How much will cherry-picking your Atlas really cost you?

Defining the issue / context

Cherry picking is a term used to describe people who anticipate wanting to, or needing to unlock only one map per tier on their Atlas in order to control what map types drop from monsters. I'm going to list the negatives, but their big positive is that they get full and narrow control of their map drops. 'Cherry Picking' isn't a one size fit all descriptor though:

(1) Some people say they will unlock only 1 map from each tier.

(2) Some say that they will only unlock 1 or 2 maps PERIOD

(3) Others anticipate unlocking all maps of tier X (7-11 usually) and below, while being very selective in their mid and high tier maps.

I'd like this post to provide as many points as possible as to what such players will not have access to if they pursue one of the two extreme versions I listed above. I think most players will fall into the third category, partly because of how they play, but also because they don't want to give some of these things up.

The little things

- Zone specific crafting bases. You will lose the ability to farm for yourself, or farm for selling to others, zone specific crafting base item types. Perhaps one map and item base will line up with a map type you want anyway, but you will be forfeiting your immediate non-traded access to most, if not all of them.

- Divination card farming and access. You will lose the ability to find and/or farm many map specific divination cards. This may be exacerbated by the new strongbox base type, but may also be offset to some degree by the fact that, with no changes, div card drop rate sucks.

- Miss out on good/fun changes to old maps because they've made up their minds. Some amount of changes have been made to map layout, difficulty, and boss placement/mechanics. Gorge is a higher tier, and may have a more difficult boss. Other maps with good layouts and hard bosses could be getting easier bosses. On the bright side for those who will be cherry picking, you can always find out about these changes as you play and adjust your unlocks accordingly.

- Skipping the new content. Like the below, you could opt to run the new map and not kill the boss.

The moderate things

- What do you do with maps that you *like* but don't *love*? Assume that you love Springs (14) but like the Dark Forest too (14). You could run the Dark Forest, but skip the boss so you don't unlock it on your Atlas. Over time, this adds up to a lot of missed maps, and good ones at that.

- The ability to accumulate and vendor sets of average/bad layout maps to get good/valuable ones.

The major things

- Handicapped ability to utilize Cartographer's Sextants and Shaper's Orbs.

- You potentially give up the ability to have 1, 2, or 3 of the Guardian's maps drop.

- Smaller map drop bonus. How small? Depends on how pared down you want your drops. This could be obviously enormous, but even small differences of 10% will add up to be huge over the course of a 3 month league. Let's run the numbers of the completionist (110%) versus the modified cherry picker of example 1 from the beginning (unlocks only one map from each tier = 25% bonus)

Average map IIQ of 75% Completionist = 157.5 // Picker = 93.75
Average map IIQ of 100% Completionist = 210 // Picker = 125
Average map IIQ of 125% Completionist = 262.5 // Picker = 156.25

That's giving up a lot of drops. The completionist is getting 68% more maps. Looking at the raw numbers for what the cherry picker is getting, there is still no guarantee that they are sustaining high maps, especially if they aren't pouring tons of currency to keep their base map IIQ north of 120 with packsize (basically what we do already)

Now let's do the same versus number 3 (unlocks most maps, but starts being picky around T10+ and forfeits 30 completions).

Average map IIQ of 75% Completionist = 157.5 // Picker = 135
Average map IIQ of 100% Completionist = 210 // Picker = 180
Average map IIQ of 125% Completionist = 262.5 // Picker = 225

That's about 17% more maps. Good, but given the high raw numbers of the picky person, it seems like those numbers are high enough to sustain a very nice map pool of high maps, and get the bonus of having those maps more often than not be the ones they want.

I used some of Rockstopper's ideas from another thread in this one, combined with my own, combined with other more common ideas that have been floating around from multiple others.

