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

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When you over level you make every aspect of the Lab trivial.
You have more movement skills, lets say "at a lower cool-down".
You have more defenses, against everything, not just Izaro.
All the thrash mobs at that point may not even be there.
More powerful flasks.
Probably more move speed to begin with.
Depending on the build you may even sit on a trap and don't even care.
Every aspect of the Lab gets trivialized.

a) You get any movement skill before reaching A3. And considering that all you have to do is cast LW before the gauntlet to appear behind it that doesn't even mean much.

b) Well yeah Izaro and mobs, but traps care about almost no defense. The only oddity is basalt flasks occuring shorty after the first lab, but you can easily have 6 endurance charges and in cruel you also have your basalt. And that's it, there is hardly anything that effects Traps behind this, most other notable benefits for running the lab are actually locked behind the Lab like Wicked Ward. And of course you can get higher life reg, but since a lot of the utility flasks are not avaible in the normal lab you likely have a bunch of health flasks, which do the same

c) All those trash mobs don't matter in the first place. The lab is not a map with any difficulty added on top. It is just a regular area with a slightly above average mob density. Those trash mobs matter as much as any other trash mobs in any A3 area... actually they matter less because the mobs encountered in the lab are mostly of a very easy kind.

d) Yeah exactly one more powerful flask, the basalt, which is avaible shortly after the normal lab at lvl40. Beyond that there is no other useful Flask to get.

e) Well this depends, with Nomics you can have 40% increased movespeed, considering that normal is easy enough that you need neither a high life roll nor a high anything on them most players will wear any unique boots that give them speed, I usually use Nomics, yes you take more physical damage with essentially increases almost all damage you take in the lab, but people doing lab runs with Abyssus and that has a higher penalty. Otherwise Wanderlust are easy way. Also I usually have Screaming Eagles on weapon swap, just because they are so cheap and provide such an incredible speed boost. Because I hate leveling I know how to make it less painful and most of it helps with doing the lab early too.

f) Yeah if you have wicked ward that is easily possible. However to get wicked ward you need to do the lab first. Also of course the burning ground is essentially a non-issue for RF builds but then again it does so little damage that you can just run over it regardless and just flask yourself through.

The only reason why people skip it early is Izaro. This is the only reason, if it would just be an endless trap gauntlet that would be fine. But Izaro is tough and in difference to other tough bosses like Daresso or Malachai you can't die your way through. When I skip doing the lab early it is essentially only because I'm not confident that I can do Izaro without issues and I also know that I can basically oneshot him later and safe time overall if I do all 3 labs once I'm ready to do maps.

So reason a) is that Izaro is too hard for people at lvl35 and b) is that it is more efficient to run all 3 labs back to back, because doing Izaro on his level takes a lot more time.

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Of course is build dependent, but to say you need to over level because of Izaro or that he's the only thing that gets trivial when you cheese the Lab is absurd.

I don't say you "need" but that is the reason why people are doing it. Because traps are so easy and it is not that hard to even proof that. I do all the trials as soon as I encounter them. The first ones you actually encounter before you get movement skills and it is hardly an issue. The thing is you normally run around with 4 life flasks and one quicksilver or 3 life flasks one mana and one quicksilver. And with those flasks on a life build, which essentially all builds are at that point traps are incredible easy. The gauntlets are not long enough that you exhaust the quicksilver (in the lab, in trials it could happen) and the life flasks are enough to essentially just run through traps.

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SO: IF YOU CAN RUN MOST OF THE GAME WITH OR WITHOUT THE POWER THE ASC POINTS GIVE YOU, THEN THE GAME IS BALANCED ON THE EASIER SIDE, BECAUSE YOU CAN GET ALL THIS EXTRA POWER LATER AND BE OK.

You can, but then again the power difference between different builds is so huge that this doesn't say much. My Pizza Sticks Inquisitor could likely do almost as fine as a regular templer and still be a lot stronger than many other builds. My old RF-Totem Chieftain would be a total pain to play because totems only last for 4 seconds. When I did my Deaths Harp barrage char I actually noticed the difference because getting free poison vs. not getting free poison and maim makes a huge difference. When my Inquisitor got his crit mult against ignited enemies and crit chance against enemies without stat effects it felt like whatever. The game before maps is so incredible easy that you might will likely do fine even if you skill only stat points (otherwise you couldn't equip items^^).

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Says what changes?

