Map Progression vs RNG 2.0 ( Feedback & Consolidated Player Solutions)

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Dragon585 wrote:

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Nicholas_Steel wrote:

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Dragon585 wrote:

Reserved... just in case.

Continuing to search the forums for great ideas and suggestions from other players, but I know there is a lot of good ideas/suggestions that got buried. So any help in finding these would be appreciated.

You should probably edit this

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___________________________________In general_______________________________________

to appear correctly. Also you can remove the --------> parts from the spoilers, we aren't 2 year olds that don't know what the Show button does. All you've done is add clutter to your post by having the arrows.

Hmm. That is strange, it appears correctly for me. Oh well, I will just remove the ___
Thanks for pointing that out.

As for the arrows, I rather enjoyed doing them to be different. I never thought someone would be insulted by it.

I don't mean any disrespect or anything as you've clearly put a fair bit of effort in to your post.

Introduction of higher level, freely accessible (once unlocked) areas would be my solution.

Every time you activate a lower level map (66-69), it adds to a tally for that maps level. Once you hit a quantity, let's say 20, of any particular level (66-69), you would unlock a freely accessible map area of that same monster level. Areas should be multifarious and spawn a unique boss from a pool of the map bosses of the corresponding level. There is still a grind to get there, it shouldn't just be provided as an easy option for bad players/builds to progress further than they should before realising what they are doing wrong, and should cap at 69 to not make high end maps too readily accessible, but this would prevent severe regression after an unlucky streak of lvl70+ maps that sends you back to 66's, or god forbid, into act3 to farm 66's.

Grinding areas 20 levels below you, in the hope of being able to grind areas 18-19 levels below you, in the hope of being able to grind areas 17-18 levels below you, just isn't productive.

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Herpy_Derpleson wrote:

Grinding areas 20 levels below you, in the hope of being able to grind areas 18-19 levels below you, in the hope of being able to grind areas 17-18 levels below you, just isn't productive.

Nor does it give you any incentive to log on and continue to get slapped in the face. I am having that problem as we speak. I spend more time on the forums than I do on the game itself. And the time I do spend in game lately has just been farming orbs. You should see how freaking full my currency stash has gotten in the last week since I gave up on maps.

I can't even imagine how the multiboxers keep enough stash space. Do I enjoy farming day after day for a week? Of course not. But at least farming, though not fun, provides a reward that I can see every single time. It doesn't cost me anything, and it doesn't give me a feeling of wasting my time.

Since I am not running maps lately I think I will take all my new found currency and help jack the price of exalted orbs up. /sarcasm.

Your suggestion of freely accessible unlocked areas is interesting to me. I must admit I am curious how something like this would effect the games economy, as that seems to be the major setback for all solutions. I wish someone who was good at these sorts of things would chime in and evaluate some of the proposed solutions and the effects they may have on the game. That way we could come back with even better and more refined ideas.

As it stands now, all I personally can do is make educated guesses on what these changes would do to the games economy. But I tell you this, I don't think a solo player should have to stop mapping for a few days in order to rebuild enough currency to continue mapping. To me that is not a currency sink, its a currency black hole.

IMO currency sinks should be put in place so that a player doesn't accumulate to much unused wealth while playing. Right now, we are spending (guessing) 5 to 50 times more currency per map than we are getting out of each map. This results in eventually having to stop mapping and farm/trade for more wealth so that you can continue.

Since I started mapping, I haven't been able to buy my mara a single new upgrade. ALL of my wealth has been fed to the bottomless pit known as mapping. This doesn't seem like a currency sink to me. This seems like some other extreme and has effectively killed endgame for me. It has been a week now since my last map, and I am simply amazed at how much currency I have been able to accumulate by not throwing it into the abyss.

Maybe I will just keep farming, and buy upgrades until my mara gets BIS everything. Then I can say, "I'm done, there is no more reason to play."

bump

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Dragon585 wrote:

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Herpy_Derpleson wrote:

Grinding areas 20 levels below you, in the hope of being able to grind areas 18-19 levels below you, in the hope of being able to grind areas 17-18 levels below you, just isn't productive.

Maybe I will just keep farming, and buy upgrades until my mara gets BIS everything. Then I can say, "I'm done, there is no more reason to play."

