2.0.4 Patch Notes

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Serleth wrote:

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Heli0nix wrote:

Mostly agree with what you are saying except one little note: These changes are intented to be a test at all if things are really unpleasant in production i'm sure they will work a bit more on it :)

I see the mapa drama every years since the game exist ( Read this as: Since maps exist ) so i'm not really more worry than usualy. Are you ? :) Design problem. Not Tier or map level problem / map rng problem.

From all accounts, the change from level to tier is something they've wanted to do for a while and all indicators are that it will be permanent. And it's bad game design.

I'm not worried about the impact it will have on my own experience but more for the new players coming in. I remember when I first learned about ilvl and affix tiers, and how the ilvl for an item is determined.

Now for a new player coming in, they basically will have to keep the wiki open or do math or keep a notepad available or whatever to know what tier = what level of map if they want to farm for a specific ilvl base, until they get used to what map bases equate to the zone level. It's an extra step for them to take that, as you say, is a design issue. For veteran players, it's mostly just annoying, but still a pretty useless thing to list T1-15.

The most important thing about what they're doing with map tiers is the colour indicator, which informs us what level of affixes are available and can give us an estimation on the drop rate expectation. Which they could do just fine without changing the item to read Tier 1-15 instead of map level 68-82.

The ONLY reason I can see T1-15 being good game design is if it's a prepatory move for a major overhaul to the map system forthcoming sometime within the next 12 months.

No, it is a better design to group your difficulties and don't have a linear development. It will be much easier to communicate map changes with us and showing us in an easy and understandable way where we have to expect changes.

For example if they are now saying they are changing the monster damage in high level maps, which maps are all high level? 80-82 or 78-82, where is the line? WIth the changes GGG is able able to change the damage value of monster of map tiers. It's clear which maps are changed. They can easily add map modificators to map tiers. That is a better design philosophy, Imo. It also opens the possibillity to group maps into one tier. SO 68-70 could be possible one tier. Which would indicate the player the level of difficulties he will encounter in those maps.

And yeah I agree with your speculation that we will see a big map overhaul in the next year. But changes can be good. It's no use to be angry about things that you don't have experienced yet. Play the 1 month with the changes and then you can judge if it's good/bad or don't effect you at all.

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Heli0nix wrote:

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I'm not worried about the impact it will have on my own experience but more for the new players coming in. I remember when I first learned about ilvl and affix tiers, and how the ilvl for an item is determined.

I havn't considered that and agree this is a strong argue to not doing Tier instead of map levels.

Still Chris explained these map changes ( on reddit if i remember ) was intented to be a kind of tests to collect further stats etc ... can't really claim it will fail or beeing succeful have to wait seeing it in production.

In the strictest sense, you are right, but I think there's an implied sense that the "testing" portion refers mostly to the adjustments to drop rates. I could be wrong, and I sincerely hope you're right that 2.0.4 is a wholesale testing ground for all changes discussed.

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Every times something is done regarding map drops it end into many troubles and finaly after few months we just " accept it " as it is. This is what i was pointing as an endgame design problem and not a " numbers adjustements " or Item description / colors problem. It has always been the case.

Well to be fair there's been a lot more transparency and I think more open pipelines lately between GGG and the community and I think some of the other changes (ie, monster damage & map drop rates) are pretty good indicators that "just accepting it" is no longer the status quo. And undoubtedly there will be some things that we will either have to accept, or move on, as I'm sure GGG will feel it's healthier for the long-term perspective.

But at least there's a palpable sense now of being heard, even if the changes aren't coming as swiftly as we might hope.

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Spoiler

- Less Rush on release. Dropping a bomb like awakening was awesome except it was clearly impossible for you to handle problems in time and in a way where perspective are enough studied before beeing implemented. 3 more months bêta would have been great here.

- Not considering only forum and reddit discussions this is an average of maybe 3/4% of active userbase and then not enough accurate to base decisions only on that. Some Satisfaction survey would be greatly helpful here allowing you to target different personas aswell. ( please correct me if there is a more appropriate word here ).

- Taking into considerations all personas before changing mapping ...

There are a big difference between:

Standard solo player / standard group player feedback regarding mapping

SC temp league solo player / Group player Warbands feedback regarding mapping

Same for tempest etc ... feedback regarding mapping

Why most of use complained about map drops and to be more accurate wich kind of players complained about map drops / design ? Not a question of Softcore or Hardcore only or supposed " psychologic effect where players want play map of their level " described in dev manifesto.

Still a great work, keep going guys i will send you some coffee one day i swear.