Please by all means actually support this statement, because as far as I know the only "actual" changes to the game to make it more difficult are as follows:

GGG added abilities to "pack leader" type monsters, this happens on some white mobs, but it typically gets put onto rares if possible. This is largely irrelevant though because as we all know it just gives them more "damage", which doesnt matter if you just 1-2 shot them really anyway.

GGG buffed the life and damage of mid level monsters, again this largely doesn't matter because GGG also added "power creep" by increasing the acquisition rate of gear, 6 links, ect.

One could argue that some of the new map mods directly counter some AC classes power, but if it doesnt negatively impact your build a lot of them are just free quantity or packsize.

Well they did increase the damage of some mob skills (very noticable are the goatman fireballs), however the biggest change is the new map bosses. Trash mobs were always laughable and they would have to reduce power a lot to change that. I think going with more meaningful boss fights is a better choice anyway, however they do have to shift damage vs. sturdyness and rewards on some of them. But honestly if you compare Factory or Arcade to the old bosses they are far more intimidating. Of course some only slightly modified enemies are still pushovers, but exspecially some of the new additions are actually dangerous.

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sofocle10000 wrote:

Well I would consider giving GGG a bit more time, until 3.0 hits at least

That's my point of view exactly.

I know this thread has way too many pages to even consider reading back, but from time to time reading the same bullshit from the "everything is ok, GGG is the best company ever, they are the gods of game design and balance" crew, still triggers me.

But once again, the dudes posting before you had reached the "you are using a fake account" line of argument, which makes me explain once again that this is not a fake account, but the one I use to post in the forums... and I'm just too tired for today to keep this shit going...

If they prefer to pretend everything is alright, or don't know better to acknowledge that there's was a time when this game was actually harder and had a slower pace and you needed really good tree interactions, then they'll have the 3.0 they deserve and I'll move on from this game.

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Emphasy wrote:

Well they did increase the damage of some mob skills (very noticable are the goatman fireballs), however the biggest change is the new map bosses. Trash mobs were always laughable and they would have to reduce power a lot to change that. I think going with more meaningful boss fights is a better choice anyway, however they do have to shift damage vs. sturdyness and rewards on some of them. But honestly if you compare Factory or Arcade to the old bosses they are far more intimidating. Of course some only slightly modified enemies are still pushovers, but exspecially some of the new additions are actually dangerous.

Making mobs actually do the appropriate damage they were suppose to idk if I would really say that was adjustment to AC, but rather fixing a problem that was clearly wrong with the game regardless.


The boss fight reworks is nice, but that rework could have went before AC classes and had similar effects....


If I get bored of D3 (which I know I will, new season starts today) I will come back and showcase how "patheticially" easy this game is both with showcasing an unascended "geared" character and an ascendend "non geared" character.

The challenge will be using some gear that people have been able to get for a while, stuff like regular atziri drops or whatever is fine, ideally only stuff that dropped before AC was added.

The other challenge will be playing an ascended character, utilizing random rares and maybe something like tabula or "shitty 6 link base.

Ideally both challenges would showcase how much power people have and when you consider each of these "halves" are put together for everyone, the game is trivial and the drop rates and power level is absurd. People excuse this as ok because there is like 5-6 "hard" bosses in the game......

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The_Reporter wrote:

Of course there's a potential trap survival advantage by overleveling. Anyone saying otherwise is clueless.

Proportionately more life regen can be taken in the form of tree nodes (it's about percentage here - more %regen and less %health nodes), vitality aura can be leveled, end charges. It goes on and on.

Boring.

Yawn.

Way to miss the point.

The only significant advantage that overleveling gives in the lab is Izaro, the rest matters so little it's pointless.

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goetzjam wrote:

So Chris sayeth and we just accepteth?

I mean my point was that they added the power, way before they "tried" to increase the challenge and I dont feel like AC is necessary to do the majority of the game....

Well if the game is supposedly balanced around the ascendancy, the "it is optional" argument looses a lot of strength yes.

Now, considering the power creep that has been happening, apart from maybe 1 or 2% of the content, the game without the point is like 10 times easier than at it's launch, that's another discussion tho imho.

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qwqwqw333_final wrote:

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sofocle10000 wrote:

Well I would consider giving GGG a bit more time, until 3.0 hits at least

That's my point of view exactly.
...
But once again, the dudes posting before you had reached the "you are using a fake account" line of argument, which makes me explain once again that this is not a fake account, but the one I use to post in the forums... and I'm just too tired for today to keep this shit going...
...

