Developer Q&A - Answers Part 2

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Hilldrake wrote:

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MarkoszHU wrote:

"Have you given serious thought to providing people who don't like Labyrinth-style content options to play the rest of the game without going through the content they do not enjoy? Is there some reason it's not being done? Is there any chance it might happen in the future?"


It SHOULDN'T! No pain, no gain.
Seriously, why people nowadays expect to be rewarded without doing actual work?

The problem is not the fact that you HAVE to work, the problem is that the Work is COMPLETELY boring and REALLY, REAAAAAAAAAAAAALLY time-consuming. You need to do the labyrinth for EVERY character you do, in EVERY League, on THREE DIFFICULTIES (i know this is changing). Right now, Labyrinth farming is cool, and stuff, but you should not gate a mandatory mechanic like ascendancy behind it.

The reward on labyrinth is its Chests at the end of the Lab. Ascendancies should be something apart from it. Maybe they should add a system that when you do the Labyrinth ONCE with a specific character, let's say the Witch for example, every new Witch you make have all the points you got on the previous one. So the player thinks into making 2 Witch Builds, he needs to do the Labyrinth and Uber Labyrinth with the first one, so the second Witch he makes will get the points afterwards. This applies to every class, so if he decides to make a Templar, his second templar will gain the points, but he'll still need to do the lab with his first templar. I know this doesn't solve the problem much, but it REALLY decreases the stress for doing the Labyrinth for every freaking character.

Honestly, I like your idea, but I think it would be more fair if it were specific levels for every two points on the second character. (example: lvl 30 gets 2 points, lvl 55 gets 2 points, and so on.)

Any plans on adding a MTX for character swaping? Like i want to play a Chieftain but with Ranger model, can this be possible?

Nothing about ps4...

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Hilldrake wrote:

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MarkoszHU wrote:

"Have you given serious thought to providing people who don't like Labyrinth-style content options to play the rest of the game without going through the content they do not enjoy? Is there some reason it's not being done? Is there any chance it might happen in the future?"


It SHOULDN'T! No pain, no gain.
Seriously, why people nowadays expect to be rewarded without doing actual work?

The problem is not the fact that you HAVE to work, the problem is that the Work is COMPLETELY boring and REALLY, REAAAAAAAAAAAAALLY time-consuming. You need to do the labyrinth for EVERY character you do, in EVERY League, on THREE DIFFICULTIES (i know this is changing). Right now, Labyrinth farming is cool, and stuff, but you should not gate a mandatory mechanic like ascendancy behind it.

The reward on labyrinth is its Chests at the end of the Lab. Ascendancies should be something apart from it. Maybe they should add a system that when you do the Labyrinth ONCE with a specific character, let's say the Witch for example, every new Witch you make have all the points you got on the previous one. So the player thinks into making 2 Witch Builds, he needs to do the Labyrinth and Uber Labyrinth with the first one, so the second Witch he makes will get the points afterwards. This applies to every class, so if he decides to make a Templar, his second templar will gain the points, but he'll still need to do the lab with his first templar. I know this doesn't solve the problem much, but it REALLY decreases the stress for doing the Labyrinth for every freaking character.

I completely disagree and here is why:

Let's pretend we have removed the "ladder" and "competitiveness" from PoE for this scendario, ok?

So lets say, you wanna reach level 100, and get the best gear you can. Now lets say, there are 2 buttons in the game, that allow this to happen automatically. You press button #1, and bam, you're 100, and you allocate your passives to the desired build you wanna do. Now you press button #2 and bam, you've got all the gear you need, with the all the best possible stats you can get, period. Now what do you do? Go kill Shaper, and drop his flask/sword, and.... sell it? You obviously don't need it, because you're a god, at max level, in BiS gear. So now you have 4-8 exalts from selling the Shaper loots.

Now what? Sit there in town all day and just.... look at your exalts that you're gonna do nothing with? You've completed the game, by defeating the hardest boss, in the hardest content. You're basically done.

If the game worked like this, it would be complete garbage, as would every other game that let's you press a few buttons to "win" instantly.

Labyrinth has extremely high power as rewards for your character(s). It is not boring(to the overwhelming majority) and it is not time consuming at all. By that logic, the game itself is just time consuming, because what are you doing in the Lab? You are leveling/gaining experience, while also getting loot, and killing boss(s), but with an extra twist. The area ends, once you have defeated the final encounter, and rewards you with extreme value, where as the rest of the game, does not. You can't expect them to just openly give you ascendancy points freely. They provide immense power/change to how your character operates. So you must do something challenging/eventful, if you want really good/cool rewards.

If you find it boring, I can understand that to a certain degree. However, it is not difficult at all. If you(and anyone else) really are having trouble in the lab, against traps and Izaro, then you are just unbelievably bad at the game, or have a seriously old computer. The Lab is fantastically easy. The time you spend inside of it(assuming you do it at appropriate level and not 50 or so levels ahead of it) is giving you exp/loot, just like any other area of content.

