Our view on map drop rates

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Chucullinn wrote:

I honestly can't see why we can't revert back to the old system, I felt the nerfs to the area and maze mods were enough. I really thought there was nothing wrong with it [the old system], except some people in the community felt they were "forced" to wear gear with IIQ. No one was forced, and people had more options in the way they wanted to do maps, instead of just "roll high quantity map with terrible mods".

I disagree with you there because I think you are looking at it from only the point of view of established players who already had a nice set of dps gear and spare magic find gear in their stash or at least a load of currency to buy it with. For people new to endgame then they were indeed forced to wear anything they could get their hands on with IIQ even if it was a downgrade to other stats if they wanted to progress a little up the map ladder, where as established players could just swap a piece or two out and not really notice the difference. I know this because I hit merciless on my first character just as maps were released and found it impossible to progress until I downgraded several pieces to stuff with IIQ on and at that stage of the game it's really dull to be needing to do that when instead you should be increasing your dps/survivability and feeling more powerful, that's the fun of the game IMO. And even with a fair bit of IIQ gear + gem still the only way to really guarantee enough map drops without the currency to reroll rare maps was running blue maps with a very limited set of mods that did nothing for the difficulty (+magic monsters, +rares, maze etc.) which was really boring also.

So I think the current system definitely has the right idea, if you want a better chance of getting maps you run harder mods instead of running some bullshit blue map with maze/rares etc. But it's just so RNG dependant that you see little difference in the result of running a +25 quantity map as you do from running a +125 quantity map, that is where the problem is and what should be addressed IMO. Magic find gear is fine - it should be a bonus to chance of finding stuff and nothing more.

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RandallPOE wrote:

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Chucullinn wrote:

I honestly can't see why we can't revert back to the old system, I felt the nerfs to the area and maze mods were enough. I really thought there was nothing wrong with it [the old system], except some people in the community felt they were "forced" to wear gear with IIQ. No one was forced, and people had more options in the way they wanted to do maps, instead of just "roll high quantity map with terrible mods".

I disagree with you there because I think you are looking at it from only the point of view of established players who already had a nice set of dps gear and spare magic find gear in their stash or at least a load of currency to buy it with. For people new to endgame then they were indeed forced to wear anything they could get their hands on with IIQ even if it was a downgrade to other stats if they wanted to progress a little up the map ladder, where as established players could just swap a piece or two out and not really notice the difference. I know this because I hit merciless on my first character just as maps were released and found it impossible to progress until I downgraded several pieces to stuff with IIQ on and at that stage of the game it's really dull to be needing to do that when instead you should be increasing your dps/survivability and feeling more powerful, that's the fun of the game IMO. And even with a fair bit of IIQ gear + gem still the only way to really guarantee enough map drops without the currency to reroll rare maps was running blue maps with a very limited set of mods that did nothing for the difficulty (+magic monsters, +rares, maze etc.) which was really boring also.

So I think the current system definitely has the right idea, if you want a better chance of getting maps you run harder mods instead of running some bullshit blue map with maze/rares etc. But it's just so RNG dependant that you see little difference in the result of running a +25 quantity map as you do from running a +125 quantity map, that is where the problem is and what should be addressed IMO. Magic find gear is fine - it should be a bonus to chance of finding stuff and nothing more.

I can see where you are coming from, but I was in no way "an established player" when I started doing maps, as a lot of other people were when the map system rolled out. In fact I had left the game for over a month at around level 60 to play Diablo, and I no currency orbs in my stash when I came back except for a few alchs and chaos. The best item/gear piece I had at a time was a relatively low level 5 link armour piece with item rarity (not quantity) on it, and a semi decent mace. That was it, everything else would be considered absolute junk by most of the population now. I was very lucky to find a rare map in pyramids. And in that map I found more maps, and at first it was a struggle, and had to plan out what I was going to do, but I slowly built up from that, to probably being one of the players who has ran the most maps in default league.

That is the way it should be, you just hit the end game (maps) and it SHOULD be a lot harder. Almost to the same way Maelstrom of Chaos might have seemed very hard to players who had just reached it and tried to solo it. In no way should you be able to enter end game and just blow everything out of the water, then what is the point of it? It would just be a random continuation of what you had already been doing to that point, instead of separating itself a considerable amount.