This is the silly Internet Troll tactic of attacking the person to belittle their argument rather than addressing the argument.

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qwqwqw333_final wrote:

When you can do Lab and get the points at lvl 33 or 70, then the game balance is fucked, since you can get to the end game with or without the power those points give.

Lab is optional in this sense, but nobody would consider their build finished without the ASC points, even if they over level and come back when the content is trivial, because the real end game content, is tuned to the most hardcore audience.

Which is fine.

The problem is you fucked 80% of the game content balance, because you know you can't make Lab less optional than this, because then a lot more players that do the Lab at the last possible moment just to get the points, would start joining the haters.

So the result is the game balance is fucked and on the easier side.

If ASC points were properly added into the characters progression, then you could really tune the game difficulty up.

The problem is GGG can't sustain their "we love the lab" stand with the "but you don't really need to do it until you are more than over ready because we know you hate that shit", on a real game balance state that's not a joke.

So If you wanna take the "stop making the game so casual" stand, then commit to it and demand mandatory Lab as a requirement to progress to the next difficulty level. So you can actually know what power level you need to tune your game to.

And then let's see how many players are actually ok with having to do the Lab in order to get the ASC points without cheese. Or really want more real difficulty added to the game.

I really liked this post and i had made a similar suggestion some months ago.

What if Lab was an whole act for example, a labyrinth related act. that upon completing it you would be granted the points. making it mandatory to progesses in the next difficulty would from the get go send the true message to everyone, be honest with your community you.. you like it : good , you dont : get the fuck out of here. and most people would have treat it that way too. But GGG masterfully disguised it as "optional" for the masses who eat grass to be happy. Besides the dishonesty and confusion there is a certain kind of broken design and ideas in all this.

Truthfully i would be so glad with a simple manifesto on the labyrinth, how the fuck was it concieved, designed, why that way, what made them force "optional alienating content", why why why.

They have talked about the design of the lab on many of podcast before....

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The_Reporter wrote:

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Regulator wrote:

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qwqwqw333_final wrote:

When you can do Lab and get the points at lvl 33 or 70, then the game balance is fucked, since you can get to the end game with or without the power those points give.

Lab is optional in this sense, but nobody would consider their build finished without the ASC points, even if they over level and come back when the content is trivial, because the real end game content, is tuned to the most hardcore audience.

Which is fine.

The problem is you fucked 80% of the game content balance, because you know you can't make Lab less optional than this, because then a lot more players that do the Lab at the last possible moment just to get the points, would start joining the haters.

So the result is the game balance is fucked and on the easier side.

If ASC points were properly added into the characters progression, then you could really tune the game difficulty up.

The problem is GGG can't sustain their "we love the lab" stand with the "but you don't really need to do it until you are more than over ready because we know you hate that shit", on a real game balance state that's not a joke.

So If you wanna take the "stop making the game so casual" stand, then commit to it and demand mandatory Lab as a requirement to progress to the next difficulty level. So you can actually know what power level you need to tune your game to.

And then let's see how many players are actually ok with having to do the Lab in order to get the ASC points without cheese. Or really want more real difficulty added to the game.

I really liked this post and i had made a similar suggestion some months ago.

What if Lab was an whole act for example, a labyrinth related act. that upon completing it you would be granted the points. making it mandatory to progesses in the next difficulty would from the get go send the true message to everyone, be honest with your community you.. you like it : good , you dont : get the fuck out of here. and most people would have treat it that way too. But GGG masterfully disguised it as "optional" for the masses who eat grass to be happy. Besides the dishonesty and confusion there is a certain kind of broken design and ideas in all this.

Truthfully i would be so glad with a simple manifesto on the labyrinth, how the fuck was it concieved, designed, why that way, what made them force "optional alienating content", why why why.

I like the proposition here.

Do it, GGG or NO BALLS.

I believe that GGG knows that enough people are unhappy with Labyrinth that they need to do something about it. Meaning something along the lines of the OP of this thread. There are two kinds of ways that this could be fixed. What I will term here as an easy fix or a difficult fix. Easy and difficult is referring to the development effort. Labyrinth was the 2.2 release. The earliest release where an easy fix could be done was 2.4. The first likely release that a difficult fix could be done is 3.0. Added to this thought is the knowledge that GGG has to do something about the Ascendancy Point distribution if they eliminate a difficulty level leads me to conclude that we are likely to finally see this fix in 3.0.