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

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Fruz wrote:

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Turtledove wrote:

- Any others?

Obviously, what we have been saying for pages (conveniently trying to avoid reading half of those pages' content, or conveniently trying to forget it there, heh ? ):
- people disliking something are much, much more likely to come and voice their opinion here (then people that do not dislike it of course, or could not be bothered). And this would appear to be a rough estimate of a 1/25th of the playerbase only.

This alone, makes your "estimate" completely invalid.

It is an extremely rare exception for people to come to the forum and use their first post ever to the forum to voice their dislike of labyrinth. In hundreds of cases it has only happened once or twice. Captain Obvious was pushing a not so obvious thing after all was he? :-)

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raics wrote:

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Phrazz wrote:

We wouldn't be here, if we didn't like farming. I could've farmed the end of the world for the AP. They could've been implemented on the Atlas is some way, just like the Shaper's Orbs. But it's a little late for that now, I guess.

We wouldn't be here, if we didn't like boss fights. They could've developed some kind of "Arena mode", letting you fight against several bosses in the arena, letting you earn your points. But it's a little late for that now, I guess

Right, that's pretty much a no-brainer. Honestly, not sure if I want them to learn from this whole lab situation or not, if there's a lesson in it to learn it would be that PoE playerbase in the end of ends just wants a spoonful more of the same. Who knows, if they knew that from the start maybe this would be just a carbon copy of D2 with prettier graphics.

And maybe they did learn, Atlas was playing it as safe as it can possibly get and it seems the Pantheon system isn't trying anything revolutionary either.

When is anything really new done, though?

Lab is a mashup of "trial by combat" (to decide the next king) and the "mad wizard's tower" (which gates untold power behind a maze, minions, puzzles, and traps). The notion of ascension is also not exactly new.

The trial by combat part of lab fits well inside an ARPG. It's the best part of lab. The mad wizard's tower fits poorly in POE for many reasons, including but not limited to mediocre execution and ridiculous lore.

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EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

When is anything really new done, though?

Nowadays? Very rarely, it takes something like a chubby Korean dude doing a pony riding impression to turn people's heads.

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raics wrote:

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EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

When is anything really new done, though?

Nowadays? Very rarely, it takes something like a chubby Korean dude doing a pony riding impression to turn people's heads.

I think I found your guy!



I'm not certain I view him as the pinnacle of creativity in any field of entertainment, but to each their own.

Back on topic, if something isn't terribly creative, then how bold can it really be?

I get a sense that some of the leads in GGG had some very good experiences when platform gaming, as you can see that sensibility coming through in act 4 (not coincidentally, the least liked act by common consensus), as well as lab.

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EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

I'm not certain I view him as the pinnacle of creativity in any field of entertainment

My point exactly, sometimes it's enough to try something else and pull a Remy Gaillard.

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Regulator wrote:

And again I'm putting the quote from "Fundamentals of Game Design" that many willfully ignored :

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You can't make a game that appeal's to action fans, to strategy fans and fans of management simulations by combining Kung Fu, chess and Monopoly- the result would be a mess that appeals to none of them. On the other hand you can include a storyline in a fighting game, so long as the storyline doesn't interfere with the gameplay. The storyline adds depth to the game without driving away its key-market of fighting enthusiasts, and it might attract the interest of who otherwise wouldn't pay any attention to a fighting game

#FeelsLabMan

Did the guy that said this even try kung fu-chess-monopoly? I bet he couldn't even pass the first level or he took too long to do it, or else he'd find it "not a mess".

Kung fu-chess-monopoly is awesome!

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Regulator wrote:

And again I'm putting the quote from "Fundamentals of Game Design" that many willfully ignored :

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You can't make a game that appeal's to action fans, to strategy fans and fans of management simulations by combining Kung Fu, chess and Monopoly- the result would be a mess that appeals to none of them. On the other hand you can include a storyline in a fighting game, so long as the storyline doesn't interfere with the gameplay. The storyline adds depth to the game without driving away its key-market of fighting enthusiasts, and it might attract the interest of who otherwise wouldn't pay any attention to a fighting game

It got ignored because it's a positively jurassic way of thinking, DotA is a good example and it started an entire subgenre. Or a first person looter like Borderlands, I'm no huge fan of shooters and I've played the stuffing out of all three games in the series.

If the game is done well, it will have a good chance to draw on the outliers from multiple camps so it's usually enough even if it can't quite hit the most hardcore crowd, which is what the quoted part is about. The trouble with genre-spanning games is they're harder to get right, you don't have a plethora of older titles to draw upon and don't have as good of an idea of how players will react to something. Yeah, the risk is higher so it's harder to persuade the investors to put serious money behind such projects and they often end up as a low budget and consequently low effort titles.

It's probably the future of gaming, only a matter of time before tired old formulas become a hard sell and genre restrictions lose their meaning.

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raics wrote:

If the game is done well, it will have a good chance to draw on the outliers from multiple camps so it's usually enough even if it can't quite hit the most hardcore crowd, which is what the quoted part is about.

I agree here. If an idea is good and is executed well, a game can thrive on elements from several "genres". You bring up an example; MOBA, while we can also name Battle Royale games, which has also made it as a completely new subgenre. And the keys here, are the two bold out words; A good idea done well.

And by all means, if GGG still believes that the lab was a good idea, and was executed well, and sit on numbers, graphs and statistics that shows that the community shares their view, share them. Let us know that it was a success. Let us see that "we" are a minority. Because I am a human being, with empathy, and can swallow a ton of camels if it's for the greater good.

I'm just having a hard time believing, experiencing and seeing that the lab is "vastly liked". And no, it's not based on this thread :)

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Phrazz wrote:

I'm just having a hard time believing, experiencing and seeing that the lab is "vastly liked".

Of course not, but I don't think it's as "vastly hated" as some claim, it has been portrayed as PoE enemy number one and the game has bigger issues than that. If 25% like it, 25% hate it and 50% are somewhere in between that's probably good enough for gatekeeper content. I don't think many players truly enjoy hunting for every single map boss in atlas all over again every league to rack up the bonus, but hey, the reward is well worth the time spent and it isn't TOO much of a hassle.

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raics wrote:

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Phrazz wrote:

I'm just having a hard time believing, experiencing and seeing that the lab is "vastly liked".

Of course not, but I don't think it's as "vastly hated" as some claim, it has been portrayed as PoE enemy number one and the game has bigger issues than that. If 25% like it, 25% hate it and 50% are somewhere in between that's probably good enough for gatekeeper content. I don't think many players truly enjoy hunting for every single map boss in atlas all over again every league to rack up the bonus, but hey, the reward is well worth the time spent and it isn't TOO much of a hassle.

The atlas thing is also the core gameplay of PoE, not experimental stuff.

In FFX, gaining the ultimate weapons that could break the damage limit per hit, were each gated behind mini-games. I hated dodging lightning strikes, Blitzball..., dodging butterflies along a nearly 2-dimensional path where you couldn't easily see where on the path the butterflies were, dodging birds in a chocobo race, ... but then you had Yuna and Auron's capture monsters with hunting weapons and Yuna's defeat summoned monsters in battles... these were fun.

Did I do the Celestial weapon quests? Yes. Did I like them all? A big no. In fact, on replays of the game, I simply crafted my own "break damage limit" weapons instead of obtaining the respective celestial weapons with mini-games I hated, even though that was a much more challenging task to collect the ingredients.