I still think map drops are fine - boost drops and good players can do 79++ all day long

"

Char1983 wrote:

What is also interesting is that according to some of the proponents here in this thread,

a) the economy in 1.3 was very broken
b) there was no reward for building a good character
c) everyone could get to the highest character levels as easily as the top players

That is actually mostly true, however it hasn't changed in 2.0^^

a) The economy always broke because of Mirrors, they are one thing that breaks the economy because with them it only needs one good rolled item and after that buying a mirror is always the better choice compared to crafting your own weapon, since this involves incredible risk and is likely a more expensive even if you get there.

b) The issue with building a good character is that "good" is a very vague explaination for the quality of a build. And the only way to get real rewards, because your build could do incredible things is by using mechanics that are clearly op or even bugs. The old Cast on Death/Righteous Fire interaction was one of that things. Since those don't last that long you just go to the Tier1 picks. Cyclone, Reave, Flame Totem, Firestorm, Tornado Shot etc. To be honest I would consider a build good that makes Wild Strike equally effective as Cyclone, because this involves a lot of thought and theory-crafting, but it would still be a build just as effective as your generic cyclone build, so you get the same rewards.

c) That is technically true as well. Your character-level is mainly a function of time invested. The top-players often see strong builds or effective synergies a bit earlier as other players, which very likely give them the edge, because it needs time for those to spread. Another thing though is that a lot of good players are not really playing for the highest level. If they don't have those 12 hours a day to invest it is likely that they will not make it anyway, so they very often just play and make alts and often make great builds as well. I wouldn't mark a high-level player necessarily as better as a player with lower level, but if someone theory-crafts a build using Spell-Totem with Flame-Dash and kills Atziri with it I would say he has a very deep understanding of the game and that would qualify him as good in my opinion.

"

What is not random in this game? You don't have to turn everything into RNG just because it works for something else. People like some amount of risk, randomness which makes replaying same area still entertaining. But if you put RNG to everything then only result will be chaos. People still need some guarantied results - like if I kill next boss, I go forward. But if everything is RNG it will make most people mad sooner or later.

In games like Baldur's Gate there was some random loot but uniques were fixed drops - usually guarded by strong boss. That made game interesting too because it made you plan your path through the game. So when you planned build you also planned your path through quests. There is nothing like that in PoE. You can't plan build requiring powerful unique because dropping it or buying it is often out of question - so you are limited by RNG again and again.

The first part is actually exactly what I was saying. Content should not be gated by that much randomness. A bit is fine, but overall you should still make progress without having to farm for currency. We could take a very extrem example to show what PoE basically does. So imagine your playing Doom, you are really good at it and could finish the whole game just with your fists. You finish the first 3 levels rather quickly without even getting hit, after finishing the 4th level you noticed that you are suddenly back at lvl3. So you finish that just to end up in lvl3 again. After that you go to lvl5... but damn after finishing lvl5 you end up in lvl2. That is basically how PoE works.

Well the thing with uniques is... if your build needs a Mjölnir or Shavs it isn't really a good build. Mjölnir is mostly a gimmick item that isn't actually as powerful as the price suggest, but is a lot of fun (at least for those wearing it, not so much for those in your group). And both are actually findable outside maps.

"

Boem wrote:

A) Economy is never broken since it's a naturally evolving cycle. It might get manipulated, but that does not imply it's core functionality is broken, it just means a lack of willingness of other participants to compete.

I guess it depends on the definition of "broken". I would say our real economy is broken, not only does it mainly work with money that doesn't actually exist it is also completly dependend of highly liquid states like the USA, Germany or GB having very high debts. If the USA, Germany and Japan repay all their debts (very unlikely^^) our economy would collaps. So for my definition of broken a economy can be broken if it evolves towards a direction opposing its original intention. For PoE this means that the economy should take the items you find that might be of value to others but not you and give you items you need, however it fails miserable at this because people don't put in the effort to sell mid-tier quality items very soon into a new league and you only get items worth multiple exalts, which you don't have the currency to buy.

