SET FREE THE ASCENDANCY POINTS (or rework the lab) [New ascension methods/lab rework ideas]

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Nicholas_Steel wrote:

So let me get this straight, people are angry because:

1) They hate the Labyrinth and don't really articulate why they hate it.
2) People don't like the Ascendancy Points being tied to completing the Labyrinth, but don't propose an alternative way of earning the points
3) People want the Labyrinth to be redesigned to be like every other zone in the game or to offer the choice of being exactly like any other zone in the entire game: Randomly chosen monsters in random locations with big open areas. This is okay, however I find that if everything in the game is the same (Like everything was before the labyrinth got added) it gets boring pretty fast once you hit maps and level to 80.

I really enjoy the labyrinth content, I just beat the Normal version of it and it was great and the rewards felt awesome.

1. You could say I'm one of those who "hate" the labyrinth. I (and many others) clearly stated why they actually hate it (examples: Gating of AC points, playstyle of lab is Arcade- and not ARPG-style)

2. I quoted my own suggestion I made 2 pages before. So you can see that there ARE suggestions (and if you had read the first post, you would see other suggestions as well)

3. You can create new game experiences without removing the most important features of PoE. The leagues are a pretty good example. Especially the first leagues felt unique and challanging, they were refreshing BUT they didn't change how PoE is meant to be played. Ascendancy on the other side, adds a completely "new" game inside of PoE. An Arcade-Rogue-Like plattformer. Tastes are different and not everyone likes Arcade games or Rogue-Likes and giving this content the really important Ascendancy points is a punch in the face for many who just want to play PoE.
Furthermore: No one minds that they added the labyrinth. Quite the opposite: Additional content is never really bad. The problem is, that it doesn't seem optional because of the Ascendancy points. If players could get the points through finishing an alternative challange and keep the treasures and craft-station in the lab, no one would complain about the lab


Here's my suggestion again:

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My personal idea of how to fix this:

Give every player who joins the labyrinth the choice between 2 ways of defeating the labyrinth. Here is a grafic that shows what I mean



Labyrinth 1 - Arcade Playstyle: This is what the labyrinth is right now. Rooms filled with unavoidable traps and most of the time no monsters (or at least no strong ones) around. In this example, you need to get over the pit-traps, followed by moving sentry drones and so on and on. Why should someone choose this labyrnith? Because there should be treasure boxes all over the place, but behind traps ofc. Those treasure boxes drop ALOT of items, with similiar chances for currency and rare/unique items like when you kill a unique monster. People who are used to the arcade style can get some nice loot here. Also the boxes are needed to balance the drops a player can make in the Labyrinth 2 - Classic Playstyle.

Labyrinth 2 - Classic Playstyle: In this example, the player enters a room full of monsters and some scattered traps. The difference between this layout and the arcade playstyle layout is, that you can completely avoid all traps. You don't have to pass them at all to get to the next room. BUT they are there! They should make it harder for you to fight mobs but the rooms should still provide enough space to move around them (like in the example). In the classic playstyle labyrinth, the player will face many rare/unique monsters and have to fight many at the same time quite often. To balance this, there will be no treasure boxes at all (since rare/unique monsters have good drop chances already). The combination of scattered (but avoidable) traps and many strong mobs make the labyrinth quite hard. Maybe even as hard as the arcade labyrinth, BUT it is much closer to the normal poe experience we learned to love.

I think this would be fair to those who love the current labyrinth and those who don't. I'm not an arcade player and I didn't start with PoE to be forced to play arcade in the end. So I hope GGG considers any of the suggestions made during the course of this thread and gives us a way to get the ascendency points without having to do those ridicoulus trap rooms.

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I don't understand what's wrong with the word "Gating", because it perfectly fits in this case. Take a look at the craftable stuff from the labyrinth. While it IS gated (you have to finish the labyrinth in order to be able to craft), people can still sell that stuff to other players who do not finish the labyrinth. Same goes for Aziris stuff etc. Even if you can't do it yourself, people can still sell you the stuff, giving you access to things that may be important for your build.

The reason why its "wrong" to use that term is as I described it creates a negative vibe in terms of discussion instead of a positive one. I understand other aspects of the game can be considered as "gated" but a lot of those aspects are tradeable and not earnable.