There are two obviously different ways you could look at the sum of these parts that probably hinge on how much faith you put in the scope and success of GGG's layout and map boss changes:

You trust that GGG have done a good job of making more maps 'top tier'. Instead of having Canyon/Gorge/Plateau, we have 3 maps per tier that are legitimately within 5% of each other when you consider layout, packsize, and boss difficulty. With this being true, and all the other things listed here incentivizing you to explore the atlas, only the most stubborn and ridiculous minority will cherry pick only 5-15 maps to unlock. Everyone else will have a fun time running pretty much whatever they get, and in the circumstances where below average maps drop, they get vendored up or sold.

or

You don't trust that GGG made more maps of 'Gorge' quality, the sky really is falling, and GGG are assholes for incentivizing us out of all the good things I listed here.

There are many other takeaways you can have, ofc, those are just the two extremes that stood out to me.

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innervation wrote:

There are two obviously different ways you could look at the sum of these parts that probably hinge on how much faith you put in the scope and success of GGG's layout and map boss changes:

You trust that GGG have done a good job of making more maps 'top tier'. Instead of having Canyon/Gorge/Plateau, we have 3 maps per tier that are legitimately within 5% of each other when you consider layout, packsize, and boss difficulty. With this being true, and all the other things listed here incentivizing you to explore the atlas, only the most stubborn and ridiculous minority will cherry pick only 5-15 maps to unlock. Everyone else will have a fun time running pretty much whatever they get, and in the circumstances where below average maps drop, they get vendored up or sold.

or

You don't trust that GGG made more maps of 'Gorge' quality, the sky really is falling, and GGG are assholes for incentivizing us out of all the good things I listed here.

It's pretty obvious that however they have balanced the maps, there will be a few maps that are 'the best' to run, and those maps will the the ones people want to buy. Farming those maps will therefore give you more currency, which makes the loss of income from completionist bonuses less of an issue.

There is no real reason why you shouldn't clear low level maps. Cherry Picking is only really relevant for late game, so you may do that for top yellow/red maps.

If you can farm consistently yellow maps there is no reason to really even run white maps, thus increasing the map pool for those tiers gives you no real penalty, while giving you a serious drop rate increase. Any other economic detriment from cherry picking is more than covered by the difference in currency obtained from chain farming optimal maps.

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dudiobugtron wrote:

It's pretty obvious that however they have balanced the maps, there will be a few maps that are 'the best' to run, and those maps will the the ones people want to buy. Farming those maps will therefore give you more currency, which makes the loss of income from completionist bonuses less of an issue.

This could spawn an interesting question, although perhaps one deserving of its own thread:

If the plateau, the canyon, and the strand were all Tier 9 RIGHT NOW, would people accept others substituting one of those maps in place of a Gorge in a rotation?

same question but if Gorge length were reduced by 15%

I think with a slight Gorge nerf they would. I know one will always technically and mathematically the best, but if that difference is small enough (5% or less), the benefits of being able to start up a rotation more quickly may outweigh it.

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Adser wrote:

There is no real reason why you shouldn't clear low level maps. Cherry Picking is only really relevant for late game, so you may do that for top yellow/red maps.

If you can farm consistently yellow maps there is no reason to really even run white maps, thus increasing the map pool for those tiers gives you no real penalty, while giving you a serious drop rate increase. Any other economic detriment from cherry picking is more than covered by the difference in currency obtained from chain farming optimal maps.

I agree, this is the best method; t1-t7 don't really matter, and thus can clear them all for the 1% drop rate bonus. And then you can cherry pick the yellow/red Maps that you WANT in your Pool (even if you're not getting the full 100% bonus, it's still better than getting sub-optimal yellow/red Maps.)

As for Gorge, it's apparently t13 now. (Interestingly, Museum is t10, and Arena is t8; I know an MF'r who this change could very much affect.. :P)


The main problem will be migration to Standard, since there will no doubt be a Challenge around completing the Atlas and such you'd have to "fk up" your Atlas near end of League; and when that gets migrated to Standard... gg GGG, your Standard Map drops are now permanently fkd..

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Sheriff_K wrote:

The main problem will be migration to Standard, since there will no doubt be a Challenge around completing the Atlas and such you'd have to "fk up" your Atlas near end of League; and when that gets migrated to Standard... gg GGG, your Standard Map drops are now permanently fkd..

