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On December 31 2019 09:40 -Archangel- wrote:
Last two leagues I almost never did same map twice. Between what Zana sold and what dropped I always had a new map to run and complete and I didn't need to fuck around with watchstones.
I don't know why GGG wanted to change a good system for this. They could have just added new bosses..
Now at best when transitioning to yellow maps I will only have 2 or 3 to drop and I cannot buy new ones from Zana. All I am offered are white ones.
Yeah Zana's offerings never get that great. Have you tried running T5's that connect directly to the area(s) you used watchstones to promote? I don't know if this is required for the new atlas but it's what I did out of habit back when fresh.
Trade API being shite tonight?
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Zana's inventory doesn't really appear to be progression-scaled anymore, where she used to stick around whatever tier you'd progressed to. So most of the time, she's just going to only have 1-2 maps of whatever tier you're actually interested in.
If you have the currency you can preemptively buy maps of higher tiers you haven't gotten to yet when you start, and have a bunch of high tier maps banked by the time you get there.
On December 31 2019 11:14 Duka08 wrote:
Have you tried running T5's that connect directly to the area(s) you used watchstones to promote? I don't know if this is required for the new atlas but it's what I did out of habit back when fresh.
It shouldn't be unless GGG changed how map drops work without telling anybody and without anybody actually figuring it out by now. Drops roll tier first, and having adjacent maps of a higher tier does not increase your likelihood of rolling a higher tier map because drop tier is determined before the valid maps of a given tier are even used.
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28090 Posts
I was fairly lucky that I just had to buy one tier 14 and I've been able to sustain off that since.
Also I starting trying out some Toxic Rain mines (sabo). It's definitely strong, but it feels weird to play so far. Enemies that move or charge you are super fucking annoying to deal with. I hear it gets really fun once you start mapping/bossing though. The good news is that Metamorph's melt in 2 seconds.
Honestly I'm just too used to running around like an idiot while my skeles kill stuff this league 
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On December 31 2019 09:40 -Archangel- wrote:
I don't know why GGG wanted to change a good system for this.
Because the system wasn't good. The system as it existed incentivized majorly manipulating your Atlas in a way to target-run specific maps, and playing only a tiny subset of the map pool, with the vast majority of maps relegated to "run once then never look at them again" status. Plus mistakes in Atlas setups were relatively expensive to fix. GGG's literally been trying league after league to break how people engage with the endgame and make it something more than just "set up your Atlas to run one map 10000 times", and multiple changes of varying degrees never successfully accomplished this. It was only a matter of time before they scrapped the entire system, so here we are.
You could choose not to engage in any of the fiddly Atlas management before, but that doesn't change the fact that the incentives on the old Atlas were pretty fucked up. The new system isn't perfect, but it has two big advantages over the old system, which is that a) it makes more of the map pool relevant for the entire endgame due to every map scaling up to T14-16, and b) manipulating the Atlas with Watchstones means that there are far less ways to permanently "fuck up" your Atlas setup whereas before uncompleting a giant chunk of the Atlas with Cartographer's Seals to "fix" your Atlas was an enormous pain.
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On December 31 2019 17:19 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On December 31 2019 09:40 -Archangel- wrote:
I don't know why GGG wanted to change a good system for this. Because the system wasn't good. The system as it existed incentivized majorly manipulating your Atlas in a way to target-run specific maps, and playing only a tiny subset of the map pool, with the vast majority of maps relegated to "run once then never look at them again" status. Plus mistakes in Atlas setups were relatively expensive to fix. GGG's literally been trying league after league to break how people engage with the endgame and make it something more than just "set up your Atlas to run one map 10000 times", and multiple changes of varying degrees never successfully accomplished this. It was only a matter of time before they scrapped the entire system, so here we are. You could choose not to engage in any of the fiddly Atlas management before, but that doesn't change the fact that the incentives on the old Atlas were pretty fucked up. The new system isn't perfect, but it has two big advantages over the old system, which is that a) it makes more of the map pool relevant for the entire endgame due to every map scaling up to T14-16, and b) manipulating the Atlas with Watchstones means that there are far less ways to permanently "fuck up" your Atlas setup whereas before uncompleting a giant chunk of the Atlas with Cartographer's Seals to "fix" your Atlas was an enormous pain.
It was good for 99% of the people, it only sucked for 1% that played that much that they would target farm red maps which was not needed to finish all content or do all bosses. I just completed all maps I could, ran guardians, ran shaper and whatever elder I could find on the way. Maybe made a new character if league was especially fun and I had enough currency.
Only a tiny percentage of players do what you talked about. GGG fucked everyone else over so they could give more to do to those that give most hours to the game. Maybe it somehow works by their calculations because those players buy most supporter packs or something. It will be interesting to see how fast players drop off in this league. I was thinking about buying a supported pack before league started and I am glad I didn't. Now I am not giving them a single $ until they fix this zoom zoom one shot mess of a game made for no lifers and ADHD people.
