Why are some players against balancing the game around SSF?

it will hurt game more and make insane ultra inflation

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DarthSki44 wrote:

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Phrazz wrote:

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DarthSki44 wrote:

I'm not saying eliminate trade. You could still get good drops that don't work for your build, trade maps, currency exchanges, and more.

I dont think this is an either or scenario. GGG could absolutely increase drop quality and still have trade be viable.

Of course they should increase drops. They should've done that years ago. But increasing drops is one thing; to balance THE GAME around SSF play is a completely different matter.

Wait what's the downside again if the game is balanced around more solo play and better drops? Trade will still be there.

its pretty simple. If the drops are drastically increased so that items previously unobtainable becomes farmable, trading for them will be almost trivial, as the insane influx of great items that the 10s of thousands of players in trade drop and want to liquidate will cause a massive inflation and over saturation of the market. And if items are trivial to obtain, the game becomes trivial, because the game is about obtaining items.

And you know what, even if this happens, items dropped will STILL seem like shit, because you can always easily pick up better ones from trade. This will be true unless near perfect items start raining from the sky

Its just how things are if you want an item centered game with unrestricted trading. Drops have to be tuned with trade in mind if you want them to hold any value. And ggg clearly wants a game with trade and valuable items, so drops simply cannot be tuned to ssf or the entire game breaks

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MECHanokl wrote:

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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.

There's been at least 4 attempts by GGG and countless by other games to increase outright accessibility, and they never succeed. The hard truth is people are people with their own predispositions and nothing a supplier of a product does will change that.

POE and most games have a majority bulk of players who will download, think the story concept is exciting, but then just don't like this sort of game. Most gamers are not aRPG fans anymore; they're spoiled by shooters, multiplayers and survival simulators. RPG's also don't have long lifespans with people who have short attention spans.

Even this league had significant changes to crafting to improve accessibility, but no one even seems to notice them.

Because SSF is a handicap. It's a challenge to overcome the handicap. Good on you for being into it, but the games drops and affix weights are literally designed around the existence of trading.

I'd rather gouge my eyes out then play SSF. The drops in this game are terrible without taking away the ability to trade.

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esostaks wrote:

I think a better question would be: would serious SSF players who play SSF for the increased challenge actually want the developers to cater to them and make SSF easier/more accessible?

Doesn't SSF lose some part of its purpose this way?

Not at all. I would totally play SSF if drops and weights were adjusted. But they aren't, so I don't. You are literally gimping your play experience playing SSF. There are only certain builds you can play and it will take you 10x longer to collect any one thing you may need. Regular mode is bad enough, the drops are really really bad without investing like 100 chaos juicing end game maps. SSF on top of that??
Hard hard pass.

OP, if you mean balance the entire base game around SSF, I'd be all for that. Make trading a faster way to get things, not the only way (ie: please don't tell me you think a Mageblood is going to drop, It won't). But they won't. Chris Wilson is absolutely obsessed with bad drops, and "trade interaction". I think he turns in his sleep and cries out at the idea something good dropped.

Here's another thing; You know how many times I've gotten a high value prophecy, or divination card on turn in? Not. Even. Once. Not once in thousands of hours. How many Mirrors? NOT EVEN ONE. Thousands of hours! Play SSF? Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, pass.
This is Chris Wilson's grand vision.
Alas the entire player base thinks this is just fine and dandy. I call it Path Of Economy Simulator.

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rekikyo wrote:

Even this league had significant changes to crafting to improve accessibility, but no one even seems to notice them.

No one even seems to notice them because they suck and dont solve the core problem. But hey, everyone noticed the returnal of harvest crafts in 3.13. By a pure accident this league was also the most popular league out of all ever released, I wonder why. It's almost as if GGG can cater to casuals and actually make the game more accessible (instead of pretending to), they just wont. They are stuck between Chris's "vision" and a need to have a healthy playerbase, and they dont know what to do because apparently they have no clue what makes the game popular anymore.

There weren't significant changes to crafting is why nobody noticed, they reduced the unveil grind but anybody whose gonna spend 10ex on a simple craft ie PoE crafting already plays enough to unlock the recipes.

Not that the change isn't good it absolutely is, but it doesn't change very much its definitely not more accessible because crafting is gated behind cost not recipe access.

