The labyrinth is both boring and frustrating

Background: I'm pretty casual, 90% solo, and I mostly play for the weird, cool, ridiculous, often underpowered builds you can make thanks to weird combinations of skills and junk. I'm not good at this or any other game. In 2000+ hours I've never made it past level 84 because I get bored playing the same character.

So. The labyrinth is awful. It's both boring and frustrating, which is a damn impressive combination. It's boring because:

1, It's way too long, and every area feels the same since all the traps have the same mechanic: wait, then move.

2, The "puzzles" are incredibly simple, you don't actually have to use your brain at all. Which I actually approve of in theory, because who would want to use their brain while playing an ARPG? But of course, if you don't have to think about them, puzzles are entirely pointless.

3, The bosses, which should be a chance to break up the tedium, don't use any new mechanics or particularly original attacks (and attacks are just copy-pasted from previous bosses). There seems to be something going on with Izaro and stuff that spawns around him to click on, but clicking it didn't seem to have any effect, and it definitely didn't have any feedback on what it was supposed to do, so I just attack the guy.

4, Lots of little corridors, traps that slow you down, etc. Everything is designed to make the experience take more time, not by adding content but by making the existing content slower to get through.

It's frustrating because:

1, On a self-found first character in Perandus league I just ain't gonna have the resources to kill the bosses unless I've been lucky or I'm playing a cookie-cutter OP build. Luckily I found a Tabula, so I do enough damage - but they still have vastly more health and defenses than any bosses in normal difficulty, which is frustrating (if you haven't been lucky and/or want to play something unusual) and boring (because whether kiting or facetanking, it just takes too much time).

2, The lab is very uneven in difficulty. Beyond the fact that the entire labyrinth is much more difficult than any other content before maps/Act 4 Merciless, which makes no sense, the Normal lab bosses feel level 40+ because of their DPS, one-shot potential, and damage mitigation, but if you go through it several times in Normal you're instantly overleveling the trash mobs, and they quickly become a total waste of time. Basically, you run through a mess of worthless trash to get to migrants from a higher difficulty.

3, The traps do too much damage on Normal (and probably Cruel, I dunno, I quit after my third or fourth lab attempt). Scaling by health percentage could make sense, but since the game is supposed to be easier on earlier difficulties (one assumes?) it just feels weird, out of place, and, y'know, frustrating.

4, Navigating the traps with PoE's control scheme just feels awful. I mostly just ran through stuff and chugged pots because it's so awkward trying to figure hitboxes and how to dodge a trap when your controlling the character more or less one click at a time. The controls just do not work for this kind of content.

5, Again, starting from nothing, your defense is gonna suck unless you're lucky. I'm at 1k HP and otherwise fairly crap defense, since I haven't found anything decent and most of my build concept's defense comes from my first two Ascendancy points.

I'll lay out my deaths real quick: first time, I died to Izaro's Blood Rage pet; fine, that's on me. Half hour later, I desynced into some traps. Took a break, came back, died to the burning ground trap because I couldn't see where I was supposed to go thanks to the room being too large. Went to bed, woke up, spent an hour going through the lab again, died to Izaro stage 2 one-shotting me. That's three deaths I couldn't predict (why would I expect a Normal boss to one-shot me?) or control, and that's at least an hour and a half of time wasted.

Back to point 5: I shouldn't get one-shotted on Normal. I'm against it in the first place, being able to die instantly without warning is a bad mechanic, but it's not usually something I have to worry about with a bit of preparation, and when it does happen, I don't usually lose much progress. But because this is my first character this league, I have no way of preparing except vastly overleveling the content and coming back - which makes the lab an even bigger waste of time, since I lose out on XP and useful loot. I should also mention that by this point I'm already six levels above the damn place from running it so many times.

6, It punishes players with poor connections. The labyrinth is impossible if you're having an unreliable ping rate. PoE's always been a game I could play casually without worrying about being punished for living in a rural area with only one (awful) ISP, but thanks to point 7 coming up, it's now totally unplayable if my connection's acting up. Luckily this has only happened twice, the first time was the desync death, the second time I just quit the damn thing rather than desync into traps again.

7, This is the big and obvious one: you have to repeat the lab every time you die. This isn't how the rest of the game works, so it's unintuitive, but worse, it's annoying. I honestly can't remember the last time I got angry at a game - I die constantly in just about any game I play, I'm atrocious at video games, but it's been a decade or more since I had to stop playing a game due to being too pissed off to continue. And that's kinda where I am now - I just don't feel the game's worth playing with this content. Getting bored isn't fun, and getting frustrated is even worse, and that's the entirety of my reaction to Ascendancy so far.

I'll probably check up on patches to see if the issue is dealt with, but considering the last boring content introduced (Broken Masters' awful fetch quests) was never fixed, I think I might actually be done with this game. It's very disappointing for me as I've proselytized the game for years to anyone who would listen, but the labyrinth is entirely lacking in everything that made PoE fun and I'm not gonna play a game that isn't fun. I'd just skip the lab, but the whole reason I play is to try weird new builds, and nearly every Ascendancy class has multiple new build-enabling things to try so I'm missing out on a huge amount of diversity by not wanting to slog through the dull obnoxiousness of the lab.

+1.

Great post. This is pretty similar to my "quit POE" thread except you go in to all the specifics that I equally felt.

Full disclosure - I only made two labyrinth attempts, but that was enough for me to call it quits!

