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

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goetzjam wrote:

Spoiler

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gibbousmoon wrote:

I posted an open letter to Chris Wilson last year that you can look at if you are curious. If you don't want to wade through the wall of text skip down to reason #2. Even a year later I still feel that it is perhaps the most significant problem, and FAR worse than traps, because of the way it synergizes with other qualities of the Labyrinth and becomes ever more unpleasant:

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1664975

On most days I would agree the reward is almost completely back loaded, but what is wrong with designing content around that? Just that people feel less rewarded during the run, until they reach the end and achieve the high? I know of a specific streamer that absolutely hates the lab, last time I asked him it was #2 on his list of things to change and he still farmed the lab. Even OP does the lab last time I remembered, so you can complain all you want, but unless you are unwilling to do it at all you kinda don't have a leg to stand on.

I mean if your doing it for the first time on that character you get so many great things in merciless or uber, or well you can.


You get your AC points, you get an enchantment and however many keys you got from making the boss harder or not.

Thats a lot of rewards.

The lab has specific uniques, one of which has grown in popularity quite a bit (the staff) and the uber lab of course has the boots that people seem to like as well.


In terms of addressing the incentive to do the side areas, part of this has to do with information or knowledge sharing. On days that there is a unique locker, people will go out of their way to do it. Its also solved in part by rewarding an additional key to argus kills. In all other circumstances the RNG is just too unfavorable to the rush to the end part.


I guess lets put it this way, if maps had 80% or more of the rewards tied to doing the boss, would you be sure you killed or explored everything or just the boss?




In regards to the game having connection\performance issues, some people have issues for sure and that has got to be frustrating when it occurs. Theres a couple of things a player can do, one is don't spam click doors when advancing areas, I don't know why this bug happens, but if you do in some cases you get kicked and lose the run. Another thing you can do if you are known to have issues is well you know progress quickly, so the chances you run into a connection issue is less.

GGG has no control over your connection to their servers or even really your machine. After they've addressed a number of the issues with crashes in the lab I can say I don't remember the last time I had an issue trying to do the lab.

It's funny, I'm reading your post, and agreeing with almost all of it. And even though I suppose you intended it as a retort of sorts, I find that the content of your post just strengthens what I already said.

The most significant being

1. The lab is popular because of its extrinsic rewards and unpopular for its (relative lack of) intrinsic rewards, and

2. The lab incentivizes getting through it as fast as possible, and not lingering and enjoying it any longer than you have to.

These are the two most salient points addressed by your post, so I can only assume you not only agree with them but consider them important. And I maintain that they are significant weaknesses which are largely responsible for the amount of negative comments against the Labyrinth.

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raics wrote:

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gibbousmoon wrote:

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raics wrote:

I know it doesn't seem very intuitive but don't you think people have tried doing it differently?

Yes, I do! And successfully, at that. GGG, for example, in this one game they once created. I think it was called Path of Exile.

Well, GGG essentially does the same thing as every other online game, it gives us trivial things to burn our time on, it does so every expansion and every new league. I don't think there's a single player on the realm that liked every league, some click with you and some don't, and when it doesn't you sit out the league or just grab the rewards and uniques, no matter how much you like the core gameplay.

The only difference is that core content stays with us and the league (mostly) goes away so the damage isn't permanent, and the only difference between forsaken masters and ascendancy is that the former hits a wider group (offends less people). I've seen plenty of players complaining that grinding masters is too tedious and that doing it anew every league is idiotic, mesters weren't a much better expansion that ascendancy, it's just that the antimaster lobby is smaller than the antilab lobby.

I agree with you as well, raics. I also agree that the Masters are the best example of an expansion which shares some of the Labyrinth's weaknesses.

Sorry to link to another of my own threads, I know it's a little obnoxious, but I made a very long post illustrating the exact similarities here: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1771935

It's spookily relevant to our debate, as well as goetzjam's comments above, regarding work-for-reward vs. play-for-reward, so have a look if you are curious.

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gibbousmoon wrote:

2. The lab incentivizes getting through it as fast as possible, and not lingering and enjoying it any longer than you have to.

Everything incentivizes you to do it as fast as possible, everything in PoE.

If you skip all of the silver chests and skip Argus too, you will loose rewards, so to get those, you also need to spend more time on the way to the boss.
And I read somebody ( you probably did too ) saying that intricate lockers in silver caches were something that he deemed very profitable.

But if you are not running the lab, you might just not be aware of that.

Of course many silver cache are not very interesting, but some are ... like ... a lot, a real lot.

