Shared Mines and Sulphite Rebalance

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Innomen wrote:

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johnnyh2 wrote:

I don't understand anyone who thought that we would get to spend 100% (or 90%+) of our time in the Delve.

What part of the word "infinite" confused you?

Yeah silly us for thinking our experience of the dungeon labeled infinite would be, you know, not finite.

Actually, the word "infinite" never confused me. Apparently, the confusion is on your part, as you did not read the word in its context. When GGG originally announced the league (https://www.pathofexile.com/delve), they indicated...

"In Path of Exile: Delve, you will delve into the Azurite Mine's infinite depths to extract treasure and discover its subterranean secrets."

I recognized that they used the term "infinite" followed by "depths"... so "infinite depths" made it clear to me that "infinite" was directional and not some component of time... and thus dashed my hopes of spending 100% of my "end game" in Delves (instead of mapping). I’m sorry that you did not come to the same conclusion.

However, since this was simply the announcement and lacked any real details, I can see how it’s possible that some people may have just seen "infinite" or "infinite dungeon" and made an assumption as to how it would work based on how an "infinite dungeon" was done in another game or how they wanted it to be (forgetting that GGG does not want us to stop mapping... ever).

Yet, those details were actually shared by GGG in mid-August with a Delve FAQ (https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2197540) that did clarify this and removed any confusion about whether or not "infinite" was just directional...

How long can you spend in the mine assuming you have filled your Voltaxic Sulphite capacity?
This depends on a number of factors, but with reasonable capacity upgrades at a reasonable depth, you can chain a few longer Delves together if you want to consume all your Voltaxic Sulphite at once.

Is the Mine only infinite downwardly?
It's also infinite laterally (side-to-side).

Can I bypass leveling in other areas of the game and spend most of my time exclusively in the mine?
No. You have to play the regular game to get Voltaxic Sulphite so that you can play Delves

So, again, back to my original point... GGG was clear that we were not going to spend 100% of our time in their "infinite" dungeon well before the league started.

Oddly, I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t be able to spend more time in the Delves (i.e. reduced cost of sulphite or substantially more sulphite given in maps)... as that’s exactly what I want!!! And I support everyone who is encouraging GGG to give us more time in Delves!

I was pointing out that this league mechanic is 100% consistent with how past leagues have worked and was to be expected... and getting pissed about the "shock and horror" of how GGG betrayed us by forcing us to map between Delves seems a bit silly.

Yours truly,
"Mostly, But Not Infinitely, Confused" :D

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but in Tier 16 maps it's 241

Actually I get more like 112-155ish sulphite from T16 maps. Not 241. And because abyss mods and masters and various other mods seem to take the spot of sulphite spawns, there is often only 1 sulphite clicky. Because of this a T4 map can give more sulphite than a fully rolled/sextanted/vaaled/etc T16 map...

3 hours of T16 mapping to spend 10-15 min in Delves is meh... I hope it will get better after patch.

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demon9675 wrote:

Let's wait and see what they actually DO before freaking out. I know a lot of people, including myself, were upset at the state in which Delve was initially released, but it's not wise to become outraged before we have anything specific to be outraged about.

P.S. The backlash against the shared mine makes zero sense to me. It'll make all of our lives easier, especially when the mechanic goes core.

That's fair. Indeed it's the only thing keeping me from (too strong a word here) despair.

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Fruz wrote:

You are missing the whole point of arpgs.

You're missing the existence of theory of mind. Yes the sensation of progression is a big motivator to many people. But it's not the only one, and it's very arguably not even the strongest one.

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If you can get everything easily in a couple of days, then there is no more progression

Then explain why ALL of us have done the story over and over?

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pretty much no point to play this game as the exploration

Agreed, which is why delve being linked to any arbitrary limiting mechanic is regrettable.

I've never liked maps being objects. Exploration would feel a lot better if maps were launchable from the atlas and stayed completed.

I love the idea of exploring delve. I back track sometimes purely for atmosphere, drops aren't relevant to me pretty much. I give away almost everything to my guild.

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You are really missing the big picture

I'm really not. I'm calling you a materialist for having motivational tunnel vision regarding what counts as wealth ("material") in this context.

Filters prove my point. Filters more or less destroy wealth and people play with them. If you never even see any item, it's never once rendered, did it even ever exist practically speaking?

Once you realize there are other quite strong if not stronger motivations to play, you'll stop being one.

