The labyrinth is both boring and frustrating

"

Catchafire2000 wrote:

2. Please shorten the lab or make izaro not as difficult.

This is actually part of the crux of it.

While almost all players would fail to have put in the through process to understand it, it's really bad game design to require a player to repeat a lengthy segment, and then have a high-risk part at the END that can send them back to the beginning.

For everyone reading, think on it this way: games with checkpoints? No one's ever liked it when you have a tough encounter, but the last checkpoint requires trudging through a minute of uneventful stuff, be it running along an empty corridor, or tedious-but-not-challenging fighting, or simply repeating unskippable dialog. Critics pan such segments structured like that, and there the players agree!

Unfortunately, the current Labyrinth is VERY much like that. Once you cheese traps by just bringing Lightning Warp on your all-strength melee build, and you're overleveled enough, you just ignore everything until Izaro. Once you add in the search for Argus and some potential key-fetching, you're investing a decent bit of time to get one shot in.

And yet, Izaro is definitely a much more higher-tuned boss than Malachai, in spite of being spec'd as 7 or 2 levels below him. Looking at what we can see about Malachai and Izarop as gleaned through datamining...

• Malachai only has 1498% of the life expected for the baseline of a unique monster of his tier and level, while Izaro has 3400%... And Izaro has 3 fights, but Malachai's is broken up into 6 segments. (two segments interspersed with dealing with Piety, and then 4 in the Heart chamber, separated by each of the hearts) this means that, compared to their level, each segment of Izaro's fights gives him around 4.5 times as much HP to work with.
  
  
• A lot of Izaro's attacks hit multiple times through pseudoshotgunning, and as a result, his damage output is much, MUCH higher.
  
  
• Similarly, Izaro's attack patterns are borrowed from Voll, which means a much higher base scale for attacks.

Also, it's worth noting that most players experience significant and inconsistent framerate drops while fighting Izaro's third form. This combines to make him much harder than Malachai, simply by virtue of depriving the player of decent control.

Rectifying this issue will require major down-tuning of Izaro at all levels. Currently, Merciless Izaro is scaled to assume a level 80+ is facing them, with mutli-exalt gear. This should be ended. Similarly, his health bar needs to be DRAMATICALLY cut down.

That's not to say there shouldn't be a challenge to beating him... But right now, it's more of arbitrary and random whether the game will deem you allowed to get to the altar... Or get booted back out for one reason or other.

"

ACGIFT wrote:

... Once you cheese traps by just bringing Lightning Warp on your all-strength melee build, and you're overleveled enough, you just ignore everything until Izaro...

two very questionable statements

if you have to do that - you have bigger l2p problems than traps and the whole point of the lab is the mere fact that except Izaro your level means little. it is your awareness, skill, environment understanding and ability to not panic that matters.

and you do not need LW on all-str character - this tells me a lot about people that complain about the lab

you are approaching it wrong, doing it wrong and ultimately get the short end of the stick and complain because it is 'unfun and takes ages'. while in fact you kill mobs, get loot and speedrun like everything else in this game - with the added difficulty of traps that punish stupid deeds. and not being able to chicken out.

one legic complain is the fps drop/lag - i do not experience it but i can understand it makes a mechanical fight pretty bad.

"

sidtherat wrote:

two very questionable statements

if you have to do that - you have bigger l2p problems than traps and the whole point of the lab is the mere fact that except Izaro your level means little. it is your awareness, skill, environment understanding and ability to not panic that matters.

and you do not need LW on all-str character - this tells me a lot about people that complain about the lab

you are approaching it wrong, doing it wrong and ultimately get the short end of the stick and complain because it is 'unfun and takes ages'. while in fact you kill mobs, get loot and speedrun like everything else in this game - with the added difficulty of traps that punish stupid deeds. and not being able to chicken out.

one legic complain is the fps drop/lag - i do not experience it but i can understand it makes a mechanical fight pretty bad.

I'm not talking about how I'm personally running through: I'm illustrating just how inconsequential the content is pre-Izaro for a challenge.

Sure, players could "practice, use fine-honed skill to use a clunky point-and-click interface to weave through traps..."

...Or they could just spam movement skills and flasks and get through it with half the time wasted and less stress.

Given that this is a game all about doing things the most efficient and effective way (see: build-making, leveling, gaining EXP, crafting, trading) It's only natural for players to break any damn system that they can find. Whine all you want that players aren't "doing it the way it was meant to be done," but in the terms of the actual game... The "cheese" way is the superior way.

