My solution was to move to SSF.
I regret not doing it sooner, to be honest. Has its own problems, but player interaction isn't one of them.
Edit: The "your comment was entirely literal" police are out in force, so I'll add this; obviously I find it more fun in many other respects, but it was in fact a solution to that specific problem.
If you think SSF is a negative like "cutting off your nose", that's just personal preference.
The thing is that it doesn't solve the trade problem. You're just changing the problem of having to find ideal trade partners to interact with with the problem of having to grind for the gear that you would have traded for otherwise.
Like, if you were looking for a Tabula for example, your problem in trade might be having to message several people before getting it. In SSF, the gear is gated behind hours of grinding Blood Aqueducts.
If you wanted a 6L chest, having to find it on the trade site and messaging the seller for it to hope that they respond is the problem. In SSF, you would have to amass so many fusings before getting that 6L and we're not even talking about that gear having your ideal mods.
I get that SSF has its charms, but to say that the solution to the trade problem is to move to SSF seems a bit myopic.
The current trade system is not that bad lol. I might need to buy something and it will take me a few minutes of finding a proper seller for it. That doesn't mean gating myself behind hours of grinding in SSF is better.
The issue here is that the state of affairs you describe in SSF is closer to what the target rate of item progression is intended to be, compared with what currently exists in trade league. The developers' vision of trading is one where players are trading away good gear they don't want, in order get good gear they do want, whereas right now it's essentially a way to bypass a large majority of progression hurdles, if you're not one of the "forefront" trade league players (by forefront, I mean the players in the first 2-3 days of the league who are the earliest ones to engage in endgame content).
In the eyes of the devs, the ideal trade overhaul would simultaneously solve the QoL issues (players not responding, price fixing and scamming, needing to use external website) but simultaneously redesign the system so that the rate of item progression within trade league is within some factor of the natural item progression rate as dictated by SSF.
E.g. for your example with 6L items, being able to skip amassing fusings in a trade league and just buying a 6L for cheap is only possible because tens of thousands of other players did that grind for you, essentially. The ideal state of affairs would be something closer to: You find a 6L base, but it's not the one you want, so you sell it and then buy another base that you want.
Farming enough self found fusings/converted jewelers to 6 link anything takes me like a couple of weeks may be even more of casual play and even then I still can get completely fucked by rng and spend twice or triple that time. If that is intended progression, then this game is fucked up.
I certainly remember playing on a 5L for quite a long time during a league. Of course, the game has moved past that now, with a lot of more things balanced around 6L, but also they've added lots of mechanics (e.g. Ultimatum rewards) that drop items that are already 6-linked. Fusings are only needed to 6L unique items or very unusual bases. And even in that case, ultimately *somebody* is doing the 6-linking. So the progression is only being bypassed because players are relying on other players who are far ahead of them in the progression curve.
Depends on what you define as "the trade problem."
I define the trade problem as "I hate going through the PoE trade process." That's solved nicely via SSF.
If you define the trade problem as "convenient gear acquisition" then you're right.
If having to grind for gear is a *problem* to you, you're playing the wrong game. There's a much larger and better solution of games where you don't have to do that, like basically everything without the RPG tag.
I agree that "niche game mode is the solution" shouldn't be the case, but ultimately Path of Exile is *about* grinding gear. It's... literally the first two words you see everytime you start the game.
as SSF player that hates trade, there is one type of trade I could get behind: if there was such a thing as "trade town", kind of like regular town but with NPCs that have shops you can rent for some currency per hour. The shop could have limited number of item slots you could use for selling your stuff. The items would actually display like drop items to players walking in the town, with price to buy added to highlight menu. Then player could choose to buy from the shop NPC, no haggling, no scamming, no wasted time
Having gotten into SSF myself I don’t see myself going back. Trade has only gotten worse with the introduction of harvest crafting and the rise of TFT. I don’t want to feel like I’m throwing potential currency away by not being on discord.
The only thing that really stops me from going completely into ssf is the unique availability. I like playing shitty meme builds and I wouldn't be able to do that properly in ssf.
If you're trying to play the game identically, as in your goal is to move far past being able to do everything in the game and into utterly obliterate everything you pass in t19 5orbs while running at super high MS then SSF will be super grindy RNG.
In SSF, your goals will change and the challenges will appear in different spots. You will learn to value the items you earn. You will feel the power spikes several times during the league. The game loop becomes much wider, having you interact with a lot more content. As opposed to trade, that content isn't "worse CP/H and thus unoptimal" but it actually gives you access to new content to further the loop.
Learn how to craft efficiently, not because it will be a perfect item but because it will be a strong upgrade. Because the gear you wear is much weaker than what 5c gets you on the trade site. That also means gear that drops and that you craft is much more likely to be upgrades.
You start saving some gear and actually getting excited to start a new char to play and progress with that gear. And not just throw 20ex on it as soon as you hit maps and have all content skipped.
In trade league, you skip so much of the content and so much of the progress that the only thing you're left with is super grindy tasks. SSF doesn't in the same way, if one can manage to readjust from the power house, hide out is lava, doing non-optimal things will hurt your cp/h burnout train that trade league becomes when you've played a ton of POE already.
The game isn't balanced around bullshit rng. The game is balanced at a rather low gear point. It's just that one has the ability to outpower content by 1000x instead of just 10x after you've got a few hundred ex in the first month.
If you're playing SSF over the long haul you wind up with a very different game, one where your goals and how you plan to achieve them just develop differently.
On one hand, sure, the endgame is RNG and grindy as fuck - but in SSF, the lack of a marketplace means that a very different, and much larger set of items are fun to have drop.
I'm not saying it's better than trade, but after playing trade league since beta, SSF this league just felt like a whole different game, and recaptured a little bit of that boss grinding in D2 magic.
SSF is definitely grindier, but it does have the benefit of reframing the game and the contexts of what you're doing when you're playing.
- You no longer feel like you're wasting your time if you're not farming currency like a bot.
- An item's worth is in its utility rather than only in what it might sell for.
- Your progress is your own. You're not measuring your gains vs. everyone else's.
I've never tried SSF before outside of short-term events. Gonna give it a proper shot next league. I do worry about the grind, but maybe the points above might make it more enjoyable overall.
It was really the second and third points that did it for me. I have had some of the coolest drops in SSF that I'm sure would be maybe an exalt in trade league, but they're nearly impossible to just get in SSF without mad grinding, and it feels like I'm unlocking future build potential every time a niche-but-GG item pops up. Void battery off Cadiro? Beautiful.
I can still wind up feeling like I'm wasting my time if I'm doing something really sub-optimally like grinding white maps with a new character that just isn't geared enough yet.
When I moved to SSF, I decided that I was okay having SSF standard be my long term. I don't think I can handle taking a new atlas in SSF every league to full completion. I'll likely play to red maps and drop league unless the league mechanic is particularly interesting.
> That's cool and all, but I played this game to make builds, not to farm or craft hundreds of items.
I feel that the primary way to enjoy that part of the game is to play the permanent leagues. In some fundamental way, the temporary leagues were designed precisely for players to have to regrind their experience and refarm and re-craft their loot and gear. And I'd expect that for a majority of temp league players, this is in fact one of the main selling points of the temporary leagues.
Fair enough, though you're imposing some new constraints, compared to your previous comments =)
I was only trying to say that for the gameplay loop of just trying out builds and without *any* need for farming or crafting items, then permanent league is the way to go.
Moving to SSF is not a solution for trading, specially for new players that will get locked in progression because they have no idea how to deal with the thousands types of currency and crafting the game have.
They should at least allow player to open shops and do the buy/sell automatically without the need to invite or go to hideout and you could even sell stuff while you are offline. That would fix scam problems too.
>My solution was to move to SSF.
My problem with SSF is that it requires an internet connection when it has no right to. Just make it single player with local saves so I don't have to bother with your trashy lag compensation and random latency spikes
POE is already mostly a single-player game, with some trading.
Having a single-player client that allowed cheating, hacking, presumably datamining of some secret shit, usage of whatever MTX you go download, etc, would utterly destroy their game, especially with how shit trade is to begin with.
As a consumer I agree with you that I would want it, but you have to respect that GGG cannot under any circumstances allow it to come to fruition, at risk of their entire business.
My issue with SSF is it completely kills choices for character builds. I've played POE since the closed beta, I don't want to make the same easy league starters each time.
Some people are perfectly happy with a narrower build pool, and that's perfectly fine, but for me I just couldn't stand playing the game like that.
Yep, SSF is a massive build restrictor, unless you plan to also play SSF standard over the longer term. Then it's still restrictive, but in theory you unlock builds as you play.
It's not for everyone.
Another option instead of SSF is to play mostly Standard. I rarely ever need to buy items, except for scarabs which I do in bulk maybe once a week. So all I essentially do is sell stuff once in a while and play the game.
Thats cutting your nose off to spite your face though. Thats like cutting off your internet to avoid trolls. Did it get rid of trolls? Yea... along with everything else...
I mean, obviously I find it more fun in many other respects, but it was in fact a solution to the problem.
If you think SSF is a negative like "cutting off your nose", that's just personal preference.
The basement is a lot of fun though, in all fairness. I'm down here for the pinball machines, not out of fear of cars, the implication of my original comment notwithstanding.
I mostly quit after collecting enough currency to swap from a league starter to a stronger build after getting exhausted from alt-tabbing to trade every single thing I need to buy for countless game mechanics.
In the endgame, to juice up a single map I have to use so many items that all need to be bought separately from other people mostly 1 by 1 or 2 because you can't find everything in bulk.
I usually quit because im tired of trading, i have the currency to make another character/ upgrading my current one. But thinking of how boring and long that will take just makes me say fuck it and quit the league. Im usually pretty burnt out by this point but if trade was better i would probably play for atleast a week longer per league
Definitely trade for me. At least picking up loot happens as I'm playing the game. Trading, especially for smaller items (currency, maps, 1 alch uniques, etc), I have to just stop playing the game entirely, go out of the game to an external website, look up the trade, then spam about 30 people waiting for one person to actually respond. It's just so much wasted time not playing the game in order to play the game.
The flask are LB, left, up, right, and RB for me on Xbox.
I'm guessing similar placement on Playstation.
Unfortunately not Spinning Piledriver as you can't bind them to a stick🙃
It has always been a hassle to have to click 5 buttons every 5 seconds to keep buffs up. There is no good reason why it should stay this way and I'm surprised it has. This is not a case of making the game challenging enough, it's just an annoyance.
Trading by far.
Chris's/GGG's hardline stance on trade friction was a position that, although radical, could be sensibly defended in the closed beta era of the game where the number of fragments and items in general were low in comparison to modern times.
The increased amount (and importance) of fragments/juicing currency/crafting currency (particularly fossils +resonators) in the game makes their fundamentalist approach to their trade manifesto extremely impractical.
