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

"

Crackmonster wrote:

long story short - you didn't want 79-82 maps added, you just wanted more 77-78 so they could boost rates till u can get all u need np.

We been over this.

No, that is not at all what I wanted. Where did I ever say that?

I am pretty sure though that the rest of the people here understand me a lot better than you do, though. Not sure, might be because they actually try to understand me.

"

Char1983 wrote:

"

Crackmonster wrote:

But past that i am afraid that you will just need to improve your mapping skill. Because of their system with the highest maps not intended to be maintained, they cannot boost higher drop rates very much without all good players running 79+ all the time. That is my guess as to what will happen.

No. I don't need to improve my "mapping skills", I need an infinite source of currency. There is a difference between knowing what would be ideal to do, and having the currency to do so.

Furthermore, they said that 80+ should be rare, not that 79 should be excessively rare. So what is wrong with everyone playing 79s? Probably nothing.

Actually there is no "mapping skill". If you know how to apply currency to a map you are good to go. Since you need to apply currency to all maps and have to run all maps stuff likey layout, or when sacrifices are more efficient, or which mobs are native to certain maps don't really matter.

Chisel -> Alc -> Vaal -> Sacrifice with a potential Chaos for really bad rolls is a very basic mechanic. And to sustain that you need to drop one Vaal Orb, 4 Chisels, one Alc and 3 Sacrifice Pieces per map... or the necessary currency to buy them.

"

You must be a novice mapper, if you haven't already noticed that your understanding of maps is in constant development.

It really isn't. Yes they changed things around, but the only thing that is different is that you want to do the boss. The rest hasn't changed. Get quantity, get packsize and get anything which might give you more mobs to drop items from even the way to get this hasn't changed. Yes they removed the packsize mod, which actually made it a lot easier, since for mapping you can very easily calculate what more packsize would net you. The old 20 - 50% packsize mod mainly meant 20 - 50% more chance to drop maps. Technically lower, since most of those additional mobs are white. So if the theoretical map-quantity multiplier is the same Quantity is always better than packsize. Things change if you want xp, then you always want packsize.

"

The reason i'd say that they probably don't want over 78 maps is because the old xp values are adjusted around a general area cap of 78. They may simply adjust some formulas such as reduce monster xp so now lvl 80 is similar ish to 78 before, but who knows, its ggg they tend to go about things their own way.

They didn't actually change anything. The only difference is the lowest possible xp to get is 1%.

1. You have a safe range of 3 levels increased by one for every 16 complete levels (so at level 82 your safe range is 8 levels below or above you, which means you can do lvl74 maps without penalty).

2. If you are above or below this level a very complicated and odd mathematical equation is used to determine the actual xp you get. It is [(Playerlevel + 5) / ( Playerlevel + 5 + Levels from safe range^2,5)]^1,5

For a level 99 player this means that he still gets 22% xp in a lvl82 map, not that bad. Even a 79 map would still give him 9% xp. To fall down to this 1% that is now the lowest possible xp-amount he would need to run lvl70 maps or so (I think lvl70 has 1,4% of the xp). So every map above 71 is uneffected by the change to xp-gain. That is why Etup is already 100 again, since they actually made it easier to get to 100 not harder if you can chain high maps, because high maps simply have a higher level then before, which makes it a lot easier to get to 100 than before. If you can sustain the same map-level as before it is very likely that you level as efficiently as before.

So XP isn't really an issue, since GGG made reaching 100 a lot easier by moving up the levels of maps by 2. Which means you can allow yourself to drop 2 levels while still getting the same xp. What they did reduced is the amount of xp you would get from farming Fellshrine or Docks, but maps are basically unaffected since you need to be about 25 levels above them to get even close to the old 2% cap.

Gonna reply to your 3 sections like this:

1 - So you think there is no skill involved in rolling maps well with a limited currency supply? Nothing that you learn from experience and time invested in trial and error? Heh.

2 - Read. I said "your understanding" is in "constant development", not that maps are being changed around all the time.

3 - You might Have a look again, because you seem to trying to disprove something i am saying? Do you realize you just repeated part of what i said in much more detail?

I said they "may" change something, i didn't say they changed the formulas.

The reason i suggested that they could "change" some of the formulas was that it is the only way that the average level of maps runs can be increased without also making it easier to hit 100, to answer him why i was on about the 79 level of maps - because that is how the xp was balanced before 2.0.

"

So XP isn't really an issue, since GGG made reaching 100 a lot easier by moving up the levels of maps by 2. Which means you can allow yourself to drop 2 levels while still getting the same xp.

What is this i am reading?

I greatly enjoy the new mapping system and the new maps - hope the upcomming ajustment to drops will improve the current situation for many players.

Did my first lvl 80 map (Wasteland) today. I rolled 110% quantity|40% rarity|20% pack size on it and run it with zana mod with this mods: +45% monster HP|+385% crit chance +35% multi|poison on hit|-15max resists|more rare monsters with nemesis mod and something i don't remember...

