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

Eventually the numbers will convince them the lab is costing them more players than it brings in. This game is a business afterall and money talks and dung beetles walk or something like that.

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Emphasy wrote:

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ShaUrley wrote:

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Fruz wrote:

What matters is the more constant player base.

And post-ascendancy/post-prophecy steam player numbers declined rapidly (from an all time high) to below the base that PoE has maintained throughout most of its history. Whether or not this also happens after AoW launches (probably to another all time high) remains to be seen.

Well I did a funny thing at one time and looked at achievements players got. And some games actually give you an achievement for just creating a character or things like that. Considering some of those achievements I could conclude that half of the players usually only play a game they own for about 10 minutes. And a free to play game, exspecially after an expension, usually has a massiv player income at this time and will be no different (actually worse, some might die to hillock and leave^^).

So even though their marketing might reach more players this naturally means that it will reach players that won't actually play the game. Someone interested in ARPG has likely already stumbled upon PoE, so the players you are reaching now are mostly those that are not generally ARPG fans but still give it a try and PoE is not really a game made for this audience.

But if they would have economic reasons for changing the lab they would have done so. That is usually the one thing that sets things in motion fairly quickly. They might maybe make it more accessible or easier to get all the ascendancies (since it takes some time and at some point the game gets overloaded with stuff you have to do for all your characters). But right now there seems to be no plan for changes. 3.0 very likely brings some changes because the gameflow might change, but that is still some time off.

This is a thoughtful post. But, it's unconvincing.

You're suggesting that shortly after what is easily the most hated and widely panned new content in the game arrives, it just so happens that "real" ARPG lovers have mostly tried POE and it's primarily those who are disposed to be less interested who are showing up. I suppose it's possible. That's not a strong hypothesis, though.

Also, look at POE's verbiage in claiming Lab is well liked. Essentially, "They play it, so they like it." That's not a very strong line of reasoning and there's plenty of anecdotal evidence that many players put up with Lab for the rewards. GGG has a difficult challenge on their hands in figuring out how much Lab is impacting their game because the effects are hard to distinguish from other possible causes. That's probably part of why they're using on an unreliable measure as a basis for claiming that Lab is well liked.

Some who don't like Lab will quit outright. Some will steer clear of Lab, but continue to play. Some will participate in fewer (or no) temp leagues in the future and slow down their rate of new character creation. Some will still participate in temp leagues, but make less alts. All of these choices reduce engagement and it'll be difficult to tell, with reactions this diverse, just how much damage has been done to POE until a fair amount of time has passed.

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EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

Some who don't like Lab will quit outright. Some will steer clear of Lab, but continue to play. Some will participate in fewer (or no) temp leagues in the future and slow down their rate of new character creation. Some will still participate in temp leagues, but make less alts. All of these choices reduce engagement and it'll be difficult to tell, with reactions this diverse, just how much damage has been done to POE until a fair amount of time has passed.

Similarly, in the absence of an explicit statement from GGG, it will take time to tell what their intentions are.

The Uber lab wasn't "doubling down on the lab" as some have suggested; it was, rather, the culmination of a plan which was under development for quite some time. If I were in GGG's shoes, I too would have gone ahead and released that content, regardless of how widely panned the Labyrinth was. They probably figured they should release the content completely and then make judgments based on the reactions, and I agree with that approach.

The next patch will say a lot more about their intentions than the last one.

I still have hopes that they will make the lab more fun (and no, Chris, adding more piñatas does not make unfun content magically become fun) by tweaking its structure and removing the most offensive of the trap gauntlets or creating paths around them, but considering the realities of development resource allocation, I consider it far more likely that they will simply introduce an alternative method of Ascension in order to put out this fire.

And whatever it is, it will likely be in some ways more strict than getting them in the Labyrinth, because if they removed them from the Labyrinth completely then a lot of its lore would stop making sense. So you'll almost certainly still be able to ascend via the Lab, even if an alternative is introduced. And I predict that the Lab will remain the easiest way to Ascend for many builds. That should keep some Lab fans happy, though I imagine the many quite obviously schadenfroh people posting in this thread will be dismayed instead.

But in the long run it seems reasonable to predict that only those who take pleasure watching others suffer will object to that approach.

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EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

This is a thoughtful post. But, it's unconvincing.

You're suggesting that shortly after what is easily the most hated and widely panned new content in the game arrives, it just so happens that "real" ARPG lovers have mostly tried POE and it's primarily those who are disposed to be less interested who are showing up. I suppose it's possible. That's not a strong hypothesis, though.

Also, look at POE's verbiage in claiming Lab is well liked. Essentially, "They play it, so they like it." That's not a very strong line of reasoning and there's plenty of anecdotal evidence that many players put up with Lab for the rewards. GGG has a difficult challenge on their hands in figuring out how much Lab is impacting their game because the effects are hard to distinguish from other possible causes. That's probably part of why they're using on an unreliable measure as a basis for claiming that Lab is well liked.

