Suggestion (updated): One of the biggest gripes with the Labyrinth can be solved by...

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sidtherat wrote:

im one of these that loves current lab implementation and oppose any and all 'make it easy QQ' ideas

however this one is really good. it saves loading times (for some it is a huge deal). saves no value plaza run. does not remove even a tiny bit of the original design. and while being punitive enough (time lost, xp loss, general failure) is not as mean as now you have to look for the entrance again

+1 (ofc all mobs are alive and the loot on the ground is removed - looking at you animate weapon)

I just don't see what it brings to the table. the layout and exits are so easy to memorize for a maze already...lab has very little backtracking for being a labyrinth... virtually impossible to get lost.

not to mention there are clear patterns to procedurally generated parts.

sigh, I remember the days when I had to draw actual state machines for mazes on paper to solve actual mazes in games

for me - it brings nothing as i died total of 3 times in the lab

but i can understand less skilled players frustration with this system. they do not know the real size of this lab. they are unaware that playing slowly and meticously is not the way to do it. let them learn and fail while making the failures less tedious (not less punishing)

and for people with platter hdd's this saves them 2-3 loading times (lab->sarn->plaza->1st floor). it is up to a minute or two of staring at a loading screen

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鬼殺し wrote:

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I feel as though my super-enhanced Exile, with all those skills gems and stat-boosting gear, would bloody well be able to remember where he or she was the past half hour or so. Erasing the minimap makes exploration not a character experience but a player one, and I don't know about you but I don't wear items that boost my intelligence in real life.

On the other hand, I like the idea that the Labyrinth itself is wiping the character's memory when they die. This deliberately puts the experience in the player's hands and so we, not our characters, have to do things like memorise landmarks, pathing, locations of exits.

But since GGG haven't really indicated the Labyrinth is anywhere near that sentient or malicious, I have to put it down to a technical limitation: instances reset very, very quickly in the labyrinth, but they're fixed seeds for the day. That means the layout won't change but everything respawns, and I presume that includes the minimap.

I know, a lot of presumption and guesswork. As is so often the case with GGG, it's all we really have to work with. It's like putting together the jigsaw pieces in the dark with only one candle between us.

On balance, I like your idea. I did suggest to the devs that we need some sort of breadcrumb/thread system, as it is traditional in the history of labyrinths and mazes for the successful (read: intelligent) hero to leave stuff behind to prevent or minimise backtracking. Having the minimap last longer would help a lot there.

Buuuut...I always figure GGG have their reasoning for these things, assuming they could do it either way.

Pardon my late reply.

It seems you generally do not like the idea of the map still being discovered after a player dies when sent back to the entrance of the Labyrinth. If that is the case, then GGG can make it where players who die still get sent back to the entrance of the Labyrinth, yet have the map undiscovered, albeit with the same layout (until it changes when it changes). There is the solution to that, which also does away with having to otherwise reload the Labyrinth map upon death. That to me is a very unnecessary process having to reload the Labyrinth after being kicked out when/if you die.

Conclusively, the overall idea my OP suggests is to, at the very least, make starting off the Labyrinth quicker so it feels less tiresome when you die when sent back to Sarn Encampment.

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Char1983 wrote:

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HeavyMetalGear wrote:

[...]but just about everyone agrees (myself included) that dying in the Labyrinth only to be sent back to town is off the charts terribly annoying where you have to rediscover everything on the map all over again.

I don't.

Also, you can do the lab much faster after you have discovered half of it. The doors to the next rooms stay always in about the same locations, the general layout is the same. So you already got what you are supposedly asking for.

Starting at the beginning of a half-cleared lab? I would just start over. The result would btw be that everyone would complain about all the backtracking.

And it would also not be that easy, because the mobs to refill your flasks between the traps would be missing. Honestly, I think this is a really bad proposed solution (to a problem I do not really see in the first place).

I did say 'just about everyone'. If you are not one of those players, so be it. With that being said, the introduction of my OP is worded in such way to pertain to the general playerbase of PoE, not to only a select few players this issue does not affect.

Furthermore, I think getting kicked out of the lab upon death (only to have to go through the load screen again) is a very unnecessary process vs. what I suggested by sending players back to the entrance of the Labyrinth that does away with the load screen and travel distance prior.

In addition to that, I updated my OP to suggest erasing the player's map exploration upon death, but to still start players off at the entrance of the Labyrinth (and by that I mean start at the location after the first chamber you would otherwise run through).

