Stories from Development: The Map System

Incoming wall of text, analyzing "endgame content" from a designer's POV.
Maps are simply randomized areas of monsters that each require a key to enter.

There is no rhyme or reason to why you're fighting those random monsters in that random area, unless your goal is to battle the shaper - then it's a very very very long randomized road to eventually gain access to each of the guardians and eventually that boss (never been a goal of mine - it's unrealistic for me, with the game as it is).

This expansion is making a valiant effort to put some meaning into it, creating a war between two forces, so maps are fronts on a battlefield, essentially. I have a feeling it was more aimed at stopping the meta of only running a select few maps that were "best" for xp and drops, so you're forced out of your comfort zone to influence this tide of battle through the atlas, requiring you to do battle in maps you'd otherwise avoid. I am wondering if this war is a personal war, or if all players completing maps influence the same lines of battle.

I don't know how successful it will be in making it feel like new endgame "content," rather than just another reason to do the current endgame content.

When you boil maps down to their basics:

* Random tilesets.
* They can be filled with randomized monsters, not always indigenous to the tileset for variety.
* Mods rolled on them can change the circumstances of the map, inflicting random statuses or impose other restrictions to impact gameplay for short periods of playtime only in that map. (some circumstances are more challenging than others, some are just tedious annoyances, some are build crippling - this was likely to encourage trading maps that roll badly for your build if they are vaal'd, or to increase the currency sink as you roll to remove the undesired mods)
* Many have bosses to fight, like at the ends of acts. (which are just as, or less rewarding than act bosses, as in, not worth the risk or time to fight, unless you consider the map chance worth it, while act bosses at least must be fought to move on to the next part of the story.)


It's really a shallow "endgame" that has never enticed me to play very far into it. It's all about blowing up loot pinatas as fast as you can and rushing to the next map,
* enforced by the extremely low experience gain compared to requirements past 90 (because of no-lifers), and
* extremely low drop rates of worthwhile gear (because of trading balance),
* where the junk on the ground is nearly worthless (even if a great item drops, most people never ID'd it to know,) instead just grabbing currency,
* because "loot tension" makes inventories so small that currency/one-slot items are the only things worthwhile to collect,
* and the time wasted ID'ing is not worth the time to stop killing. ID scrolls and ID'ing items seems like such an unnecessary step in gameplay like this, just have stuff drop ID'd so more of the actually good items are "found" and made use of, this may make people feel better about drops, and make it seem like you increased drop rates, without actually touching any settings!)
* Bosses aren't worth the risk or time (especially after the doubling their HP stunt), so they're skipped as well.

It's easy to see why the game is where it is, meta-wise, and this expansion and its mechanics do little to change that, as described thus far. (those going for fast xp will still grind the "best" maps for time invested, and only those hunting the new items will bother with the new war mechanic.)



The good points about maps (for a designer/developer):
"Maps" allowed a small startup game company to provide constantly "fresh" randomized replayable content to keep people busy without having to program each area individually, like the acts. Content creation for PoE is thus reduced to creating tilesets with rules of tile connections and lists of monsters to spawn within them and their random mods for blue packs and rare monsters. Gear is likewise nearly all randomized, aside from "Uniques" that are custom made.

Maps require the expenditure of currency to "roll" the state of the content, so they help drain currency from the system, reducing the amount players profit from the drops of a map and reducing "inflation" in the economy. Limited inventories and limited portals into the area also reduce the potential gains from each map (this is described as creating "loot tension" where you have to decide what's worth picking up, and what to leave rotting on the ground.)

The work required to create this game boils down to creating tilesets, creating monsters, then databases of base items, prefixes, affixes, and RNG numbers, along with subsequent balance. This allows them to focus their programmer's efforts on league creation to change how the base game is played in potentially interesting ways, along with optimization and bug fixes - and hopefully on new endgame content.

Bosses and uniques seem to be the outliers on requiring an extra amount of effort to add to the game, because they have the potential to change the rules so much. They're not just new combinations of modifiers added to existing things. These are also the things most players look forward to seeing in each expansion (beyond the mechanics of the league) I'd say those 3 things are the closest thing to "new content" that expansions and leagues add (with expansions more heavy on the introduction of new tilesets and monsters, whereas leagues are heavier on the modifiers to existing content.)

So I understand why they'd want to continue to expand upon this successful endgame feature.


Endgame Additions -- Lateral or Vertical increases?
The "endgame" nature of such additions are inherent to their access and power needed to defeat the enemies presented. Can you access them before you defeat the final act boss? Then they're not necessarily "endgame" (unless you require more power to defeat that content than you need to defeat the end boss, which makes the access method questionable.) In this way, I categorize endgame. What level of power is expected to defeat said content? Is it supposed to provide lateral growth of the game and its challenges, or is it vertical, increasing the need for power above previous challenges?

