A suggestion on how to solve endgame and mapping and make it fun and rewarding for everyone

Apologies in advance for the wall of text. The number of threads complaining about map drops is significant. I kind of feel the same, even though I did get lucky and dropped two 78s starting from 74s - I still feel that there should be a bit more to it.

I have been told by friends that the solution I propose here is somewhat similar to what Diablo III is doing in that it produces content that is simply too hard for anyone, and this might be the reason to kill it. Not sure. It would be sad, because I think that it is not a bad solution, and most of the things needed are already existing in the game.


To start with, I have heard people from GGG stating that:

- Maintaining high-level maps should be hard
- Level 100 should not be easily achievable
- Playing hard maps and killing the map bosses should be rewarding
- Players should be encouraged to play content appropriate for their level

On top of that, I would suggest that:

- Grinding maps should be rewarding
- You should be able to make process
- Game content should be gated by difficulty, not by RNG


So let us check for the current map system:

- Maintaining high-level maps is indeed hard, if not impossible
- Level 100 can be reached pretty fast it seems (not by me, but by others)
- Killing the map boss does not feel very rewarding, though theoretically it probably is good to kill it for the chances of map drops
- Playing hard maps does not feel rewarding either
- I cannot play level-appropriate content because I cannot get my hands on it
- Grinding maps makes me often go down in map level
- I am hardly able to make progress
- Game content is gated to me by RNG rather than difficulty
- I do not try some of the hard content not only because I am afraid of dying but also because I am afraid of losing the map - not fun
- Last but not least, solo players are punished because re-rolling maps costs currency and you cannot share the burden when you are playing solo


So in summary, the current map system (and map drop system) is not a total failure, but it is far from being great. Which is really sad because maps are actually pretty nice:

- You dont do 100s of stupid MF runs to the last boss in the game
- Varying content from all areas in the game (all four acts) with a variety of hard bosses and challenges
- Some of the bosses (Shock and Horror, anyone?) are very well-designed and mechanically interesting
- You do have a proper endgame and can (or could, if the maps would drop) still make progress after finishing the "normal" game



So in principle, I think maps are great. But the current implementation, especially on the map progression, is kind of mediocre. I think the RNG is part of the problem, because it is hard to tune it to the point where maps are hard to maintain at high levels, but not impossible. Pre-2.0 it seems like it was easy with rolling packsize, post-2.0 it seems very hard to get to 78+ map levels, especially if you are a solo player. Also, you seem to have very little influence on this, and are very dependent on your luck.


So here is my proposal on how to solve the problem, make mapping hard but rewarding and fun for everyone:

Part 1: Map drops
- remove +2 drops from the maps, boss or elsewhere
- remove +1 drops from the maps, boss or elsewhere
- make the map boss drop a guaranteed map of the same level, though not necessarily the same map type
- make white maps drop no maps except for the map from the boss
- make quantity on maps increase map drops from everyone except the boss. If needed, you can make this exponential (a 50% quantity map will on average drop 0.5 maps while a 100% quantity map will on average 2.0 maps, numbers can be adjusted)
- make the only way to get to higher-tier maps be up-trading

This way, you start out with level 68 maps, and run them white if you want. You kill the boss, you get another map. You start alching them if required, and get more maps, until you are able to save 3 68 maps of the same type and up-trade to a 69. You start running lvl 69 maps. Until you have enough to get to lvl 70.

You grind, you make progress. If you are strong, you roll hard maps and make progress faster. You also can try out every new map white to find out how hard it will actually be for your character. If you are not able to kill EVERY boss in a certain map tier (for example, Shock and Horror or the Residence Dominus is too hard for your character), progressing to the next map tier will be tough. You have to have a versatile build, several characters or a guild actually working together.


Which brings us to the second part, making the endgame difficult, but not impossible for everyone, both players with full mirrored gear and casual gamers. Providing challenges for hardcore no-life gamers and casual weekend-players alike. It would also make leveling to 100 harder while not punishing the other players.

There are currently 77 base maps in the game, with 7 map types for level 68, gradually decreasing to 3 base maps for level 81/82 (which also means that you only have a 4 base types from 76 up, running the same areas over and over again). So what you do is this:

- Make the bracket in which you earn full XP narrower, 4-5 levels at all levels (As a lvl 80 character, you would need to run 75+ in order to gain full XP), encouraging to run level-appropriate content
- re-structure the map levels. Make it such that there are 11 maps for each level from 68 to 74, so still 77 map base types
- once you have run through all of these, there would be a new "tier" of maps. Instead of a lvl 70 Spider Lair, you find a "Undying Spider Lair", which is lvl 77. And so on, up to lvl 81. The maps would be identical, except that the monsters would have 2x more life and deal 1.6x more damage.
- after that, an "Immortal Spider Lair" would be level 84. And hard, because you are now at 4x more life and ~2.5x more monster damage
- anyone up for an "Eternal Spider Lair" at level 91 with 8x more monster life and ~4x more monster damage?
- highest map level would then be (68+7*4-1) = 95, though of course you could add another tier of level 96 - 102 maps if you like (hopefully impossible to beat for everyone)


Of course, you could work on the exact numbers and the number of "stacks" of maps that are available.