"

C) map availability was extremely high, i chained 78's non-stop in all past league's, solo. If i was dedicated i could probably have pushed for lvl 100. I simply don't care for it that much, i run to many allts to dedicate to a single theory-craft.

Your points hold little value without any out-liners of what your actually talking about though. There so general that everybody will have an opinion about them without touching base.

Peace,

-Boem-

The question though is... is that bad? I still felt chaining 78s required a lot of effort, exspecially solo (it actually wasn't harder, just the currency drop was lower, so to get back your investment you needed a bit more luck. I mainly sustained arround 77, but that was also with a little help from Zana :P

"

Emphasy wrote:

The first part is actually exactly what I was saying. Content should not be gated by that much randomness. A bit is fine, but overall you should still make progress without having to farm for currency.

It was just addition to your post. I agree with you.

"

Emphasy wrote:

"

Char1983 wrote:

What is also interesting is that according to some of the proponents here in this thread,

a) the economy in 1.3 was very broken
b) there was no reward for building a good character
c) everyone could get to the highest character levels as easily as the top players

That is actually mostly true, however it hasn't changed in 2.0^^

So in summary, things have not become better, just more boring. Plus, a lot of people are excluded from a lot of the content in this game. Great!

Again: Please, GGG, gating items behind RNG is fine, gating content behind RNG is extremely frustrating (the Atziri and uber Atziri content is actually not gated behind RNG because you make PROGRESS there rather than falling back from 79 to 74 maps when you are trying to reach 82 maps).

It just sucks really hard if you play the game for an evening and at the end you did not make any progress, but actually you made negative progress.

"

Emphasy wrote:

"

Being a softcore player, there is no inherent risk in running maps for me :) The only real risk is to my sanity in trying to achieve higher and higher tiers.

As for buying the new maps? NEVER! Content does not become commodity until I've earned it myself :)

Not sure how you would define "earning".

If I can beat every map-boss shouldn't I be allowed to do every map? I earned it I made a char, leveled him but the content that might actually push my char to the limit is taken away from me. That is the issue that a lot of players have. They are never really challanged because 90% of the maps they are forced to run are so easy that it is sometimes even boring to just run through them.

By earning I mean naturally progressing through the tiers of maps myself, as would be expected by playing a game :)

It's the progression bit that is holding me up a little at the moment - not because of difficulty (I'm running a chessey as fuck SRS build that will happily do Deathless Atziri runs at the moment), but because of the RNG.

I'm firmly in the "Something is fucked, Timothy" camp.

"

Emphasy wrote:

"

Boem wrote:

A) Economy is never broken since it's a naturally evolving cycle. It might get manipulated, but that does not imply it's core functionality is broken, it just means a lack of willingness of other participants to compete.

I guess it depends on the definition of "broken". I would say our real economy is broken, not only does it mainly work with money that doesn't actually exist it is also completly dependend of highly liquid states like the USA, Germany or GB having very high debts. If the USA, Germany and Japan repay all their debts (very unlikely^^) our economy would collaps. So for my definition of broken a economy can be broken if it evolves towards a direction opposing its original intention. For PoE this means that the economy should take the items you find that might be of value to others but not you and give you items you need, however it fails miserable at this because people don't put in the effort to sell mid-tier quality items very soon into a new league and you only get items worth multiple exalts, which you don't have the currency to buy.

"

C) map availability was extremely high, i chained 78's non-stop in all past league's, solo. If i was dedicated i could probably have pushed for lvl 100. I simply don't care for it that much, i run to many allts to dedicate to a single theory-craft.

Your points hold little value without any out-liners of what your actually talking about though. There so general that everybody will have an opinion about them without touching base.

Peace,

-Boem-

The question though is... is that bad? I still felt chaining 78s required a lot of effort, exspecially solo (it actually wasn't harder, just the currency drop was lower, so to get back your investment you needed a bit more luck. I mainly sustained arround 77, but that was also with a little help from Zana :P

point 1)

This is clearly a player error and nothing related to the functioning economy or distribution of items.

The items are there, so are the players, so are the tools to list them.

