"
It will never stop being funny seeing people with non-issues saying that a certain thing ruins the experience when it doesn't have to affect them in the slightest if they don't want it to bother them.
Literally there's a button that explicitly allows you to play SSF.
If you want a more unforgiving experience, there's an HC button.
Hell, you can even play HCSSF if you want the ultimate virtual-dick-measure-trading-tool for you and your fellow true gamers.
That said, maybe you should stop projecting onto other people, or you're just crying because you lack the force of will for committing to a playstyle.
Your inability to see that trade affects balance is indeed funny.
|
Posted bySickness#1007on Dec 16, 2024, 5:21:42 AM
|
|
The core problem that people in this thread do not understand is that SSF is a lot more restrictive in PoE2 than it is in PoE1, simply because there's no robust crafting system in PoE2 where you have control over as an SSF player.
As such you mostly rely on vendors or raw drops to powerspike your build, which is dire.
Add to the fact that there are a few uniques that are insanely powerful for specific builds (electrocute gloves, Everlasting Gaze for EB Spark) and no way to target farm them in SSF in any way. Chance Orbs are item deleters, don't even think you stand a chance (pun intended).
The game is balanced around having trade available to you to climb over roadblocks. There are so many people playing, the large majority is on Standard, so there's an absurd volume of good item influx from vendors/ground drops that people don't need for their builds but provide amazing value for those who do need it.
The crux of the matter is: these power spike items are rarely the result of crafting. They're RNG vendor/gambling pulls. If they were the result of a crafting process you'd have a clear upgrade path on SSF provided you are willing to grind out the materials needed to craft.
If your upgrade path is through vendors/RNG, the game just turns into a one-dimensional hamster wheel of grinding gold and hoping you hit the jackpot.
Anyone saying this system is fine because "SSF exists" if you don't like it hasn't played SSF in the endgame.
Last edited by MyzPoE#4175 on Dec 16, 2024, 5:38:01 AM
|
Posted byMyzPoE#4175on Dec 16, 2024, 5:29:44 AM
|
|
Getting tricked out in sick gear and then dropping the game once you do all the content is literally how this game is played, leagues exist for a reson. If struggling through maps due to limited loot is your idea of fun then go play SSF, meanwhile anyone sane will just reinvest their act exalts to have more fun playing instead of making inane forum posts.
|
Posted bytinmei#3775on Dec 16, 2024, 5:29:48 AM
|
"
A lot of people mentioned "Diablo 2 also has trade."
Let me elaborate here a bit on it:
First of all in Diablo 2 when it came out, trading was feeling more like an opportunity and wasn't a straight out buy/sell transaction like here.
To trade in a first place you actually had to have decent items to show for first. Players mostly exchanged for items and sometimes runes/jewels on higher tier but all in all trade there was more complex. And trading actually felt rewarding and social like, because it was mostly an opportunity, not a grind for "trade gold". You would show everything you have found so far and hope a seller picks some items that he finds useful for the item he has. Sometimes it was even 3 items for 1 item exchange.
In Path of Exile trading feels like a failure of not being able to get good rolls on your crafting, not getting enough currency and overall being stuck in your progress. Its made of just "grinding popular trade currency" and browsing for items like on Amazon for cheapeast price. You know you can get what you need in a matter of "search on website" feature. And reason why it feels bad as oppose to Diablo 2 is exactly that feeling of failure on not being able to progress any other way.
SSF exist but not every build can make it there. It's made for a specific builds that can work with minimal or no investment mostly and require huge knowledge of "metas" and where to exactly put your points. Not everyone likes it anymore. Players want to be able to progress any build they decided on as long as points and stats they put on, made sense to their build, but a lot of times its just never enough. We end up min/max stats just to see that progress.
So all in all:
Diablo 2 trading at its release was an opportunity for a player to exchange the loot one doesn't need, with someone who might actually find it useful. There was no universal currency. It was haggling with your finds. It felt good, rewarding and social. And game itself didn't require you to min/max in order to make it through base game. Reruning maps, bosses was something normal and any decent item might have had way to end up in exchange.
Path of Exile trading is an aftermath of being extremely unlucky with your drops, crafting rolls, game rng, pushing most of us to the website just to not be stuck in same grind over and over again. Some like it because its an easy way to gear up. You just grind some currency, its universal, find cheapeast price, get stats you desire in one click and done. Efortless.
But for some of us ending up with a thought: "I can't find anything and I'm stuck. I need to trade" feels just bad and unrewarding. Trading should be something optional, not necessary. The only reason why trading is so big here is because crafting drains in the end more resources than giving away those reasources for the item. It should always be the other way around.
In the end Trading itself won't ruin the game. What will ruin the game is a struggle of the player on trying to get his own gear together, failing and being forced to trade in order to progress.
PoE 2 received much bigger community, made of all types of players. Its no longer just your usual poe vets and people who are just used with how gearing up goes. Needing to trade feels like "only way out".
Fantastic summary
|
|
"
"
It makes the experience less fun, for the vast majority of players.