So the lab does incentivizes players to find an efficient way to go through it, getting the important key elements until the final boss,it does not encourages full clear, but is that so much of a bad thing ?
It pushes the player to do more effort than most other areas, surely.

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gibbousmoon wrote:

It's funny, I'm reading your post, and agreeing with almost all of it. And even though I suppose you intended it as a retort of sorts, I find that the content of your post just strengthens what I already said.

The most significant being

1. The lab is popular because of its extrinsic rewards and unpopular for its (relative lack of) intrinsic rewards, and

2. The lab incentivizes getting through it as fast as possible, and not lingering and enjoying it any longer than you have to.

These are the two most salient points addressed by your post, so I can only assume you not only agree with them but consider them important. And I maintain that they are significant weaknesses which are largely responsible for the amount of negative comments against the Labyrinth.

Its not suppose to be a direct retort, but rather an explanation for the reasoning.


I think part of the issue with trying to encourage people to linger in the lab is that it has to be done in one sitting (technically you have safe spots along the way, but there isn't a WP you can go back to or a TP you can take if you dc.

So without design changes to the lab, how can it be more rewarding to divert from reaching the end as soon as possible? And if it was changed in design to promote a more lingering aspect with checkpoints of various forms, then doesn't that somewhat defeat the more hardcore aspect or the challenge aspect of a continuous instance fight (aka multi stage boss fight)

You make vary valid points regardless, which is why I respect you as a poster, instead of just making the same one liners over and over again you break down and think logically and act rationally, the same can't be said by everyone that dislikes the lab.


I guess the question becomes if GGG makes the lab more rewarding in terms of intrinsic rewards, would that quell the common complaints about the lab? Personally I don't think it will, but there is some merit to saying of people feel like they received more during the other aspects of the lab it would feel "less boring"

Again to me the lab is all about reaching the end and getting that high, no one can really enjoy encountering or overcoming a series of traps, I mean its an ARPG game, I personally like the puzzle aspects of it, but doing the single series of traps doesn't give me the reward, with the exception of allowing me to progress to the boss fight and collect the rewards at the end.

Its like if GGG made map where nothing dropped loot or gave XP, but the final boss gave all the rewards (sans XP in most cases in the lab) So you know you have to do the things that aren't as challenging or that you can't just kill your way through, because thats what is required to do the boss fights and collect the payday at the end.

Question then becomes can you give or spread out the rewards more, personally I don't know how that is possible, with the way the lab is designed its purposely meant to push you to the end. Everything I can think of in terms of making it more rewarding along the way has to do with a bigger payout at the end instead.

Like making a token drop that gives 2 enchants, additional keys or something along that route. I suppose darksrhines could possibly be an option, but just like the silver caches they are set in specific places and have specific rewards, the information is shared out and will be abused, so about the only way to make it so it isn't broken as hell always would be to add more random elements to the lab, but the lab is almost suppose to be this specific challenge that resets daily.

So GGG is almost stuck in this design loop where any changes to the lab would hurt its identity.

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And I read somebody ( you probably did too ) saying that intricate lockers in silver caches were something that he deemed very profitable.

But if you are not running the lab, you might just not be aware of that.

The issue here is that there is a daily thread about it, so unless you run the lab literally right when it resets then you can have the knowledge of the locker and or location of argus as well. Information is somewhat the issue here as if it were more random, either via spawn or location it would encourage people to linger more.

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goetzjam wrote:

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And I read somebody ( you probably did too ) saying that intricate lockers in silver caches were something that he deemed very profitable.

But if you are not running the lab, you might just not be aware of that.

The issue here is that there is a daily thread about it, so unless you run the lab literally right when it resets then you can have the knowledge of the locker and or location of argus as well. Information is somewhat the issue here as if it were more random, either via spawn or location it would encourage people to linger more.

I agree.
My point was : The lab does not just encourages you to skip everything and rush to the end.
It encourages finding a good, efficient way through the lab, and most rewards do come at the end, but you need to go through other areas first (@Argus, and extra keys in silver caches).

And some silver caches might also have a reward that is good enough to take 3 mins of your time to go get it, some definitely do ( direct reward, not an extra key ).

It also does give some xp, I got quite a bit of xp lvl 91 and 92 from the Uber lab.
If I has been more confident and had ran it 2 levels before, it would have been even better.

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gibbousmoon wrote:

Sorry to link to another of my own threads, I know it's a little obnoxious, but I made a very long post illustrating the exact similarities here: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1771935

It's no problem, better than quoting the entire post :)

The recent master tweaks were indeed interesting from the point of tedium in service of entertainment, got a short story of my own regarding that, more specifically - Vorici because his missions were threading the fine line between tricky and tedious more closely than others. So, it went like this - when the new league starts and I'm rotating masters with a few buddies Vorici was always a wake up point, the token idiot with a single target skill (usually me) steps forward and takes the fiddly task of killing the mark upon himself. And it doesn't always work out, sometimes you misclick, sometimes a party member gets too trigger happy or something else happens, you fail it, get pissed a little, sorry-sorry, we'll get it next time.

