Endgame drops are ridiculously fucked up!

There are builds for the rich. Any insane ES build. COC discharge, maybe not so good or expensive any more with COC and Mjolner changes. Then theres crafting, the best currency sink in the game. You can even flip items by buying common used meta uniques and rolling off colors for builds that need those colors. You can go o corrypting spree for those insane modifiers like +1 endurance charge belts, or temp chains facebreakers, and so on.

There are plenty of things to do with currency as long as you have it. Even test builds no one else has and find a way to make it good.

"

Jgizle wrote:

Play Lab. You will never rage again. The map system is trash yet people have become accustomed to the trash it is that they actually convienced themselves it is fun. The map system needs a mod overhaul. Until then, Uber Lab is where you go to farm for currency and is where you will actually make money. Carry people through it so you dont have to get goddess to run it yourself. Its pure profit.

( i tried making suggestions to improve the mapping system and people shat on it saying it is fine as is. Its funny how people can grow to accept something that is terrible. )

Yeah, the mapping system is problematic. On the other hand, to run Uber lab consistently and to carry others, you need a very specific kind of character, so you either get to play whatever you want and probably not sustain much past T11 maps if you're doing it solo and trying to save currency, or you get to run similar lab layouts all day while playing something from a limited set of builds that can crush Izaro without fear of getting wasted.

"

Tempada wrote:

"

Jgizle wrote:

Play Lab. You will never rage again. The map system is trash yet people have become accustomed to the trash it is that they actually convienced themselves it is fun. The map system needs a mod overhaul. Until then, Uber Lab is where you go to farm for currency and is where you will actually make money. Carry people through it so you dont have to get goddess to run it yourself. Its pure profit.

( i tried making suggestions to improve the mapping system and people shat on it saying it is fine as is. Its funny how people can grow to accept something that is terrible. )

Yeah, the mapping system is problematic. On the other hand, to run Uber lab consistently and to carry others, you need a very specific kind of character, so you either get to play whatever you want and probably not sustain much past T11 maps if you're doing it solo and trying to save currency, or you get to run similar lab layouts all day while playing something from a limited set of builds that can crush Izaro without fear of getting wasted.

I dont find that problematic for me. I think of it like Uber Atziri. There are limited viable builds for Atziri. Granted Uber Izaro probably has a more limited list of viable builds, currently. There are plenty of viable builds just not public posted ones. And with all the people complaining that lab sucks, I doubt people are actually trying to learn the lab content, and create new builds for it. Like any content, people will just use what is Meta for said content.

I have always enjoyed cyclone through all its nerfs and buffs, ill keep playing it, and enjoying the game in its current state. I can always hope for more improvements, but not any time soon. GGG to small to please my desires in a timely manner.

Man this is why league is dead after a month. I don't think GGG will ever understand.

I have leveled 4 characters this league. 3 are 90+, last one is 80 and I can't bring myself to keep grinding. It seems pointless. All of the characters get to T13ish. Same old story of chisel, alch, chaos x 4-5, vaal...PRAY.

It's annoying. The game is not rewarding in end game. There is absolutely no reason to play once you hit T12 maps. No matter how crazy your quantity, items don't really drop more or better. Maps don't drop more or higher tiers.

Every league when I get to T13/T14 I know that going beyond that is pointless.

What does GGG do? Make the game even LESS rewarding by nerfing XP in high levels...so now do we not only get starved of items and maps...but XP as well.

What's the point of putting the carrot on a stick that is so far out it gets rotten before you reach it?

I want to love mapping and playing end game stuff, but I always feel like I'm hate fucking it instead. which really just leads me to "why am I even doing this?"

I have said this many times: GGG understands gambler psychology very well, but not gamer psychology. That's why they will always have a barren endgame where only a small percentage of people will continue end game mapping.

P.S. I'm not saying i didn't enjoy getting all of my builds to end game...I'm saying once I get there I wish i had some kind of motivation to continue. Currently the motivation set by GGG is not good enough.

Ive been having great map drops in t15/t16.
Craft your maps for high iiq, if you cant afford it, you are in the tier group you belong.

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Jgizle wrote:

There are builds for the rich. Any insane ES build. COC discharge, maybe not so good or expensive any more with COC and Mjolner changes.

