SSF players, how's Atlas progression going for you in Abyss league?

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Jennik wrote:

Mine's frustratingly slow. The extreme RNG needed to grind out maps for the recipe since they added a bunch of new maps is too much. My gems are almost up to 20/20 and I still haven't unlocked one T9 and few T10s. The worst part is that the problem's only going to get worse in red maps.

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Jennik wrote:

A big reason it's much harder to unlock the Atlas this league than last league is the increase in the number of maps of each tier. If there were six T10s before and there are nine now, you'll have to grind far more maps on average to get three to drop for the vendor upgrade (50% more on average).

The higher number of maps also makes it more likely variance will absolutely gut you on some maps, where you'll go for a stretch of over a hundred maps without having one of a particular base drop. I still don't think I've had three Phantasmagorias drop total, and it was one of the first of that tier I unlocked.

GGG made it much harder to unlock the Atlas this time without adding anything to compensate for the extreme added grind. Unlocking the Atlas without trading was already in a bad place before. Now it truly sucks.

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Jennik wrote:

It sounds like a lot of people aren't understanding the issue. The problem isn't that you're unable to advance in tiers to T15 in no time. If you ignore being expansive on the Atlas and instead just target one specific branch while mostly ignoring the rest, it takes no time at all to rise. The problem is how restrictive the Atlas is toward an expansive approach.

My view of maps is that they're there to be played. We're supposed to unlock and play them. What's the point in a T3 map even existing if players don't get it until they're level 92, rush the boss to unlock the bonus, then never play the map again? Content exists to be played, and the Atlas in its current incarnation with its extreme RNG prevents that from happening.

I'd much rather play a dozen maps three times each while they're level appropriate than play three maps a dozen times each. I'd also actually like to be playing maps while they're level appropriate instead of mindlessly grinding them for recipe maps while I'm way overgeared and overleveled. If you're taking an expansive approach to the Atlas, maps are briefly level appropriate when you first reach them and become level appropriate once again around the time you hit red maps.

The idea that someone can believe we're meant to unlock some low tier maps after we beat Shaper is completely absurd to me. I can only hope the people at GGG don't believe anything so ridiculous. My hope is that they're capable of recognizing that this is a serious problem (as they did when they added the band-aid of Zana selling maps) and taking steps to implement a real solution.