Map Changes in 2.0.4

I like all of these changes! great job ;)

1) Remove "Tiers". Its an arbitrary number that doesn't mean anything to anyone. For someone not wanting to confuse players, you're doing a great job with this idea.

2) Stop basing your changes on the 1% who do it and open it up to the 99%. "Its too easy because one or a group were able to get to 100, so because of a dozen or so players, the few thousand that are playing will have to receive exp penalties for it". It is not a "challenge" to get to 100. It is a waste of time to get to 100. Only a few get to 100 because its not worth the time. Even with your EXP change, the same dozen people will probably still get to 100 and the rest will be lest inclined to bother leveling.

People enjoy progress. Leveling up a new character feels like progress. Grinding in maps does not feel like progress, and slowing it down even more as you're proposing and you're basically just killing any interest to level.

If you want to gather "feedback from players", try starting now before you push things like this into the game.

One day, this game will just lose what's left of its players and be left with about the 100 super dedicated players as GGG continues to kill off the rest with poor decisions.

"

Chris wrote:

Map Levels are now Tiers
There are 15 tiers of maps, from level 68 to 82 inclusive. We've struggled for ages with the confusion caused by this. Players expect to play maps of their level (which can be way too hard for them), or make arguments about that they're level 95+ and can't find a level 80 map. Players with backgrounds in contemporary MMORPGs expect to play content equivalent to their level.

In order to resolve this confusion, maps now display a tier rather than a level. The level can easily be calculated. Tier 1 is level 68 (or level 66 if it's an old map graphic).

As a side note, this makes it hard to distinguish between old (pre-Awakening) unique maps and their post-Awakening counterparts. It may be best to put them in different places in your stash.

Just swapping one 'perceived confusion' for one of another type.

Keep the levels and then have a tier indicator based on boss difficulty perhaps.

I REALLY don't understand the "Tiers" instead of the actual level of the map. You do realize people are just going to ask what level this tier is supposed to be (as you said, it's easy to calculate) and base their complaints/approvals off the old "level" system anyways. It makes no sense.

All we care about is MORE MAPS THAT CHALLENGE OUR CHARACTER EFFECTIVELY.

No one cares about tiers, or (LOL) map colors. We just want MORE MAPS.

Nerf XP across the board if you have to, JUST LET US RUN MAPS AND HAVE A SUSTAIN POOL ABOVE 77 and the entire playerbase will be MUCH HAPPIER.

Warbands and Tempest didn't die out ultra-fast due to the quality of the league mechanic (which wasn't very good, let's be honest), it died out because there was nothing left to do. Map drops were disgusting (at best), so people moved on to other games. And can you really blame them?

I'm going to remain 100% cautiously pessimistic about this change until I can test it out thoroughly in the 1-month but since I'm a betting man, I'm going to guess it is still going to be terrible.

And one last thing--more balance changes that effect the top 1% of the top 1%? Is this how we're going to balance the game now? Who cares if they hit 100 ultra-quick. It didn't stop them from continuing to play--Hell, Havoc did another lvl 100 character after his first.

GGG, you keep falling. Just because a handful of people reaches very fast level 100, It does not mean that ordinary people have to pay for the broken dishes. Normal people playing this takes two years without reaching level 100... Now the experience of high-level maps is lowered which negates any potential lucky break. Great, keep it up, you are doing better and better.
Increasingly you become the "not trading" in something like a punishment, a sin. They want at all costs to force people to trade and don't even give them the tools. We waiting two years new developments in the trade system and remains unchanged, obsolete...

Keep it up, you do great.

Also, yeah. Renaming to tiers is flat out a mistake.

The colouring is fine. Hell, even adding an additional above-the-line remark to indicate tier is fine.

But removing the map zone level entirely, isn't. There's a lot of people that look for ilvl specific loot to craft, and now you're just adding a frustrating step of either calculating the base zone level or waiting for a white monster to drop something so you can check the ilvl and go "oh, zone 75."

This may not be as significant a problem for veteran players who automatically just know that Gorge is a 76, although it's still a problem, but especially for newer players who just familiarized themselves with what an item level is and now they have no idea what maps drop what base item level.. it is, quite frankly, terrible, unintuitive game design that just adds to the list of potentials that keep new players away from what's already a complex game.

I don't mean to come from a place of spouting negativity, and I apologize for my potentially harsh word choice but I don't see another way to phrase it.

Overall pretty good, dont think ive heard one person complaining about people hiting lvl 100 to fast this league though.

map droprate increase sounds good. Exp gain in higher maps won't affect me since the only lvl 80 areas I have run was a haku mission in a 79 map I managed to drop. Renaming map levels to tiers "to avoid confusing conventional mmorpg players" is so totally contrary to everything else in poe that I am a bit baffled as to who made that decision.

Great news! Glad they listened to my outcry (and many others) about how bad ground effects made the game run, hopefully the changes make an impact and are not just fluff words. Not sure about the map changes from level to tier, seems confusing, people will just ask "what tdo tiers mean" non-stop, though I guess norms we'll get used to it in 1-2 weeks.

If you DO plan to change it to tiers, then simply use "Tier: x" instead of "map tier: x" in the description of the map, seems redundant to include "map" when it's obviously on a map already.

So, we have experience penalty based on lvl difference and item affixes based on ilvl, that's why maps now has their lvl hidden, for the greatest clarity.