... and then? I can make a Blade Vortex Pathfinder today and kill Shaper today if I want to. I even have a legacy Vinktar lying around. The problem with that? The T13 maps would get even more boring. The only thing that more currency would allow me to do is pretty much buy more content. And buying content is a pretty stupid concept to start with.

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666lol666 wrote:

[rant]

Ok, I'm salty as fuck right now and I'm still unable to express how disgusting these endgame map drops are. Ok, first of all before some moth*pieeep* son of a *pieeeep* that was mol*pieeeeeep a bunch of redneck r*pieeeep* starts telling this "Did you roll your maps well enough?" bullshit - YES I DO!
In fact I don't give a shit about the mods because no matter what at least one of my chars is always capable of running the map. Therefore I run my higher maps chiseled, rare & corrupted.

example

And I have a >100 altlas bonus aswell so please forgive me that I'm salty as fuck if all I get in return is a level 10 and a level 5 map. Fuck this shit! I even don't mind running these corrupted maps when they end up "unidentified". But when I do a corrupted & unidentified palace map with elemental weakness and Dom drops a Limpsplit I'm having a hard time not smashing my screen.

Dom_trolling

Seriously, this is the only game I know where you were punished for playing. I can life with the fact that I'll never play some maps because they are just zu valuable to run them myself but it's completely bullshit when it is (currency wise) almost always better to just sell the maps, chisels, chaos orbs and vaal orbs than to run the maps.

maps_that_I'll_never_run_or_never_run_again

Maps that are far to valuable/expensive to run them myself:

shaper
putrid cloister
perandus manor
vinktar's square
uber atziri

That whole concept of punishing players for playing the game is beyond stupid. Is there anyone at GGG's headquarter that really believes that it is fun to faceroll the same t11 maps over and over again and sell the few higher maps that do drop? Fuck this ret*pieeeep* "reward"-system of ass*pieeep* created by people that have obviously completely lost the connection to their own game long ago!

FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!

Damn, I feel better now!

[/rant]

Yup, that's one of the things to add for the nonsense GGG list.

If you want to run a high tier map you gotta buy it for 10c + chisel + chaos + vaal, in the end you just waste like 25c to end up with shit drops.

Yesterday, I bought all the low tier maps till t11 and today till t14.

So far I just had 1x t15 drop and 3x t12. But I gotta say, atlas feels better than the old system. Like 4 or 5 days playing essence and it's nice. High tiers are hard to get but at least till t11 is fine. The old system was hard even to keep t9s.

"

morbo wrote:

The 150+%, triple packsize rippy maps are more often than not a disappointment. If I get some lucky rolls or nice corrupt, then ill run it, sure. But I've stopped chaos spamming maps into "perfection" a long time ago.

The variance of results is just too huge and the invisible base drop roll (aka "seed") is still more important than the % rolled by the player. The lack of map drops from those rippy maps, is then offset by some easy Alc & go dropping several +1, which feels stupid as always, but meh... I've stopped caring about this somewhere betweeen PoE 1.0 & 1.3

It wont change as long as endgame mapping is primarily designed as a currency sink and RNG progression is an almost exclusive tool in GGG's toolbox.

I remember Anu and BillNRND dropping Exalts on a Shipyard.
it was a form of "ritual suicide" for Bill, far more than a quest for "the perfect map".
he quit after that. the drops from that map must have contributed to his decision.

maps got better since those Beta days, and a couple "less RNG" mechanics were added, but GGG's mind set never changed: fuck the player. he will come back for more.

+1 OP.

I'm getting to the end of my frustration levels with POE and it makes me sad to say that.

Make no mistake... I love this game. But, end game gating has driven away most of my mates already and now has me with one foot out the door. When the majority of my play sessions are ending in frustration and annoyance, I fail to see the point in continuing on.

We invest time to build and gear our character, more time to farm currency and then blow it all just trying to gain access to high tier maps because RNG has decreed it so.

When I heard that Alas was changing everything about end game I was so hyped. Foolishly so it seems because nothing has changed. Spend time, spend more time to progress a little and then watch it all drain away. Oh, bad luck. Back to maps many tiers below your capabilities for you! Have fun with that! Aren't you thankful we are helping you grind, grind, grind! Gooooo team!