Imagine if you could convert your master's XP into a token which you could trade, you can't but you can trade away some of the benefits like crafting that they provide. Still AC points are about character progression, while a lot of expansions are more about gear progression, which makes it hard to have a discussion, considering this is really the first time they've added an expansion in which no matter what you must do the challenge to benefit from at least some (if not the most important) rewards.

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But wehat about ascendency points? We are not talking about some minor stuff that has little effect on you. In fact, the ascendency nodes are such huge and unique boosts, that some builds are built around them. And since you HAVE to clear the labyrnith YOURSELF, you may never get access to them if you don't like the trap rooms because you are not good at doing arcade puzzles or just dont enjoy them. I think you agree that it's not the playstyle that made PoE successful.

People run the lab or get carried all the time, if this was something that required you to do it more then just 4 times (3 realistically) per character I might agree that its quite annoying or too annoying for those people that dislike the gameplay. However because it only requires 3 (sometimes 4) runs I feel like its no different then leveling thru the rest of the game, except actually doing the lab, with a carry takes substantially longer then likely any 1 act does really in your regular progression in leveling.

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Obviously a developer can't cater everyone, but they should cater their fanbase as much as possible. And if 50% (more or less) really HATE something that was implemented, the developer should seriously think about reworking that stuff or should try to implement alternatives for the player, especially if the content from this stuff is extremely important for character builds. Thats's why I suggested to implement a second kind of labyrinth, which is more focued on actual fighting mobs then solving trap rooms. The traps would still be there and still be very dangerous, but you can at least avoid them. This is not possible in the normal labyrinth.

Again, making up numbers isn't helpful for a discussion. It doesn't matter the % of players that dislike or don't want to do it. Not only that the number of people that just dislike the aspect that they don't get them for free are usually piled up in that % as well, which goes to show you the numbers are skewed. There simply isn't a realistic way to get an actual representation of the players thoughts on this matter, so using it in discussion, like the polls in OP or any other shitty method is just that. Utter shit.

As for your suggestion, again its among the ideas that I can support, if implemented properly. My remarks you quoted were really in regards to OP's approach, not yours. As you can see a page or two back, I took your pictures and I edited it to show it would really need to be a maze instead of just like what your picture shows.

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To say "always try to cater to everyone" is as wrong as saying "NEVER try to cater to everyone". There are situations where it is impossible to cater everyone. But there are also situations, where you CAN cater to everyone (or at beast the big majority). You will never make 100% of the players happy, but in some cases you can make 95%+ happy. If they implement an alternative (classic-playstyle oriented) labyrinth on top of the existing arcade playstyle labyrinth, then I can't imagine that many people would be unhappy about that. Those, who enjoy the traps, can keep enjoying them and all the others take the other route and fight the mobs. In the end, most will be able to get the Ascadency Points and "everyone" will be happy.

You know nothing about GGG's approach if you think changes should be made to apply to everyone. The only changes that qualify as ok that everyone would like are QoL changes, like lockstep, sound improvements, ect. Anything that affects actual gameplay can't by nature appease everyone, so if you try you will fail.

The whole, just implement a different style lab thing and everyone is happy. Yes more people will be happy, except that's dev time focused on something they hadn't planned on. Not only that but its very important to implement it in such a way that the original lab is still the fastest and "best" way to get the points. If it becomes the case where that isn't happening, then we have the exact reversal of this thread, where people that enjoy the more fast paced lab no longer feel rewarded for doing the more "difficult" thing.

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Sorry, but he also lists suggestions like mine that keep the current labyrinth untouched. We (the player who don't like the arcade playstyle) just want to have an alternative way to get the Ascandency points. It doesn't automatically mean that the arcade labyrinth has to be removed...

Except his thread started as basically a shit post that said "we hate the lab", its evolved and I will give him credit for trying to be useful in terms of offering suggestions, but instead of being a more focused thread he wants to throw any "shit" idea (again not referring to yours or anyones in particular) up on the wall as if they all were equally good options. Chris even indicated on the podcast an the fact that ideas that keep AC in the lab are the ones that receive the least hate from lab supporters, so why not focus on something that is most likely going to happen, instead of having a whole bunch of useless ideas listed?

