A self-found purist's feedback [Long]

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Fruz wrote:

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morbo wrote:

But forget about top OP items for a sec. Trading makes the game a child's play, because items you might need (mere gems, leveling gear, etc.) are just a few tradechat spam messages away. Therefore trading has nothing to do with rewarding progression, its the opposite - an unrewarding shortcut.

you seem to forget that in order to get something with a trade, you gotta give somethingback, which means you have to accumulate wealth, and for decent gear for end-game ( 70+ maps ), than means quite a lot of wealth <=> time.

That's the same idea that made people quit D3. They were farming currency and not items. The fact that orbs were meant as something different from gold doesn't matter; there will always be a numéraire, no matter how hard you try to circumvent the problem.

It's also safe to assume that D3 model failed. RMAH was the icing on the cake, making even gold farming an insult. But hardcore players (as in permadeath) with no RMAH quit all the same.

It's kind of telling when one gets more from watching someone play D3 RoS beta than actually playing PoE.

OT: December, closed beta, then open beta for loot 2.0 on PTR.

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Fruz wrote:

you seem to forget that in order to get something with a trade, you gotta give somethingback, which means you have to accumulate wealth, and for decent gear for end-game ( 70+ maps ), than means quite a lot of wealth <=> time.

I didnt forget. That's actually what I mean when I say that endgame serves as a pyramid sheme for the economy.

The majority of players farming for low orbs (eg. Merveil runs for alterations) are supplying the top pyramid, which consists of organized mapping parites, that in turn are selling craftables back to the peasant population.

GGG seems to be fine with this economy simulation, and its not bothered that the majority of players dont even play endgame content (because its too damn expensive). Even though endgame maps are one of the most fun parts of this game (if you can get to it). Eventually people get bored of this unrewarding grind and either reroll or quit. Most of them never experiencing the hardest content the game has to offer, which is a shame, imo.

Every game aspect, from crafting, to droprates, to endgame, is in service of GGG's vision for the economy. Instead of trading being a complementary function to ARPG looting, its the primary functionality and everything else revolves around it.

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Fruz wrote:

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morbo wrote:

But forget about top OP items for a sec. Trading makes the game a child's play, because items you might need (mere gems, leveling gear, etc.) are just a few tradechat spam messages away. Therefore trading has nothing to do with rewarding progression, its the opposite - an unrewarding shortcut.

you seem to forget that in order to get something with a trade, you gotta give somethingback, which means you have to accumulate wealth, and for decent gear for end-game ( 70+ maps ), than means quite a lot of wealth <=> time.

It's actually not that hard to accumulate wealth small amounts of wealth. Simply selling every blue you find, and farming for orbs is more than enough to get you decent gear capable of endgame content. It won't be the best gear, but it will be better than anything you're going to find, more likely than not, which is exactly the problem.

Once you get into the more fringe stuff (i.e. Voltaxic, Shav's, Bringer of Rain, Kaoms, etc.) it gets much more farm intensive, sure, but to even get to the point where that type of stuff can drop, you almost always need to trade up to be able to do it.

The gear you can get via trading is leaps and bounds better than the gear you can get via farming. Even if you're talking about relatively low quality 1-8 chaos value items. That's why for many people the game feels more like a trade simulator than a game where they progress through gameplay.

It takes an order of magnitude (i.e. 10 times) longer to progress without trading. So that pushes many people to trading because playing a game and having no feeling of progression isn't fun. The problem then comes from the fact that some people don't want to spend their game time browsing trade forums or searching for items. It feels less rewarding, and it's honestly not how I envision gearing up my player would go.

Part of the rush in all ARPGs is that moment of finding something good for your character to use, even if it isn't one of the uber rare uniques. But that rush is very rare in the game right now.

Sure, trading is needed not to have to spent 10+ hours a day at least to progress, that doesn't make the thing child's play still, you gotta spend time farming those craps ( selling everyblue ? wow you must port a damn lot then, I'd loose to much from loadings, having no ssd doing that personally ).

Didn't say that the trading here was a good thing, I would like to have more usable orbs <=> less rares ones, but it doesn't seem to be one of GGG's objectives.


And for an order of magnitude, let's say maybe 30 times more time being self found having the gear than farming to buy, but not 500 as someone else was saying in the previous page.

I agree with OP specifically about uniques drops.

GEEZZZ.... all of this 1 chaos crap...

Why there is so much uniques on high rrity tier? Why they are so rare that now (almost lvl 80 - 3 weeks of playing) i give any hope that ill ever get any of them from drop...
And im not talking about Kaoms and Auxiums here... but of anything even remotely expensive or usable in endgame.

