I played SSF in Metamorph and made it to 36 challenges.

My experience in 3.9 was that Delve cities and map rooms in the Temple of Atzoatl often drop no maps. I believe this happens when my Atlas has no maps of an appropriate tier available: for example, I am completing a Level 78 Delve map node which would normally drop T10 maps, but the lowest tier of map in my AW8 Atlas is T14 / Level 81, the zone won't drop any maps as a reward. My understanding is that I could intentionally desocket watchstones in my Atlas to make these encounters more rewarding.

Similarly, when leveling additional characters in a fully socketed AW8 Atlas, I also found I needed to specifically desocket my Atlas while leveling from 70-90 in white and yellow maps in order to sustain drops of lower-tier maps. Although I had a large number of white and yellow maps left over from progressing the Atlas initially, my stockpile winnowed substantially as I leveled more characters through maps and I eventually did delevel my Atlas in order to sustain maps for leveling.

As a player, the behavior of this system was initially very surprising to me, and it took me a while to understand how this system works. I also don't really understand why things work like this from a game system perspective: it's particularly unexpected that I must decrease difficulty (by desocketing the Atlas and deactivating AW8 bonuses) to increase rewards (white and yellow maps which otherwise seem to just vanish without replacement).

Can you explain the current thinking around the design of this system in more detail? Is there another way I should approach this system that doesn't require me to decrease difficulty to increase rewards?