POE2 and SSF
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Doubtful GGG will care about making SSF a priority, especially when they don't think SSF is good enough to have balance changes. Shame, but it is what it is. Hopefully party play systems will be better in POE2.
"Bonus points if it is Scion/Witch because they have nice knees. Ranger has ugly knees and other characters are men so playing them would be homoerotic." - CAKE, 10/20/21
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ssf is ssf end of discussion.
if you want to trade u can? if u want only to use what u find your self and not party u can do that. ssf shouldn't need buffs tbh. never needed it why start now? it's solo self found..... not solo buff my loot self found is it? xD "Now all that's left is for you getting on your knees."
if you know thanks me:) i'm dying to find out x'D | |
" Well, obviously I'm hoping that it's not the end of the discussion. That's why I started a discussion. Looking at the whole of this thread, I'm pretty sure that I'm far from alone in wanting to have that discussion, too. Thanks for the bump, though. " With a sequel to promote, and a new "no excuses" approach to everything, I'm hoping that it isn't limited to just being what it is; I'm hoping it can be better. And, yes, better party play systems would be good, too. Live in hope, Exile. Live in hope. Remember, remember the 6th of December...
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"no worries. still doubt ssf will be buffed. enjoy another dumb i guess xd "Now all that's left is for you getting on your knees."
if you know thanks me:) i'm dying to find out x'D | |
" doesnt that just get over complicated tho? so we have new rates for ssf and then new mechanics for ssf that is not ssf but is also not trade. what about ssf except that 1 time i bought a 5c unique and asked a player in global to help me kill a boss mode? would the better answer be to just identify the bits of the game that feel terrible to interact with in a non heavytrade situation and just make them feel functional and rewarding to play for everyone? this is what happens when i unhide loot in my maps right now  im gonna argue that it is absolutely farcical for anyone to make a flat statement like "drop rates are too low". can we all agree on that? just saying drop rates need to be more in ssf, drop rates already almost crash the game client they are so high with 1 player in an instance, this is 1 player loot, and its not just this league if you juice maps they always look like this. drop rates are problematically high even in a single player situation, no one can seriously argue against that. so what are we actually saying? cause there are certain drop rates, certain game mechanics that do feel really unrewarding. ill give an example ive been meaning to make a feedback post on for ages, Incursion temples. its basically selling the double corrupter and then the gem thing on the side is cool. the amount you go through to generate one of those temples almost every room option is absolute trash unless you get double corrupt and then its moderately valuable on the trade market, yet still very low value to yourself because ive run 20 self farmed temples in a row before now without hitting a single double implicit. the effort to farm 20 temples, the odds of getting what ur looking for or anything even usable are very low. i would argue that we shouldnt create a different inc temple reward structure solely for ssf to fix this, and then have these alternate ssf but not actually ssf but still not tradecore variant mechanics. we should just buff the temple, it just needs fixed in the main game for everyone surely? so what are people actually saying here? what are the other specific things people think are so badly tuned in ssf they need changed? i feel like were having a conversation here with no specifics and is it really helpful? what are we really saying? i think different people have very different ideas here about what actually is wrong with drops and what they would like to see changed, and that matters a lot when it comes to debating different ways of fixing those things right? |
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" Drop quantities are definitely a problem in current PoE, yes. GGG are well aware of the issue, though, and Mark (aka Neon) and Jonathan have actually talked about this during some of those interviews. Mark said that he's working on addressing the issue for PoE1, and Jonathan has said that PoE2 will have a completely different system for item drops, which should also address the issue. I'm willing to wait to see what they both come up with, and evaluate their solutions once we more details. Hopefully soon, rather than Soon™. That's not what we were discussing in this thread, though. We're not talking about the problem of the game generating a metric ton of ground litter for everybody; we're talking about the problem of the frequency of the game's rarer drops being balanced around the assumption that everybody is trading, which results in people who don't do that getting a worse experience with the game, with no real alternative apart from entirely different games... all while people who do enjoy trading also get a worse experience, because GGG are fixated on the mistaken idea that they're creating enough "friction" between the game and trading to