It would've been nice I think to have a longer beta but by the same token there was starting to be a lot of unrest about the patch delays. It was first anticipated in April, then SURPRISE there's a Beta which had no definitive timeline. There was already a much more extended period without a content update than usual and the decision was basically a) do we release it now and ask forgiveness or for any issues or b) do we prolong the beta and risk losing more players?

They opted for A.

"Target different personas:" - here, you mean playstyle. Solo vs party, etc.

I don't know if a survey is exactly the solution. Indirectly they can actually track that on the back end by taking a look at a player's history in terms of how long the usually stick around in challenge leagues, or after a patch release, compared to how long they stuck around this time; did they stop at a particular map tier or zone level; how is that different compared to what they stopped at previously in 1.3; did they suddenly change from solo to group play; etc. They can gather a lot of that just from their data logs and make some inferences.

The rest I think is best solicited through the forums here and I don't think that people who aren't already supplying feedback are going to be any more willing to do so in a survey format. I'm inclined to say I've actually seen a greater variety of people posting on the forums since 2.0, which tells me that communication between GGG and the playerbase is a lot healthier than it's previously been. I attribute that directly to an increased visibility on the forums from Bex, Dan and other members of the development team.

Bit off-topic but I think worth noting.

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acillatem wrote:

No, it is a better design to group your difficulties and don't have a linear development. It will be much easier to communicate map changes with us and showing us in an easy and understandable way where we have to expect changes.

For example if they are now saying they are changing the monster damage in high level maps, which maps are all high level? 80-82 or 78-82, where is the line? WIth the changes GGG is able able to change the damage value of monster of map tiers. It's clear which maps are changed.

Right, which is why I say that the colour indicator is a good thing (sorry if that wasn't clear) but changing from map levels to tier levels, isn't. It's the definition of pointless. The colours will still allow us for quick reference to determine if Patch Note x.x.x says "low tier maps receive ABC change" - we'll understand very quickly that means: "cool, white trimmed coloured maps are changing."

If they're going to change a subset of a tier, there's no reason to say "Tier 2" when you can just as easily say "Level 69" and avoid the issue altogether.

Every item in the game has an associated ilvl with it, and that's a huge thing when it comes to recipes and crafting. Outright changing it to tiers on the map item itself adds another level of confusion.

I'd be fine if they decided to include both Tier and Map Level above-the-line, or at least allow pressing the highlight button to show the map level, but in a game that's already exceedingly complex, adding another layer of confusion is just a terrible decision if you're looking to continue to attract new players to the game.

Like I said earlier, for veterans, it's a mild annoyance. We'll know that Gorge is a 76 map and that we can get regal recipes from it. But tell a new player that ilvl 75+ items can create regal recipes and that they need to run a Tier 8 map to get them (or Tier 6, but only off rares/bosses) and I guarantee you, you're going to get a giant WTF-face in response when you explain to them how ilvl functions.

I can already see the feedback posts coming from new players going "Why does this just... not tell me the map level, BEFORE I load it?"

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Chris wrote:

The rate of spawning Warbands has been increased. It's now up to twice as high in some cases (such as leaders and Chaos Warbands).
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We expect to deploy this patch in two days, when the challenge leagues end.

good for the one month league, too late for the current challenge league.
the challenge should have been more focussed on killing them, not finding them.

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Chris wrote:

Your active pet is now retained between sessions. You only need to summon it once and it'll be automatically summoned for that character in the future. To unsummon your pet, click the new button above the microtransaction stash.

Hear, hear!

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The largest level variation has been removed from the Twilight Strand. We plan to improve all variations of this area in the future, but have removed the much larger one for the time being to keep its size consistent for fairness in races.

Racing is still unfair since the shadow always gets in first....

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Map drops have been increased across the board. The chance of finding higher level maps has been increased by a larger amount.

"large amount" times 0= 0

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Maps now indicate what tier they are, rather than what level they are. Tier 1 maps are level 68 and tier 15 maps are level 82.

That's the first thing you gonna change back!

Path of Nerf

RIP Ghostbusting OMG!!! is this a joke? GG

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Chris wrote:

The rate of spawning Warbands has been increased. It's now up to twice as high in some cases (such as leaders and Chaos Warbands).

Do I have to conclude that warbands is now a core feature ?

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Pulsahr wrote:

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Chris wrote:

The rate of spawning Warbands has been increased. It's now up to twice as high in some cases (such as leaders and Chaos Warbands).

Do I have to conclude that warbands is now a core feature ?

As per this Manifesto post, no. It's an adjustment that's being made for the one month (probably in order to make completing the associated challenge easier).

I also think map tiers are just annoying
You can give an idea of high level with colours
That's the only good thing imo in this map patch. It will also be easier to stash them