A self-found purist's feedback [Long]

OP, you worded everything perfectly.

The issue of uniques has been a problem in most of these games since WoW first launched. It is sorely neglected, and is a huge problem with this game. It could be solved, perhaps, by having new uniques reviewed by the community in order to check their balance, rather than throwing in things that people with money to spare were willing to pay to create. Unfortunately the issue with uniques is not unique to PoE.

I have done relatively well on nemesis, but even I am reliant on trading (though to a different extent). I am friends with a lot of people who play this game and we have our own "network" of sorts. If we find something we know someone else can use we usually contact them personally and just give it to them for free, with the understanding that they would do the same. But even with 10+ people playing, some at very high levels and communicating with each other, we can't always find viable upgrades.

This is unbalanced. It should not be encouraged. The drop rate in game should never be changed based on the trade system. The trade system must rely on the drop rate. The fact that drop rates have decreased to the point where Rarity Find items are almost meaningless is a testament to this.

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Real_Wolf wrote:

Please stop discussing it as 'we need a seperate league for solo self found' because it would be identical to the current leagues if you play self found

You are arguing this in a vacuum. Doing pure self found, in a game like PoE, is practically unfeasible for endgame builds (unless you happen to use the OP fotm builds)

A solo self found league would have mechanics (which at its simplest would be vastly improved drop rates when you hit around merc area) to make up for not being able to trade.

Better implementations would allow you to set goals (such as a unique that you are looking for), which would cause PoE to increase drops in the favor of that item

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deteego wrote:

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Real_Wolf wrote:

Please stop discussing it as 'we need a seperate league for solo self found' because it would be identical to the current leagues if you play self found

You are arguing this in a vacuum. Doing pure self found, in a game like PoE, is practically feasible for endgame builds (unless you happen to use the OP fotm builds)

A solo self found league would have mechanics (which at its simplest would be vastly improved drop rates when you hit around merc area) to make up for not being able to trade.

Better implementations would allow you to set goals (such as a unique that you are looking for), which would cause PoE to increase drops in the favor of that item

That is my point.

Every discussion about self found league is really a discussion about 'drop rates aren't good enough please improve them'

I'm fine with you discussing drop rates, I think their fine myself, but trying to hide it behind "We want a self found league" is false, what YOU want is better drops for less time spent

This is kind of depressing to read as a purely solo+self-found player that only started really playing after release and only has one character in Cruel Act 3 and another in Normal Act 3 at the moment, but I guess I'll just content myself with attempting to clear the game (i.e., Dominus in Merciless) with a few fun builds and then play other stuff until more Act content is added in eventual patches.

Running on a very steep gear treadmill ad infinitum just doesn't seem like that much fun. I guess there would be passive points to get but if the leveling curve is super-miserable once you outlevel the non-map content, then eh. (From the forums it seems like it's nearly impossible for solo/self-found players to sustain mapping, so eh.)

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Real_Wolf wrote:

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deteego wrote:

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Real_Wolf wrote:

Please stop discussing it as 'we need a seperate league for solo self found' because it would be identical to the current leagues if you play self found

You are arguing this in a vacuum. Doing pure self found, in a game like PoE, is practically feasible for endgame builds (unless you happen to use the OP fotm builds)

A solo self found league would have mechanics (which at its simplest would be vastly improved drop rates when you hit around merc area) to make up for not being able to trade.

Better implementations would allow you to set goals (such as a unique that you are looking for), which would cause PoE to increase drops in the favor of that item

That is my point.

Every discussion about self found league is really a discussion about 'drop rates aren't good enough please improve them'

I'm fine with you discussing drop rates, I think their fine myself, but trying to hide it behind "We want a self found league" is false, what YOU want is better drops for less time spent

False

If you are never going to trade, its a significant impediment, so much so that endgame is unfeasible without trading.

The drop rates increase is to take into account that you CAN'T TRADE (even though that is a silly solution).

Drop rates should definitely not be increased, in leagues where you can trade (on the basis for self found players) because those leagues have to maintain a proper economy, and its GGG's every intention to maintain an economy.