Now, I can accept that's tedious for many players, which is why they made the whole thing easier. However, to me the thing fell to the tricky side rather than tedious, it's something that requires a different approach, something that can fail if you aren't paying attention which means it's also something you can feel some small amount of satisfaction about when it goes smoothly. Now there's very little of that left anymore, you nuke his missions like all others with paying a token amount of attention to what you're nuking at least. So yeah, I found myself at the wrong end of the cutoff line that time like some had with lab, the fall was just less serious.

@raics

arent there though some huge differences both in the gameplay as well as the point of each content?

In this case you compare the tediousness of pre-updated forsaken masters, which i dont argue against but since their implementation in the game master missions have always been totally optional and on top of that even if you felt the need to have a specific craft mod you could always trade for it. Last but not least their missions were all in line with the core game, if you like the base game and dont care about the tediousness/grinding aspect you could still continue playing the game you came for.

Now lab, since its implementation it has NEVER been optional content, anything for character optimization is NOT optional, even before they "rebalanced" the game for ascendancies their existence alone was enough for the content not to be considered "side". Second on the comparison list with masters, the gameplay changed DRASTICALLY compared to what poe was offering up until now, dont get me wrong generally this is a very nice idea/step to take since variety is nice to have and im supporting GGG totally for the idea of the labyrinth as a truly side content, but combined with number 1 and the number 3 thats coming is a bad combination of overal drastic design ideas. Last there is no way to buy ascendancies you must bear the labyrinth no matter what either by yourself or by seeking someone else to "help" you while you literally just do the content.

More general

So the gameplay changed and the point of the content somewhat changed between those too, labyrinth sundenly became not only a place to progress your character but in the same time a place to make currency as its the most profitable area in the whole game.

And those differences dont stay there, every single expansion had something going for it, all more or less being true to the original game, and even if they werent at least they were never mandatory. Labyrinth's point should have been the same as Atziri's, the difference in the gameplay alone would be enough for players to choose the one they like. Endgame lab is more profitable with the chests and enchants at the end alone and those could have been enough of a chase reward (though i believe enchanting can really use some help*) to keep players who like said content keep doing it.

What we have with lab is GGG forcing you to undergo something you are not here for in the first place which has the exact opposite effect of what they hoped to, instead of grinding inside it you do it just for the points and never setting foot there again. Unless you are farming it for profit which makes the decision to gate character progression there even more dumb. Simply put they overwhelmed said place with loot and rewards for players to spent time in there(and their game) but obviously that didnt go as planned as there are obviously 3 main group of players regarding lab :

1) Those who farm it (some every day others once in a while etc doesnt matter), those people dont care where the ascendancy points are, they will do lab no matter what because the loot is more than enough to justify spending time there. Those people are around 6-12% (generous) of the playerbase as shown by the labyrinth ladders. This is lower than 5% in HC leagues. Carries offering lab services also belong here.

2) Those who will do it once to get their ascendancy points and never going back again. Thats the group where the vast majority of the players belong to. Those players that got used to the necessary evil, or dont care about 1 run for each character, or find it ok at this amount. (useless info i was part of that group in breach league)

3) Those who will never do it, by far the smallest of the group but its a distinct one thats why it has to be mentioned. Most people belonging to that category probably stoped playing too for reasons mentioned above and in the OP. Less than 0.01% of the player total at the moment. Its not that they dont want the ascendancy points, but they despise having to do allienating content for them (useless info i was part of that group from Ascendancy till Essence, though i thoroughly runned lab in the alpha realm for testing purposes before it came live)


We have so many ideas in the OP (some even suggested by former white knigts and vocal supporters of the lab). Some of them not only dont affect group 1 but it makes lab even more profitable for them. All of them will make group's 2 experience and enjoyment of the game if not much better definatelly not different from what we have now. And it will make people in group 3 (not that it matters since we are soooo few) rejoice. So overal we have a cause that could only bring good things for the whole community but still a tiny group of people (less than 10 total, 5-6 times less than those who actively want(ed) and ask(ed) for a rework, who do this at other threads too asking for game improvments mind you its not lab related only), keep shouting and derailing the cause for their own personal reason (and i mean rl personal reasons nothing objective regarding the game).