Essentially, they have taken their entire design of the game (get passive points on normal tree, get good gear, get good at fighting enemies, get good combinations of skills and supports) and abandoned ALL of that in preference for %HP traps and lever puzzles. AND this is to say nothing of the tedious, chore trials before the lab!

+1

I tried and tried but every time the server crashed or random D'c, Had to start the long process over. WTF. GGG this is not fun. Plz put waypoints in so not all the progress is lost. I refuse to do it now sober or maybe ever. Way to long of a dungeon .

+1

Most eloquent statement of my feelings I've yet seen.

I have only about 1000 hours in the game, if i had to guess (not really sure because how do you find out?), but PoE has become my favorite game ever. Which makes me sad now because I don't think I'll be able to continue playing.

I tried the lab probably 7 times total yesterday. 2-3 times got knocked out due to server crashes, the rest due to trap deaths. I'm playing CI so the lack of pots and instant regen probably had something to do with it, but I'm not the most coordinated person in the world. I liked that this game was accessible to people with less-than-perfect hand-eye coordination. It's not anymore. Even if they implemented some sort of waypoint, that would be do-able. As it is, all or nothing? I might have to get one of my friends to do the playthroughs for me. But that is a LOT of favors to ask.

The ascendancy classes are too juicy to say they're optional. Also, to continue to play without them is like wearing a badge that says "I suck at this game". Now, i'm not afraid to admit i am not a great player, but damn, I don't want to be constantly reminded of it by not having access to a part of the game that everyone else (who doesn't suck) has access to.

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The_Wuggly_Ump wrote:

1, It's way too long, and every area feels the same since all the traps have the same mechanic: wait, then move.


4, Navigating the traps with PoE's control scheme just feels awful. I mostly just ran through stuff and chugged pots because it's so awkward trying to figure hitboxes and how to dodge a trap when your controlling the character more or less one click at a time. The controls just do not work for this kind of content.


7, This is the big and obvious one: you have to repeat the lab every time you die. This isn't how the rest of the game works, so it's unintuitive, but worse, it's annoying. I honestly can't remember the last time I got angry at a game - I die constantly in just about any game I play, I'm atrocious at video games, but it's been a decade or more since I had to stop playing a game due to being too pissed off to continue. And that's kinda where I am now - I just don't feel the game's worth playing with this content. Getting bored isn't fun, and getting frustrated is even worse, and that's the entirety of my reaction to Ascendancy so far.

I think some good points here. Length feels very long to me, due to (1) total length, (2) lack of waypoints, and (3) time spent waiting on traps to do their thing (at least if you bother to play along and don't just use movement skills/quicksilvers/flasks to completely negate them).

Spot on about navigating the traps. Trying to get my character on the exact right spot to avoid a spike trap and accidentally clicking on a chest that is a good centimeter away from my mouse point on my screen is infuriating. The fire trap issue is even worse, with the huge rooms as you point out. If we had a greater field of view it would work, but we don't. The same goes for the huge fields of spike traps.

And I agree about the deaths and starting over. Personally, I haven't died to anything besides lag or intentionally testing trap damage, but it's a weird departure for the game and I can see how it would frustrate players. I'd much rather see a waypoint like system per attempt, where you just start at each leg rather than completely over.

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krakerman wrote:

I think some good points here. Length feels very long to me, due to (1) total length, (2) lack of waypoints, and (3) time spent waiting on traps to do their thing (at least if you bother to play along and don't just use movement skills/quicksilvers/flasks to completely negate them).

Spot on about navigating the traps. Trying to get my character on the exact right spot to avoid a spike trap and accidentally clicking on a chest that is a good centimeter away from my mouse point on my screen is infuriating. The fire trap issue is even worse, with the huge rooms as you point out. If we had a greater field of view it would work, but we don't. The same goes for the huge fields of spike traps.

And I agree about the deaths and starting over. Personally, I haven't died to anything besides lag or intentionally testing trap damage, but it's a weird departure for the game and I can see how it would frustrate players. I'd much rather see a waypoint like system per attempt, where you just start at each leg rather than completely over.

Not to mention there's no point going into the labyrinth for farming items. As a IIQ/IIR user what's the point of going in there for farming items if I can only get 1 inventory?


Just let us use portals and give us a time limit or something, like Oba's Cursed Trove. GGG could give you greater rewards for finishing it in a certain amount of time too.

As a HC player with a poor connection, I have been happy up until now. I may have lost a couple of characters to lag/dcs but it was worth it since I can't enjoy SC at all.

The labyrinth though has ZERO tolerance for lag unlike everything in the game atm, even Atziri. I don't know how I will be able to complete it.

I agree with a lot of this assessment. I completed once on my marauder and figure id go through the thing again on my witch and i went through the portal assuming id just have the ascendancy points and bam......wasted all that time for nothing. That makes me incredibly angry. The fact you cant go in and out for trading too is ridiculous especially with the introduction of public stash tabs.....Im sorry but this was not well thought out IMO

Nicely stated OP. I come to POE to play an ARPG , not Myst style puzzle games mixed with pseudo platforming elements, traps and levers. The game's control scheme just does not lend itself to this, and the aspect of losing all progress and starting over again makes this a frustrating, tedious chore, the opposite of fun.

Perandus challenge league on the other hand is pretty nice.

I hate the stupid traps period - if I want to play a game with traps I would go play Guild Wars 2 or neverwinter - I play POE solely to kill stuff without having to deal with these lame traps and now they add traps - WTH

I am sad to say I am now hunting for a new game to play