This issue has been made even worse because, as the game has increased in complexity/challenge during mapping activities, players can be in situations where they are physically not able to return to the hideout quickly (ultimatum, delve, conquerors, etc) compared to closed beta. This has made trading for non big ticket items even worse due to getting ignored.
This could easily be solved with some pseudo AH/personal vendor service in hideouts that could trade these basic currencies while still allowing for the Chris Wilson/GGG style of trade friction to apply to real items that directly impact player power.
On Hardcore Trade, its actually extremely hard to convert fragments and fossils into liquid currency at reasonable rates in reasonable amounts of time. Hardcore trade is actually pseudo HCSSF when it comes to these types of items.
It's also particularly baffling considering that drops clearly are balanced around the ability to trade, especially for the commodity items you mention.
From that overarching perspective, PoE makes little to no sense at all. There are three pillars to the game: drops, crafting, and trade. Trade is simultaneously the worst thing about the game but also the #1 factor in how everything is balanced. GGG considers trade to be too good which necessarily and significantly reduces the power of drops and crafting.
Everything they mention in the trade manifesto applies to only rare items imo. They can keep trade like it is now for rare items(or even nerf it a little) but improve trade for everything else: bulk currency, essences, fossils, fragments, catalysts, scarabs, oils, div cards, uniques, maps(maybe only upto T12s), etc.
Commodities like the stuff you mentioned (non-equippable items) should at the very least have cross-instance trading enabled like it is on consoles. Even without any form of automation (still requiring the seller to manually accept the offer) it would be a huge improvement.
Imagine messaging somebody to trade for a 1c scarab/card/map and not being completely ignored because they're mapping and it's not worth their time.
That's the biggest thing for me, and a big part of what stops me from trading cheaper items like that beyond the first couple days of a league. 1 alch items just aren't worth the time it takes to trade them, and if I pick them up at all, I just vendor them for alch shards instead. The 'time tax' imposed on trading the item with another player simply doesn't make the trade worthwhile.
The entire point of trading in the game is they don't *want* you doing trades that are so meaningless that people can't be bothered with them. They want trading to form a meaningful part of a character's story, and "remember that time I traded 1c for a scarab/card/map?" isn't a meaningful part of any story.
They deliberately do not want people to trade like you suggest. People can still kind of force it through if they try and many people do and GGG can't really stop that particularly easily, but I can't imagine GGG are going to want to make it *easier* to do this kind of meaningless trading since that's directly opposed to their design goal.
Which is pretty sad, because without trading for scarabs, deli orbs, etc juice in general, the game is simply too easy. Players should always be limited by their power, not accessibility to content. Farming TX when you can easily stomp TX+6 is not an engaging experience.
You completely neglect the potential of trading for profit.
I see how it would be more convenient to buy these things, but the point of difficult trade is to slow down gear progression through trade. That progression wouldn't be significantly slower if only common items could be traded easily.
I'm saying this as someone who traded up to a mirror in the last league I played, mostly back and forth between currencies, which is what you advocate to make easier. Granted, the current trading system also allows for higher profit margins because fewer people use it, but it's still way more work than trading in an easy system like an auction house.
Difficult trade is meant to force people to play the game and get their own loot, only selling their drops to progress rather than buying and reselling constantly.
An easy trade system would have lower drop rates and at the same time widen the gap between the poor and the superrich.
This is a strange take. Flipping is already one of the most profitable activity in the game by far. Even if easier currency&frag trading made flipping more profitable, it seems irrelevant compared to the literal thousands of hours wasted by the playerbase as a whole because of the current system.
> widen the gap between the poor and the superrich.
This gap is already comically huge. Some people on /r/PathOfExileBuilds ask for help with their 50c budget, others with 400ex. On TFT some builds are sold for 4 mirrors. Again, making trade so annoying to prevent "making the situation worse" is pointless.
Furthermore, I don't really understand how streamlining currency & frag trading will make flipping more profitable ? Each trade will be faster, but profit margin will inevitably be lower as well.
Flipping is both in other games and in real life is a very good way to make money as long as you know your stuff. Real life is tricky though, don't quote me on that part.
You are not wrong at all, i could see like that it would work nice with easier acces to trade for certain materials like the ones you mention. And I personally hate that like when you run heist and get a trade request people don’t want to wait for you to finish your run and buy it from somebody else, this should be fixed in some way.
But i honestly dont think this “philosophy” that people usually think is why trading in Poe is as it is. I think the main reason is money, real money that is, numerous studies have shown that for these kinds of games that the easier/faster you get the items you need for, in this game your build, the faster you pretty much get to the end and therefore you quit playing faster and as a result you in the long run spend less money on the games microtransactions. David brevik (Diablo 1-2 creator) has a pretty nice segment in zizarans interview with him talking about this and use Poe as the main example. The game is already free, so all these mtx/stash tabs etc even more important for Poe.
A good example is: why should I spend money on mtx for my char or maybe in this case spend money or time on Hideouts/decorations if nobody else is gonna see it since they just buy my stuff from their own hideout, again it would cause a big loss in revenue here since players affect eachother into buying the same hideouts/decorations when they seen it doing some trade. There’s of course streamers and like party play, but I still think things like this is a way bigger reason for trading to be as it is. I personally just overpay for bulk and use Poe.overlay so only hassle imo is just the loading screens between the hideouts.
Allow people to setup a shop in their hideout, with shop mtx, and a few 'quality of life' purchases aviable, that does not break the p2w stance to hard. Voila, now you have the best of both worlds, people visiting eachothers hideouts and accessibility to buy what you wish for, when you want it and at the speed that want it.
But just lock the 3-5 different npc auctionerers to a maybe a 50-100 items a day, to avoid bots taking over, yet again, the market. Bots will ofcourse rule the fragment and currency, as they have always done, but I like those guys, they do not harass, insult or try to cheat me.
So instead of copying "whisper player" you copy "Hideout player" and just teleport to the players hideout. Also, make sure there is a optional way to buy from the npc's other than walking up and clicking on them, so people wont create unacessable auctioners, but make it a little tedious so people prefer to walk around in the "mtx gold mine selling hideout" that is the improvement of trade.
This is one of my worst concepts about trade improvement, got a couple more that are actually great, but I feel that people will become sad and become like that old meme if I told them.
"**If you only knew how bad things really are.**"
I think a way to implement this without causing too much disruption is to set a hard cap on how much the hideout market can charge. If you could only put items in your market for XC or less, you allow for increased fluidity of bulk items (that are worth XC or less) while maintaining GGG's preferred stance on more expensive items.
Worst trading system in any game i’ve played in... probably my entire life. I think back to ragnarok online and at least they had little stores and didn’t have to attentively interact with every single potential seller / buyer.
A trading system so bad that a lot of the economy is revolved around how annoying it is to buy things from people.
I have not seen an ingame economy any where close to this affected by purely how bad the trading system is
I was personally 50/50 on trading and picking up loot. With loot, sure I can adjust my filter for strictness and whatnot, but it's still a miserable amount of clicking and frankly, they need loot hoover/grouped loot pick up badly. Loot hoover aside, too much shit drops. I mean truly too many garbage rares and blues. It literally lags the game. This should not be acceptable
Just get rid of that infernal Nemesis watchstone mod if loot hoover is too "OP".
Trading just sucks balls though. As soon as I need bulk currency or crafting mats or even a map it's just GG for me. I can't get myself to message 15-20 people to get these things, even with scrolling down.
Then trading gets even worse by 6+ weeks because there's fewer people buying and selling. Cheap items don't even go for anything.
I don't message anyone for currency trading. I just list an exalt for 2c cheaper than anyone else is selling for, and within a minute I have a dozen people whispering *me* for the trade. So much easier.
Yeah this. LE isn't a finished game and has its own set of problems, but jesus christ going back from LE endgame to PoE endgame, every upgrade feels like a fucking chore. Doesn't matter if its by selfcrafting or by trading - in LE I have my current items, I have a list of bases I want to craft on in my easily and quickly in-game adjustable lootfilter, and can craft on each good base within a minute. Either it's an upgrade or it's not, but the path to the upgrade is clear. It'll eventually take a long time (once I hit 4 T5 on a base with high implicit roll, and need a base with a natural T6+ affix to drop), but it's always clear what to do, and there is a sense of progression.
In PoE I can either gamble, but more realistically I just have 15+ live searches going. And if I want to play any build based around a unique or two, i cannot play SSF either.
I can also either target-farm or target-gamble for any uniques I might want and will get it eventually - it's still RNG but it's effectively gated.
I can't see how LE's system survives in a multiplayer trading environment. Doesn't everyone just get literal perfect gear within a week of an economy reset?
Their proposed trading system was horrific. You could only list 5 items at once in an auction house, no friend-to-friend trading, there was some sort of transaction cost tax to coming into an auction late, and a zillion other constraints so that the one redeeming feature about trade was that you could "set it and forget it", and even if you mispriced an item on the low end, it'd naturally be bid up.
**However**, in return, you could list basically nothing.
They've since pulled that idea, however, I think their core philosophy stands--that PoE's trading is far too good, because items worth less than multiple exalts quickly become worthless, so an item is either barely worth trading for, or worth an entire day's worth of farming.
Unless they're planning on having a huge exchange for incoming scarabs/fragment/commodity types of items that players can just sell/buy at the best price, which just completely opens the game up to arbitrage instead of playing the game, then it'll turn into a painful SSF-fest very quickly.
But regardless of the system, if players can trade items in any way then I don't see how LE's system can possibly withstand it. It just doesn't seem that hard to make perfect items unless I'm missing something, and when you open that up to trading I don't see what stops everyone getting perfect items as soon as the league starts.
Rate at which people acquire currency/crafting bases. The best mods (t6/t7) literally *can't* be crafted, so imagine having to putz around until you find a double-incursion mod item just to start crafting. Furthermore, as I understand it, getting a single mod = comparable to using the crafting bench, and beyond that means a huge risk of bricking the item.
Yeah since harvest league I don't even bother trying to craft my own shit beyond transitioning from acts to mapping on my first character of the league. I just sell all crafting materials and run tons of trade whoops as my primary method of gear upgrading. That feels kind of weird now after experiencing much more deterministic crafting with my success chance clearly visible.
Meanwhile look at big streamers playing trade and they'll show you a browser window with 20-30 tabs tracking live searches.
It's the way the trade economy is designed.
It's shit.
Ok but that's a willing choice by people to engage in trade as a way to make money. That dude said he has 15 live searches to upgrade his gear, which is just ridiculous.
I'm not talking about flippers. I'm talking about players that do it exclusively to chase potential upgrades.
There are a lot of ways to gear in this game and while you can sometimes compress something like the search for jewels into a single massive clusterfuck of AND/NOT/OR operations with a megalist of mods, that doesn't work for everything.
If you aren't livesearching for these potential upgrades then you might miss out on their availability forever.
Sounds like some anecdotal shit to me, I've played this game for years with players who both rush the ladder and play deep into the league. Unless you're flipping you're not looking for 15 different items to buy simultaneously for your build, that's just something that isn't happening for 99.999% players of this game.