One thing that really struck was when a mate asked how the game was and if it was worth starting. My answer was simply No. :( It wasn't the fact that I actually said No, but the ease with which I said it. I didn't even need to think about it. Just straight out, No.


And so we come to today. Another couple of hours running T12/13 maps, currency invested to help with returns. And after those couple of hours?? I've gone backwards. Again. When my last T13 chiseled, alc'd, chaosed, vaaled, fragged Lair with 130+ Quantity, bloodlines, Twinned bosses resulted in a Single T4 map... Yeah, I logged out. Maybe for the last time.

GGG, you have come so far with POE. Don't push your long time players away when all they want to do is play the game without resorting to buying their way through it. Please...

"

Druga1757 wrote:

Forum post is a good way to vent, but nothing speaks louder than lost player retention. Take a break/stop playing will let GGG know you don't like what they have done. If player retention drops enough, they'll rebalance. They've already buffed item and map drops several times before.

If you'd still rather play, then maybe your frustration isn't that bad, or your addiction to the game is stronger than your frustration. If that's the case, then GGG's drop balance must be working since you're still playing.

As a SSF player there are many things that GGG does with PoE that makes playing a huge pain in the ass. For example, I'd gladly engage in trading if there was a listed price and a B/O option that can be done without the seller being on-line at all (you know, the asynchronous method that we all wanted yesterday 3 years ago). I'd even set up my own shop to sell my excess items of value. But no, GGG can't or won't be bothered to make trading functional and usable.

Of course there has to PoE features that I like to still be playing and not just another of the millions who have quit. For me it's the near infinite build combinations I can play. Even though I'll only play < 100 different builds lifetime just knowing I have such a huge number of possible builds keeps me theory crafting and playing. Even though I have yet to advance a single of my couple dozen builds to level 90 yet and the xp nerfs are another pain in the ass to deal with and come up with ways to clear faster or mostly just have to grind more maps. I guess it's part of the "I'll be dammed if I will quit now" mindset in spite of GGG's mad nerf insanity disease they have. I do like the gear progression on new builds and finding better items to use as I level. I do like rogue encounters as I travel and progress (I also liked war bands for the same reason, GGG should make them permanent). GGG should increase the frequency we encounter rogues. I do like the history and stories that the NPCs of Wraeclast tell.

Then there is the huge elephant in the room of all the endgame changes GGG makes to kill progression and kill any desire to play the endgame. Sure, GGG can look at the ladders and see 29 players right now (20 SC and 9 HC in Essence) and say "working as intended" and completely ignore the fact that all the endgame nerfs have alienated a huge quantity of players and have driven out even many top long time players this year. And for what purpose? For a super small handful of top elite players that could face roll Uber Atziri, Uber Izaro, or maybe even The Shaper? What long term player retention business model strategy is this? How can poisoning the playing field (endgame mapping on the road to level 100) be shown on GGG's bottom line (P&L ledger) to generate more revenue? Are there more uber hardcore masochist players buying mtx right now than the millions of players GGG would have retained if they hadn't been so nerf heavy handed? I hardly think so.

So even though endgame drops have always sucked for the SSF players (and always will) more now than ever before the leveling to 90 process has become so much worse that my quantity of time playing has dropped significantly. For example, in Perandus league I was actively choosing to spend my free time playing PoE so I was getting in 21 to 25 hours a week. In Ascendancy league that dropped to below 20 hrs/week, in Prophecy... err... that was such a complete server/client latency timing mess that I couldn't play at all until patch 2.3.1 was pushed out but by then the desire to play at all was killed so I didn't play it. Now in Essence I have a level 68 CA archer fire trapper I'm pleased with but with mixed comments that CA was nerfed out of being endgame viable and CA is completely endgame viable I'm left not knowing if I should continue this build or not. What I do know is now it's not a matter of finding enough free time to play PoE it's that I'm using the new fall tv shows and other leisure activities as a reason to not play PoE so I'm under 15 hrs/week easy and some weeks only about 10 hours. This should be sending clear and loud signals to GGG that the endgame grind is too costly in terms of time verses enjoyment derived from playing and change their direction for coding PoE but to me I just don't see that GGG listens to the majority of PoE loyalists and continues steering the PoE ship with blinders on. When the PoE ship crashes on the rocks and the player base collapses then GGG will have to take the 99% seriously but by then it will be too late.