Stories from Development: The Map System

Always been a fan of maps and interesting to get the team's insight.

But to echo others thoughts, my issue lies in random progression. I have loved Abyss league. It is my favorite league (even over breach). But I'm basically done this league because the atlas is just not filling out.

The system has serious flaws if you are relying on trading/RNG to progress. Would it be so hard to have the boss of a zone at least have a 50% chance to drop the next sequential map??? That would at least give you a reason to kill the boss and help solve progression issues.

For a mere filthy casual scrub like me, Maps is the best end game ever.
150+ mod-able maps of different tile sets with 3 levels of rarity and 50+ unique ones, just WOW!
After almost 2 years of playing, still having fun as ever. Thanks GGG. :)

The current batch of Maps are amazing fun to play. I was pleasantly surprised by original designs that you don't see in the story zones and all the neat touches, like the changing paintings in Haunted Manor that are normal at a distance but change when you approach...

I'm not sure how long I've been playing this game now, maybe 1-2 years, currently feeling out T14-15 maps with a few of my characters, still getting incrementally more powerful, and it still feels like I have a ton of challenges ahead of me. Honestly the PoE end game feels like a treasure trove. Well worth every moment!

(Plus on top of the great design, the incredible art and audio... top, top stuff. AND helpful support people. AND some nice collector items you shipped to me. Okay I will stop now, haha.)

First of all, I would like to thank GGG for making such a great game. I have spent lots of time with POE and have had great solid fun, so hats off to the dev team.

I, however, have some suggestions that I believe might improve an already-great game:

1. Map drop rate is fine. Getting a high-level red map drop should feel great because of its rarity.

2. The map content should be made a bit harder. Not everyone should be doing red maps (partly due to its rarity). A player can either make a item-find map-clearing build that breeze through mid-yellow maps, yet will die to red maps horribily. Similarly, mid-to-high level red maps should only be run by more robust builds that clears slower.

3. Sextants are bad because once a player has spent a considerable amount of currency on setting them up, they feel they should run the same sextanted map over and over again to recoup the cost. This kills diversity and makes the game boring. Maybe make it so that sextants are a cheaper type of exalts that add some special mods to maps.

4. A dynamic system of modifications to IIQ can make players more likely to explore more maps. Popular maps should be "punished" by putting a "depleted" de-buffs on them that reduces IIQ. Maps that no-one runs should be "rewarded" with an "abundant" buff that increases IIQ. Lets say this buffs and debuffs have a maximum of 10 stacks, and each stack add/subtracts IIQ by 3%. Then a players would be more willing to run cheap Torture Chambers with +30% additional IIQ, instead of exorbitant Shaped Vault with -30% IIQ.

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It was quite frustrating, watching people intentionally sabotage their own progression and then getting angry about it. Eventually we realised the truth: the game design was at fault and needed to change. We needed to find a system that made players feel good about playing at the right level for their progression.

This pretty much exists nowdays too. The difference is pepole are not sabotaging their own progression, but their own fun. They are angry about sextant blocking and shaped map farm, while nobody said, that you have to play this way.

YOU DONT HAVE TO FOLLOW THE MOST EFFICIENT STREAMER META BUILDS, WITH THE MOST EFFICIENT FARMING METHOD.

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Repetition. Convention. Duplication. Creation distilled to perfection.

Sounds familiar isnt it? Thats how streamers play, and when you follow them you will efficiently not enjoy this game, which was made for you to have fun. Sounds logical. Just farm and be angry about it, you little bio-bots.

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2nd - Your boss balancing has gotten horrible. The reward for killing them just is not there. This was compounded in 3.o when you jacked up their health by a huge amount while doing nothing to make it more rewarding to engage with. And now in Atlas, you imported a ton of multiphase complex boss fights from phase 2 of the act game..... now a boss with a ton of phases is neat and exciting when it's a significant encounter; but when it's guarding nothing and has no real loot, you are just sending a loud and clear signal that engaging with this encounter is a bad use of time. Making bosses not worth engaging with removes the 'end goal 'objective of each map.

I can totally agree with this. At least make the boss drop a fix map with the same tier it was killed on, or something. This way you dont have to worry about MAP-HELL as long as you are capable of killing the boss.

Thanks ggg for great challenge game!

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Motopsycho wrote:

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2nd - Your boss balancing has gotten horrible. The reward for killing them just is not there. This was compounded in 3.o when you jacked up their health by a huge amount while doing nothing to make it more rewarding to engage with. And now in Atlas, you imported a ton of multiphase complex boss fights from phase 2 of the act game..... now a boss with a ton of phases is neat and exciting when it's a significant encounter; but when it's guarding nothing and has no real loot, you are just sending a loud and clear signal that engaging with this encounter is a bad use of time. Making bosses not worth engaging with removes the 'end goal 'objective of each map.

I can totally agree with this. At least make the boss drop a fix map with the same tier it was killed on, or something. This way you dont have to worry about MAP-HELL as long as you are capable of killing the boss.

I also agree with this, I have more fun and more rewards playing a new map rathing than fighting a boss that most of the time will bring me nothing but loss of time and also obviously risk.

An idea : along with IIQ and IIR scaled on the number of map mods, introduce a third amount, for example IRC (Increased Reward Chance, name it like you want). This IRC would increase just like IIR and IIQ with the number of map mods, but would directly influence the quantity/quality of maps, currency and uniques dropped. People complaining about map drops would have a chance to increase their map pool at the cost of a boss fight. The high-end uniques would become more accessible. The tougher the fight, the higher the chance to drop nice stuff. Of course the idea needs to be balanced and polished, but you get the idea. To sum up : MAKE BOSSES MORE REWARDING ! :)

Very interesting post, really enjoy reading these.

Just want to echo others that map drops this league basically stopped the game for me. Harbinger was the best league so far. Forget lackluster league mechanics - one could actually PLAY THE GAME in Harby thanks to horizon orbs.

At 25/40 I just can't be arsed to keep grinding for the 'privilege' of more grinding. Funny, seems I can't be arsed to buy a supporter pack either, for the first time in a long time.

Maps ARE the game. Playing the ACTUAL GAME should not be heavily RNG gated. And for fucking sure should not require trading. However it was in the past: this is now. Wake up.

Thank you so much for developing PoE, doing cool stuff and sharing background stories

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