Are we there yet? I think we might be. You seem reasonable.

P.S. Turn off items entirely beyond shop trash and this game, especially the boss fights, can be parsed as a bullet hell shooter.

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cfg3 wrote:

Removing this aspect and requiring players to map to progress in Delve doesn't make much sense to me. If the purpose of this patch is to encourage players to map then simply increase the drop of high tier maps.. no other changes need to be made.

Players like the new mechanic so much they are willing to grind out Quarry to experience it. Now you are punishing them to force them to play a certain way.. why?

Agreed, and I have a theory about your why.

So we know they are strongly motivated to look for ways to make the community need more stash tabs. That means if maps dropped properly or the mechanic didn't even need drops, we'd need the map tab less. And that means new players might do without one at all. == Lost Sale

They don't want people living in the delve, because skipping the main game also skips motivations they've carefully built in over years for spending real money.

I think they are worried what delving will do to stash tab sales hence the sulphite limiter, to act as a backstop against a super unprofitable league for them if it turns out delving doesn't translate into spending as much as mapping does.

Thoughts?

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johnnyh2 wrote:

I was pointing out that this league mechanic is 100% consistent with how past leagues have worked and was to be expected... and getting pissed about the "shock and horror" of how GGG betrayed us by forcing us to map between Delves seems a bit silly.

Yeah, I get that, but it's consistent only from a set of cynical (entirely reasonable) assumptions.

You seem to (cynically) assume everything has always worked as intended. In which case busted nerfed delve is as you say 100% on par. Kinda like the education system in America, less broken, more corrupt. Like less education, more social engineering. Working as intended, though real intent is undisclosed.

But others take a more charitable optimist view that GGG has always been trying to really please the community, as opposed to manipulate it for profit.

From the charitable perspective it's reasonable to assume they had an epiphany for making something EXTRA fun, and will implement that fun as a matter of principal. (Hard to sell that frankly, but people can believe anything if it supports their worldview somehow or flatters them.)

Hindsight is 20/20, and you're right, expecting what we even half way did is kind of silly. But not silly enough to warrant the scolding you gave us all :)

For the record my disappointment started the moment we were given any indication of a limited mine experience, which was kind of late in the hype cycle if I can trust my memory at all.

And even after that I remember saying somewhere, and thinking, that I would absolutely still try to level in the mines and skip the story as much as I was allowed to.

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silverdash wrote:

3 hours of T16 mapping to spend 10-15 min in Delves is meh... I hope it will get better after patch.

Thanks for the proof and input.

Sidenote: Trade is more OP than anything else in this game. Whenever anyone whines about what removing some limit would do to drops I instantly think of the level of trade skill the higher level players take for granted. Trade they do from habit like breathing that amounts to a MASSIVE unfair advantage compared to people that for whatever reason lack that ability.

Trade amounts to fully deterministic farming, but only available to a specific kind of mind.

And it's hard for me not to believe they expressly cultivate this advantage to reward the same kinds of minds that reward them with real money.

And punish those that don't.

Like that's maybe why there will never be a bugfix optimization patch league, because they don't want poor people here because they would prefer a community with the means and will to spend money.

3 hours of t16 mapping. I doubt I will EVER be able to afford that from a pure maps and materials perspective, let alone, the character gear needed to survive it.

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Innomen wrote:

Agreed, and I have a theory about your why.

So we know they are strongly motivated to look for ways to make the community need more stash tabs. That means if maps dropped properly or the mechanic didn't even need drops, we'd need the map tab less. And that means new players might do without one at all. == Lost Sale

They don't want people living in the delve, because skipping the main game also skips motivations they've carefully built in over years for spending real money.

I think they are worried what delving will do to stash tab sales hence the sulphite limiter, to act as a backstop against a super unprofitable league for them if it turns out delving doesn't translate into spending as much as mapping does.

Thoughts?

You are really living in your own dreamworld. Its just completely crazy what are you talking about in general.

It's obviously that you will never understand and *accept* that nearlly everyone don't have your mindset. So i'm just glad GGG don't listen to you and i can enjoy PoE.

Why not give everyone or rather most players what they want? i.e. Want new Delve with new char? Why not? Just let us have pick that option. Otherwise play default option or maybe some third option. Grind sulfite (better rewards) or maybe not grind sulfite and less rewards? IMO more simple options is always better than forcing one playstyle on everyone.

