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

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e1337donkey wrote:

But this doesn't even start/stop with the lab, the rest of the game is like this where players have no clue about anything. God forbid brand new players start the game up... its easy for players like ourselves who have been around for a long time, this comes so natural to us. But newer players have way too much to take in. GGG has done nothing over the years to assist in this.

So no, obviously I didn't mean a book literally... but you have to do a ton of research outside the game just to understand the game. When the beauty of game design is you can teach a player simply by them playing it. You don't need to hold someones hand, but you can design games to lead people in the right direction. This game doesn't even try to do that.

Trial and Error is a fairly common method of introducing fake difficulty to extend the playtime. Dark Souls is all over that one and it was common as dirt in old games, whenever death isn't permanent you can get away with it.

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sofocle10000 wrote:

Some of us remember a time when you had to work for those advancements and different advantages that made you feel like a God amongst mortals, but even though so many "Labyrinth" supporters are praising it, and don't think there is still a lot to improve, due to having access to a map that renders the "Labyrinth" term moot, and having "carries" to do your work for you - yeah, I'm even conceding that you have to just pass the traps to wait for the "magic" to happen so you do something like pay marginal attention and spam health/quicksilver flasks to keep up - it's sad to see so much wasted potential.

You won't hear me saying it's anywhere near perfect, they messed it up in many ways. What I don't agree with here is the recurring sentiment to fully trivialize it or replace it with something else because I believe it's essentially a solid experience they've put a lot of effort into.

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e1337donkey wrote:

All that is is map layout of the lab, if I need additional information on what/how to combat Izaro's mechanics, I also need to research that. As well as all those weird items(Forgot the name, I never use them) that help in those phases. As well as the rewards at the very end. How key drops work, enchants, ascendancy. This is all a part of the lab but never really explained to anyone. Especially if you haven't played when Ascendancy came out since it isn't in the top page anymore.

But this doesn't even start/stop with the lab, the rest of the game is like this where players have no clue about anything. God forbid brand new players start the game up... its easy for players like ourselves who have been around for a long time, this comes so natural to us. But newer players have way too much to take in. GGG has done nothing over the years to assist in this.

So no, obviously I didn't mean a book literally... but you have to do a ton of research outside the game just to understand the game. When the beauty of game design is you can teach a player simply by them playing it. You don't need to hold someones hand, but you can design games to lead people in the right direction. This game doesn't even try to do that.

That "map" or picture also tells you the mechanics in all 3 phases and what sort of weapon he wields, on the same site or the wiki you can find the information regarding what "lieutenants" do or what attacks he does with a "2 handed sword"

In terms of the side items that you forget the name of them, they are largely optional to make the fight easier or to allow you to make more mistakes. Yet another scenario in which you can find out more about on the wiki. I'm not sure what you mean it isn't explained, when you reach the AC plaque it allows for you to click on a class and ascend. In terms of enchanting, it describes the item types you can use, gloves, boots, helm (depending on which lab you are in)

In terms of explaining key drops, the game doesn't explain that sort of thing to a player, it never has. This is information you learn either after doing it or after researching the topic. Part of what made poe so great was that everything wasn't force feed to a player they had to do some background information on their own or discovery on their own. It only makes sense that you get more keys for chest the harder you make the fight.


You claim GGG has done nothing, perhaps its because this game and genre of game is best suited for players with the mindset and ability to seek out information on their own? They've done a few little things at the start of the game, but by the time you reach the first town there really isn't anything else they would like to cram down your throat.


So you understand that the lab is not that much different then the rest of the game, regarding information to the player and understanding. I'd argue its actually one of the only pieces of content in the game that has any preparation going into it. You must seek out the trials, which give you an introduction to the mechanics of the trap. The very first thing in the lab itself is a map you can click on, on ever subsequent door you can click on that map as well to get more information about direction.



@sofocle10000

You act as if the lab is the only piece of content that people used to get carries for. I mean people still get second half of act 4 carries, people used to get dom carries, piety carries. Its nothing new to this game, hell it isn't even new to this genre. In d2 people used to get rushes there, boss kills there. In d3 people power level people. These are online multiplayer experiences and while it might be a novel idea to create a scenario in which a player must overcome a challenge, it doesn't fit the idea of making it so people won't play together, unless you are talking about a player driven challenge, like SSF.

