In Path of Exile, a common way to run sextants nowadays is to prepare the atlas by sextant blocking and running a single map. This approach raises the price of the sextants to a limit where this is the only profitable way to use them, so for other players that can’t afford the investement or want to run different maps it’s almost always better to sell.
Some players think a simple solution might be that the sextant wouldn’t block each others mods anymore, and if two overlapping sextants would have effect on the same map, the charge would be removed from one at random every time the map would be opened.
This way, the sextants could be used by all people without the need of a high initial investment and also by running a variety of different maps vs single map spamming, as some of players prefer. Ultimately this would lead to a more diverse gameplay and additional mechanisms that lots of people don’t use now.
Leaguestones are an example of what sextants could have been. There should be slots on your character that you sextant that effect the next few maps you do. Then tier sextants with mods they can roll. White sextants roll worse mods while red rolls the best mods.
However, some other players think that those maps aren’t better than shaped vault, but there’s a lot more shaped vaults in the market because the people who shape their atlas around vault get a lot of shaped vaults.
Price is a function of both supply and demand. The people who run sextant-blocked shaped vault strategy get a lot of surplus vaults. They also need to sell them because sextants are expensive and they need liquid poe currency to buy them, and one of the most lucrative ways to earn money from mapping is selling maps. So those same people have a lot of incentive to sell maps (in their case, shaped vaults).
Tons of shaped vault runners selling tons of shaped vaults, and boom, you have shaped vault prices the way they are. By contrast, if you aren’t running a shaped atlas, you probably aren’t using sextants and you’re not building a map pool near as fast as the people who are running sextanted maps. Thus, you’re less likely to sell maps because your surplus isn’t as large.
What are your thoughts on this? In Path of Exile, if you don’t want to be left behind, buy poe items on U4GM is always an excellent choice, and they are cheap.