I just vendored a Hall of the Grandmasters

Just an FYI for the fine folks at GGG.

Taking HOGM off of the Atlas was one of the single worst choices you guys have ever made, because there's literally zero reason to run it now.

And I'm not saying this from the perspective of, "I can't beat it." You guys can see my challenge history, you know I've beaten it many, many times. But the rewards have always been absolute garbage, the ONLY reason to beat it in the past was for that Atlas Bonus/Awakening Bonus point.

Now we don't have that, so the map is a complete waste of time and design space. No special drops or chase uniques, bad exp, no crafting recipes or unlocks... literally nothing. I get objectively better returns out of a white T1 map, and I can do that without swapping a support gem for Block Chance Redux.

Why even have this map in the game if there's no reason to run it? You guys need to either put a high end metacrafting mod at the end of it or put it back onto the Atlas next league or SOMETHING, because right now this is all it amounts to:

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ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate wrote:

Just an FYI for the fine folks at GGG.

Taking HOGM off of the Atlas was one of the single worst choices you guys have ever made, because there's literally zero reason to run it now.

And I'm not saying this from the perspective of, "I can't beat it." You guys can see my challenge history, you know I've beaten it many, many times. But the rewards have always been absolute garbage, the ONLY reason to beat it in the past was for that Atlas Bonus/Awakening Bonus point.

Now we don't have that, so the map is a complete waste of time and design space. No special drops or chase uniques, bad exp, no crafting recipes or unlocks... literally nothing. I get objectively better returns out of a white T1 map, and I can do that without swapping a support gem for Block Chance Redux.

Why even have this map in the game if there's no reason to run it? You guys need to either put a high end metacrafting mod at the end of it or put it back onto the Atlas next league or SOMETHING, because right now this is all it amounts to:

This is just a tribute. Memory. Although Perandus Manor did not regret it.
However, even before, even for the sake of 1%, there was no desire to go there. Most builds couldn't pass it.

Well, at least no one found any abuse of survival, as with Fortify|Zerphy, to change or delete this thing, which means there are no problems.

Ok let'S tripple the amount of alchemy shards

What if you use it with watchstones that drop items on unique monsters?
Shouldnt they drop lots of shit then

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MasterTBC wrote:

What if you use it with watchstones that drop items on unique monsters?
Shouldnt they drop lots of shit then

They took the map completely off of the Atlas, so you can't affect it with watchstones or sextants anymore.

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ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate wrote:

Taking HOGM off of the Atlas was one of the single worst choices you guys have ever made, because there's literally zero reason to run it now.


Now we don't have that, so the map is a complete waste of time and design space. No special drops or chase uniques, bad exp, no crafting recipes or unlocks... literally nothing. I get objectively better returns out of a white T1 map, and I can do that without swapping a support gem for Block Chance Redux.

removing HOGM was done because the community wanted it off the atlas so we didn't feel forced to get it completed to maximize the potential of rewards on the atlas, so it wasn't a mistake

also house of mirrors div card drops in HOGM.

The Immortal also drops there.

I think it was a good move to remove it from atlas, but leave it in game for the people who like the challenge.

There might have been a past league where I would have considered farming the map for a little bit but game performance in that map has always been complete ass.

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dorkdude2 wrote:

also house of mirrors div card drops in HOGM.

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6_din_49 wrote:

The Immortal also drops there.

Wanted to reply to these points specifically. Just because a div card CAN drop there, doesn't mean those div cards WILL drop there. Have you guys ever actually farmed HOGM? I don't mean beat it once for Atlas completion, I'd assume everyone in this thread has run it for a league challenge or whatever, I mean actually run it 50-100 times in a single league because you're selling carries or trying to target-farm the Disfavour back in the days before they nerfed it into garbage.

Statistically speaking, you will have to run HUNDREDS of HOGM maps to get a SINGLE Immortal card, and THOUSANDS to get a House of Mirrors. This is common sense: if the best way in the game to farm mirrors was running HOGM, then the map wouldn't be worth less than 1c because any 20 ex build can clear this map in about 60 seconds. As I said before, you get better returns from white T1 maps, because if you make even 1c profit per map (which is hard NOT to do in modern POE) you'll be able to buy an Immortal card LONG before you receive one as a drop in the HOGM.

More to my point though, div cards to get currency you can get elsewhere still don't provide a specific reason to run this map. Getting a couple chaos is not a reward for content. If I'm playing the game - literally doing ANYTHING - I'm making some amount of currency. So an average of 2-3c from each HOGM isn't a reward, because I'd make at least that with the maps I'd be running instead with that same amount of time. The map needs to actually give players a reason to run it, or players will not run it, which is both common sense and supported by the fact that nobody is running this map right now even though you can buy them for 1c or less. GGG doesn't release their metrics, but I really wish they'd tell us how many TOTAL Halls of the Grandmasters have been run in the last two leagues, compared to when it was on the Atlas. I'd bet there was at least a 95% drop, it might be as high as 99%. I literally do not know a single person who has run that map in the last two leagues.

This is Game Design 101, which is why pulling HOGM from the atlas was objectively a mistake. Just look at... well, almost ANY unique map. Would anyone in the world actually run Whakawairua / Pillars of Arun / Hallowed Ground / Death and Taxes if those didn't give Atlas/Awakening bonuses? Nobody I know would, my guild gets a full party together so that we only have to run them once per league because it is our collective opinion that the content is garbage. But we still run it because there is a reward, in the form of Atlas and Awakening Bonuses. Content doesn't always have to have a big reward, but it does have to have ANY reward. Again, Game Design 101 here.

unique maps should offer unique rewards. Period.

Look at beachhead. That's a unique map done RIGHT. Same with Perandus Manor, Machinations, etc. Not really sure why there isn't at least 1 or 2 map-specific unique items for the others.