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Draegnarrr wrote:

There weren't significant changes to crafting is why nobody noticed, they reduced the unveil grind but anybody whose gonna spend 10ex on a simple craft ie PoE crafting already plays enough to unlock the recipes.

Not that the change isn't good it absolutely is, but it doesn't change very much its definitely not more accessible because crafting is gated behind cost not recipe access.

Influence mod options were about halved, leaving behind only 2-3 undesired mods and all the good mods.

Some items only have 2-3 prefixes and 5 suffix outcomes now (rings/belts/amulets/shield particularly).

Most of the crap mods were moved into Scourge, so they no longer compete with the in demand influence mods.

But hey.... you keep believing nothing was done.

Even Shaper and Elder were pared down.

You can get Level 22 Herald of Thunder rolled on an Unset Ring in about 10 chaos orbs of outright crafting now.

There was literally only 1 downside to this paring: Boots can no longer have Attack Block or Spell Block, outside of Rainbowstride. Now it's a unique exclusive mod for boots. It was replaced on Elder with Spell Suppression.

I've spent about 30c an item getting prefixes or suffixes ready to finish out T1 rolling the other set of mods on them. You're nuts if you think nothing's changed.

There are literally thousands who do quite fine SSF and made lvl 100 this league. check out the events ladder under SSF scourge and SSFHC Scourge. For those who don't like to do 2500 maps for 100 there are like 100,000 players at end game on those leagues. Seems game is made for SSF to them.

Another reason it seems that way is how loose GGG got over the years. With masters, with cards, with fossils, with essences, gems at vendor, and other targeted ways to obtain gear on your own. They also increased unique and currency drops by at least 10 fold over time. Game is literally raining loot non stop I use neversink 5 uber strict, and then I edit it to be even more strict, so I don't have to make more than one trip back to town. Like I don't want wands showing if I'm playing bows or evasion gear if I'm playing Armor.

On currency. I'd be lucky to solo 5ex a league in Gen 1 most EX I got through trade. Nowadays I do 50-80ex SSF. More than enough to craft a full set with help of Harvest and aisling, yet more help for the solo players.

Sure some things are still random but for most part this game is totally SSFable. If you want to compare it to D3 no way but compared to past very much so. PoE sits somewhere in between D3 GG geared in a week to it's before state of trade was manditory.

Most of us like it that way and wouldn't change much, Like I said helmet enchants are still problematic and watchers eyes are about the only things I'd change.


Watchers eye's in particular. I farmed like 60 in Ritual and got no aura I even used let alone exact aura condition I wanted.

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rekikyo wrote:

Influence mod options were about halved, leaving behind only 2-3 undesired mods and all the good mods.

Some items only have 2-3 prefixes and 5 suffix outcomes now (rings/belts/amulets/shield particularly).

Most of the crap mods were moved into Scourge, so they no longer compete with the in demand influence mods.

But hey.... you keep believing nothing was done.

Exactly what I wrote, improvements for players that already had no problems crafting.

Here's a hint, if your crafting involves an exalt its already shutout an overwhelming majority of players.

They made some good general itemisation improvements like making regen have values that might be relevant and cutting a few mods but crafting is pretty much identical to last league with a small increase on weightings for expensive strats.

I don't even know what your point is with the 30c, it sounds like you are ignoring all of the costs associated with an item then pretending the outcome is gonna be cheap, are you using keep prefixes/suffixes? They aren't cheap or common.

Delve is probably an acceptable improvement i'll let you have that one, more fossils and new types of fossils in the market has made it much better to craft attribute items specifically.

The problem here isn't that the game isn't balanced with SSF in mind... it is. It's that players who play SSF and expect the same results from trade are posting here. Don't take them as representing SSF players. They're not. They're trade players who want the perks of playing SSF without the associated costs.

I don't play SSF for the "difficulty". It's not difficult. I play it because I can't abide cheating. If you trade, you cheat... at least by proxy. By that I mean that you get other people to cheat for you. If you trade for currency, you're trading with bots. If you're trading for items, you're likely trading with people who use currency to craft with at best, and RMTers a bit worse. But you're benefiting from that. SSF I know I'm not.

The game is what it is. Play it. Play it with what ever rule set you enjoy. Just don't expect the same results as people playing with a different set.

And yes, I've tried playing with a small group of people who swear they're not cheaters. Doesn't work. Someone always gets caught and it ruins it for everyone. Not worth it.