preserve the experience for non-traders. I'm not asking them to balance SSF so that SSF players get more items overall; I'm more asking them to balance a trade-free option for us that give better/rarer drops more frequently, with the same number of overall drops, so that we can engage with more of the game's fun monster-slaying content, and not have to take frequent breaks from role-playing a badass monster slayer so that we can role-play as part-time merchants. At the same, I'd like them to also cater to trade enjoyers, by removing some of that friction, which is just making trade into a perpetual pain point, even for those who do engage with it. To be clear, I'm still very excited by what I'm seeing of PoE2, and I still love current PoE, warts and all. I just it loved me back a little bit more, is all. Remember, remember the 6th of December... Last edited by Waitubold on Mar 3, 2024, 11:08:25 AM
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" thats waht you are talking about, but i dont think thats what everyone asking for more loot in ssf is talking about. what specific things do you count in this rarer drops? i would argue that most of the games rarer drops are not balanced around the assumption that everybody is trading, but rather around the data that says most players are not trading. what is then happening is that players who trade extreme amounts are receiving way too many of these via trade and their game is becoming completely unbalanced as a result. when heavy trade players are instantly killing maven invites like the feared, going in and obliterating the entire encounter in a few seconds, that is not the game being balanced around them. that is the came being balanced around self found people and the result is people who trade are playing a unbalanced game. instaphasing uber pin bosses is not an intention, the intention is its really really really hard to even get to that fight and then you are supposed to find it nearly impossible to kill them unless you are an extremely skilled player. and thats how it plays out for an ssf person, its balanced for ssf its not balanced for I_NO who can probably go buy 50 invites and chain kill them all deathless in 100 minutes right? the game isnt supposed to be a joke, the intention is that its hard and requires skill, that theres content and items most people never achieve. thats an intended balance state. but when you farm 20 uber mavens and you get nothing but stupid boots and belts it feels like your chance of getting something rly good are being shat on by a balance state based around keeping the chase items extremely expensive. at least thats my feeling when farming uber maven. so some rare drops do feel unnecessarily bad from the perspective of someone who doesnt make trading a main feature of their game. ive mentioned 2 of them, temple and uber pin boss loot. i think these both need adressed in the main game for everyone. i wont waffle too much more right now but i could and would make an argument that those things can and should be changed universally throughout the game. im interested to hear what specific things other people think is leaving the ssf game feeling inherently unbalanced. im sure there must be loads of them and im sure many are legitimate, reasonable opinions that most people on the 'dont change ssf drop rates' side would agree are problems and should be fixed, but just fixed in a different way. it seems like a fundamental disagreement on if a problem exists but i not sure it really is if we were not talking in such unspecific fashions. even friction within trade, most people who trade only make a few trades, so you still have to make sure that people who trade but do so in a way that has almost no impact on their power are still playing a game that is somewhere in the realm of acceptable compared to someone whos making 20 trades per hour every hour. i dont think that its ever healthy to just saying ok, completely frictionless trade for all traders lets go. trades existing is inherently more powerful than playing or you wouldnt bother doing it, its never good for anyone, even the supertraders, to allow that difference to become bigger than it needs to be. people complain about friction but i think everyone wants to eat an entire fudge cake for breakfast its just some people understand and accept why they shouldnt and other people dont. trade drives me up the wall sometimes but when i really look at the bigger picture i accept that hardship is for the best. im on a no carb diet right now mixed in with 36 hour fasts, it fking sucks man, u know how much i want to eat a dominos stuffed crust peperoni pizza right now? i also dont want to do that because theres more to it than just what i want to satisfy me right now this minute. Last edited by Snorkle_uk on Mar 3, 2024, 11:58:39 AM
