New maps only dropping when running an adjacent map really, really sucks

Edit: Bleh, not worth it.

I agree, it does suck a bit. A whole new expansion that focuses on making the end-game better, and what do you have to do when it launches? Go and run a bunch of crappy low-level maps.

Maybe it won't suck for new players though, who don't want to get overwhelmed with so many different maps? Who knows?

I wasn't going to go into this, but the problem just sucks so hard. I'm coming from a self found perspective.

Here's my Atlas:

You'll notice that I've done jack shit over on the right. That's because those maps aren't dropping. I've had one Oasis drop and I traded three Arcades for a Ghetto. I'm stockpiling maps to do more vendor recipes to advance and now have two Deserts and two Ghettos I bought from Zana. I've had about a dozen Factories and Beaches drop, though.

This sucks. It's not fun. I'm not running a variety of maps. I'm not running the maps I want to be running. I've even gone so far as to run a bunch of tier 1s in the hopes that I could get more of the right tier 1s and 2s to drop (and, as I said above, I fucking couldn't).

This is one of the worst fuck yous that self found players have ever received. Please do something about this, GGG. It's fucking awful.

New T6 maps sell on poe.trade for 10c and more, quite funny actually. I have just run a bunch of legacy red and unique maps and gotten some progress that way, but yeah - the not-so-beaten tracks are hard to get your hands on. If you do this, you should have a 50% chance for an adjacent map and a 50% chance for a non-adjacent map or something. Otherwise getting some maps is ridiculously hard, especially for the unique maps.

Speaking of unique maps, it is even worse - most unique maps are of the variety "want to run it once, cause it's interesting". Once you've run them, well, not that interesting anymore. However, getting that first map is very hard, after getting it and running it it gets a lot easier. At least if it follows the same mechanics. Makes sense? No.

In general though, I like that care was taken about the end game. I've seen quite a few cool new maps.

Yeah, unique maps are in a really dumb place right now. I always enjoy running them whenever one that isn't Hall of Grandmasters drops. Now it's incredibly unlikely I'll ever get to run one again unless it's in a Zana mission.

They really dropped the ball with the Atlas's functionality.

GGG, I just uninstalled. Your game is inexcusably fucked right now. Please make it less shit by next league.

Edit: I've been giving you feedback since right around the time I started running maps that having content gated behind RNG is a terrible thing. This expansion shows me very clearly how completely different our perspectives on this are. I don't want content gated behind RNG. You took the level of RNG we had previously, which I already disliked, and added even more layers of RNG to it.

If nothing changes, you have finally balanced the game to a point where the worst kinds of punishing RNG have ruined any chance I had of having fun. I really hope you simply fucked up and didn't have the foresight to see what the effects of the new changes would be. If not, it looks like I'm finally done with POE for good.

well. i play standard so my perspective is different as i have several tabs of t10+ legacy maps to burn.

a) poe HAD issue of cherrypicking and min maxing. that limited content players were able to experience/enjoy because they simply played one map and couldnt care less about rest of the content.

b) ability to boomrush trough content and reaching too high maps (clearing maps was and IS piss easy - it allows bad players playing bad builds to feel that they are in better shape they really are) was also a problrm. lvl77 3.4k hp killing t10 thrash felt he deserves all rewards and is tanky enough.

c) ggg couldnt really increase difficulty after inviting all clay-fingered players on board. so they had to use this non-elegant way to slow down the progression. i would have preferred difficulty increase (a SOLID one..) but oh well


what i do not like are noob traps - shaper orbs. using them too early slows down the progression as shaped maps are adjacent to stuff you already have. shaper orb not being stashable suggests 'use it asap' and many players will fall for this. i did. each shaped Strand could have been t11 map i didnt have yet.


but the real issue is removal of 'LAST CHANCE' pool - Zana sells tier 5 at best.. this is a kicker and i hope it is a bug

"

Jennik wrote:

You'll notice that I've done jack shit over on the right. That's because those maps aren't dropping. I've had one Oasis drop and I traded three Arcades for a Ghetto. I'm stockpiling maps to do more vendor recipes to advance and now have two Deserts and two Ghettos I bought from Zana. I've had about a dozen Factories and Beaches drop, though.

It is called "positive feedback". No, not your post but the problem it describes. And yes, I agree it absolutely sucks.
I don't see a good solution though except allowing Zana to sell maps not restricted by your Atlas progress, in the end it is OUR Atlas, not HER! Or hell, even better, allow her to sell(based oh her level, as before) legacy maps! She's a master cartographer, after all, so she should be able to do something really interesting with maps, right? Voila, people have an incentive to level Zana so their atlas progresses faster.

My solution would be to revert map drops back to the way they used to be. The system was not broken. This would also allow people to ignore the Atlas and map as usual just as GGG originally said we could.

The Atlas is neat. We can put Sextants in it (assuming we hit the lottery and one drops), plus they give us a bonus to map drop tiers. That's enough. This absurd attempt to shoehorn map drop locations into the Atlas was a complete failure.

Unlocking maps is an exercise in tedious grinding or trivial trading and doesn't improve the game in any way. It fucks over self found players completely while adding more shitty "why the hell do I have to do this?" trading for everyone else. It needs to be scrapped entirely. Trading for gems you need for your build and maps you need for your Atlas are super shitty and neither should be part of the game. We shouldn't have to trade for the basic building blocks of the game.

Optimally they'd change the game so that mapping was no longer gated behind RNG. This expansion demonstrates pretty clearly that GGG loves gating content behind RNG, though. I don't expect them to wise up on that front.

could you clarify what is 'gated'? maps (as in any map of given tier) or selected maps?

because if it is the first one then i have to disagree. maps are droping like crazy for me. if you however complain about not being able to play the map you want.. then sure, current system forces us to play a lot of different maps to get somewhere. and i think it is very deliberatw