Game Balance in PoE 2

Hi GGG,

The game should be balanced around trade league. I believe that is the essence of arpg's.

The main and original reason people played ssf was for the challenge. If the game is balanced around trade, then ssf remains a challenge - but this does not work the other way around. If the game is balanced around ssf, thereby no longer making it a challenge but more of a typical game experience, the normal leagues are no longer challenging at all and players will quit the league earlier (and I'm pretty sure non-ssf players still make up the majority of the player base). Which brings me to my next point about player longevity - in the short term ssf players (and perhaps mtx cash cows) will be happy and so will your pockets, but in the long term this will be detrimental to the lifespan of the game and it's philosophy.

Another point is that an ssf-first approach will attract the wrong sort of players, and their loud minority voices will continue to steer the game in the wrong direction; they would like a sort of casual deterministic loot game (a solved game essentially, like tic-tac-toe or American checkers). But I think we all know that the core of arpgs is RNG, which happens to be the #1 complaint you so often hear from some ssf-first players.

The game should be balanced around mechanics within the game. The pitiful state trade is currently in isn't acceptable for Diablo2 much less PoE2. Trade should either be dragged kicking and screaming into the 2000's with the rest of us or outright removed.

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sage#2546 wrote:

Hi GGG,
The game should be balanced around trade league. I believe that is the essence of arpg's.

I fully disagree and reject your premise.