I basically stopped playing this league before 1 week ended as I hit this problem and went to play better games and now that I want try again I still didn't get yellow maps after running a few white ones. I got a lvl 85 character running white maps lol. Fuck that.
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On December 31 2019 20:08 -Archangel- wrote:Show nested quote +On December 31 2019 17:19 TheYango wrote:On December 31 2019 09:40 -Archangel- wrote:
I don't know why GGG wanted to change a good system for this. Because the system wasn't good. The system as it existed incentivized majorly manipulating your Atlas in a way to target-run specific maps, and playing only a tiny subset of the map pool, with the vast majority of maps relegated to "run once then never look at them again" status. Plus mistakes in Atlas setups were relatively expensive to fix. GGG's literally been trying league after league to break how people engage with the endgame and make it something more than just "set up your Atlas to run one map 10000 times", and multiple changes of varying degrees never successfully accomplished this. It was only a matter of time before they scrapped the entire system, so here we are. You could choose not to engage in any of the fiddly Atlas management before, but that doesn't change the fact that the incentives on the old Atlas were pretty fucked up. The new system isn't perfect, but it has two big advantages over the old system, which is that a) it makes more of the map pool relevant for the entire endgame due to every map scaling up to T14-16, and b) manipulating the Atlas with Watchstones means that there are far less ways to permanently "fuck up" your Atlas setup whereas before uncompleting a giant chunk of the Atlas with Cartographer's Seals to "fix" your Atlas was an enormous pain. It was good for 99% of the people, it only sucked for 1% that played that much that they would target farm red maps which was not needed to finish all content or do all bosses. I just completed all maps I could, ran guardians, ran shaper and whatever elder I could find on the way. Maybe made a new character if league was especially fun and I had enough currency. Only a tiny percentage of players do what you talked about. GGG fucked everyone else over so they could give more to do to those that give most hours to the game. Maybe it somehow works by their calculations because those players buy most supporter packs or something. It will be interesting to see how fast players drop off in this league. I was thinking about buying a supported pack before league started and I am glad I didn't. Now I am not giving them a single $ until they fix this zoom zoom one shot mess of a game made for no lifers and ADHD people. I basically stopped playing this league before 1 week ended as I hit this problem and went to play better games and now that I want try again I still didn't get yellow maps after running a few white ones. I got a lvl 85 character running white maps lol. Fuck that.
I don't see the huge problems with maps. I got 16 watchstones very soon in the league and I have a huge supply of red maps now. I didn't have problems to find yellow maps neither. To be honest, completing 3 maps in the same region (you can filter by region in the map stash tab) is not so much. You probably are doing something wrong.
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Running T5s and not getting drops is completely unrelated to the atlas changes, that couldve and frequently did happen in the old atlas system and the map system before that. RNG gonna RNG
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On December 31 2019 22:41 ThaddeusK wrote:
Running T5s and not getting drops is completely unrelated to the atlas changes, that couldve and frequently did happen in the old atlas system and the map system before that. RNG gonna RNG
Not to me and not in last two leagues where they upped map drops. And you had Zana that sold so many yellow maps to you. Now she sells shit.
Also I don't want to fuck around with watchstones, why did they need to make this part of the game more complex after they finally reached good progress with Atlas drops.
They made it too confusing for little gain, new players are going to be even more pissed than people like me that liked old Atlas more.
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I feel like early on the new atlas is better than ever, you can get like 60 map completion from white maps (so you get to play more different maps faster) and I managed to do that much easier than ever before since you find so many maps. Watchstone system is really simple, socket one, like always play adjacent maps that are 1 tier below and thats it. Repeat for more watchstones. It probably is more grindy than before for people that tend to buy maps, but otherwise I feel it's similar. Getting 32 watchstones is taking really long tho, but not everyone even wants that.
What helped me big time at completing maps I didn't find is selling 3 maps of the same type for 1 new one. Now, you don't get an adjacent map for sure with it, it might be any +1 map from the region the map is in. If it isn't the one that you need and you have say 4 maps, you can try selling map 1, 2 and 4 or 2, 3, and 4 and you might get the one you need.
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On December 31 2019 20:08 -Archangel- wrote:
It was good for 99% of the people, it only sucked for 1% that played that much that they would target farm red maps which was not needed to finish all content or do all bosses.
Even if you weren't manipulating your Atlas to target-farm, you were only ever engaging with maybe 5-10 maps at any given point in the game. Like 90% of the maps in the game you just never looked at again because they were too low tier to matter, and you could only shape 1-2 maps of each tier.