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" This is a great example of a straw man argument. Nobody's asking for the game to a joke. Nobody's asking for Uber bosses to not be a challenge anymore. We're just wanting trade-free time to be respected in the same way that intensive-trade time is respected, so those Uber bosses can be reached without necessarily needing to adhere to a specific set of "meta" builds which can only be built through trading. I don't even see evidence that GGG disagree about trade making the game easier, allowing players to get farther, and faster, than is possible without trading. There's a reason why they presented SSF mode as a scary difficulty thing, which needs an escape hatch to take players back to safety of trade mode. There's reason why the trade manifesto was so clear about the need to maintain friction between the game and its trade economy. But Jonathan is also claiming, at the same time, that balancing SSF to equalize those difficulties somehow equates to turning SSF into an exploitable advantage... somehow? Which makes no sense. Which is why I'm asking for clarity on what the reasoning is, there. " " Good points. The details of how would matter, of course, but I have no objections to GGG making the experience better for everyone, universally. Addressing the overall drop problem should help here, and better target farming options for some of the build-enabling uniques could also be part of the discussion. Of course, Mark and Jonathan have both said that addressing the drop situation will be part of that, for both PoE1 and PoE2, but I'd still like to hear more from both of them about what those improvements will be... and, for PoE1, when we can look forward to seeing them. " I don't want to get too granular about which things I'd specifically want them to change, simply because I think GGG are in a better position to make those calls. I'm like a patient going to see their doctor -- I can identify my pain points, but diagnosing the specific causes, and potential cures, are best left to people who have proven themselves to be much more skilled at that. I trust Mark's and Jonathan's skills; I trust that they sincerely want to make PoE1 and POE2 into the best games they can both be. I just want to draw attention to the painful points of the experiences, so that they bring their skills to bear on them, rather than carrying existing issues forward. As to whether there's a disagreement about whether there's a problem... I think your own posts, in which you point out several instances where there's general agreement that problems exist, would serve as an effective counter-argument, even if the rest of this thread didn't exist. Of course, the rest of this thread does exist, with plenty of examples of other players who see the same problems that I see, which rather strongly implies that we're responding to some real deficiency in the product. " You're making a very stat-driven argument here, which is only valid if your guesstimates are correct. You'll note that my OP didn't assume anything in particular about the numbers; I was asking that GGG pull the numbers, something which I don't think they've done recently. They've talked about this too, over the years; they're not just very stat-driven, and would rather make design decisions based on their own feel of the game, rather than pulling a bunch of metrics. They have the data, yes, but they don't rely on it, which I mostly love about their approach -- the result has been my favourite ARPG, and one of my all-time favourite games of any genre, after all. This is one time when I'd like them to check the numbers, and maybe even share those numbers, so that we're not reduced to wild guessing at those numbers, and can actually have a discussion which is informed by actual facts. The fact that you're making up numbers to back up your assertions pretty clearly shows that there's a need for more clarity, here. " I don't think trade needs to be completely unrestricted, but I do think it could have fewer restrictions. In fact, that's kinda what motivated me to write the first post, here -- the fact that Jonathan is actually promising to reduce the friction, with instant buy-outs, bulk trading, and an expanded number of things that can be traded... but isn't talking about how they'll balance the other side of that equation, i.e. the non-trading experience, which even GGG have previously recognized as being worth protection. " No, I think most people understand that games need some friction. A game without friction is just a movie; it ceases to be a game, because overcoming the friction that the game puts between the player and the game's objectives is the fun part. There's a point of diminishing returns, through; a point where too much friction stops being fun, and becomes frustrating. Those are the pain points, and the fact that the same points keep coming up, year after year, suggests to me that GGG haven't actually been recognizing them, or addressing them, as effectively as they could be. " I don't know why you shared this, or why you're dieting so restrictively, but I sincerely wish you luck with this, and many more years of good health. Remember, remember the 6th of December... Last edited by Waitubold on Mar 3, 2024, 1:51:48 PM
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"Not overcomplicated, no. Most software has more options than that, it’s fine. I mean look at what GGG trusts people to choose from for private leagues. "That’s trade. The trading gives it away. "That’s important and should be done too, yes. It’s not one or the other, it’s all part of the same project. |
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" thats not what im saying, im saying the game IS a joke for heavy traders and that is proof that most of the rare drops in the game are not balanced around people who trade heavily. |
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