It's like what happened with Merciless Malachai; the players didn't actually "git gud™" at him... They just realized that, like most bosses, with good tactical timing you can just pop your mitigation buffs of choice and nuke down each stage, and pretty much just ignore the fancy footwork he tries to persuade you into. Quicker, less fuss. Why intentionally gimp yourself when it's the same reward?

well.. i do lab speed runs. youll never get good times if you have to flask trough the traps. it is always better to not get hit by them at all - by timing or routing

ofc you skip them, same as you skip the white loot and blue loot and most of the yellow loot. you just have to know what and why to skip. same with traps - what are to be skipped what are to be bruteforced (like lava + ruby) and what are to be navigated (like certain door/switch/spikes combos)

all perfectly doable with poe interface - maybe stop using whirling blades if you find it clunky. WB are a noob trap in the lab as it is a fixed range skill.



and the content is VERY consequential because lots of bad players have serious issues with it. lots of them report times of up to ONE HOUR per run. it is VERY consequential. it separates good from bad amazingly well - despite it being in fact easy, very easy. you just have to know what you are doing and do it well

"

sidtherat wrote:

well.. i do lab speed runs. youll never get good times if you have to flask trough the traps. it is always better to not get hit by them at all - by timing or routing

When did PoE become all about speedruns and not killing shit? You should really stop defending rinth mechanisms, you're doing nothing but making a joke of yourself for even implying that this kind of content is in any level acceptable in a point-and-click based arpg.

I agree with almost every single point in the OP. Some more strongly than others.

My background is similar is well: I'm a casual, solo, self-found player who generally ranges from terrible to mediocre in most games. I play for the interesting and fun combinations of skills and mechanics, not for the challenge (some challenge is fine, but I have little tolerance for frustrating repetition). I very rarely stick with a character beyond T1 maps because the skill and item acquisition rates drop so drastically I feel like the character has stopped progressing and I get bored.

The point I feel most strongly about is the length. It is far too long to not have checkpoints. The Labyrinth is nearly the size of a full act, and those acts have waypoints in practically every zone. Not that I would ask for that many in the Lab, just after the Izaro fights. I really don't care that some people can speedrun it in 10 minutes or less. These same people can and probably do speedrun the rest of the content, waypoints or no. I just want to play the damn game.

The other point I strongly agree with are the Izaro fights. Well, actually I think Izaro himself is mostly fine aside from maybe having to much health. But those arenas man. They do an abysmal job of communicating what's going on in those fights. I've had to ask about different arenas in these forums a couple times now and thankfully a few people have jumped in to answer. But how those people got that knowledge... I have no idea. Certainly not from playing the game.

Regarding the traps, I agree on some points and disagree on others. I do not believe they do too much damage on normal, or any difficulty. A single individual trap feels equally dangerous relative to a leveling character on normal as it does on merciless. They just get more numerous. I do agree that the trap gameplay just isn't fun. I quickly gave up on wresting with POE's controls to truly avoid the traps, instead I'll just chug a flask and put forth just enough effort to not run straight through every single one. With this mentality, my most hated traps are the door traps. Most traps you can run through or around. With these you have no choice other than to stand around like a chump waiting for the damn thing to get out of the way. It may only be a few seconds, but it feels like forever.

The rest of the points in the OP I also agree with, but I don't feel terribly strongly about them.

"

sidtherat wrote:

all perfectly doable with poe interface - maybe stop using whirling blades if you find it clunky. WB are a noob trap in the lab as it is a fixed range skill.

Fun Fact #1: You assume a lot about people who disagree with your opinions.

Fun Fact #2: I've made 6 builds to the engame so far. None of them use Whirling Blades as their movement skill. (Melee all use Leap Slam, magic all use Teleport + Flame Dash, and ranged use Blink Arrow) Given I just named the three pinpoint movement skills...

Fun Fact #3: When you have >100% increased movement speed, often popping a flask and just running through traps (where line of sight is too obstructed to bypass with a jump/teleport skill) is the quickest course of action. A number of the specific trap gauntlets for chests are readily bypassed that way. And since this is often with Surgeon's flasks, I can just attack once into a group of enemies (sparing a tiny fraction of a second to do so) and have all my flask charges back. Seems a lot more efficient than "stop a moment, watch the patterns, pick the right time to go."

+1

I've completed the lab a number of times now but each time I hate it more. I've DCed just before the end of the last fight, I've been one shot by the boss on the last fight and I've gone through to near the end only to die to a trap.

I have tried and tried again because the ascendency passives are so good but now after yet another failed attempt I give up. I am actually starting to hate the game purely because of the labyrinth.

The reason so many people do not pick hard core when they make a character is because they hate this type of gameplay so why force them into it if they want to enjoy the expansion passives?

"

mynameisonlyforthegods wrote:

"

sidtherat wrote:

well.. i do lab speed runs. youll never get good times if you have to flask trough the traps. it is always better to not get hit by them at all - by timing or routing

When did PoE become all about speedruns and not killing shit?

Since CoC, Mjolner, Caustic Arrow, Spark, etc.

"

TreeOfDead wrote:

Since CoC, Mjolner, Caustic Arrow, Spark, etc.

Last I checked, those are all for killing things!