On December 31 2019 20:08 -Archangel- wrote:
Now I am not giving them a single $ until they fix this zoom zoom one shot mess of a game made for no lifers and ADHD people.
?
Metamorph is like the least clearspeed-focused, most bosskill-focused league mechanic in ages, and actually incentivizes people slowing down and spending time killing map bosses.
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I personally find the new atlas a hundred percent more enjoyable than the old atlas. If you're having trouble with map drops then you should focus on grinding out watchstones. Once I hit 16 I was reliably getting t14+ maps from all active 4-watchstone regions. I have only purchased a single map, desert spring, for the pantheon bonus.
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On December 31 2019 23:40 -Archangel- wrote:Show nested quote +On December 31 2019 22:41 ThaddeusK wrote:
Running T5s and not getting drops is completely unrelated to the atlas changes, that couldve and frequently did happen in the old atlas system and the map system before that. RNG gonna RNG Not to me and not in last two leagues where they upped map drops. And you had Zana that sold so many yellow maps to you. Now she sells shit. Also I don't want to fuck around with watchstones, why did they need to make this part of the game more complex after they finally reached good progress with Atlas drops. They made it too confusing for little gain, new players are going to be even more pissed than people like me that liked old Atlas more.
You're just having a bad league. It happens. Play other stuff lol, I've skipped leagues before.
Not dropping yellows is pure RNG. Yango's correction to my last question is right. As in the old atlas, once you start getting them you'll probably get plenty more. Nothing about the way maps drop has changed.
Also I literally just slot every watchstone I get right into the region it dropped from. I'm sure there's more clever stuff you can do if you want to get to certain T15+ very quickly early in a league, but if you find it confusing or just don't want to micromanage, put them in the slot they dropped for as soon as you get them and never think about them again. It turns a lot of your atlas red pretty quickly (~2 stones per region), but I get boatloads of white/yellow maps still from metamorph, random drops, etc. so there's always something to run if you start a new character or have a specific map to run for prophecies, sextant positions, master missions, anything.
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On January 01 2020 00:33 HolydaKing wrote:
I feel like early on the new atlas is better than ever, you can get like 60 map completion from white maps (so you get to play more different maps faster) and I managed to do that much easier than ever before since you find so many maps. Watchstone system is really simple, socket one, like always play adjacent maps that are 1 tier below and thats it. Repeat for more watchstones. It probably is more grindy than before for people that tend to buy maps, but otherwise I feel it's similar. Getting 32 watchstones is taking really long tho, but not everyone even wants that.
What helped me big time at completing maps I didn't find is selling 3 maps of the same type for 1 new one. Now, you don't get an adjacent map for sure with it, it might be any +1 map from the region the map is in. If it isn't the one that you need and you have say 4 maps, you can try selling map 1, 2 and 4 or 2, 3, and 4 and you might get the one you need.
I tried that, it is broken atm, at one point I sold 3 t4 maps and got a non linked t3 map.. probably a leftover from last atlas
Doing 60 white maps is way more grindy than before (and then you will do all of them again for yellow tier and then for red tier WTF)! It is exactly what I am complaining about. I am lvl 86 and still doing white maps trying to do all 4 corners (did 3 so far). It is boring terrible gameplay without any challenge. Grinding for grinding sake. Atlas progress was never very interesting but at least in last two leagues they upped map drops enough so I always had a new map to do to complete it. Even progressing from yellow to red became kind of easy and not irritating.
Now GGG because of their short development cycle tricked you all into grinding same shit over and over and presented it as new Atlas. It is about as new as Acts 6 to 10 that were just recycled Acts 1 to 5 but now done with even less effort.
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On January 01 2020 01:41 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On December 31 2019 20:08 -Archangel- wrote:
It was good for 99% of the people, it only sucked for 1% that played that much that they would target farm red maps which was not needed to finish all content or do all bosses. Even if you weren't manipulating your Atlas to target-farm, you were only ever engaging with maybe 5-10 maps at any given point in the game. Like 90% of the maps in the game you just never looked at again because they were too low tier to matter, and you could only shape 1-2 maps of each tier. Show nested quote +On December 31 2019 20:08 -Archangel- wrote:
Now I am not giving them a single $ until they fix this zoom zoom one shot mess of a game made for no lifers and ADHD people.
? Metamorph is like the least clearspeed-focused, most bosskill-focused league mechanic in ages, and actually incentivizes people slowing down and spending time killing map bosses.
Maybe you were playing same 5-10 maps as you are the part of the 1% (or more likely 0.1%). I just did all maps once and only repeated maps that had elder stuff on it so I can do red elder. Once I reached guardians I tried them all with my build and then Shaper if I felt like it. Then I tried another character or quit the league.
