Map Drops in The Awakening

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Souleus wrote:

This all sounded good except for the part about sustaining high tier maps. I'm not sure why that's part of your goals. It seems like one of the least interesting mechanics in the games, and basically forces a lot of players to play against content well under their capabilities a significant portion of their time. I'm not sure how that generates any fun.

i find maps pretty fun and i've done a lot of them. i do wish there were more max level maps(only four gets pretty boring and tedious, especially when they are fps killers like palace). i understand that reaching a high level is a huge grind. i don't expect it to be easy, and maybe everyone else shouldn't either.

I suggested this before, but this seems like a good place to suggest it again:

GGG should invert the map pyramid. The largest number of maps should be at the high level end where people have to grind for weeks, and the small number of maps should be at the low level range where you have to do 2 or 3 to level up.

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twitticles wrote:

Instead of tweaking drop rates why not fix the poor system of gating map progression behind pseudo-randomness and swap it to map progression through an actual build/skill check? Keep map drops as is for the two highest levels of maps, for all map levels below: reduce map drops, grant a guaranteed map drop of equal or +1 level upon full clear of the map. Still scared of Igna? Here's incentive to grab that ruby flask from your stash. Getting mauled by that physical map boss? Sure wish you'd thought of that when you planned your build. If you can and bother to kill everything in each map you should be able to keep mapping, not run ten 76 maps in a row with only a 68 and a 73 to show for it and leave the game with the joyous feeling of being kicked in the groin repeatedly by the holy (pseudo-)rnghost. So much in this game rewards player skill, it's weird the map system still to a large degree doesn't.

most of things in this game (aside from exceptions like atziri and pvp) have nothing to do with player skill

anyway there are a few major problems with your suggestion.

first, a technical one- a lot of full clears do not include the boss room. jungle valley boss spider does not count as a monster for example, so in temp leagues youd get achievement for jv full clear without actually entering the boss room.

second, an effiency one- such thing (full clears) will doom the long-winded maps even more. what the hell is the point of running maze-like maps and looking 10 minutes for that last monster if you can run underground sea/strand/plateau and get guaranteed clears ?

third (and the major one) it still does not solve the MAIN problem of why maps are gated. your solution does not give anyone an incentive to run a map LOWER than the highest tier map there is.

maps are mainly gated to artificially suppress everyone from running 78 maps all the time, thereby the whole map system boiling down to the several highest tier maps.

instituting ANY kind of guaranteed map drop basically makes it so there is absolutely no incentive to run middle tier maps- any time you get +1, you rise and never look back.

lets do some simple math and probability theory here. lets assume you have 50% chance of getting +0 map and 50% of getting +1 map. now these weights might be different, but for sake of argument let's assume that the probabilities are equal.

after 3 runs of maps of the same level, you'll have 77% chance to get +1. if you were "unlucky" and got 3 maps of the same level, they will still vendor for another map (in the long run). that's 3 runs per level for +1 maps JUST from the guaranteed drops

so in 12 levels (66->78) you will need to run exactly 3 maps per level = 36 maps to get 1 78 map. at which point you'll NEVER go down. its a microscopic number of maps given that theyre all from GUARANTEED map drops.

again, in current map system with the following assumptions:
1)map can be traded
2)map can be vendored x3 for +1
3)maps can be rolled with rarity corresponding to difficulty but white corresponding to least difficulty
AND
4)cartos as they exist and chance of them appearing not tied to anything

not gated map system is a disaster. if map drops are guaranteed, GGG might as well take out any other maps besides 78. theyd be utterly useless. Poe does not follow linear progression item-wise or skill-wise, especially in endgame.

when someone comes up with a good reason to do a 74 map over a 78 one on the regular, no matter the rarity/quantity, is the time GGG can un-gate the endgame. otherwise it might as well delete all the maps besides 78 and just do random tilesets all day. also we know GGG is against that. a 78 map drop should feel exciting says chris, and I fully agree with him.

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grepman wrote:

a 78 map drop should feel exciting says chris, and I fully agree with him.

Except it doesn't... after a not long time, you get bored from sustaining 78 maps with OVERWHELMING number of 2 tilesets.

You are right tho that current system need to have 78 maps to be kinda "gated". Well I say dont remove gate, but change the damn system. Why we are capped at level 78?

Just remove the damn cap level of maps, make tilesets random and be done with it. If someone is capable of doing map level 95, just let him... I'd much rather be capped by capabilities of my build than being capped by map level. Not even speaking of fact that GGG wants 78 maps to be rare because they are last. Which is kinda lame.

At least there would be some kind of challenge in endgame.

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Malvan wrote:

As I understand it GGG is rewarding their noisy 5% hardcore players who have plenty of time playing the game whole days and on the otherside is punishing their 95% casual players not permitting them end game maps. How devestating this is and what a let down for solo players.
Bravo!

every single change they've made has been for the greater good of the casual player. they are trying to stop the hardcore "nolifers" like myself from leveling too fast, but how does that effect the casual player at all? the changes they're making won't affect people that only level to 85, but rather the people leveling to 100.