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Astealoth wrote:

Ascendancy classes should not be tied to the labyrinth. This content is really unfun and uninteresting. Locking core progression in there is asinine at best. I am extremely disappointed that this is not being addressed. I would rather see ascendancy class progress integrated into the core game than new acts or anything else. The current setup with the labyrinth would be like making it so you could only earn XP for a certain range in vaal side areas. Frankly I think even that would be better since that content is comparatively much more interesting.

There is no slippery slope to worry about here, how often do you plan to hide skill tree nodes in horrible side content? Asking GGG to not do that and to rectify the one time it was done in the past is not a slippery slope to fall down, but a mountain of stubbornness you've asked us to climb.

I guess I'm in the minority here, but I really don't mind the lab. With that said, Ascendancy classes are, indeed, powerful, but they are by no means mandatory. I started playing in Talisman (you know, before Ascendancies were introduced) and I don't feel like I have to run the lab for my character to work. Simply put, I recognize the value of the Ascendancy classes and choose to run lab. This game is about choices. A great example of this is reaching The Eternal Laboratory in Act 3. If you want to do end-game content, you don't have to finish Act 3 or even make it to Act 4 Merciless. But I wager almost all player do for the passive skill points. The lab is no different. Just because you can Ascend, doesn't mean you have to.

I understand the lab can be difficult and frustrating if you're running a glass-canon and your survival depends solely on killing enemies two screens away before they even see you. You can't kill traps. And I also get that the layouts, gold doors, and traps do keep most players from running to "the boos" in 20 seconds like they can in most maps. The trade-off to making your character just a little tankier or going just a little slower for a few minutes is an Ascendancy class. If you are unwilling to do the work, why should you get the reward? Just because you can Ascend, doesn't mean you are entitled to.

As for the analogy to only gaining XP for a certain range in Vaal side areas, do you not see the game is all ready very close to this? There comes a point when farming Dried Lake grants you a negligible amount of XP and so one must move on to maps, which are consumable, non-infinite, and based on RNG unless you buy them. If you want to reach the max potential of your Ascendancy class, you only need to run the lab a total of 4 times for what equates to 8 very strong passive skill points. If you want 8 normal skill points once you reach level 90, well, that's a lot more than 4 Shaped Strands.

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LoloTwingo wrote:

Just thinking about something i would like to have for every league i played : have a button to force a league character to go standard (or HC league to standard HC) before the end of the league.
Starting a new character in a league with an empty stash is a challenge and finally fun. But when you reach 70+, you still have "nothing" really good in your stash, and would like to go standard to access your treasury. One could say "trade", but when you play SSF, it will never be an option.

For example i started a tornado shot ranger, having in mind the use of my standard death's opus and cospri's will. Now i'm reaching 70, and i must wait the end of the league, this is not fun anymore. I wish to go standard, finish building the character to 80-90, then eventually start a new one back to the league.

What even. Theres a reason you cant go to standard, there are league specific items that standard will not get until the league is over.

And why the hell did you make a league character if you wanted to use your standard items. You make my brain hurt.

Dear GGG, thanks for the answers as always. You guys rock.

I've tried to like that lab, I honestly have. In Essence league I farmed four key Ubers a few times to learn how to do it. But I just can't grow to like it. It is godawful.

At LEAST put a waypoint somewhere. Or SOMETHING. Give us SOMETHING. How is it that every other content in the game, the instance gets preserved in the event of a crash (at least until you run out of portals). But with the longest single piece of content: one crash you're out.

I find it incomprehensible that you can't see how infuriating the design of this piece of content is. It is the one thing that makes me want to stop playing PoE. It's the one thing that made me do only one character this league, one that functions fine without full ascendancy.

It must be really hard making these design choices. I 100% agree you should not give ascendencies away cheap. Just make it a little less keyboard-smashingly frustrating.


Edit: Update in the interest of transparency: so I did make more characters this league and will run uber lab soon. Maybe many times. Haha. It's not my fault: one time, long ago, I started mapping. And now GGG own my soul. It is known.

ctrl + F for trade

Thanks for your patience.

Trade and gems answers were pretty disappointing. :/

Trade - if not AH, then how about implementing poe.trade into the game?

Gems... ok, cool, if you want gems to be vendor this now, what about quest rewards?

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Astealoth wrote:

Ascendancy classes should not be tied to the labyrinth. This content is really unfun and uninteresting. Locking core progression in there is asinine at best. I am extremely disappointed that this is not being addressed. I would rather see ascendancy class progress integrated into the core game than new acts or anything else. The current setup with the labyrinth would be like making it so you could only earn XP for a certain range in vaal side areas. Frankly I think even that would be better since that content is comparatively much more interesting.

There is no slippery slope to worry about here, how often do you plan to hide skill tree nodes in horrible side content? Asking GGG to not do that and to rectify the one time it was done in the past is not a slippery slope to fall down, but a mountain of stubbornness you've asked us to climb.

I'm with you and share the disappointment. The fact that most of the frustration from lab runs come from the client/server crashes and desyncs, makes it GGG's problem, and the fact that they don't consider doing anything about it, is a slap in the face.