This is genuinely the first complaint about it I've seen, largely because SSF exists. Trade benefits those who dislike fighting the RNG monster or have better luck obtaining currency than gear affixes.
If you don't have that issue with RNG, SSF already exists. This is a solved problem.
It does not solve the problem, but gives it a reason to exist, unsolved, untouched. And here's why I think that:
PoE2's drops are akin to Ruthless, if not slightly worse, if we're comparing progression speed through the game in hours not acts. It's a slow process of building up power. That gets dwarfed the moment you can just trade some currency for that power with no need to interact with the game at all. So, everyone gets what they need easily, by just accessing the trade system. No need for drops to be balanced. With 1 million players, surely some will drop what you need and sell, cus they don't need it themselves.
That boils down to just grind currency. Like in Black Desert, farm trash, buy your gear, win the game. It's unfun and unrewarding. I mean, sure, breezing through the content without ever sweating over it is definitely fun and rewarding for some, but then... I dunno, why make the drops so rare if they're abundant on the market, huh?
Not to mention the secondary issue someone else mentioned, namely, Trade being a neat way for gold sellers to cash in, because some players can't even wait for items to be available on the market (let alone get them themselves), they'll pay a premium for obtaining them faster.
Now imagine PoE would have the population of less crowded games, with 1k players active at any moment. With market selling you next to nothing, cus not enough players to keep it well stocked. Then what? You'd still think the game drops are fine, cus you can buy what you need from the market?
Or, let's put it another way: what if game ONLY had SSF? How would you gear up then? Waiting till level 50 to drop an item you would've needed at lvl 20 and just painstakingly progress with whatever you could scavange along the way.
I'm not saying the market shouldn't exist, I'm just claiming that it should NOT be the primary means to improve your stats. Which it is. Both here and in PoE1. It is pretty much the reason why I don't find neither games nor fun, nor rewarding. Cus in order to beat the content I need to be either lucky or rely on Trade (seeing how GGG has nerfed crafting into oblivion and always gave us more gamble - with Expedition, for example - when we were asking for more determistic crafting).
Let's add to this the fact that most build guides from CCs rely on you buying your gear. "Pulverize X boss with ease. Just spend 200 divines". Yay, game!
|
Posted byhimenoinu#2580on Dec 16, 2024, 5:37:16 AM
|
"
"
It will never stop being funny seeing people with non-issues saying that a certain thing ruins the experience when it doesn't have to affect them in the slightest if they don't want it to bother them.
Literally there's a button that explicitly allows you to play SSF.
If you want a more unforgiving experience, there's an HC button.
Hell, you can even play HCSSF if you want the ultimate virtual-dick-measure-trading-tool for you and your fellow true gamers.
That said, maybe you should stop projecting onto other people, or you're just crying because you lack the force of will for committing to a playstyle.
Your inability to see that trade affects balance is indeed funny.
Oh no, I'm well aware it does.
Yet using trade or not is a personal choice. You may abide to the games' rules or you may bypass them with extra effort. You just cannot seriously think about making other people go through your personal choices and bias.
"I've chosen to eat spoiled food, so others must do that as well"
Nah homie, that's not how things work.
|
Posted byDrazharm#0966on Dec 16, 2024, 5:43:22 AM
|
"
It will never stop being funny seeing people with non-issues saying that a certain thing ruins the experience when it doesn't have to affect them in the slightest if they don't want it to bother them.
Literally there's a button that explicitly allows you to play SSF.
If you want a more unforgiving experience, there's an HC button.
Hell, you can even play HCSSF if you want the ultimate virtual-dick-measure-trading-tool for you and your fellow true gamers.
That said, maybe you should stop projecting onto other people, or you're just crying because you lack the force of will for committing to a playstyle.
I want to play the game where the drops aren't on the market, but in the game itself. Just disenchanting stuff to buy the gear that others dropped is unfun. Not to mention SSF is highly restrictive in terms of build diversity, precisely because there's no way to augment your passive tree with gear you drop or craft.
Add to this that both content creators and the devs themselves are relying on this overused tool to craft their guides and balance the game. Cus you see, if you're powering through everything with the help of the trade system, then the devs will have no option but to balance the difficulty around that. Making the game harder in time, yet just as unrewarding - gear-wise.
Everyone and their mom using cookie-cutter builds, made by buying cheap gear, to get the currency to buy the expensive gear to power through the game as if they never left the Clearfell surroudings, difficulty-wise. Some find it fun, I guess. Some get a feeling of pride and accomplishment to click one button in the gear someone else dropped for them and win the game.
But now imagine you'd have the trade system allowing for only gear exchange, with no currency. That would make it a bit better, I guess. When your warrior could trade the minion gear he doesn't use to a minion master for the armor pieces they don't use, but both dropped. That would, maybe, alleviate both the power-creep and the issue of the devs balancing the game around the market instead of SSF.
|
Posted byhimenoinu#2580on Dec 16, 2024, 5:51:03 AM
|
"
Or, let's put it another way: what if game ONLY had SSF? How would you gear up then? Waiting till level 50 to drop an item you would've needed at lvl 20 and just painstakingly progress with whatever you could scavange along the way.