OMFG... i always like new patch and watching new uniques only to realize that i probably will get 10 crowns of thorns and Koams rings in next two weeks....

Combine this with IDIOTIC idea od lvl 10 uniques dropping in endgame maps and you have totally garbage drop rates. To all 'but they may have 6sox then' ppl: so they may drop in mercilles not in maps. Also its only applicable to 2h weapons and armors not for example jewerly.


If there is a reason that i will stop playing POE in short time this is definitely the one. I just know that i will get nothing (like 99% of players) and it feels frustrating and playing item hunt game withuot cool unique drops is tbh pointless...


Tl;DR - higher tiers of uniques (even med ones - not top like Kaoms/Shavs) are TO DAMN RARE!
Game gets more boring with each day with no nice drops... i know there are some ppl here in community that love mindless alteration farming (idk why they are not playing World Of Warcraft tbh) with ocassional 1c unique (again, and again, and again....) drop but its not me... :/

And honestly i dont know what is the grand scheme of thinking in GGG offices but craating all this endgame content and then artificially gate it via EXTENSIVE trading (far worse than D3) plus creating all this nice unique items and then makin them so rare that 99% of players will not see anything higher than maybe couple chaos worth Windscreams is idiotic. Yes you heard me, its idiotic. Strong word but it is idiotic.

And honeslty - my main message to GGG... maybe besides biggest addicts and nolifers all players will realize this (sooner or later but with curent drop rates and design is inevitable...) - playing PoE as a item hunt game is pointless. Its just grinding MMO like World Of Warcraft but grind here is just grotesque end EVERYTHING (content, items, even builds (!!!)) is gated via trade and drop rates totally biased towards 'vendor trash').

PS This is my unique tab after 3 weeks of playin, on lvl 79 and i run maps up to lvl 70:



Worse than korean MMOs.
I also sell Windscreans and Pillar Of The Caged God - only two semi-valuable drops that i have (Aurseizes have 41 IRR roll so worthless). And i was literally FORCED to sell them becasue i want to buy maps (because farming lunaris on lvl 75 with 50% probability of one map per run is so much fun).

And how may i trade in your game to run maps GGG? With what? Maybe real money? It looks like its designed to force that.

/end of rant but sorry - this is the game reality

My problem isnt even with gear (that much). I don't expect, dont care, dont need any of those OP uniques... But I have problem with content being walled of behind trade.

I've played self-found solo on Nemesis, died at lvl 67. But I had fun and (gear) progression wasnt that bad (tho some repetitive farming was required). Then I re-did the same build on Domination, and again played solo self-found until 71 tier maps. Still having fun.

Here is where self-found stops and trading becomes required. No way you'll be able to play 71+ maps without heavy currency investment. That practically means that content is walled off by the need to trade.

I'm able to circle now from 70s - 74s maps, by selling off everything I found. Forget about re-roling with "build enabling uniques", crafting and all that, if you want to play endgame as solo and semi-self-found (meaning you dont buy gear, but sell off things for gold orbs), you have to invest everything in one char. You also cant do any build, but only the cheapest ones, that dont require specific gear.

I'm now down to 5 chisels, 7 chaos and a few alc, browsing my stash for which piece of gear I'll now have to whore-off in trade chat, to be able to continue playing content...

Anyway, bottomline: I would just like to play the fkn content with my crappy geared ST Scion, without the need to stare at the fkn trade chat. Maybe gate content behind gameplay difficulty, instead of gold orbs? Can we haz that, plox? -_-

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Fruz wrote:

Sure, trading is needed not to have to spent 10+ hours a day at least to progress, that doesn't make the thing child's play still, you gotta spend time farming those craps ( selling everyblue ? wow you must port a damn lot then, I'd loose to much from loadings, having no ssd doing that personally ).

Didn't say that the trading here was a good thing, I would like to have more usable orbs <=> less rares ones, but it doesn't seem to be one of GGG's objectives.


And for an order of magnitude, let's say maybe 30 times more time being self found having the gear than farming to buy, but not 500 as someone else was saying in the previous page.

Exalteds a very good example of this. Its probably the most useless orb in terms of its inherit value for what it does, and the exalteds are basically being used 99% of the time as a replacement for gold.

Not exactly, it does a lot, it's benefit can be huge, but considering its rarity, it's often just not worth using it on an item unless it's a really god one.
I'm hesitating on exalting my chest, but maybe I should wait for getting a lot of currency and eternaling it first since it has the potential to be an almost perfect one.