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Trial and Error is a fairly common method of introducing fake difficulty to extend the playtime. Dark Souls is all over that one and it was common as dirt in old games, whenever death isn't permanent you can get away with it.

As opposed to what would you consider being "real" difficulty? Force feeding information in a genre of game best built around players discovering things for themselves isn't ideal, all that does is really dumb down the game in order to appeal to a wider playerbase and leave long time supporters of the game sour about wasted resources being devoted to new players, instead of focusing on supporting the players they have now.

That being said GGG has a chance with the launch of 3.0 and the xbox 1 release to address some of the issues with players running into speed bumps while getting into the game. Because xbox 1 players are in general more casual players, it is only logical that they treat them as such and give an appropriate amount of time and information to start the game. Some of this could translate 1:1 to the main pc realm.



I think people forget that people appreciate more what they work for and discover on their own, as opposed to be feed all of the information possible.

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goetzjam wrote:

As opposed to what would you consider being "real" difficulty?

I don't consider it bad just because it's fake, that's just what it is and trial&error is probably the least offensive form of fake difficulty. Take, for instance, a jump in a platformer, real difficulty is making it tight so you need to hit the exact 5ms window to press that jump button, fake difficulty is keeping the window generous but making the character movements intentionally unresponsive so the jump is harder to perform.

The thing about trial&error is it used to work much better back in the nintendo days when web resources weren't widely available, you can't really count on players having any self control. That's why I consider it outdated and personally prefer dynamic content.

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raics wrote:

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goetzjam wrote:

As opposed to what would you consider being "real" difficulty?

I don't consider it bad just because it's fake, that's just what it is and trial&error is probably the least offensive form of fake difficulty. Take, for instance, a jump in a platformer, real difficulty is making it tight so you need to hit the exact 5ms window to press that jump button, fake difficulty is keeping the window generous but making the character movements intentionally unresponsive so the jump is harder to perform.

The thing about trial&error is it used to work much better back in the nintendo days when web resources weren't widely available, you can't really count on players having any self control. That's why I consider it outdated and personally prefer dynamic content.

Take any number of the poe systems or issues and turn it into something dynamic then, because I'm having a hard time coming up with an example of something you might change.

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raics wrote:

Trial and Error is a fairly common method of introducing fake difficulty to extend the playtime. Dark Souls is all over that one and it was common as dirt in old games, whenever death isn't permanent you can get away with it.

I heard you said that before. That would be the case if the information wasn't already well documented and available. All you're really achieving is forcing new players to play at a great disadvantage in a game heavily centered around trading.

Trial and Error ends when the results are conclusive. At that point there are no reasons to still keep players in the dark.

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sofocle10000 wrote:

If only obtaining Ascendancy Points would be more on your own character's back instead of over-relying on others, even with just using a detailed layout and phases description, it's just a boring way to cheat exploring on your own and just gunning for efficiency...

I agree with this but, at this point, if AC points are such build enablers, I'm all for not gating them behind "inaccesible" content.

I think the goal should be to have as many successful builds as possible so that people can play their favourite ones and still do fine.

You can have plenty of exploration and riches hidden in the lab without hindering a character's progression.

I heard Chris say they won't do it not to slip into that slippery slope of giving power without effort. But at the same time they won't touch trading so you can basicaly farm currency in your favourite strand map or dried lake with a single functioning neuron and be able to buy every powerful item there is.

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goetzjam wrote:

Take any number of the poe systems or issues and turn it into something dynamic then, because I'm having a hard time coming up with an example of something you might change.

Had some iffy suggestion in this thread I think about making lab and Izzy fully random but split in sections so it stays farmable.

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QuiquePoE wrote:

I think the goal should be to have as many successful builds as possible so that people can play their favourite ones and still do fine.

You can have plenty of exploration and riches hidden in the lab without hindering a character's progression.

I heard Chris say they won't do it not to slip into that slippery slope of giving power without effort. But at the same time they won't touch trading so you can basicaly farm currency in your favourite strand map or dried lake with a single functioning neuron and be able to buy every powerful item there is.

And I haven't seen a single build to date that hasn't been able to do the lab. If you want to say xx support built can't, well they can't do the other game content solo either.


In terms of hindering characters progression, is it really? Following that logic the traditional skill points awarded at any of the side zones just hinder character progression too, maybe a lessor extent as they seem to take less time then doing the lab.

