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

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The_Reporter wrote:

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ampdecay wrote:

The last times we had threads this long we got chain girls removed, and free for all loot changed. I guess it just isn't happening this time boys.

My personal opinion is that GGG invested a shit ton of money into making the lab and since this game is their baby they have too much pride to get rid of it.

Chain girls was just a UI redesign, nothing to hard to do, though the first one with the templar dudes and babies was hideous, and the loot change probably wasn't that hard to implement either.

Changing something that they likely spent a few million developing is probably just out of the question for them.

Just my 2 cents.

They don't need to change anything. Creating an alternative method to access Izaro is all that's needed. Something less annoying with actual difficulty.

Leave all that gold door frogger stuff for people who like it and add something of higher quality and challenge for we more refined gamers.

They do not care and will never change they aren't about opinion just "Vision". Find a new game this one is not for you any more.
Accept it but you can have fun posting for 10 minutes a week!

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The_Reporter wrote:

They don't need to change anything. Creating an alternative method to access Izaro is all that's needed. Something less annoying with actual difficulty.

I would personally have nothing against it, but it ultimately boils down to one thing: can you guarantee them it will bring enough revenue to cover the cost of implementing it?

What I mean is, let's say I hated the lab so much that I'd absolutely insist on an alternative method of gaining ascendancy points. Even with that kind of mindset, if a bunch of likeminded players suggested that everyone chips in to gather a sort of an insurance fund for GGG in case the new method fails to draw people back, I'd say no.

Guys, the Lab and Ascension is here to stay. Better deal with your emotions and accept it.

If GGG thought the Lab was problematic or "risky", they would plan changes before they enter the Xbox & Chinese market with 3.0. Collecting data for close to a year should be enough, to make such a decision. Since they did not mention any such intent, you can bet Ascension wont stray from the current concept.

I'd like to see some changes to the Lab, eg. redesigning how helm enchants work, shortening early labs, remove golden doors from norm. & cruel, maybe do away with trials and/or make uber trials less RNG. But whatever, don't really care, because I can live with it. I never grinded helm enchants and I never will, for example. I fully understand enchants are there for market gameplay, not for SSF.

People who claim that the Lab ruins the game, are an extreme minority. Most people who are bothered by the Lab, are not bothered to the point they would throw the whole game into the bin. Those who would do that are already gone, with the exception of a few who made this thread their raison d'etre & personal jihad.

My main reason for continuing my support of changing the Labyrinth or adding an alternative is 100% to help the game get better, and that means fixing this terrible situation, and not repeating it in the future.

I've stopped playing (the PC this game was installed on has died, and I haven't bothered re-installing on my new one), and see no reason to pick it up again if the designers are so stiff-necked to change, and too blind to see why the game design behind the Labyrinth was "bad" - purely from a game design position, taking into account the medium of the game and its limitations (such as the method of input/control, lag/disconnects, etc) as well as the style of the game they're adding the content to (ARPG character gearing and building monster slaying gameplay vs avoidance gameplay that mostly disregards gear - in a gear-based monster-slaying game, and adding HC elements to the SC version, among other things.)

The idea of a labyrinth with traps could have been designed in a MUCH better way for THIS game, and think the current implementation fails in many aspects. Whether people like the current implementation doesn't change my appraisal.

If a game designer reads my posts, I hope they take the reasonings to heart. I hope they see the reason behind the changes that I think should happen, and I hope they don't make content as out of place as this again, for their own sakes.

I couldn't care less what other posters on the forum say against this. My intent is to reach the devs. At least one of the devs says he reads the Feedback and Suggestions Forum. If so, my mission is partially successful.

I actually don't mind ascendancy classes behind the lab. I just want the lab itself to be fun and engaging experience. The majority of the player base just run it 3-4 times then leave it for 2 reasons, the lab isn't very fun or engaging, and the enchant system is pretty poor. I made huge post on this before, so I won't go into massive details but honestly..

The traps needed to be involved with monsters in some way. The lab has rooms with traps and rooms with trash monsters. Obviously the trash monsters aren't providing anything new, just there to refill flasks. And it's been proven that the best way to get past the trap gauntlets are to simply run through them with mass mitigation or just use movement skills that bypass most the traps. When people just bypass your mechanic in very simple ways... its just not engaging. Lab needed more interesting encounters like the izaro fights.

