Thoughts about Map Rotations for 3.16

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ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate wrote:

I honestly don't think it'll be a problem. By FAR the best way to farm Nurses and Doctors currently is to farm stacked decks from various league content anyway, so even if there is no Burial Chambers that's only gonna cut like 5% of the cards in circulation.

In recent podcasts, Chris has mentioned that the Atlas will be limited to 100 maps (don't know if this is non-inclusive to unique maps which there are 30 of them) and that maps will be rotated in and out on a seasonal cycle. Although I greatly love this idea and think it will greatly help the more casual players getting to finish the atlas, I also think that this needs to be done with great caution.

The biggest reason I claim that this needs to be done with great caution is to not accidentally lock out deterministic farming of various map drops such as divination cards. If you happen to rotate out all maps which can drop nurse and doctor cards then plenty of people may get angered by this loss of farming for a headhunter.

A potential solution to consider is to get away from loot tables on a per map basis instead of making them assigned to a specific node on the atlas. What I mean by this is to choose 1 atlas node out of 100 to have their own loot table. Unfortunately, this would require a lot of extra work on the dev team to assign individual loot tables for each node on the atlas and then worse is to assign a way of identifying the specific nodes a player may want to farm for items. This way we may even see doctor cards being farmed on the beach instead of burial chambers every single season.

The biggest benefits of this workaround would be that:
- developers will be able to balance loot tables on the atlas instead of on a per map basis.
- players would have different maps to farm each season instead of the same map over and over.
- Developers would also be able to incorporate actual loot tables for many various uniques. This way players would know which maps they would need to farm in order to get certain unique.

This is also a good way to balance the early game by allowing more early game loot/currency during white and yellow maps and then once you get into red maps the loot tables expand into those "Chase Uniques" that people have been asking for.

SIDENOTE Since I have talked about loot tables, I also want to express that I've been always wishing maps to be overall a bit less valuable but buffing the loot that bosses drop as a reward for "clearing" the map. As an example, I always get great joy when I finally get through a rift in diablo to then be awarded a decent bit of "useful" loot once we kill the boss.

Or just remove the loot tables alltogether, and allow div cards to drop on every map, but increase the chances for certain maps or zones to drop them so they can still be 'target' farmed in the traditional sense.

i.e. humility cards can drop everywhere, but there is a higher chance for humility to drop on the aqueduct maps.

The upside here is that if a target farm map is rotated out, people can still trade/find the headhunter cards elsewhere.

I honestly don't think it'll be a problem. By FAR the best way to farm Nurses and Doctors currently is to farm stacked decks from various league content anyway, so even if there is no Burial Chambers that's only gonna cut like 5% of the cards in circulation.

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ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate wrote:

I honestly don't think it'll be a problem. By FAR the best way to farm Nurses and Doctors currently is to farm stacked decks from various league content anyway, so even if there is no Burial Chambers that's only gonna cut like 5% of the cards in circulation.

Well with current player trends leaning towards "Deterministic Farming" I don't particularly like stacked decks. Yea they are amazing only because of the quantity of stacked decks that drop in highly juiced maps.

I also remember watch some stream where the streamer said that due to stacked deck being dropped like candy it damaging the game by ruining the balance of divination cards.

I personally would love to see Stacked Decks being much rarer or even removed but all the absolutely "trash" cards to be taken out of their loot table. For example who in the world would want part of a divination set that gives you 40 wisdom scrolls? Maybe it's just a quality issue with what stacked decks are able to provide which is why players constantly asked for more stacked deck drops instead of better loot table for the stacked deck itself.

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ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate wrote:

I honestly don't think it'll be a problem. By FAR the best way to farm Nurses and Doctors currently is to farm stacked decks from various league content anyway, so even if there is no Burial Chambers that's only gonna cut like 5% of the cards in circulation.

In that same Podcast Chris said that Stacked deck are a problem and will not drop as many or might be deleted forever...

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ironstove wrote:

Or just remove the loot tables alltogether, and allow div cards to drop on every map, but increase the chances for certain maps or zones to drop them so they can still be 'target' farmed in the traditional sense.

i.e. humility cards can drop everywhere, but there is a higher chance for humility to drop on the aqueduct maps.

The upside here is that if a target farm map is rotated out, people can still trade/find the headhunter cards elsewhere.

But this isn't just an issue with divination cards. It's also an issue with players wanting "Chase Items" aka being able to know that if someone wants a certain item they can go to that area to farm for it. Secondly, allowing all items everywhere would just be a total cluster f**k. The reason is that people would just super juice maps with insane modifiers maybe 5 deli orbs and so on then run in a party of 6 and super buff their Magic Find Character in the party and be able to farm any map they feel most comfortable with getting any drop they want because there would be no more loot tables unique to specific maps.

The reason players used to farm Burial Chambers is because of the Doctor card. The reason players farmed Tower was to farm the Nurse Card because it had a higher drop rate which then combined into doctors. Then you have the map Canyon. It has an amazing layout and high natural map tier which entices players to farm it over others.

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Azarhiel wrote:

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ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate wrote:

I honestly don't think it'll be a problem. By FAR the best way to farm Nurses and Doctors currently is to farm stacked decks from various league content anyway, so even if there is no Burial Chambers that's only gonna cut like 5% of the cards in circulation.

In that same Podcast Chris said that Stacked deck are a problem and will not drop as many or might be deleted forever...

I honestly wish Stacked Decks could be taken out of the game entirely, they really are horrible for game balance because they ruin the entire point of div cards as a deterministic farming option.

But I'm not holding my breath on this one. Stacked Decks are tiny lootboxes that prey on gambling addiction mechanisms, and we all know how much Krillson loves opening Magic booster packs.