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

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EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

Your starting point is that they asked the "right" questions from their perspective as developers. That's an opinion you presented as fact, at which point you played "pin the blame for the dislike and hate" on the *players*, instead of on the ones who created lab.

I'm pinning nothing. The whole point was that this is what they do when they actually want our opinion on something and they started doing it because they have no time for our crap right now. The comments I mentioned are just one of the many forms 'our crap' takes, we were asked directly&nicely to do something and it seems some still can't resist playing a smartass instead. I suspect Chris sometimes regrets not opening a kindergarten instead of a game company.

Anyway, that's what it apparently looks like when they mean business. All this? It's probably here for our own amusement most of the time.

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Phrazz wrote:

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goetzjam wrote:

Where in this post do you see anything about improving it, they want to be able to get the power, essentially without doing anything at all.

I stopped there. This arrogant attitude is totally lost on me. I almost don't see ANYBODY at all wanting the points "essentially without doing nothing". If YOU view "alternatives" as nothing, that's on YOU, no one else.

I've written about improvements several times in this thread, and so have others. If you CHOOSE to ignore that, that's also on you. You're so far into the "this is what we got, deal with it" bubble, that you don't seem able of consider any possibilities what so ever.

It's almost like you think the lab is PERFECT, and the ULTIMATE way of getting the ascendancy points. Every other option in the world, every idea, every rework, is idiotic just because; "this is what we've got, deal with it".

I wonder have the world would look with that attitude.

Considering most of us were offered to get them for free with no effort and want them still changed. I would say the opposite is true.

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raics wrote:

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EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

Your starting point is that they asked the "right" questions from their perspective as developers. That's an opinion you presented as fact, at which point you played "pin the blame for the dislike and hate" on the *players*, instead of on the ones who created lab.

I'm pinning nothing. The whole point was that this is what they do when they actually want our opinion on something and they started doing it because they have no time for our crap right now. The comments I mentioned are just one of the many forms 'our crap' takes, we were asked directly&nicely to do something and it seems some still can't resist playing a smartass instead. I suspect Chris sometimes regrets not opening a kindergarten instead of a game company.

Anyway, that's what it apparently looks like when they mean business. All this? It's probably here for our own amusement most of the time.

I'll put this in a way that will perhaps be easier for you to see why some might prefer to bypass the questions being asked and just say what they think.

There's a pretty good chance that on the phone or in person you've been asked to answer a survey (customer satisfaction, a political issue, ...) where it's clear that the one creating the survey has a particular outcome in mind. And, their goal is to justify what they're doing or planning on doing, rather than to hear your own thoughts or the truth of your experience.

Plenty of people put in that position just go ahead and say whatever they'd prefer to say, regardless of the one asking questions. There's a pretty good chance that you would also fit into that category, from time to time.

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EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

You're not mentioning the larger point, though; a large percentage of responding beta participants don't find lab enjoyable, and in fact dislike or hate it. There wasn't a question posed that specifically addressed that kind of issue directly, though, so many typed in what was most important to them about their experience in lab.

I get why GGG would be squeamish about asking "Do you find lab enjoyable?", though, because the sheer volume of dislike and hate pushed at lab over a sustained period of time pretty much guarantees that they'd get a very large number of "Not so very much" responses.

In the smaller picture, I can understand why GGG would want to get specific feedback on their beta changes to the lab and not get tied up with the overall controversy over the lab.

But in the bigger picture, their refusal to acknowledge the so-called "vocal minority" who fundamentally dislike the lab -- and resent having to play through it for ascendancies -- hasn't served them well.

As one more example, in the development manifesto on the lab they say:

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Much of the feedback we've received since the Labyrinth was added focused on the length and difficulty of the Labyrinth itself, so for the first Labyrinth we are removing some of the areas in the leadup to each fight with Izaro. You will still fight Izaro three times, but the time between each fight will be significantly shorter. This also means that a failed run will generally feel less bad, since you'll be able to regain lost ground more quickly.

It's almost Orwellian to act like the negative feedback on the lab was just about "length and difficulty" while ignoring the much more fundamental complaints from many players.

