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

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goetzjam wrote:

First either I am wrong or I am not. No one kills merciless malachai because its optional content, that was left that way on purpose. It offer an alternative to mapping for those first few levels, in addition of he was somehow required to be killed, other then the challenges (which he almost always is) then he would need to be made easier, because he simply wasn't adjusted like the normal and cruel versions that were adjusted because the plebs QQ'd about how hard he was.

The only reason why people kill dominus is because you need to kill him to get access to act 4 (for the additional skill point) and dried lake. If dried lake was an act 3 zone and if you got the skill point from act 4 in act 3 or it didn't exsits at all progressing to act 4 merciless would really not benefit you at all. GGG left act 4 merciless completely optional.

You don't get shit for killing koam+durr except what some shitty map or jewel? I guess div cards can drop in those zones, but because they don't have increased quantity like the map level zones of the area could its mainly pointless to farm those zones for cards (except dried lake)

Simply put act bosses don't give any other rewards then progressing to the next act\difficulty, seeing as there is nothing after merciless malachai to get to its obvious that people don't go out of their way to kill him and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, its indended.

And other act bosses like Brutus or Piety give you a reward. So GGG is inconsequent in this. Either provide rewards for all act bosses or none at all. My point is, that it wouldn't be out of question to implement a reward like AC points for killing Malachai, since there are bosses that provide rewards.

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goetzjam wrote:

You don't need to spend 45 min to do the lab, if you do that you are either an uninformed and\or inexperience player that is unwilling to put forth actual effort into completing it. Its fine to hate traps, if you aren't willing to figure out how to complete the challenge without death, then obviously you shouldn't be rewarded with additional power, its called ascendancy for a reason, not just give you the fucking power for free because you are too bad of a player to complete a challenge.

Ok, so I dont have to spent 45 minutes to finish the lab, but I need to spent at least so much time to learn about the lab and it's mechanics and this knowledge still doesnt guarantees me that I wont get desyncs or lags that kill me while passing traps or that I do have to do the boring content in the first place. And if I manage to log out fast enough because of a desync, then I have to do the lab again (happened to me at least twice). Many (like me) just dont have a good stable internet connection and it sucks to do the lab over and over again just because you can't tp back in or die because you had a desync.

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goetzjam wrote:

The not tp\in out removes some cheese mechanics from it and it actually is balanced with that in mind, many many people complete the challenge without the need to tp out, if you feel you need to tp out you need to improve your build. Disconnects shouldn't happen that often, if it does figure out something on your end, we haven't had massive disconnect issues on the server side since like perandus.

"even more deadly", God forbid something in this game be deadly that isn't a 1 shot.

Always a good idea to create content that requires you to spent 30-45 minutes and do it again if you have a bad internet connection... In maps you can at least tp out and have 5 portals left. Like I said, not everyone lives in a city with perfect internet connection or close to the PoE servers.

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goetzjam wrote:

Not all content has to align with traditional ARPG mechanics. Like stated multiple times already in this thread, PoE isn't even the first ARPG game to include trap mechanics into the game. Massive adds in boss fights just allow leech\flash cheese instead of allowing the fight to be challenging.

The one shot mechanics of izzaro are actually perfect. Its risk\reward, learning how and when to debuff him or make a build around farming him at his peak is part of what makes the content so great. Lets not pretend like izzaro is the only boss that can and will 1 shot you.

aRPGs can have traps, but show me a game that constantly lets you face rooms filled with traps you can't avoid (you have to pass them in order to proceed). I can't think of one. Especially uber lab is completely out of the aRPG genre and is far away from the classic gameplay people love in PoE.

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goetzjam wrote:

Its only their responsibility to fix it if they view it as a large enough problem, which nothing indicates that they do. If anything the podcast statement he made made it seem like at the time they are perfectly fine with leaving the lab as is.

If the majority of the vocal community is against content, you can guess that this also applies to a large part of the non-vocal community. That's how polls usually work: You ask 1000-10000 peoples opinion and then generalize the outcome to the population. And the lab is probably the most controversial discussed content ever. Chris statement is, that people play the labyrinth and that is a sign for him that people like the content. The problem is, that people only play it because of the AC points and not because people like the lab itself. They should remove the AC points for 1 week from lab and THEN they could make a statement about people loving the lab or not. My guess is that the lab play rate will drop at least by 80%, lol.

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goetzjam wrote:

There are lab and uber lab only unique items and the uber lab is 100% worth running, the merciless lab is the one suffering by having a better version without really anything of its own to make it worthwhile.

Adding content that is required in order to get character progression or additional power is perfectly fine, especially when the content can be rushed, like the lab. You do have to navigate thru traps, but the most challenging part of the lab you can have someone help you with, similar to getting rushes from bosses, that was done quite a lot in the past, when the game was more difficult.