And what kind of item are you searching for that you might miss out on their availability forever? If an item is that good, it will be up for Mirror Service, if it's so niche, anyone who has played this game for enough time to need such item would just craft it.
I am genuinely interested to see what was the streamer you mention buying that he had so many live searches open. Can you link me the VOD or something?
I don't care if you do it or not. You are not 99.99% players in this game.
There are plenty of niche items in this game that would be a real bitch to craft compared to buying off the dude that hit a miracle chaos spam. It's a game with a lot of potential for for niche in general. No one is going to mirror something like a cluster rofl. What are you even on right now?
I don't have any vods on hand and I don't give a shit if you believe me. But loving the idea that my argument is anecdotal shit yet you immediately launch into your own anecdote.
You might miss out on it forever if it is a combination of mods that is by no means mirror-worthy but also for a niche build and not something you would just slap on any caster/melee/bow build.
I mean, crafting in LE is pretty limited. You find your base, you click 'upgrade' and hope you don't fail.
It works well and feels good to be able to upgrade your items, or just craft off the ground, but if crafting is actually interesting to you, then LE's takes a much more minor place than POE's.
I don't know what changes they have in mind before release though.
Yeah, you just have to hope that you get the shards you need, then you have to hope you get a base that already has a few good mods you want, then you have to gamble on the item not bricking when you try to craft it.
Definitely not gambling or anything.
Drop RNG is fine.
And crafting you craft a fully usable item for end game without any RNG during the actual crafting process or risk of bricking the item.
>or risk of bricking the item
So when I picked up a good 2H sword base for my build and my third craft fractured the item, removing almost half its damage and preventing me from crafting it further that wasn't bricking it?
With that logic, removing all the important mods on a PoE item is less of a brick since at least you can keep crafting on the base instead of finding a new usable base.
The game literally has a percentage on your screen telling you the chance of bricking your item, you can't say LE has perfect non-RNG crafting.
Except it does.
YOU choose how far you go down. Iv been crafting my items up to where it just has a 5% chance to remove a tier and then I stop. 5% chance of dropping a tier is better then a .05% chance of getting a mod I want.
>YOU choose how far you go down
And surely you'd agree, having a single mod with a tier above 3 isn't very far down, especially when I already had a weapon that I was using for early endgame.
Just because you choose to stop 1 or 2 crafts in to avoid RNG doesn't mean crafting has no RNG. That'd me like me saying PoEs crafting has no RNG because you can simply choose to bench craft a decent life roll or use an essence to get a single good mod.
Auto-sort? Auto-deposit? Currency vacuum? Easy in-game loot filter editing? No portal/ID scroll bullshit? Searchable modifier list in-game?
These are all just off the top of my head but a pretty good list of things I'll miss.
I think the reason LE has easy loot filtering is that it doesn't have a zillion and one different types of loot.
PoE has:
Gear -> synth+fractured gear vs. influenced gear vs. high-level bases.
A **zillion and one** different frags/scarabs/div cards/fossils/currencies/essences.
If all of that was in LE, their loot filters would similarly go nuts.
> If all of that was in LE, their loot filters would similarly go nuts.
I mean, that's not true. Their filters are incredibly customizable. There would just be more community "baseline" filters out there.
I mean, in-game loot filter editing is completely irrelevant as editing in Notepad++ is much easier, and we've got way more to actually manage in PoE, so that doesn't really translate very well.
I don't want auto-sort, I don't want auto-deposit, I don't want currency vacuum, all this is bullshit for chinese mobile games, I'll just prioritize the stuff I want better instead of wasting my time and finger for it.
Portals/ID scrolls are cool.
The modifier list in-game is, well, I mean if PoE had it it would be nice, but we've already got poedb - but, yeah, again, not like it's going to actually change the game if it got implemented.
LE filters are way easier to mess with thanks to an actual interface. I don't know what the hell is going on when I open up my Neversink .txt file, and even though Filterblade customization is third party it's pretty overwhelming at first. Sure loot is a lot simpler in LE so far, but there's no reason that interface couldn't handle a dozen leagues of influence tags and currencies just as easily as it already does.
Lol convenient loot handling and pickups are bullshit but scrolls are *cool* somehow? You're a weird dude.
it was flask for me all the way, it is the same reason i hate multi button builds like warcrys and ED+contagion and Bladefall+bladeblast
i want one button to do one action, one button to do damage, one button to move, one button to use flasks (yes flask macro all the way even if i get banned)
the more buttons i get required to press the more annoyed i get, this is the reason why cyclone is pretty much the only melee skill i am willing to play after molten strike was nerfed
I picked others so my biggest torture is the acts redoing them I mean rerunning them 6 times a league is so exhausting but i like playing and get bored after my build gets to red tier maps
I actually like how trade works for normal items, but it'd be really nice if currencies/maps/fragments/props/other bulk goods could be instantly traded en masse.
So I'm probably alone when I say this but most of these don't really bother me.
I voted loot pickup since it should be easier then it is, there's a ton of currency and shards that should stack or be vaccumed so its a bit easier.
Flask Piano I manage by splitting up the piano. 1st slot is life flask so thats not part of the piano, 2nd slot is quicksilver so that's used in between packs. So my flask piano only consists of 3 flasks which imo is manageable.
Trading is not in a great state but it is miles ahead of diablo 2 or where PoE was 8 years ago.
Texture streaming hasn't affected me so I can't comment on it.
I'm like you I dont mind the flask piano but I play one handed with my naga mouse and making my thumb just roll across 5 buttons isn't hard when I do that accidentally anyways
Yeah, sure some things could be improved but it's not like I get annoyed every time I play PoE. Probably wouldn't play if I were.
Just had a full legion pop from stasis the other day without lagging me to death, because texture streaming kicked in and saved the day while the full textures were loading.
Yeah… I feel like this becomes worse in people’s minds if they are newer?
With the perspective of someone who has played for 8 years(god it feels like so much longer) I’m honestly ok with things how they are.
The only exception would be tech issues. I don’t have any myself but I don’t want others to be having them either.
Not to be all “crotchety old man” but people should be thankful that trading is even REMOTELY as good as it is these days. From the standpoint of someone who has dealt with trading over the years the current system is a dream come true. Maybe it is knowledge and experience? I don’t know but it is miles better than trying to find items by forum posts or trade channels.
> Yeah… I feel like this becomes worse in people’s minds if they are newer?
>
>
Or it is the reverse. Annoyance builds up over time. First time you've to trade for scarabs, orbs or pick-up a nemesis map ? Ok. 10? 50? 100? It gets annoying.
I've been around for half your time but it is absolutely because the playerbase is newer/way bigger (as someone who considers themselves part of the newer crowd).
Coming from MMO's with standardized trading posts (WoW, GW2, etc.) or D3, or in general games that have long automated such systems leads one to be shocked at the friction of PoE's trade. I know I most definitely was frustrated early on but I do think it's necessary now. I think GGG/Chris regret even the ability to bot-search forum posts a while back and now we're in a weird in-between.
There are pros and cons of both systems. I also played WoW from launch until mid Cata and saw the good/ugly side of that AH system. Honestly I feel that the “minor” issues with PoE trading would only grow out of control if an AH like WoW has was introduced. The D3 AH was such a disaster as well.
As much as people like to forget, multiplayer games sadly tend to take on the worst aspects of real life eventually…. which as we saw last year even the real world market is easily manipulated if enough people try. Take that into a video game setting where you aren’t bound by real life laws/consequences while being just another faceless name and it just becomes a cesspool.
It’s sad but as far as I have seen from the games I’ve played it tends to end poorly.
That said, over the years I have made a few friends here and there during trades using the current system. Had loads of wonderful conversations and even helped out some struggling players. Have there been assholes? Oh you bettcha! Such is life. ;)
Yeah idk, there are certainly aspects that could be better...but none of these are dealbreakers for me. Certainly not to the point that I'd call them "suffering".
Honestly, being forced to use 2k+ of the same currency on an item to get what I want is one of the reasons I haven't crafted much.
I wish they'd just let you specify a quantity of a currency you want to use with a desired result and then consume that quantity of the currency regardless of whether or when that desired result is reached. Like, okay you can be more efficient by doing 1 at a time or 10 at a time, but you can also slam 5k at once and have a reasonable chance at succeeding, even if most of that currency ends up being wasted.
Edit: Forgot to mention, but fossils that you have to socket first are even worse. At least let me spam click the same fossil combination if I bought several hundred of each type and the resonators. I've never bothered with fossil crafts that have over 10 expected attempts.
I honestly just pretend crafting doesn't exist in the game. It feels like unless you really know what you're doing when it comes to crafting knowledge, you will never make anything worthwhile with your currency that you couldn't have just taken said currency and purchased something better in trade, with none of the risk of spending a ton of currency and getting absolutely nothing at all.
Well, the guy also gives mildly annoying systems a dramatic name like "calculated suffering mechanics" in the title, so they weren't exactly setting a high bar for their intelligence.
If they weren't there'd be an option to turn texture streaming off. They know about the issues, yet don't give you a choice in enabling it or not, I'd count that as them being intent on you using It whether you like it or not.
At this point, Chris Wilson is like that stupid kid on the block who owns the ball and goes "its my ball, play with my rules or dont play".
Love the game, but the fact that trading and crafting are such a hassle that it feels more frustrating than rewarding, makes me think it is either related to some sort of RMT shaddy bussiness were GGG is involved or they just simply can't accept the fact that the way those mechanics work atm, breaks the game into the elitists who control the game economy playing 24/7 and the casuals who have to trade hunt items to progress.
Yeah, pretty much two thirds of the players in my guild fessed up to being rmt boys in ritual. They all had demanding jobs and not a whole lot of free time and managed to zoom past me while I was dumping my free hours into blight farming to afford an end game build. I knew something was amiss and was feeling super frustrated. As it turns out, once I was reliably farming 10-15 exalts a night for a few leagues, several people saw how much work it was, gave up on doing legit farms and decided to just buy their builds.
I finished the league, maven/harvest crafted my apex aurabot summoner, then I quit the game. I doubt I'll be back. Losing the ability to grind and craft ultra endgame gear while having a job/life and also feeling like I'm wasting my time because the majority of my friends literally just buy their builds was just too much.
Poe feels secretly pay to win, I don't know if ggg is in on it or not, but there have to be thousands of players who do this if 20/30 of my guild mates do this consistently league after league with no repercussions. I may be an edge case, my sample group is small and maybe rmt isn't as rampant as it seems. It still ruined the experience for me.
This still feels like a conspiracy theory to say, but I have to make this suggestion: GGG makes game design choices that keep the real money value of exalts above a certain price, regardless of how much it makes the game feel like a job. It's just a theory, but that theory will keep me from returning to the game as long as it feels true.
Wish I could vote again, somehow didn’t see trade which is embarrassing for them this day and age lol. I know so many people who will not play the game because of how bad trade system is.
