Our view on map drop rates

Heres your fix for map drop rates:

Upon killing vaal oversoul for the first time on merciless, he has a 100% chance to drop a level 60 map, shunting players towards the endgame.

In a map, there is a 'enemies left' count displayed on the top right under the map info, showing how many enemies remain on the map. After you kill the last enemy, you get another map (level between 2 below and 2 above the map level), guaranteed. Note this would be the VERY LAST enemy, as in you would have to clear the ENTIRE map, leaving not a soul alive.

For players on level 60 maps, having cleared it and not really needing any 60-62's, they'll probably just move on to the next one. If they're running out however, they might think 'ehh maybe I'll go kill those last 30 creeps, they gotta be around somewhere'.

This keeps the map drop rate about where it should be, while providing players with an option for replenishing their maps should they desire to expend the time in doing so.

Also, the map crafting recipe should be reduced from 3 maps of the same name/lvl to 2 for a map of a higher level when crafting maps above level 63, since higher level maps are far more valuable and nobody would craft 3 of them for a single level up.

I've crafted quite a few 65s from 64s and several 66s from 65s

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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.

I can respond some from when I was leveling (to 82).

a) I was using as many chisels as I could buy, but it was extremely hard to find enough of 'em.

b) I found doing rare maps, frankly, sucked. Unless you rolled a rare map with + size mod on it. The reason it sucked, is of course, because you have to reroll it with chaos orbs and you'll run out of 'em really fast. Generally a blue map with +size would beat a rare map with hard mods on it (and thus high IIQ), unless the rare map had +size. I have +110 or something IIQ from my gear so for me, that compensated any rare mod it could get. Still, I think the map progression was very hard. You end up around lvl 64 maps and its extremely hard to get up to lvl 66+ consistently (with 110+ IIQ from gear and always rolling maps with +size).

c) I got a ton of maps with +110 IIQ on my gear, way more than I can ever use. But I never get enough >66.


So yea, maybe increasing the drop rate is good. But it should somehow easier to continue your map progression once you start getting higher level map drops. Actually getting a map (like any level 60) is absolutely ZERO problem. Ask in chat that you want to buy one and you'll get one in two seconds, literally.

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silentman wrote:

I'd like to add something.
This game is very good.
The core idea is really nice but it's missing something which are carrots.

If you die at higher level you lose a large portion to your exp.
If you try to make a 6l item you mostly will lose a fortune.
If you like to try a high level map with hard mods on them and you can't progress you end up losing in most cases both a huge amount of exp and a rare map.
It's all about sticks and very few carrots far between.
A system like this mostly drive the players to give up and go to much more friendly alternatives that already exist.

I still see level 30 loot in level 64+ maps.
Still see that when i sell a level 59 rare to vendor give me very similar currency amount to a level 20 rare.

No i don't want the game to be more easy but i want it to be more rewarding....i don't want the best loot in game but i want a loot that is maybe just 10 or 15 levels behind the map i'm currently doing.

This.

Look at the core of the rest of this game, and what makes the rest of the game so much more awesome than the end game in its current state.

- Passive Skill Tree, where every level feels like very real, personally crafted character progression, and one's ability to advance and to make a strong build is what determines continued advancement.

- Working Currency/Crafting system. Players can farm orbs easily, which are either currency or crafting components, all of which make a great market system with built in currency sinks.

- Customizable Skill System which allows players to choose how each of their skills is in relation to his/her other skills.

(I have a lot more pluses here, but these three will suffice for this argument.)

Advancing in the Passive Skill Tree is a carrot, an incentive to advance. In the current map and exp system, a player needs to be at close to same level content to continue advancing rapidly. Every map a player goes into could just have a really bad set of monsters, and the player has a chance to die. When you're level 70 and you only get 2% of a bar of exp from a lvl 60 map, that means you're facing 8 maps of potential death before even breaking the boundary of advancement if you happen to die later. So that carrot is crushed.

With the current map drop rates, players are trying to make the most out of each map. Great! That's a good thing! The problem is that their amount of player wealth is tied to doing so, and if you have to roll a map with an alch + 2 or more chaos, that is probably more than the amount of currency you will actually get out of the map itself. This does not even factor in the fact that many players need to buy Chisels from other players, as well as the maps themselves. This is all in order to advance! That means that Maps are a net loss in currency at the moment, which means they are not rewarding. There is no incentive; carrot is crushed.

And finally, by that point, the only way to improve upon your skills is through more links on equipment. More links = more sockets = stronger skills. I do not need to link the countless threads that have been made QQing about the current state of Fusing Orbs. So, that carrot is crushed by an outside factor, meaning that there isn't even that incentive in maps.

Three of the biggest perks to this game are currently being squashed by end game. I am not expecting that these all need to be addressed at once, but they are important to look at, as many of your hardcore players (in gaming mentality, not in reference to the League) are being turned off by it.

This is all coming from a player who
1) has actually been enjoying the map system quite thoroughly
2) has been finding more maps than I have been spending since 0.9.12c, and
3) does not spend wild amounts of currency on fusing for 6L or on chaosing maps, but rather has several builds made so that I can take on different content with different characters... all from 1 alch per map.

Also... I really love the Disgaea Item World, so the posts that have been made about that are things that I would love to see implemented. ;)

I wonder how bad it would be to have vendors carry a lower level map (the tileset it has is randomized like a lot of other items) and you need to pay in Chisels to purchase one so that if you run out of maps it will be a lot easier to get back into endgame?

My take on the map drops in 0.9.12:

I spent 2+ weeks mostly focusing on maps, after leveling up other characters and rare farming at lower levels with full parties and tons of iiq/iir. In the 2+ weeks, I didn't see a map level 65 or higher drop (except in a party which was about 2% of my playing time). I ran 78% iiq (with a 40% iiq gem on a single attack that I used whenever possible that brought it up to 118% iiq).

Today I had a level 68 drop, 2 level 67s, 3 level 66s, 3 level 65s, along with several level 60-64 maps (all while soloing, and I started the day with no map higher than level 61).

My suggestion is run harder maps if you aren't getting the map drops you think you should. I had a level 65 map with 68% quantity drop 4 or 5 maps (2 66s and a 67 among the drops). If you're using alterations, don't expect too many map drops. I've been using alchemy orbs on every map I run, with great success.

Doing that already. Ran a 65 with 73% nothing. I pop in at night after HC race, and for 2 days. I haven't received anything. Only run 60%+ it was better before.

I ve just run 3x65 lv maps with 70%+ quant and it seams to be working for me, the only problem I ve now is burning orbs on them, but I think I can handle that with more trading. Unfortunately I would run more tests tomorrow not today... good luck guys in finding them.

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TehHammer wrote:

I've been using alchemy orbs on every map I run, with great success.

And where on earth do I get the amount of currency to keep this up?

Same for the idea someone said about trading a chisel at the vendor for a map... Where do you people get all this?

I ran out of maps, out of alchemy/chaos/alteration orbs, all while trying to maintain playing endgame. And all that while those same orbs should have been stashed/used to get gear upgrades, since most items I wear at lvl 72 I have been wearing since around lvl 60.

So no, I guess if this is how it should be, then PoE is not the game I was looking for.

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paffix wrote:

I ve just run 3x65 lv maps with 70%+ quant and it seams to be working for me, the only problem I ve now is burning orbs on them, but I think I can handle that with more trading.

Trading should be optional, not mandatory. While solo playing and relying on your own drops, the current system is way too fragile to allow someone endless endgame content.