Maps, Affixes, Risk:Reward and You

Preface
Some lengthy discussion has been going on on mumble between some veteran players and we all came to a singular conclusion: map affixes do not reflect accurate risk to reward ratios. Maps, while extremely fun to do right now do not promote or emphasize running difficult and/or challenging combinations.

In the current state of the game, players choose to skip or reroll damage affixes in lieu of demographic, layout and/or inhabitation affixes because it offers the best risk:reward ratios, i.e: lowest risk to highest rewards. This, I feel, is not the ideal way to approach maps. I also feel that bandaid changes to quantity and rarity are not the way forward.

Over the course of Open Beta, I've had the wonderful opportunity to run every single map in the game in various forms and combinations. I'm no stranger to running Shrines with -Res, Chain or Crematoriums with Overlord's & Fleet and some other ridiculous combinations. The stark difference is that we were never rewarded any more than had we done a simple hordes, champions map. And why would you risk your entire character's life (or many hours of effort in the case of Standard League) over a meagre chance at some loot? You wouldn't! This problem is exacerbated by more difficult maps with dangerous native packs and/or unique bosses (i.e: Shrine, Crematorium, Temple, Maze).

Map Affix Synergies
The concept is simple. The current system is close to solid but with some small improvements, looks to be an enjoyable and worthwhile experience. Rather than taking the standard "nerf" approach, my design paradigm revolves around never "nerfing" things but rather "buffing" things that are lacking.

Synergies aims to do this.

Look at this map. Underground Sea with the Chilled, Commanders, Smothering, Mirrored and Splitting affixes. For the average 70~80 joe entering this map, it is both risky to run and has very little prospects for it with Kuduku being the primary culprit.


Absolutely nothing would prompt you to run this because the marginal gains from it is..well not enough to justify doing it! However, what if that specific combination of Smothering and Splitting gave you the following bonus: "Unique Boss has +30% Increased Item Rarity". Hold on for a moment there - that seems like it could be worth attempting the boss.

Suggested Synergies
Examples:

• Burning/Freezing/Shocking + Deadly - +30% Increased Item Rarity
• Chaining + of Exposure - +100% Increased Item Rarity from Ranged Monsters, Ranged Unique Boss has a +10% chance to drop a map
• Chaining + of Exposure + Overlord's - Ranged Unique Boss has a +20% chance to drop a map
• Overlord's + of Exposure - Unique Bosses drop items with +1 Item Level
• Deadly + Fleet - +10% Increased Experience Gained
• Fleet + Overlord's - Unique Boss has a x% increased chance of dropping a Unique

And various other combinations you may like to think of (with their own unique rewards). The idea is to provide bonuses that do not normally exist. If this was the case, extremely skilled players and well coordinated groups would be more likely to tackle content like this as per the initial design intent.

Clearly much can be done to tweak the system to suit the difficulty of maps, going so far as to greatly incentivize running these affixes on riskier maps. This can be compounded as more difficult affixes are present on the map. Most importantly, this system gives players a choice. If one were able to customize their gaming experience beyond the randomized internal and semi-controlled external variables on maps, I strongly believe we could see a long-lived and very fruitful system.

Credits to Ighnaz for sparking this whole discussion. More to come as I add things to the discussion.

This is thoughtful. It acknowledges what we all know to be true: certain mods in combination are worse than when they appear alone.

Basically I came up with two ideas about the whole synergy thing. The first one is having a specific table of map mods that synergyse with each other. Where certain map mods meet there is a multiplier that increases the bonus quantity of both mods. Multipliers stack with each other just like all other multipliers in the game.

The small example would be: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B557k8bVbuL7M0FyT2wwZXI1Y1U/edit

Current issue with this is the fact that you would need to maintain the table if changes occur and that takes quite some time.

The second suggestion I had was about map bosses having specific lists of map mods that make them harder. Those mods increase the overall loot quality of the boss. This idea would be much easier to implement and would not require too much effort to maintain as new mods and bosses become available.

This whole idea revolves about making difficult maps attractable to players. In general, all we really want is more people dying to hard mods and I think this would help with that.

It seems like the simpler fix would be remove all beneficial mods and then buff map area and pack size accordingly. While I agree that synergies would make things interesting, the bigger offender is being forced to roll area on certain maps to make them runnable at all.

I like it. There are definitely a lot of affix match-ups that I'll always skip over because it's just not worth the risk/hassle of dealing with them. If there was any kind of added bonus to them, I'd be less likely to reroll them.