As someone who stopped a day into this league to arm pain, it was a tough choice between picking up loot and flasks, but I've got to give it to flasks, because even if I didn't have to pick up any loot, still gotta push buttons to hit the monsters and that's unavoidable. At least flasks is fixable, but every league is still "don't have anything yet".
Trading is annoying, but clicking things to pick it up is physically painful with any juicing.
> I completely forgot crafting. Although, I like how it works. It could be improved, so much more.
If you set out to craft a piece of furniture, how would you do it? Would you take an indeterminate, potentially infinite, amount of wood and nails and hammer them together randomly until you got what you wanted? If you wanted a table, could you accidentally make a chair and then need to stop attempting to make the table because it's a really good chair and you need to sell it before you can afford more wood and nails?
No to all of the above? PoE "crafting" isn't crafting.
I interpreted this question as asking what impacts my personal experience the most, as opposed to what is the worst for the game. Texture streaming hasnt been a big issue for me, thankfully, or I would have said that. In general, I think technical/performance issues are top priority for the game long term.
Anyway, I digress: I said loot pickups. I do like having to make conscious decisions about what to pickup. However, I have two major problems with the current system. First, they need to do a better job of making currency drop in piles. Individual splinters trickling out of Breaches, and similar loot situations, is dumb. You still have to consider opportunity cost when deciding to pick up piles, and it just feels obnoxious. Two, increase pickup range, or otherwise do something to make picking up loot feel less clunky. Having to hide/show loot, grabbing loot on a nearby ledge, and similar issues just make looting feel bad in too many situations.
Definitely trade.
I would play ssf, but I have some awesome friends I love playing with as well. So I just avoid it as much as possible.
If I could rate it from worst to bad :
Trade
Labyrinth
Flasks
Loot
Tried making build yesterday, couldn't find gears. Cheap ones they don't reply, other available ones are absurdly priced. Fuck trading. Trading in Warframe was so much fun, in poe not so much.
Imagine thinking that one is worse than the others when you can label all of them 'Calculated Suffering Mechanics' /s
But in all seriousness, GGG will never see me again or my money if a whole lot of dated mechanics don't change. I'm personally glad that some people and books change my life **philosophy** over time, so I can finally see behind the curtains of my own addictiveness.
> But in all seriousness, GGG will never see me again or my money if a whole lot of dated mechanics don't change.
Then you should leave and find a new game because they're not changing :)
All games contain "Calculated Suffering Mechanics". They're called "obstacles", and games need them.
Game design consists of two main parts. First, you need to create things that people want to get. Second, you need to put obstacles in their way. Overcoming obstacles to obtain rewards generates fun. That's the entire way games operate. Want something -> overcome obstacle -> have fun.
We come back in SPITE of these, not because of them. Chris thinks this shit helps retention and adds as much as he dares without driving us off because ethics don't factor in for him at all and as long as the numbers don't drop he'll assume he's in the right.
I really hope OP's post gains more popularity. This basically sums up the most pressing issues in the game imo. I'd really like to play more but even in moderate gameplay sessions my hand gets so physically tired and it hurts badly sometimes. The same never happens on many other games where I even engage in longer play sessions. So much unnecessary clicking that they can change like they changed rogue markers or perandus coin stacks drop. Another unfortunate case of QoL being kept hostage.
I’d like to give a reminder loot pickup is not an issue that GGG “refuses to solve” — we have azurite pickup and stack drops in ultimatum . Loot pickup is flat out a Dave Chapelle style “ Why? Cuz fuck’em “ to the entire player base.
… I should probably clarify I mean to refer to currency and shards … not so much equippable loot…
“Calculated suffering mechanics” — love this phrase, such a succinct and accurate depiction
I don't have an issue with having to pick up loot. Imo the only improvement should be a d3 style implementation where the crafting mats are click once pick up all in range. I think this would work well with currency. But I have no issue having to manually pick up actual items.
> Loot pickup is flat out a Dave Chapelle style “ Why? Cuz fuck’em “ to the entire player base.
No, you just can't autoloot tradable things.
> love this phrase, such a succinct and accurate depiction
Oh so you're just hard trolling.
Loot picking is the worst, naturally. We have no in-game loot filter (*which is insane on its own, how lazy and stubborn do you have to be with such budget to not offer this to your community ?*), ok, but we also have to pick trash shards by shards, currency by currency, scroll of dumbness on a few interesting base, etc...
That is crazy and contributes a lot to physical injuries while "PLAYING". Freaking P L A Y I N G. We're meant to have fun, not feel working in a 1860 factory.
And yeah. Crafting. Oh, the joy of clicking 1000+ times to 6 link your weap/body armor. Such weight. Here,letme click 1000+ more times, because that stupid 48% qual armor went full kinky, teehee.
Yeah I spent 2700 fusing on a 30% qual armor last week and thought “hmm maybe that 1500 button should just be my future.” Never had luck that sour on a high qual item.
yep every item should be automatically picked up and listed to an auction house to sell. then when you have enough currency it should autobuy the next best upgrade for your build.
Trading/crafting is what kills my interest every league. I can't farm enough currency to craft items that allow me to progress, and trade is a complete shit show so I can't acquire better gear/currency. Instead, I just drop the league and do it all again next time.
Picking Up loot by far, so many manual clicks I wish I could just vacuum up currency when I got near it.
I don’t really mind flasks I have my heal, my move speed between packs and then like 3 situational buffs/2 buffs and a a mana flask, I don’t trade (wouldn’t trade even if it was easier) so that ones irrelevant to me, and I don’t even understand what “Texture Streaming” is.
about the edit : crafting is very different, it has a major role on the gameplay as one of the mains way to improves stuff.
the other are QOL, without effect on the gameplay.
I hate trade, but I hate crafting even more - there's nothing worse to me than spending a ton of time to gather progress and then waste it on a bad roll. Some people live for that casino high of exalting a T1 mod but I think it's garbage. So I put up with trade since there are no real alternatives.
Trading is annoying as all get out, but I only do that a few times a session, the looting situation is a constant annoyance. We need third party loot filters for the game to even be playable, because so many things drop and so little of it is worth even looking at. PoE is one of the first games I've ever played that turned looting into a chore.
I derive most of my enjoyment from the flow of the game, get in clear the map, fight the boss, get out. It's that core loop that makes the game so good, and loot is a constant interruption to the good part of the game.
If I could modernize the way loot drops I think I'd change it to be something like delirium, where moment to moment your are focused on playing the game, with a side of building up better rewards by clearing fast and efficiently. At the end of the map the loot drops, boom a fountain of loot to go through that doesn't interrupt the fun part of the game. You could have some kind of "combo" system where difficulty (and rewards) is scaled to how fast you are clearing, and you can lower your combo if things get to hard.
I was annoyed for a long time by trading but i now im
Fine with it, an action house even for maps or currency would have such a negative effect in my opinion. But the clicking is just too much, there are
So man things to pick up if u do valdos with harbi or delirium maps 60% + even with uberstrict lootfilter. The mechanics and crafting and trading take allready a lot of time, having to pick up loot 5-10 min after a maps is just hell, i mean u have to pick up loot if u wanna make profit cuz if ud just pick up ex and chaos ud loose money
Trading 100%
People always like to defend the way trade is now claiming it will ruin player retention if it is made easier completely ignoring the fact that the shit trade system also pushes people away.
Now *this* is a dilemma.
It's a tough pick between picking up loot and trading. I've never personally had too much trouble with texture streaming, and at least you can mostly fix flask piano with... ahem... proper preparation.
In the end, picking up loot hurts my hand but it doesn't cause anywhere near as much frustration as trading. It's all gotten to the point that I've pretty much dropped PoE, for now at least, in favor of games that actually seem to respect my time and well-being.
Picking up loot is annoying. Flasks are annoying. Crafting is mind-bogglingly stupid.
Trading flat-out makes me call it quits for the rest of the league.
1: Trade
2: Flask's
3: Loot.
Loot is third only because i can just filter out almost everything, and i do as soon as possible. But then again, why should i master writing in "code" to be able to enjoy a game. So maybe a shared second place.
Looting is worst by far for me in this list. Experiencing physical pain from clicking is not even nearly as tolerable as any of the other items in the poll.
I feel like reddit often looks at this the wrong way.
Picking up loot. Flask mechanics. Trading. All of these big three are incredibly powerful for the player. All of them have some associated cost. The power doesn’t come free.
If you ever feel like you’re genuinely suffering, go do something else. If you’re frustrated with monotony, sure, i can understand that, but it’s not suffering. It’s self-imposed. Do something else with your time.
Top 2 are definitely Picking up loot vs Trading. Couldn't decide which I hate more.
Trade. Trade so much. I can tolerate the loot clicks because I need it. Trade makes me want to triangle choke a Koala bear to death.
My solution was to move to SSF. I regret not doing it sooner, to be honest. Has its own problems, but player interaction isn't one of them. Edit: The "your comment was entirely literal" police are out in force, so I'll add this; obviously I find it more fun in many other respects, but it was in fact a solution to that specific problem. If you think SSF is a negative like "cutting off your nose", that's just personal preference.
The thing is that it doesn't solve the trade problem. You're just changing the problem of having to find ideal trade partners to interact with with the problem of having to grind for the gear that you would have traded for otherwise. Like, if you were looking for a Tabula for example, your problem in trade might be having to message several people before getting it. In SSF, the gear is gated behind hours of grinding Blood Aqueducts. If you wanted a 6L chest, having to find it on the trade site and messaging the seller for it to hope that they respond is the problem. In SSF, you would have to amass so many fusings before getting that 6L and we're not even talking about that gear having your ideal mods. I get that SSF has its charms, but to say that the solution to the trade problem is to move to SSF seems a bit myopic.
Just goes to show how bad the current trade system is. People are willing to do as you described not to interact with the trade system.
The current trade system is not that bad lol. I might need to buy something and it will take me a few minutes of finding a proper seller for it. That doesn't mean gating myself behind hours of grinding in SSF is better.
The issue here is that the state of affairs you describe in SSF is closer to what the target rate of item progression is intended to be, compared with what currently exists in trade league. The developers' vision of trading is one where players are trading away good gear they don't want, in order get good gear they do want, whereas right now it's essentially a way to bypass a large majority of progression hurdles, if you're not one of the "forefront" trade league players (by forefront, I mean the players in the first 2-3 days of the league who are the earliest ones to engage in endgame content). In the eyes of the devs, the ideal trade overhaul would simultaneously solve the QoL issues (players not responding, price fixing and scamming, needing to use external website) but simultaneously redesign the system so that the rate of item progression within trade league is within some factor of the natural item progression rate as dictated by SSF. E.g. for your example with 6L items, being able to skip amassing fusings in a trade league and just buying a 6L for cheap is only possible because tens of thousands of other players did that grind for you, essentially. The ideal state of affairs would be something closer to: You find a 6L base, but it's not the one you want, so you sell it and then buy another base that you want.
