SSF and people who dislike trading, also need love you know?

I live with social and general anxiety after extensive sickness period, and this post has been underway for years to reach the point of writing this post. For the same reason I will never experience PoE's trade function or reach out to people in-game. And for those that don't know about it, writing a text and pasting it in this editor is nothing like starting a live conversation.

SSF has always been a detrimental option, without any bonus to them, while some people who dislike trading playstyle gets the same experience anyway.

In the current ARPG-genre, Path of Exile is probably one of the least SSF-friendly games. (Last Epoch's loot system made me question if GGG even cares about non-trade players. No joke, the difference is just simply that big)

- Mechanics and leagues catered for trade
- Shallow league mechanics without trade aspects
- Loot too random to be useful for what YOU are playing
- Target farming gear is scarsely a thing
- Crafting limitations and randomness
- Mechanic access limitation, because SSF have to farm everything and often at the same time

Everything adds up to build limitations, larger strain to get builds up and running, general lower stat gear across the board, mechanic limitations (example beast limit, corpse limit, stations with item limit... The limit doesn't seem like anything special, until you get it filled with junk SSF don't want and can't sell)

No one says SSF have to be only detrimental, if people want misery, there's Ruthless. SSF could be immensively more fun if it varied from the state of being trade-league without trading, be it with different loot- or crafting parameters, or if the game is hardwired to be the same for trade and SSF, then a minor mechanic only for SSF would also make a big difference.

In this league, in SSF you have little control of the bases for the crafting mechanic which is the main part of the mechanic and that's beside the randomness of the crafting modifiers and the scarcity of the corpses to enable you.
If you ignore the league mechanic you get slammed with rough empowered mobs and corpse interfaces blocking loot drops from the mob both visually and the ability to hover over or click them if they are even close to the interface

The corpse collect interface should have more tranparency to not hide stuff, the click-box of the interface need a trim, and a button to collapse or close (burn corpse) the interface.

This post may in its entirety seem criticizing, but at the same time it's coming from a SSF player that haven't been experiencing much fun or reward from interacting with the league mechanic through the campaign, even though the graphics of it was nice.

in case you didnt know. upon release POE did not have an SSF option.

it was just standard vs hardcore and the temp leagues.

many SSF enjoyers begged GGG to get an SSF league.

a lot of other players kinda shat on these people because SSF is all about bragging rights.

back then and even now you could play SSF whenever you felt like it on a new character. just dont party nor trade with anyone.

but that wasnt enough. self imposed SSF did not come with bragging rights.

so the SSF community continued to request GGG, saying all they wanted is their own SSF league and NOTHING ELSE. there was no rebalance of lootdrops. no smart loot system. nothing. SSF is practically the game but without trading with no additional benefit.

eventually GGG caved in and gave SSF players exactly what they asked for

that said, SSF is a challenge you imposed on yourself.

what you are actually asking is "POE SINGLE PLAYER" with drops balanced around you alone.

i actually think that can be a good idea just that i dont think ggg is keen on having to consider 2 different economies to balance.

if the scale tips too far to one side, the other side will voice dissatisfaction.

that said, if you impose no trade on yourself, well... expect not to get what you want.

+1, Absolutely agree with OP, SSF shouldn't mean more difficult, just different.

I also only play SSF because, as Diablo 3 once has shown when it experimented with it, once you enable trade in an arpg, you unavoidably make trade the center of the gameplay and turn it into a wall street simulator with arpg elements attached.

Everything else becomes secondary to it. Everything. Choosing to play without trade isn't a choice to play a harder game (actually, more scarcity does not mean harder, just LONGER; this game confuses DIFFICULTY with TIME). It's a choice to play an actual arpg.