The enchant system is just awful. Obviously you can't hope to farm the type of enchants you want. After a total of maybe 100 runs from lab release till now... I have never once recieved a helmet enchant related to any skill in my current build... its terrible. Okay so I go to trade for it.. but everyone is enchanting ES helmets because it's meta so I can't do that either. Everything in this game doesn't need to be revolved around trading. The enchants need to be farmable, each skill needs to have impactful enchants on it (some currently aren't good enough), and the values of these enchants need to be random from a low to high. So you can run uber lab for your EQ duration enchant but you aren't guaranteed to get a good value.. you may need to run it multiple times to get the one you really want.

If both of these were addressed, the lab would be so much better then its current iteration.

I agree with everything you just said, e1337donkey. The AC points can be locked to the Labyrinth, but GGG really needs to stop neglecting old, longstanding problems (of which the unengaging Labyrinth is just one) in favor of new, shiny toys. In my case, not only do the new shiny toys not excite me; they annoy me even more, because I see all of these existing problems which have been ignored for years, and I cannot help but assume that, with the necessarily limited resources GGG has, GGG has consciously chosen not to address those issues (and we all know what they are; there is a laundry list). That gives me the impression that either Chris or his team does not care about PoE’s current fan base nearly so much as they do about wooing new players (and $$$), and that is not a flattering impression, to say the least.

As for the Labyrinth specifically, let’s do a little thought experiment. Imagine everyone who has ever posted an opinion on the Lab never posts one again.

This issue will remain a headache for GGG, because I regularly see new players reacting negatively to the content, in part because they feel forced to do it.

The issue isn’t going to magically disappear just because it isn’t addressed in 3.0. It would probably be better for the community if it did, and if everyone just learned to accept content they find unfun. But I think that is an unrealistic expectation for anyone to have.

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goetzjam wrote:

Then enjoy the good parts of the game and suck it up like a good little boy and do the lab when you feel its necessary or worth it for your character. Such an amazing concept.

You know, it’s funny. I see threads critical of specific map layouts and bosses all the time, and no one ever seems to throw out the retort “it’s optional” or “that map only takes 5-10 minutes to run, so just suck it up.” I assume this is because their mental filter catches the fact that it is an (astoundingly) irrelevant comment well before their fingers hit their keyboard. And yet many seem to think these statements work as retorts to any Labyrinth criticism. Because so-called optional content is immune to criticism, right? Because content which takes <x minutes is immune to criticism, right?

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Emphasy wrote:

They also have another big issue and a risk if they make an alternative, nobody can be sure that those minority wouldn't dislike the presented alternative as well. So they might put time in for nothing. Considering the way some of the feedback and the other threads of some of those people they are basically against everything GGG has done lately, which makes it highly unlikely that the alternative is any different.

That’s an incredibly unfair thing to say, and in my opinion not a little mean-spirited. The desire held by people who dislike the Labyrinth has always been simple:

Allow us to experience complete character development by playing traditional content.

That is to say, not content which is “orthogonal” (to use Chris Wilson’s own word choice) to the gameplay enjoyed by PoE players prior to Ascendancy.

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Zaludoz wrote:

As I'm sure others have said by now (I take a while to make posts, sometimes thinking overnight and re-writing entire sections when I think of a better way to word things...) you're arguing against a topic based on making attacks on the people making the argument rather than against the argument itself (I'm sure that has a debate-term somewhere)...

It’s called an ad hominem attack, and I’m sure I’m not the only person to appreciate the irony that the person you are responding to (who is well known in this forum for his snide comments) of all people is berating others for being “rude.”

That said, criticizing another’s debate style is not necessarily an ad hominem. But you are correct to suggest that it is peripheral to the issue at hand, and often a red herring. Based on what I see in these forums, attacking someone’s debate style is most often done by someone who has an insufficient counterargument toward the content of that person’s post, so it is a cheap way to derail the discussion.

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gibbousmoon wrote:

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goetzjam wrote:

Then enjoy the good parts of the game and suck it up like a good little boy and do the lab when you feel its necessary or worth it for your character. Such an amazing concept.

You know, it’s funny. I see threads critical of specific map layouts and bosses all the time, and no one ever seems to throw out the retort “it’s optional” or “that map only takes 5-10 minutes to run, so just suck it up.” I assume this is because their mental filter catches the fact that it is an (astoundingly) irrelevant comment well before their fingers hit their keyboard. And yet many seem to think these statements work as retorts to any Labyrinth criticism. Because so-called optional content is immune to criticism, right? Because content which takes <x minutes is immune to criticism, right?

