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

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gibbousmoon wrote:

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Xavathos wrote:

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The_Reporter wrote:

Things aren't that bleak! After 4 years of debating SSF with forum bullies, it has finally arrived! 4 years of being forum bullied from now, maybe the ascendancies will be separated from the lab! :)

Or maybe you will have finally moved on with your life. Perhaps a hobby. A profession, something to do with the news...

I'm hoping.

Fuck off with the ad hominem attacks already, Xavathos. It's really tiresome, and adds zero to the discussion. I actually knew before I even came into this thread that the latest post would be one of those posts because it had your name on it. That is how consistent you are. Is that really what you want to be famous for on these forums?

@Reporter: What are you talking about? Has there been some major SSF development I'm not aware of?

Hey man, there's sharks in these waters, I'm just trying to fit in. Don't waste your hate on me while the Lab is still there.

Wait, did you really just use the word discussion? Mate, this hasn't been a discussion since page 2. This is a mindless rant thread that should have been locked and removed weeks ago.

All it's good for now is drawing out more hate and dividing the playerbase, well, you four from the rest of us.

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Xavathos wrote:

All it's good for now is drawing out more hate and dividing the playerbase, well, you four from the rest of us.

Let me fix that for you...

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Xavathos wrote:

All it's good for *me* now is drawing out more hate and dividing the playerbase, well, you four from the rest of us.

Oh, btw count me in : "you four" + 1

Have a nice day...

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LanPirot wrote:

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Xavathos wrote:

All it's good for now is drawing out more hate and dividing the playerbase, well, you four from the rest of us.

Let me fix that for you...

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Xavathos wrote:

All it's good for *me* now is drawing out more hate and dividing the playerbase, well, you four from the rest of us.

Oh, btw count me in : "you four" + 1

Have a nice day...

Five now, fantastic. Will do. Have a good one mate. :)

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The_Reporter wrote:

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gibbousmoon wrote:

@Reporter: What are you talking about? Has there been some major SSF development I'm not aware of?

Pretty dang major! By now I know you've checked it out in the announcement sub forum :)

@ Xavathos - Troll on, son. I ain't going anywhere. You telling me to makes it even LESS likely to happen.
Enjoy! <3

@Xavathos: Yes, a "discussion." Discussions are comprised of thoughtful posts. Of which yours are anything but. Yours are just hateful spew. Make a thoughtful post for a change (and DISAGREE with me, that's fine, it's actually a lot more interesting to read a well-constructed disagreement than just a "+1, I agree with you man"), actually contribute to the discussion for a change, and I won't tell you to fuck off.

@Reporter: I have, thanks.

I have mixed feelings about it. I'm afraid it might be a concession to what is already happening, as opposed to directly addressing what might be causing it to happen in the first place. Namely, frustrations with the state of trade and also (indirectly) the Labyrinth's impact on the economy.

And so this conversation is somewhat surprisingly on-topic for this thread. I posted something related in the other thread this morning:

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gibbousmoon wrote:

And then you'll have people who say "the Uberlab is the most rewarding part of the entire game," in a sort of disingenuous utilization of the dual-meaning of the word "rewarding."

Allow me to unpack this a bit more, because deconstructing arguments and finding out exactly why people disagree is always interesting. Now, there are two kinds of rewards: intrinsic and extrinsic.

So let's talk about sex, baby. If you do it because you enjoy it, then you are doing it for its intrinsic reward. If you do it with someone you perhaps don't find attractive, because you really want a baby or you want something else from that person, the reward becomes extrinsic.

When people say, "I find the Lab unrewarding," they are speaking of intrinsic rewards and intrinsic rewards only. So the all-too-common response of, "Your characterization of the Lab as unrewarding is WRONG, because it gives more rewards than anywhere else in the game" makes no sense, because Ascendancy points, powerful enchantments, quality gems, maps, currency, etc. are all extrinsic rewards, which have nothing to do whatsoever with why people find the Lab unrewarding.