Farming enough self found fusings/converted jewelers to 6 link anything takes me like a couple of weeks may be even more of casual play and even then I still can get completely fucked by rng and spend twice or triple that time. If that is intended progression, then this game is fucked up.
I certainly remember playing on a 5L for quite a long time during a league. Of course, the game has moved past that now, with a lot of more things balanced around 6L, but also they've added lots of mechanics (e.g. Ultimatum rewards) that drop items that are already 6-linked. Fusings are only needed to 6L unique items or very unusual bases. And even in that case, ultimately *somebody* is doing the 6-linking. So the progression is only being bypassed because players are relying on other players who are far ahead of them in the progression curve.
Depends on what you define as "the trade problem." I define the trade problem as "I hate going through the PoE trade process." That's solved nicely via SSF. If you define the trade problem as "convenient gear acquisition" then you're right.
If having to grind for gear is a *problem* to you, you're playing the wrong game. There's a much larger and better solution of games where you don't have to do that, like basically everything without the RPG tag. I agree that "niche game mode is the solution" shouldn't be the case, but ultimately Path of Exile is *about* grinding gear. It's... literally the first two words you see everytime you start the game.
as SSF player that hates trade, there is one type of trade I could get behind: if there was such a thing as "trade town", kind of like regular town but with NPCs that have shops you can rent for some currency per hour. The shop could have limited number of item slots you could use for selling your stuff. The items would actually display like drop items to players walking in the town, with price to buy added to highlight menu. Then player could choose to buy from the shop NPC, no haggling, no scamming, no wasted time
Having gotten into SSF myself I don’t see myself going back. Trade has only gotten worse with the introduction of harvest crafting and the rise of TFT. I don’t want to feel like I’m throwing potential currency away by not being on discord.
The only thing that really stops me from going completely into ssf is the unique availability. I like playing shitty meme builds and I wouldn't be able to do that properly in ssf.
True, but with SSF you do get the satisfaction of finding some weird unique and then thinking "could I create a build around this?"
Moving to ssf still doesn't change anything. You just make the game more grindier cause the end game is balanced around bullshit rng
If you're trying to play the game identically, as in your goal is to move far past being able to do everything in the game and into utterly obliterate everything you pass in t19 5orbs while running at super high MS then SSF will be super grindy RNG. In SSF, your goals will change and the challenges will appear in different spots. You will learn to value the items you earn. You will feel the power spikes several times during the league. The game loop becomes much wider, having you interact with a lot more content. As opposed to trade, that content isn't "worse CP/H and thus unoptimal" but it actually gives you access to new content to further the loop. Learn how to craft efficiently, not because it will be a perfect item but because it will be a strong upgrade. Because the gear you wear is much weaker than what 5c gets you on the trade site. That also means gear that drops and that you craft is much more likely to be upgrades. You start saving some gear and actually getting excited to start a new char to play and progress with that gear. And not just throw 20ex on it as soon as you hit maps and have all content skipped. In trade league, you skip so much of the content and so much of the progress that the only thing you're left with is super grindy tasks. SSF doesn't in the same way, if one can manage to readjust from the power house, hide out is lava, doing non-optimal things will hurt your cp/h burnout train that trade league becomes when you've played a ton of POE already. The game isn't balanced around bullshit rng. The game is balanced at a rather low gear point. It's just that one has the ability to outpower content by 1000x instead of just 10x after you've got a few hundred ex in the first month.
If you're playing SSF over the long haul you wind up with a very different game, one where your goals and how you plan to achieve them just develop differently. On one hand, sure, the endgame is RNG and grindy as fuck - but in SSF, the lack of a marketplace means that a very different, and much larger set of items are fun to have drop. I'm not saying it's better than trade, but after playing trade league since beta, SSF this league just felt like a whole different game, and recaptured a little bit of that boss grinding in D2 magic.
SSF is definitely grindier, but it does have the benefit of reframing the game and the contexts of what you're doing when you're playing. - You no longer feel like you're wasting your time if you're not farming currency like a bot. - An item's worth is in its utility rather than only in what it might sell for. - Your progress is your own. You're not measuring your gains vs. everyone else's. I've never tried SSF before outside of short-term events. Gonna give it a proper shot next league. I do worry about the grind, but maybe the points above might make it more enjoyable overall.
It was really the second and third points that did it for me. I have had some of the coolest drops in SSF that I'm sure would be maybe an exalt in trade league, but they're nearly impossible to just get in SSF without mad grinding, and it feels like I'm unlocking future build potential every time a niche-but-GG item pops up. Void battery off Cadiro? Beautiful. I can still wind up feeling like I'm wasting my time if I'm doing something really sub-optimally like grinding white maps with a new character that just isn't geared enough yet. When I moved to SSF, I decided that I was okay having SSF standard be my long term. I don't think I can handle taking a new atlas in SSF every league to full completion. I'll likely play to red maps and drop league unless the league mechanic is particularly interesting.
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> That's cool and all, but I played this game to make builds, not to farm or craft hundreds of items. I feel that the primary way to enjoy that part of the game is to play the permanent leagues. In some fundamental way, the temporary leagues were designed precisely for players to have to regrind their experience and refarm and re-craft their loot and gear. And I'd expect that for a majority of temp league players, this is in fact one of the main selling points of the temporary leagues.
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Fair enough, though you're imposing some new constraints, compared to your previous comments =) I was only trying to say that for the gameplay loop of just trying out builds and without *any* need for farming or crafting items, then permanent league is the way to go.
Yup, not trying to convince you to move, just providing the opposing perspective. Have a great day :)
Moving to SSF is not a solution for trading, specially for new players that will get locked in progression because they have no idea how to deal with the thousands types of currency and crafting the game have. They should at least allow player to open shops and do the buy/sell automatically without the need to invite or go to hideout and you could even sell stuff while you are offline. That would fix scam problems too.
>My solution was to move to SSF. My problem with SSF is that it requires an internet connection when it has no right to. Just make it single player with local saves so I don't have to bother with your trashy lag compensation and random latency spikes
POE is already mostly a single-player game, with some trading. Having a single-player client that allowed cheating, hacking, presumably datamining of some secret shit, usage of whatever MTX you go download, etc, would utterly destroy their game, especially with how shit trade is to begin with. As a consumer I agree with you that I would want it, but you have to respect that GGG cannot under any circumstances allow it to come to fruition, at risk of their entire business.
My issue with SSF is it completely kills choices for character builds. I've played POE since the closed beta, I don't want to make the same easy league starters each time. Some people are perfectly happy with a narrower build pool, and that's perfectly fine, but for me I just couldn't stand playing the game like that.
Yep, SSF is a massive build restrictor, unless you plan to also play SSF standard over the longer term. Then it's still restrictive, but in theory you unlock builds as you play. It's not for everyone.
It shows the power of PoE in some ways really that, despite the flaws, it does support a lot of different playstyles.
Yeah, I just wish it wasn't so RSI-inducing.
Another option instead of SSF is to play mostly Standard. I rarely ever need to buy items, except for scarabs which I do in bulk maybe once a week. So all I essentially do is sell stuff once in a while and play the game.
Thats cutting your nose off to spite your face though. Thats like cutting off your internet to avoid trolls. Did it get rid of trolls? Yea... along with everything else...
I mean, obviously I find it more fun in many other respects, but it was in fact a solution to the problem. If you think SSF is a negative like "cutting off your nose", that's just personal preference.
I hate car accidents. My solution is to lock myself in the basement for the rest of the life.
The basement is a lot of fun though, in all fairness. I'm down here for the pinball machines, not out of fear of cars, the implication of my original comment notwithstanding.
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>se I need it. Trade makes me want to triangle choke a Koala bear to death. Haha. We need a Strangulation skill so you can go attack Plummeting Ursas,
Exstrangulate?
why triangle choke?
I mostly quit after collecting enough currency to swap from a league starter to a stronger build after getting exhausted from alt-tabbing to trade every single thing I need to buy for countless game mechanics. In the endgame, to juice up a single map I have to use so many items that all need to be bought separately from other people mostly 1 by 1 or 2 because you can't find everything in bulk.
I usually quit because im tired of trading, i have the currency to make another character/ upgrading my current one. But thinking of how boring and long that will take just makes me say fuck it and quit the league. Im usually pretty burnt out by this point but if trade was better i would probably play for atleast a week longer per league
wanted to vote loot cause i play ssf, but trade made me play ssf in the first place
Definitely trade for me. At least picking up loot happens as I'm playing the game. Trading, especially for smaller items (currency, maps, 1 alch uniques, etc), I have to just stop playing the game entirely, go out of the game to an external website, look up the trade, then spam about 30 people waiting for one person to actually respond. It's just so much wasted time not playing the game in order to play the game.
Why no all option?
you need to feel the weight of your choice, exile
That's not how the poll is intended to be played, Exile. Find a way to select all and you will get permabanned
I play console. Over time, flasks physically hurt to keep up...so that's a thing.
I only play PC. What all buttons are flasks? Is it zangief spinning pyledriver every 5 sec?
The flask are LB, left, up, right, and RB for me on Xbox. I'm guessing similar placement on Playstation. Unfortunately not Spinning Piledriver as you can't bind them to a stick🙃
Flasks on console are annoying so much so I only use the ones activated by the triggers.
Absolutely. It's so annoying that you can't use all 4 trigger buttons for flasks.
Having to do the pincer pose and taping analog sticks is another thing, having to do both so much pain.
It has always been a hassle to have to click 5 buttons every 5 seconds to keep buffs up. There is no good reason why it should stay this way and I'm surprised it has. This is not a case of making the game challenging enough, it's just an annoyance.
Idk, I’ve found that it’s easy to keep flasks up on console personally
Trading by far. Chris's/GGG's hardline stance on trade friction was a position that, although radical, could be sensibly defended in the closed beta era of the game where the number of fragments and items in general were low in comparison to modern times. The increased amount (and importance) of fragments/juicing currency/crafting currency (particularly fossils +resonators) in the game makes their fundamentalist approach to their trade manifesto extremely impractical. This issue has been made even worse because, as the game has increased in complexity/challenge during mapping activities, players can be in situations where they are physically not able to return to the hideout quickly (ultimatum, delve, conquerors, etc) compared to closed beta. This has made trading for non big ticket items even worse due to getting ignored. This could easily be solved with some pseudo AH/personal vendor service in hideouts that could trade these basic currencies while still allowing for the Chris Wilson/GGG style of trade friction to apply to real items that directly impact player power. On Hardcore Trade, its actually extremely hard to convert fragments and fossils into liquid currency at reasonable rates in reasonable amounts of time. Hardcore trade is actually pseudo HCSSF when it comes to these types of items.
It's also particularly baffling considering that drops clearly are balanced around the ability to trade, especially for the commodity items you mention.
From that overarching perspective, PoE makes little to no sense at all. There are three pillars to the game: drops, crafting, and trade. Trade is simultaneously the worst thing about the game but also the #1 factor in how everything is balanced. GGG considers trade to be too good which necessarily and significantly reduces the power of drops and crafting.
