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

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Zalhan2 wrote:

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'.

That makes sense even lore-wise.

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raics wrote:

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.

I consider this a good post. However, I'm afraid it will be kind of lost since it is a bit off a tangent for this thread. Perhaps you should consider re-posting it as the opening post in a new thread?

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Turtledove wrote:

I consider this a good post. However, I'm afraid it will be kind of lost since it is a bit off a tangent for this thread. Perhaps you should consider re-posting it as the opening post in a new thread?

It would be kinda pointless. That's something I'd like to have for myself or something I'd try to mod in if the game was moddable, but if my ass sat on the GGG direction board I wouldn't approve it.

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raics wrote:

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Turtledove wrote:

I consider this a good post. However, I'm afraid it will be kind of lost since it is a bit off a tangent for this thread. Perhaps you should consider re-posting it as the opening post in a new thread?

It would be kinda pointless. That's something I'd like to have for myself or something I'd try to mod in if the game was moddable, but if my ass sat on the GGG direction board I wouldn't approve it.

It might trigger a discussion and new ideas that could be interesting to GGG?

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Turtledove wrote:

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raics wrote:

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Turtledove wrote:

I consider this a good post. However, I'm afraid it will be kind of lost since it is a bit off a tangent for this thread. Perhaps you should consider re-posting it as the opening post in a new thread?

It would be kinda pointless. That's something I'd like to have for myself or something I'd try to mod in if the game was moddable, but if my ass sat on the GGG direction board I wouldn't approve it.

It might trigger a discussion and new ideas that could be interesting to GGG?

If the lab is a problem they want to change something about, aka AC points, then they would just reward them elsewhere instead of massively changing the design of the lab.

I mean think about it, they don't change old gems very much because people enjoy this or that aspect of the gems and they don't want to alienate those players, the same applies to the lab.


I have a feeling like GGG will make AC points available elsewhere or some other method of leveling that includes an option to get AC points, but its just a hunch. Regardless OP doesn't want discussion he wants a massive list of any idea that is different then what we have now, regardless of the quality.

raics has some points, but the design of the lab was already created, I hightly doubt they change it as they've even went as far as to explain the design of the lab.

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Turtledove wrote:

It might trigger a discussion and new ideas that could be interesting to GGG?

They've most likely had their fill of us telling us how to do their job in regards to lab, I have a strong suspicion they need to pass some alka-seltzer around the office every time someone mentions it :)

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goetzjam wrote:

raics has some points, but the design of the lab was already created, I hightly doubt they change it as they've even went as far as to explain the design of the lab.

And those points would have no chance of making it even as a fresh design, let alone a rehaul.

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raics wrote:

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Turtledove wrote:

It might trigger a discussion and new ideas that could be interesting to GGG?

They've most likely had their fill of us telling us how to do their job in regards to lab, I have a strong suspicion they need to pass some alka-seltzer around the office every time someone mentions it :)

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goetzjam wrote:

raics has some points, but the design of the lab was already created, I hightly doubt they change it as they've even went as far as to explain the design of the lab.

And those points would have no chance of making it even as a fresh design, let alone a rehaul.

I bet when Lab is mentioned they feel as misunderstood as OJ feels.

Hey guys, some great discussion points brought up, sorry to take so long to respond, I came down with the flu last week. :(

Here are some things I started writing before I got sick (WALL OF TEXT INCOMING):

@Fruz

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Fruz wrote:

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.

You are technically correct if you understand me to mean "complete content as quickly as possible." As in, do the minimum tasks required for maximum profit and then get the fuck out of there so you can do it all over again. And yes, the entire game does indeed incentivize this. But those so-called minimum tasks as presented in the Labyrinth are rather different from elsewhere in the game.

Allow me to distill the spoiler below (only look at it if you are really interested in the complete argument breakdown),



along with a caveat that this is an oversimplification:

The more monsters you kill, the more fun you’ve had and the greater rewards you receive.

This is what most ARPG fans think of as “typical ARPG gameplay.” That is the primary way in which the Labyrinth (and, again, some of the Masters missions) deviate.

