From a Q&A
Q. (Quin) In D3 if you’re trying to be competitive you’re forced to play in a group. Will this be the case in D4? Have you considered solo self found?
A. (Joe) We have considered it (SSF). We have announced hardcore, seasons. The reason we have hardcore is that we have a passionate fanbase who wants to see. We also know people are exicted about SSF, we are looking and considering the implications. We don’t have anything to announce on SSF today.
As for groups: we do not want it to feel mandatory to be in a group. We understand that if its not mandatory but its dramatically more efficient then it will feel mandatory to be competitive. There are logistics involved in being in a group, additional effort. To some extent, we want to make sure there are benefits to being in a group but it should not feel mandatory
They don’t want it because it would divide people too much. 8 separate groups:
1-2) Season And Non-Season SF
3-4) Season And Non-Season SF Hardcore
5-6) Season And Non-Season Trade Hardcore
7-8) Non-Season Trade
To avoid that I’d suggest marking player somehow so everyone will know instantly: you can trade with this character or it is SF. I would allow SF players to play with non-SF if there is no competition (ladder). Again, SF players could share their loot in D3-like manner.
The last time Q69 asked them about SSF in 2019 they said, No. Now they said they are looking at it.
If they want to push true competition that’s the way to do it.
SSF draws also many dedicated players to itself. One of the largest threads (480+ pages) on PoE forums is SSF related:
I heard somewhere recently that PoE community migrates to SSF more and more. Wonder if this is true.
SSF is more satisfying due to longer progression time.
On trade league you can buy the farming stuff very fast (since prices drop fast) and from there on it’s fast upgrades until you reach the moment each upgrade is 10+ Exalts and at that time most players stop. In SSF on the other side the curve of progression is constant and you can play with months until you reach the 10+ Exalt mark.
It just feels better to have such longer and constant progression, even if you are a casual player. The reason many casual players avoid SSF is that PoE has difficult to learn and master mechanics and a lot of mistakes on SSF can lead to you basically hitting a wall. But if the skill cap was lower, I’d say the majority would play SSF.
Now, PoE is kind of different from D4 and multi in D4 would be way more fun than in PoE, but SSF would still be something extra in D4 you can start after you finished your goals in trade league. The more options and modes we have in D4 the better.
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