Some who don't like Lab will quit outright. Some will steer clear of Lab, but continue to play. Some will participate in fewer (or no) temp leagues in the future and slow down their rate of new character creation. Some will still participate in temp leagues, but make less alts. All of these choices reduce engagement and it'll be difficult to tell, with reactions this diverse, just how much damage has been done to POE until a fair amount of time has passed.

The thing that attracted the most players ever on steam is ... Ascendancy.
This is a fact.
More player from unknown background attracted => more player that just try a game but do not stay, plain, simple.

I do not think that GGG said that the lab was "well liked" the lab.
Could you show my where they said that ?

Is Malachai well liked ?
I don't think so.

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gibbousmoon wrote:

But in the long run it seems reasonable to predict that only those who take pleasure watching others suffer will object to that approach.

Please stop with the paranoiac statements.

Nothing paranoid about acknowledging Schadenfreude. Anyone can plainly see that this entire thread is dripping with it, as are most Lab-related threads containing arguments. It says poor things about the community, in my opinion.

And try to look at the entire context of what i say, please. Most of my post was talking about (likely) good news. If those are the only remaining unhappy people after the most likely of solutions comes to pass, then we should all be pleased at the outcome. Yes, that means you too.

No, people are getting tired from couple of posters spamming the forum relentlessy with the same **** over an over.

That makes people much more sensitive to lab complains in general, without a doubt.

I do not think that anybody actually takes pleasure in other's suffering here, it is more likely to me that people would feel relieved to see the couple of people heavily poluting this section of the forum leave, that's all.

A forum is for posting. They don't like the feedback, they are free to go to another forum.

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Pyrokar wrote:

A forum is for posting. They don't like the feedback, they are free to go to another forum.

Or to not read threads that are about labyrinth. As Homer Simpson would say, "Duh"

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Turtledove wrote:

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Pyrokar wrote:

A forum is for posting. They don't like the feedback, they are free to go to another forum.

Or to not read threads that are about labyrinth. As Homer Simpson would say, "Duh"

It is fine if the discussion stays in one thread like this one. Because honestly there are a lot of reasons:

a) Easier to keep track for staff members
b) Doesn't spam the forum that much
c) Honestly it is fairly likely that almost any argument was already traded for and against the lab in that thread

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You're suggesting that shortly after what is easily the most hated and widely panned new content in the game arrives, it just so happens that "real" ARPG lovers have mostly tried POE and it's primarily those who are disposed to be less interested who are showing up. I suppose it's possible. That's not a strong hypothesis, though.

With Ascendancy GGG also launched a huge marketing campaign. And they have gotten better and better at this. This way they reached a lot of people that hadn't PoE on their radar already. They did that again with Prophecy and are trying to do this now with Atlas again. But Ascendancy had likely the biggest campaign around it.

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Eventually the numbers will convince them the lab is costing them more players than it brings in. This game is a business afterall and money talks and dung beetles walk or something like that.

They will if they feel they need to. But then again they have a big issue. Half or even more of the people disliking the lab even openly in the forum are entirely unable to give a clear reason why.

There are reasonable arguments, but those are things not really in GGGs control.

Technical issues are a lot harder, at least for standard players. If you play due to a lag you just die lose a bit of XP and move on, punishing at high levels, but a lot of players never get chars that high. The lab punishs you directly for dying, which can happen due to lag. Hardcore players should be used to this, but for standard players, which are a huge majority this is new. And it is very reasonable to argue that technical issues are the biggest thread to enjoyable lab experience. After I moved and only had my laptop with WLAN I hated the lab, because now with a more stable connection there is hardly an issue.

Traps ignoring defenses. Again something that is a valid argument, however in the long run it makes trap damage more predictable. If they had to consider physical mitigation the traps would likely oneshot some characters and hardly scratch others, that isn't really a good design. All traps aren't that hard to pass without flasks or high regeneration, so it isn't too punishing having a high HP char. And ES now is actually incredible easy, exspecially CI occultist had already a fairly easy time in the lab, now its super easy. Only Lowlife and Hybrids have issues there, but not to the extent that they can't finish the lab, because again there aren't many traps in the lab.

Not being able to trade from inside the lab is another argument. I it exeggerated but almost anyone I pmed for a trade was in lab at this time. Maybe they use it as an excuse, I didn't really check but I often had to wait for them, which on the other hand seems that at least those active enough to engage in trading are running the lab regularly or only when I want to trade with them.

The point is they spent a lot of money and time on a lot of major improvements and the numbers got worse because all these new players tried it and hit the Lab and quit.

They could have done nothing and had the same number of players and had less drop off.

Clearly the Lab is a player killer.

GGG to their credit has not cared about popularity over what they feel is correct gameplay. I complained about the old loot rules in beta (ffa loot) and their position was they felt it was unpopular with many but they felt it was the right approach.

They do change their minds over time. I do not think it will be (like FFA) for many weeks or months. Does not mean we should shut up or that we are wrong.

Or they are going to change it, who really knows.