Well, you are right before the step where i am now. Unwanting to even log on to my char to play him. Theres no reason because there is a very small prospect of having fun on the horizon. My Map pool situation is the same as yours, even progression wise. From all the people i know, theres only a select few that can actually half-way sustain high level Maps. Too much RNG and too much drop-down potential.

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Dragon585 wrote:

I have this nagging question I wish to know. Did you gents read through the whole thing, or was it just to much text to keep you interested?

not the whole thing but just scanned through most of it and read parts here and there, was just sharing my own experiences as an unlucky player.

I largely agree with the op.

Love this map system, love that it is a currency sink, but it needs to be more reliable as you invest, the chance of getting maps back should go up a lot more when you invest in good mods, it should be noticeable, it is with items because theres so many of them dropping, with maps its just not, you can run 100 quant and get nothing regularly and also run 15 quant and get back 5 maps regularly, the odds are so remote that 100% more feels like buying 2 lottery tickets rather than one, a complete waste of time that cost twice as much. It should feel rewarding and that should strengthen the sink of currency investment in maps and the result should be that we dont have to abandon lvl85+ characters because we ran out of luck.

Either buffing how the quantity map affixes boost the map drops, temporarily buffing the map drop rate inside a map until 1 map has dropped, making it far more likely for a map to drop another at the same level rather than a lower level, however they want to go about it something needs changed. The idea of giving each boss an extra slot with a high chance to drop a map of the same level and just leaving the rest of the system as it is now would work, I think theres definitely options available.

I think there has to be rng in it, and when it comes to lvl76 and 77 maps there should never be an endless supply (unless higher maps are released), so these things should scale down slightly as the map levels increase to keep reaching the mid 90s a real challenge in itself, thats a good thing. But right now it feels like you can never sustain the level of maps you are on, you get an endless supply of 66 maps when you stop playing them and they start building up, then you stop playing lvl67 maps and hey ho, stockpiles of em, but that map base seems to me like it can only be generated by being so over levelled that you keep them rather than playing them, you need to be able to build a small but respectable base of maps at the level you are playing tailing off somewhere around lvl74/75 maps where it should have descend into this brutal rng system we have now.

Thanks for posting guys. If we continue to post our thoughts and experiences in a respectable organized matter I am sure GGG will take them seriously. I knew I wasn't the only one out there with bad luck, and reading your guys experiences proves it.

Now the hard part. We can't just say, maps are broken please fix. We need to think of what it would take for maps to be something fun again, and we need to do so intelligently. Meaning we keep how said changes will effect the rest of the game in mind.

I have been seriously brainstorming all morning long and to my disappointment, I have come up with nothing new to add. I guess I will keep searching the forums for other peoples ideas that might have been buried, but please feel free to add your ideas or links to other peoples ideas. It will help, I promise. An organized thread with constructive criticism AND potential solutions can't be ignored.

And since I am having trouble finding the drive to actually play the game lately, I am left with a lot of free time to work on this thread. So keep it coming :)

Great points brought up so far.

I thought of a new suggestion to add to the thread. I think it has good potential.

• Implement a map token system. Instead of dropping maps, what will drop instead will be map tokens. These tokens can be exchanged at the vendors for maps. Each tier of map will have a different token cost. For example maps level 66-69 will cost 1 token, maps level 70-73 will cost 2 tokens, and maps level 74-77 will cost 3 tokens. This would prevent our only map drop in a 77 map from being a level 66 map. Maps purchased from the vendor will be exactly as they are now. They will still need to be rolled and chiseled ect. Bonus iiq will have the same effect, accept that map drops will now be token drops.

For me, this would fix the feeling of farming low level maps being a complete waste of time. If you start to run low on tokens, you buy the 1 token tier maps and rebuild you high level maps this way.

It still effectively keeps players from being able to run high level maps nonstop, but at the same time allows a much quicker rebuild of your high level maps. I thought about maybe adding a randomness to the purchase of the maps as well. Meaning if you purchase a tier 1 map (66-69) you won't know what level of map your getting until you actually purchase it. That way you can't just continually buy the highest level of each tier map.

The more I think about this idea the more I like it.


-Dragon

Not sure if its been mentioned prior but what if you allow maps to be combined for higher level map? 2x66 can be placed into alter for a 67, then 2 67's for a 68 etc. Then at least you have to decide whether you would rather have 2 runs of a 70, or 1 of a 71 etc, and hitting dry spells and only getting 66's all day isnt as bad.