^ tl;dr: Watch out for the "vibe" guys. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO It's gonna get ya.
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah your OP is shit and your ideas are shit.

Thanks for the bump.

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goetzjam wrote:

Not only that but its very important to implement it in such a way that the original lab is still the fastest and "best" way to get the points. If it becomes the case where that isn't happening, then we have the exact reversal of this thread, where people that enjoy the more fast paced lab no longer feel rewarded for doing the more "difficult" thing.

We should be careful when saying things like "X must be faster then Y". There are people who can literally sleep while doing the labyrinth and others (like me) who can't even finish the norm lab because they are terrible at arcade-games. And I bet even if they would implement the classic-style I have suggested (without your maze-like modification), there will still be many lab players who are faster in the trap maps.

There are 2 solutions though to make the classic playstyle take long enough:

1) The rooms are maze-like like you suggested. The player has to take several detours to proceed (like activating levers protected by large groups of enemies behind wall + some traps) and therefore it takes some time to get to the next room

2) The rooms are like I suggested (large + scattered traps + many strong enemies in center) and you need to clear the room in order to get to the next room. This can take time, especially if there are enemies who run around alot. So trap-runners would probably take less time then those who have to clear the rooms all the time.

No matter what, I think this would be fair in regards of the trap-runners.

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goetzjam wrote:

Except his thread started as basically a shit post that said "we hate the lab", its evolved and I will give him credit for trying to be useful in terms of offering suggestions, but instead of being a more focused thread he wants to throw any "shit" idea (again not referring to yours or anyones in particular) up on the wall as if they all were equally good options. Chris even indicated on the podcast an the fact that ideas that keep AC in the lab are the ones that receive the least hate from lab supporters, so why not focus on something that is most likely going to happen, instead of having a whole bunch of useless ideas listed?

True, but the OP changed his attitude in regards of this topic too (at least I think so), so I don't think it helps to point something out which isn't important anymore. We should take the best suggestions we have and discuss how the implementation should happen (like how you edited my pictures to show what you mean by balance). ^^

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Pyrokar wrote:

^ tl;dr: Watch out for the "vibe" guys. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO It's gonna get ya.
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah your OP is shit and your ideas are shit.

Thanks for the bump.

Don't forget about lore! That idea will never work because the lore wouldn't agree with it. You know lore is totally made up stuff that could be easily changed for the cost of some new text and maybe some new voice recordings. Also don't forget that our opinion doesn't count because of some arbitrary rules that some internet troll has spewed.

Guys, this page is filled with 120 pages of flaming and maybe 10 pages of constructive feedback. Flaming will help no one and derail this thread even more, making it less likely that the devs will respond or react to this or care about to read anything here at all.

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Casual_Ascent wrote:

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dickhole_mcghee wrote:

At this point I hope they remove the points from the lab but add hella traps to the rest of the game. Only half of that reason is to drink down the savory tears of that pyrrhic victory, the other is I think it would be neat to add the mechanic of leading monsters/bosses to traps to defeat them.

That would be great for the couple hundred of you remaining. you'd all need to donate way WAY more money to keep GGG paid. :)

Found a strongbox on hot lava floor. Opened it and ran away. Lava decimated monsters. Was awesome.

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Turtledove wrote:

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Casual_Ascent wrote:

Strange. I proposed nearly the same idea earlier in the thread and as a result, was called mentally incompetent by all you lab-lovers.

Anyway, it's good that some of you are at least taking the initiative to evolve past your own noses. Good job. :)

About the trials: They're still goofed, IMO. Use them once in Normal difficulty as a 'tutorial' of sorts for new players, then remove for cruel/merc. They become tedium for the sake of tedium after the first time around.

I got a map trial yesterday. It is horrible shit, as bad as the labyrinth. It was so long, boring, tedious and not fun that I didn't bother finishing it. I seriously doubt that I will ever get the final two ascendancy points. I'm sure that GGG is not getting another dime from me unless they make this horrible game play optional.

Edit: to be clear, I can usually stomach the other trials because they are much shorter. This seemed as long as a full set of traps in the labyrinth. I escaped and quit PoE to get out of it so I'm not sure how long it actually is.

