Choosing to not Complete Maps on the Atlas

GGG is the best!

(I will throw money at screen as soon as I am able.)


Really hyped for the Map Balances!
IGN: Golem_Antsy, Harvest
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Chris wrote:
We believe that the correct and dominant strategy will be for players to unlock all maps, but since players are afraid that they'll damage their account permanently if they unlock the wrong maps, we have decided to add a way to respec map completions on the Atlas. Three currency items (one for each colour of maps) will be available from vendor recipes for this purpose. They'll likely be measured in Cartographer's Sextants of the appropriate colours and won't be trivially cheap.


+1

I'm an explorer type of person so I was really worried about not being totally free to enjoy the Atlas in its full scope. Because, let's be honest, yes it's only a game, but it's a game that revolves heavily around minmaxing and making numerically right choices so to say...

Besides, for a solo player the leveling (past 90) process is already quite hard, so if there's something that can help in the long run - such as restricting the pool of your map drops - it's only reasonable that a player will limit himself, effectively taking advantage of it.

This way I can reveal the whole Atlas and have a good time without being scared of "completing that unwanted map", and then, when everything settles down, I can possibly adjust the Atlas (i.e. restrict the map drops).

Way better in my opinion.
Last edited by pathfinding on Aug 25, 2016, 2:01:35 AM
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DelphaeRs wrote:
Does this mean that we can fully unlock all maps in the atlas then once completed, we can then go back and lock the maps that aren't fun for the build we're playing at the time?


That's exactly what this means. Exciting, isn't it? :D
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We believe that the correct and dominant strategy will be for players to unlock all maps.


The dominant strategy is to unlock every t11 and lower map and unlock only the single best 11,12,13,14,15,16.
IGN: Arlianth
Check out my LA build: 1782214
Whelp, I'm really pleasantly surprised by this turn of events.

Regarding the first point, I don't believe you'll ever be able to make all maps equally desirable. PoE is just too complex for that, and "desirable" depends on one's goals; be it just exploring all maps, maximizing xp/hour, getting multiple-boss maps for corrupted fragment farming, doing targetted div card farming, or what have you.

The second point, however, I'm really, really happy about. Being given the choice to change my strategy for any of the above options is good (even if I don't know if it'll be "balanced"). Being locked into that choice for the duration of my account is not (not to mention other players being able to purposefully try to screw it up).

So, well done :) Kudos for actually listening to community feedback, and alleviating these concerns in a timely manner. Going to buy myself one of the new supporter packs right now to show my appreciation.

[edit]



:)
Last edited by acme_myst on Aug 25, 2016, 3:10:21 AM
player base: "it's too complicated. its not really rewarding"
GGG: "thx for your concern, we will make it even more complicated and keep it unrewarding"

wth. so many skilled game devs at GGG and this is the best you can come up with?
This is totally fine.
chris i see the change in direction but would be interested in why you did it:


the game ever wanted to encourage players to play the most variety of maps AND kill the bosses. the map drop implementation kind of forced players into it.


now you do a 180° turn and want people NOT to complete certain maps and NOT kill the bosses if they want to to farm some cards and/or item types.

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Chris wrote:
They'll likely be measured in Cartographer's Sextants of the appropriate colours and won't be trivially cheap.

you want to CHARGE people for being able to do a wide variety of maps and specialize in certain map drops? i don't know what "measured in Cartographer's Sextants of the appropriate colours" means but imho respecs should be free.


---

what about the idea to enable a "character bound atlas" for game points? players who min/max their atlas trees are surely supporters.
age and treachery will triumph over youth and skill!
Last edited by vio on Aug 25, 2016, 3:52:29 AM
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DestroTheGod wrote:
"
Map Balance
Historically, some maps have been better than others in different ways. Some have had more linear or more open layouts and some have had easier signature monsters or bosses that are safer to kill. A lot of work has gone into balancing this out so that maps are more comparable. In some cases, additional monsters have been added (hence increasing item drops including maps) to mitigate the additional time or challenge that certain maps entail.

We will continue to work on improving this balance, even after release. Our goal is that the choice of whether to leave certain maps locked is a very debated one within the community and there's no clearly right answer.


That's a MASSIVE statement. Are you guys saying that you made maps comparable to gorge? I can't imagine how that's even possible.

Gorge is godly because it's linear and doesn't require any backtracking. It's perfectly optimized for clearing, and you don't have worry about party members getting split up and lost.

In order to make other maps comparable to that level of superiority, you'd have to seriously buff every other map or nerf gorge into the ground by changing it massively.

I just can't see that happening.

But, I'm looking forward to the changes. I guess we'll see.


Well your intuition is correct, because that's NOT what he is saying (although it could be). He said that they think they've better balanced the maps. He didn't say they buffed bad maps up to gorge level of desirability. They could have just nerfed the good ones. Or buffed the bad ones. Or both. The idea is that there are multiple maps per tier that are equally desirable.
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Chris wrote:
We've been reading a lot of feedback about the Atlas and wanted to briefly address the concerns around players being able to choose which areas they unlock to influence what maps drop of a certain tier.

The ability for players to choose what maps they play is an important (and positive!) aspect of the Atlas system. Everyone has their own preferences for maps, and we want there to be some choices about whether to unlock everything or leave a few maps disabled in order to maximise your own goals.

Having said that, we wanted to address two important points that will hopefully mitigate concerns that players have.

Map Balance
Historically, some maps have been better than others in different ways. Some have had more linear or more open layouts and some have had easier signature monsters or bosses that are safer to kill. A lot of work has gone into balancing this out so that maps are more comparable. In some cases, additional monsters have been added (hence increasing item drops including maps) to mitigate the additional time or challenge that certain maps entail.

We will continue to work on improving this balance, even after release. Our goal is that the choice of whether to leave certain maps locked is a very debated one within the community and there's no clearly right answer.

Respeccing Decisions
We believe that the correct and dominant strategy will be for players to unlock all maps, but since players are afraid that they'll damage their account permanently if they unlock the wrong maps, we have decided to add a way to respec map completions on the Atlas. Three currency items (one for each colour of maps) will be available from vendor recipes for this purpose. They'll likely be measured in Cartographer's Sextants of the appropriate colours and won't be trivially cheap.

Thanks again for the feedback. We're really looking forward to seeing what you think next week when Atlas of Worlds and the Essence Challenge League launch!


Are you serious about that? You're adding 30 new tilesets and think it's positive that players might just ignore most of them, maybe even more than before?
I really hope the players will just unlock everything because otherwise this will be the worst design decision you have ever made.

Players shouldn't have to respec anything. Every area should be equally worth the time.
You actually want to give players the ability to just intentionally ignore tilesets even though you added 30 new ones.

I always thought diversity was the main goal of the expansion?
Last edited by darkmatch on Aug 25, 2016, 4:22:13 AM

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