P.S. Regarding other feedback in this thread saying, "I just don't see what it brings to the table." Reply: My suggestion does bring something to the table to benefit everyone

and... "for me - it brings nothing as i died total of 3 times in the lab" Reply: You cannot speak for everyone just because it was and/or is easy to you...

The entire point of my OP is that the time it takes to restart the Labyrinth upon death can be optimized/improved to benefit everyone regardless of anyone's good or bad gameplay skills.

It's a labyrinth. Supposed to be hard to find your way around. People used (and some still do one would suppose) have hedge mazes. The best ones were supposed to be hard to remember the way out of. Who would want to spend the money to have one made on their property to only do once?

I think it is the player mindset on going in. If you expect to get lost and accept it you might have fun. If you want to find the way out fast and you do, you will feel a sense of satisfaction. If you don't then you will say, "oh well". That is me anyway.

My only complaint with that labyrinth is with ES based chars. That is another matter entirely.

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HeavyMetalGear wrote:

Furthermore, I think getting kicked out of the lab upon death (only to have to go through the load screen again) is a very unnecessary process vs. what I suggested by sending players back to the entrance of the Labyrinth that does away with the load screen and travel distance prior.

It is a necessary process to ensure that you can beat the labyrinth and Izaro deathless in order to ascend. Which was kind of the design goal. I can see why you would want to make it less punishing, but... yeah, well. What I could agree with is checkpoints after the fights, but checkpoints before the fights - no.

However, what does that do to parties? If one party member dies, everyone has to restart from the last checkpoint?

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Char1983 wrote:

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HeavyMetalGear wrote:

However, what does that do to parties? If one party member dies, everyone has to restart from the last checkpoint?

You lock out the ressurect option until the fight is over. At that point, I don't think there is an ideal way to handle people choosing different ressurect options; if one player chooses ressurect in town, they get locked out of the instance until the party leaves. Quite annoying if someone makes a misclick, but hard to come up with good ways to handle it.

As far as the counter arguments as it ruining the integrity of the Labyrinth, you can have a different option that requires deathless playthrough to qualify for the leaderboards. Shouldn't take too much coding to make it work as ultimately you are just changing respawn points based on different game modes.

No one is suggesting that the Izaro fight be made easier or anything. I ultimately realize my limitations on doing Izaro are the glassiness of my build and my own mistake, but there is a difference between asking for nerfs, so I don't have to get better and asking for a shorter iterations on the retry phases, so I can get better.

while I can understand the "single unpaused unbroken deathless run" challenge, it annoys me to no end.
I generally play in a very casual style, going from waypoint to waypoint. it would at least make my life and my issues with the 'rinth much less if we had checkpoints after each Izaro just to be able to log out or not lose the progress on a random disconnect. heck, the checkpoints may even erase on death to keep the "deathless run" challenge. and to prevent alt+f4 rushes, the developers could use the ancient secret art of "character persist in instance for 3 minutes after disconnect" - if you try to alt+f4 out of a tight spot, no dice :)

being a softcore player since the good old D2 days, I'm obviously calling for a "resurrect on last checkpoint" button, though - a slight client derp, a lucky one-shot or a single larger trap clicking mistake should not put me through the whole slog again.

I wish someone would have quoted the original OP because it's very confusing to read this topic now when the OP is talking respawning in the plaza and all the replies seem to be about checkpoints near each boss fight. The edit destroyed the context of all these replies, and I seem to be the first respondent to have read the revised OP.

With regard to new OP, I usually don't try again immediately after a death so the place I want to respawn is in the town. But I am willing to trade my extra load time for your extra load time if its that big of a deal to you, because I only make that transition once and yours is potentially several times.

With regard to checkpoints, I think they can open the door to a lot of logout abuse & zerging that the lab was attempting to resolve, but I'm not categorically against them either. I would be in favor of 1 checkpoint after the first Izaro fight that you can load 1 time. More than that and I feel like the pendulum is shifting away from convenience and toward abuse.

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Char1983 wrote:

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HeavyMetalGear wrote:

Furthermore, I think getting kicked out of the lab upon death (only to have to go through the load screen again) is a very unnecessary process vs. what I suggested by sending players back to the entrance of the Labyrinth that does away with the load screen and travel distance prior.

It is a necessary process to ensure that you can beat the labyrinth and Izaro deathless in order to ascend. Which was kind of the design goal. I can see why you would want to make it less punishing, but... yeah, well. What I could agree with is checkpoints after the fights, but checkpoints before the fights - no.

However, what does that do to parties? If one party member dies, everyone has to restart from the last checkpoint?

Well, yes, if they want to stay together. As it is, if one member dies and they want to stay together, they all have to restart from the beginning...


-VG-