Yeah I intentionally left Standard out of this b/c LOL standard.

Think with your heads people.

If people start cherrypicking optimal red maps-those maps will be cheaper.

I mean by "fucking up your atlas", you will have exactly the same mapping system as in 2.3 (besides more maps).

It's not like having only Gorge as a red map will make it rain Gorges. It will make it so that only Gorge can drop. Like sure, you will get 3xGorge drops more than he will (assuming you compete with 3 other tier 12 maps), but that also means 3x more Gorge maps on the market, if everyone keeps thinking like that.

I mean it would take a ridiculously big XP/layout/mob density difference to justify minmaxing like that.

And even though mathematically a person with only a Gorge will have 3x better chances of getting it, I don't think that will be the case.

I mean consider the current mapping system. Do you think that in the new system, game will decide "I will give the play a tier 12 map" as often to a guy with only a Gorge compared to a guy with all 4 tier 12 maps?

No reason to think that such hidden mechanics will change. I mean it's just like currently getting tier 15 maps works-if you "hide" all your Abyss and Colosseum maps in favour of core-is there really such a big difference? It would be assuming each of those Abysses and Colosseums would roll as Core instead (for the minmaxer in our hypothetical situation). But there's no reason not to believe GGG will stealth nerf that.

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dxmzmx wrote:

Think with your heads people.

If people start cherrypicking optimal red maps-those maps will be cheaper.

I mean by "fucking up your atlas", you will have exactly the same mapping system as in 2.3 (besides more maps).

It's not like having only Gorge as a red map will make it rain Gorges. It will make it so that only Gorge can drop. Like sure, you will get 3xGorge drops more than he will (assuming you compete with 3 other tier 12 maps), but that also means 3x more Gorge maps on the market, if everyone keeps thinking like that.

I mean it would take a ridiculously big XP/layout/mob density difference to justify minmaxing like that.

And even though mathematically a person with only a Gorge will have 3x better chances of getting it, I don't think that will be the case.

I mean consider the current mapping system. Do you think that in the new system, game will decide "I will give the play a tier 12 map" as often to a guy with only a Gorge compared to a guy with all 4 tier 12 maps?

No reason to think that such hidden mechanics will change. I mean it's just like currently getting tier 15 maps works-if you "hide" all your Abyss and Colosseum maps in favour of core-is there really such a big difference? It would be assuming each of those Abysses and Colosseums would roll as Core instead (for the minmaxer in our hypothetical situation). But there's no reason not to believe GGG will stealth nerf that.

Everyone wins when t12 gorges are cheap as fuck.

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dxmzmx wrote:

I mean consider the current mapping system. Do you think that in the new system, game will decide "I will give the play a tier 12 map" as often to a guy with only a Gorge compared to a guy with all 4 tier 12 maps?

Yes. It'll roll Tier first, then among the options within that Tier, and if there are none, you won't get a Map.

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dxmzmx wrote:

but that also means 3x more Gorge maps on the market, if everyone keeps thinking like that.

I ALMOST put that idea in the OP, but it didn't fit in smoothly. So there are two things there - the one, you mentioned: If the sky really is falling, and the best route to take as individuals is 'narrow our map pool severely' then everyone will do that. What are the consequences?

Supply is absolutely flooded with good, cheap maps, prices drop, casual/new players can afford whatever the good map is (Gorge) because everyone already has more than they need for themselves.

But there is a side effect. We know not everyone will do this, for tons of reasons. Other maps will still be desirable to small groups of people, but the market won't be finding enough maps to satisfy their demand for that map (Necropolis for high iLvl Bone Circlet). Some % of the Gorge spammers will realize that opening up and running Necropolis and selling Necros + Bone Circlets will be more profitable than keeping his map pool as narrow as everyone else.

There will be tons of little examples like this, plus personal preferences.

If the hive mind happens, it will still naturally trend towards exploration because of economics.