Firstly, adding the three zones is much appreciated. It was very, very needed.
After a few days of testing, here is how I feel:
Fields of Misery is awesome;
Briarthon Cemetery is interesting. Super high mob density and tricky obstacles make for a great, unique challenge - love it.
…However, Desolate Sands is, well, desolate. The zone is simply too large for its mob density - a lot too large. If the Caldeum sewer/aqueduct zones were long, pointless tunnels, then Desolate Sands is a large pointless field. It either needs to be shrunk by a solid 25% (in the interest of keeping zones balanced, my favorite solution)…or the mob density needs to be increased significantly. There is a vast, needless area south of the exit portal, that could go away and never come back, as far as I am concerned.
Then skip that part of the map? In fact it’s easy to skip the whole map quite easily as the layout is fixed. My experience with the map is that although you have to move around a bit it still gives good progression.
Your suggestion just compounds the problem. You imply that, on top of inefficient exp progression, I should now risk missing Pylons. That is hardly game-play that I find acceptable…In fact, a resounding “Heck No” to that idea! On the sewer maps, as painful as they were, I was at least basically forced to bump into any pylons that spawned…
No it doesn’t. It’s one of the most dense GR maps there is now. I’m constantly moving with my Marauder DH, Multishotting all over the place and I never run out of things to shoot. Tons of elites as well.
Your problem is you’re simply too slow. If you move and kill like a snail, of course it’s gonna seem empty.
When you play that map on regular rift it really dense map. Now in a GR it is 1/2 that. I have done that map like six time. Every time you get about 80% out of it. Where on a regular rift you get over 100% with no problem. They gave us a map that was very dense and cut it in 1/2.
Or…and hear me out here…you don’t know the definition of dense. (ironic?)
The amount of progression you get from a map doesn’t indicate whether a map is dense or not. The amount of monsters compared to the size would determine density.
Faster classes (such as DH) will benefit across all zones in terms of movement. But when you say “you’re”, let’s be clear that it is Blizzard not players made those classes slower. So, the question becomes, did Blizzard make the new desert zone to screw the snails and favor DHs on purpose? Ya’ know, “up yours snails. see da patch notes, har, har!” Dunno, Blizz. You tell us? Or better yet, fix what needs to be fixed.
There should be three densities, determined randomly like the map:
Dense (1 pack per X “yards”) - guarantee 50%+ progression
Light (1 pack per X * Y “yards” or “half”) - guarantee up to 40% progression
Sparse (blah blah) - up to 10-20% progression
This way, even if you get a huge map, it can be very sparse. Or you might get a ridiculously small map with a huge number of enemies.
Of course, some tweaking can be done as this also implies at least 2 maps are needed and I don’t think that’s necessarily right.
Anyway, point is a GR should be chock full of bad guys. Perhaps even decreasing with higher levels to force the player to be faster and explore the entirety.
Also, the type of mobs encountered can vastly affect the amount of progression because different mobs give varying amounts of progression per kill. 100 mallet lords vs 100 imps is the same amount of kills, but it’s not the same amount of progress.
aggreed. it suffers from the same issue as Shrouded Moors does in rifts.
I have on average a worse clear time with Desolate Sands as the main map than with Corvus and Keeps.
It’s only ~10 hours of grinding right now but it’s noticable and worth to mention even at that point.
Again same as Shrouded moors in rifts …the map is too big, which would be great but there are no mobs. it’s really. desolate.
Agree…and to reinforce your point I have some interesting data. Last night I video captured 12 farming runs (video was made for unrelated reason - was testing stuff related to my gameplay techniques). By super coincidence, one of those runs turned out to be an Orek’s Dream with the first two floors being Desolate Sands. When I reviewed the videos, shockingly, I discovered that of my 12 runs, timewise, the Orek’s Dream came 4th from last (as in, 9th spot), behind runs on Westmarch Commons and even cave maps.
Conclusion: at this time, Desolate Sands is unfit to feature in Orek’s Dream.
…And to tie in to your analogy, Horrax, yes, it’s basically an equivalent of what’s happening with T-XVI Shrouded Moors.
I have done like 6 of the desolate sands and they arent really as horrendously as you guys describe it. I have also hated shrouded moors in neph rifts and this isnt that bad. I had like 40- 60% of progress and thats without nems, because there are also a couple of decent pylon spots. It may not be a woods kinda of push map but not thaaat bad as shrouded moors neph rift type.
Well, we should add here that the big layout of Desolate Sands is still a good thing in most cases when we’re stricly talking about GR pushing.
Without a doubt it’s alot easier on big open maps to create density. So there I guess it’s still a good map.
For that reason I think it’s suitable to be included in the Orek’s Dream map pool - even at this state.
When we’re talking about efficient farming (which is speed GRs) the map is not as great as it seems.
Still could be be right it’s not that big of a problem when compared to the shrouded moors rift map. But I prefer to get a tiny fix while it still might be on their radar over the mess we got with shrouded moors rifts.
Again, just posting progress per map is not the whole story. The problem with even getting 60% progress from that map is that it’s so big that getting that progress takes a long time. (Particularly in pushing) It could be great, but they just need to increase density +50%.
Disagree, I tried pushing ns on that map quite a few times. And it’s sooo big and spread out, that if you don’t have a build that can kill elites on the spot (most builds), you end up dragging 1, 2 or 5 all the way across that giant map. Yes there are not many obstacles, which is nice, but the distance is so far, and trash to help you kill them so sparse, for pushing in particular this map sucks IMO.