And here we come to the reason I call the Labyrinth “work-for-rewards” gameplay as opposed to most of the rest of the game, which I call “play-for-rewards” gameplay. If the pleasure you gain from an experience is derived primarily from the reward you get after that experience, then why bother playing a video game at all? Go be a garbage collector in NYC. I hear they make great wages, since no one wants them to go on strike.

In other words, if you aren’t engaging a video game to play, then why are you engaging a video game at all? The rewards to be gained from actual work are so much greater, so why engage in an unpleasant task merely to gain a virtual good?

I believe most people do not engage PoE as a form of work but rather as a form of play. And those are the people who have found the Labyrinth’s reward-for-enduring-adversity model (and Chris Wilson’s justification for it) the most offensive.

@goetzjam

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goetzjam wrote:

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 supposed to be this specific challenge that resets daily.

You make a very good point about exploiting reddit. I agree that it is a barrier to making the Lab journey more rewarding.

I do think the Lab should be randomized for every player. That will put some of its weaknesses in stark relief, for sure, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It would put everyone on the same page giving feedback to GGG on how to make a fun true labyrinth (as opposed to the “pretend” labyrinth it is now).

The second reason is the issue you raised: Randomizing the Labyrinth will allow GGG to make the journey more rewarding without worrying about it being exploited. On a related note, it will make the discovery of secret areas and the like far more exciting, because it will feel like an experience unique to you. It will also encourage exploration and observational skills, neither of which is particularly encouraged by the current setup (the need to observe traps closely notwithstanding).

The third reason is more philosophical and subjective to my views: I object to any dynamic which encourages meta-gaming, which is by definition the exploitation of outside game knowledge to profit inside the game (thus the word “meta”). I believe EVE Online is one of the most infamous examples, but I think it is generally speaking bad for a game, because of the role it plays in de-emphasizing the game per se, and because the nature of the challenge it provides is less fun. (Visiting reddit religiously every day to learn a layout, for example.) But this is probably a discussion for another thread.

In any case, I don’t think GGG has the guts to change the faux-labyrinth into an actual labyrinth, because it would lead to almost-guaranteed short-term losses, and only speculative long-term gains (even though those gains would end up being greater than the losses). GGG would have to have a great deal of faith in its own product, and be willing to prioritize quality over profit in the hopes that that will pay off. And, sadly, in the world of gaming quality and profits do not always correlate.

@Regulator

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Regulator wrote:

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.

I kind of disagree with this.

1. Some of the advantages given by Master mods are too good to ignore. Vorici’s coloring abilities in particular. You are significantly crippling yourself by not taking advantage of the Masters.

2. Some of the Masters’ missions have and/or had gameplay aspects that were paradigmatically different from those in the rest of the game.

Take Haku, for example. His missions involve piloting skill with time-based efficiency, and a tiny bit of monster killing in between each piloting challenge. Sound familiar? Yeah, thought so.

Have a look at my link (above) comparing the missions with the Labyrinth, and you’ll read about other similarities. The thing is, GGG has evidently recognized that those aspects of the Masters’ missions (the ones shared with the Labyrinth) were also their largest weaknesses, if the tweaks are any indication.

Again, it comes back to the basic question: “Do you get a greater reward for killing more monsters?” If yes, then conservative (forgive the label) ARPG fans will be happy. If no, then conservative ARPG fans will bitch and moan. And thus a hundreds-of-pages thread is born. The lessons to be learned are rather obvious.

@gibbousmoon

Nice post, it made me think about my overall RPG experience. I played D&D for many years and always kind of tailored my RPG game play to that thought. Like clearing all maps in PoE. Or when bringing up a new character almost clearing all the monsters as I go through the quests. The idea being that I'm a hero on a crusade to cleanse the world of evil. When I restart the game after a break I'll rush past monsters until I get to about the same spot that I left off when I quit the game then start clearing monsters again. I know that this doesn't maximize my treasure but it is fun for me and when not in the horrible labyrinth, I still get some loot for killing monsters.

I have played other games besides RPG's. Those are fun too. I've even played some Frogger (never liked Mario) but those kind of games are more fun to play with a controller than with bad mouse game play.