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

The sole purpose of this post is to show how things TRULY are, support what some claim to be just arguments instead of the truth. My quotes here are the five paragraphs from the opening post in this thread. Enjoy











Truth has spoken dear exiles. Accept it and see the big picture, or continue on with the delusions.

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Regulator wrote:

The sole purpose of this post is to show how things TRULY are, support what some claim to be just arguments instead of the truth. My quotes here are the five paragraphs from the opening post in this thread. Enjoy

Spoiler

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Regulator wrote:

For starters its the first time in an expansion that GGG gated such content. With "such" i mean immaterial content aka the ascendancy points that feel way too important, personal and flavourful for character customization. After all this is an ARPG game where min-maxing and character creation/optimization matter a ton.

Path of Exile wiki - All the information about every expansion so far, in short, GGG has released 4 expansions so far

Sacrifice of the Vaal - Atziri gated items
Forsaken Masters - Masters gated item customization mechanic (crafts)
The Awakening - added Jewel sockets in the tree FOR EVERYONE, new CORE content, Lockstep
Ascendancy - Lab gated item customization mechanic (enchants), gated items (uniques + treasure chest), gated ASCEDANCY POINTS

Spoiler

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Regulator wrote:

Even though gating is a dick move, its sometimes needed to make something feel more important. What is the problem though here is that GGG decided that the gate is a completely different game inside PoE. A series and combination of 80' arcade games with 90' action-adventure, aka Indiana Jones meet PoE meet Contra. This has the negative effect of alienating many players who feel excluded from this expansion because they do not find that - obviously different - playstyle fun and/or engaging. PoE can have experimental content, thats fine from and for everyone, but gating something so important behind that is a dumb move from the company

Indiana Jones : Spike Trap
2:50:00 - Lava Floor
3:34:00 - Puzzle to progress
3:58:35 - Spike Trap
3:58:50 - Another Trap


Prince of Persian : Guillotine Trap(not currently in PoE)
10:23 - Timed Cranks
15:44 - Timed Cranks + Spike Traps
25:03 - Using Leap Slam to pass over Spike Traps

Go and check in each video the timestamps. The links might not work correctly but the timestamps are ok

Spoiler

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Regulator wrote:

Guess what? there is more. GGG labeled the labyrinth as hard, difficult, skill-based content that will prove to be an alternate end-game. Well they couldnt be more wrong. First of all there is no difficulty issue whatsover, maybe some feel izaro is overtuned for his level but thats easily countered with overleveling or knowing the game mechanics. Second the only skill that someone needs, is to know how to press quicksilver pots or use movement skills. Wait, see pattern of the trap, quicksilver pull lever, and level cleared (just like playing hardcore mario).

Path of Exile: Ascendancy (News Coverage)
You can check every video or article there to see the valitidy of my claims. If you do not have the time to do so, here are some quotes. Take into account how these quotes support also the previous truth.

"The Labyrinth is assembled as if it were a Roguelike game, Wilson said. According to Wilson, each Labyrinth run should take about 45 minutes to an hour"

"Path of Exile's free new Ascendancy expansion looks roguelike-like"

"The Labyrinth leans heavily on the new traps, with complicated patterns that remind me as much of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time"

"The labyrinth is a marathon of horrors, as players will need to set aside an average of 45-60 minutes to complete it. This will be one of the first additions that will introduce roguelike elements to Path of Exile"

Those were the initial estimations, but since you can fucking cheese your way through with quickisilvers, movement speed on gear and movement skills the time has gone down by a lot, to the point where people claim to do lab runs in under five minutes.

Spoiler

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Regulator wrote:

But it gets worse. In a game like PoE where the skill tree and character creation is the main attraction surely people's choices must be (and are) very important. Well... labyrinth and especially traps say FUCK YOUR CHOICES, if x person used 50points on his basic skill tree to get hp and armour while y player used 20 points for hp and armour, regarding traps the person with the less hp has actually an easier time in case he gets hit by a trap. WHAT???? How is that possible you may ask, well its easy, healing pots restore higher percentage to the player with the less flat hp pool. Yeah that happens, and its even worse for certain hybrid or pure ES characters. Ofcourse one's players damage and movement choices are unaffected by the labyrinth. So traps ignore and negate specific mechanics while they allow others to trivilize them.So yeah very well thought and fair system.. not.