I guess what I am trying to say is, I went into end game with crap gear and had to drastically change what I had been doing up to that point to progress, and I was fine with it. If you think you can just do what you had always done up to that point and get away with it, well then that's a wrong way of approaching things. "Established players" who were lucky to get amazing gear and what not would always be at the forefront or be at an advantage when new content was added like this, it is almost always the case with any game.

Basically your opinion of the game is that you should always be powerful enough and always be getting more powerful. While I think that you should always be finding new ways to make the most out of your character, and change to fit this, even if that means sacrifices.

Neither of us is wrong in this.

Edit: I guess I should also throw out that I thought the drop rate when the map system first came out was a lot better than it is now, but that is just my feelings about it.

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Chucullinn wrote:

That is the way it should be, you just hit the end game (maps) and it SHOULD be a lot harder. Almost to the same way Maelstrom of Chaos might have seemed very hard to players who had just reached it and tried to solo it. In no way should you be able to enter end game and just blow everything out of the water, then what is the point of it? It would just be a random continuation of what you had already been doing to that point, instead of separating itself a considerable amount.

I guess what I am trying to say is, I went into end game with crap gear and had to drastically change what I had been doing up to that point to progress, and I was fine with it. If you think you can just do what you had always done up to that point and get away with it, well then that's a wrong way of approaching things. "Established players" who were lucky to get amazing gear and what not would always be at the forefront or be at an advantage when new content was added like this, it is almost always the case with any game.

Of course you shouldn't be able to blaze though without thinking & with shitty gear & that is why I think reverting to the original system is bad - because the most effective way to climb the map ladder was simply get some IIQ and run blue maps with the desired 2/3 stats none of which made the map any harder. Whereas the current system if it were implemented properly encourages you to run harder maps where you need to think more and swap gear around to overcome the mods that are on it.

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Chucullinn wrote:

Basically your opinion of the game is that you should always be powerful enough and always be getting more powerful. While I think that you should always be finding new ways to make the most out of your character, and change to fit this, even if that means sacrifices.

No I don't think that at all - I agree with your view here, but I think sacrificing dps for more resistances, more cast speed, more armour/ES/evasion or whatever other stats you need to complete that particular map as efficiently as possible is way more interesting than simply sacrificing dps for IIQ and running every map with the same set of IIQ gear.

It wasn't more beneficial to run magic maps, since the maps IIQ was added to yours. You were better off running the hardest maps possible with select mods. This is exactly the same way it works now, but with less drops overall. This is the problem.

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Chucullinn wrote:

That is the way it should be, you just hit the end game (maps) and it SHOULD be a lot harder. Almost to the same way Maelstrom of Chaos might have seemed very hard to players who had just reached it and tried to solo it. In no way should you be able to enter end game and just blow everything out of the water, then what is the point of it? It would just be a random continuation of what you had already been doing to that point, instead of separating itself a considerable amount.

the problem is, no matter where you look right now there is a severe lack of difficulty in maps which allows people that stack strictly IIQ to pull ahead of the rest.

difficulty of endgame maps needs a SUBSTANTIAL boost to counter this, its great if you want to bench some of your srsbusiness gear to stack IIQ, but ATM there's little to no difficulty tradeoff which makes stacking IIQ far too easy for endgame players if it were to go back to the way it was.

the map availability issue needs a far more serious overhaul than just going back to the way it once was, because that's only going to benefit a fraction of us and the goal here is to find an approach that can make the entire community happy.

