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

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Professor_Robot wrote:

No, I'm asking you theoretically if the lab was never thought of and the ascendancy points still existed, would there be fair possibilities to gate those points, or is Lab the only fair way to gate the points?

If I remember right, the concept of lab came first and then they tied ascendancies to it instead of releasing it separately because they needed something to gate them. So, I don't think they would release ascendancies without some highly involved quest to earn them. Honestly, I think we got off lightly with the lab, imagine if it was a random prophecy - first two weeks it's 100c to do it when it suits you, please.

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raics wrote:

If I remember right, the concept of lab came first and then they tied ascendancies to it instead of releasing it separately because they needed something to gate them.

That's aside from the point. My point is if they hadn't gated it behind Lab, it would have been behind something else, so Lab is not the only conceivably fair option. The person I was replying to was saying they thought any other ideas were free hand outs.

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raics wrote:

So, I don't think they would release ascendancies without some highly involved quest to earn them.

That's all I'm asking for, because there are many more fun POE relevant options for that which would not share as many extra connection problems as the lab.

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Professor_Robot wrote:

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Shovelcut wrote:

IIRC it didn't exist when the ascendancy points were conceived yet they tied it to that content anyway. It fits thematically.

No, I'm asking you theoretically if the lab was never thought of and the ascendancy points still existed, would there be other fair possibilities to gate those points, or is Lab the only conceivably fair way to gate the points?

Well, of course it's possible.

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Professor_Robot wrote:

Anything else would be a hand out?

Of course it wouldn't be a handout if that's how it was released. But after having it for over a year, changing it to some of the suggestions would be a handout IMO.

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Professor_Robot wrote:

They are nothing more than extra powerful passive skill points, and nothing about them aside from having to complete the lab to allocate them, is tied to the "theme" of the lab.

Then by removing the points they would no longer be "ascendancy points" since you're not proving your worthiness to Izaro and The Goddess. You're basically undoing an entire expansion. There is a theme to the labyrinth and ascendancy points whether you've noticed it or not though. :)

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Professor_Robot wrote:

That's aside from the point. My point is if they hadn't gated it behind Lab, it would have been behind something else, so Lab is not the only conceivably fair option.

Sure isn't, but that's what we ended up with, for better or worse. If they chose something else it would be tied to the points now and though I'm not against the very idea of an equally involving alternative that makes sense, I'm against them wasting time on one as long as they have a working system in place already. Sure, it isn't ideal but it does the job, which is somewhat of a recurring theme in PoE, we got a whole bunch of things like that.

Small tweaks and improvements are feasible, that's what we can realistically expect of them, but a full blown alternative is expecting too much.

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raics wrote:

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Professor_Robot wrote:

That's aside from the point. My point is if they hadn't gated it behind Lab, it would have been behind something else, so Lab is not the only conceivably fair option.

Sure isn't, but that's what we ended up with, for better or worse. If they chose something else it would be tied to the points now and though I'm not against the very idea of an equally involving alternative that makes sense, I'm against them wasting time on one as long as they have a working system in place already. Sure, it isn't ideal but it does the job, which is somewhat of a recurring theme in PoE, we got a whole bunch of things like that.

Small tweaks and improvements are feasible, that's what we can realistically expect of them, but a full blown alternative is expecting too much.

If it was broken, it would be a grounded expectation. It's not broken, just disliked. Well, if we had to change everything that's disliked in the world, would there be anything left to like?

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raics wrote:

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Turtledove wrote:

You were the one criticizing Professor_Robot for guessing at a theoretical situation ratio. Yet here you are stating your totally unfounded assertions as if you know that "significant portion of complainers fall into the l2p category".

Technically, the previous one was indeed a hypothetical assumption because we haven't been in a situation where points are no longer gated, he can't possibly know if that would cause any players to quit or not. If my memory serves right, less people complained about the idea of the lab when were were shown the video than when we actually got our hands on it, maybe more people would complain about free points than we expect, eh?