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Vipermagi wrote:

Trap Damage is relative to your HP/ES, similar to Righteous Fire. No matter how much HP you have, standing in the middle of a trap like a doofus will get you killed in no time.

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Vipermagi wrote:

Worth noting: most traps seem to deal Damage over Time, dealing more Damage the closer you are to the center of it.

I couldnt find more info on the matter (since you know GGG likes to keep things hidden) but those two quotes from the master Vipermagi are more than enough. Basically since most traps deal percentage damage over time, every skill point on the tree that is spend on armour,evasion,dodge,block, HP, ES, endurance charges is rendered COMPLETELY USELESS. In contrary every movement speed node, damage node, HP regeneration node are not in any way affected.

Spoiler

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Regulator wrote:

Its pretty obvious that the labyrinth is dividing the community and for a lot of right reasons. If we take into account PoE's notorius performance issues the matter gets even worse.

That is not an argument directly for labyrinth but for the game in general, and since it happens that the mechanics of the lab are unforgiving it had to be mentioned. I do not believe anyone has anything to say against it. Recent news announcements and how they try to improve the game's performance is enough of evidence that the game sucks on that department.

Truth has spoken dear exiles. Accept it and see the big picture, or continue on with the delusions.

We mustn't forget that the true audience in the Feedback and Suggestions Forum is GGG, not each other. :-)

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Here's what I suggest:

* Keep AC points in Lab and still prohibit retries
* GGG fixes Lab stability issues
* only two Trials per difficulty, but always two different Trials; Normal Lab only has 2 types of Traps, Cruel only 4 types
* GGG fixes Lab stability issues
* Normal Izaro only has one phase and Lab is 1/3 current length; Cruel Izaro only two phases, Lab 2/3 current length (this also makes Izaro easier in Normal and Cruel)
* GGG fixes Lab stability issues

For you guys that hate Lab, that'd be 66% less Trials and 50% less Labyrinth/Izaro.

You don't fix an un-fun time sink by making it less of a time sink. You fix the fact that it isn't fun. Since Lab can only really be fixed by making it less of what it is intended to be (as your suggestion here implicitly accepts), Lab will probably never be a well loved part of the game.

Can you see a group of ARPG game developers in a meeting saying "Let's gate a core part of character development behind a divisive gaming experience that many players dislike, hate, and/or find boring." and then agreeing to do that?

Me neither.

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EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Here's what I suggest:

* Keep AC points in Lab and still prohibit retries
* GGG fixes Lab stability issues
* only two Trials per difficulty, but always two different Trials; Normal Lab only has 2 types of Traps, Cruel only 4 types
* GGG fixes Lab stability issues
* Normal Izaro only has one phase and Lab is 1/3 current length; Cruel Izaro only two phases, Lab 2/3 current length (this also makes Izaro easier in Normal and Cruel)
* GGG fixes Lab stability issues

For you guys that hate Lab, that'd be 66% less Trials and 50% less Labyrinth/Izaro.

You don't fix an un-fun time sink by making it less of a time sink. You fix the fact that it isn't fun. Since Lab can only really be fixed by making it less of what it is intended to be (as your suggestion here implicitly accepts), Lab will probably never be a well loved part of the game.

Can you see a group of ARPG game developers in a meeting saying "Let's gate a core part of character development behind a divisive gaming experience that many players dislike, hate, and/or find boring." and then agreeing to do that?

Me neither.

I like that those wise words so much, I'm going to quote them again.

"You don't fix an un-fun time sink by making it less of a time sink. You fix the fact that it isn't fun."

Some people find Labyrinth fun the way it is. So it seems to me that the best solution would be to leave Labyrinth as it is, as much as reasonable, and then somehow allow people that don't find the labyrinth fun to get their ascendancy points another way.

I never found act 4 fun, can I have a portal after dominus to skip it entirely ?

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Dawmz wrote:

I never found act 4 fun, can I have a portal after dominus to skip it entirely ?

