How it should have been. Food for thought.

"

geradon wrote:

my hope always was that ggg introducing paid leagues with the option to make them self found would silence these 20-30 very active forum posters demanding some of the current leagues being changed to self found.

dunno how it's going at ggg regarding paid leagues. either they lack the desire for the extra buck or they came to the conclusion development efforts are not worth it now that the only guy they expected to purchase them left the game.

I'm not one of those "20-30 very active forum posters demanding some of the current leagues being changed to self found" I don't advocate SFLs, I don't want an SFL. I want to play the long term league that I started playing, albeit self-found.

The thread isn't asking for a change, it isn't asking for a SFL, nobody as yet has asked such ITT.

So I'm not entirely sure what the fook you are talking about :/

"

TheAnuhart wrote:

So I'm not entirely sure what the fook you are talking about :/

asking questions: for example would you buy a self found custom league?

what's the reason anyway to claim that somebody should have done this or that in the past and start discussing it? discussions only make sense if you try to find a solution.

that's why i've added some suggestions in my previous post.

"

geradon wrote:

"

TheAnuhart wrote:

So I'm not entirely sure what the fook you are talking about :/

asking questions: for example would you buy a self found custom league?

what's the reason anyway to claim that somebody should have done this or that in the past and start discussing it? discussions only make sense if you try to find a solution.

that's why i've added some suggestions in my previous post.

Would I?

No.
....................................................................


The reason is because I see a design opportunity missed.
I want to talk about that missed opportunity, the problems the game has because of that missed opportunity and why having a stance without fully considering the negative and positive implications is not good. Especially when it leads to your vision being self defeating.
It's time to open your mind and learn from your mistakes so in future, actually fully considering implications is above a stance based purely on, because.

"

kasub wrote:

Some people actually enjoy being able to trade.

Ok, but the problem is not with "being able to trade", but with "trade-centric design".

Trade-centric design == some classes not getting any of the two gems that virtually every build uses (reduced mana, life leech), while others getting 4 copies. Completely useless from the gameplay pov, just serves (forced) trading.

Trade-centric design == eternals droping once a year, if that.

Trade-centric design == 'crafting' that is a useless roullete casino, unless you bought enough orbs to bruteforce defeat RNG.


And while in a game where "you are able to trade", everyone is happy, in a trade-centric game non-traders are forcibly put on the sideline, because no amount of H&S looting will ever be able to compete with tradecore merchants. Not even close.

A BOA Std would at least take away some of the ability to exploit trading (Xleague, flooding Std economy, RMT...) and the ability to balance the league in a non-tradecentric way.

All u guys must stfu. Why? Because u play a F2P game with non 3D modeled items. Its just a poor game but ve some interesting nodes (like passive tree and some builds bla bla bla). So, dont need to much ponder for this game. Just play and smile.

"

TheAnuhart wrote:

Every new league players begin fresh, this is what GGG want people to do, they push for league activity and they want economy isolation. But players amass wealth, leagues end and everything goes to parent leagues. For a league ladder player this wealth is of no use, if they obey the rules.

So a league ends and Joe's characters go to HC/Std. All the gear, the exalts, the mirrors, the mirror service crafts, all in HC/Std. Joe either writes it off, or tries to profit. Joe isn't interested in HC/Std. There's a new league ladder.

There's 2 ways Joe can profit. He can accept RMT or he can try to cross league into the new ladder league. FG makes the latter quite easy.

I must be in a funny mood today, or have some kind of fresh perspective from not actually playing PoE for several weeks, because this actually makes a lot of sense to me... I feel this. I really do.

"

TheAnuhart wrote:

What GGG should have done was have parent leagues be completely bound, from the get go, parent leagues should have been pseudo SFLs, crafting leagues and dump leagues without economy. Leagues where one can play SF or where one can carry on playing characters after ladder leagues. Characters landing in parent leagues with wealth from ladders can craft with the orbs they bring and use items but not trade them. The ladder reset leagues are where the trading happens, from fresh, new economies, every 4 (or 3) months, in fact, under this design, players might even have preferred 6 month leagues as opposed to complaining that 4 month is too long.

