Our view on map drop rates

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Chris wrote:

Hi guys,

This is posted in response to the Map Drop Rates thread.

Here are some observations on the current usage of the map system:

a) Players are not using enough chisels. I'm going to raise the drop rate of chisels in 0.9.12d. They are an important tool in helping get those maps that don't quite have complex enough mods to yield a whole new map on average.

b) Players are not playing hard enough maps (in terms of mods). If you don't have mods on it, its yield may not average a new map on average. For players who are making theirs rare with difficult mods, they get more maps than they spend, on average.

c) The nature of randomness means that conclusions drawn about playing low numbers of maps are dangerously misleading. Even when I was averaging 1.5 maps per map, I still had a run of six maps in a row where no new maps were found. I later had two maps in a row where I found three or more maps per run. That is randomness!

d) On average, players are finding more maps now.

e) On average, players are finding more items from maps now.

f) On average, players are reaching higher level maps more easily now.

g) Players appear to be running more maps than they were before the patch.

h) Most players are choosing maps that would have been good in 0.9.11, without switching to the mods that produce the best results in 0.9.12.

i) The modelling we were using does not account for some ways that maps are lost (disconnections, etc), so we are increasing the drop rate of maps in 0.9.12d to compensate.

Remember, if you get a bunch of people in a room to flip coins and count how many heads they get, a whole bunch of people are going to not get as many heads as they should on average and will feel that the system is unfair. For every person who has a bad experience with a string of eight maps, someone else is basking in riches. This same principle applies to everything else in this type of Action RPG that uses extreme randomness for its item system.

We'll continue to monitor feedback and statistics. Thanks again for the testing.

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Moosifer wrote:

On the actual subject, everyone is trying to roll the same affixes they did before the changes.

maze, larger area, pack size, blue mobs and rare mobs.

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An easy solution is make all outdoor map areas...

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drakar8888 wrote:

What we have been playing so far seems like a giant placeholder to me, there is so much potential behind the idea of maps as end-game that I really refuse to believe what we have now is all there is to it. I am just going to throw a wild guess out there predicting that the map system will be reworked quite a bit upon entering open beta or shortly after.

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RandallPOE wrote:

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drakar8888 wrote:

What we have been playing so far seems like a giant placeholder to me, there is so much potential behind the idea of maps as end-game that I really refuse to believe what we have now is all there is to it. I am just going to throw a wild guess out there predicting that the map system will be reworked quite a bit upon entering open beta or shortly after.

I predict all we'll get is some extra maps recycling the acts 3 areas and bosses...

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MrDDT wrote:

Something has changed since the last patch or 2.

It has to do with the level of maps dropping, not the # of maps.

Ive yet to run out, and I doubt I ever will, but the level of the maps I'm doing has gone down and all the data I have shows that it shouldnt have changed. Getting a +1 or +2 map level now is 10x less than it was before (data pool of 58 maps since the patch), my prev data pool is over 100 maps. Clearly 10x is a huge change. I've not changed the way Ive been rolling my maps either, as I have a formula I use.

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MrDDT wrote:

About what Moo said, I disagree. crafting at that level could easy just be as effected by maps as it could be anything else. I see no reason to increase the map level. I thought it was high before the patch.

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TehHammer wrote:

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Moosifer wrote:

On the actual subject, everyone is trying to roll the same affixes they did before the changes.

maze, larger area, pack size, blue mobs and rare mobs.

I'm not. I tried that for a short while and found it to be pointless. I switched to running hard maps after the last buff to map drops (0.9.12) and found that to be the most effective way to progress in the map game. Now though, it doesn't seem to matter how you do it, you'll fail and get stuck on 60/61s.

Running hard maps at least I have more maps than when I started, my map count is increasing, even if they're all level 60. :/

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An easy solution is make all outdoor map areas...

I agree but I also disagree. I think all of the map areas should be bigger. Removing the maze/area mods would be fine, as well. But I also found that those mods didn't make a very big difference prior to the 0.9.13 patch, what I found to be best was map quantity, nothing else was even close.

Increasing quantity significantly for tough combo mods would be brilliant. Elemental Weakness + Monsters do % more (insert elemental damage here) should definitely be a huge boost to the map's %, not around 30%.

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Moosifer wrote:

Have we been doing the same maps? Everyone I've talked to said they are rolling the same mods, while they will do others that are hard they focus on the ones I listed. Hell Mouze told me before they fixed blue mods he used a divine to get 30% blue mobs.