Sustaining 75/76/77 Maps /w Blue Rolls

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Psyringe wrote:

Personally I prefer true randomness though, and I disagree pretty fundamentally with that entire school of thought.

PoE has no "true randomness". As Chris mentioned on State of Exile, they ramp up some numbers if they feel "it is necessary". The time you are playing is important and if you can afford to play PoE 24/7, nothing is random x.X

I personally think that is bad design... a game is enjoyable (at least for me) if the rules are defined and the same for everybody at any time. No stealth nerfs/buffs to currency/items/MAPS(!!) when ever "they feel like it's necessary".

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kcstar wrote:

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Psyringe wrote:

Personally I prefer true randomness though, and I disagree pretty fundamentally with that entire school of thought.

PoE has no "true randomness". As Chris mentioned on State of Exile, they ramp up some numbers if they feel "it is necessary". The time you are playing is important and if you can afford to play PoE 24/7, nothing is random x.X

I personally think that is bad design... a game is enjoyable (at least for me) if the rules are defined and the same for everybody at any time. No stealth nerfs/buffs to currency/items/MAPS(!!) when ever "they feel like it's necessary".

Well, to be honest, I don't care much about GGG manipulating drop rates behind the scenes, or doing stealth nerfs. As stated earlier, I enjoy unpredictability. Changing drop rates probably makes the drops even less predictable, so it doesn't affect my enjoyment negatively. But I can understand why other people may see this differently.

I'm not aware that Chris said anything that would lead to the conclusion that "the time of playing is important". He did say (in the State of Exile podcast 35) that GGG does change drop rates when the feel it's necessary, but he didn't give any timeframe. I think he _did_ use the words "We are changing those all the time", but in the context of the conversation this could just mean "with every patch". He did not give any clear indication that it's even possible to change drop rates without a realm restart. Was that podcast the only source of your information, or do you have another source?

Edit: I just watched the respective part of the podcast again, and I think it's really more likely that Chris meant "We are often making small changes to currency drop rates through patches, which don't get mentioned in the patch notes." He mentiones patch notes right afterwards, and he also explicitly stated that large changes _do_ get announced, and that changes to skill gems also do get announced since GGG wants those to be calculable for theorycrafters.

One of the problems is: I am in principle pretty good at math. I like it, and I can do with it, I can optimize my game play and/or currency investment to it if I want, or ignore it if I choose to play the game in a different way. For that, however, I need to know how things work. And some fundamental game mechanics are... well, not very well explained or even completely uncertain.

For example with maps: I can see the lines on the maps, but by now I am not even sure they are accurate any more. Like, does % IIQ on maps actually increase map drops? By the amount of % it reads? Did GGG ever comment on that? Does party play affect map drops? Does % more pack size actually mean that many more monsters in the map?


EDIT: I will try to buy 20 75 maps tonight / on the weekend and run them all plus all maps that drop inside. I will post my results here if anyone is interested. Any hints whether I should chisel them or not? Given the % on them, I should probably just alch-and-go.

Are we sure the map drop rates are the same on warbands and standard?

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Psyringe wrote:

Well, I don't have the data to assess that.

What I can see, though, is that in the next patch _after_ 1.3, GGG substantially increased the endgame grind, and also took other measures to make sure that players don't get the feeling they've "seen everything" now. Even little things - Chris Wilson stated explicitly that the credits roll has been removed from the game because "it gave people the feeling that they were done".

If a company puts considerable effort into changing something (in this case, the previous 'ease' of getting to the highest bits of content), then yes, I think it's not unlikely that they weren't totally satisfied with how it worked before.

Please note that it is very possible that a version like 1.3 was well liked by players, but still performed less well economically, exactly due to reasons such as "players dropping out happily after getting the feeling that they were done". That's speculation though, we don't have the numbers.

Thing is they made it substantially easier to reach 100 for very involved players and a lot harder for the average player, and the reason players drop usually is because they are out of things to do. That is true if they achieved everything, but it is true in the same way if they feel they can't achieve any more.

And the amount of F2P-Games like PoE that are actually F2P is very low and they usually work by providing a lot of goals to achieve and not by making the one goal frustratingly hard to achieve.

I'm not sure why ARPGs in general seem to fail in this regard quite repetitive. D3 has basically the same issue, they have one goal for the player, climb in GR-levels. Both D3 and PoE are entirely focussed on one endgame-element and both games had quite some time to introduce something different to give the players more incentive to shaken up streaks of map or portal runs.