Oh my, yeah, I was gonna say, wait til you guys see an endgame trial.

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Regulator wrote:

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To cater to everyone we do not and never have asked for labyrinth to be removed

The title might seem misleading but after reading the opening post every question will be answered with solid and reasonably supported arguments and analysis. Besides my initial request that is completely removing AC from labyrinth, every single suggestion presented there leaves labyrinth untouched with all the rewards it offers now still there.


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Well there's your problem. The bold is factually far beyond untrue. And that's an actual fact, not a gorilla fact.

The non-bold is a bit rich as well.

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goetzjam wrote:

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Regulator wrote:

What this thread tries to achieve is to allow everyone, every single player to have the chance to optimize/customize their character in the most optimal way and with as many option possible, something that this form of gating prevents in contrast to what GGG usually implemented in the past.

To cater to everyone we do not and never have asked for labyrinth to be removed

The title might seem misleading but after reading the opening post every question will be answered with solid and reasonably supported arguments and analysis. Besides my initial request that is completely removing AC from labyrinth, every single suggestion presented there leaves labyrinth untouched with all the rewards it offers now still there.



On a side note, first time since i can remember that after a league/expansion update that there was no "successfull deployment" or "x update was a success" kind of news in the announcements. They still havent released any data regarding the labyrinth from perandus yet, why is that? Around 30% drop (12k players) in player numbers too in steam charts, guess many left. Labyrinth participation numbers spiked since the release but they drop steadily as the time passes too, not a coincidence. What a failure is that labyrinth and they still refuse to adress it. What can i say.

More options don't always = better. More options creates a scenario where both (or multiple) ones need to be balance in consideration of challenge, considering that your goal is for at least one of the rewards to remain the same its CRUCIAL that this gets addressed properly.

"gates"

Just stop using that term. You want to benefit from getting something that requires you to do something else. Everything in this game requires you to do something to benefit. By using the term "gating" your just saying what is already implied and trying to use a term that people throw around like its a massive negative thing, which it isn't in this context or any context of the game. Using that tone of words actually encourages negative remarks and discussion and will not help you achieve your goal.

"to cater to everyone"

This game was never meant to cater to everyone, if they ever decide to cater to everyone they have ultterly failed as a company and a game and the whole game will be worst because of it. I've already said this, so why you keep repeating this "we care about everyone" shit idk, but its really annoying.

Look at it this way. If various people really enjoy this or that about the game, but it gets changed because some people want it another way then the people that really enjoy those aspects of the game won't enjoy it as much and while you might enjoy it slightly more, it isn't nearly as much as the enjoyment that the people lost in the process.

So its always a net NEGATIVE to make adjustments "to cater to everyone" as soon as you learn this and recognize this you will better understand why its important to NOT cater to everyone.

I've also told you that removing AC from the lab is equivalent to removing the lab basically altogether, because it removes the MOST RELEVANT part of the lab. Even if you can still get the AC points from the lab, if you can get them outside the lab, it has very little rewards on its own to be "worthy" of doing it.


Maybe they didn't want to jinx themselves with the whole "successful deployment" stuff again. Not only that the steam number drop is actually expected considering this is not an expansion update. Furthermore I asked you to try and not bash GGG, yet here you are again bashing GGG calling the lab a failure. Do not mistake your dislike of the lab as an indication that the lab is a failure, its far from that.

They refuse to address it? You mean like making trials not be so annoying for characters, by adding more rewards to the endgame lab, they aren't just going to magically pull shit out of their ass just because you post on the forums QQing about the lab. Its not like they can make a massive change just to "appease" everyone. The sooner you realize this, the sooner you will realize that you shouldn't be expecting any major changes for months in regards to the lab, thats only IF they decide they should, which GGG has made no indication that they will.

So where does this leave you, well it leaves you will a thread full of repeated comments without actually acknowledging any parts of the opposition, you just massively list anything that throws the lab out. Great impartial post by you /s

culling strike

oops srry accidental post

here's some comic relief, something to debate if lab arguments are temporarily too much, from a few months back

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dickhole_mcghee wrote:

oops srry accidental post

here's some comic relief, something to debate if lab arguments are temporarily too much, from a few months back

Not sure why i find this so funny, well done