Personally I'd suggest trying to avoid limiting them to specific maps/bosses, you could break down the nasty combos into 'melee boss', 'ranged boss' and 'general nastiness'. Having very specific combos just for Shrine Piety doesn't effect very many people.

"

Munsie wrote:

Personally I'd suggest trying to avoid limiting them to specific maps/bosses, you could break down the nasty combos into 'melee boss', 'ranged boss' and 'general nastiness'. Having very specific combos just for Shrine Piety doesn't effect very many people.

That sounds like a good idea. I contemplated that for a moment and I think it would simplify things a good deal. Also, if I am not mistaken Act boss replicas have a different tag on them as noted by the recent changes to Curses - those should fall under 'general nastiness'.

Subscribed to this thread.

I'l repost my comment from reddit:

I like the idea. -25 max resist and %physical damage done as x element can make a 66 map deadly for a 11.5k life level 85.

My idea: They datamine what affix combinations people die the most on, and then set up an algorithm that buffs quantity based on that data. Combo's that produce the most RIPs also would provide the most maps and loot.

This would truly make the system into one where challenge = reward. If you have a build that can overcome affixes that most other builds can't, then you are rewarded. It would also make it so flavour of the month builds become worse because everyone would die to the same affixes.

In addition, it would give players a much more accurate description of map difficulty. High quantity = bad if you are undergeared.

"

Lyralei wrote:

"

Munsie wrote:

Personally I'd suggest trying to avoid limiting them to specific maps/bosses, you could break down the nasty combos into 'melee boss', 'ranged boss' and 'general nastiness'. Having very specific combos just for Shrine Piety doesn't effect very many people.

That sounds like a good idea. I contemplated that for a moment and I think it would simplify things a good deal. Also, if I am not mistaken Act boss replicas have a different tag on them as noted by the recent changes to Curses - those should fall under 'general nastiness'.

Ah, by 'general nastiness' I meant affix combos that don't really depend on the boss of the map. Affix combos that suck simply for existing, such as No Regen + Chaos DoT, or something like Half Regen + Temp Chains + Fleet, or -Max Resist + Ele Weakness.

I wonder if there would be certain situations where 2 bonuses would stack? Such as a bonus for doing a ranged boss with Extra Projectiles + Chain, and another for doing a map with Emanant + Extra Proj + Chain. That sounds really not fun and I'd definitely reroll it with the current system lol.

"

Uvne wrote:

It seems like the simpler fix would be remove all beneficial mods and then buff map area and pack size accordingly. While I agree that synergies would make things interesting, the bigger offender is being forced to roll area on certain maps to make them runnable at all.

The problem with that is the design space for map affixes. I'm not trying to say that GGG has exhausted all the possible affixes a map could, in theory, have, but without making overly clunky rules it's actually somewhat difficult. Just take a minute and try to create some new map affixes yourself; tricky, huh? Remove too many mods, and you're left with a small enough number that maps no longer seem varied.

There are some things we can, and should, do to increase variety. In the case of Fleeting, two mods that are only tangentially related -- attack/cast speed, and movement speed -- are combined into a single affix, and we'd likely be better off if we separated those two components into separate affixes with an appropriate reward for each. Perhaps new value ranges are appropriate as well.

In regards to the currently overpowered, non-difficult affixes, I think we need to seriously consider quantity penalties. It might be too hard to change Labyrinthine (makes indoor map a maze) to where it doesn't make some levels twice as large. That doesn't mean we need to remove it from the affix pool; our challenge is simply to balance it against other map affixes. If that means giving it -20 IIQ, so that players need to burn through their Chisels just to even things out, I don't have a problem with that.

In terms of the OP, I think the intent is fantastic, and that some system to promote this should definitely be in effect. However, I'm not sold on the actual system proposed; it creates additional, archaic rules for how maps work.

What I feel should be done instead is a lot simpler: when assigning risk/reward ratios to map affixes, the affixes with the highest chances of anti-player synergy should be deliberately overpowered. Imagine if the reward for "of Exposure" (-x player resistances) was so great that it became the de facto awesome mod for maps to have. You know how people toss Alterations at their maps until Labyrinthine shows up? Imagine that for "of Exposure." So then what happens when Shocking also pops up, with its own, synergy-enabled high reward factor? We still have the same essential end result: the risk is high, but with a high reward to compensate. However, we've done it with the minimum of artificial systems; elegance.