We have a very cool machine with 4 slots that takes our maps... why wasn't there ever any incentive to change maps even more with the 4 Slots? Just a small example what could be done:

1. Charms (I totally stole that name from D2)

Charms simply add specific properties to a map and replace the incredible expensive and boring Zana-mechanic. Zana instead offers crafting for charms. Charms are rare items that can be modified with global effects for maps (prefix) and certain map-elements like shrines (suffix).

The thing is the prefix would affect everyone and provide a cool benefit. Berserking Small Charm of Champions could be an example of a charm. It basically consists of 3 things:

1. The type of charm. There are Small Charms, Charms and Large Charms for the 3 map-tiers.
2. The prefix Berserking would give 25% more attack-speed to anybody in the map and make all items that drop with attack-speed roll the max value (it doesn't ensure a high tier mod only the max value within that mod)
3. The suffix "of Champions" gives every group a rare. Some suffixes could get additions to rarity, packsize or quantity, but having more rares is benefit enough.

An examples for unique charms could be:

The Riddle
-Gives a random layout and boss instead of the used one (so you could use it on a rare Torture Chamber and get a lvl74 Temple with the same rolls)

The Ascent
-20% more chance to drop maps of higher level, 100% less chance to drop maps of the same or lower level

Safe Passage
-Your map does not run out of portals


My issue isn't so much the gating, it doesn't really matter if you are stuck at 74, 77 or 79 in the end it results in mostly running the same few maps, which ends up getting pretty boring. Having a way to spice that up with a cool and challanging map every once in a while that has traits that are not common for maps would make it more interesting. And again it would be some form of bargain you trade stuff for other things. I would actually also like a boss-randomizer, having one fix boss in every map means two things:

1. Hard ones are simply avoided... not the boss, the entire map now, so there is no real encouragement to try those maps, just trade them to someone who can do them easily.

2. Easy ones are focussed and exspecially many of the high maps offer no real risk because they have incredible easy bosses (Plateau, Arsenal, Springs, Shipyard)

Having a chance of encountering an easier boss or being in danger of facing a tougher opponent would allow people to switch up maps easier and also give a bit more diversity, due to some bosses having specific areas for them this might not be possible though.

I use a second post, since it is a bit in the other direction.

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Char1983 wrote:

For example with maps: I can see the lines on the maps, but by now I am not even sure they are accurate any more. Like, does % IIQ on maps actually increase map drops? By the amount of % it reads? Did GGG ever comment on that? Does party play affect map drops? Does % more pack size actually mean that many more monsters in the map?

1. %iiq means that many more maps. Well over one million maps run, for a single map it actually means nothing, but in the long run you would get that much more. And I assume it is different from the char based IIQ and does not suffer from diminishing returns (which would make chaosing maps entirely pointless for a few percent quantity).

2. Party play or player-specific IIQ does not increase map drops. Party play only benefits from dropping more currency within one map, which makes it easier to roll the map properly (a 6 man party easily sustains all currency necessary for mapping)

3. In theory yes, however due to some enemies having very low packsizes a 15% increase might result in something like 0,4 mobs and I'm not sure how PoE handles this, but in general it means exactly this, of course excluding any unique mobs (like Warbands, Exiles) and the boss, you won't get 15% more of those. Since Shrines and Strongboxes spawn packs as well it should influence them too.


EDIT: I will try to buy 20 75 maps tonight / on the weekend and run them all plus all maps that drop inside. I will post my results here if anyone is interested. Any hints whether I should chisel them or not? Given the % on them, I should probably just alch-and-go.

Are we sure the map drop rates are the same on warbands and standard?[/quote]

1. The easiest way to prepare cheaper maps (not sure if 75 are part of them) is just alching them. After transmutes the Alchemy Orb is the most efficiency piece of currency for maps if you compare IIQ gained with spended currency. It is a rather cheap way to get a map with good quantity for low cost. I usually go with that for my maps:

Transmute > Alc > Chisel + Alc > Chisel + Alc + Vaal

Transmutes are the basic, its cheap and efficient and good if you want to breeze through some lower maps. If the maps start to become more valuable I simply Alc them, once they are even more valuable I Chisel and later even Vaal them. I usually don't use Chaos for any of the mid-tier maps (up to 78, simply because the increase in actual quantity, packsize is rather low. It would have to be a very bad map to be worth a chaos. One simply rule could be never Chisel if you don't plan to Alc and never Vaal if you don't want to Chisel.

Also for lower maps a good idea would be just transmuting 3 maps of the same type and upgrading them to an unidentified map of the next level. This gives easy 50% quantity if the mods on the map provide at least some quantity and is rather cheap. I usually do this for maps that result in Mountain Ledge, Channel, Shore, Promenade etc. or in general maps that are nice to run due to a straight forward layout (or one that is easy to navigate at least). You could then even wait for these maps to have at least 3 warbands or a cool tempest in them (not sure if tempest-tracking is as active as warbands tracking).