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EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

If GGG had more interest in actually understanding what players like or dislike about lab, then they could have asked questions relevant for exploring that issue and they probably would have gotten detailed responses.

BS, plain and simple.
Does this thread seem like a huge amount of interesting points about the lab ?
No, it's a huge amount of shit-posts everywhere.

Plus you speak of "if GGG has more interest in actually understanding what players" ....
They probably have collected quite a bit of feedback about that.
But the players that just say "lab is shit", do you think that those have any actual interest in making an effort to trying to understand what's what and why ?
Not really, those are just "I'm playing a game, and I judge that this is not fun and shit content, [cry] [cry] [cry] !!".

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EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

There's a pretty good chance that on the phone or in person you've been asked to answer a survey (customer satisfaction, a political issue, ...) where it's clear that the one creating the survey has a particular outcome in mind. And, their goal is to justify what they're doing or planning on doing, rather than to hear your own thoughts or the truth of your experience.

Plenty of people put in that position just go ahead and say whatever they'd prefer to say, regardless of the one asking questions. There's a pretty good chance that you would also fit into that category, from time to time.

Are you one of those, that would just answer time wasting off-topic sh*t and maybe even insult people that have nothing to do with the question but have to call because of their job ?
That would be pretty obnoxious.

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ShUrley wrote:

But in the bigger picture, their refusal to acknowledge the so-called "vocal minority" who fundamentally dislike the lab -- and resent having to play through it for ascendancies -- hasn't served them well.

How come haven't they "Acknowledged" the minority that is QQing about the lab ?
WHEN will you understand that they know about it, that they are aware about it, and that they might just be FINE with it ??

They said "much of the feedback", and they might have other ways to collect feedback too, as well as other more reliable sources of feedback, who knows ...

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EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

There's a pretty good chance that on the phone or in person you've been asked to answer a survey (customer satisfaction, a political issue, ...) where it's clear that the one creating the survey has a particular outcome in mind. And, their goal is to justify what they're doing or planning on doing, rather than to hear your own thoughts or the truth of your experience.

The equivalent of what they're doing with the lab feedback thread is a company putting up a booth on a food fair with a big banner that says 'help us improve our cookie by answering these questions'. And then people approaching and saying 'your cookie is ass, it should be banned by law and your factory burned, I hate the very idea of it'.

Understand what I'm getting at? They aren't asking those other questions because stopping with the production of that cookie or giving that product slot over to a pudding instead isn't a matter of consideration. They're making a cookie there and they want your feedback on raisins versus chocolate chips, nothing more, if you want to mudsling the cookie be a good sport and do it on one of the 300 other locations on the fair, don't waste their time.

Chocolate chips, by the way, raisins are

So, as the weekly beta report 6 ( thank you Zrevnur, in that other thread ) shows :

- Normal Izaro nerfed ( as all story line bosses later on, kinda ).

- Izaro's buffs will be gradually added to the encounter ( less in cruel, and even less in normal ), as I suggested somewhere here, to make it more consistent with the 10 acts, as a labyrinth gradually more difficult.

- 2 optional treasure keys in side areas all of the time, some Darkshrine changes, to put more incentie to visit the side areas of the lab, which seem like a very good think, and is probably going to satisfy Gibbousmoon to some extent. They also made silver caches more accessible.

- The golden door will have also the keys in the same area ... I guess that it might reduces some remaining crashes for some people ( haven't crashed in the lab for like ages, but hey, others might still crash from time to time ).


( The obvious part : traps are still there, even if normal Izaro won't have them anymore, and the points are still in the lab, of course ).

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raics wrote:

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EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

There's a pretty good chance that on the phone or in person you've been asked to answer a survey (customer satisfaction, a political issue, ...) where it's clear that the one creating the survey has a particular outcome in mind. And, their goal is to justify what they're doing or planning on doing, rather than to hear your own thoughts or the truth of your experience.

The equivalent of what they're doing with the lab feedback thread is a company putting up a booth on a food fair with a big banner that says 'help us improve our cookie by answering these questions'. And then people approaching and saying 'your cookie is ass, it should be banned by law and your factory burned, I hate the very idea of it'.