If anything, it shows there is still a niche market available for somebody to dominate. The lack of player effort to fill that spot should not be an argument to claim the economy is failing or non-functional.

point 2) i never found maintaining a 78 pool difficult and this was without even utilizing fragment pieces to boot up the inherent iiq. Do note, this is from 3 league's all able to sustain 78 pools solo with very little effort.

Inherently, no there is nothing wrong with that.

Of course if it infringes on the core design philosophy of GGG that there end-game should be "hardcore and difficult to sustain" then there is an underlying problem visible to them.

Chaining 78 maps also reduces there "perceived value" to players, there was nothing special about chaining court-yards and palaces all day long, it was just common business. A shrine and shipyard in between to freshen stuff up etc.

People complained the end-game didn't have enough diversity as-well.(a rotation of 4 maps gets dull eventually)

Now maps have more inherent value when acquired. The entire perceived dimension of GGG's end-game was altered. Which i consider a benefit to the game long-term.

Peace,

-Boem-

So why not make maps up to 78/79 rather easy to sustain, and make things hard afterwards? With the right balancing, you could play 79s all the time, 80s 30% of the time, 81s 10% of the time, 82s 5% of the time. Would that be wrong? High level maps would still have value, everyone would have more fun (except for the rich players that want to gate others from having fun because they are afraid that those players might get a too big piece of the pie), and you would be running a lot of different tilesets.

Right now a lot of players have problems sustaining 75, and I am having problems sustaining 76/77, because I do not have enough currency to participate in the gambling for high-level maps (for the same reason I do not link stuff myself, but buy things linked). It is very frustrating.

"

This is clearly a player error and nothing related to the functioning economy or distribution of items.

The items are there, so are the players, so are the tools to list them.

It is mainly a time-issue. People want to play the game, not trade. Even if you actually use all the tools it is still a considerable time-investment(that are not in the game and I assume 50% or even more of the players don't really want to use inofficial tools to play the game). The more time you have the more likely it is you invest some of it in trading, however if you have more time it is very likely that you are already richer than most and don't really want to bother selling 3c items.

"

i never found maintaining a 78 pool difficult and this was without even utilizing fragment pieces to boot up the inherent iiq. Do note, this is from 3 league's all able to sustain 78 pools solo with very little effort.

With my non-MF chars I simply run out of currency to roll the maps. Because you needed packsize. The old system wasn't better it was just bad for different reasons, mainly the dependency on packsize. Not to mention how much more powerful and common cartographer strongboxes were. Considering the most expensive Item I ever dropped in 800 hours on steam and likely the same amount on the client is an Eternal Orb or Alphas Howl (depending on which on is more expensive) I guess it might also be a bit of bad luck.

I mainly used a mediocre MF Summoner, my TS-Ranger and for the really annoying stuff my Dual Shockwave-Totem scion. And with those 3 I could do every map, although the summoner would lose the low-life benefits in a CI-Map.

"

Chaining 78 maps also reduces there "perceived value" to players, there was nothing special about chaining court-yards and palaces all day long, it was just common business. A shrine and shipyard in between to freshen stuff up etc.

People complained the end-game didn't have enough diversity as-well.(a rotation of 4 maps gets dull eventually)

Now maps have more inherent value when acquired. The entire perceived dimension of GGG's end-game was altered. Which i consider a benefit to the game long-term.

Well there were and still are two big issues.

1. Yes the endgame was limited. And it still is. In 1.3 you basically only did the few 76+ maps. Because running low maps wasn't rewarding. In 2.0 you are only running the 74-76 maps because you can't get to higher ones and the lower ones are still not rewarding.

The worst thing is, Divination cards would have been an option to make some of the lower maps more valuable. But they actually removed some of the interesting ones like Springs and pushed them up... which means another high-level map with a laughable easy boss, the same goes for Arsenal. They don't even allow the Fellshrine Cards to drop in Cemetery, likely because it is too low as well (though Graveyard isn't that much higher).