2. The drop-mechanics in all leagues are the same. However Warbands has the chance of offering additional uniques in maps that can drop +1 map level. The same goes for Tempest which has all kinds of interesting ways to mess with map-drops. But considering a map without tempests and warbands the drop-rates are the same.

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Char1983 wrote:

One of the problems is: I am in principle pretty good at math. I like it, and I can do with it, I can optimize my game play and/or currency investment to it if I want, or ignore it if I choose to play the game in a different way. For that, however, I need to know how things work. And some fundamental game mechanics are... well, not very well explained or even completely uncertain.

Yeah, I can relate to that. I do it (though probably to a lesser degree) sometimes, but for some reason, I draw more enjoyment from devising strategies that make a chaotic/unpredictable environment manageable, than from calculating optimized strategies for a highly predictable environment. No idea why, personal preference I guess.

With regard to PoE, it's probably important to know that GGG explicitly does not _want_ certain things to be calculable or predictable. They have a very different approach for skill gems than for currency (and probably maps). With skill gems, they want to be as transparent as possible, they _want_ people to be able to calculate effects precisely in order to optimize builds. With currency drops however, they explicitly said that people "should not make spreadsheets about that". Not only do they never publish information about specific drop rates, they also have "anti-datamining" code in effect which is meant to ensure that people _cannot_ determine drop rates by just logging the drops they are getting.

If you haven't already, I would suggest to listen to Chris Wilson's statements in this podcast between 40:30 and 43:30, they ought to be pretty interesting for people interesting in calculating things:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e7OKbkXruk

(On a sidenote, I sometimes wonder if _some_ of the extreme drop variance that people are reporting, might be attributable to those anti-datamining functions, or to anti-farming/botting code if PoE has that.)

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Char1983 wrote:

For example with maps: I can see the lines on the maps, but by now I am not even sure they are accurate any more. Like, does % IIQ on maps actually increase map drops? By the amount of % it reads? Did GGG ever comment on that? Does party play affect map drops? Does % more pack size actually mean that many more monsters in the map?

I don't think that GGG has ever officially commented on that, and I think that that's intentional at least with regard to the exact effects if %IIQ.

The collective believe of the community seems to be that %IIQ does affect map drops, that party play does not (maps only drop for the person who opened the map anyway), and that pack size means exactly what it says. I don't know if anyone actually tested that statistically though.

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Char1983 wrote:

EDIT: I will try to buy 20 75 maps tonight / on the weekend and run them all plus all maps that drop inside. I will post my results here if anyone is interested. Any hints whether I should chisel them or not? Given the % on them, I should probably just alch-and-go.

I would be interested in the data. I would suggest using two chisels per map, as a middle-of-the-road approach, which should also be self-sustainable through the drops you get in the maps.

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Char1983 wrote:

Are we sure the map drop rates are the same on warbands and standard?

I think no one has ever officially commented on that, but it's generally believed that the permanent leagues and the temporary leagues operate by the same set of rules, except the few differences that are explicitly stated (league duration, respawn destination after death, special features like warbands or tempests).

OK, so so far as expected. I am BTW also close to just saying "fuck it" and running 100 mountain ledges in a row, half of them alched or transmuted / alted to have IIQ but no packsize and half of them not, to see if IIQ has an effect. I think 100 would be approx. enough.

I also did some theoretical simulations on map drops, and the results are pretty... random with long streaks of good luck as well as very long streaks of bad luck using some basic assumptions. If changes to drop rates in the live code act on top of that, that would make the variance even higher and would suck pretty bad.

And yes, I am aware that for a single map the effect is changing the expected amount of map drops while by no means guaranteeing anything. Still pretty frustrated, hope that the next batch of 75s does something positive. If not, I don't know... at some point it becomes pointless to beat the head against the same stupid wall.

LOL I love this thread. Honestly, I've been telling people to go blue for a long time - it's a really safe strategy that allows you to kill more bosses reliably and doesn't seem to significantly impact map drops.

Alching and going was killing me every 20% when I tried to level from 94 to 95, drastically increasing how long that already horrible experience was taking (most of my deaths were my own mistakes, or what I'd call "unlucky bs" if I were in a worse mood). Switched to blue and go, and boom - never died again. Still easy to get 50% iiq with blue maps if you use chisels. Chisels really become the main currency sink.

Sustaining 77s with blue & go is great - let alching be necessary for higher maps. But for that system to work, alching has to actually yield those maps, which it currently doesn't.

