A New Tier Of Maps

So this is an idea I had while watching the most recent What's Up Wraeclast about continuing to challenge characters towards the end of and after completing the leveling process.
In essence this is just a new tier of maps, Black Maps, that follow Red Maps in the tier progression. They are also set in line with this progression (the three shown are monster level 83, 84, and 85) but are acquired in a different way and have some differences in their mechanics.

Firstly, to get a Black map (The three shown are Abattoir:83, Void:84, and Nightmare:85) you must have it drop from Uber Atziri or the boss of any Tier 15 map, and you will only drop Abattoir (the lowest of the three). However, Abattoir will ALWAYS drop from Uber and from the Tier 15 map bosses on kill.

Second, Black tier maps only drop with a normal rarity (for crafting purposes) and can only drop from map bosses, but will always drop from applicable bosses. This includes the bosses in the three Black maps. Killing a Black map boss can drop any of the three Black tiered maps, as the highest one is only +2 from the lowest one. This means that they are sustainable as long as you can meet the challenge.

Third, Black tier maps are intended to be excessively difficult, matching fully modded Tier 15's when Normal, and becoming insane as you add mods to them. They are supposed to challenge even the best builds without mods and to be nearly impossible when 8 mod corrupted (for example). The risk:reward in these maps would be considerable, particularly in regards to experience (concerning the race to 100, running Black maps would be VERY risky but VERY advantageous).

I think this concludes the idea, what are your thoughts? Do you think this would help improve the endgame for those at the tip top of players, or is it not enough?

I don't like the idea. I want to be challenged, but running black maps only would become boring. They should just fix the map system. As a fist step, they should remove everything that gives quantity for no added difficulty (SAC and Mortal fragments as well as chisels should give IIR not IIQ). Second, they should make it easier (cheaper) to add difficulty and rewards. Challenging content is wealth and RNG gated rather than difficulty gated. Which means that if you have a strong character and not a lot of currency / luck, you are facing boring content and falling asleep.

New tier of maps idea for sure, but the sustainable black maps is out of reality, we know it will never happen, even red maps is a pain to sustain or at least try. But we need more tiers. Sounds a little elitist too when you put up like sustaining maps above the actual highest tier maps, it will limit most builds to do them, so it will make the game even more broken for the poor players vs rich players matter("rng" blessed ones).

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Char1983 wrote:

I don't like the idea. I want to be challenged, but running black maps only would become boring. They should just fix the map system. As a fist step, they should remove everything that gives quantity for no added difficulty (SAC and Mortal fragments as well as chisels should give IIR not IIQ). Second, they should make it easier (cheaper) to add difficulty and rewards. Challenging content is wealth and RNG gated rather than difficulty gated. Which means that if you have a strong character and not a lot of currency / luck, you are facing boring content and falling asleep.

While I agree that "free" IIQ is a bad thing, the intention with these maps is to provide a baseline difficulty where you absolutely cannot faceroll it (thus it shouldn't get boring) and once you get in you can continue without RNG limiting your progression (So IIQ/IIR are about returns rather than progression) as long as you can kill the boss (which is supposed to be VERY difficult).

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Crusader_of_Sorrow wrote:

New tier of maps idea for sure, but the sustainable black maps is out of reality, we know it will never happen, even red maps is a pain to sustain or at least try. But we need more tiers. Sounds a little elitist too when you put up like sustaining maps above the actual highest tier maps, it will limit most builds to do them, so it will make the game even more broken for the poor players vs rich players matter("rng" blessed ones).

Well they are built to be sustainable, IF you can kill Uber Atziri/Tier 15+ map bosses. Beyond getting the map with a boss that drops the first one, there's no RNG involved. Sustaining them is possible, but only with a top tier character. Naturally, this means the rich players will have easiest access to these maps, but that would apply with any endgame solution and as such isn't really my concern with this suggestion (scaling the difficulty through a sustainable medium is).

You actually don't need kill bosses to go up in maps tier, that's what i meant. If you limit it to bosses drop, you are saying only X can access a given content. Uber and t15 bosses aren't like Dominus or Merveil that are story bosses, so you have to kill to go to the next content. They are there just to give you fun as a challenge, so limit content this way doesn't feel right for those which go up on maps only by playing a lot, not playing blast rain(why the fuck no nerf?)/ voll's devotion/ coc or those disgusting things that make the game looks bad to me. Bosses maps aren't the map itsel, so they shouldn't limit content.

I do not like the idea for the simple fact well known that GGG not know about balance. Most of the time all have left or very easy or ridiculously hard.

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Crusader_of_Sorrow wrote:

You actually don't need kill bosses to go up in maps tier, that's what i meant. If you limit it to bosses drop, you are saying only X can access a given content. Uber and t15 bosses aren't like Dominus or Merveil that are story bosses, so you have to kill to go to the next content. They are there just to give you fun as a challenge, so limit content this way doesn't feel right for those which go up on maps only by playing a lot, not playing blast rain(why the fuck no nerf?)/ voll's devotion/ coc or those disgusting things that make the game looks bad to me. Bosses maps aren't the map itsel, so they shouldn't limit content.

Is your only issue with it that you have to kill a top-tier boss in order to access the content? They're intended to be sustainable as long as you can survive and kill the content, and I couldn't figure out a way to provide that without oversaturating players with these maps (If they're gained through normal map drops there would be too many). Perhaps there would simply be a single Black tier map drop somewhere in the map (so you want to full clear it a la Zana's find a map mission)? If that was the case, perhaps the boss could drop an additional map?

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Actkqk wrote:

I do not like the idea for the simple fact well known that GGG not know about balance. Most of the time all have left or very easy or ridiculously hard.

Well they're supposed to be ridiculously hard so GGG should find that part easy then. :P