IIQ whether it be via mods on a map or your own personal stats should never be the sole deciding factor between whether you can progress or not. leave the RNG frustration to gear and sockets, not maps.

take any other popular game with a gear progression system and think about how broken it would be if the intro endgame raids were as easy as the final content and the only way you could get into the final content was by purchasing a lottery ticket. world firsts, ladder positions, everything loses its value because the game turns from an opportunity for skilled players to an opportunity for just lucky players.

that is the current map system in a nutshell.

i'd like a way to access endgame content using skill as a primary stat, not IIQ.

after long and hard grind to lvl 73 i fnaly managed to run out of maps

back to lvl 58 vaal pyramid

isnt that fucking awesome?

come on GGG fix this, pointless to continue playing / testing this game if there is no enjoyment in it.... I play 12 hours a day and am only able to find 1 65 map and then the server resets for a pointless patch and loose it after 4 chisels and countless orbs to roll it, getting old trying hard not to unsistal the game and move on to some thing else, you gonna let this thread go a 100+ pages the facts are in the posts we need change now dont make us suffer through another 48 hour weekend of missery and unenjoyment you created a thread to get feed back now use it....

ign MelloYellow

Ive posted this in a couple of other threads, but this is probably where it belongs:

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I think I have a more elegant solution to map rates.

First the problem stated in mathematical terms:

The RoR (Risk of Ruin ie the chance of running out or maps) of maps is too high, in the opinion of many players. Im not having this issue yet: I currently have 10 maps, its been as high as 16, but ive traded a few maps to the vendor for higher levels.

Increasing map drop rates does not necessarily do much to fix the Risk of Ruin.

Ok, so how about if there was a chance of a Map including a link back to a zone on the campaign map?

so the Reef Map might link back to the Tidal Island or Twilight Strand.

Once opened the link is permanent: thus the player will always have access to the Reef Map.

On entry the Map gets an Orb of Chance type treatment. To balance this a new instance wont be player activatable; the map will have to expire in the usual timeframe. (no 'new' button on the ctrl-click screen, but a timer to say when its going to reset) And, of course it cant be chiseled.

Perhaps the new button could be used if the boss is killed, allowing for a no map drop scenario.

The chance of this link opening for any given map level should follow an exponential decay curve; starting at something reasonable say 10% for a l60 map and falling away for each L60 that has been opened. Higher Maps should have lower starting values for the curve.


This will do several things:
1. After opening a map, further drops of those can be used to trade up.
2. Once opened, characters will always have a map to do.
3. It will lower the RoR. Although there will still be a chance of it early on. Initial L60 odds could be enhanced iff the player has none open, although Fellshine/Pyramid runs are acceptable for characters starting out in endgame.
4. It creates a 'WTF, the map gets bigger?' moment for new players
5. It allows higher level characters to have a 'base level' of map to work from that can only go up.

B.

It would be nice to hear from GGG on this. Regardless of your opinions, the current map system is clearly creating a ton of tension and it seems like people are losing confidence.

I was doing very well in the 1 wk race. Got to act 2 merci in 2 days in my second race ever and was staying in the top 20. Started leveling on my own then in a group and was holding steady between 5th-9th place for the last 3 days. I got into merci act 2 at lvl 48, to lvl 67 I was grinding fellshrine and pyramid (fell in group, pyramid solo 82% AR) in this time I found 3 maps. 2 while questing and 1 in fellshrine (ran it AT LEAST 100 times). None in the pyramid.

When in maps I didn't do so badly, from those 3 60s I got a 61, 2 62s, 63 and a 64. I got the 61 and 63 at lvl 61 so I didn't think I could run them so I waited. Besides the first two maps, which I did in my low 60s, my easiest map was 36%, hardest 86%. Both of these don't match the IIQ on my lvl 76 on default where I had a 4 day and then a week later 2 day stretch without finding a map. Lucky in default you can trade for maps easily, 1 week race when there's been only 1-5 people who might have no interest in running lvl 60 maps, I have no shot to trade for them.

So I'm done with the race I guess and I'll take my reward. I was doing very well and if I had maps I would have probably finished top 5 but instead I'll hope to get top 20 at 71.

Playing the end game content you've designed shouldn't depend on RNG. Make lvl 60s ultra common, make them a vendor recipe or make it so you can buy them from a vendor. I just hate the idea that with about 36 hours left in the race I'm going to lose my top 10 spot because I couldn't find maps.

I'm also pretty sure the person in the 1st passed me because he was able to do maps consistently. So while I'm doing fellshrines, he's doing 60-63 maps, how is this a race? It's like putting someone on a bike in a NASCAR race and telling them "well, you couldn't afford car, not are fault you lost."

Please stop treating maps like GCPs. Make us earn 65+ maps, not 60s.