For the love of god can we have a in game auction system?

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Scroll down a page and look at when the item was listed. A little knowledge of the system can help you have a better trading experience.

And this is a good experience, how?

Read "better" not "good".

You're welcome.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

First of all I think describing it as "100% satisfying the intention" is super disengenous. This isnt what the players wanted, but it was all GGG would allow them to have. That's a very large distinction. Players did want the looting to be based off a solo experience, not trade, and GGG refused. You have to remember how long GGG fought to keep SSF from existence to begin with.

Secondly, GGG allows multiple people in a SSF league now. Of course you have to pay money for a private league, but its doable. It's a cynical move mostly gear towards their content creators, but hey, whatever drives that revenue.

Point is that SSF is still balanced around trade and multiplayer for nothing short of fear on GGG's end. That's all. Fear people will enjoy it more than their core experience, which in itself is laughably tragic.

Not even slightly disingenuous as I was speaking from the perspective of why it was released. When it came out, it came with the understanding that it was a modifier that added difficulty and would not have its own balance attached to it. Its sole purpose was to provide a place for the SSF crowd to play and not rely on the honor system.

I was originally against the SSF as its own mode, largely because I knew at some point people would moan about making it easier, and it becoming the defacto easy mode akin to D3. There isn't anything wrong with D3, but we don't need another one. I was shocked about how wrong I *mostly* was, but occasionally people make waves about making it easy.

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Nubatron wrote:

it came with the understanding that it was a modifier that added difficulty and would not have its own balance attached to it

Yes, that's what I said, but you left out that is absolutely not what the players asked for in a solo experience.

It was a necessary concession, because quite frankly, it wasnt a negotiation. Basically we got a solo mode that came with a penalty, because that's all GGG would allow.

Ironically many people, especially in the content creator circles, consider trade league "easy mode".

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Nubatron wrote:

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

First of all I think describing it as "100% satisfying the intention" is super disengenous. This isnt what the players wanted, but it was all GGG would allow them to have. That's a very large distinction. Players did want the looting to be based off a solo experience, not trade, and GGG refused. You have to remember how long GGG fought to keep SSF from existence to begin with.

Secondly, GGG allows multiple people in a SSF league now. Of course you have to pay money for a private league, but its doable. It's a cynical move mostly gear towards their content creators, but hey, whatever drives that revenue.

Point is that SSF is still balanced around trade and multiplayer for nothing short of fear on GGG's end. That's all. Fear people will enjoy it more than their core experience, which in itself is laughably tragic.

Not even slightly disingenuous as I was speaking from the perspective of why it was released. When it came out, it came with the understanding that it was a modifier that added difficulty and would not have its own balance attached to it. Its sole purpose was to provide a place for the SSF crowd to play and not rely on the honor system.

I was originally against the SSF as its own mode, largely because I knew at some point people would moan about making it easier, and it becoming the defacto easy mode akin to D3. There isn't anything wrong with D3, but we don't need another one. I was shocked about how wrong I *mostly* was, but occasionally people make waves about making it easy.

Why exactly would a mode with similar or slightly slower progression to the main mode be easy mode? I honestly dont get the mindset all of you seem to have, people oneshotting ubers 3 days into tradeleague by spending most of their time in their hideout/outside the game is perfectly fine and reasonable but wanting to have a minimum amount of gear for endgame actually dropping from monsters is a sign of the apocalypse and must be prevented at all cost because the game would be too easy? Wtf man, honestly. We already have super easy mode in the game, its called SC trade.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

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Nubatron wrote:

it came with the understanding that it was a modifier that added difficulty and would not have its own balance attached to it

Yes, that's what I said, but you left out that is absolutely not what the players asked for in a solo experience.

It was a necessary concession, because quite frankly, it wasnt a negotiation. Basically we got a solo mode that came with a penalty, because that's all GGG would allow.

Ironically many people, especially in the content creator circles, consider trade league "easy mode".

And they would be correct. There are three modes that are self-elected harder modes: Ruthless, SSF and Hardcore. These are all options to make the game harder, so relatively speaking, it is easy mode. That's the point.

But if SSF had a drop rate that nullified trade, it would become the new easy mode because it removes one of the steps to getting all the things. Trade is there and purposely hard to provide resistance. Making a mode that somehow removed that need would become the path of least resistance. There is a good reason to not do that as they envision trade as a core element of the game.

As for the comment about it not being what people asked for, that actually is being somewhat disingenuous. Some people did ask specifically for what was delivered. If your argument is that it didn't meet the needs of everyone, well okay. That pretty much summarizes every release of every game in the history of gaming.

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Nubatron wrote:

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

"

Nubatron wrote:

it came with the understanding that it was a modifier that added difficulty and would not have its own balance attached to it

Yes, that's what I said, but you left out that is absolutely not what the players asked for in a solo experience.

It was a necessary concession, because quite frankly, it wasnt a negotiation. Basically we got a solo mode that came with a penalty, because that's all GGG would allow.

Ironically many people, especially in the content creator circles, consider trade league "easy mode".

And they would be correct. There are three modes that are self-elected harder modes: Ruthless, SSF and Hardcore. These are all options to make the game harder, so relatively speaking, it is easy mode. That's the point.

But if SSF had a drop rate that nullified trade, it would become the new easy mode because it removes one of the steps to getting all the things. Trade is there and purposely hard to provide resistance. Making a mode that somehow removed that need would become the path of least resistance. There is a good reason to not do that as they envision trade as a core element of the game.