2. The currency is still one of the biggest issue. The only way to sustain high maps is to craft Domination on every single one, which isn't exactly cheap. With some of the mods being a lot meaner (the Crit-Chance one) it might also mean that there are combination that simply destroy most chars. Getting the Crit and Vulnerability is just one example. Grouping is still vastly superior to solo-play. Not only do the maps get easier, they also reward more currency to roll new ones.


I always wonder why a company doesn't manage to implement a proper ingame-trade system but design new maps that most players will never see.

"

Char1983 wrote:

So why not make maps up to 78/79 rather easy to sustain, and make things hard afterwards? With the right balancing, you could play 79s all the time, 80s 30% of the time, 81s 10% of the time, 82s 5% of the time. Would that be wrong? High level maps would still have value, everyone would have more fun (except for the rich players that want to gate others from having fun because they are afraid that those players might get a too big piece of the pie), and you would be running a lot of different tilesets.

Right now a lot of players have problems sustaining 75, and I am having problems sustaining 76/77, because I do not have enough currency to participate in the gambling for high-level maps (for the same reason I do not link stuff myself, but buy things linked). It is very frustrating.

First of all, 79+ maps are based on the same tilesets and boss fight mechanics that you've seen in lower maps or even the core game. So for what reason can you claim that doing the same tilesets in 79+ maps with the same or similar boss fight mechanics new content to you? You could mimmick higher damage and HP by reserving an aura on life, not capping resists, and taking out a link. We already do this to practice for Uber at regular Atziri. If you want to see how your character compares to others in real 79+ maps, then earn them like the others who earned them. They don't have different means of earning them than you.

What's the point of making arbitrary suggestions on the breakpoint of what map level is easy to sustain? How could you possibly defend an argument as to why it should be 78-79 rather than 75-76? I feel like once again you're just complaining about your personal situation, while ignoring the global situation. Like OP said, if it were easy to sustain 78-79, then Fyndel and co would be running 81-82, and again people would complain about not being given access to 81-82 rather than 79-82. The only thing that raising the sustain level higher would do is make it easier for less dedicated players to reach the more dedicated ones. That would make the game more shallow, which is always bad.

Also maps aren't the only form of content. Build-enabling uniques are as well. Do you think those should be given out for free as well? If yes then just go play the games that give away content and equipment for free, what's with trying to make PoE do that too? If you're ok with items being RNG-gated, but not "content," then why are you ok with that?

The fact that maps are consumable, rollable by the player, and have inherent value due to their scarcity is one of the coolest and most unique design decisions GGG could have made. It's astounding to me that people don't understand how amazing the map system is compared to end-game systems in other ARPGs.

You are just not reading what I said.

Make low- and mid-maps easier to sustain.

Leave 80+ maps at the current unsustainable level or make them harder to sustain.

Effect: Noone runs more 82 maps then now, but casual players get to play higher-level content as well. But yes, I see that there are a lot of people that are afraid that others might have fun as well.

Sorry that English is not my native language, "tileset" was the wrong term, the correct term would likely be "level layout". I do not consider Graveyard and Cemetary to be the same level, they play differently, they are different content.

As for uniques, if I need a specific one, I just save up for it, buy it and then have it. If I buy a map (which currently are crazy expensive for 80+ maps), I play it, get nothing in return and am disappointed. I cannot make progress in maps, while I can make progress in gear.

Which is the reason why at the moment I am not playing high-level maps at all, they just make me angry.

"

MatrixFactor wrote:

First of all, 79+ maps are based on the same tilesets and boss fight mechanics that you've seen in lower maps or even the core game.

Chicken Doge boss in 79 Village Ruin is not the same encounter as those two in Daresso dream. They might look the same and use same skills, but the fight is not the same.

I would comment on more 79+ Act 4 based maps, but I haven't been able to loot any others in ~160 hrs of mapping since 2.0 release -_-

---
repeating from a few pages back:

Map content =

* tilesets / layouts
* boss fights / dynamics
* ilvl gear / gated uniques
* difficulty

Especially the last one is important and completely overlooked by some commentators. I don't give a damn if Megaera looks the same as the fire witch from Act 1, it's a different fight, with different mechanics and an obstacle to overcome. It's there, it needs to be defeated.