When considering vertical power growth of challenges, does previous content provide a realized increase in power to allow players to advance to more difficult endgame content? Do people experience a game whereby doing one endgame activity they become powerful enough to advance to the next, or is it all tied to a grind that can be accomplished at any level of power, simply tied to RNG for their sense of progression? At this point in time, I'd say the game is entirely focused on the RNG grind and more difficult content does not adequately reward players for the increased difficulty.

There is a dangerous disconnect to the satisfaction of completing endgame content if bosses don't drop anything better than the hordes of pinatas that blow up easily, they're not worth the risk. This method of vertical progression of increasingly dangerous bosses while also rewarding players with stronger items as a reward easily succumbs to power creep. (especially seen in MMO's with gear sets that you get from each advancing dungeon - but this is the only satisfying way to reward players in a vertical growth/vertical danger environment - that I can see.)

If endgame bosses are equal in power/danger, purely lateral endgame, wherein their defeat simply earns different rewards than other content (their selection of drops are catered to a certain set of prefixes/suffixes, or unique prefixes/suffixes) this opens the door to a wide range of endgame that doesn't succumb to power creep and provides options as to what content you want to do, and try to earn rewards that benefit you as a player individually, whereas someone playing a different build would do an entirely different endgame challenge.


Proposed Endgame Features:
This first change is mainly tied to the entirely random selection of prefixes and suffixes on dropped gear. As you progress through the game, the range of rolls only increases at the top end potential. That's a good first step in character growth. At certain stages of difficulty, however, the selection of rolls should decrease. First dropping the least powerful affixes from items once you reach maps (at the latest), and only for affix categories with more than 3 affix levels. Bosses should always drop items with the least possible affixes removed throughout the game. As you increase in danger to map bosses, remove the 2 least possible rolls on items, and for further endgame bosses, remove the bottom 3 possible rolls (at least). This increases the quality of all dropped items from more dangerous challenges (doing this, while retaining the RNG chance in those lower areas for the higher rolls allows for "exciting" and "unexpected" drops... and adds the feature that drops in the dangerous areas are less anti-climactic and underwhelming.)

As outlined above, I would increase the lateral growth of the game by creating equally dangerous endgame bosses and areas that cater drops in different directions, similar to how you have new base items dropping in certain areas. The method to reach these bosses and areas should not be through the map device or atlas - that simply becomes an extension of the current endgame, rather than a new endgame. The systems need to be separated for the most part, like vaal areas and Atziri, the prophesies and the council, the talismans and rigwald. The further they are separated, the more they will be perceived as "new" endgame content.



If they're intent on keeping maps as "THE Endgame", I have these 2 proposals:

First - Corruption Hunts
In a previous endgame thread, prior to the Atlas of Worlds, I suggested an endgame feature where Zana sends you on a quest to find the source of the corruption she was always talking about. I was thinking they were sort of chaotic baby-Beasts (or manifestations of the beast under the mountain) that were as strong as map bosses.

If I were to expand on that idea, these would be sets of at least 3 maps strung together from 1 entrance portal provided by Zana that wouldn't close until the quest was done or you abandoned it. You'd have to defeat each map's boss to move on to the next in the quest string. Since this would be an alternate entrance to "map equivalent" content, currency could be expended with Zana or a new NPC to modify the string of maps, perhaps allowing you to follow the path further, or follow a path to a more dangerous source. The corruption string effects would impact every single "map" in that path. The path wouldn't close when you portal out... it would act like a farmable story-mode area until the quest is complete.

Now that there's an atlas, the paths between maps are easily understood. Completing maps along a corruption string could lead you through maps in the described way, with boss kills (or "map completion" for maps without bosses) opening a portal to the next map in the string, eventually leading to a unique map battlefield with the new endgame content bosses.

Second - Atlas Portals
Similar to the above idea, but not linked to any quests or new content, I suggest that "Map" items become your entry key to the atlas, but once inside, and until your 6 portals are used up, by defeating bosses on each map (or map completion if the map has no boss), you open the locked atlas portals to the adjacent maps. Atlas portals do not use up your exit/entrance portals. Maps would carry over the rolled properties of the first map.

This means, that once you enter the atlas through any map, you can stay in the atlas as long as you can complete the maps you encounter and kill their bosses to keep moving on. Map bosses or completions could be bypassed by using a map item as a key to open the dormant locked atlas portals to the next areas.

I understand this would have a large impact on the "economy", because once you roll a map, all the maps you encounter are pre-rolled without expending currency. The counter to this is that you have to kill bosses to move on. Also, you can't take "more currency" out of mapping than currently, as they retain the same number of exit/entry portals. There is more "loot tension" in this mapping experience. So, more currency isn't created, but less is taken out of the system for those who are mainly in maps for XP and don't care about drops too much.

In addition, this version of mapping allows players to access all of the atlas content as long as their build is up to the challenge. There is no RNG about being able to find the map drops. As long as you can kill the boss, you can move on to the next map. Map items become "save points" in your Atlas exploration, and chances to re-roll the mods on the maps in case they're getting too dangerous as you proceed, or not providing enough challenge.