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Char1983 wrote:

Well, it seems like you can sustain 75s, which I cannot.

well, thats sort of because i dont run them, is what it really comes down to tbh. I do run them sometimes, but my chars I map with are all lvl93-95, so I really get nothing from a 75 map, my gear is so ridiculous that rare monsters and exiles sometimes get 1 shot, literally. I basically run them with friends who are lower level or if Im really tired and dont want to concentrate at all I just bash through them for map pool maintenance and stash space reasons, basically.

But by and large i dont run 75s and thats why I can sustain 75s, if I actually ran them daily Id run out. Any maps I run I run out of. Heres my 76 map tab





Why so many residence? Cause i dont really run them. Now desync is fixed dom is actually fairly easy, but if you get -max gmp double boss it can still be a bit sketchy sometimes I guess. I should just run them theres no good reason why I dont now days tbh but I just dont like the map that much. I have a lot of underground river because the shit 75s like cells and orchard both vendor into underground river, so Im always getting a lot of them from that. Malformation I have never tried, I just hear awful things about the boss. Im half expecting to run one and find out its piss easy and everyones just making a big deal over nothing as per usual... but Im running lvl94 characters and 10% xp is a massive loss. I play mainly softcore but I always play like its hardcore, I think Ive died once in a map since 2.0 came out and my reaction to it was basically to scrap the character at lvl93, Ill respec it to something else a bit more hardy, it was a suspect character anyway tbh, 3 damage auras, no defense aura, thats so not me because basically its a shit way to build imo and the death just confirms that for me. It was also using curse on hit heralds for a lot of its stuff and against bosses that falls apart, again shit way to build in my opinion, I gave it a go, it sucks. but for me I take no risks on a softcore character I wouldnt take on a hardcore one, so malformation is basically sitting there waiting for me to tempt fate and see whats up, probably realise its a joke and then all those maps will disappear.

The maps I run a lot, arid lake and gorge, dont have many of those maps and I will run out of them, regularly, because I constantly play them. This is my 77+ tab atm...






f all really, because I play all of them. If i ran these right now I would burn every map and get maybe 4x 77+ maps back, Id run them get 1 back, run that and be out of maps. If I run out of 77+ maps at this stage I cant be sure Ill ever come back to this game so I just cant run them, I have to run down a ton of those 76s to build up enough 77+ that I can run some without running out and then go back down again. Literally for my own sanity and to have a reason to keep playing.


I have about the same amount of 75s as I do 76s, but Ill run 10 maps from them, and then go to 76s and maybe some 77/78 and by the time Im done I vendor all the 70,71,72... etc up and it replaces my 10x 75s I ran.. Its not that Im actually ever able to sustain anything, 8k hours playing Ive never 'sustained' any tier of maps, ever. Its only through having a map base, maybe 6 or so tabs dedicated to maps that I can move around in such a way that if I ever play 75s, I can replenish the losses from then playing some 76 and 77 maps then vendoring all these bullshit lowball drops up because I have tabs dedicated to 3 of a kind recipe etc. If i just played 75 maps I would run out in a day or so. In theory right now ur sustaining lvl72/73 maps right? You dont actually run them so youre building up a base of them? Would that be a correct assumption?


What peter says here is right...

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Peterlerock wrote:

+1.

I only roll harder maps for more loot, not map returns.

This is absolutely noticeable, I have to use a lot more portals to carry out my rare drops.
(1-2 -> 4-5). I also get a ton more currency this way.

But map drops... It doesn't seem to matter how hard you roll a map.
Same as it doesn't seem to matter if you just "yolo through map tiers" or "carefully build up a map pool and progress slowly". One is less threatened by bad RNG, but "less threatened" doesn't mean guaranteed success.

going by the actual numbers ur best off running ur highest maps first. In theory you could potentially run a 78, get 2x78s, run one, get a bunch of 77s and build a high map base from there that sustains 76+ all the way to 100, off the back of 1 map, in theory its possible however unlikely. So why would you ever run a lvl73 map when you have a lvl78 map?

Well, depends how much you can deal with the inevitable swing from playing like that. Thats the best way to xp as fast as possible, but if you want a nice, stable, consistent flow of maps where you dont have this mental torture then theres something to be said for building the map pool. Thats why im not running my 77+ right now, Im almost out of them and I just cant take the horror of actually having 0 maps in that tab, well, im playing d3 atm but at the point I gave up for a week or two away in my little first arpg blizzland that was the deal.