Why is that perfectly fine? It was never necessary and PoE. You had your passive skill tree and items. Items could always be aquired through buying and passive nodes came with leveling or side-quests. Why the hell starting to gate stuff for character progression now? People want to try out stuff and now I have to do the lab 4 times with every character I create now. And dont tell me it's optional, because it's certainly not. Future patches will be balanced with Ascendency classes in mind and therefore players are kinda forced to get the AC points... And many existing builds also heavily depend on the AC classes, so it's even more out of question to call the points optional.

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goetzjam wrote:

He has no purpose, on purpose though. GGG doesn't do actions based on more profit or whatever dumb excuse you want to use. They make a game and design it keeping mind that not everyone will like what they are doing.

No one is asking for an easy way, yet 4\8 of the points would be with the malachai suggestion 100% something you have to do anyway. Like the statement here just proves how wrong you are.

And what's wrong about getting 4 points just by playing the game? It already takes long enough to do all 4 acts + all 3 difficulties for most players and with the lab you also need to do these. The workload just increases and increases and the game becomes more repetitive and boring that way. Most players just want to get their character as high as possible as fast as possible and the gating of character progression content does not help with this, especially if many people find the lab just plain boring.

And lets not forget that you would only get 50% of the AC points that way "for free". You still had to kill merc malachai (which certainly is not easy) and maybe even a buffed malachai version in a uber-map to get the 7th and 8th AC point.

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goetzjam wrote:

Boss rushes have been a thing since D2 or the beginning of time. Not only are you now asking GGG to put points behind that you are asking them to go against a purposely designed feature in boss rushes.

How is that a "feature"? And even if that is a "feature", how would rewards for killing bosses destroy that feature? You still can do the boss rushes, even if their is a reward...

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goetzjam wrote:

Thats why even the simplest solutions are far more work then necessary. All of you guys acting like the lab is this big detrimental time sink or something that is terrible annoying is funny as hell, many players have easily spent more time shitposting about the lab and complaining then they every would have to actually spending it in the lab getting the points. Great logic there.

You dont get any point at all. It's not just about the lab. If we (the ones that dont like the lab) are not vocal now, how do you think will future content look like? Even more traps, maybe even puzzles... Why not add a PoE card game or a jump'n run dungeon? We are vocal because we dont like this change of gameplay, especially if it ignores large parts of your character build entirely. It's like agreeing to the pre-leveled lvl 60 characters. If we allow this to happen, more of this will happen in the future. THat's why many people raise their concerns about lab and would like to see that GGG at least tries to think about the people who love the classic way and dont want something else, especially not if it stops or limits the character progression.

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goetzjam wrote:

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Funny thing you say this, because you get 2 passive skill points for killing piety in act 3 (but nothing for Dominus, who is even worse then Piety, LOL). It just doesnt make sense that you get rewards for the minibosses (brutus, piety) but nothing for the main bosses.

The reward to killing the bosses is progression to the next act\difficulty, it really isn't that difficult to understand.

Oh, what a great reweard. I can literally see the "heros" face when he gets back to the village and the village leader talks to him "Well done, young one. We gave you lots of stuff killing small critters. Now you have killed the biggest of all threats and as a thank you, we allow you to proceed to the next area, filled with tons of problems and even more dangerous beings... What? You want something for killing the strongest foe you have ever faced yet? Nah, that's not possible, sorry mate"... So yes, lore-wise it would make more sense to get a reward.

I think he is triggered because i keep calling it mario and tries to trigger us in return with empty hypocritical argumentation.

Anyway this is the most important info in the most recent discussion:

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And other act bosses like Brutus or Piety give you a reward. So GGG is inconsequent in this. Either provide rewards for all act bosses or none at all. My point is, that it wouldn't be out of question to implement a reward like AC points for killing Malachai, since there are bosses that provide rewards.

Brutus\piety are not act bosses, they are mini bosses within the act, act bosses are the final bosses of the act, which are mervil, vaal, dominus and malachai, killing any of these bosses only gives you access to the next act\difficulty. If one of these would give rewards, but not the others, there would be inconsistencies, but seeing as these act bosses do not give rewards (other then the progression itself) it is consistent.

The mini bosses, brutus, the general, act 3 piety, ect all come with a reward for killing them, some of these bosses are optional to progress as well.

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Ok, so I dont have to spent 45 minutes to finish the lab, but I need to spent at least so much time to learn about the lab and it's mechanics and this knowledge still doesnt guarantees me that I wont get desyncs or lags that kill me while passing traps or that I do have to do the boring content in the first place. And if I manage to log out fast enough because of a desync, then I have to do the lab again (happened to me at least twice). Many (like me) just dont have a good stable internet connection and it sucks to do the lab over and over again just because you can't tp back in or die because you had a desync.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist in order to learn how the mechanics of the traps and the lab work. Not only that if you don't plan on farming it, getting someone to rush you for a mere chaos or few should save you enough overall time to have farmed that in the time it would have took to just do it yourself. People specifically build for the challenge and will excel at it, similar to as why you would use a boss rushing service in any other aspect of the game.

