A4Merciless.

Really needs to be revamped, I bet you can count on one hand how many people even bother doing it past the skill point quest.. Malachi doesn't get farmed, because of the sub bosses making it incredibly inefficient, and nobody bothers to do the quests on merc because there's no reward lol.

This one is a bit worrisome, especially combined with the nerf to map drop rates. One quote I saw said that +2 maps drop less often, for fear a player might get one, run it, and find themselves out of their depth. That's a funny sort of logic, given that act 4 is intentionally made too hard for the average player coming straight out of finishing act 3. Like: isn't it far more likely for people to get frustrated not being able to "finish" the game?

Putting Act 4 and the high expense of mapping together: it's like GGG don't want people playing the end game. It's an odd situation.

At least in 1.3 u had a rare map after killing Dominus, AND AWESOME GUITAR MUSIC WITH CREDITS.

But right now is like: "Malakai is dead, good for u, here's a portal" THE END

My face and comment after first cleared act 4 was like: o_O "Thats it ?!"

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Migdalin wrote:

One quote I saw said that +2 maps drop less often, for fear a player might get one, run it, and find themselves out of their depth.

Yeah, this is perhaps the most hilarious thing I've heard from GGG, either a statement of outright ignorance, or just a straight-up lie from them.

Example: GGG states they want players running "Harder mods," yet a random alch on a map will average to adding FAR more difficulty than just going 2 levels higher. Couple this with some of the particularly brutal new mods... And they're pushing players to far higher difficulty levels.

And yeah, coupled with the HUGE "out of depth" shift for Act 4 merciless... This whole prospect is outright laughable.

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Migdalin wrote:

Putting Act 4 and the high expense of mapping together: it's like GGG don't want people playing the end game. It's an odd situation.

This is the conclusion that most people have arrived at when using logic. It seems that GGG was absolutely terrified that any sizable number of people (perhaps outside of their most-favored streamers) were hitting 100.

Basically, they wanted to balance it around the tiny few dozen that actually reach the very end, and as a result SLIGHTLY slowed them down in exchange for wrecking the endgame for the other 50-100,000+ players that get to the 80+ range.

If GGG doesn't realize what's up, I suspect the ALREADY going trend will continue, as that "50-100,000" that makes up the vast majority of their playerbase-hours continues to shrink.

Up? Come on, act 4 is fucking useless in merciless... Such a bad decision.

Agreed. A4M = grab passive point and go mapping. There would need to be something really good at the end, to make me bother with that Malachai 20fps crap fight in Merc too.

(no, having to pick one rare 68 map is not enough. Who would want to play a rare Pit or Desert anyway?)

The only really decent thing A4 Merciless brought is leveling up to 80 in the first 2 zones. Easy as pie.

I do feel Malachai should be adjusted to provide incentive to farm him, even maybe Kaom and Daresso.

Malachai dropping maps in the 75+ range would be pretty nice. Hell, I'd farm him.