Is the map system humane design?

Extra Credits video

And if not, what can be done about it?

you know, nugi said on his stream about a week ago "xp should never be gated", he went on a talk about how you should never gate xp from players and if they get to the point where theyre gated out of grinding for xp, theyre just going to leave. I have to agree with him to a large extent, I dont think they will always leave, but those who dont leave will feel very upset, angry, frustrated, and if you look at the forums a lot of players do seem to be in that zone a lot of the time.


I often get to the point where I have no 78 maps, no 77 maps, a horde of lvl90+ characters I just want to grind xp with and progress and I cant because i dont have the maps, and tbh what goes through my head is "fuck this fucking stupid fucking game", thats honestly how it makes me feel. I love this game, but Id be lying if I said that I dont feel like that with this game and the map/xp system a lot more regularly than is healthy.


dunno if how relevant that is to the thread but there it is.

As it is, no. Specifically, there are no guarantees, and it doesn't reward risk properly. Also, how to sustain them is not intuitive.

Some people have found how to cope with that (spending all the maps of a level before going to the next, big starting volume).

A possible solution would be to nuke pack size and rare mods (besides the mods that would normally be skipped because are hard counters or just annoying/poorly rewarded), and putting a item quantity floor that guarantees a return on investment. Also, the currency for rolling them should come exclusively from them. Maps should be about replayability and not about scarcity. It's fun when the game puts a challenge for you that puts you to the edge.

PS: now that desync will be solved, will you revert your stance on the game and go to the beta of the version 2.0?

Do you mean is it humane when it comes to how addictive it is?

By this vid's definition of humane design no it isn't. Far from it. GGG is indeed an ethical company but that has nothing to do with gaming addiction. POE is designed to be addictive. It is in our hands to not be overly addicted to it though. We can't blame a company for trying to keep players playing their game. The "humane design" argument is pointless in the first place because POE is strictly made for people older than 18. Adults are responsible for how they choose to spent their time..

Now in case you mean how frustrating is the map system to the player:

That depends. There are people that take joy from constant progression of their toons. In that case maping can be frustrating at 90+ level range because having a constant 77-78 map pool is pretty hard.
You are pretty much forced to play some lower maps too which I don't mind but some people do..

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Iluvatar_gr wrote:

GGG is indeed an ethical company but that has nothing to do with gaming addiction. POE is designed to be addictive. It is in our hands to not be overly addicted to it though. We can't blame a company for trying to keep players playing their game. The "humane design" argument is pointless in the first place because POE is strictly made for people older than 18. Adults are responsible for how they choose to spent their time.

I don't agree with this.

A game like this one should be designed to keep players coming back for more. But there is a huge difference between addiction and joy when it comes to motive. Aiming for the first leads to Skinner box techniques like random affixes which are useful to no one and daily missions to habituate the populace. Aiming for the second is about delivering consistently delightful experiences.

I don't mean to single out GGG as singularly unethical operators here. I believe they're trying to be ethical, and thus humane. However, I also think that many of the standards of the ARPG genre, GGG looks at them with a misguided respect and tries to pay homage, but they are copying inhumane practices as a result. Historically, ARPGs (and especially MMOs) have a horrible track record for ethics.

This doesn't mean I think everyone is entitled to level 100 or anything, or that there shouldn't be any RNG in the game, but outcomes which just plainly suck, or encourage a dull grind rather than engaging gameplay, go beyond bad design and contribute to addictive behaviors.

I've written about the difference between good RNG and bad, human reaction time, and preventing the game from feeling like you're always on autopilot at great length in the past, and I feel this concept of humane design encapsulates my most prominent concerns with PoE.

The specific topic is mapping, because I confess a lack of experience, especially recently. I'm curious how people feel, since it seems to be the grindiest part of the game.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

I often get to the point where I have no 78 maps, no 77 maps, a horde of lvl90+ characters I just want to grind xp with and progress and I cant because i dont have the maps, and tbh what goes through my head is "fuck this fucking stupid fucking game", thats honestly how it makes me feel. I love this game, but Id be lying if I said that I dont feel like that with this game and the map/xp system a lot more regularly than is healthy.

I know these feelings well! ^^

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Is the map system humane design?

No.

The biggest factor of map progress & therefore XP gain is RNG. You can roll those maps as good as you can afford or as bad as you dare to gamble, doesn't matter much, rng will mostly fvk you when it shouldn't and reward you when you don't deserve it.

Mapping (building your map pool) is inherently frustrating. More so because progressing requires currency, which takes wealth from other activities: crafting, tradign, rerolling...

Even when you spend a ton of orbs AND get a ton of map drops, it's still wont guarantee you progression, because all those drops can be several levels lower than the map that dropped them. A bad streak of luck can therefore "ruin" days or weeks of effort, kicking you down several tiers to a map tier that is useless to your char.

Throw in there extremely rare and very lucrative cartoboxes and you get a huge variance in gameplay, where one player is bathing in maps, another cant get past 72s...

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There's too much rng layers thrown into the equation, for mapping to be "humane". Sadly GGG thinks that "trading solves everything", which is true in theory, but still leaves a frustrating endgame experience.

God I hate Extra Credits...

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CliveHowlitzer wrote:

God I hate Extra Credits...

You shouldn't. I mean, I could understand apathy, but what you're saying requires elaboration.

Excellent topic! In summary:

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...we have to stop making it our goal to capture as much of the player's time as possible and instead make it our goal to ensure that they have the best experience possible...

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...treadmill MMOs...

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Humane design involves not trying to habituate players by training them to play on a schedule. Humane design doesn't use guilt as a motivator; it doesn't punish you for having something more important to do on a given day... It doesn't use adrenaline and empowerment to give you a fix that you might be lacking in your everyday life, but instead uses them to empower you in your life outside the game. It doesn't intentionally waste the player's time or artificially lengthen the experience.

I think these are the most relevant quotes from the video.

PoE is never going to be "ethical". It is a free game designed around the grind, keeping people hooked (the longer you play, the more likely you are to buy something), forcing them to play at specific times if they want a chance at exclusive items (races; are exclusive items ever ethical?), wasting time with artificially lengthened experiences (level grind, extreme rng, playing through the same story multiple times per character, map mods such as Temp Chains/Enfeeble/Elemental Equilibrium/Increased Monster Life/Physical Damage Reduction, low high level map drops, bosses gated behind rng)...

These are actually the reasons that I have the hate part of my love-hate relationship with PoE. And yet it's hard to hate when this is a free game and the devs need to make money, but I wonder how their profits would be affected if it was simpler to experience more aspects of the game (better drops or lowered crafting costs, easier to reach level 100 - perhaps PvP could be the focus for lvl 100 characters, a more controlled economy). And, of course, such changes would herald a warcry from the ridiculously hardcore players that pride themselves on their wealth and exclusive items or ability to reach lvl 100 in two weeks.

In short, hell no, the map system is not "humane design" as defined by Extra Credits. GGG could remove xp penalties, make it simpler to get high level maps, shorten the time it takes to get to level 100, work on a post 100 endgame (perhaps at that level you could change your skill tree at will to try out more builds)... But that is, sadly for many of us, not the vision for PoE.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

I often get to the point where I have no 78 maps, no 77 maps, a horde of lvl90+ characters I just want to grind xp with and progress and I cant because i dont have the maps, and tbh what goes through my head is "fuck this fucking stupid fucking game", thats honestly how it makes me feel. I love this game, but Id be lying if I said that I dont feel like that with this game and the map/xp system a lot more regularly than is healthy.

Right? Such feelings permeate many aspects of this game.