Understand what I'm getting at? They aren't asking those other questions because stopping with the production of that cookie or giving that product slot over to a pudding instead isn't a matter of consideration. They're making a cookie there and they want your feedback on raisins versus chocolate chips, nothing more, if you want to mudsling the cookie be a good sport and do it on one of the 300 other locations on the fair, don't waste their time.

Chocolate chips, by the way, raisins are

Heh, I like the joke at the end. It's cute. :)

You seem like a fundamentally decent person, which is why you can empathize well with GGG on this. But, you're investing a disproportionate amount of significance in a minor event (ie: a survey) that was pretty much guaranteed to go how it did, given the strongly negative feelings a multitude of players have about lab.

The quote by ShaUrley shows how GGG handles criticism it isn't prepared to address; it essentially pretends that such criticism doesn't exist. That seldom goes well because it's one thing to show a thick skin, which most are fine with seeing, but quite another to feign being deaf about certain concerns, while clearly hearing others.

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EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

But, you're investing a disproportionate amount of significance in a minor event (ie: a survey) that was pretty much guaranteed to go how it did, given the strongly negative feelings a multitude of players have about lab.

Hell, maybe I am, it's hard to say how much of the ginormous amount of daily freeform feedback is getting where it should. Based on their comments and reactions I'm assuming it isn't much, but who knows.

I already mentioned the reason they can't ask those other questions like this. What they did in the thread is voluntary feedback, it's much cheaper and faster than random sample and is very useful if you want to learn specific things when the subject's disposition is not important. For like/dislike I'm afraid you'd have to use the random sample, that's the phone thing you mentioned and it's what they would do if they really wanted to find out what the playerbase thinks about the lab. USA elections were a very good example of this, they used the voluntary survey to try showing that Hillary is winning and random sample would show that the opposite is true. Sure, they did it on purpose because I don't think they hired a total idiot for the campaign but it still shows you need a proper tool if you want real results.

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raics wrote:

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EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

But, you're investing a disproportionate amount of significance in a minor event (ie: a survey) that was pretty much guaranteed to go how it did, given the strongly negative feelings a multitude of players have about lab.

Hell, maybe I am, it's hard to say how much of the ginormous amount of daily freeform feedback is getting where it should. Based on their comments and reactions I'm assuming it isn't much, but who knows.

I already mentioned the reason they can't ask those other questions like this. What they did in the thread is voluntary feedback, it's much cheaper and faster than random sample and is very useful if you want to learn specific things when the subject's disposition is not important. For like/dislike I'm afraid you'd have to use the random sample, that's the phone thing you mentioned and it's what they would do if they really wanted to find out what the playerbase thinks about the lab. USA elections were a very good example of this, they used the voluntary survey to try showing that Hillary is winning and random sample would show that the opposite is true. Sure, they did it on purpose because I don't think they hired a total idiot for the campaign but it still shows you need a proper tool if you want real results.

The problem is that even in that voluntary survey GGG did not asked the right questions. If you look at the questions, it mentions if it was done solo or not, used silver keys or not, silver caches and the level . It lacks critical questions though such as:

''
-What do you think of the current state of the traps in labyrinth?''
-What would you think could be done to improve labyrinth?
-What are your current thoughts on the Itzaro fight phases?''

Those are important questions that should be asked. Most players do lab solo, that is obvious, while some duo it/get carried. Silver caches? Sure, they might make fights easier or might not change much depending on the layout. Loot caches sort of asks ''what do you think of the rewards'', although most players run maps for rewards, not lab, although there are people that run others for currency or some that love the thrill. The question of what level though should have had a sub-layer with ''why are you running at X level?'' because it gives additional information.

Take for instance this example

What level do you finish normal lab at?

-Answer: 45

Now this question

What level do you finish normal lab at?Why?

-answer: 45 Because itzaro does too much damage depending on the layout and traps sometimes deal too much damage.


Right there it makes a huge difference since it gives a reason why it is being run at a higher level then just pointless information and it gives an idea to the team on what might frustrate players in the first place.