Actually my primary point of comparison was as I stated a couple of times previously - each mini-game in the macro game is the best way to get SOMETHING. Maps are the only way to get a bit of EVERYTHING but it’s not the best at ANYTHING.
Explore - traitstones (and souls if you have Valk)
Arena - souls (without Valk of course)
PvP - gold and glory
Simply put, maps are a “catch all” and that’s why people are complaining about them. In the interest of full disclosure, I still use every single map I get. But it’s starting to become a real grind. Each mini-game needs to have a “niche”. As it stands, maps are a commodity currency with no unique value.
From my own experience, your glory rewards in maps are overstated, at least in terms of time spent vs. glory gathered. And the only way maps is a good way to get gems and glory keys is if you’re not in a guild. I’m in a decent guild and my time is far more efficiently spent giving gold to them to get gems and keys.
If you are looking for glory, you can play fast, trying to accumulate a decent number of the first-level chests, then move on. I don’t do this a ton, but find that about 30 moves can be done in just a couple minutes, getting me 5-20 glory, 2 traitstones, a couple hundred gold and a few souls.
Sometimes, I will play slowly and deliberately, but generally just take the most obvious 5 and 4 matches at the (edit to say) top. If I see none, grab a low value match at the bottom and hope for cascades. I can plow through 5 maps in 15 minutes this way, but I seldom get gems or keys (which I can get plenty of in other ways).
Personally, I’d like to see the payouts for treasure maps changed to, well…you know…TREASURE.
PvP should pay out Glory, period. I think the Gold rewards for PvP are WAY too high. Conversely, opening treasure chests shouldn’t pay out glory at all, IMO.
Make maps the primary ways to get Gold and problem is solved.
On console, treasure hunt is by far the best way to get glory. We get a maximum of 3 glory per PvP win. That’s it. In the same amount of time, I can usually pick up 15 glory (along with some gold and souls) doing a treasure hunt.
Things will change once we get the PvP update, of course.
Yep. We only recently got the change to reduce the turns from 15 to 8, so that has allowed for much better speed-play with maps. I viewed the random traitstones as a nice bonus and not a primary reason for doing them. Explore will be a big improvement for us, as well.
And that’s really my point. When I started playing on console, and even on the lower levels of mobile, maps HAD a primary reason for doing them.
They no longer do, that’s just simple fact. Every other mini-game type has a primary reason to be played (although arena is becoming more and more marginal, IMO) except maps. Simply put, make them better!
I have no idea, but I’ve heard it is potentially a lot more. I understand it is more variable and is affected by team score, with bonuses for revenge and rivalries, I think? You’d have to ask a PC/mobile player, but I think getting 5 to 7 glory wouldn’t be unusual.
The payout for multiple Explore and PVP matches ARE linear though.
1 hour of maps isn’t ever going to yield 2 arcane/celestial trait stones while Explore is giving me about 2 every 30 matches, which is exactly an hour for me. With difficulty and other bonuses factored in, I can bring Valk along and those 30 matches will net me 3000 souls. There’s simply no comparison.
1 hour of PVP is likewise about 30 matches. Take Valkyrie out of the equation and assume that I’m getting ZERO rival/revenge Glory bonuses and I’m looking at potentially 60K gold and AT LEAST 120 glory per hour. Add back in the rival/revenge bonuses and that goes up by double or more in some cases.
I don’t think that is true if you are measuring earnings against time spent, rather than against maps played. Traitstones are given every 15 moves on a totally linear basis, so doing three 30 move maps will get me the same number of traitstones as doing one 90 move map. Since I don’t consider maps a precious resource (as opposed to time), I don’t worry about maximizing my total rewards each time I play, and playing more maps faster, with less time thinking about each move, means more traitstones per play session. The folks that can manage 200+ turns are certainly getting more stones per map than I am, but not more stones per minute.
I’m able to get about 15-30 glory per map within 2-4 minutes so about 225-450 an hour, by trying to keep the match as short as possible, getting as many of the brown chests on screen as possible, of course a few greens will appear from cascades, but definitely avoid red chests…getting 50 souls when you want glory is super frustrating.
As you can see, the problem is that the rewards are spread way too thin. One time you get glory, the next you get souls, and so on. There’s no consistency at all and thus the time spent simply isn’t predictably efficient.
Add in the fact that I could have bought 12 glory keys or 10 gems with my PvP gold in that time and it’s easy to see why it’s just not that lucrative compared to the other game modes.