And this is already more gameplay than 95% of players each league. Most don't even reach maps and those than do probably never reach red maps.
New grindy atlas promotes zoom zoom so you can complete maps faster. Metamorph promotes one shots by what I have been reading (I also got one shot in white maps a few times, I can only imagine how bad it is later).
Also Metamorph combat is kind of terrible, it is same each map. You run around it attacking until he dies. There is really nothing special or interesting about it. Like always visual part is terribly done and you don't see shit what is happening so you just hope you avoid any of his one shot by luck.
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On January 01 2020 02:34 Duka08 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 31 2019 23:40 -Archangel- wrote:On December 31 2019 22:41 ThaddeusK wrote:
Running T5s and not getting drops is completely unrelated to the atlas changes, that couldve and frequently did happen in the old atlas system and the map system before that. RNG gonna RNG Not to me and not in last two leagues where they upped map drops. And you had Zana that sold so many yellow maps to you. Now she sells shit. Also I don't want to fuck around with watchstones, why did they need to make this part of the game more complex after they finally reached good progress with Atlas drops. They made it too confusing for little gain, new players are going to be even more pissed than people like me that liked old Atlas more. You're just having a bad league. It happens. Play other stuff lol, I've skipped leagues before. Not dropping yellows is pure RNG. Yango's correction to my last question is right. As in the old atlas, once you start getting them you'll probably get plenty more. Nothing about the way maps drop has changed. Also I literally just slot every watchstone I get right into the region it dropped from. I'm sure there's more clever stuff you can do if you want to get to certain T15+ very quickly early in a league, but if you find it confusing or just don't want to micromanage, put them in the slot they dropped for as soon as you get them and never think about them again. It turns a lot of your atlas red pretty quickly (~2 stones per region), but I get boatloads of white/yellow maps still from metamorph, random drops, etc. so there's always something to run if you start a new character or have a specific map to run for prophecies, sextant positions, master missions, anything.
Last league was bad, league mechanics were boring and lag was unbearable. And since I already played a lot of summoners in past leagues I didn't really have any new fun build to play so I did a hipster one that turned out not fun and I quit the league after 2 weeks.
This league I hoped it would shake things up but new atlas is now irritating and league mechanics are about as bad.
Lich fights were 3x more interesting than these Metamorphs. So was Legion rares and generals even with all the rippy parts. At least they were not black on black and I could see them charging up special attacks so I can try to dodge them..
Worst thing is that this atlas is here to stay, probably even for 4.0
If it does I can see myself skipping all leagues until 4.0, and only play story parts there as it will actually be harder and interesting and feel more like D2. Anyways these changes are not making me want to give GGG $
All I can hope is that this league retention is worst yet and GGG figures out it is because of new atlas.
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Your issues with the Atlas serm plain weird to me. It was never so easy to get tons of high tier maps and sustain them. Before completing the Atlas or even just get into higher maps forced you to trade or just grind until your lucky.
ZoomZoom is also not any worse than before, i would say its less.
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On January 01 2020 23:42 Velr wrote:
Your issues with the Atlas serm plain weird to me. It was never so easy to get tons of high tier maps and sustain them. Before completing the Atlas or even just get into higher maps forced you to trade or just grind until your lucky.
ZoomZoom is also not any worse than before, i would say its less.
Zoom Zoom is same shit as before, one of the reasons why I played less and less. Now they added more reasons.
I just might go back to playing Path of Diablo instead.
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Sure zoom zoom will always be the meta because its the most fun for the most people. However this expansion/league focuses on bosses a lot more so instead of having the fastet Herald of ice autobomber or 200 quant no resist 3 screens killrange deadeye you need to have a character than can kill the bosses and metamorphs, because they drop a lot of loot. Not running the bosses might also lock you out of sextants. On top of that you cant target farm one specific map anymore.
And on top of that ideally you want to do t19 maps, which are quite a bit harder and rippier, so unless you already have 30 exalts invested in your build you will have to go slowly.
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On January 02 2020 00:25 -Archangel- wrote:Show nested quote +On January 01 2020 23:42 Velr wrote:
Your issues with the Atlas serm plain weird to me. It was never so easy to get tons of high tier maps and sustain them. Before completing the Atlas or even just get into higher maps forced you to trade or just grind until your lucky.
ZoomZoom is also not any worse than before, i would say its less. Zoom Zoom is same shit as before, one of the reasons why I played less and less. Now they added more reasons. I just might go back to playing Path of Diablo instead.
This is the less zoomzoom league I've played in a lot of time. You are just complaining for everything.
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Put about 12ex into gear for an Ice Shot Raider and just leveled her to maps tonight. Excited to put it all on tomorrow and be a meta slave. Still 3 chase uniques worth a combined ~11ex to work toward too. Was ready for the change of pace.
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EPT