And we have GGG on the other hand, which followed (and still does with one small though irrelevant exception of a recent news post) the blizzard tactic of putting their head in the sand and neglecting constructive negative feedback. They find the rework ideas stupid? They find the cost (time and money) for a change preventive? They want to keep the original idea/design intact for ego/self-image/self-esteem reasons? They are bound by contract not to change it or even mention any stats about it? They dont want to make the people responsible for it's design feel bad? Maybe they are proud for and ok with it despite the discort it still causes? Maybe they want to focus on a new group of consumers/gamers like those of the consoles? (its not at all a coincidence)



*There are quite a few ways to make enchants more reasonable, fun, consistent. For example have 2 or 3 or 1million more enchanting devices inside the lab, or once getting an enchant it is then stored in your character and you can use said enchant everytime you want but make the enchanted item not-tradable (similar to how premade lld characters' items are tagged), or for helm enchants allow gems inside helmets add a 5% chance for this gem's related enchants to occur (for example you could put 4 arctic breaths inside your helmet and then the chance would increase to 20% for an arctic breath related enchant, or put firebal, blade flurry, vortex and exlposive arrow gems and each offers a 5% chance for the helm to get a related to those gems enchant), or allow players to choose between treasure keys and enchant tries when doing argus, or golden chest etc (or even put both it might make it sufferable if the end rewards are EVEN more rewarding /s).

Anyway, those were again some general thoughs that needed sharing. GGG please consider making the lab a totally optional/side content like atziri or pale counsil or shaper or or or everything else you ever added where the purpose is for people to pass their time and have fun and farm, and not a mandatory obstacle thats so allienating and tedious for your veterans who came here for the ARGP and supported you for that and now we get an ARCADE, there are sure other ways to challenge us for those points why it has to be a prince of persia/frogger/contra copy-paste?

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Regulator wrote:

@raics

arent there though some huge differences both in the gameplay as well as the point of each content?

Hell yeah, obviously enough, I was just saying what the whole thing ultimately boils down to.

After reading the post, I don't agree with some of the content, Masters had and still have a huge impact on the gearing and market, we could argue they were more impactful on the base level than ascendancy. At the same time, I personally think both types of content are much more similar than you claim there
1. They're kinda optional, but not really.
2. Both have more value before your character is fully done, but keep some afterwards.

Sacrifice of the Vaal was different, mostly because it was fully optional and I don't think GGG will do anything similar again, it seems they want to make sure every player is fully dipped in the new content instead of just wetting his toes.

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So the gameplay changed and the point of the content somewhat changed between those too, labyrinth sundenly became not only a place to progress your character but in the same time a place to make currency as its the most profitable area in the whole game.

Any proof to this claim?

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What we have with lab is GGG forcing you to undergo something you are not here for in the first place which has the exact opposite effect of what they hoped to, instead of grinding inside it you do it just for the points and never setting foot there again. Unless you are farming it for profit which makes the decision to gate character progression there even more dumb. Simply put they overwhelmed said place with loot and rewards for players to spent time in there(and their game) but obviously that didnt go as planned as there are obviously 3 main group of players regarding lab :

What makes you think it has the opposite effect of what they intended? I mean we have video proof of Chris saying they are OK with content not being as enjoyable for everyone, because in the end you will do it to get the reward, if the AC points were not tied to the lab, then why would he make a statement like this. If GGG wanted everyone to experience this "different content", then wouldn't the only way to ensure that people do it be make it "mandatory" for a player to encounter it?

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1) Those who farm it (some every day others once in a while etc doesnt matter), those people dont care where the ascendancy points are, they will do lab no matter what because the loot is more than enough to justify spending time there. Those people are around 6-12% (generous) of the playerbase as shown by the labyrinth ladders. This is lower than 5% in HC leagues. Carries offering lab services also belong here.

Trying to put a number on this just proves you have no idea what you are talking about, if you want to break people into groups thats fine, when you try to define the numbers without having anything to go off of at all, well that just proves your trying to make shit up.

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2) Those who will do it once to get their ascendancy points and never going back again. Thats the group where the vast majority of the players belong to. Those players that got used to the necessary evil, or dont care about 1 run for each character, or find it ok at this amount. (useless info i was part of that group in breach league)

So when the league suits you, you will be part of the group that you think would complain about the lab in a heart beat or don't care where the AC points are?

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3) Those who will never do it, by far the smallest of the group but its a distinct one thats why it has to be mentioned. Most people belonging to that category probably stoped playing too for reasons mentioned above and in the OP. Less than 0.01% of the player total at the moment. Its not that they dont want the ascendancy points, but they despise having to do allienating content for them (useless info i was part of that group from Ascendancy till Essence, though i thoroughly runned lab in the alpha realm for testing purposes before it came live)

I agree with the smallest group part. Any player that makes it to mapss with the intention of never doing AC is an interesting stat, however a difficult one to find I think. Perhaps this would be easier the first week of the league or something like that.

