Map Drops in The Awakening

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Antnee wrote:

Are you saying that soloing through maps is so offensive that it can't be allowed to happen? I genuinely do not understand, Chris, why you feel the need to push the multiplayer angle so hard. It almost feels like you're being insecure; that the game can't possibly be good enough to enjoy solo. It fucking is.

I have an idea - and it really seems to fit. There is no way to check it without getting access to internal data that GGG collects on their MTX sales, but it does explain their actions.

People who play in groups and trade a lot (aka socialize) have other people around them all the time, people to impress with shiny MTX, with the amount of money spent, with perfect taste (or lack of) in combining those MTX for the best effect. And that is, probably, the strongest motivation to give money to GGG.

I strongly suspect that internal statistics they collect show strong correlation between group play/trade and amount of money spent. So, pushing everyone to grouping would bring more sales. Also, I do believe that results of previous changes in the game actually fit with their expectations: you push people to group and trade - and they give you more money. And without money the game will die, so pushing is a sad necessity, not a dirty money-grabbing scheme.

I spent 145 dollars in three years I played PoE, and I think that's not enough to be a "whale" - server and bandwidth costs make people like me a burden, not a profitable customer. So, I'm not surprised that with every new change the feeling of "group/trade or suffer" gets more insistent.

I am, in fact, thankful that GGG was smart enough to realize that in first years they needed to attract people like me and get my money too. So, they didn't push too hard at first, and I spent great three years playing PoE (self-found and mostly solo or with 1-2 friends) - thanks for the entertainment, GGG!

Right now they feel the need to push a bit harder, and it seems this time it might be enough to include me in the "non-whale" group discouraged to play too much. I'll probably play for a few weeks, check the new content, get bored running low-level maps for zero XP and not getting higher ones - and leave, as they want me to.

Sure, they will lose my money, but it's not that much, not thousands, and their calculations almost certainly prove that the bottom line would be higher this way. The only thing that could backfire is not having enough non-whales like me in the game for the whales to compare themselves to. Still, I'm certain they have enough data to avoid that risk. Nothing personal, just a consequence of ethical microtransactions business model.

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Chris wrote:

It's worth noting that +2 maps are a dangerous thing. They can cause players to get out of their depth - playing maps that are too hard for the items they currently have..

I laughed so hard at this, I swear!

Well I look forward to seeing how this plays out. As is I'm not sure if it is going to encourage that much boss killing, especially if the joke bosses are going to get buffed. Seems like all it is really going to do is devalue the extra rares mod. But I am encouraged you're thinking about this and working on it!

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Serleth wrote:

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BlazedAs wrote:

very little trading going on

You're kidding, right? I've made and spent easily 30ex in beta.

HC?

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CliveHowlitzer wrote:

Also, while you are adjusting mods. Remove Temp Chains replace it with anything else. It can be something like "Every mob explodes into 5 Atziris" as long as it isn't Temp Chains.

signed

 I just read this post from Chris and I immediately had a WTF are you thinking mental flash. So if I understamd this correctly Chris says it took the beta testers longer to get a pool of maps going and to sustain them meaning the drop rates are lower. In addition to GGG making it harder to find maps they want to bring the experience of map starvation to the rest of us. I'm sorry but WHAT THE H IS THAT CRAP TALK?!?! It's bad enough now in PoE 1.3.x to get xp at high levels because the higher level 70s maps drop too infrequently and the lower level map drops are just barely enough now in my solo play to acquire enough to vendor 3 for the next map level up. If 6 party teams can see a higher drop rate of maps now and are filling up their stash tabs with maps quickly then dialing down the drop rate for group play is justified but under no circumstances should GGG be reducing map drop rates for solo players. The drop rate is good right where it's at now.

 For Chris to try and spin a map drop rate nerf as "We want to bring this experience to more players" is asinine. I clearly don't understand (because I'm not a hard core no-lifer PoE player and never will be) why the over-riding emphasis in developing PoE is to take a great arpg and then double down on the reward nerfs. Okay GGG, double down and nerf drop rates even further so that all currently orb drops are a once in a blue moon event. Yah, that's what we all want. We are all clamoring for more white trash drops and fewer good gear drops. We want all the fun nerfed the H right out of PoE!

 If GGG nerfs all rewards in PoE to make the masochists real happy but piss off the majority rest of the players, where's the logic in that?