Furthermore, GGG decided that the ascendancy points are tied to the lab for a reason, if not many reasons. Is it logical to give the largest form of power creep the game has seen into something you already do like act level bosses or does it make more sense to need to go out of your way to earn the points?


Comparing the lab to trading is far reaching at best, while you say they won't touch trading, they already have. If it was up to them, they would find a way to make it more difficult, yet many of the complaints that people have can be solved with an api that reporting actual, factual ingame statuses of players, including giving players an option to not show online for trades would be fine. In terms of making trading easier by automation or mailboxes or anything else, isn't really necessary.

I think GGG realized they made a mistake making items so easily accessible, its one thing if power is accessible and the passive tree gives you a decent amount, its another if items are super easily accessible. I think with 3.0 GGG needs to review how easy it is to actually access power in this game and either balance the game for that power or make that power more rare to achieve (like making various unique items more rare) or having diviners boxes follow the drop restriction rules so that specific maps and div cards farming are as rare as they should be.


There are a number of people I've spoken to that think the drop rates and power accessibility is fine now, because they enjoy making multiple style of builds every league, part of what makes poe great is the ability to do so many different style of builds, but for me poe and ARPG are more about playing a couple of different style of builds and getting those closer to perfect, then it is about mass characters. Lately it seems to be about the later, which isn't enjoyable for me at all. I also think this idea of mass alts leads to people trading more, which should be a good thing, except the want to fill these alts with 1c items in like every slot and cry and bitch when they don't have their way, instead of buying 5c items that are 20% better from people that actually will respond, because its not just a 1c sale.

There are some compounding issues regarding power, trade and accessibility.

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Had some iffy suggestion in this thread I think about making lab and Izzy fully random but split in sections so it stays farmable.

Doesn't really fit the competition idea behind a daily race. I think a fully random lab and izzy would make the encounter more difficult, but we already see people complaining about the difficulty, despite all of the information about the mechanics being posted daily.

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goetzjam wrote:

Doesn't really fit the competition idea behind a daily race. I think a fully random lab and izzy would make the encounter more difficult, but we already see people complaining about the difficulty, despite all of the information about the mechanics being posted daily.

Who cares, races are mostly random except the fixed seed ones, you can get fucked by RNG and you might instawin, it's all part of the package.

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goetzjam wrote:

@sofocle10000

You act as if the lab is the only piece of content that people used to get carries for. I mean people still get second half of act 4 carries, people used to get dom carries, piety carries. Its nothing new to this game, hell it isn't even new to this genre. In d2 people used to get rushes there, boss kills there. In d3 people power level people. These are online multiplayer experiences and while it might be a novel idea to create a scenario in which a player must overcome a challenge, it doesn't fit the idea of making it so people won't play together, unless you are talking about a player driven challenge, like SSF.

Come on goetzjam, they added the Holy Grail of platformer content in an ARPG and they couldn't see that if they want to give it a meaning, they would have to make it feel like a goddamn "Labyrinth" and limit the carries in a way that encourages true party play - with a smaller gap in power creep points, you make them have a closer level too, and reward interaction in a party instead of the current system that leaves a lot to be desired...

I'm not against the carry idea, but with the introduction of Ascendancy and "Labyrinth", they could have improved that aspect and fine tune even more the "Labyrinth" and it's contents, by encouraging skillplay. They didn't, and what's worse, they further exacerbated the "speed meta" with a content that should have reduced it's impact.

You have to see and accept that, just as I and many others accept the bribe and the underwhelming "Labyrinth" as the way to Ascend...

They could still improve on the carry situation, just as they could further improve zerging, balance, the progression post level 90 and so on...

I just want them to reach the true potential of the Ascendancy and "Labyrinth", sooner, instead of later...

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goetzjam wrote:

That "map" or picture also tells you the mechanics in all 3 phases and what sort of weapon he wields, on the same site or the wiki you can find the information regarding what "lieutenants" do or what attacks he does with a "2 handed sword"

Right, that was kind of my point. In that you have to go outside the game to figure out things in the game. It's another one of those things that GGG don't do anything about but let the community design programs so the game itself is playable.

If you didn't have access to all these community related tools. Would PoE be where it is now.. no it wouldn't. Another great example is "We designed our game around trade" but haven't done anything for trade, just piggyback off of poe.trade and collect $1.00 from players.

I am kind of getting off track though, rather stick to more lab specifics.. but conveyance could be better in this game. It's not hand holding, but many things in this game have little to no explanation to how it works or how it works properly.