Quitting PoE after years due to Labyrinth System

True, the labyrinth is poorly implemented. It should have been an equivalent to the larger loot droprates of the perandus league without requiring us to do it to have character advancement.
Or it could have been a place with much better experience than loot to be the alternative to the mapping system to get to 100.

Loot is a good motivation to do the labyrinth, skill points are not.
Especially after they nerf every skill so we have to get these 6 annoying points to get back to what we had before.

As it is though, lab is not a lateral progression for anyone. It's bad experience, bad loot and a lot of waiting. Unplayable with ES builds as well.

ggg seriously needs to start considering firing people inside their team who proposed these ideas in the first place, as they're hurting the game.

My problems stem largely from length and Izaro.

First, the Labyrinth is super long. Getting to Izaro only to get pushed into a trap and killed is an extremely frustrating experience, and the reward hardly seems worth the effort.

The second problem is Izaro himself. This has all the same problems that Malachai did: Why make Normal Lab level 33 if you couldn't possibly kill him at that level without being twinked out? Why troll players like that?

Other than that I liked the little extras like the Fonts and Conduits. I didn't like that most of the fight is Voll 2.0 from the slam to the dash.

I don't have a problem with Traps other than how much they seem to hurt ES builds compared to Life builds. The traps apparently do percentage-based damage but take a build with 1000 ES and one with 1000 Life and you'll see a lot more damage loss from the ES build.

A common argument states that this means ES builds need to slow it down and be more careful or that their natural regen makes up for it. But Life builds can get regen as well and because you can heal with flasks you can just run straight through spamming pots.

I like traps. I love the Zelda-esque feel they give when I play, but they need to be slow for everyone, not just a few builds. The point of a trap is to punish the careless and impatient, you shouldn't be able to just skip over them.

I have a feeling a lot of the problems stem from GGG's philosophy around balance. The Labyrinth has the same problem of being overtuned as Malachai did, and GGG told us then that they prefer to make something too hard and nerf it down rather than making it too easy and buff it up.

Frankly, I don't think it matters. People will complain either way to the point that any sort of "marketing" issues you might have from making something harder is completely negated by all the people who leave because they couldn't do it the first time.

Why enhancement shitty grind still in game? It's absurd system that drives ppl to use bots or motivate then to scam other ppl bcs no way to get enhancement by yourself

It's content that 90% of the player base will never run after they get their initial 6 points per character. That's a terrible use of developer resources.

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Picksomecardz wrote:

It's content that 90% of the player base will never run after they get their initial 6 points per character. That's a terrible use of developer resources.

I agree, it's also simply not fun ... I mean it caters to a certain fact paced build style and everyone else is out of luck.

I feel the same way OP, just wish I had done it as quickly as you had.

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dinobin wrote:

I don't care what the white knights will be saying, I'm totally on OP's side.

First, I also don't see how the lab fits to the style of the game, but it's a matter of one's own preferences, I don't care.
The problem is, that the biggest part of the expansion (or to say better, the most anticipated) is locked behind it.

Why is that a problem? Because it doesn't have any checkpoint. And it's too long (and for me, also boring)

To be honest, I HATE all the people who say "if you don't work hard for the points, you shouldn't get them", or "everyone is QQing". No. Not everyone is a nolife geek, some casual players just want to have fun. Some people play the game after a long busy day, the last they want is to work their ass off before the screen (I mean now that it is time-consuming, and that there is no checkpoint is the worst). Also, there are a lot of players, who get DC-s ALL THE TIME. With normal SC content this is not a big problem (although sad), and these people don't give a fuck about HC. But forcing a semi-hardcore mechanic to these people is just a fucked up decision.

Futhermore, don't say it is not optional. Yes, of course, it is optional in the way that you can progress with the storyline without it. Maybe also do some maps. But if you wanna be competitive / do content later, you have to get the ascendency points. And by "do content later", I mean the next patches, which are very likely going to be a lot harder, because the "new standard" will be those with asc.points. So the new points are, or will be calculated into the game difficulty.

I think I'll also stop playing for a while

(PS.: I like the idea a lot from a previous poster, to have Izaro as a hard, no-party boss with asc.point as reward, but without the Lab. The should be then only a good farm/leveling zone.)

Mind explaining to me, why would I read your post? If you do not care what the other side says, do you really expect them to care about stuff you say? If you do not, are you writing just to circle-jerk with other people, who agree with you? Are you trying to create some kind of echo chamber here?

You're not achieving anything here, nor discussing anything, but simply trying to reinforce a feeling, that you are doing everything right, and the game is broken, and when people tell why in might not be the case, you disregard all of it, because it might prove that you were wrong. And nobody likes to be wrong, amarite?

I honestly can not comprehend the mindset of players who quit over labyrinth when they did not quit over desynch until it was fixed. Labyrinth a nice change of pace and you need to run it 3 times per char. What is the big deal?

Also NOX had similar trap labyrinths and it was ARPG too, and I think it was a very good part of that game. For PoE, with the speed mobs move around traps are less meaningful, especially with all the mobility skills at our disposal *cough*lightningwarp*cough* but still a good change with the ascension classes.

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symban wrote:

I honestly can not comprehend the mindset of players who quit over labyrinth when they did not quit over desynch until it was fixed. Labyrinth a nice change of pace and you need to run it 3 times per char. What is the big deal?

Also NOX had similar trap labyrinths and it was ARPG too, and I think it was a very good part of that game. For PoE, with the speed mobs move around traps are less meaningful, especially with all the mobility skills at our disposal *cough*lightningwarp*cough* but still a good change with the ascension classes.

Goddamn, the memories. NOX was such a great game. :v SIGH.
It was the ACTION part that made it so good. It wasn't just the gear you are wearing (but it was helpful). Played some multiplayer, and gotta admit that its PvP was pretty damn good.