The Case For Removing Zana Bloodlines

How Zana Bloodlines made me wealthy

Early in Bestiary, a large section of the playerbase claimed that maps above T8 were impossible to sustain. At the same time, I and many other people were selling fistfuls of upper red maps (13+) to those same people.

RL got in the way for me so I only made about ten exalts selling red maps. 10 exalts isn't much, but it was far more than my playtime warranted. Many players who didn't have major IRL work projects in their way made far more currency and funded headhunters or mirrors, just from running high (14-15 with occasional 13s) red maps using the Zana Bloodlines mod, and selling all their T16s and all their excess red map drops.

There will always be a 'best' strategy for using Zana, but in Bestiary, the best option was so far ahead of all of the others that no other options were worth considering. (Exception: Harbinger, if you unlocked it, because it also adds blue monsters en masse).


What Bloodlines Does

Bloodlines adds almost no difficulty to a map, but adds 25% more magic monsters and 20% increased item quantity. Magic monsters drop the overwhelming majority of '+1' maps and are a significant contributor to map refunds and '-1' and '-2' partial refunds.

Adding Bloodlines to a map with 100% IIQ from chisels and mods (so total quantity 200%) costs 3 chaos, adds 10% more chance for monsters to drop maps, and adds an additional (almost) 25% more multiplier to +1 map drops due to the increased number of mobs that can drop them.

When T13+ maps are valuable consumables (as they have been in every league except Legacy and Harbinger, where they were cheap consumables), this is an enormous increase in value. The overwhelming majority of your wealth comes from looting maps.


Risk/Reward Imbalance

Bloodlines adds too much reward - 8-10 chaos per T14-15 map run in my experience - for the negligible risk it poses. Other less lucrative modifiers (such as Perandus or Beyond) pose considerably more danger to players.

Additionally, Bloodlines adds so many map drops that map drop rates have to be balanced around the possibility of players using it.

Either maps are balanced around the assumption that players usually/always use Bloodlines on their high tier maps (rendering maps too rare for players that don't understand the power of Bloodlines - this was the case in Bestiary), or maps are balanced around the assumption that players do not use it (in which case, players that use Bloodlines will be utterly flooded with excess maps).

Additionally, it imposes a severe opportunity cost on playing around with any other Zana mods. Using Perandus on a high tier map, for example, imposes two costs - both the Chaos Orb cost of the Perandus mod itself, and additionally the opportunity cost of not being able to run Bloodlines.


My suggestion

My suggestion is to remove the option to select Bloodlines on Zana's map device for a league or two, and re-assess map drop rates in accordance with this change.

Without Bloodlines map drops may be too low. While Incursion specific mechanics may adjust this slightly, it's my opinion that map drops should be balanced around Standard's mechanics.

League effects like the Temple of Azcanta or the Beachhead map will produce some extra maps, but these will be balanced somewhat by players occasionally failing maps because they are using a weaker character in a league they are less established in. So the league should use the drop rates that are designed for Standard.

SSF players may find this change harsh when trying to break into a new tier of map, but they are playing a completely voluntary hard mode. They'll deal with it (or change to a trade league).


An alternative

An alternative is to leave Bloodlines in, but denominate it in a rarer currency than Chaos Orbs. Regals, GCP, Blessed Orbs - all of these are considerably rarer drops than Chaos, and using any of them as the cost to run Bloodlines would constrain the amount of maps that can be vomited into the economy by people like me that always run it.

Blessed Orbs would be an extreme nerf to Bloodlines as those orbs cannot be mass produced by any known recipe, they have to be found and they are quite rare. Regals or GCPs would result in a sharp upward pressure on the prices of those orbs, and consequentially a lot more novice and intermediate players carrying out the recipes for those orbs.

Same bullshit logic in OP as in previous posts on this topic. Anecdotal evidence or vague claims, poorly justified request to remove Zana mod nobody gave 2 shits until recently, all in an attempt to create outrage on online forums.

I wanted to put some serious counter-arguments here but realized this is nothing but bait.

In the end, all I will say is "NO!"

"Remove Bloodlines" "Make red maps harder" "Harder content!!" "Nerf EXP even further"

I am glad you bunch are a small, albeit more vocal than I'd like to, minority.

Calling for more and more content gating in this game is, luckly, not the community consensus anymore. People are waking up to the ridiculous grind that they put on level 100 and the ridicule that is to sustain red maps without stuff like Elder Ring and Bloodlines.

Bloodlines is one of the few positive things remaining to sustain maps, as they already announced Elder Ring is no more. Removing it is basically saying they don't care at all about the casual player that wants to push higher levels, and that the only way to hit 100 is through grouping up.

Although I do agree that some zana mods could use different currencies besides Chaos. That has a lot of potential to spice up the economy and make use of all those uncommon currency you use once in a blue moon when crafting.

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sirgog wrote:

What Bloodlines Does

Bloodlines adds [...] 20% increased item quantity [...]

Adding Bloodlines to a map with 100% IIQ from chisels and mods (so total quantity 200%)

Mad skillz in math.

"

Ridelith wrote:

"Remove Bloodlines" "Make red maps harder" "Harder content!!" "Nerf EXP even further"

I am glad you bunch are a small, albeit more vocal than I'd like to, minority.

Calling for more and more content gating in this game is, luckly, not the community consensus anymore. People are waking up to the ridiculous grind that they put on level 100 and the ridicule that is to sustain red maps without stuff like Elder Ring and Bloodlines.

Bloodlines is one of the few positive things remaining to sustain maps, as they already announced Elder Ring is no more. Removing it is basically saying they don't care at all about the casual player that wants to push higher levels, and that the only way to hit 100 is through grouping up.

Although I do agree that some zana mods could use different currencies besides Chaos. That has a lot of potential to spice up the economy and make use of all those uncommon currency you use once in a blue moon when crafting.

This wasn't a call for more difficult overall map sustain. Bestiary got this about right.

We didn't have a repeat of Legacy or Harbinger where you could 'transmute and go' the top 2-3 tiers of maps with no concern of running out. Nor did we have a repeat of pre-2.0 days where the top 3 tiers of maps were not accessible to players.

The problem is that people like me that understand that Bloodlines is broken get all the map returns.

From a personal standpoint this is great - if IRL hadn't got in the way I'd have been able to fund a mirror easily at the expense of less knowledgeable players. But it's bad for the game.

A far better solution is removing Bloodlines and distributing those extra maps throughout the playerbase by rebalancing map drop rates under the assumption Bloodlines doesn't exist. An 8-10% increase in all map drops would be a far more equitable way of spreading these maps.

Bloodlines is so good that it is mandatory at the moment. Either you use it, or your playstyle funds the people that do.

If it remains in the game as it presently is, I will continue to exploit the suckers that don't understand why it is so broken.

That is some funny shit OP hahahaha

Wtf?

TLDR

Case dismissed!

a low % of players make it to maps. a lower % of players run the T14-15+. a lower % of players make it to maps, run T14+ and spam bloodlines for this purpose.

What you should be doing is thanking yourself for making some money off less enthused players, spend your currency on your builds, fuck your significant other and get good sleep.

God Damnit! Are you happy now!? I blame this entirely on you!

"

PhoenixFlame wrote:

God Damnit! Are you happy now!? I blame this entirely on you!

In fairness, it was way too good a mod. I mean, outside of Breach, Harbinger, and Bloodlines, there wasn't much point to Zana's map device. (Nemesis ceased being a thing once The Doctor farming became a thing in Burial Chambers and Spider Forest before that)