PoE Map Drop Season - Understand your Map Pool

I created this little figure with my mad paint skills to help you to analize and optimize your map pool and make use of RNG instead of being subject to it. I know several guides have been written about that and nevertheless I wanted to add new aspects and write things down from my view, observations and experiences.







Guidance:
1. Build up your map pool mainly at the start (first few weeks, no exact date) or at the end of a season. Obviously at the end isn't an option for league players.

2. Memorize changes in drops and their length. When map drops get bad they usually start getting bad only for a short period, followed by a good period, followed by a longer bad period, followed by a good period, followed by an even longer period, until they stabilize on a pretty low level (This is reached now when alot of threads in forums arise with people coplaining about map drops and when Kingtiamat has ran down his standard map pool completely, haha). Playing 10-20 maps a day is enough to figure out the long term movement and adapt to it.

3. Don't mix up break-outs with a change of the phase though. Periods of good map drops will have downward break-outs an the other way round. Base your decisions on that and analize carefully.

4. Switch to lower maps and keep all maps above a certain level for better periods when you recognize maps are just not dropping anymore no matter how good and how many good maps you roll, such as chaining 120%+ T13-15 maps with additional sacrifice pieces just don't drop anything. This level is determined by the map pool you have. Switching to T10-T12 maps is for standard players who have a map pool or league players who have built up fast enough to copare to that. If your pool's highest maps are T12 maps you of course adapt and switch to lower ones. You can even run out of T11 maps in bad periods.

5. Switch to higher maps when you recognize good drops on lower maps during a bad period. You might have encountered a short period of normalized or even optimal map drops and should try your RNG now, which will either confirm the trend and you continue or force you to revise and go lower again after few tries.

6. Use of Q, chisels and pieces for an existing map-pool. I haven't build up a map pool for quite some time in a fresh economy so I can't exactly exlain how to do it but you start earlier with everything for sure.

T09 = no chisels and only chaos on very good layouts sometimes
T10 = no chisels and only chaos for packsize, magic or rare if you can afford
T11 = ~070%Q+ & 0-1 chisel and usually chaos for packsize, magic or rare if you can afford
T12 = ~080%Q+ & 2 chisels & packsize
T13 = ~090%Q+ & 4 chisels & packsize & maybe one sacrifice piece sometimes if you can afford
T14 = ~100%Q+ & 4 chisels & packsize & 1-2 sacrifice pieces if you can afford
T15 = ~110%Q+ & 4 chisels & packsize & 1-3 sacrifice pieces if you can afford

The Use of currency however makes more difference and sense in periods of good map RNG than bad. Don't make the mistake to ignore the use of currency in periods of good map drops as that makes you believe they drop anyway and then when they start not dropping anymore you start using your currency in periods of bad map rng, which is exactly the wrong way to do it.

7. Rise slowly in tier. Don't play the highest tiers of your map pool if you only got very few of them but instead wait until you get a decent amount of them to counter RNG. If you don't follow that your RNG turn out as follows:
T14 = T10 + T8 drop
T10 = T10 drop
T08 = T09 + T09 + T08 + T07 + drop

If you hosted all three maps T14 then you might have gotten the lucky RNG drop sequence from the T8 and the replacement from the T10 on a T14 map which resulted in T15 + T15 + T14 + T14 + T13 to drop instead.




Things to notice and explanations:

a. This isn't an exact but a rough picture of how map drops must work. Please don't start to measure lengthes of lines drawn or to count up and down steps. There are plenty more ups and downs than shown on the picture and it is inaccurate.

b. Phases have smoother transitions than in the picture of course, therefore harder to recognize.

c. It is important to understand that map drops are not all random even though some people keep claiming that. It doesn't make any sense for GGG to have player loss early in the season due to randomly bad map RNG. They want to first make all players happy and keep them play and make them spend money. That must be counterbalanced somewhere and sometime during the season so that mappools do not explode and good rolls and the use of currency remain meaningful. This should give a rough picture of how that can work.

d. At the end of seasons when players get active again and wait for the new season to be released GGG usually doesn't want to kill their desire with bad map RNG (which lets bad memories arise about why they got incactive before and potentially prevents them from playing the new seasons).






If you follow that and get good at it you basically cannot run out of maps. You just cannot play any map at any time if you are not rich enough to ignore RNG. When you have 20x T14 map and play 10 of them with only bad drops the worst thing you can do is play the other 10 afterwards.

It tells a lot that you have to analyze this to understand how to play the game.

Honestly, I am not sure if they are constantly adjusting map drops or not, but they should just give us content to play. It sucks. I moved to Essence Hardcore recently to find something useful to do, where I will probably RIP soon.

