Why are some players against balancing the game around SSF?

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PraceAce wrote:

Imagine you want to get are new rare item as an upgrade to your build. Which of these two options sounds more fun to you?

1. You spend X hours to farm currency to purchase the rare item.

2. You spend the same X hours to obtain the item yourself.

What's the lure that makes some people argue against balacing around SSF? Why is purchasing upgrades from other players (option 1) more enticing to them than option 2, given that it'd take the same amount of hours and "skill"?

Personally, I do finding (currency to craft my) items by interacting with the gameplay much more appealing than getting them from other players.

Because it will greatly shorten the lifespan of the game. If the game is "too rewarding" you will finish the game and move on. Which is what GGG doesn't want. That's also why they remove Harvest from the game.

But the way 3.16 is now is just not playable unless you are nolifing your time away in this game. Either you are a streamer or you play to make money or you are just rich and can RMT or having too much free time. It's this crowd that GGG wants to attract and balance their game around. Casual can just buy stash and follow their streamers and watch them play.

That the devs feel that the meta-game of messaging other players, waiting for responses, joining parties, haggling over prices etc is a core part of their game rather than a weird growth hanging off the side of it is understandable (as plenty seem to love it) but still always disappointing.

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Networm13 wrote:

Because it will greatly shorten the lifespan of the game. If the game is "too rewarding" you will finish the game and move on. Which is what GGG doesn't want. That's also why they remove Harvest from the game.

New leagues already die out in about month or month and a half (sometimes even faster)... And most people leave not because they 'did everything and got bored", but because they hit a grind wall and lost interest in playing further, despite not reaching more interesting content like endgame bosses.

Improving accessibility will encourage a VAST majority of players to stay in the game longer to experience later game content, instead of leaving early.

Not sure I buy the idea of more stick keeps players around either.

Ritual had good retention and it was extremely rewarding at the same time - allowing players to make mirror tier items and farm mirrors even if you loaded up the alters. I think cute_dog found 4 and as much as he plays never found one in previous 7 years. Anyway, what players need is something to strive for and Harvest as contained in Ritual provided that rather than just finish game as you see it - challenges or complete atlas or 100, etc. that most leagues give us. Or worse hit the "grind wall" and check out early which happens to a lot of players.

Some mechanics would actually feel good in SSF without dumbing it down. Harvest in some form felt absolutely fantastic even in acts. It gave solo players tons of agency and paths to success, lowered the barriers to what builds could become viable in ssf, and introduced a lot of non-crafters to a very intuitive system for crafting that made the "many incremental steps" of gear improvement feel very concrete and real.

Likewise with Syndicate, currently it's very trade-friendly with the scattershot of goosed mastermind syndicant rewards, meaning some players can specialize in continuing to ignore catarina and then leverage their 3 star gains into buying benches for folks who don't mind blowing up their org. SSF means you have to blow your org regularly and build up again, but few of the rewards are totally useless because you're the only source for them.

I don't see why there's so much hostility about ssf and the possibility in future that ssf could receive some individualized attention to make it attractive to completionists who want to do it all on their own, but also need to know their time is valuable and they're not simply opting to gimp themselves to make a statement.

I get it though. SSF doesn't showcase expensive mtx in towns to other players, they are a minority, developer man-hours are at a premium, etc.

To its credit, nearly ALL of PoE's endgame content is soloable unlike many other pubby games where content is designed around a full raid team all with gg gear that coincidentally drops from that instance.

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MECHanokl wrote:

New leagues already die out in about month or month and a half (sometimes even faster)... And most people leave not because they 'did everything and got bored", but because they hit a grind wall and lost interest in playing further, despite not reaching more interesting content like endgame bosses.

Improving accessibility will encourage a VAST majority of players to stay in the game longer to experience later game content, instead of leaving early.

You, Aim_Deep, crunkatog are not wrong. But you guys made the wrong assumption. You think this game cares and caters to casual crowd. It is not.

If you make things easy or reasonable for the casual, it will make it extremely easy or very accessible for the sweety tryhard crowd. That's why GGG said 3.13 is the worst even though to many people including me 3.13 was the highest point of PoE.

I keep recommending people to watch Yoji vid on this issue. He explained it really well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c--MzZhvxY ( No-Lifers vs. Casuals - GGG's Biggest Challenge for Path of Exile going forward - Yoji Rambles )

So if you are a casual. Just don't spend a dime on this game. It's not worth, especially seeing how GGG handled the issue.