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Jakabov wrote:

66-69 maps are abundant to the point where I'm starting to consider converting my 66s and 67s into 68s with the vendor recipe

66-69 are expendable.

Something to note, as a self found player:

Always transmute and aug your low white maps before vending them up.

Look out for Massive, of Hordes and of Commanders.
These 3 mods each give 6 alch shards. Note that Labyrinthine and of Champions don't.

You will know how scarce alchs can be at times and these expendable low maps giving so many shards really help. A Massive of Hordes/Commanders will give you 12 alch shards to go towards alching higher maps that you would rather be running. 6+6 = 12. Or 6+1 (if you only have one of those mods + a random mod) = 7.

Maps which don't roll those high shard mods, when you vendor them up as blue, you will get an UNID blue which is well worth running as UNID at 69/70 lvl maps.

Good post. I'm self found too. The whole point of these games, for me, is replaying the content in new ways that change the gameplay, Thus, what I most like is finding an item that just screams at me that I need to build a character around the item. I thought that was the great promise of this game. After about 15 days played in open beta, and three days on domination in release, I have yet to find any item that would inspire me to build a new guy. I'm beginning to think that it just won't happen

Instead, I see nonstop talk in global chat about the trade value of various things. More and more I'm beginning to suspect that this game is just an even more gimped trading simulator than D3 was. Too bad.

GGG wouldn't have to make a new league. A person could elect to make an account self found only. With that tag, they get enhanced drop rates, but their characters could only play solo or in groups where loot was set to permanent allocation. Right now loot is tuned on the presumption of trading. I'm not asking for the increase in drops to fully make up that difference, just to narrow the gap to reasonable levels.

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BolshoiToo wrote:

Instead, I see nonstop talk in global chat about the trade value of various things. More and more I'm beginning to suspect that this game is just an even more gimped trading simulator than D3 was. Too bad.

Well, the irony is people talk about D3 AH, trade sim etc, one thing D3 never did was gate content behind trading. Self found there was always a challenge ahead of you. But in PoE the actual challenging content at end game is gated behind trading and grouping, the two main things that trivialise it.

Quite looking forward to next year now, RoS is looking good, as much as it pains me to say. Blizz are putting the loot find back in the genre and leaving the shopping sim to GGG.

i agree with everything, especially the unique parts. i don't like trading; the past week i've sent god knows how many PMs about weapons and amulets and pretty much no one gets back to you. it's unbelievably tedious and i'm sure you can understand why i don't want to spend time either spamming PMs or spamming trade chat more than actually playing the game just to spend a couple of chaos.

anyway, preferring not to trade, the uniques i find are pretty much all the same low level trash. in what must be over 800h total played by now, i have found 2 uniques i consider good: Rat's Nest and Maligaro's Virtuosity and they are only good on 1 of my characters, built for crit. the rest of my findings are worth like 2 chaos max.

i did 2 cowards trials and got a 3rd koam's sign from one and a sidebreath from the other. in 69 maps the other day i got 2 more silverbranches. while farming piety/crematorium, i got 2 more of those basket rapiers to take my total of those up to 4. i vendored 3 of my 4 karui wards and 2 out of 3 stones of lazwhar. why level 1 uniques continue to drop in merciless and even in so called "end game content" is completely beyond me.

i have never got a unique from a chance orb either. is this how you wanted it GGG? i've jumped through your hoops, made so many characters i have to delete someone to partake in races, spent 100s of hours in your game and STILL i have to trade for ANY half decent gear. never mind decent uniques to actually have some fun with a character or make an unusual build that happens to work in merciless, nope, back to poe.xyz searching for super meta life + res gear.

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Real_Wolf wrote:

Thing is, you can play self found in any league

Define "play".

Beating the regular game is doable self-found (if you play a cheap build and not that build-enabling-uniques nonsense).

But from my pov, the regular game is just something you need to go through, to get to the real game - ie. maps.

Now in the new leagues, if I play without +quanity gear (perandus & goldwyrm), I get 1 chaos orb every 15 maps or so, and 1 alchemy orb every 5 or 7 maps I do. Each of those maps (68 - 72 range) takes on average 1 alc and 1 chaos to roll.

Endgame is totally unplayable self-found.