I wouldn't. My luck is famously bad among my friends and trading is my bad luck protection. As a recent example, in Necro Settlers, I settled on a build that called for the Unique helm from the Betrayal boss. You probably know the one, its name escapes me atm. I dumped dozens of dozens of hours getting to and murdering that boss and never saw it drop naturally. Trading was the only thing that allowed me to complete that build. My luck with Chaos Orbs in PoE isn't any better than my luck anywhere else, so that 60-80ish hours of grind was the amount of time it took me to scrape together 50 Chaos to buy a weaker version of it and pick up Eldritch Battery.
"
I'm not saying the market shouldn't exist, I'm just claiming that it should NOT be the primary means to improve your stats. Which it is. Both here and in PoE1. It is pretty much the reason why I don't find neither games nor fun, nor rewarding. Cus in order to beat the content I need to be either lucky or rely on Trade (seeing how GGG has nerfed crafting into oblivion and always gave us more gamble - with Expedition, for example - when we were asking for more determistic crafting).
Let's add to this the fact that most build guides from CCs rely on you buying your gear. "Pulverize X boss with ease. Just spend 200 divines". Yay, game!
I concede that it being a primary means of gear progression is an issue, but I don't see a solution. The problem being, if Trade is possible, content-specific builds will be refined over time to optimize it, and you can't really curtail that without restricting trading with artificial limitations, and even then, players would be constantly on the lookout for a way to game the system and circumvent those limitations, especially when the game itself is free to play and guild stashes exist.
The only thing that I think could put a stop to being so Trade reliant would be the in-game AH some players have been asking for, outright removal of the actual player-to-player trading window, and some arbitrary number limit on sales- and purchases-per-day.
Alternatively, the other direction would be allowing players to specify an item they're targeting and implement bad luck protection that progresses as they complete eligible content that can/should drop the item in question.
I personally would prefer SSF play all the time, but my luck is such ass that doing so isn't feasible in any practical sense without dumping hundreds of hours I don't have per item, and heaven help me if it's a build-defining unique.
|
Posted byReggShanks#0071on Dec 16, 2024, 5:55:44 AM
|
"
Oh no, I'm well aware it does.
Yet using trade or not is a personal choice. You may abide to the games' rules or you may bypass them with extra effort. You just cannot seriously think about making other people go through your personal choices and bias.
"I've chosen to eat spoiled food, so others must do that as well"
Nah homie, that's not how things work.
For every possible feedback and suggestion you can do the same thing and just go "that is not how the game works and it should not be changed based on your personal opinion". Your position is incredibly stupid.
Regardless, I am not asking for trade to be removed but rather to have a system like Last Epoch to try to balance trading with self-found.
|
Posted bySickness#1007on Dec 16, 2024, 6:04:09 AM
|
"
"
You've realized that one million players playing and dropping items and selling the ones they don't need, is always going to have a ridiculous supply pool that items you dropped in your dozens of hours of playthrough, will never be able to compare to?
If that wasn't obvious this would hold true in free market economy with tons of players...it now should be.
Next step is realizing that instead of using some things yourself at only like 10% of the potential value, you can just sell them to the powergamers who would utilize it fully and pay you more than you'd otherwise get. And that's more efficient.
And then next step is that you realize in order to get best items in the game you don't even need to play the game killing monsters but you can flip items and currency making profit and then use huge sums of currency to buy beat gear.
Welcome to the world of economy.
We're not trying to maximize output of loot, if that were the ultimate goal, the devs would put a giant red button that killed all the monsters of the world for 9999999 damage and all of them would drop 5000 unique items.
Raw, unrestricted power is not part of the equation for fun.
There is no global shortage of a resource we are trying to solve in a game, there is no product we need to create to make the world a better place. GGG are not designing a system meant to churn out powerful items for kids on Christmas.
More powerful items spawning into inventory boxes != better game
The only resource generated by a a game that matters is FUN.
And fun is a very fragile thing. We don't want to break it by shaking up the balance with a saturated economy.
Soccer players could hit goals much easier if we just made the goals much bigger.
Why don't we do that? Players could get goals way more. This way the fans will have more to be happy about. You can just kick really hard to the other side at any time and you'll score a point.
This is essentially what you're advocating for. As if the job of GGG is to maximize player power as fast as possible in the most simplistic and boring way as possible.
This is a silly world view.
Why was excaliber special?
Did King Arther buy it on the auction house?
FFS. I don't know why the concept of grinding and chance drops, and grinding for power is so hard to communicate in a forum of die hard ARPG players.
The grind and finding the loot through long dry spells IS THE GAMEPLAY.
If you can just drop a quarter into a machine to get power, the whole system collapses.
I'm not advocating for anything, just found it amusing that you just realized that this game just like poe1 is balanced around trade.
Economy was mentioned many times by GGG as a pillar of what an arpg is. And reiterated again by Jonathan in one of the most recent interviews.
Ssf option is there if you want a good grind and not instant gratification. I played a few leagues in ssf myself.
|
Posted bygrepman#2451on Dec 16, 2024, 6:07:27 AM
|