As for the comment about it not being what people asked for, that actually is being somewhat disingenuous. Some people did ask specifically for what was delivered. If your argument is that it didn't meet the needs of everyone, well okay. That pretty much summarizes every release of every game in the history of gaming.

That's not really what I meant, but really I'm not disagreeing totally either, especially on path of least resistance. I suppose we are nitpicking a bit, but my point was there were plenty of folks that wanted a solo experience, that wasnt penalized simply because it was solo.

If a game mode would be more popular than they would have envisioned, perhaps they should re-examine a bit? I mean, That's a negative? Well ok I guess, you are right, there are other options out there, but at least I hope they realized they were wrong about SSF and what would happen. Not everyone is group play focused in multiplayer setting. In fact it's probably the opposite on average.

Its yet another reason D4 will do well in comparison I think. The PoE "Get fucked solo player" isnt exactly the greatest strategy imo, but let's see how it goes.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

That's not really what I meant, but really I'm not disagreeing totally either, especially on path of least resistance. I suppose we are nitpicking a bit, but my point was there were plenty of folks that wanted a solo experience, that wasnt penalized simply because it was solo.

If a game mode would be more popular than they would have envisioned, perhaps they should re-examine a bit? I mean, That's a negative? Well ok I guess, you are right, there are other options out there, but at least I hope they realized they were wrong about SSF and what would happen. Not everyone is group play focused in multiplayer setting. In fact it's probably the opposite on average.

Its yet another reason D4 will do well in comparison I think. The PoE "Get fucked solo player" isnt exactly the greatest strategy imo, but let's see how it goes.

I truly hope the "it's popular" argument never lands with GGG. And to be quite honest, that's not a path you want them to go down either. Where do you draw the line on popularity? Do you stop when you reach D3 levels of popular? Or do you keep going because other gaming options are a ton more popular: see Minecraft or Candy Crush for more information.

Reality TV is confoundingly popular with the added bonus of being low cost and easy to produce. That doesn't make it good; at least not for me.

They've stubbornly fought popular choices for a long time with a few deviations, and it's served them well. No, they're not as popular as Candy Crush; and that's okay.

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Nubatron wrote:

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DarthSki44 wrote:

That's not really what I meant, but really I'm not disagreeing totally either, especially on path of least resistance. I suppose we are nitpicking a bit, but my point was there were plenty of folks that wanted a solo experience, that wasnt penalized simply because it was solo.

If a game mode would be more popular than they would have envisioned, perhaps they should re-examine a bit? I mean, That's a negative? Well ok I guess, you are right, there are other options out there, but at least I hope they realized they were wrong about SSF and what would happen. Not everyone is group play focused in multiplayer setting. In fact it's probably the opposite on average.

Its yet another reason D4 will do well in comparison I think. The PoE "Get fucked solo player" isnt exactly the greatest strategy imo, but let's see how it goes.

I truly hope the "it's popular" argument never lands with GGG. And to be quite honest, that's not a path you want them to go down either. Where do you draw the line on popularity? Do you stop when you reach D3 levels of popular? Or do you keep going because other gaming options are a ton more popular: see Minecraft or Candy Crush for more information.

Reality TV is confoundingly popular with the added bonus of being low cost and easy to produce. That doesn't make it good; at least not for me.

They've stubbornly fought popular choices for a long time with a few deviations, and it's served them well. No, they're not as popular as Candy Crush; and that's okay.

Well that sounds nice from from a strategic development perspective, but not so much from a financial performance perspective.

If they dont really care about "popular", and we are not talking candy crush or mobile popular, they sure dont show it well when leagues dont perform as expected. They get panicky and surprised.

It's the quandary they find themselves in lately. Wanting to design and develop for a more niche elite audience, but marketing towards, and wanting, casual money. Its self-imposed friction and imo, one reason the community gets wild sometimes. It's two vastly different customer groups and GGG does a poor job managing them.

They probably would be better off picking a more niche lane, but I dont think they could stomach what that means on the financial side. Or if Tencent would even "allow" that to intentionally happen.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

Well that sounds nice from from a strategic development perspective, but not so much from a financial performance perspective.

If they dont really care about "popular", and we are not talking candy crush or mobile popular, they sure dont show it well when leagues dont perform as expected. They get panicky and surprised.

It's the quandary they find themselves in lately. Wanting to design and develop for a more niche elite audience, but marketing towards, and wanting, casual money. Its self-imposed friction and imo, one reason the community gets wild sometimes. It's two vastly different customer groups and GGG does a poor job managing them.

They probably would be better off picking a more niche lane, but I dont think they could stomach what that means on the financial side. Or if Tencent would even "allow" that to intentionally happen.

As long as the servers stay on and they stay fairly close to their current trajectory (besides shafting melee at every turn), I'm not sure I care.

We will never know the financials other than correlations to things that don't tell us nearly anything about their financials. You can usually tell when a company is in distress. I think they've adopted some questionable monetization things as of late, but that seems to be in line with the gaming industry as a whole so that isn't an indicator of distress.

If they suddenly caved on things that are so against the grain for them like AH or Chinese POE version P2W type things, then that would be a clear sign of distress for me. They have backed off changes that were unpopular, particularly at the beginning of leagues, but never so extreme that seemed to deviate from what appears to be their vision. So even those few times didn't seem like a sign of distress, just an attempt to realign the ship to players wants within their own guidelines of inbounds. If you can name one reversal or shift in philosophy that was so engrained in their design philosophy, I'll happily revisit that assertion. For calibration purposes though, giving in on FFA allocation isn't at the level I would consider distressing as an example, but giving in on AH would be.