The other one was but an observation of the current state, a fair bit of lab complaints are indeed somewhat misinformed, you need a build like this, you need this level, you need this much defenses or you get oneshot no matter what, I absolutely need crazy move speed, movement skills, a ton of phys mitigation, I have to pay some basement slug to do it for me and so on. It's really nothing a bit of practice won't fix, hell, even the fairly valid complaint about trap gauntlets you can't fully see because there aren't really that many trap patterns, if you've seen it a few times you'll recognize it.
Won't say the number is 'significant' but I've seen it often enough to acknowledge it's a thing.

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The extended trap gauntlets often present in lab provide an out-of-genre experience, which makes unfamiliarity a given for many, rather than some kind of failing on the part of players. Telling others to "git gud" at some game genre other than an ARPG to players who showed up to play an ARPG is quite a thing to do. I don't see how that makes sense.

Even if lab didn't have trap gauntlets at all, the length of the maze and it's once-or-fail mechanic in an online-only game, plus the annoyingly numerous and lengthy set of trials run on a per-character basis pretty much assure that lab would remain disliked by many.

Lore is a mess for lab, as well; the motivations of Chitus to set up a trap-filled maze to find an heir basically has to boil down to "He had become too batshit crazy to pick a more functional way of finding somebody to do a job he should know how to do, given his years of experience". Also, you supposedly "ascend" four times to receive your prestige class skills in an incremental way from a Goddess riding on some skeleton's shoulders. In contrast, you ascend once to Oriath at the end of act 4 to fight Gods directly and obtain a much smaller sampling of their power. Then you shift to maps and add to the collection of lesser abilities you obtained in Oriath, with no spillover to your prestige class skills, or vice versa.

Say what?

As for me, before lab POE was my favorite game since open beta and one of my top five favorite games that I had ever played. After lab, POE has mostly been a fourth option when I'm figuring out which game to play for an evening. The latest expansion has offered enough novelty, together with my new computer and my soon-to-be upgraded internet connection, to offer me a chance to play it as more or less a new game. And, it has been fun overall. Still, POE is no longer in my all time top ten and I'll lose interest in it entirely much faster than I would have, in the absence of lab. Lots of players have delivered a broadly similar message in their negative feedback about lab.

Overall, lab has the look and feel of somebody's not very well thought through vanity project, especially when you consider it's isolated presence in POE and not in other ARPGs; nobody seems eager to repeat GGG's example with lab.

So you base your opinion on an entire game on content that makes up less than 5% of the game as a whole and 0% of that in the late game that you end up playing mostly?

Okay, that's enough information for me. Thanks.

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EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

The extended trap gauntlets often present in lab provide an out-of-genre experience, which makes unfamiliarity a given for many, rather than some kind of failing on the part of players. Telling others to "git gud" at some game genre other than an ARPG to players who showed up to play an ARPG is quite a thing to do. I don't see how that makes sense.

Sry, just checked the wiki articles about ARPGs or Action RPGs.
None of them specify that an ARPG has to be a game where you only slaughter monsters without any other activities...
Where is this definition y'all are talking about?

I don't even understand the problem ... lab has lots of monsters, cool Boss fights, fantastic rewards. What's not to like?
(except when you disconnect and have to start over, gladly i don't do that anymore ...)

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Antaiseito wrote:

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EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

The extended trap gauntlets often present in lab provide an out-of-genre experience, which makes unfamiliarity a given for many, rather than some kind of failing on the part of players. Telling others to "git gud" at some game genre other than an ARPG to players who showed up to play an ARPG is quite a thing to do. I don't see how that makes sense.

Sry, just checked the wiki articles about ARPGs or Action RPGs.
None of them specify that an ARPG has to be a game where you only slaughter monsters without any other activities...
Where is this definition y'all are talking about?

I don't even understand the problem ... lab has lots of monsters, cool Boss fights, fantastic rewards. What's not to like?
(except when you disconnect and have to start over, gladly i don't do that anymore ...)

You're being obtuse by suggesting the ARPG genre has no boundaries. Lab is obviously and by design different from usual ARPG gameplay and it's the equivalent of rules lawyering to argue otherwise.

Don't take my word for it about the connection between lab and other game genres, though. Instead, take the word of GGG developers, who explicitly compared the experience of lab to platform games in their internal discussions.