After thousen of hours and dollars, i now feel like quiting

"

mezmery wrote:

"

Miská wrote:

I think that is also one of the problems of Labyrinth. It's a non-optional time eater. While act 4 can be skipped the labyrinth cannot.

sometimes i dont even believe how bad are most people at this game.

okay.
backtrack trials take 10 min at max for one difficulty.
1st time lab takes 15 min.
so
semi-mandatory 1 hour of game, that is designed for thousand-hour-grind is TIME EATER?
okaaay

You should understand that not everyone can play as good as you or etup or whatever you respect as "pro" poe player.

Also labs not THAT good as you may or not think. If not enchantments and insane unlimited grind for needed helmet no one complain or amount would be lesser.

Btw build also make huge role, not just skill. So if your build suited for lab, that doesn't automatically mean other builds would be same.

"

DalaiLama wrote:

Getting stuck on a fixed trap with a moving trap chewing you up can kill any character. It's like facing Atziri with no movement and no fire resists.

This is actually more doable than the labyrinth with tons of practice. Which is messed-up, given that anyone who reaches the end of Merciless KNOWS that you need movement and capped resists.

...Whereupon Atziri is utterly inconsequential compared to Labyrinth.

"

DalaiLama wrote:

Load up on some staunching flasks for trap bleeding damage - you can leave some monsters alive and refill your Izaro battle flasks later.

Also, life flasks don't help you if you're CI. You should try ascending with a CI character to get a new perspective. (I'm betting almost all players haven't run more than 2 characters through the labyrinth, so there's VERY few who understand how much builds can make it WORSE than the norm)

"

DalaiLama wrote:

Except for dealing with merciless Izaro (that depends on your character build and style/skills, which I can't answer), the Labyrinth's traps really shouldn't be killing you.

Once you add in server-side-lag, yes, they can kill you.

The typical human (including gamers) has a reaction time of 250ms, so getting finer control than that requires pre-planning your actions in the future. If the game suddenly starts and stops without warning, that makes such pre-planning impossible... And relying on reaction time alone WILL get you killed.

"

pandasplaying wrote:

you can overlevel and be tanky enough to speed by traps...

Hahaha, clearly you've never experimented with the traps.

Get more life? The traps do more damage to you. Their damage scales off of a percentage of your maximum HP+ES.

"

pandasplaying wrote:

maybe you should have practiced avoiding traps more and done it more carefully.

Um, no, the game's input system simply doesn't let you reliably do what you want to do.

"

pandasplaying wrote:

also ascendancy classes are not mandatory, they're only an addition that isn't required to experience the rest of the game.

Ascendancy classes are as "not mandatory" as, say, playing a Scion, or running maps, or wearing gear at all... It's a core part of the game.

Any and all arguments that "it's not mandatory" come across the same as "well, you can fully enjoy the game by just standing in Normal Lioneye's Watch all day repeatedly clicking on the NPCs!"

GGG rebalanced the difficulty of the later game to account for the power of ascendancies. Hence, they are assumed to be had in the endgame. This makes them as mandatory as following the expectations that, y'know, you'll actually be wearing equipment.

"

DalaiLama wrote:

I consider myself a real fan of the game, and I don't have any issues with what Ascendancy has brought. Disconnects when you are 2/3 the way through a Labyrinth are annoying as all get out, but so are disconnects in a map. It isn't the new content that is at fault.

Nice false equivalency there.

Disconnect in a map = lose a portal (most of the time) or lose that 5-minute map (the 1% of the time the server craps itself)

Disconnect in the labyrinth = lose ALL OF THE LABYRINTH, which takes as long as several maps. AND it occurs far more often than any disconnect in a map.

Currently, in TWO WEEKS, I've had more disconnects from the labyrinth than I've had in more than TWO YEARS of playing in maps.

Stop trying to pretend they're equal.

"

DalaiLama wrote:

I understand that not everyone likes the new one shot, no recover waypoints and that many do not like the play style adaptations the traps bring during Labyrinth runs. I don't mind them, and actually enjoy them.

"Acquired taste" is a very poor business model.

"

DalaiLama wrote:

In 2 more weeks, GGG should have enough data from playing time and support spent to determine whether they need to tweak Ascendancy or not.

They had enough data in the first 24 hours.

Waiting any longer is just being wishy-washy, demonstrating a lack of decisiveness. And they certainly shouldn't be waiting 5 years; by then, if they don't change direction, the game (and company) WILL be defunct.

"

Catchafire2000 wrote:

If you dont like somethint you vote with your wallet. Likewise, if you like something reward with your wallet.

Simple concept.

Easy for you to say, having sunk a grand+ into the game, to feel smug and satisfied over.

But for a company like GGG, whose entire business model relies on getting FUTURE payments from players in the FUTURE (and has already spent your $1,000) that's a very, very poor concept to rely upon. Downright stupidly suicidal, in fact.

"

DalaiLama wrote:

I can sympathize with your frustration. I'm not sure if any of these will help, but in case they do:

Too much life vs flask or life regen recovery may cause more harm than good when dealing with the traps.

I know you said you play hardcore, but unless that means you will never allow yourself to play sc at all, I would fire up one of your dead characters and practice running the traps in a normal Labyrinth.

Except for facing Izaro, the Labyrinth really isn't that much different in terms of challenge in normal, cruel or merciless.

The one or two (usually) sections with traps that you have to wait for and time, are usually just a very small part of a given lab section. Half the time you can bypass one of them.

