Atlas Changes in 3.10.0

I really hope you guys are on point in this manifesto about map drops...

People complain that it was fun to drop valuable T14's before and what not. But that has simply been replaced with Shaped / Elder drops / missions and well, in a way with conqueror fights as these now drop the worthwhile crafting bases, keys and other stuff. Synthesis map drops were exciting all league long tbh.

So T14-16 maps aren't valuable? Neither are their bases. They are part of early endgame progression in a way. To be upgraded by better influenced bases. And then you upgrade to double influenced and what not. The abundance of T14-16 amplified that.

But you know what did feel bad? That you couldn't get low maps anymore at AW level 8 (or 7 / 6 etc pretty much). Early on, it pays off to have your regions at 1-3 stones to fill it all up. But what if I need some nice T6-10 maps for my second character?

The Temple and Delve were clearly bugged to where if you were at AL8, you couldn't drop maps at times, because the game rolled T7's and there were none available. I'd say, just drop the T7's. Pick a fully random one, I don't care. I might actually like completely random more.

These mechanics were clearly bugged. Just fix them up and leave the map drops and bonusses as is would have been totally fine.

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The thing with the target farming, is that now, you were limited to a handful of T16's. After a while, if you are fully geared and just farming some mechanic or conqueror spawn, you want to do that in a good map: Good layout, density, worthwhile divination cards, etc.

Right now, if you preferred map wasn't T16, you'd have to be running subpar ones. And if you happened to like a T14, well though luck, because at AL8 and with 110+ Awakening bonus, these would hardly drop as most maps would be upgraded. Say you want Nurse cards and corridors. T14 Tower was impossible to sustain, while T16 Summit for instance was...

How about letting us be able to upgrade an entire section to T16's once we hit Awakening level max + XX% awakening bonus?

The moment say 90AWBonus completion awards you a fifth stone that makes all maps in that area T16 and increases the droprate of those maps by 15%, people would go after it. And then make it so you can upgrade that stone at the next bonus.

Not quite target farming, but very worthwhile if you want to spend the time on it.

You see, I get it, some things need to be bad to make other options shine. But bad map layouts / bosses, just make it so people run them once or twice a league. The temple was clearly a sub-par options this league, so people avoid it. We were literally getting Incursion bases in an at least 20 times shorter time investment from metamorph. You'd be crazy to run it.

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Maps are honestly the main course for PoE. An overabundance isn't bad. There's so many options to branch out to. Why gate and stretch it out so much. Player retention was incredibly high this league as was the map drop rate.

I am honestly so happy that the chore of having to spawn Elder and Uber were removed. Because having to buy up another 3 maps to prevent a segment to be cut off, run and rerun, only to run out of those maps again and having to trade were such a terrible chore.

Don't make the game feel like a chore. Because people will get enough of it much faster.

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Players playing the league commented that Delve cities did not feel rewarding any more (because in the past they were a great source of Maps)

Yeah because they were broken all league and literally dropped zero maps. Not because we were getting too many elsewhere.

Don't know if it's useful to balance the game vs the very devs running awakening 8 all day long. I mean hundreds of red maps? Depends how many hours you can spend on the game daily.
I have to stash quite a few away mostly stuff like corrupted reflects or the added elemental dmg/less resist/elemental weakness combo. Or maps corrupting into unwanted maps.
That's not even meaning I choose what map I want to play: I just go with whatever seems doable. I have yet to see another desert spring (I completed with Zana so it can drop anywhere) and don't even have an adjacent high map in red.

So "sustain" isn't a problem but choice is.

So we had one league where map sustain wasnt a massive problem and now its back.

Thanks.

No supporter packs.

I pretty much assumed the reasoning outlined here was the case when the news first broke. Not sure why people were so surprised tbh.

hey there
i never posted anything but i most say i love farming the same map that i love all day long and i started to hate the game since you took this choice from me
i know GGG lisn to players so please do somthing about it :((((

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Chaoslord_AJ wrote:

Don't know if it's useful to balance the game vs the very devs running awakening 8 all day long. I mean hundreds of red maps? Depends how many hours you can spend on the game daily.

Even if someone has got hundreds of them - over half of them were useless because of bad layouts/density.

Meaning - the current Atlas progression has been designed in such a way in which if you want to get more valuable rewards - the REGULAR map drops need to become more random (and thus - useless) as the player progresses.

Players are forced to give up the control over Atlas (and what drops at what tier) by bringing every region up to tier 14-16, with 4 socketed watchstones in every watchtower.

But in doing so players are effectively slashing their IIQ/sustain when it comes to map drops with every fully upgraded watchtower because they're throwing more and more useless map layouts into the t14-t16 drop pool, up to awakened level 8 and thus - severely diluting their chances to obtain higher tiered maps with good layouts/density.

In other words - GGG is forcing players to upgrade all the regions up to tier 14-16 and thus - to give up the control over Atlas, to pollute their map drop pool while blocking all lower map tier drops (1-13) AND.. at the same time - they're severely nerfing the tier 14-16 map drops overall (see the recent changes)...

This is a beautiful example of a total clusterfuck of a design and random ideas and tweaks thrown together. I'm not even gonna elaborate on Delve/Temple and other problems with maps not dropping from chests.

I highly doubt that they actually know what they're doing now or have any kind of long-term plan of how to improve it.

How does one fix Map tiers and such? SIMPLE! Make Maps a single drop, and the Atlas a giant chess board of sorts, where you take, say, a Tier 2 Map, and simply place it over any Tier 2 zone that you wish to travel to. Imagine, not having to hunt or pray to the Gods of RNG that the 3 Tier 1 Maps you have will upgrade to the one you want.

Imagine a static Map drop, that you just slot into a giant map of possible travel sites. BAM. No more hunting, no more overpricing specific, hard to find maps.

I don't want guardian maps to complete my atlas. And fix horizon orbs.

Fix flame dash! It seems 50% inconsistent.