Secondly, GGG no longer has to balance or design the game around connection issues or desync as you say. GGG gives everyone the ability to use the connection method they want, if you have issues still find another ISP or try and get a closer gateway server to your location. What is your ping to the closest GGG gateway currently?

The only lag that I really notice in the lab is the outside zone that contains a lot of darts, everytime I come across that zone and load in I wait another 20-30 seconds before moving and don't experience lag. They need to address this issue.

As for "lag"\desync or any other excuse you want to use regarding connection, you are responsible for the connection to the internet. If your ISP drops out, its not a GGG problem. Lets say we take your instance and apply it to really any other aspect of the game, what happens if you lag or desync on a pack of bearers or into a volatile blood or dominus smash, those are acceptable pieces of content for most of the community and the same issue can occur there. Prime example of someone trying to say or imply this sort of thing could only happen in the lab, when clearly it can happen anywhere in the game.

Again its an Online ARPG game, if your internet connection sucks, well that sucks to be you, GGG cannot design content for an ONLINE ONLY game to be for people that have shitty connections, its 2016.

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Always a good idea to create content that requires you to spent 30-45 minutes and do it again if you have a bad internet connection... In maps you can at least tp out and have 5 portals left. Like I said, not everyone lives in a city with perfect internet connection or close to the PoE servers.

It doesn't take that much time to do it again, it should never take that long to do the lab, if you have issues every 30 min or whatever, then you need to adapt what you do to the situation you are in and in this case just pay for a lab rush.

The content of the lab was designed to be completed all at once, it isn't logical for them to have designed the content just for you to have someone TP you in at the boss room and farm the enchants with alt characters or as a guild without work. There is always a reason why something was done in a certain way. Of course there are consequences like someone that has internet issues not being able to complete the lab and needing to restart of you do have issues.

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aRPGs can have traps, but show me a game that constantly lets you face rooms filled with traps you can't avoid (you have to pass them in order to proceed). I can't think of one. Especially uber lab is completely out of the aRPG genre and is far away from the classic gameplay people love in PoE.

You can 100% avoid every single trap in the lab. Whether you use movement skills, blink arrow, WB, phase run or what have you every single set of traps has patterns and timings to avoid damage.

If you mean avoid them completely as in not having to see them at all, well that just doesn't fit the design of the lab.

The uber lab actually is likely the least hated lab out of all, it is rewarding and challenging, about the most hate from this came with people having issues finding the trials in maps (and completing them) or getting 1 shot by a buffed boss.

You say it takes away or is far away from the classic gameplay, which is why its largely optional, at least the last 2 points are. Not saying I would ever make a character without the points, but you can get your character to a point where you can just knock out all the labs altogether in a rush and spend as little time as possible if its a piece of content you don't like. Again the first 3 labs shouldn't take a total of 45 min together, the last one will take time because you can't get really rushed in trials and you must complete those all once.

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If the majority of the vocal community is against content, you can guess that this also applies to a large part of the non-vocal community. That's how polls usually work: You ask 1000-10000 peoples opinion and then generalize the outcome to the population. And the lab is probably the most controversial discussed content ever. Chris statement is, that people play the labyrinth and that is a sign for him that people like the content. The problem is, that people only play it because of the AC points and not because people like the lab itself. They should remove the AC points for 1 week from lab and THEN they could make a statement about people loving the lab or not. My guess is that the lab play rate will drop at least by 80%, lol.

You cant somehow speak for other people, there is a handful of players that extremely dislike the lab and stop at nothing to bring it down, there are some that don't like it for various reasons, but my guess is a good amount (of whoever doesn't like it) don't like it because:

a) they don't understand the mechanics or how to navigate the lab
b) they just want the additional power without doing anything extra

The lab isn't the most controversial discussed content, even if it was it still wouldn't matter. The lab is a fine piece of content and somehow making it less important and changing the design of this piece of content isn't good for the game. Even if 10% or whatever like the idea of it being changed.

If they change the lab, then future people will do nothing but constantly bitch until stuff gets watered down into a compromised pile of shit. It sets the worst possible precedent.

Just because everyone might not love the lab for what it is doesn't mean its reward should just be transferred somewhere else, he stated its good to have content in the game you don't necessarily enjoy, but want to do because of the reward. The lab is a perfect example of that.

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Why is that perfectly fine? It was never necessary and PoE. You had your passive skill tree and items. Items could always be aquired through buying and passive nodes came with leveling or side-quests. Why the hell starting to gate stuff for character progression now? People want to try out stuff and now I have to do the lab 4 times with every character I create now. And dont tell me it's optional, because it's certainly not. Future patches will be balanced with Ascendency classes in mind and therefore players are kinda forced to get the AC points... And many existing builds also heavily depend on the AC classes, so it's even more out of question to call the points optional.