I assume that this is sarcasm? If so then I argue it falls flat because Act 4 is the same basic game play that is in the rest of the game. The labyrinth is a different style of game play and one cannot expect everyone that likes acts 1 thru 3 to like the game play in labyrinth as well.

Come on, the traps are such a small part of the lab. You have maybe 3 or 4 traps sequences to go through during a lab run, the rest of it is monster slaying and Izaro.
I'm not a huge fan of the lab, I've done it just to get the points on each of my chars, but you're making this a big issue when it's nothing. Just overlevel the damn thing, and it becomes a 15-20 mins run in normal and cruel. Buy the izaro kill from somebody in merc, and call it a day. It's really not that big of a deal.

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EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

You don't fix an un-fun time sink by making it less of a time sink. You fix the fact that it isn't fun.

It is possible to make something more fun by making it shorter, and I really believe that principle applies here.

The Labyrinth has one thing which makes it very different from other content in the game: you cannot leave and return later. As such, content length has a factor it doesn't have in any other area of the game, because length doesn't only determine how much time you'll spend there, but how much of it must be consumed in a single bite, without the ability to portal away.

It also effects death penalty. Labyrinth deaths are as punishing as Standard gets. The further along you are in the Labyrinth, the stronger the penalty becomes.

If all Labyrinth length did was make it less of a time sink, it would indeed be a bad decision. But that wasn't the primary motive. Instead, I wanted players to be eased into the Labyrinth better. I don't think it should be just "Normal Izaro is easier," but "Normal Labyrinth is easier," from number of trap types which can spawn to the amount of time you need to go without a death or a portal.

In its current state, the Labyrinth is a lot of content. I enjoy the content and feel it's the right amount for Merciless, but it's just way too big of a bite for Cruel and especially for Normal. The new player experience isn't good because it's too much too fast. I still want players to get there (notice I barely want changes for Merciless Lab) but to do that the experience should slowly ramp up instead of hitting players with Maximum Strength right out the gate in Normal.

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Dawmz wrote:

Come on, the traps are such a small part of the lab. You have maybe 3 or 4 traps sequences to go through during a lab run, the rest of it is monster slaying and Izaro.
I'm not a huge fan of the lab, I've done it just to get the points on each of my chars, but you're making this a big issue when it's nothing. Just overlevel the damn thing, and it becomes a 15-20 mins run in normal and cruel. Buy the izaro kill from somebody in merc, and call it a day. It's really not that big of a deal.

Come on, this is such a small part of your life. You have sex maybe 3 or 4 times a week. Why don't you have sex with that sheep? It will be over with in just a few minutes? You're just making this a big issue when it's nothing. It's really not that big of a deal.

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NeroNoah wrote:

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mynameisonlyforthegods wrote:

yeah, it's only a minute or two per trial. then whatever time rinth takes. amplified by every difficulty. at this point it'd still be bearable, but here's the problem: that time gets amplified even further by every reroll you want to do. At this point it's no longer about minutes. it's hours we're talking about.

It's the same problem people that have leveled characters too many times have.

So again, the question is, wouldn't make more sense to improve the quality of the whole thing rather than making it easy to skip material?

Should every time something is disliked be abandoned?

Probably no, given that some people can't even stomach spike floors, but it seems like a giant waste. Also, I can only guess why would someone hate the whole thing, most people can't put it into words (although one that tried just came with nonsense).

I "dislike" act 4, as well as quite a few other things in the game. I don't want them to go away though.

Labyrinth is just comparable to if traps and doors locked behind switches were added to Sceptre of God. It'd be nothing but an annoyance with no other reason than to be annoying.

Why do I hate the lab? Oh, let's see...

1. It encourages a playstyle that is completely foreign and unfitting for PoE. It breaks the flow of the game completely.
3. Stability.
4. "Oh I just ran through all these traps on my screen and took no damage. Weird huh."
5. "Oh I just died to traps that aren't even close to hitting me on my screen. Weird huh."
6. Ridiculous boss spike damage. Taking ~6k spikes with full end charges and blablabla up is just traditional PoE. Fucking ridiculous for a place that takes 20+ mins to clear in the first place.