

In this tag system, the "base" game would be the one GGG sees as the "default" way the game is supposed to be played (with the current balance, drop rates, trade enabled, being the 'easiest' mode) and on top of that there would be different modes which players could TAG and play in each respective league (SC or HC), and ladder would be filtered by tags if players want to.

This would enable more playing styles and modes (with harsher, more oldschool PoE style for example, no walking simulator) without fragmenting the economy in several leagues which is GGG biggest fear. The system would enforce partying incompatibility between certain modes, stash sharing/locking between characters, etc. This way you could have things like pure "Ironman" (no gear sharing between characters) or "partying SF" (so you can play in parties with your friends but could not trade and loot would be PA) without adding a million extra leagues.