Short and Sweet why this game isn't something I can play long term

What you are saying here doesn't make any sense. You say that SSF is amazing and the only proper way to play the game, but you also say that the game isn't something that you can play long term? Why? Cause streamers don't play SSF and that ruins it for you? What???

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Pizzarugi#6258 が発言:

Your mistake is common among a lot of PoE1 players: You believe SSF is a viable mode on its own and not what GGG intended it to be, which is a challenge mode.

The game is designed fundamentally from the ground up to encourage trading. Some of the best items in the game are intentionally made rare to inflate market value, nothing more. By playing SSF, you're doing the equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot by opting out of a foundational game mechanic.

GGG did not, and unfortunately probably will not, balance SSF to be more fun for people who don't want their enjoyment dictated by the market.

The path to h@ll is paved with good intentions.

It's easy for developers to want this, to want a return to the glory days of ARPG's, to wants players to experience the early trade community we had decades ago.

But today we have mass guides, we have a different culture of player that wants things now and will go out of their way to get it.

People have FOMO, they don't want to be last place, they want to be where the action is.

The streamers are trading, they're rushing content to be relevant, players want to be doing the same things, it normalizes and suddenly everyone is rushing the game and chewing through content in a matter of a week.

It's impossible to just enjoy the game now because the zietgiest is so rancid and full of players who are simply over it all.

GGG largely doesn't have much control over the culture of the day and the streamers playing 15 hours day and power grinding through all this content.

But what they do have power over are the trade mechanics that allow them and others to turn this game into a paint by numbers snore fest as you easily acquire max resists and a stats tailor made to your cookie cutter talent build.

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Glowie_Zigger#5018 が発言:

What you are saying here doesn't make any sense. You say that SSF is amazing and the only proper way to play the game, but you also say that the game isn't something that you can play long term? Why? Cause streamers don't play SSF and that ruins it for you? What???

No I never said that, but I do understand that the gaming culture is low attention span and full of knee jerk reactions, so strawmanning is just part of the game any more.

Everyone wants all theri cookies, no matter how unhealthy it is.

There are other arguments in this thread, like correlations to Diablo 4. Many of the best and most popular games of all time use no drop look, or bind on equip. Look at world of Warcraft.

A game where fun is derived from pilfering exciting loot from your kills becomes devoid of that fun when you hand the player power and progression on a silver plate in an auction house.

I could understand the counter arguments if GGG where doing a great deal to tweak and tune and balance trade, if there were roadmaps explaining how the negative aspects were going to be curtailed, but we're largely in the dakr, and the player base is in free fall, and a slew of other systems are degrading and appear to be in a state of developement hell.

It feels as though GGG are trapped by all their features, they do not have an executive who has a vision who can come out and say, "No this isn't working we need a cohesive and fun experience." Many of the features and mechanics of this game just hover around and get tweaked and tuned endlessly as they piss of a majority of players, or do great damage to the game itself.

If they gutted a bit of the overdesign, put that design on the uniques, and they cut trade systesm, and then got rid of those gimmicky trials. This game would be so much more enjoyable for so many people.

But they can't, because they are too invested in these ideas, of what some of the developers want in their heeads, no matter how poorly they are working in practice, and patch after patch they burn out trying to fix tertiary things hoping to fix the core issues with the game.