If you ran the lab on the alpha realm, then how do you not have an alpha tag?

In terms of the players that still aren't ascended its hard to get an accurate read because the only place you could possibly check would be in the temp leagues, as standard is full of tons of pre-ascendancy characters that people havnet had the need or want to touch. For example uber trails don't merge with the leagues so I have to redo those before I can ascend any of my standard characters made pre ascendancy.

If this group was large or significant, I think GGG would be forced to change, but it isn't its such a tiny tiny small market of people and so far I have yet to see a single one of these people here. I mean at least ones that play the game still. People like turtle might be in this group, then again he only has a few characters and already ascended his higher geared\leveled characters from last I remember.

Compiling a list that has both good ideas and shit ideas isn't good. Ignoring feedback that I gave for example about focusing on a few good ideas to hand off to GGG, instead you rather list every literal shit idea and just hope any of it sticks, that doesn't lead to a better game, that just leads to GGG having to look thru the shit to find a gem among it.


Maybe GGG feels the only way that AC points should be rewarded is inside the lab, if you look at that principle alone you are left with but a few options to do. Maybe GGG thinks that the largest power creep to date should be something that people can't buy there way past, like everything else.

Instead you sit here bashing the design, when you should be bashing yourself for compiling the biggest useless list of retarded ideas to date.


You are also forgetting another statement made, which was that GGG does not want to water down the content until everyone is "ok with it" that doesn't lead to a well designed game, that leads to the road of homogenization. I only wish they would realize this statement they made should be applied to the rest of the game as well, instead they've done nothing but more and more casual changes, which in turn has closed the gap between the original deign of this game and d3 to be closer then it should have ever reached.

While on the subject of ideas, there are some issues I have with the lab and most revolve around PoELab in some way.

1. It isn't a labyrinth if you know where you should go.
I feel that areas are too straightforward, if you combine that with knowing which areas you should go to and which parts, you lose the feeling of labyrinth. I'd prefer it randomized on each entry, or at least randomly interconnected from 20-ish areas that would be pre-generated daily.

2. Screw golden doors.
If you think about it, you don't really go through too many trap gauntlets per run or visit many areas, golden doors are a way to force you to do both when you know your path in advance, they're pretty much a bandaid for the problem no1.

3. Farming.
And we come to the main reason the layout resets once per day, it wouldn't be farmable otherwise. This is the man obstacle to full randomization of the labyrinth, they tried to have the cake and eat it too by making a non-farmable type of content usable for just that.

How to solve it all and address the various issues people have with the lab - no bloody idea, something like this would probably work for me if I try to dabble in lab design:
- Labyrinth Zone 1: a bunch of random areas and at least one mandatory trap gauntlet per area, which removes the need for golden doors.
- Ascendant Arena: a colosseum-like zone where you fight the spirits of dead emperor candidates, pretty much a set of rogue exiles with a ghostly makeover.
- Waypoint 1
- Labyrinth Zone 2: also random as the first one.
- Argus gauntlet, you need to run away from him through a trapped corridor, if he catches up the exit is blocked and you must kill him to proceed. Might have some ways to use traps against him to hurt or slow him down. If you kill him he drops a trinket.
- Waypoint 2
- A large area like the entrance zone in the labyrinth, somewhere in it is a spirit of emperors past, which is an exile that uses a random ascendancy archetype from the 19 we got, something like a preview, you must kill him to proceeed.
- After the area is an Izaro fight.
- Repeat three times, Izaro encounters are randomized every time you enter.

Or something else between labyrinth areas, it would solve my problems, I get exploration, golden doors are removed and it could be farmed. Depending on the size of 3rd segment areas you could get to the end a bit faster than normally, Izaro is random so some farm attempts would probably end up botched, they can't make lab areas fully random so the gatekeeper boss position is randomized instead.

Now, would this be better? For me - yes, for the majority - fuck no, and it would be tricky to implement too. I'm sure the majority would prefer just some monster bash gauntlets between boss fights and I'm also sure devs know that, already said I admire the kind of balls it took to go through with their vision despite knowing it won't bring them the most cash. And, I might say a lot of things but I can't honestly blame them if they go full mcdonalds in future, they attempted something they thought would please their oldest fans and got more abuse for it than they really deserved.

Your talking about content you can pay someone else to do for you for small change. Make it Solo self only if its supposed to not be 'watered down'.