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Innomen wrote:

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Fruz wrote:

You are missing the whole point of arpgs.

You're missing the existence of theory of mind. Yes the sensation of progression is a big motivator to many people. But it's not the only one, and it's very arguably not even the strongest one.

LOL
Yes it is, it obviously is.
I mean, you would be mentioning any ... but of course you're not ( and you won't be, I know, it's alright ).

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Innomen wrote:

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If you can get everything easily in a couple of days, then there is no more progression

Then explain why ALL of us have done the story over and over?

Absolutely irrelevant.
Progression is not all about the storyline, at all.


And you're calling me on "tunnel vision" ?
Holy moly dude ... seriously lol

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Innomen wrote:

I think they are worried what delving will do to stash tab sales hence the sulphite limiter, to act as a backstop against a super unprofitable league for them if it turns out delving doesn't translate into spending as much as mapping does.

Everything you can have in maps ( that makes you hoard things ), you can find in delves .... apart from the elder/shaper and their guardians only loots probably ( and shaper frag I guess ).
There is no actual reason why delving would directly reduce stash tab buying from players.

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Rake7 wrote:

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Innomen wrote:

[...]

You are really living in your own dreamworld. Its just completely crazy what are you talking about in general.

It's obviously that you will never understand and *accept* that nearlly everyone don't have your mindset. So i'm just glad GGG don't listen to you and i can enjoy PoE.

I would be a bit less crude, but overall, I agree.

Innomen didnt you say you were quitting last league? and the one before that as well? just leave already and spare us the short whiny stories of why everything should be free and require no effort to attain.

Unfortunatly, with this being on page 27+ of this thread I doubt it will get much attention.

I don't think the shared mines is going to really solve anything except for those deep delving to begin with. Sharing the mines, only really benefits characters that can get deep enough for Niko's mining of the main shaft to no longer matter.

To give some insight on this, I enjoy delve but I also don't really do delve much. The big reason for this is initial delve progression doesn't mesh well with normal Story progression. Either I do a bunch of Delves and quickly make the normal story progression boring, or I do the story progression and then will hit a point where I will have to grind a number of much weaker delves due to not having the azurite progression to have the upgrades to do content appropriate for the character I am playing. This was even worse prior to the merging of the azurite upgrades, as I have been going between a lot of characters to play with friends as well as re-feel out a build I want to take more to the end game. So in short, I like the concept of Delve, I like the fresh mine for each character, the problem is that it doesn't fit in to the normal gameplay well currently due to either removing the challenge of the story progression or resulting in grinding trivial areas to be able to do challenging delves later on.

I can see where those doing deep delves would benefit from a merged mine, and that is on the time to retrying deeper delves with a totally different character build. But this also seems to contradict the spirit of Delve to me. The Time to Retry for a specific build is fairly low, unless one goes to do some major regearing or resetting of skill points, provided one has sulphite. However, there will still be those hitting a brickwall in delve progression for one reason or another, that will still try and find a way to blame anything but themselves for their inability to progress.

If the idea behind the shared mine changes is to make it easier for a player to take a totally different character and build to the deepest depths a player has been to, its hitting the mark. But if the change is intended to get more people doing delve, I feel it has drastically missed its mark, as it is not really addressing the issues keeping people from getting into delve.

From my experiences with Delve, the bigger problem for people getting into delve is when the light radius and darkness resistance penalties kick in. It is the combination of these penalties, and not wanting to do content when it is trivial for hours on end(story or Delve for azurite) that is keeping me from really getting into Delve. I don't know when Delve was intended to become more of a focus for a character, but it seems to either be from lv 1, which its not very well balanced for occasional delving, or if it was for those that are 70+ which it is also not well balanced for starting at. Thanks to the combination of the Light Radius and Darkness penalties, and azurite progression rate.

And in regards to the just go sideways a bit if want a fresh delving experience for a character, I'd much rather have separate mines than be forced to side path for say 10-40+ nodes or so to achieve the same effect by spending more time and sulphite to get far enough away from another characters main mine area.

If you really want to have fully shared mines, maybe introduce checkpoints at certain depths and give people the option of either continuing from an existing explored area, or start from a different point at the checkpoint depths a significant distance from other explored areas.

Cant wait for Sulphite buff so i can do challenges

Nice. I'd really like sulphite to be shared as well. I like having multiple characters, I'd like to switch them around as I feel like it. But this is welcome at least.