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grepman wrote:

anyway there are a few major problems with your suggestion.

first, a technical one- a lot of full clears do not include the boss room. jungle valley boss spider does not count as a monster for example, so in temp leagues youd get achievement for jv full clear without actually entering the boss room.

second, an effiency one- such thing (full clears) will doom the long-winded maps even more. what the hell is the point of running maze-like maps and looking 10 minutes for that last monster if you can run underground sea/strand/plateau and get guaranteed clears ?

First problem isn't really a problem, all it takes is a minor overhaul of the mob count system. Second boils down to how many maps you got at your disposal, if non-guaranteed map drops are low, you might just have to run the annoying windy maps every so often, or spend some currency buying efficient maps.

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grepman wrote:

third (and the major one) it still does not solve the MAIN problem of why maps are gated. your solution does not give anyone an incentive to run a map LOWER than the highest tier map there is.

maps are mainly gated to artificially suppress everyone from running 78 maps all the time, thereby the whole map system boiling down to the several highest tier maps.

In my suggestion I exempted the top two map levels from guaranteed drops, which could certainly be extened to three or four (especially if map level range is increased) at the cost of the system not being as straightforward. The very highest map levels should only be available through a significant investment, it's the map progression through the first ~75% or so of the map range that should not be limited by (poorly executed) randomness, but by player skill/aptitude/aplomb etc.
The vast majority of players have most likely never set their foot in a 78 map and wouldn't (I'm assuming) be too confident opening up their first 75 either, I sure wasn't when I had no clue what the map bosses were capable of. Admittedly I'm fairly hardcore focused, softcore is a bit of a different animal.

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grepman wrote:

instituting ANY kind of guaranteed map drop basically makes it so there is absolutely no incentive to run middle tier maps- any time you get +1, you rise and never look back.

lets do some simple math and probability theory here. lets assume you have 50% chance of getting +0 map and 50% of getting +1 map. now these weights might be different, but for sake of argument let's assume that the probabilities are equal.

after 3 runs of maps of the same level, you'll have 77% chance to get +1. if you were "unlucky" and got 3 maps of the same level, they will still vendor for another map (in the long run). that's 3 runs per level for +1 maps JUST from the guaranteed drops

so in 12 levels (66->78) you will need to run exactly 3 maps per level = 36 maps to get 1 78 map. at which point you'll NEVER go down. its a microscopic number of maps given that theyre all from GUARANTEED map drops.

You're basing those numbers on non-guaranteed map drops still being a significant factor so that you can vendor the guaranteed maps. My idea is to drastically reduce random map drops to the point where it covers non-cleared maps, server destroying instances and some sprinkled on top. Map influx should remain roughly the same as it is today, only eliminating the streakiness in map drops and replacing it with a certainty.

I'd be perfectly fine with all maps still being done by generated randomness, if said randomness was done on a per-drop basis to smooth out the streakiness the current number generation exhibits, but I assume that would be far more taxing on the servers.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

...
palace
crematorium
jungle valley
museum
graveyard
dungeon
torture chamber


those bosses are already needing a reward worthy of the risk they provide, players are skipping these bosses more often than they should because the current risk is too high for the potential of their drops.

honestly most of the other bosses could do with being buffed, stuff like shipyard is a complete joke, way too many of the bosses are a complete joke. But you have to be careful because crematorium is retarded, it feels like you have instagib 6 figure dps or you use rise of the phoenix with purity of fire or you do not even attempt this boss regardless of what it drops because the damage of that firestorm is insane. You dont want every single boss being a complete build/damage gate like crema because thats actually very harmful and will not result in players feeling the challenge is worth almost certain death when running those maps over and over if they do not meet the narrow criteria for the fight.

This perfectly mirrors my concerns about increasing map boss difficulty. I still recall that fun time when I got Dungeon lvl76 as Zana's daily only to get 1-shotted (technically it was 2-shot caused by spikes and immediate Ground Slam but it happened in under 1 second) by the boss 10 seconds into fight.

Why the level of map is not random ?

It's so borring to play in high level with very few map... always plays in the same map


i love map66 for boss and/or environnement but i cant play it at high level.


For zana's mission, the level is random, why not apply this for map ? It's just a balancement of pool of life and damage of monsters...

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Gogodrop37 wrote:

Why the level of map is not random ?

It's so borring to play in high level with very few map... always plays in the same map


i love map66 for boss and/or environnement but i cant play it at high level.


For zana's mission, the level is random, why not apply this for map ? It's just a balancement of pool of life and damage of monsters...

Tileset should be random, not level. I guess that's what you meant.

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Diphal wrote:

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Gogodrop37 wrote:

Why the level of map is not random ?

It's so borring to play in high level with very few map... always plays in the same map


i love map66 for boss and/or environnement but i cant play it at high level.


For zana's mission, the level is random, why not apply this for map ? It's just a balancement of pool of life and damage of monsters...

Tileset should be random, not level. I guess that's what you meant.

What's the difference, anyway?

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silumit wrote:

What's the difference, anyway?

Level of map define the level of the monsters. Tileset on the other hand defines map design. Aren't these a bit different things?