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

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vio wrote:

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Turtledove wrote:

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vio wrote:

we can't win this cause the other side has no real argument.

Actually you speak the exact truth. There is no argument, just an opinion that xxx are boring not fun.

what i find unfair, is, that the original ascendancy complaints had real arguments like certain builds couldn't do it, some even had to respec to do lab and traps hit like a truck, ggg fixed these issues and now the lab got boring cause players just speed run it.

the frustration of seeing your char die after you spent like 10 minutes running the areas has been game's appeal and what made it different to other games. dps didn't help but, now i don't even have to stop and wait for the lava to go away anymore.

lab got boring thanks to your effort and now you just use that as a argument against it.

well played

Those were always two separate criticisms, vio.

1. Lab is too hard.
2. Lab is boring.

The two are not mutually exclusive, and many people who agreed with one of those statements did not agree with the other.

The reasons people find it boring today are, for many, the same reasons people found it boring back when traps still hit like a truck.

It is specious to combine the two as you have done here. This idea that "boring" and "difficult" cannot go together in the same content is quite simply wrong.

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gibbousmoon wrote:

The two are not mutually exclusive, and many people who agreed with one of those statements did not agree with the other.

what if it came from the very same people?

but yes, even then they could have improved in skill so it became boring as you learn about most trap layouts pretty fast and know how to handle them.

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vio wrote:

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gibbousmoon wrote:

The two are not mutually exclusive, and many people who agreed with one of those statements did not agree with the other.

what if it came from the very same people?

but yes, even then they could have improved in skill so it became boring as you learn about most trap layouts pretty fast and know how to handle them.

You're still conflating statements inappropriately.

"Difficult = interesting."
"Easy = boring."

These statements are simplistic and incorrect, even if they are sometimes closely correlated.

Correlation and causation are not the same thing.

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gibbousmoon wrote:

The reasons people find it boring today are, for many, the same reasons people found it boring back when traps still hit like a truck.

When did they reduce trap dmg? It's still percentage base except for for Ulab ones. Isn't it?

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Pyrokar wrote:

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gibbousmoon wrote:

The reasons people find it boring today are, for many, the same reasons people found it boring back when traps still hit like a truck.

When did they reduce trap dmg? It's still percentage base except for for Ulab ones. Isn't it?

that was just out of memory. looks like the percentage is still the same.

what comes closest is additional mitigations like the pantheon stuff ggg improving trap layouts to be less tricky.

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vio wrote:

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Turtledove wrote:

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vio wrote:

we can't win this cause the other side has no real argument.

Actually you speak the exact truth. There is no argument, just an opinion that xxx are boring not fun.

what i find unfair, is, that the original ascendancy complaints had real arguments like certain builds couldn't do it, some even had to respec to do lab and traps hit like a truck, ggg fixed these issues and now the lab got boring cause players just speed run it.

the frustration of seeing your char die after you spent like 10 minutes running the areas has been game's appeal and what made it different to other games. dps didn't help but, now i don't even have to stop and wait for the lava to go away anymore.

lab got boring thanks to your effort and now you just use that as a argument against it.

well played

I'm with Gibbousmoon on this.

Over time I've gotten more experienced at trials / lab and completion is much quicker and easier. That hasn't made time spent in lab / trials any less boring.

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EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

Over time I've gotten more experienced at trials / lab and completion is much quicker and easier. That hasn't made time spent in lab / trials any less boring.

There is no way that boredom and time are not related at all.
I'm not saying that this relation is everything of course, but it definitely is related, so the less time you spend in there ...

Power creep also has been helping speeding things up, like ... a lot.

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EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

I'm with Gibbousmoon on this.

Over time I've gotten more experienced at trials / lab and completion is much quicker and easier. That hasn't made time spent in lab / trials any less boring.

Gibbousmoon is like a breath of fresh air isn't he?

It's gotten quicker and easier but not less boring as you note. The not fun factor has improved slightly since less time in there is a factor as Fruz points out.

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Turtledove wrote:

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EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

I'm with Gibbousmoon on this.

Over time I've gotten more experienced at trials / lab and completion is much quicker and easier. That hasn't made time spent in lab / trials any less boring.

Gibbousmoon is like a breath of fresh air isn't he?

It's gotten quicker and easier but not less boring as you note. The not fun factor has improved slightly since less time in there is a factor as Fruz points out.

I agree that Gibbousmoon is always a breath of fresh air. And his posts are always thoughtful.

Regarding boredom and lab, I find that when I'm bored for a longer period of time some fraction of my boredom turns into frustration. As my feeling of frustration grows my "room" for feeling bored shrinks. Thus, my experience is that being in lab / trials for a shorter period of time and finding that experience easier to navigate means that I find myself more bored while I'm in lab and I experience less frustration.

Overall I prefer the current state of affairs; I'd rather be more bored for a shorter period of time instead of having boredom being converted into frustration if a lab run ends up going longer and/or disconnects enter the picture.

Naturally, I'm only speaking for myself. YMMV.

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Pyrokar wrote:

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gibbousmoon wrote:

The reasons people find it boring today are, for many, the same reasons people found it boring back when traps still hit like a truck.

When did they reduce trap dmg? It's still percentage base except for for Ulab ones. Isn't it?

If I remember correctly, they reduced the damage to ES quite a bit (halved it?). I think they nerfed Izaro as well. Then again, as vio just implied, power creep will definitely color our perceptions.

I'm still of the mind that the biggest improvement GGG made to the Labyrinth was to randomize more of the reward locations. The net effect of this change was to reward exploration more--or punish it far less, if you're a "half-empty" kind of person.

Rewarding exploration more than the use of online maphack-like tools (poelab, mostly)--and GGG is not there yet, but the above change nudged the Lab slightly closer--is important to emphasizing the journey, rather than the destination.

When the destination (extrinsic rewards: loot, enchantments) is more important than the journey (intrinsic rewards: enjoyable gameplay), any content will necessarily become nothing more than a grind; which, let's face it, many of us find boring.

This is why I keep pushing for heavier randomization of the Labyrinth (a reset of its layout every single run would be ideal), alongside a slight rebalance of the included extrinsic rewards, since the feedback loop of kill-and-get-loot is evidence that intrinsic and extrinsic rewards are quite closely linked for almost all ARPG players. GGG just needs to tighten up that link a bit more, and the status quo of randomization only once per day prevents them doing that.