...and here we are, back to typical Anuhart.

However, the good news is: I think I've finally caught a glimpse into what problems The Anuhart sees in the game. I still disagree with his proposed solutions, but I think I kind of get the core beef.

And that core beef is: the effects of league transference. How one league just dumps into another. So I sit back and I think about it and I wonder...

why do league dump into other leagues in the first place?

No, seriously, it's a good question. Why are the temporary leagues, well, temporary? Why do they end? They don't have to, you know; you could have an arbitrarily large amount of leagues in existence at one time.

Yes, I'm aware that, from character creation perspective, having the ability to begin in one of twenty leagues is far too confusing and not very elegant. But that is just an answer to "why should the new character creation window for a 'temporary' league end?" That should end at some point for each league, precisely for that reason. But this is actually a completely separate question from "why do leagues end?" Creating a new character is a completely different process from continuing to play an old one. Trading is a different process too, as The Anuhart is quick to point out. But the question I'm asking is not "why trading?" — the question is "why ending?"

And to be honest, I can't think of a single coherent consequence other than what Anuhart says in the section I quoted — that is, entirely harmful effects. It's taking a league and throwing a bunch of items into it, from players who could have played in said league, but willfully chose not to. It's not difficult to predict what kinds of effects that is going to have, and how it actually does form a kind of systemic vulnerability to RMT and pseudo-RMT activities.

So since there is no really good answer to why leagues end, what if they didn't end?

Just brainstorming, but lets say there were 2 softcore and 2 hardcore leagues available for character creation at any one time. All four of these would have been originally released as "challenge leagues," so at least at some point or another they all had that nice big GGG spotlight on them. One soft and one hard would be the "new" leagues, and at whatever date they release a third league of one type, that's the date when character creation closes so that it's back to being only two.

This doesn't mean there'd only be 4 leagues available for play, just for new character creation. Once one of your (softcore) characters is in a league, it would stay in that league. Forever.

Hell, while they're at it, GGG could even offer an iron-clad guarantee: once a unique item is introduced into a particular league, it will always be available as a drop in that particular league. Might not be the case in leagues to be released in the future; that's where the incremental balance would come into play. But you could have a situation where the entire concept of the "legacy item" is done away with, relatively easily.

Now this doesn't mean there wouldn't be any player exoduses. You'd still have those players who quit a league when a new temp league is recently or soon to be released, and you'd still have hardcore (little h) players dying and getting shipped to softcore. But the thing I don't understand is... why make Standard/HC the permanent flogging dummies for these duties? Why not have each of the hardcore leagues dump into precisely one, simultaneously released softcore league, rather than all the hardcore leagues dumping into Standard? Why set up Standard/HC for an endless cycle of getting a temp league dumped into them once every four months, when you can set them up to be dumped into precisely once, at exactly the four month mark, and then never dumped into that way again? Why repeatedly flog the same leagues over and over again with the same bullshit, when the weight can be more evenly distributed throughout the system?

That said, there will still be some degree of RMT and pseudo-RMT going on at leagues end, but I consider a trade freeze to be far too drastic of a measure. By "drastic," I mean damaging; SFL advocates are far too quick to dismiss the benefits of trade, usually with the standard "it's such a benefit that it's OP" mantra. However, the proper response to OP is not to nerf it into the ground to make it impossible; it is to curb its effectiveness down to reasonable proportions. As long as there is trade, there will always be RMT and pseudo-RMT, and this is, within reason, an acceptable drawback.

It does not, however, mean we should ignore design decisions which allow RMT and pseudo-RMT to grow and fester beyond the levels which are implied by the phrase "acceptable drawback."

In any case, I believe the best answer to the problem would be less dumping by making even the "temporary" leagues permanent, at least in some meaning of the term. Let me know what you guys think.

Fuck no.

