A self-found purist's feedback [Long]

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Jakabov wrote:

Depends how you interpret "viable." You can complete the game on merciless without trading and get to fairly high levels (I made it to 85 in a month before quitting) playing purely self-found. However, that's not really what the game is about. The point of an ARPG isn't to complete the campaign, it's to build up wealth and a strong character through long-term play, and that's where self-found completely collapses due to the absurd scarcity of good gear and currency.

All of PoE's depth is gated behind excessive trading. You can forget about crafting, about any build that requires a specific high-level unique, about getting to the later endgame maps, and anything else that can be considered the real endgame of PoE. These things very literally are not available to a self-found player. Sure, you could be unrealistically lucky and find the right combination of severeal ultra-rare items required to properly run one of the really worthwhile builds, but this is so improbable that the possibility barely deserves to be acknowledged.

All of these things are only realistically possible by engaging not just in trading but in heavy, constant engrossment in the game's economy. The amount of currency it takes to actually craft a worthwhile item is absurd, we're talking about wealth that you wouldn't be able to find yourself if you played the same character for an entire year. Likewise, a self-found player is unlikely to ever get past level 74 maps, and will probably never be able to do regular farming runs of any map level above 70. To do so requires an investment of chaos orbs and chisels that can't possibly be sustained in any other way than to spend considerable time every day selling all your loot to other players.

This is what we don't like. It's not just that we're staunchly against the idea trading, it's that the facilities for trading are so terrible in this game. It takes so long and is so unsupported that we'd rather not play the game at all if that's the alternative. The game isn't good enough if you don't trade, and the game's trading system isn't good enough to demand that everyone makes extensive use of it. It's not unreasonable to demand that a game is either fully playable without trading or has adequate trading facilities, but neither is the case in PoE.

To be a self-found player is very much to be a second-rate player, and now that GGG have begun to officially shun and denounce this playstyle, it's hard to feel anything but unwanted. They haven't just ignored us, they've plainly announced that they're against our chosen style of play and refuse to support it in any way. It's frankly appalling to see a company treat its customers so poorly, especially since we're not asking for something unreasonable -- on the contrary, we're asking for something that should really be there already.