Map drop rates are a real problem

I'm sure there are plenty of threads addressing this issue and many people are tired of hearing about it, but I feel that the map drop rates are a serious problem. I've tried everything that I can possibly think of to maintain a 78+ map pool (chisels, difficult/high iiq rolls, corrupting, vaal frags, kill all bosses, etc, etc) and nothing works. I've resorted to purchasing maps over and over again in an attempt to get a hot streak going, but I repeatedly experience the soul crushing pain of plowing through the maps (and my currency) only to find myself back at square zero in short order.

The system is simply designed to prevent maintenance of high level maps. Prior to Awakening (when the top maps were 78) drops were rare enough that you would run out from time to time, but perseverance and a bit of luck would always get you back on track. With the current drop rates there is no hope. I've played many 100's of hours since Awakening was released and I'm yet to have a single 82 map drop. I'm not sure of the number of 81's, but I guarantee that I could count them with the fingers of one hand. I've dropped more exalts that I have dropped 81+ maps! What is the point of making end game content so difficult to obtain?

I say that this is a serious problem because I know people that have recently quit the game due to map drop frustration. Worse yet, I feel that I am on the verge of following suit. Every time I run out of purchased maps it pisses me off. Every time I run a lvl 82 map and walk away with a couple 71-76 I'm infuriated. When I kill a 80+ boss and it drops a 70 map I feel like kicking somebody in the face!!

It makes no sense to play a game that continually pisses you off, it kind of defeats the purpose. I've put a lot of time into developing high level characters that plow through 77 content like nothing. I want to play challenging content. I'm flat out sick of running 77-78 maps. If I have to look at the inside of another 76 (because I actually run out of 77's sometimes) I'm gonna barf!!

I've been playing since open beta and I love the game. Talisman looks interesting, and I'm gonna give it a shot. But, if top tier map drops do not improve, then I doubt I'll be around much longer. It just sucks to be forced away from a game that I love because of something so silly.

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Cherd wrote:

...The system is simply designed to prevent maintenance of high level maps...

That's the idea exactly.

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Cherd wrote:

The system is simply designed to prevent maintenance of high level maps.

Yes it is. The philosophy behind making them that rare is to make them feel special. You only do these on special occasions. Not every day in the year is New Year or Christmas.

Also it is not because these are high tier that you should expect better returns. These do however offer the chance to get higher ilvl gear and special divination cards. But if it is solely for loot explosions, then any tier of map will do. Stuff drops regardless if it is in a tier 10 or tier 5 map.

Challenging maps can be made with lower tier maps as well. I find this a bit of bullshit excuse that is being overused to "convince" the developers that the highest tier maps should drop more often. This is also the reason why there are some harder bosses in the lower tier maps for people like you.

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Cherd wrote:

What is the point of making end game content so difficult to obtain?

So that you can indulge yourself in the fun gaming experience of budget managment and dive into the vibrant PoE economy, with the amazing trading tools GGG created for this multionline trading RPG.

Exile yourself in the harsh business world of poe.trade and alt-tabbing into Google.

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Reinhart wrote:

Challenging maps can be made with lower tier maps as well. I find this a bit of bullshit excuse that is being overused to "convince" the developers that the highest tier maps should drop more often. This is also the reason why there are some harder bosses in the lower tier maps for people like you.

Oh yes! Give me some double hasted Necropolis boss, or a double extra-damage elemental weakness Torture Chamber boss. I might actually yawn a bit less on them then on the rest of the map, which is incredibly boring.

Seriously, a lot of builds just simply outdamage and overlevel everything before the Village Ruin boss. I stopped playing that character because except for Uber Atziri (which is also rediculously hard to find), there is just no challenge and the game is very boring.

Map drops suck and gating content behind RNG and (even more so) wealth is and always will be a shitty idea.

BTW, to make the lower-level maps hard you have to spend ridiculous amounts of Chaos orbs, which is just plain stupid. It is simply not an option, so don't present it as an option.

I felt the same way as you initially Cherd. Maps are a continuing RNG problem for me too - I start getting less and less then suddenly BOOM jackpot and I fill up again on a good streak. I HOPE my system for maintaining higher tier maps keeps working - I haven't had to buy Maps for a couple of levels now (95-97) but it may also be I'm just getting LUCKY.

From my own experimenting and research on the forums I believe the key to maintaining high tier maps is to start with a decent map pool (for example 20 of the desired tier), have a small fortune in chaos orbs (say 200 or more - not hard to obtain by farming Dried Lake and collecting Rares for chaos recipe), chisel every map to 20% (white maps only need 4 chisels to reach 20% btw - I've had friends complain of running out of chisels because they alch then chisel), alch the map and chaos the maps for a pack size of 25-30% (which will generally mean the IIQ will be at 70-80% not including the Zana bonus of 8% at lvl8) and you're good to go.

If you're doing that or something similar and it's not working then I dunno mate... more packs/fracture + high IIQ are about the best way I can think of the maintain maps and it does alright for me. I've definitely noticed there are dry spells and times of plenty... I think being consistent is important when rolling maps so that when the lucky map/s occur you capitalize on that and replenish your map stocks.
Also as most other players say, the red maps (t12-15) are not really meant to be maintained but if you start from a big map pool and chaos them with pack size + high IIQ then they will still replenish themselves pretty good... I guess map drops in higher tier maps has a bigger range (tier 1-15) so that's why they're harder to maintain. Whereas a tier 1 only has a range of (1-3) depending on the mob it drops from.

Anyway... I acknowledge maintaining maps can be tedious, there's a learning curve to doing it optimally, it's expensive, sometimes more RNG dependent than we'd want, but I think it's good overall to slow players down on their way to lvl. 100 - especially in temp. leagues.

Good luck with it all in the future.

You are not going to be happy until there is a guaranteed map drop per map...it's not going to happen.

You'll still need to deal with RNG and as such you'll always get shit spells with no map drops or if there are any lower tier ones.

It's not like it hasn't constantly been buffed anyway...just that YOU don't see the results, GGG dose and they can tell if it needs adjusting or not.

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Char1983 wrote:

there is just no challenge and the game is very boring.

Then simply quit. You dont bring anything constructive to the table anyway.

Considering you can get to 96 solo without any actual rolling costs on yourself relatively easily with just T9/T10 maps i don't understand the complains. Your max level maps will probably not give that much more exp/min unless you're somehow clearing 1 shotting packs consistently anyways. not to mention they have far higher chances of ripping you.

A year ago it would have been twice as expensive and probably twice as time consuming to reach any level pat 90.

I would argue it is TOO easy to get to 95 now but probably still too hard to get from 98 to 100.

to define "endgame" a game developer either has to make end content so hard that NO character survives it or restrict access.

ggg chose the latter and combined the real and only curency link to it: rolling maps.
that you burned alot of currency is a prove the system works.

that you didn't succeed maintaining endgame maps is another proof the system works: if every player can easily sustain level 78+ maps it's no real restriction anymore and players don't have to spend massive amounts of currency to it.


so your complaint is just a try to change the system. that's a proven method but the bad thing is, they won't do it because they would have to invent another currency sink if players get free endgame access (you don't want item and/or currency degradation do you?)

and there wouldn't be less complaints as players would then try to force ggg to make endgame easier so they don't die.