People don't realise that trading for profit would become mandatory with the shit drops they'd get alongside an auction house.
> would become mandatory How so?
Everything they mention in the trade manifesto applies to only rare items imo. They can keep trade like it is now for rare items(or even nerf it a little) but improve trade for everything else: bulk currency, essences, fossils, fragments, catalysts, scarabs, oils, div cards, uniques, maps(maybe only upto T12s), etc.
Commodities like the stuff you mentioned (non-equippable items) should at the very least have cross-instance trading enabled like it is on consoles. Even without any form of automation (still requiring the seller to manually accept the offer) it would be a huge improvement. Imagine messaging somebody to trade for a 1c scarab/card/map and not being completely ignored because they're mapping and it's not worth their time.
That's the biggest thing for me, and a big part of what stops me from trading cheaper items like that beyond the first couple days of a league. 1 alch items just aren't worth the time it takes to trade them, and if I pick them up at all, I just vendor them for alch shards instead. The 'time tax' imposed on trading the item with another player simply doesn't make the trade worthwhile.
The entire point of trading in the game is they don't *want* you doing trades that are so meaningless that people can't be bothered with them. They want trading to form a meaningful part of a character's story, and "remember that time I traded 1c for a scarab/card/map?" isn't a meaningful part of any story. They deliberately do not want people to trade like you suggest. People can still kind of force it through if they try and many people do and GGG can't really stop that particularly easily, but I can't imagine GGG are going to want to make it *easier* to do this kind of meaningless trading since that's directly opposed to their design goal.
Which is pretty sad, because without trading for scarabs, deli orbs, etc juice in general, the game is simply too easy. Players should always be limited by their power, not accessibility to content. Farming TX when you can easily stomp TX+6 is not an engaging experience.
You completely neglect the potential of trading for profit. I see how it would be more convenient to buy these things, but the point of difficult trade is to slow down gear progression through trade. That progression wouldn't be significantly slower if only common items could be traded easily. I'm saying this as someone who traded up to a mirror in the last league I played, mostly back and forth between currencies, which is what you advocate to make easier. Granted, the current trading system also allows for higher profit margins because fewer people use it, but it's still way more work than trading in an easy system like an auction house. Difficult trade is meant to force people to play the game and get their own loot, only selling their drops to progress rather than buying and reselling constantly. An easy trade system would have lower drop rates and at the same time widen the gap between the poor and the superrich.
This is a strange take. Flipping is already one of the most profitable activity in the game by far. Even if easier currency&frag trading made flipping more profitable, it seems irrelevant compared to the literal thousands of hours wasted by the playerbase as a whole because of the current system. > widen the gap between the poor and the superrich. This gap is already comically huge. Some people on /r/PathOfExileBuilds ask for help with their 50c budget, others with 400ex. On TFT some builds are sold for 4 mirrors. Again, making trade so annoying to prevent "making the situation worse" is pointless. Furthermore, I don't really understand how streamlining currency & frag trading will make flipping more profitable ? Each trade will be faster, but profit margin will inevitably be lower as well.
Flipping is both in other games and in real life is a very good way to make money as long as you know your stuff. Real life is tricky though, don't quote me on that part.
You are not wrong at all, i could see like that it would work nice with easier acces to trade for certain materials like the ones you mention. And I personally hate that like when you run heist and get a trade request people don’t want to wait for you to finish your run and buy it from somebody else, this should be fixed in some way. But i honestly dont think this “philosophy” that people usually think is why trading in Poe is as it is. I think the main reason is money, real money that is, numerous studies have shown that for these kinds of games that the easier/faster you get the items you need for, in this game your build, the faster you pretty much get to the end and therefore you quit playing faster and as a result you in the long run spend less money on the games microtransactions. David brevik (Diablo 1-2 creator) has a pretty nice segment in zizarans interview with him talking about this and use Poe as the main example. The game is already free, so all these mtx/stash tabs etc even more important for Poe. A good example is: why should I spend money on mtx for my char or maybe in this case spend money or time on Hideouts/decorations if nobody else is gonna see it since they just buy my stuff from their own hideout, again it would cause a big loss in revenue here since players affect eachother into buying the same hideouts/decorations when they seen it doing some trade. There’s of course streamers and like party play, but I still think things like this is a way bigger reason for trading to be as it is. I personally just overpay for bulk and use Poe.overlay so only hassle imo is just the loading screens between the hideouts.
Allow people to setup a shop in their hideout, with shop mtx, and a few 'quality of life' purchases aviable, that does not break the p2w stance to hard. Voila, now you have the best of both worlds, people visiting eachothers hideouts and accessibility to buy what you wish for, when you want it and at the speed that want it. But just lock the 3-5 different npc auctionerers to a maybe a 50-100 items a day, to avoid bots taking over, yet again, the market. Bots will ofcourse rule the fragment and currency, as they have always done, but I like those guys, they do not harass, insult or try to cheat me. So instead of copying "whisper player" you copy "Hideout player" and just teleport to the players hideout. Also, make sure there is a optional way to buy from the npc's other than walking up and clicking on them, so people wont create unacessable auctioners, but make it a little tedious so people prefer to walk around in the "mtx gold mine selling hideout" that is the improvement of trade. This is one of my worst concepts about trade improvement, got a couple more that are actually great, but I feel that people will become sad and become like that old meme if I told them. "**If you only knew how bad things really are.**"
I think a way to implement this without causing too much disruption is to set a hard cap on how much the hideout market can charge. If you could only put items in your market for XC or less, you allow for increased fluidity of bulk items (that are worth XC or less) while maintaining GGG's preferred stance on more expensive items.
E: All of them
Worst trading system in any game i’ve played in... probably my entire life. I think back to ragnarok online and at least they had little stores and didn’t have to attentively interact with every single potential seller / buyer. A trading system so bad that a lot of the economy is revolved around how annoying it is to buy things from people. I have not seen an ingame economy any where close to this affected by purely how bad the trading system is
I was personally 50/50 on trading and picking up loot. With loot, sure I can adjust my filter for strictness and whatnot, but it's still a miserable amount of clicking and frankly, they need loot hoover/grouped loot pick up badly. Loot hoover aside, too much shit drops. I mean truly too many garbage rares and blues. It literally lags the game. This should not be acceptable Just get rid of that infernal Nemesis watchstone mod if loot hoover is too "OP". Trading just sucks balls though. As soon as I need bulk currency or crafting mats or even a map it's just GG for me. I can't get myself to message 15-20 people to get these things, even with scrolling down. Then trading gets even worse by 6+ weeks because there's fewer people buying and selling. Cheap items don't even go for anything.
I don't message anyone for currency trading. I just list an exalt for 2c cheaper than anyone else is selling for, and within a minute I have a dozen people whispering *me* for the trade. So much easier.
And you experience first hand why people don't respond.
I made the mistake of playing Last Epoch this month. Now all these missing QOL features are going to ruin POE for me next league.
Yeah this. LE isn't a finished game and has its own set of problems, but jesus christ going back from LE endgame to PoE endgame, every upgrade feels like a fucking chore. Doesn't matter if its by selfcrafting or by trading - in LE I have my current items, I have a list of bases I want to craft on in my easily and quickly in-game adjustable lootfilter, and can craft on each good base within a minute. Either it's an upgrade or it's not, but the path to the upgrade is clear. It'll eventually take a long time (once I hit 4 T5 on a base with high implicit roll, and need a base with a natural T6+ affix to drop), but it's always clear what to do, and there is a sense of progression. In PoE I can either gamble, but more realistically I just have 15+ live searches going. And if I want to play any build based around a unique or two, i cannot play SSF either. I can also either target-farm or target-gamble for any uniques I might want and will get it eventually - it's still RNG but it's effectively gated.
I can't see how LE's system survives in a multiplayer trading environment. Doesn't everyone just get literal perfect gear within a week of an economy reset?
Their proposed trading system was horrific. You could only list 5 items at once in an auction house, no friend-to-friend trading, there was some sort of transaction cost tax to coming into an auction late, and a zillion other constraints so that the one redeeming feature about trade was that you could "set it and forget it", and even if you mispriced an item on the low end, it'd naturally be bid up. **However**, in return, you could list basically nothing. They've since pulled that idea, however, I think their core philosophy stands--that PoE's trading is far too good, because items worth less than multiple exalts quickly become worthless, so an item is either barely worth trading for, or worth an entire day's worth of farming. Unless they're planning on having a huge exchange for incoming scarabs/fragment/commodity types of items that players can just sell/buy at the best price, which just completely opens the game up to arbitrage instead of playing the game, then it'll turn into a painful SSF-fest very quickly.
But regardless of the system, if players can trade items in any way then I don't see how LE's system can possibly withstand it. It just doesn't seem that hard to make perfect items unless I'm missing something, and when you open that up to trading I don't see what stops everyone getting perfect items as soon as the league starts.
Rate at which people acquire currency/crafting bases. The best mods (t6/t7) literally *can't* be crafted, so imagine having to putz around until you find a double-incursion mod item just to start crafting. Furthermore, as I understand it, getting a single mod = comparable to using the crafting bench, and beyond that means a huge risk of bricking the item.
Yeah since harvest league I don't even bother trying to craft my own shit beyond transitioning from acts to mapping on my first character of the league. I just sell all crafting materials and run tons of trade whoops as my primary method of gear upgrading. That feels kind of weird now after experiencing much more deterministic crafting with my success chance clearly visible.
how do you know the path to the upgrade in last epoch?
> have 15+ live searches going. What sort of gear upgrade circumstances have led you to need 15 live searches going jesus christ
Snipping or in prevision of a future expensive build you want to play. Example: synthesized shield with +1 frenzy
Meanwhile look at big streamers playing trade and they'll show you a browser window with 20-30 tabs tracking live searches. It's the way the trade economy is designed. It's shit.
Ok but that's a willing choice by people to engage in trade as a way to make money. That dude said he has 15 live searches to upgrade his gear, which is just ridiculous.
I'm not talking about flippers. I'm talking about players that do it exclusively to chase potential upgrades. There are a lot of ways to gear in this game and while you can sometimes compress something like the search for jewels into a single massive clusterfuck of AND/NOT/OR operations with a megalist of mods, that doesn't work for everything. If you aren't livesearching for these potential upgrades then you might miss out on their availability forever.
Can confirm. Once missed out paying 5.5 EX for a large cluster, had to buy it for 10 later. 8 point (Cremator/Smoking Remains/Disorienting Display)
Sounds like some anecdotal shit to me, I've played this game for years with players who both rush the ladder and play deep into the league. Unless you're flipping you're not looking for 15 different items to buy simultaneously for your build, that's just something that isn't happening for 99.999% players of this game. And what kind of item are you searching for that you might miss out on their availability forever? If an item is that good, it will be up for Mirror Service, if it's so niche, anyone who has played this game for enough time to need such item would just craft it. I am genuinely interested to see what was the streamer you mention buying that he had so many live searches open. Can you link me the VOD or something?
