Atlas Changes in 3.10.0

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Baddgulf wrote:

The whole idea of endgame being gated behind rng is bad at the roots. It's like you intentionally want to discourage players from playing your game. It's constant, irritating topic every league.
Why not disable map drops and open Atlas completly. If you want to play tier 2, first you need to complete tier 1 and so on. Someone want to play only one map? Let them have it. What's wrong with that? I'm pretty sure 100% player base would be more than happy with such a system.

Because money. See my sig.

In 3.9 it's not longer possible to sustain one map, e.g. Burial Chambers, because of two terrible reasons:

1. There is no possibility to undo maps. In their announcement they wrote that they think about Cartographer's Seal. Whatever that means...

2. Even more important: The rule that a map's tier is reduced if the rolled tier cannot drop is gone. Instead the map won't drop. That is annoying! Will this be changed again in 3.10?

Another terrible decision will come up in 3.10: Orb of Horizons will also roll unnatural maps which furthermore decreases the chance to obtain a desired map.


Is all of this really intended? Do I really have to buy maps if I want to target farm ONE map and only that one map?

I wished no regeneration and no leech mods could not be rolled together making maps available only to a few niche builds if we are talking about map mods.

I do not really see any issues with the rest as they can be counterbalanced through some shape or form, be it a flask, a change in support gem ect...

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krzsztf wrote:

make winter orb great again!
no, just make it playable

Yes, GGG please make Winter Orb better.
You nerfed it too much.

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Flinkerkobold wrote:

this but this is just something for the entire squad of ggg to consider, especially the balancing team. We as high lvl players dont care about having only one map to target farm (even if that is the essence of arpgs). Running random maps IS FINE. But why on earth do most of the maps suck so much compared to others? why do so many maps have less than half the amount of mobs than others and bad drops on top? why dont you add some of the new cards to bad maps to make them competitive? the way the game is right now, casual players will still run random maps and dedicated players will just buy their maps. literally no changes in the maps run apart from even more trading and micro management. please consider at least buffing all of the horrendously bad maps in the game to make it feel less painful running randoms

i totally agree with him ,if anybody else agree please quote him as well best way to be seen and heard.Constructive too.just my 2 cent.

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Fapmobile wrote:

The major point of ssf is bragging rights.
One single ssf-only change like you're proposing and it's all gone.

The two major points of SSF are 1) not trading and 2) not participating in groups. So long as these two remain, other changes, including drop rates, no not alter the nature of SSF.

Compared to previous Shaper/Elder versions of the Atlas (which IMO were the best versions), this version is underwhelming. It's unnecessarily recursive and bloated - having different levels of the same map further confuses what used to be implicitly clear (you knew what level a map was by its name). There are now multiple levels of the same endgame content. I'm not sure why you would think that would be compelling.

That's ignoring the ordinary/clunky narrative of the new Atlas. The old one was elegant and engaging. This one is ... does anyone care about the narrative beyond getting map areas to spawn guardians ASAP? The old artwork was also superlative. I literally used it as reference it was that good. The new Atlas graphics/art is ... arcadey. The worst part about the previous Atlas system was the infuriatingly random nature of the Shaper/Elder areas. But that was an easy fix. And honestly it's all you had to do.

With the new system I am now forced through a gauntlet of recursive content in order to effectively target farm a low level map. So if I want to just target farm Burial Grounds, I need to get to Awakened level 8 in order to unlock all levels of the maps, just so I can 3x favourite the maps I want to target. That forces me into builds that can do that, just so I can play the game the way I want to... eventually, because that's a massive, time consuming undertaking.

That's not better, it's far worse. You haven't given me more choices and ways to play, you've forced me through obnoxious recursion in order to get to the lower difficulty levels I enjoy farming with MF builds. How does that make sense?

And let's not talk about having to relearn everything again with each remade iteration of the Atlas.

Please consider going back to the old way, or forward to a new, similar way. It was much more enjoyable. Target farming maps was elegant and rewarding. Now it's the ultimate grindy chore (and as a result I haven't done it; coupled with the league mechanic that turns a beautiful and varied game into a bland monochrome speed run with unavoidable one shot deaths, I just couldn't face the grind).

This is why I gave up on trying to figure out the new map/s...

After having played PoE since Open Beta, going away after Talisman league, then coming back... AND being a person that treasured complexity of this game in that it allows min-maxers to squeeze as much as possible out of the game -- I find the socketing system to have a bit too steep of a learning curve.

The biggest issue that I've come across is actually just sorting through the maps I've attained, to visualize where they go on the Atlas. There are 8 sections on the map, yet all of the icons of the physical maps in the inventory only distinguish themselves by tier but not the map region they belong in.

I finally got the new Map stash tab tonight. While I was pleasantly surprised to see that each Map becomes highlighted when its under Crusader/Shaper/Elder influence, I still need to click through each Map while holding Alt to see its geographical region on the Atlas (ie: Tirn's End).

Before I had the Map stash tab, I couldn't see which Maps had influence, but I could at least organize the stash tab I put them in to to indicate which regions they belong in. For example, I'd place Haewark Hamlet maps in the top-left, Tirn's End in the center-left, Lex Ejoris in the top-right, Lex Proxima in the center-right, etc.

These condundrums gave me an epiphany tonight.

**I think some simple but effective quality-of-life solutions for all players, new & veteran alike, are:**

1) Consider altering the shape of the inventory icons of Maps to indicate their region (or letting players do so, for their own sake), ie: Triangle shape for Glennarch, Circle shape for Lex Ejoris, etc.

2) AND/OR Consider altering the hue of the inventory icons of Maps to indicate their region (or letting players do so, for their own sake), ie: Dark Red hue for Haewark Hamlet, Red hue for Tirn's End, etc.

3) Consider allowing players to zoom the Atlas out if the inventory is open.

4) Consider showing on the Atlas how many of each Map the player has on each node, say with a counter. A fun addition would also be a logging functionality to show how many times that player has run that Map, and the average time of each run.

5) Consider adding customizability to Map stash tabs so players can choose between Roman numerals or Modern numerals, and also allowing players have the Maps in each tier sorted by Map region, and perhaps frequency of that Map having been run (tied into the previous suggestion).

There's definitely some room for improvement when it comes to Mapping, and while the Atlas is a MASSIVE improvement and a quite impressive one, the manual inventory management of Maps that a player has to do is not so intuitive (in my view).

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t0lkien wrote:

That's not better, it's far worse. You haven't given me more choices and ways to play, you've forced me through obnoxious recursion in order to get to the lower difficulty levels I enjoy farming with MF builds. How does that make sense?

And let's not talk about having to relearn everything again with each remade iteration of the Atlas.

Please consider going back to the old way, or forward to a new, similar way. It was much more enjoyable. Target farming maps was elegant and rewarding. Now it's the ultimate grindy chore (and as a result I haven't done it; coupled with the league mechanic that turns a beautiful and varied game into a bland monochrome speed run with unavoidable one shot deaths, I just couldn't face the grind).

It would be no problem if you could quickly unlock the Atlas without any external trading. It's the stupidest thing ever to force a player out of the game, to go to a trading site and search 300 times for their stupid maps to buy. It's just insane. They should soon implement instant Ingame Trading to save their game.