 As to us "occasionally" skipping map bosses Chris, you are clueless here too. The only reason a map boss is skipped is that we cruise through the map content and then get one-shotted by the map boss. Any map that has a one-shot death trap boss at the end is obviously going to be skipped (10% xp loss on my level 88 build is an extremely painful kick in the ass to be avoided at all costs). If by this statement "Making map bosses more challenging and more rewarding to fight." GGG is reprogramming map bosses to have more HP but less one-shot crit-damage so we can survive and not be insta-killed but must spam more attacks to kill the boss then I guess that is an improvement but if "challenging" means higher crit-damage then that too will be a reason that a maps end boss must be skipped.

 Final comment on map level drops. If end map bosses will drop maps of higher levels more often than monsters in the rest of the map then that is a very welcomed change. For far too long (forever) the end map bosses presented a tougher challenge (a good thing for all bosses that can't one-shot my build) but then upon dieing dropped crap loot then there is no incentive to ever risk killing it. Many forum posts (including my own) have questioned and condemned the GGG lack of wisdom of drops being completely random. If I'm just as likely to get a unique to drop from a map rare monster than from a much tougher end map boss then there is 0 incentive to want to kill it. Kole is a perfect example of a PoE failure to provide any good drops for the challenge to kill him (only kill him once to get a 100% cleared map reward and then forever after always skip him). We've always wanted a better risk reward weighting to the drops so a very tough boss kill should always reward us with higher quality drops than a common rare monster. That's always been the way other arpgs have done it because it works and PoE should have it too.

Example note: I have 2 Grandmasters unique maps sitting in my stash and will not play them now as I watched a video of some one who played that map successfully but got no good loot drops opening the chests. With all the special player created bosses to battle through one would logically think that the rewards for the risk taken would be enormous. I was shocked and appalled at how almost all the chest drops were white and blue trash. The player never even got 1 unique from any chest. Zero. Nothing. That is totally wrong and needs to be fixed but quick. RNG randomness on loot drop quality regardless of the difficulty in getting the drop has been a major problem since day 1.

Finally some news about map drops. I just hope there is no wipe so we can test this changes right away. I'm a very poor currency hoarder for map modding so I'll just see how many times I can throw my L80/78 toons bodies to their deaths until I can get some serious map pool.

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MyH4o wrote:

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Chris wrote:

It's worth noting that +2 maps are a dangerous thing. They can cause players to get out of their depth - playing maps that are too hard for the items they currently have..

I laughed so hard at this, I swear!

If this goes live, a standard player will have no problem creating one character to spam tough bosses with no real consequences at all while the other characters can gain xp from the + 2 map drops. Danger nullified.

This seems like a sugar coated horrible change overall and huge nerf to solo play. The game content itself should be difficulty gated not RNG gated. This is even more frustrating when the numbers have been balanced to actively screw you out of the content you want to be playing.

To put my feelings on the topic In a nutshell sustaining high level maps should not be challenging, being capable of running those maps is what should be challenging.

How to fix this?

option 1: Basicly make a baseline of "this map is hard as X" and it will drop you quranteed map of the same level. This can be a Zana mod for easy access with price in the 1alch to 2 chaos range. The droprate of additional maps than the quranteed one could be lowered if for some reason necassery.

option 2: Have maps drop as corrupted with 8mods and make white/rollable maps at high level EXTREMELY rare.

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For players to find the highest tiers of maps challenging to complete and to sustain

You know reading alot of these beta changes has given suspicion about GGG and Chris's vision but this quote right here completely confirms it. GGG is completely out-of-sync with the actual community. They are balancing based around the <1% of no-lifers, professional streamers, and Hald-liners purists that want nerfs to everything. Forcing level 80+ into 70 level maps due to RNG is NOT ok. Who gives a shit if someone invests the effort to hit level 100? Do Exalts start raining from the sky at level 100? Why do we feel the need to bring others down instead of lifting everyone up? It's all smoke and mirrors... You think because Flamebast gets nerfed, your build becomes better? It doesn't- now they both suck. the attitude of staff and a small whiny faction of the playerbase is sickening. The Awakening will definitely be that for a lot of players. They will wake up and find another game.

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mhm83 wrote:

Idea. Full clearing a map, last mob drops a map.

+1
This post needs more attention. Solid idea in my opinion. Even if it can only go up to +1 but usually just sustain you. It makes it so if you are down to your last map you can just full clear the map, maybe get an upgrade, or at least not have to go buy a map for no reason. I guess Zana maps are cheap enough and running out of maps completely is really hard but it would help sustain higher level maps. May break the map economy though. But I dont really care about any current economy at this point with all the changes coming its all gonna change.