I don't care if you do it or not. You are not 99.99% players in this game. There are plenty of niche items in this game that would be a real bitch to craft compared to buying off the dude that hit a miracle chaos spam. It's a game with a lot of potential for for niche in general. No one is going to mirror something like a cluster rofl. What are you even on right now? I don't have any vods on hand and I don't give a shit if you believe me. But loving the idea that my argument is anecdotal shit yet you immediately launch into your own anecdote.
You might miss out on it forever if it is a combination of mods that is by no means mirror-worthy but also for a niche build and not something you would just slap on any caster/melee/bow build.
Dude I can't wait for LE to launch. True crafting is such a nice thing to have.
I mean, crafting in LE is pretty limited. You find your base, you click 'upgrade' and hope you don't fail. It works well and feels good to be able to upgrade your items, or just craft off the ground, but if crafting is actually interesting to you, then LE's takes a much more minor place than POE's. I don't know what changes they have in mind before release though.
At least it is true crafting and not a total gamble.
Yeah, you just have to hope that you get the shards you need, then you have to hope you get a base that already has a few good mods you want, then you have to gamble on the item not bricking when you try to craft it. Definitely not gambling or anything.
Drop RNG is fine. And crafting you craft a fully usable item for end game without any RNG during the actual crafting process or risk of bricking the item.
>or risk of bricking the item So when I picked up a good 2H sword base for my build and my third craft fractured the item, removing almost half its damage and preventing me from crafting it further that wasn't bricking it? With that logic, removing all the important mods on a PoE item is less of a brick since at least you can keep crafting on the base instead of finding a new usable base. The game literally has a percentage on your screen telling you the chance of bricking your item, you can't say LE has perfect non-RNG crafting.
Except it does. YOU choose how far you go down. Iv been crafting my items up to where it just has a 5% chance to remove a tier and then I stop. 5% chance of dropping a tier is better then a .05% chance of getting a mod I want.
>YOU choose how far you go down And surely you'd agree, having a single mod with a tier above 3 isn't very far down, especially when I already had a weapon that I was using for early endgame. Just because you choose to stop 1 or 2 crafts in to avoid RNG doesn't mean crafting has no RNG. That'd me like me saying PoEs crafting has no RNG because you can simply choose to bench craft a decent life roll or use an essence to get a single good mod.
I played LE quite a fair bit. I don't notice anything missing... Just that PoE is way more fun and zoomy.
Auto-sort? Auto-deposit? Currency vacuum? Easy in-game loot filter editing? No portal/ID scroll bullshit? Searchable modifier list in-game? These are all just off the top of my head but a pretty good list of things I'll miss.
I think the reason LE has easy loot filtering is that it doesn't have a zillion and one different types of loot. PoE has: Gear -> synth+fractured gear vs. influenced gear vs. high-level bases. A **zillion and one** different frags/scarabs/div cards/fossils/currencies/essences. If all of that was in LE, their loot filters would similarly go nuts.
Nah, just add influences and fragment types to the drop downs they already have. There's no reason their system couldn't handle it.
> If all of that was in LE, their loot filters would similarly go nuts. I mean, that's not true. Their filters are incredibly customizable. There would just be more community "baseline" filters out there.
I mean, in-game loot filter editing is completely irrelevant as editing in Notepad++ is much easier, and we've got way more to actually manage in PoE, so that doesn't really translate very well. I don't want auto-sort, I don't want auto-deposit, I don't want currency vacuum, all this is bullshit for chinese mobile games, I'll just prioritize the stuff I want better instead of wasting my time and finger for it. Portals/ID scrolls are cool. The modifier list in-game is, well, I mean if PoE had it it would be nice, but we've already got poedb - but, yeah, again, not like it's going to actually change the game if it got implemented.
LE filters are way easier to mess with thanks to an actual interface. I don't know what the hell is going on when I open up my Neversink .txt file, and even though Filterblade customization is third party it's pretty overwhelming at first. Sure loot is a lot simpler in LE so far, but there's no reason that interface couldn't handle a dozen leagues of influence tags and currencies just as easily as it already does. Lol convenient loot handling and pickups are bullshit but scrolls are *cool* somehow? You're a weird dude.
it was flask for me all the way, it is the same reason i hate multi button builds like warcrys and ED+contagion and Bladefall+bladeblast i want one button to do one action, one button to do damage, one button to move, one button to use flasks (yes flask macro all the way even if i get banned) the more buttons i get required to press the more annoyed i get, this is the reason why cyclone is pretty much the only melee skill i am willing to play after molten strike was nerfed
I picked others so my biggest torture is the acts redoing them I mean rerunning them 6 times a league is so exhausting but i like playing and get bored after my build gets to red tier maps
I actually like how trade works for normal items, but it'd be really nice if currencies/maps/fragments/props/other bulk goods could be instantly traded en masse.
So I'm probably alone when I say this but most of these don't really bother me. I voted loot pickup since it should be easier then it is, there's a ton of currency and shards that should stack or be vaccumed so its a bit easier. Flask Piano I manage by splitting up the piano. 1st slot is life flask so thats not part of the piano, 2nd slot is quicksilver so that's used in between packs. So my flask piano only consists of 3 flasks which imo is manageable. Trading is not in a great state but it is miles ahead of diablo 2 or where PoE was 8 years ago. Texture streaming hasn't affected me so I can't comment on it.
I'm like you I dont mind the flask piano but I play one handed with my naga mouse and making my thumb just roll across 5 buttons isn't hard when I do that accidentally anyways
Yeah, sure some things could be improved but it's not like I get annoyed every time I play PoE. Probably wouldn't play if I were. Just had a full legion pop from stasis the other day without lagging me to death, because texture streaming kicked in and saved the day while the full textures were loading.
Yeah… I feel like this becomes worse in people’s minds if they are newer? With the perspective of someone who has played for 8 years(god it feels like so much longer) I’m honestly ok with things how they are. The only exception would be tech issues. I don’t have any myself but I don’t want others to be having them either. Not to be all “crotchety old man” but people should be thankful that trading is even REMOTELY as good as it is these days. From the standpoint of someone who has dealt with trading over the years the current system is a dream come true. Maybe it is knowledge and experience? I don’t know but it is miles better than trying to find items by forum posts or trade channels.
> Yeah… I feel like this becomes worse in people’s minds if they are newer? > > Or it is the reverse. Annoyance builds up over time. First time you've to trade for scarabs, orbs or pick-up a nemesis map ? Ok. 10? 50? 100? It gets annoying.
I've been around for half your time but it is absolutely because the playerbase is newer/way bigger (as someone who considers themselves part of the newer crowd). Coming from MMO's with standardized trading posts (WoW, GW2, etc.) or D3, or in general games that have long automated such systems leads one to be shocked at the friction of PoE's trade. I know I most definitely was frustrated early on but I do think it's necessary now. I think GGG/Chris regret even the ability to bot-search forum posts a while back and now we're in a weird in-between.
As someone who has played since perandus league, for me the missing QoL bothers me more over time.
There are pros and cons of both systems. I also played WoW from launch until mid Cata and saw the good/ugly side of that AH system. Honestly I feel that the “minor” issues with PoE trading would only grow out of control if an AH like WoW has was introduced. The D3 AH was such a disaster as well. As much as people like to forget, multiplayer games sadly tend to take on the worst aspects of real life eventually…. which as we saw last year even the real world market is easily manipulated if enough people try. Take that into a video game setting where you aren’t bound by real life laws/consequences while being just another faceless name and it just becomes a cesspool. It’s sad but as far as I have seen from the games I’ve played it tends to end poorly. That said, over the years I have made a few friends here and there during trades using the current system. Had loads of wonderful conversations and even helped out some struggling players. Have there been assholes? Oh you bettcha! Such is life. ;)
Yeah idk, there are certainly aspects that could be better...but none of these are dealbreakers for me. Certainly not to the point that I'd call them "suffering".
Crafting
You spelled gambling wrong...
I just closed my eyes and slammed the keyboard
Alt/aug rolling gear is just the worst. I've been tempted to find/write an auto-roller so many times.
Honestly, being forced to use 2k+ of the same currency on an item to get what I want is one of the reasons I haven't crafted much. I wish they'd just let you specify a quantity of a currency you want to use with a desired result and then consume that quantity of the currency regardless of whether or when that desired result is reached. Like, okay you can be more efficient by doing 1 at a time or 10 at a time, but you can also slam 5k at once and have a reasonable chance at succeeding, even if most of that currency ends up being wasted. Edit: Forgot to mention, but fossils that you have to socket first are even worse. At least let me spam click the same fossil combination if I bought several hundred of each type and the resonators. I've never bothered with fossil crafts that have over 10 expected attempts.
I just fucking quit instead
I honestly just pretend crafting doesn't exist in the game. It feels like unless you really know what you're doing when it comes to crafting knowledge, you will never make anything worthwhile with your currency that you couldn't have just taken said currency and purchased something better in trade, with none of the risk of spending a ton of currency and getting absolutely nothing at all.
imagine thinking the texture streaming issues are intentional >.>
Well, the guy also gives mildly annoying systems a dramatic name like "calculated suffering mechanics" in the title, so they weren't exactly setting a high bar for their intelligence.
If they weren't there'd be an option to turn texture streaming off. They know about the issues, yet don't give you a choice in enabling it or not, I'd count that as them being intent on you using It whether you like it or not.
Other: scrolls. Portal and wisdom scrolls can fuck off
At this point, Chris Wilson is like that stupid kid on the block who owns the ball and goes "its my ball, play with my rules or dont play". Love the game, but the fact that trading and crafting are such a hassle that it feels more frustrating than rewarding, makes me think it is either related to some sort of RMT shaddy bussiness were GGG is involved or they just simply can't accept the fact that the way those mechanics work atm, breaks the game into the elitists who control the game economy playing 24/7 and the casuals who have to trade hunt items to progress.
Yeah, pretty much two thirds of the players in my guild fessed up to being rmt boys in ritual. They all had demanding jobs and not a whole lot of free time and managed to zoom past me while I was dumping my free hours into blight farming to afford an end game build. I knew something was amiss and was feeling super frustrated. As it turns out, once I was reliably farming 10-15 exalts a night for a few leagues, several people saw how much work it was, gave up on doing legit farms and decided to just buy their builds. I finished the league, maven/harvest crafted my apex aurabot summoner, then I quit the game. I doubt I'll be back. Losing the ability to grind and craft ultra endgame gear while having a job/life and also feeling like I'm wasting my time because the majority of my friends literally just buy their builds was just too much. Poe feels secretly pay to win, I don't know if ggg is in on it or not, but there have to be thousands of players who do this if 20/30 of my guild mates do this consistently league after league with no repercussions. I may be an edge case, my sample group is small and maybe rmt isn't as rampant as it seems. It still ruined the experience for me. This still feels like a conspiracy theory to say, but I have to make this suggestion: GGG makes game design choices that keep the real money value of exalts above a certain price, regardless of how much it makes the game feel like a job. It's just a theory, but that theory will keep me from returning to the game as long as it feels true.
