Is Standard ever played or just seasons?

standard is where all the nerfed builds go. you enjoy something in league then it gets gutted next patch and you never touch it again in standard.

Well done. Your question will trigger at least 75% of the players to start slinging poo at each other.

I've been playing only standard for years (I think Delve was my last league) and I love it. Can skip the awful leveling experience. Have plenty of maps, and a wide variety of gear to pick from when choosing a new build. Plenty of 90+ characters to just slam a build on and try.

You get a more polished version of league mechanics and are at most a league behind everyone in new content. But that's fine, its all relative and each league in standard usually adds something new for me.

THE BEST part is probably not having to no-life the start of a new league to get ahead in the market. That phenomenon simply doesn't exist in standard. In this regard, the game is a little less abusive.

The market is fine. Fewer items for sale due to fewer people = the items that you do find usually sell for a lot more. Essentially, there is a tad bit of currency inflation as a result. Some items, like decent ass-mark rings for example, are cheaper to make yourself in standard... which I believe is opposite the leagues.

Despite what some people claim above, most builds are still nerfed in standard. Sure, legacy items exist that make almost any build more powerful such as flasks, jewels, better stats on uniques. However, these hardly overcome nerfs to skill gems themselves. For the most part you are still slave to the meta.

Play the league if you want the extra challenge and grind. If you can no-life the league you will also probably be able to make more currency than playing standard for an equivalent amount of time. If you want something thats a little more respectful of your time, standard all the way baby.

In Standard I would imagine you have less bots to compete with for trading items that are listed but I could be wrong on that assumption.

I think more and more I'm finding that standard is actually a better environment then leagues. Although I say this as a SSF player. It just takes too much out of me to regrind up Delve, Conq, Maven, HeistMembers, etc every league. I accomplished a lot in Ritual league but I also had to invest a lot of time and I don't know if I want to do that every 3 months.

So as a SSF player I can say that standard is just fine to play.

if you want to just play sure its fine
if you want to trade it sucks

Standard is the best version of PoE.

The problem is even relatively poor players like me who make 5 to 40 ex most leagues, or 200 tops when I bother crafting, still accumulate everything they have ever made in standard, so it has many leagues worth of currency.

So why would anyone sell you something under 50 chaos when they have 20,000 chaos and 1,200 ex sitting in the stash that they probably wont ever use?

And someone people who really craft make that per league, so why would they ever bother trading?

Thats why standard sucks.