EDIT: Also, do you have any data to support the notion that map drops are better at the beginning and end of a league?

EDIT2: Chisels are either worth it or not. It makes zero sense to put 2 Chisels on a map unless you are just not sure if its worth it. If it is worth putting 1 Chisel onto a map, it is worth putting 4.

great analysis. thx a lot bro

"

Char1983 wrote:

It tells a lot that you have to analyze this to understand how to play the game.

You don't. This is all just overthinking it, and with some "broscience" added in for good measure.

.

Delusional is to believe any all random map drop system could technically deliver desired results without processes of adaption.

And ignoring the facts such as ranting threads about bad map drop RNG always appear after the leage is several weeks in and barely ever in the first 2-4 weeks of a season or at the very end. You can also observe your own and friends map pools and if you are following the forums you can see that the guys who post pictures of full stash tab of T12+ maps most likely made them at the start of the season and are the hardcore gamers that play a dozen hours per day.

Add to that that it is simply better for GGG and players at the same time to create rewarding map drops in the beginning where most people are active and let it fade slowly. That creates the best experiences

Well broscience is a nice word and certainly there is alot of it inside if you call it like that. I am not saying I have figured it all out. This is a try to replicate a system to which I and probably noone else who writes here has access to and figure out how it can work, not must work. It certainly helps keeping in mind certain mechanics might and to a certain degree even must exist.



But let me get back to sentence one. You guys know that many games have such mechanics to reward players. E.g. D3 has/had it to reward casuals with one/two hours of increased unique drop rates a day which mostly benefit casual players that don't play more than that.

Btw. a completely random system would create more punishing results than a system of phases where more compareable results are being created for all active players at the same time.

Furthermore such systems usually have tendencies when completely random. That means either it tends to drop too much or too few but never perfectly as desired (random factor player base). Imo it is almost impossible to balance such an algorithm perfectly and then never touch it again even throughout the period of just a single season. It makes more sense to accept these tendencies and make them to phases where you simply increase or shorten the duration (that can be automatically and still random to a certain degree, not saying chris sitting there all day and pushes the button) if needed instead of changing the whole thing again and again. I don't state I know how long periods are lasting and how often they switch (remember this is not a hard switch as shown in the picture but smoothly), that will probably be several times a day and potentially sometimes even an hour.


Nevertheless keep in mind that noone probably knows how that whole thing is working in detail and nor do I. Therefore it wont be possible to bring hard evidence for either supporting this or the opposite. We can only observe and look for hints at this point.

So what you are saying is, you have absolutely no proof for any of this and essentially base everything on anecdotal evidence?

Well an important guy said once imagination is more important than knowledge and was very right about that.

This is not about anecdotal evidence but about

a) how I would use technical limitations to my benefit as a developer
b) how to lessen frustrating and punishing RNG for my customers (especially streak control)
c) how I would create incentives for players to play longer and spend more money and exclude instant bad experiences, first week knock-outs etc.
d) observations of several years that support that (which you call anecdotal evidence)


regarding b & d:

I know and remember that the map drop system was different at the start of open beta. It seemed to be way more random and less reliable than now. Later on there were seasons where everybody was swimming in 77/78 maps. Now to me it seems like at certain points of the league it is quite easy for everybody who rolls correctly to generate maps and at other points it hits alot of players at the same time to lose maps.


Just make up your mind about one thing (regarding c). Do you believe it is possible that GGG uses certain mechanics (e.g. at the start of the season) to increase factors named in c) or not. If so, there need to be phases of counter balance if you want that or not. If you rather want to believe GGG leaves the experience of their customers to a completely and all (in any way) random system (after years of complaint about full RNG and implementations of workarounds for other full RNG things such as the vorici 1500 fusings, essences, etc.), then they don't have to exist but still might exist as they make controlling such a system more comfortable (refering a). What is more likely?

"

LSN wrote:

b) how to lessen frustrating and punishing RNG for my customers

They certainly failed there. At least with regards to me.

There is some truth scattered in there somewhere.

"

T09 = no chisels and only chaos on very good layouts sometimes
T10 = no chisels and only chaos for packsize, magic or rare if you can afford
T11 = ~070%Q+ & 0-1 chisel and usually chaos for packsize, magic or rare if you can afford
T12 = ~080%Q+ & 2 chisels & packsize
T13 = ~090%Q+ & 4 chisels & packsize & maybe one sacrifice piece sometimes if you can afford
T14 = ~100%Q+ & 4 chisels & packsize & 1-2 sacrifice pieces if you can afford
T15 = ~110%Q+ & 4 chisels & packsize & 1-3 sacrifice pieces if you can afford

At least on standard, you should be alch and go T12s. Never chiseling this or any lower tier.