Our view on map drop rates

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xenogfan43 wrote:

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.

Terrible idea.

Maps are not THE endgame once Vaal is down, esp for 60s. Thicket, Pyramid and Fellshrine work perfectly fine as well.

And 100% drops are terrible in general. It would mean that as long as you're willing to do Vaal over and over again, you will never run out of level appropriate maps.

You can reach Vaal insanely fast if he is your only goal in the pyramid.

The main subject is being avoided so i'll ask again and i really need an answer to that.

GGG,Does your end game map system depends on you being lucky to find maps?

Or Does your end game map system depends on you grinding to be able to grind?

This need a straight answer no a dodgy one , i'm sorry.

I, personally, have not run any maps at all; but after reading the concerns of people running out of maps, what if they implemented a special kind of map? It has a chance of dropping of the final bosses of each act (not a huge % drop like 100%, but i was thinking like 5% or so). This map could be permanent and endless(I also thought about having the map have charges, and once it gets used that many times, it gets faded, and you have to re-charge the map by doing something).

What could happen in the dungeon is that they make "Brackets", and these brackets could be sets of levels (5, for example) and at the end of every bracket, there is a random boss from one of the previous levels that is guaranteed to drop a map that is on par with the difficulty of your bracket. Once you are done with your bracket, you have the option to move on to the next bracket, or head out, grab your map and start running the one that you got.

9.12e seems a little better, or perhaps the luck is starting to turn.

Today started with a lvl 60 map, got another 60, ran it, got another 60, ran it and gotten 5(five) level 60 maps. During the last map drop people started to join in and the drop was for another person, but still 5 maps was worth a little smile. (and yeah alching maps is the new way)

After that started running in group, one 60 - nothing, another - nothing, third 60 - another 60 drop, then we started to run blue-alted maps - nothing. Then a 63 map dropped a 63 map. Then a 60 dropped a 60.

So overall it seems like things are not so bad.

A suggestion: PLEASE MAKE MAPS NON-WHITE OBJECTS. Give maps (like gem) its own special color.

Using minions, if they kill stuff off screen and it drops a map, cant see it unless turn off "filter whites" (not possible to play) - or what doing currently is taking a second run through the map (takes time). And maps are no less valuable than alt or trans orbs for sure to include in the visible list.

Would love to see more chisel drops (as well as alch drops).

If it weren't for the stash of alch orbs, would not be possible to sustain alching every map found. ID'ing and selling just MF gear takes way tooooo long, but is a solution.

9.12e seems better as far as map drops. At least after couple of hours playing the map stash did not diminish.

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S_SienZ wrote:

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xenogfan43 wrote:

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.

Terrible idea.

And 100% drops are terrible in general. It would mean that as long as you're willing to do Vaal over and over again, you will never run out of level appropriate maps.

I cant believe someone made such a statement.
"As long as you are willing to do endgame, you will never run out of level appropriate maps, this is terrible"

Does that mean that you are of the opinion that people that are willing to do endgame shouldnt have level appropriate maps, but instead do lvl 60 maps when they are already lvl 80?

My brain just exploded.

I was really hoping for more maps to drop, but I guess I'm still unlucky. My marauder is probably forced into early retirement at 77 with one lvl 64 and four lvl 62 maps left.

There are loads of lvl 60/61 maps in the stash but I will not run those at 77, it's just not good enough.

Guess it's a good thing I'm not a one-char-only type ;)

Reading through some of the comments, I think it would be important to remind people that we're still pre v1.0, this means not all game content has been released yet.. The game is still a WIP.

Some comments are made as though this is the game. While I do still believe that the gaps in the map system should be filled with future non-map end game content, I also feel that some measures can be taken temporarily to fill these gaps until such future content is ready to be released.

For a short term fix, I feel that a single guaranteed map drop is a viable solution. It could be dropped with a gold border, picked up only by the one who opened the map (recover investment, disallows one from "falling out" of the end game) with a guaranteed range of levels (-2 : current : +1, skewed to have ~50% chance of being current, other ~50% evenly divided between -2, -1, and +1) or something..

I don't like the idea of the long term solution being altering map drop rates much more than they already have been; I like the exclusive nature of the map system and the tension it causes.

The only problem, IMO, is falling out from content comparable to one's level, and the long term solution for this, again, I believe to be additional non-map end game content, particularly content that compliments and encourages map runs rather than simply being a supplement. The short term solution should be, IMO, temporarily making it more difficult for players to fall out of equitably leveled contend and be forced to grind lower levels (less profitable, boring) content to get back in.

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Helheim wrote:

I was really hoping for more maps to drop, but I guess I'm still unlucky. My marauder is probably forced into early retirement at 77 with one lvl 64 and four lvl 62 maps left.

There are loads of lvl 60/61 maps in the stash but I will not run those at 77, it's just not good enough.

Guess it's a good thing I'm not a one-char-only type ;)

Also, this... At some point in every aRPG, you reach a level cap and the end game... Ends. Replayability is then determined by the incentive to create a new character to progress and experience game content through. Perhaps that's all we're facing here. The lack of act 3 sets our end game content to conclude in the mid 70's, rather than 80's or 90's...

Guys, please share you secret, how the hell on earth i suppose to have enough orbs for such endgame?
I would really like to do hard rare maps with decent IIQ but i cant afford it. And if i cant afford it i cant find more maps.

I have one 64 and one 50 lvl chars, and i haven't seen divine or exalted orbs, found like one gcp and one chisel rofl, and most of my chaos, and those few regal orbs are from vendor recipes. Do these orbs exist at all or I'm just missing something?

I'm not even asking how to hell i should get enough orbs to modify maps AND craft or upgrade my gear.
Even i try to use my best orbs on maps to get best possible results, i usually find nothing inside except some crappy chances, or maybe alch at best.

Even those rare items drops inside maps are so awful i cant describe, i vendor almost all of them.

I have no idea how GGG imagine char progression with such awful drop rates.

I have feeling that current system forces me to spent more than i can potential get back in return and that's a fail IMO.

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gh0un wrote:

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S_SienZ wrote:

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xenogfan43 wrote:

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.

Terrible idea.

And 100% drops are terrible in general. It would mean that as long as you're willing to do Vaal over and over again, you will never run out of level appropriate maps.

I cant believe someone made such a statement.
"As long as you are willing to do endgame, you will never run out of level appropriate maps, this is terrible"

Does that mean that you are of the opinion that people that are willing to do endgame shouldnt have level appropriate maps, but instead do lvl 60 maps when they are already lvl 80?

My brain just exploded.

Except Vaal is not endgame, we're in beta mind you, he's like the halfway boss, the Belial of this game.

And to clarify, I am not against increasing the drop rates of maps per se, but making it a 100% drop will essentially kill off maps like Fellshrine and Thicket. Some variety is nice.