I play on Standard exclusively because I absolutely *hate* rolling new characters. Leveling new characters feels like a chore and an absolute waste of time, if they are of a same class that I've already leveled to 80+. I would rather spend 100+ Regrets to respec than have to go through the questing process again. Standard League solves this problem because the league is permanent. My progress is permanent. Everything is permanent, and I like it that way.

Secondly, with the way droprates are, I can't even begin to imagine how I would have acquired the gear I have via "self-found". Trading is a large part of how I acquire wealth and new gear. I can test whatever build I want by trading items I don't use for items I need.

"

TheAnuhart wrote:

"

mark1030 wrote:

So you basically want to force everybody to play self found if they don't play in a challenge league? I don't know about you, but I like to try a lot of builds. If I couldn't trade for items needed for builds, then I just wouldn't be able to play them. Doesn't sound like it would solve anything except make me not want to play this game at all. If I want to play self found and be stuck playing only builds that I find gear for, I'll go play D3.

Or did I misunderstand what you wanted to do?

You did misunderstand, yes.

I'm asking to imagine that this current model didn't exist, it never existed.
And that instead, the design from the start was as stated in the OP.

While it isn't easy to see the benefits because you are in fact imagining something that simply doesn't have an element that you do enjoy, that being long term league with trading, in the hypothetical scenario, you would never have had that to start with. Trading, as you know it, would have been temporary leagues.

I must point out, again.
Considering two of the many play styles..
Long term permanent trading leagues.
Short term temporary competitive leagues.


The first type is at the moment highly dependant on a pyramid economy.
The first is contradicted by GGG pushing for the bottom and middle pyramid to play the temporary leagues.

I don't believe this play style is long term sustainable with the current model, any way.


The second type is dependent on a fresh untainted economy, fair play, competition.
The second is contradicted by the existence of parent leagues as they are and the ease of transferring wealth from previous leagues, via parent leagues, via FG or RMT, into each fresh league.

Ok, so I didn't misunderstand. What difference does it make if I never knew standard league as a trading league? My objection remains the same. I CANNOT make any build I want anymore. Now I'm FORCED to only make builds that can be made with gear I've found. If I haven't found the items needed to make a build, I just don't get to. That's not fun to me. And that's why after reaching Paragon 100 on D3, I've not been playing RoS. Bound on account just sucks if you want to have any flexibility and try different things.

How about comparing the current way things are to another game - D2. Was that game 'long term sustainable'? If you say no, what is your definition of long-term? Because I know people that still play D2 even though it's been "unsustainable" for a decade and a half. You don't need to force people to play bound on account to make a game sustainable. What makes a gain sustainable is an enjoyable activity. If you don't enjoy this activity, find one you do enjoy instead of trying to make it unenjoyable for those that like it.

I think your design is fine... but you're talking about a different game. The idea of limiting trading to a short term league and having the parent league be account bound isn't a bad one. It's just not PoE and never will be.

The drive to acquire "wealth" in this game is bad for it. Players find that they're stuck in a never ending goal for better and better, even though what they have is pretty darn good. They complain that it's too hard to advance, that items are too expensive.

Your game, if you ever make it, would have all the trading focused on "new stuff" and wouldn't have this market for BiS gear.

I actually might even enjoy trading in a game with this type of limitation in place.

Well I see me trying to not get people to see this as a change to happen to the current leagues, with current mechanics all bar trading..

And me trying to get people to see this as a hypothetical could have base design, which would have of course been tuned around the design itself.. failed hard.

I still note that people aren't grasping that the play style of permanent league pyramid economy that they are so protective of and see as being shit on if the OP design had been; gets shit on more and more each day in the current design where the middle and bottom pyramid gets less and less.

It's like you are all B&B owners in that nice little seaside resort, living out the rest of your days off of the tourism, you want to protect your investment. Little do you realise, the very council that sold you the properties, gave you the license and feature your seafront B&B in the holiday brochure, are putting people on the ship to Ibiza before they get near the resort.

Edit, ^not implied towards your post, Shags.