People are not against it, the game has not been designed to be SSF as it generates trash and not stuff that you can use to upgrade your character. I don't see it is going to change anytime soon.

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Networm13 wrote:

You, Aim_Deep, crunkatog are not wrong. But you guys made the wrong assumption. You think this game cares and caters to casual crowd. It is not.

If you make things easy or reasonable for the casual, it will make it extremely easy or very accessible for the sweety tryhard crowd. That's why GGG said 3.13 is the worst even though to many people including me 3.13 was the highest point of PoE.

I keep recommending people to watch Yoji vid on this issue. He explained it really well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c--MzZhvxY ( No-Lifers vs. Casuals - GGG's Biggest Challenge for Path of Exile going forward - Yoji Rambles )

So if you are a casual. Just don't spend a dime on this game. It's not worth, especially seeing how GGG handled the issue.

GGG said the 3.13 was the worst league due their own feelings, not due to any metrics (it had the largest online numbers and the best reception out of all leagues EVER released). It's their hubris and Chris's 'vision' striking again, nothing more. Chris, that same guy would give things like legal flask macro and death log to China but not to us, or who would not implement graphical options like reduced effects intensity solely because some streamers might play on potato settings and give bad marketing... They are not exactly the brightest, and thier awful decision making that goes against profits or any common sense already bit them with expedition.

Whatever forum warriors, no lifers with 40 challenges on week one or some streamers who play this game like a full time job might think, this game will not survive without casuals. The moment most casuals are gone for good the game will plummet dramatically in terms of player numbers, making it "worse" for hardcore players, since it will negatively affect trade and currency circulation. Morevoer, this game will not survive on top of hardcore base only, even if half of them doesnt scatter when trade goes to the drain with dead economy due to low player pop (imagine playing the game with the online of month 3 of a league). Expedition with its, all things considered, not that dramatic of a player and profits drop, would already be unsustainable for the devs for more than 3 leagues. Stop fooling yourself by thinking that "hardcore" players can carry this game in its current state. They cant.

Its a can of worms because whats actually required is balance around SSF with trade disabled, the trading is what makes SSF balance garbage because so many players play SC that anything even touching on self farmable will cost 1c by the end of the first week.

I think some SC players don't really appreciate this and would encourage them to compare listings on like SC trade vs HC trade, you can get absolutely crazy niche shit for nothing on SC because there are just so many players contributing to the system and so few taking most items out.

If players had to farm their own shit though almost every complaint about the game going too fast becomes mute, infact for the super rich this would be a significant nerf to their progression every league if they couldn't just buy everything off everyone else.

This one went around alot with respect to harvest because that clearly had a problem being traded, if you only used your own plots it was a great mechanic. If you bought other peoples it became a truly busted mechanic producing gear far better than you'd ever see otherwise.

GGG don't want to bind items though its one of their core philosophies and I kinda get why they don't want to change that. It does come at a steep design cost though that already very heavily impacts the game.

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MECHanokl wrote:

GGG said the 3.13 was the worst league due their own feelings, not due to any metrics (it had the largest online numbers and the best reception out of all league EVER released). It's their hubris and Chris's 'vision' striking again, nothing more. Chris, that same guy would give things like legal flask macro and death log to China but not to us, or who would not implemented graphical options like reduced effects intensity solely because some streamers might play on potato settings and give bad marketing... They are not exactly the brightest, and thier awful decision making that goes against profits or any common sense already bit them with expedition.

Whatever forum warriors, no lifers with 40 challenges on week one or some streamers who play this game like a full time job might think, this game will not survive without casuals. The moment most casuals are gone for good the game will plummet dramatically in terms of playernumbers, making it "worse" for hardcore players, since it will negatively affect trade and currency circulation. Morevoer, this game will not survive on top of hardcore base only, even if half of them doesnt scatter when trade goes to the drain with dead economy due to low player pop (imagine playing the game with the online of month 3 of a league). Expedition with its, all things considered, not that dramatic of player and profits drop, would already be unsustainable for the devs for more than 3 leagues. Stop fooling yourself by thinking that "hardcore" players can carry this game in its current state. They cant.

Even if they go on with Chris' vision they won't die, at least in a year or two. But they won't grow either, and playerbase will eventually shrink back to the 2.0 era, I suppose. But hey it's what they want, and what their fans want. Let them have it.

And yeah that ostentatiously catering to streamers is disgusting. They did nothing about delve for months. But after Lily died due to ridiculous reason in delve, they fix it immediately. Really shaking my head.