GGG barely touched the surface on balancing for ascendancy trees, despite saying they did so in this patch. My guess is the next one, which is endgame focused will add more challenge and really put that extra power we get to the test.

Why was adding jewels to the passive tree fine for the game, that gates power thru wealth? Personally I rather power be gated thru completing challenges then by how much money you can put together.

The total time it takes to ascend characters, especially the 2nd and beyond in a league can be less then an hour, you can't possibly begin to tell my that spending an hour on increasing the power of your character isn't acceptable. You simply cannot say this with a strait face.

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And what's wrong about getting 4 points just by playing the game? It already takes long enough to do all 4 acts + all 3 difficulties for most players and with the lab you also need to do these. The workload just increases and increases and the game becomes more repetitive and boring that way. Most players just want to get their character as high as possible as fast as possible and the gating of character progression content does not help with this, especially if many people find the lab just plain boring.

And lets not forget that you would only get 50% of the AC points that way "for free". You still had to kill merc malachai (which certainly is not easy) and maybe even a buffed malachai version in a uber-map to get the 7th and 8th AC point.

Because adding additional power, especially ones that you get from AC points should be rewards for actually doing different content, not just slapping it on something you already do and saying enjoy this new content we added, Kappa.

"it already takes long enough to level and blah blah blah", well focus more in playing a couple of good characters instead of leveling a bunch of alts, if you had the time before to level a bunch of characters, the additional hour it takes to get all your AC points shouldn't be that big of a deal.

If its boring, even more reason for you to find out ways to spend less time doing it instead of stating it takes 45 fucking min to do 1 run and you still somehow fucking fail it.

50% are 100% free, the last will likely always have someone sitting in act 4 town doing boss kills for 1-5c to get you the additional points, which makes basically 75% of the points for free. That isn't a good solution.

Anything that removes or offers AC points outside the lab is an utter failure in recognizing the purpose of the lab at all.

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You dont get any point at all. It's not just about the lab. If we (the ones that dont like the lab) are not vocal now, how do you think will future content look like? Even more traps, maybe even puzzles... Why not add a PoE card game or a jump'n run dungeon? We are vocal because we dont like this change of gameplay, especially if it ignores large parts of your character build entirely. It's like agreeing to the pre-leveled lvl 60 characters. If we allow this to happen, more of this will happen in the future. THat's why many people raise their concerns about lab and would like to see that GGG at least tries to think about the people who love the classic way and dont want something else, especially not if it stops or limits the character progression.

So GGG can take the lessons they learned about content like this and simply not add anything that could be so controversial, you guys are going to the extreme saying that GGG will do future stuff that you don't like without even giving them a chance.


But just because this content was implemented into the game (in a good way from my perspective) doesn't mean they will go the further extremes, especially given the feedback they have received about this one. That also doens't mean that this needs changed at all either, as doing so is a huge waste in resources and any small deviation from smashing your face on the keyboard content would just get massive QQ from players unwilling to learn the content.

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Casual_Ascent wrote:

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goetzjam wrote:

You don't need to spend 45 min to do the lab, if you do that you are either an uninformed and\or inexperience player that is unwilling to put forth actual effort into completing it. Its fine to hate traps, if you aren't willing to figure out how to complete the challenge without death, then obviously you shouldn't be rewarded with additional power, its called ascendancy for a reason, not just give you the fucking power for free because you are too bad of a player to complete a challenge.

This has always been the one I like most out of you guys.

If I don't want to spend 45 minutes of my life doing something that I find not difficult at all, but absolutely nauseating, CLEARLY the solution is to spend many HOURS learning how to do that nauseating activity more efficiently so that I can do that eventually that nauseating activity will take 20 minutes instead of 45 minutes.

Common sense doesn't allow me to want to do such a thing. I'd rather mow the lawn during a snow storm than hold my vomit back whilst learning the Lab.

lol@Pyrokar

Many hours LOL


I guess whenever GGG adds new endgame content in the next patch you will avoid that, because if I had to guess it will take time to learn and we know thats something that you are unwilling to do.

If you dont want to learn, pay the price to get someone to carry your ass.

I Just hope such crusaders like him from this bully brigade are getting payed from GGG , otherwise i feel sorry for them to spend so much hours each day crusading on indefensible point each day spending hours posting wall of text with tons of hidden insults for people for complain about their absolute perfect game with absolute zero issues while tech/FB section are clealy empty.

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If you dont want to learn, pay the price to get someone to carry your ass.

"did nothing special in this game but berserk with people he disagrees with because he konw everything"

And people still ask why this forum is getting ignored by a large amount of the community :D

Why haven't they removed the lab yet?