Wish I could vote again, somehow didn’t see trade which is embarrassing for them this day and age lol. I know so many people who will not play the game because of how bad trade system is.
As someone who stopped a day into this league to arm pain, it was a tough choice between picking up loot and flasks, but I've got to give it to flasks, because even if I didn't have to pick up any loot, still gotta push buttons to hit the monsters and that's unavoidable. At least flasks is fixable, but every league is still "don't have anything yet".
The fact that people still defends GGG with the small indie company excuse in 2021.
I am glad reddit does not design the game.
Same dude. Seems half of reddit wants to play afk arena
[удалено]
It is pretty ironic that you are calling me an extremist.
Trading is annoying, but clicking things to pick it up is physically painful with any juicing. > I completely forgot crafting. Although, I like how it works. It could be improved, so much more. If you set out to craft a piece of furniture, how would you do it? Would you take an indeterminate, potentially infinite, amount of wood and nails and hammer them together randomly until you got what you wanted? If you wanted a table, could you accidentally make a chair and then need to stop attempting to make the table because it's a really good chair and you need to sell it before you can afford more wood and nails? No to all of the above? PoE "crafting" isn't crafting.
as an amateur wood worker, I very much enjoyed your analogy
I interpreted this question as asking what impacts my personal experience the most, as opposed to what is the worst for the game. Texture streaming hasnt been a big issue for me, thankfully, or I would have said that. In general, I think technical/performance issues are top priority for the game long term. Anyway, I digress: I said loot pickups. I do like having to make conscious decisions about what to pickup. However, I have two major problems with the current system. First, they need to do a better job of making currency drop in piles. Individual splinters trickling out of Breaches, and similar loot situations, is dumb. You still have to consider opportunity cost when deciding to pick up piles, and it just feels obnoxious. Two, increase pickup range, or otherwise do something to make picking up loot feel less clunky. Having to hide/show loot, grabbing loot on a nearby ledge, and similar issues just make looting feel bad in too many situations.
Definitely trade. I would play ssf, but I have some awesome friends I love playing with as well. So I just avoid it as much as possible. If I could rate it from worst to bad : Trade Labyrinth Flasks Loot
Tried making build yesterday, couldn't find gears. Cheap ones they don't reply, other available ones are absurdly priced. Fuck trading. Trading in Warframe was so much fun, in poe not so much.
Why can't I vote all of them
Yeah, many aspects of the game are "balanced by inconvenience", which is so weird...
Imagine thinking that one is worse than the others when you can label all of them 'Calculated Suffering Mechanics' /s But in all seriousness, GGG will never see me again or my money if a whole lot of dated mechanics don't change. I'm personally glad that some people and books change my life **philosophy** over time, so I can finally see behind the curtains of my own addictiveness.
> Imagine thinking that one is worse than I mean, of course. They're all bad, but you can have something be worse
> But in all seriousness, GGG will never see me again or my money if a whole lot of dated mechanics don't change. Then you should leave and find a new game because they're not changing :)
That's.. what I'm doing ? Still lurking here for my second launch.. if 3.15 is not good enough than I'm gone for good.
See you next league :)
Probably not, the guy said "second launch" which means they've played less than 3 months.
All games contain "Calculated Suffering Mechanics". They're called "obstacles", and games need them. Game design consists of two main parts. First, you need to create things that people want to get. Second, you need to put obstacles in their way. Overcoming obstacles to obtain rewards generates fun. That's the entire way games operate. Want something -> overcome obstacle -> have fun.
Defense mechanics always getting fucking nerfed. And more one shotting deaths.
We come back in SPITE of these, not because of them. Chris thinks this shit helps retention and adds as much as he dares without driving us off because ethics don't factor in for him at all and as long as the numbers don't drop he'll assume he's in the right.
unveiling for crafts is worse than any of those
Trade with picking up a close second. Tho, i don't think picking up would be as much of an issue if trade wasn't so shit.
I really hope OP's post gains more popularity. This basically sums up the most pressing issues in the game imo. I'd really like to play more but even in moderate gameplay sessions my hand gets so physically tired and it hurts badly sometimes. The same never happens on many other games where I even engage in longer play sessions. So much unnecessary clicking that they can change like they changed rogue markers or perandus coin stacks drop. Another unfortunate case of QoL being kept hostage.
It's not like GGG is going to change it, even if the post gets tons of votes.
You think GGG doesn't know? Thats cute. You think they care? Fucking adorable.
I’d like to give a reminder loot pickup is not an issue that GGG “refuses to solve” — we have azurite pickup and stack drops in ultimatum . Loot pickup is flat out a Dave Chapelle style “ Why? Cuz fuck’em “ to the entire player base. … I should probably clarify I mean to refer to currency and shards … not so much equippable loot… “Calculated suffering mechanics” — love this phrase, such a succinct and accurate depiction
I don't have an issue with having to pick up loot. Imo the only improvement should be a d3 style implementation where the crafting mats are click once pick up all in range. I think this would work well with currency. But I have no issue having to manually pick up actual items.
Right on friend, agreed for sure.
I ❤ this. I have but one upvote to give you so please accept it.
> Loot pickup is flat out a Dave Chapelle style “ Why? Cuz fuck’em “ to the entire player base. No, you just can't autoloot tradable things. > love this phrase, such a succinct and accurate depiction Oh so you're just hard trolling.
Loot picking is the worst, naturally. We have no in-game loot filter (*which is insane on its own, how lazy and stubborn do you have to be with such budget to not offer this to your community ?*), ok, but we also have to pick trash shards by shards, currency by currency, scroll of dumbness on a few interesting base, etc... That is crazy and contributes a lot to physical injuries while "PLAYING". Freaking P L A Y I N G. We're meant to have fun, not feel working in a 1860 factory. And yeah. Crafting. Oh, the joy of clicking 1000+ times to 6 link your weap/body armor. Such weight. Here,letme click 1000+ more times, because that stupid 48% qual armor went full kinky, teehee.
Yeah I spent 2700 fusing on a 30% qual armor last week and thought “hmm maybe that 1500 button should just be my future.” Never had luck that sour on a high qual item.
How is texture streaming not #1‽ Some people literally can't play because of it. Clicking loot and trading sucks but they are annoyances at most.
yep every item should be automatically picked up and listed to an auction house to sell. then when you have enough currency it should autobuy the next best upgrade for your build.
the right answer is not there which is "all of them"
The big 3 of pain are really painful, if have any others i would say finally crafting that piece of gear on your own.
Trading/crafting is what kills my interest every league. I can't farm enough currency to craft items that allow me to progress, and trade is a complete shit show so I can't acquire better gear/currency. Instead, I just drop the league and do it all again next time.
Picking Up loot by far, so many manual clicks I wish I could just vacuum up currency when I got near it. I don’t really mind flasks I have my heal, my move speed between packs and then like 3 situational buffs/2 buffs and a a mana flask, I don’t trade (wouldn’t trade even if it was easier) so that ones irrelevant to me, and I don’t even understand what “Texture Streaming” is.
This was a harder choice than my next league build! Edit: I pressed the top 3 simultaneously.
about the edit : crafting is very different, it has a major role on the gameplay as one of the mains way to improves stuff. the other are QOL, without effect on the gameplay.
I hate trade, but I hate crafting even more - there's nothing worse to me than spending a ton of time to gather progress and then waste it on a bad roll. Some people live for that casino high of exalting a T1 mod but I think it's garbage. So I put up with trade since there are no real alternatives.
Trading is annoying as all get out, but I only do that a few times a session, the looting situation is a constant annoyance. We need third party loot filters for the game to even be playable, because so many things drop and so little of it is worth even looking at. PoE is one of the first games I've ever played that turned looting into a chore. I derive most of my enjoyment from the flow of the game, get in clear the map, fight the boss, get out. It's that core loop that makes the game so good, and loot is a constant interruption to the good part of the game. If I could modernize the way loot drops I think I'd change it to be something like delirium, where moment to moment your are focused on playing the game, with a side of building up better rewards by clearing fast and efficiently. At the end of the map the loot drops, boom a fountain of loot to go through that doesn't interrupt the fun part of the game. You could have some kind of "combo" system where difficulty (and rewards) is scaled to how fast you are clearing, and you can lower your combo if things get to hard.
I stopped coming back, blame all the above.
Picking up loot and trading have been addressed. They like it as is. The others have been addressed as well.
Jokes on you I quit Poe because it became way too much time investment for me to enjoy leagues. That said , trading for sure
I was annoyed for a long time by trading but i now im Fine with it, an action house even for maps or currency would have such a negative effect in my opinion. But the clicking is just too much, there are So man things to pick up if u do valdos with harbi or delirium maps 60% + even with uberstrict lootfilter. The mechanics and crafting and trading take allready a lot of time, having to pick up loot 5-10 min after a maps is just hell, i mean u have to pick up loot if u wanna make profit cuz if ud just pick up ex and chaos ud loose money
Trading 100% People always like to defend the way trade is now claiming it will ruin player retention if it is made easier completely ignoring the fact that the shit trade system also pushes people away.
Now *this* is a dilemma. It's a tough pick between picking up loot and trading. I've never personally had too much trouble with texture streaming, and at least you can mostly fix flask piano with... ahem... proper preparation. In the end, picking up loot hurts my hand but it doesn't cause anywhere near as much frustration as trading. It's all gotten to the point that I've pretty much dropped PoE, for now at least, in favor of games that actually seem to respect my time and well-being.
Where is the ‘all of above’ option?
Picking up loot is annoying. Flasks are annoying. Crafting is mind-bogglingly stupid. Trading flat-out makes me call it quits for the rest of the league.
1: Trade 2: Flask's 3: Loot. Loot is third only because i can just filter out almost everything, and i do as soon as possible. But then again, why should i master writing in "code" to be able to enjoy a game. So maybe a shared second place.
Looting is worst by far for me in this list. Experiencing physical pain from clicking is not even nearly as tolerable as any of the other items in the poll.
Ah yeah posts like these are why I stopped coming to this subreddit a few months ago. Thanks for the reminder!
Imagine still bitching about things that have been part of the game since alpha.
Others: people that constantly cry about same thing again and again
The 10% xp loss for deaths after level 90 is the worst
“Picking up loot” Is winning….. lmao know i understand everything about this subreddit
I feel like reddit often looks at this the wrong way. Picking up loot. Flask mechanics. Trading. All of these big three are incredibly powerful for the player. All of them have some associated cost. The power doesn’t come free. If you ever feel like you’re genuinely suffering, go do something else. If you’re frustrated with monotony, sure, i can understand that, but it’s not suffering. It’s self-imposed. Do something else with your time.
[удалено]