I did not expect to get another lvl 80 map or even a 81 out of it but i hoped for a tiny reward in form maybe a 78 map and some 77's/76's - with such scary mods on THAT boss, holy.
The map itself felt great to play through with my lvl 91 character (finaly some challenging content i thought) - also faced the exile Magnus in there which crit me twice with his flameblast and nearly oneshot me with it - it was so scary and so much fun to fight him and it felt so good when i killed him.

Then i finaly faced the boss: The Brittle Emperor (or Voll on steroids). I knew if he crits me i will instantly fall over dead - the fight took forever, because of his insane regen mechanic. At some point i thought i can't even kill him (+45% HP on mobs from map mod makes the regen just insane; vulnerablility doesn't counter regen anymore due to a PVP patch in the past)
Luckly i got 44k DPS on my char so finaly managed to take him down in an epic battle of dodging his attacks and desecrated ground - took me 10min at least only for the boss.
He droped a ton of loot (lot of rares) more than a normal map boss.


Reward? 1x 68map, 1x71map, 1x73map (rest of the loot was bad as usual)


And there is were i thing the system needs to be improved. It felt totaly unrewarding doing this map in terms of loot and map drops despite doing very hard map mods.
Very hard mods should be rewarding if you can full clear the map and kill the boss - if i had gotten 1x78map i would not complain at all and i would be happy with the result.




For the record: I usually do 76-78 maps fairly constantly and can sustain them as a solo player with huge effort and currency investment. The new high level maps (especially the bosses) are so cool to fight against - it is a shame that this fun content is gated behind RNG, everyone with a high level character should be able to expirence that content i feel.

EXP gain in high level is also gated purly behind maps, which is just bad design and not fun because there is no alternative.
Sure you can level with 76/77/78 maps to high 90's or even 100, it is possible but what is the point behind it if your character doesn't feel challenged while doing so?


Looking foreward to next weeks patch!

I hereby dub Crackmonster's strategy the:

Super Squirrel Rolling Map Haduken.

He boss like Ryu, much fireball in face of opponent. Also know more about everything like Al Gore.

I think when it's time to calculate drops, the program is simply buggy.

Examples (though some of them are fixed by now):
1. "+1xxx rarity%" strongboxes used to drop only white+blue items. This was not RNG, I popped between 50 and 100 such boxes before always rerolling if this mod was on. Never got a single rare or unique. It seems to be fixed since some patch late in 1.3.
2. "+x rare items" used to mean "precisely x rare items", reliably. Although most other boxes used to drop a rare or 2.
3. "Bosses have 1/5 chance to drop a +2 map". No way, maybe 1/20 does. I get many more +2 maps from rares than from bosses.
4. Some boxes dropped no loot whatsoever. My feeling was this happened only on rare boxes.

So I believe that the code which takes care of calculating all the odds depending on all the mods is just simply buggy. If every boss dropped 1/5 of a +2 map, you could easily sustain any level just by killing the bosses on white maps. (1/5 of a +2 map is the same as almost 2 maps of the same level, no way you could drop down in levels unless you were very unlucky for quite a few maps).

My theory: GGG doesn't dare touch that code, because if drops worked as intended, they'd have to rebalance all basic drop rates, lest we get showered in loot, which is considered A Bad Thing (TM).
So they just adjust the basic rates until they feel overall drops are OK. This means specific drops (such as maps) can be way off.

Suggestion: Grow some balls and prototype fixes even in ugly parts of your code! Then adjust other stuff to account for the fixes as needed.
Little tip (sorry for the condescending tone): Check that you don't underflow really low numbers to be truncated to 0 when multiplying low probabilities...

"

Treffnix wrote:

3. "Bosses have 1/5 chance to drop a +2 map". No way, maybe 1/20 does. I get many more +2 maps from rares than from bosses.

No, bosses have 1/5 chance to drop a map. Any map. This then translates into 1/40 chance or so, to drop a +2...

What would actually make sense, is to scale this base boss chance of 1/5 with total map quantity. Then you'd get a correlation between rolling high maps, doing boss kills and getting returns. As it is now it's almost useless.

OP you are under the illusion that your experiences implicitly reflect the reality for most players post 2.0. You're wrong, they don't. Having had some good luck may be enough to delude you into thinking a problem does not exist, but not everyone has that luxury. Map sustain is the worst it has ever been for me, and from 95% of threads/comments I've read, the same holds true for others as well.

As for you having "largest map pool you've ever had". Sure, if you mean to count 68-70s maps as equal to 76+ maps, something beyond absurd. Trash maps drop for everyone sooner or later. That isn't what people want or need; rather they need to be able to sustain content their chars can handle. Anything less is just mediocre and boring gameplay.

Step up your map game son!