A way to work it might be to run all your 72s, literally all of them, including any drops, just blitz until you dont have a single map left. Then blitz 73s, all of them, then 74s... then go back to 72s and do it again, and again, just keep any 75+ sitting there. I dont know if you vendor up lower maps or whatever, if so keep doing that too. Once uve done it a couple of times run up to half your 75s, but do not destroy that map tier, maybe just run 1/3 of them, then go back to 72 and run 72-74 in the same fashion. What you want to try and do is just stockpile 75+, and at some point stop running 72s, stockpile there too. So now you are never running 76+ and you are never running 72 or below. Maybe u vendor up to 72 now so you just build up a huge stash of them. You never allow urself to run out of 75s, and the goal is now to try and get enough 76+ (that you never run) that it starts to resemble your 75s when you wernt running them, and you start never running 73 maps. Then you keep trying to shift up a level when you feel you can, youll start occasionally running 1/3 or 1/2 ur 76s then go back to 74/75, meanwhile stock piling 77+ and 73. That becomes your sustain line, the 73s, because you just never play them. Now and again you go there and take only the best base, say Strand map (I would never vendor a strand, god bless strand) and you speed clear all your strands, but leave the rest untouched. Youre basically trying to limit your bounce to a select group of maps and by stockpiling above and below the bounce zone you eventually can raise the bounce zone up and up till you no longer ever play 74 maps and you occasionally dip into 75s only to play the best bases like canyon and dry pen.

Its not going to happen over night, could be weeks, months even to really get a satisfactory map base that sustains. But make no mistake, its the map base that sustains, its not any given tier of maps that you regularly play unless you have a malformation situation where you just avoid that one map, thats the only way youre going to end up always having something on that level, by having a base you never touch.

for me its pointless leveling chars in standard for the most because my stash there is too full of toys, theres no challenge, its just my endgame grinding league for older characters. But just in case I still keep some leveling maps. Trop island, moutain ledge, shore, strand, I keep those maps, I vendor everything else up with 3:1 recipe all the way to 75s. For me as a player who refuses to ever buy a single map this works in terms of never dropping below 75s, took a fair amount of time to build it up but for my own psychological welfare, keeping me in a zone where I feel like its still worth my time playing this game its been worth it. sometimes my 77+ tab has 40 or 50+ maps in it and then I run them on a push to level a char and they just get rekt but as long as I keep going back to my 76s for the bulk of my mapping and occasionally blast through some lolcopter 75s its never empty. I have never managed to stay 77+, ever, its never happened, I have mirrored gear insane characters that obliterate 77 maps like theyre cruel docks, Ive tried running every map 150% quant with pack size + zana mods, it doesnt make any difference I can never sustain a group of maps once I start playing them. I can only make it work by building up a stock of them and then obliterating my stocks, but having a big enough cushion that I can never then fall too far down from there and can rebuild the stocks without really hurting the cushion of 75/76 to the point where theyre in danger of running dry. I feel like you can do this already, just not at the level im doing it but over time you can strategically keep inching that sustainable cushion up the tiers.




Only other thing Id say to help out is that you should always, always, carry a stack of transmutes, augs and alts in maps, always. Archanist boxes roll for orbs, cartos maybe you alch and chaos for maps, if thats even worth it any more, debatable tbh. Every other ambush box in a map you care about returns and xp from you are rolling for magic mobs or rare mobs. Fuck exile, roll over that, fully linked, contains unique, I dont care Ill roll right over that stuff looking for magic mobs on every single ambush box I find. If I run out of alts Ill walk away and bring more back next time I go to town, I dont care if it takes 40+ alts to hit magic/rare mobs I will roll it whatever it takes. Maybe you wouldnt do that in a 73 map, i dunno, I only play 75+ and for me its worth it in almost all those maps, certainly 76+ without fail. Only time I might stop is if I hit say 17% quality on a gem cutters, Ill take that for sure.

OK, first of all thank you for your comments and taking the time to write such a long post. The information that you are rolling boxes for more magic is very important, because it significantly increases map drops. Might not do that in 75s because its just too little chance for map drops, and they are not valuable enough (8 alch is about a chaos, so 20 alt are about a 75 map).

I just bought myself 40 75 maps and 260 alchs, and plan to run 75s in an alch-and-go style and 76s in a chisel-alch-and-go style unless I hit blood magic, i would chaos that, or extremely bad (low quant, no packsize) on a 76, might also chaos that.

And yeah, I can sustain 74s I guess, but not 75s. By "sustain" I mean that I will just run 75+ maps, so by that definition you are sustaining 75s. In my case, I want to start with 75s, then run 75+76, then eventually 75/76/77. I just do not want to fall back to 74s. And I really hope that a pool of 40 75s should be good enough of a start for that.


EDIT: I will keep a log and post it. Shall I do it in this thread or in a separate thread in general?