End game is only sustaining red maps. Fun?

I think the main topic was about the end game being bad. I'd like to know what other game has a good end game, because I'm pretty sure there are none.

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morbo wrote:

If you are willing to trade, I suggest you buy 20x T11 or T10 and you'll do fine from there on.

Jesus Christ... Is there an easy way to buy a bunch of maps from a single person, or are you talking about whispering 100 people on poe.trade to get those 20 maps? Trading to end game when the devs say they don't want easy trade is amazingly shit. (Just saying, no animosity towards you. Thanks for the suggestion.)

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jlw622 wrote:

Jesus Christ... Is there an easy way to buy a bunch of maps from a single person, or are you talking about whispering 100 people on poe.trade to get those 20 maps?

Ugh. Every time I buy a map for 1chisel, I always follow up with - or as many as you'll sell me. They always throw one map at me and kick me.

My contribution to this conversation will be a quick SSF anecdote:

I've been casually grinding through this league, far less intense than the last several to be sure. Two nights ago, hovering around 85 complete on the Atlas, I had a strip of great luck where incomplete maps were dropping, Zana had a couple (for the first time ever), couple more red maps than usual dropped (usual being "approaching zero" lol). I found myself having this thing called "fun" again, thoroughly enjoying the entire evening, playing more in that one session than the previous several days combined.

Then it was back to the grind. Atlas now over 100, but I still drop into T9s occasionally as I grind my main to 90.

What I wanted to emphasize was that point of "fun". I am not sure how to balance the required grind for this type of game against that feeling of accomplishment, which is part of that fun, but I feel like PoE has dropped well below the "fun" line of late. And something needs to be adjusted in this.

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morbo wrote:

Endgame is grinding the highest maps possible for loot and XP. In my extensive SSF experience over the years and almost exclusive temp league play, sustaining T11 is doable just by Alc&go, in the last two years at least.

With some investment into: map completion / reroling / chisel / Zana mods / sextants / vaaling / frags... T13+ are sustainable in SSF. It's worth killing map bosses just for the +2 potential and 1/5 chance of dropping a map.

You can fall down from T11 to T7 only if you just had a handful of each and you've hit a negative streak. As long as your pool is "big enough", its impossible to run out of T11 maps no matter how badly you roll them, as long as you Alc them.

Point of discussion - End game, as of War for Atlas, is NOT entirely about grinding your highest tier map anymore. Sure, you can make it that if you ignore the map influence mechanic, but why would you - the loot can be fantastic even in well less than your highest map.

As a long time SSF player allow me to say that, yes, T13+ sustain was easily achievable in past leagues (more than easy, you had a glut) but now that we have, apparently, returned to the days of "no more loot piñatas" as some people have said, that is no longer necessarily true, regardless of how much of your limited SSF currency pool you shotgun your maps with. Remember that your currency tends to be more limited in SSF as well as your maps.

I am currently hovering around 55 Alchs, 125 chaos. 50 chisels and 25 Vaals for rolling maps. I worry about Alchs every day!

You should be horizoning all your dupe copies of high tier map so you get mad completion bonus easily.

Thats what i did and im at 141/157. Never traded once. It will make map drop less horrendous.

median xl has more endgame quests, try it

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Squirrel_of_doom wrote:

So your choice:
1) keep complaining
2) finish the atlas and start profiting from all those people complaining and not wanting to go into higher tiers

And yes there is a threshold of profit for:
- chisels
- sextants
- prophecies (zana, monstrous treasure, might be others), I mean buying them, not just shuffling through random ones with navali
- atziri frags

Up to you to verify when it's profitable and when it's not.

Just saying that the mechanics to sustain are there. People just need to stop doing shaped T11 full sextant without elder and thinking it's gonna rain chaos like in 2.6.

I wasn't complaining so much as relating to the experience of others - given what I've seen on the forums in my short time here, there are plenty who will overdo that for me.

The threshold for profit is really what hits it on the head. I would be more profitable in lab, I just don't enjoy doing it.

I totally get that I'm still learning the dynamics, but I do try to play it out more like SSF - establish a baseline for self-sustain but not completely eliminate convenience of trade.

At the same time, I want trade to be a matter of convenience, not necessity.

I mean, I'd be content to buy certain maps in bulk, but even doing that isn't particularly convenient as with cheaper items/maps people are far less motivated to respond.

Ultimately, it just seems like its an excessive amount of work - there's a lot of runaround just to repeat the same content over and over again. I don't mind a "lean" league and I don't expect it to rain chaos - but the last time I ever saw 4 chisels in the same map was in standard doing a zana daily.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

Oh... just to let you know... no one believes you when you say you had to drop to Tier 7. That's silly.

Then either you are lucky or the type of willful ignorant where to support your own arguments you dont believe anyone else that doesnt already agree with you. I did have streaks of being stuck yo-yoing around Tier 7 and your belief doesn't really change anything for me. I would say after researching, using influence, sextants, alchs, corrupting, scouring and re-alching, Zana mods, investing in chisels, I drop back to Tier 9 on average, though though more than once I dropped from doing Tier 12s all the way to 7 after 15 maps in a row netted nothing above that. Then I went back to 12, then down to 9. Not really progress.

Someone mentioned the point of the thread. It is more about the fact that the game progression is based on RNG rather than persistence and work.

You wouldn't accept Acts 1-10 where randomly, when you beat an Act, you are sent back 3 acts, and have to repeat it - cause RNG.

In theory, you could still progress through the game, but it would be a stupid design and would bear criticism. That's all I'm saying here.

If you want to up the difficult, or grind time, why not do so? A game model where its not only possible but common to defeat content and be sent multiple levels backwards is just lazy thinking.

Someone said the alternative to this was grinding the end boss over and over, but thats not the only solution. If you averaged out drop rates (say getting a higher Tier map post T10 is 1/8) and had the bosses drop 1/8 of a fragment each time for the next Tier map, you have players spending the same overall time, but without basing all progress on RNG. How is that worse?

You are only level 84. Expecting to be swimming in high tier maps without putting in the effort is silly.