New to arpg never played LE. question about ssf

I started with Diablo 4 and found early on I loved the gameplay but the loot and progression felt bad to me. Not rewarding at all. Felt like my time was being valued and I was being thrown so many items nothing felt special or powerful.

I tried Poe 2 and it's a great game but as a controller player on PC it's bad. No loot filter on tier 15 maps is awful. The gear progression feels bad because I have to trade currency on trade sight is the only option. Grinding maps for just currency non stop feelts bad. Crafting is pure gambling. So for now I am done with Poe.

Wondering if last epoch could be fun as a ssf experience. Based on my opinions of D4 and poe2 do you think I might find some joy from last epoch and not have the same feelings about these systems.

I did read that last epoch has lots of good qol stuff so that's what it making me want to try it. And apparently crafting is great. I am treating like a single player game and don't want to trade/play the market game.

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Originally posted by MrElderwood

A related question - Do you have to stipulate SSF at character creation or do you choose it later during gameplay?

Solo challenge (SSF) is decided upon character creation, but can be then disabled later to become a non-solo challenge character from the settings. There are also 2 different types of Solo challenges - one is a "true character SSF" where the character has no access to shared stash, materials or progression from other characters, and then "acount found SSF" which is what Path of Exile has, where you can move items and materials between different characters but not be able to interact with other players.

What /u/PoorLittlePicklePest mentions below about the Item Factions (Merchant's Guild or Circle of Fortune) is quite a common slight misunderstanding of Item factions, as neither of those have nothing to do with the Solo challenge.

It just happens to be that most Solo characters choose Circle of Fortune (CoF), but you can be aligned with Circle of Fortune and still play with other players and are able to gift items(not to be confused with trading which requires being part of Merchant's Guild) to other players, so being part of CoF is not a requirement to be a Solo challenge character.

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