GGG also seems to have fallen victim to this logical fallacy, as evidenced by their addition of more extrinsic rewards to the Lab. Now, I don't dispute that some players find the Labyrinth intrinsically rewarding to play. But GGG didn't add the additional goodies for them but rather for the other crowd. That's why many of them looked down their nose at those rewards and labeled them "bribes." And ironically, GGG made the problem (of people finding the Lab unrewarding) even worse, for the following two reasons:

1) Those who find the Labyrinth intrinsically rewarding are already at an economic advantage, because they can happily run it all day and have just as much fun as they do mapping, but with the added bonus of greater economic reward. Making the Labyrinth even more economically rewarding has widened this imbalance and made this group of people even richer. (And also much more entrenched and resistant to any changes to their cash cow, regardless of how much it hurts the game and its community. There is no question in my mind that this has made the issue even more divisive and prone to infighting.)

2) Those who do not find the Labyrinth intrinsically rewarding, but who care about being wealth-competitive, feel even more compelled to spend time engaged in this activity they do not enjoy, since, other than trading/flipping, Lab runs and carries are the most profitable activity in the game, and therefore much harder to ignore than, say, Atziri runs (which all of us seem to agree are a highly optional activity, in every sense of the word "optional"). This, tangentially, also contributes to the "SSF problem," because it further encourages players to disengage from the economy completely, in the same way frustrations with the state of trading have done.

In conclusion, nerfing some of the Labyrinth's rewards--and not just the Ascendancies--will (perhaps counterintuitively) alleviate some of the issues surrounding perceptions of the content as "unrewarding," "a waste of time," or "an activity which feels more like work than play."

Based on this and similar topics, it looks like those against the idea of adding more, optional ways to unlock ascendancy points belong to one of three groups:

* Those who are paid to carry others through the labyrinth. Without ascendancy points, a lot less people would pay them to be carried, so they're against the change.

* Fanboys who think GGG can do no wrong. Ironically, they would applaud if GGG actually added more ways to get ascedancy points (since GGG can do no wrong).

* People who hate the labyrinth but how think that, since they had to go through it, everyone else also has to go through the same thing.

There aren't many reasons other than the above to be against adding more options to the game, without actually removing anything in it.

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The_Reporter wrote:

I agree that there's an ulterior motive behind it. Difficult to say what it is unless GGG wishes to spill the beans.

From the point of view of GGG, it could be something simpler: they know the labyrinth would be empty if it didn't have an exclusive and massive reward, and for some reason they don't want the labyrinth to be empty, so they don't want to give people another way to get the ascedancy points. Why they wouldn't want the labyrinth to be empty could be explained in multiple ways - perhaps the guy who designed the labyrinth thinks GGG would see it as a personal failure of his design if no one ever tried to play in it.

Or maybe GGG wants people to take a long time to get character progression (see the time required to reach level 100), and they see the labyrinth as something that takes some time (since people often die in there), and thus the need to continue to give people a reason to bother with it.

All reasons I can think of go along the lines of something that would maybe be good for GGG, but would certainly be bad for the players.

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Erasculio wrote:

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The_Reporter wrote:

I agree that there's an ulterior motive behind it. Difficult to say what it is unless GGG wishes to spill the beans.

From the point of view of GGG, it could be something simpler: they know the labyrinth would be empty if it didn't have an exclusive and massive reward, and for some reason they don't want the labyrinth to be empty, so they don't want to give people another way to get the ascedancy points. Why they wouldn't want the labyrinth to be empty could be explained in multiple ways - perhaps the guy who designed the labyrinth thinks GGG would see it as a personal failure of his design if no one ever tried to play in it.

Or maybe GGG wants people to take a long time to get character progression (see the time required to reach level 100), and they see the labyrinth as something that takes some time (since people often die in there), and thus the need to continue to give people a reason to bother with it.

All reasons I can think of go along the lines of something that would maybe be good for GGG, but would certainly be bad for the players.

That's a pretty stupid argument. You only get your ascendancy points once, yet the lab is run a lot more than once by those who enjoy it.

Ascendancy points are acquired in a thematically challenging way.

You're not the majority. Quit crying about the lab. A lot of people love it.