Well, it isn't quite the same, if you want to level your character decently high maps are hardly optional. By virtue of the randomized map drop system, you will often have to run maps with bad layouts and bosses, it isn't something you do once and get rid of it forever. Unless, of course, you're a player who runs each map once for the bonus and then buys gorges. You know, can't say I've seen many complaints in the vein of 'I have to run crappy maps once to get the bonus', it's usually people who don't buy maps that complain.

Besides, it's also the nature of complaint, I don't think many people have the gall to ask 'make all maps short, jam-packed with monsters and linear, remove all other layouts'. Most people understand that not every layout can be good, the complaint is usually 'we don't mind if it's somewhat worse, but some layouts are much, much worse'.

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raics wrote:

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gibbousmoon wrote:

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goetzjam wrote:

Then enjoy the good parts of the game and suck it up like a good little boy and do the lab when you feel its necessary or worth it for your character. Such an amazing concept.

[/spoiler]
You know, it’s funny. I see threads critical of specific map layouts and bosses all the time, and no one ever seems to throw out the retort “it’s optional” or “that map only takes 5-10 minutes to run, so just suck it up.” I assume this is because their mental filter catches the fact that it is an (astoundingly) irrelevant comment well before their fingers hit their keyboard. And yet many seem to think these statements work as retorts to any Labyrinth criticism. Because so-called optional content is immune to criticism, right? Because content which takes <x minutes is immune to criticism, right?

Well, it isn't quite the same, if you want to level your character decently high maps are hardly optional. By virtue of the randomized map drop system, you will often have to run maps with bad layouts and bosses, it isn't something you do once and get rid of it forever. Unless, of course, you're a player who runs each map once for the bonus and then buys gorges. You know, can't say I've seen many complaints in the vein of 'I have to run crappy maps once to get the bonus', it's usually people who don't buy maps that complain.

Besides, it's also the nature of complaint, I don't think many people have the gall to ask 'make all maps short, jam-packed with monsters and linear, remove all other layouts'. Most people understand that not every layout can be good, the complaint is usually 'we don't mind if it's somewhat worse, but some layouts are much, much worse'.

This comparison seems off base.

At the end of the day, maps are still (generally) traditional ARPG gameplay. That's not to say the way they've been implemented is perfect. But, they're still the kind of gameplay that would draw a player to POE in the first place.

If some maps provided the standard kind of rewards for maps of their tier, but were really just a re-done version of Labyrinth, then you might have a better basis for comparison.

In that scenario, without turbo-charged rewards to entice players into doing their frogger dance moves, enduring gold doors, and just generally pushing through the tedium, Labyrinth-style maps would probably not be well received.

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At the end of the day, maps are still (generally) traditional ARPG gameplay. That's not to say the way they've been implemented is perfect. But, they're still the kind of gameplay that would draw a player to POE in the first place.

First... scrap ARPG and replace it with PoE. Because traps are damn common in ARPG (look Skyrim as one example or D3). And the biggest thing that likely draws people to PoE is a lack of alternatives. The ARPG genre mostly went first or third person nowadays with games like Dark Souls or Skyrim and you hardly have your oldschool topdown ARPGs.

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You know, it’s funny. I see threads critical of specific map layouts and bosses all the time, and no one ever seems to throw out the retort “it’s optional” or “that map only takes 5-10 minutes to run, so just suck it up.”

Well thing is some map layouts are just bad and the influence of a bad layout is quite high on your XP/hour but the thing is that is more a min-max issue than one actual centered around the playability. And again the type of complaints are entirely different, there is hardly anybody that quits over a few bad layouts, because avoiding them is possible to a certain degree and even though they are inefficient they are not much different from other maps.

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The AC points can be locked to the Labyrinth, but GGG really needs to stop neglecting old, longstanding problems (of which the unengaging Labyrinth is just one) in favor of new, shiny toys. In my case, not only do the new shiny toys not excite me; they annoy me even more, because I see all of these existing problems which have been ignored for years, and I cannot help but assume that, with the necessarily limited resources GGG has, GGG has consciously chosen not to address those issues (and we all know what they are; there is a laundry list).

Again, why? If it is better for their revenue to add new things instead of fixing old content it is obviously the right thing to do. Because this also means making those content elements that are not that good less important because there is more overall content so the exposure to the old content. It already seemed as if they shortened the labyrinth although we have to wait for actual information from GGG right now the informations are a bit wonky and they added new things like the Pantheon stuff.

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The_Reporter wrote:

I know how the game was before. My original deleted account was mid 2012.

It's not the game for you. And they won't change it for one guy (you)

lol'd