With that, players would be able to level their characters very high given that they are able to kill very tough monsters (and bosses!). Players would start to roll maps for giving quantity while not being impossible to survive.

However, level-appropriate content would be available for everyone, and all content could be seen by pretty much everyone, while with the current setup, probably less than 1% of the player base ever get to see the Eater of Souls. You could also enable achievements to kill the Eater of Souls at different tiers, while probably (and desirably) noone would be able to kill the Eater of Souls at the highest map tier.

As for getting to level 100, just make players gain less XP once they reach level 90 or so. Like, 25% less XP for every level from level 90 (which gives 5% of experience gained at level 99). Technically, you could even remove the hard level cap if you like.


So with that proposed map system, you would have:

- Maintaining maps is easy up to the level where it becomes hard for you to kill the map bosses, and that point will come with the scaling HP and damage from the monsters
- Level 100 is not as easily achieved because of being forced to run more level-appropriate (and hard) content, and the diminishing XP returns
- Killing map bosses is instantly rewarded, at higher map levels it becomes essential to maintain maps
- Grinding maps is rewarded and you can and will make progress if you do so
- Content is still gated, but by difficulty, not by RNG
- Endgame is challenging for everyone, top-players and casuals alike
- (Hopefully) more fun for everyone!



Sorry for the long post. Thoughts and suggestions welcome, if anyone at GGG thinks this is worth it, I am happy to help work out the details ;).

So,once you reach lvl 82, you just run white maps?

No, because then you cannot get higher level maps (I suggested that white maps drop zero other maps). Also, blue / rare maps drop more things.

If you want to prohibit running white maps completely, you could make the chance for the boss to drop a similar-level map be 50% + quantity from map (such that at 50+% quantity, you have a guaranteed map drop).

You could also make the guaranteed map drop only start from 100% quantity of the map, to make sure people run hard maps. But there should be a way to consistently maintain your maps and (through grinding) advance. Because right now, a lot of people (including me) are severely discouraged.

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Char1983 wrote:

No, because then you cannot get higher level maps (I suggested that white maps drop zero other maps). Also, blue / rare maps drop more things.

If you want to prohibit running white maps completely, you could make the chance for the boss to drop a similar-level map be 50% + quantity from map (such that at 50+% quantity, you have a guaranteed map drop).

You could also make the guaranteed map drop only start from 100% quantity of the map, to make sure people run hard maps. But there should be a way to consistently maintain your maps and (through grinding) advance. Because right now, a lot of people (including me) are severely discouraged.

You said map boss would drop a map from a white map of equal level.

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SL4Y3R wrote:

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Char1983 wrote:

No, because then you cannot get higher level maps (I suggested that white maps drop zero other maps). Also, blue / rare maps drop more things.

If you want to prohibit running white maps completely, you could make the chance for the boss to drop a similar-level map be 50% + quantity from map (such that at 50+% quantity, you have a guaranteed map drop).

You could also make the guaranteed map drop only start from 100% quantity of the map, to make sure people run hard maps. But there should be a way to consistently maintain your maps and (through grinding) advance. Because right now, a lot of people (including me) are severely discouraged.

You said map boss would drop a map from a white map of equal level.

Yes, and with only doing white maps you cannot get further than level 82 then.

Did you read the entire post?

I really like this idea of gating endgame content behind skill instead of RNG and/or wealth. Even though I would love to see this implemented, GGG will never do it for at least 2 reasons:
1. It would be fun!
2. No trading required.

Is there a reason why GGG would want trading to be required?

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SL4Y3R wrote:

So,once you reach lvl 82, you just run white maps?

Yep.
If you want loot/more experience then you gotta run it with affixes and/or beyond.
Seems fair.

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shaunus wrote:

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SL4Y3R wrote:

So,once you reach lvl 82, you just run white maps?

Yep.
If you want loot/more experience then you gotta run it with affixes and/or beyond.
Seems fair.

Did you all read through the post (which admittedly is long ;))? In my suggestion, there would be lvl 83, 84, up to 90+ maps. Which would be hard to reach because you would have to kill every boss in those maps to make progress to higher-level maps.

Content gated by difficulty, not RNG.

I was so happy and it was so motivating when I found out how to kill the level 76 residence Dominus. Now I would love to repeat that process with the level 78 Crematorium boss, but I don't have the maps to do so. Even though I can kill all the map bosses in all maps up to level 77.

I like this idea, and ITS GOT OT BE BETTER than what we currently have. heh

+1 to this.

I'm level 83 and have only ever ran one level 73 map and a bunch of 68-72.