The New Vanilla Experience that is 1.2.3

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kasub wrote:

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When I started during Forsaken Masters the amount of side quests and corrupted zones added a sense of wonder and made you feel a sense of accomplishment for exploring these large maps to their fullest.

None of those spawn rates got nerfed since then. This entire topic is written under a false premise.

There is actually a fair bit of consensus out there that they have indeed been nerfed. Especially the Corrupt Zones. I'm not pulling this out of thin air.

The amount of Vaal fragments I receieved prior to 1.2.2 was immense. After the patch I would rarely come across any corrupt zones at all.

15 Vaal Fragments on My L69 witch. All of which acquired before 1.2.2 patch. I was about L59ish when that devastating patch struck. My new Beyond character L52 has how many Vaal Fragments in comparison? Zero. Vaal gems? Only one or two. Vaal Gems acquired on previous character pre-patch? Around 12 I believe.

The nerf has been unreasonably severe and senseless. The corrupt zones used to be frequent enough. Now they feel almost like some sort of memory.


It defeats the purpose of creating new content if we cannot even FIND it.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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IcyMist27 wrote:

Masters Quests are rarer than ever. Corrupt Zones are so scarce you can almost forget they exist in the game at all. Lockboxes are much more difficult to come by.

1.2.3 did not change the spawn rates of any of those things. They are just as common as they were before.

It was in 1.2.2

In has already been acknowledged that Corrupt zone spawn rates were reduced in Smaller Zones to prevent some people from farming them.

Perhaps what constitutes 'small' is bit too common and thus the overall reduction of Corrupt Zones in regular play through the various difficulties has thus been severely compromised.

Too much caution over people potentially farming the Ledge etc (not my style of play) and thus everyone ends up being punished with this less fulfilling experience.

Even if the patch notes don't specifically mention anything further I think it's far too obvious in actual play. I don't expect every single change to the game to be written in the notes.

The reason I claim 1.2.3 is the New Vanilla Experience is not because there were any further nerfs to spawn rates but because it seems the devs are satisfied with the direction that the game has taken since 1.2.2 and thus the elusiveness of all this new content is somehow an acceptable reality.

Shadow of Vaal. All that work and for what? So many hard hours must have gone into the development with much passion from the devs only for these zones to now be so unbelievably difficult to find.

Similar case with Masters + Strongboxes.

People have less of an issue with Masters not showing up as often because they can just farm them via Daily Quests.

Many of those I don't even bother to do because that's not my idea of fun. Coming across a master while exploring on the other hand can create a nice change of pace to the repetition that sometimes presents itself.

Though the convenience of people being able to do daily quests is kind of moot if you cannot even find Zana more than a few times in 25 or so maps. I still only have hew at Level 1 since the other time I have failed with a inbalanced timed mission that put me up against two rogue exiles with bear traps.

I actually would have welcomed this encounter because it felt fresh. That type of scenario really put me to the test despite how cheap it was but... there was no retry. And I would have to scour another dozen maps to possibly be able to find her again. I am resorting to going to the masters daily quests channel to finally get her to Level 2 so I can find out what her Map Device actually does. Should a player really have to resort to such a thing?


Plus the Masters themselves provide reasonable products to purchase if they are at a reasonable level. When starting a new character on a different league it really renders many of the items useless when your character leveling outpaces the low level of the Master. It would provide more reasonable rewards and greater potential for reasonable purchases if the rate of finding these Masters was in concert with actual level progression. The spawn rates are far too low as is for that to reasonably happen.

In the course of normal play, I am practically tripping over Masters, Strongboxes, and corrupted zones. It is funny how one persons play can differ so dramatically from another.

That is why you really can't trust what the people you talk to are saying as they will be biased. The spawn rates were unchanged, so it is all in your head.

Of course, if you are referring to Masters being useless when you run into them on an alternate character. That I agree with. It is absolutely brainless.

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IcyMist27 wrote:

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kasub wrote:

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When I started during Forsaken Masters the amount of side quests and corrupted zones added a sense of wonder and made you feel a sense of accomplishment for exploring these large maps to their fullest.

None of those spawn rates got nerfed since then. This entire topic is written under a false premise.

There is actually a fair bit of consensus out there that they have indeed been nerfed. Especially the Corrupt Zones. I'm not pulling this out of thin air.

The amount of Vaal fragments I receieved prior to 1.2.2 was immense. After the patch I would rarely come across any corrupt zones at all.

15 Vaal Fragments on My L69 witch. All of which acquired before 1.2.2 patch. I was about L59ish when that devastating patch struck. My new Beyond character L52 has how many Vaal Fragments in comparison? Zero. Vaal gems? Only one or two. Vaal Gems acquired on previous character pre-patch? Around 12 I believe.

The nerf has been unreasonably severe and senseless. The corrupt zones used to be frequent enough. Now they feel almost like some sort of memory.


It defeats the purpose of creating new content if we cannot even FIND it.

This is strange, since FM dropped I've had 3 full sets of atziri drop, along with about another 9-10 fragments that I have either rerun with map portal or just stashed. I also have about 8 vaal gems. Not to mention finding plenty of the masters and strongboxes, see about 2-3 per instance of the strongboxes and a master every 3rd instance or so.


So maybe I am going to believe Mark when he says this is unchanged, and believe patch notes which state it has not changed, over your anecdotal and completely false evidence.

All these crazy conspiracy theories really can only be believed by those who don't understand statistics or logic

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There is actually a fair bit of consensus out there that they have indeed been nerfed. Especially the Corrupt Zones. I'm not pulling this out of thin air.

Fair bit of consensus?.. From whom exactly. I don't think there is a need for me to discuss this further. One of the lead devs even confirmed what I said. You simply got a short bad luck streak.

Overhwhelming players with all these new features would also take away any special flavour they have. It can become tedious if every other zone has a corrupted area, an exile, a few shrines and a random invader. Masters already appear in 50% of endgame maps which is quite high.

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kasub wrote:

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Overhwhelming players with all these new features would also take away any special flavour they have. It can become tedious if every other zone has a corrupted area, an exile, a few shrines and a random invader. Masters already appear in 50% of endgame maps which is quite high.

That's great if you are experiencing 50% appearance, but in a little over 200 maps I've experienced masters in 1 out of 4 maps. And very few corrupted zones.

You have to remember there are many different leagues right now, I was speaking to standard and in that league for me, it's 1 in 4. Which is saddening.

Not basing that from experience. Chris himself said it's a 50% spawnrate.

http://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/2fitlr/more_content_update_122_information/ck9rzfm?context=3

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This is strange, since FM dropped I've had 3 full sets of atziri drop, along with about another 9-10 fragments that I have either rerun with map portal or just stashed. I also have about 8 vaal gems. Not to mention finding plenty of the masters and strongboxes, see about 2-3 per instance of the strongboxes and a master every 3rd instance or so.


So maybe I am going to believe Mark when he says this is unchanged, and believe patch notes which state it has not changed, over your anecdotal and completely false evidence.

All these crazy conspiracy theories really can only be believed by those who don't understand statistics or logic

Perhaps you can add something constructive to the conversation without coming off like a complete ass?

There is no conspiracy theory considering in previous patch notes it was revealed that corrupt zones were nerfed from small zones.