Getting stuck on a fixed trap with a moving trap chewing you up can kill any character. It's like facing Atziri with no movement and no fire resists. If you have a long section of traps lined up (again, these are usually rare)-try to time your movement so that if you get stuck it is on a fixed trap with no moving trap that can close in on you.

Load up on some staunching flasks for trap bleeding damage - you can leave some monsters alive and refill your Izaro battle flasks later.

I know that "rarely" on traps isn't acceptable in death terms when you play HC, but with some careful choices and playing, you can eliminate ALL trap deaths in the Labyrinth.

Except for dealing with merciless Izaro (that depends on your character build and style/skills, which I can't answer), the Labyrinth's traps really shouldn't be killing you.

If you were speed running them over and over to get a specific enchant in HC, I can see where an incautious moment could lead to death.

In any case, Good Luck and hope you can find PoE fun again!

Wow, what a wonderful, respectful, thoughtful and helpful post! It's like a breath of fresh air for the thread. Thank you for reminding us that most in the PoE community ARE "wonderful, respectful, thoughtful and helpful"!

"

TreeOfDead wrote:

Btw build also make huge role, not just skill. So if your build suited for lab, that doesn't automatically mean other builds would be same.

guied for a lab
press x
equip brightbeak in main hand
equip aurumvorax in off hand
socket brightbeak with ww+fa+bm
equip silver flask
equip quicksilver flask

YOU HAVE BUILD FOR LAB NOW

"

ACGIFT wrote:

"

DalaiLama wrote:

I understand that not everyone likes the new one shot, no recover waypoints and that many do not like the play style adaptations the traps bring during Labyrinth runs. I don't mind them, and actually enjoy them.

"Acquired taste" is a very poor business model.

I definitely agree with that. PoE core game play is fantastic. I can't stand the labyrinth game play. It's tedious and not fun, even worse, it is so boring and uninteresting that I am playing another game now rather than having to suffer through the labyrinth.

"

ACGIFT wrote:

"

DalaiLama wrote:

In 2 more weeks, GGG should have enough data from playing time and support spent to determine whether they need to tweak Ascendancy or not.

They had enough data in the first 24 hours.

Waiting any longer is just being wishy-washy, demonstrating a lack of decisiveness. And they certainly shouldn't be waiting 5 years; by then, if they don't change direction, the game (and company) WILL be defunct.

To be fair they have been working really hard on trying to fix the bugs and performance issues introduced by the Ascendancy release. I would think that everyone would agree that should be their first priority. They are still working on the memory performance issues and that problem is going to take more time and effort because they have run out of virtual address space in Windows and that will require a major effort to fix.

I can't agree that the game will be defunct if they don't change direction but, I'll probably never play a new character again as long as the labyrinth is required for ascendancy points. I'll guess that they would lose more players than they would gain if they don't change direction but I'm sure that if the player loss was significant enough then they would recognize it and change it eventually before they went "defunct".

In summary, before GGG will change the labyrinth they have to first fix the bugs and performance issues. They probably believe that people leaving earlier in this release than previous releases (see steam charts http://steamcharts.com/app/238960#All) is more because of the bugs and performance problems than the labyrinth game play. So they will wait a bit after that is all fixed before they decide to change anything having to do with the labyrinth.

"

mezmery wrote:

"

Miská wrote:

I think that is also one of the problems of Labyrinth. It's a non-optional time eater. While act 4 can be skipped the labyrinth cannot.

sometimes i dont even believe how bad are most people at this game.

okay.
backtrack trials take 10 min at max for one difficulty.
1st time lab takes 15 min.
so
semi-mandatory 1 hour of game, that is designed for thousand-hour-grind is TIME EATER?
okaaay

Get off your high horse casual. You didn't even understood what i said. So your opinion is irrelevant.

"

Miská wrote:

"

mezmery wrote:

"

Miská wrote:

I think that is also one of the problems of Labyrinth. It's a non-optional time eater. While act 4 can be skipped the labyrinth cannot.

sometimes i dont even believe how bad are most people at this game.

okay.
backtrack trials take 10 min at max for one difficulty.
1st time lab takes 15 min.
so
semi-mandatory 1 hour of game, that is designed for thousand-hour-grind is TIME EATER?
okaaay

Get off your high horse casual. You didn't even understood what i said. So your opinion is irrelevant.

ye, talking straight you named gated a4 "optional" and optional lab - non optional
so you were saying complete bullshit in any terms, if you want so.
also, how many hours you spent at dl leveling another toon 65-78, a4 hater?

"

mezmery wrote:

ye, talking straight you named gated a4 "optional" and optional lab - non optional
so you were saying complete bullshit in any terms, if you want so.
also, how many hours you spent at dl leveling another toon 65-78, a4 hater?

No.

"

Turtledove wrote:

To be fair they have been working really hard on trying to fix the bugs and performance issues introduced by the Ascendancy release. I would think that everyone would agree that should be their first priority. They are still working on the memory performance issues and that problem is going to take more time and effort because they have run out of virtual address space in Windows and that will require a major effort to fix.

The problem is... They've not really given any indication that they're focusing on the right direction. They talk a lot in each patch about "performance increases," but few if any people notice any improvement.

Basically, they focus on tiny band-aids when the problem is in the underlying system, yet GGG has not made any public committment to the overhaul that's necessary.

"

Turtledove wrote:

I can't agree that the game will be defunct if they don't change direction but, I'll probably never play a new character again as long as the labyrinth is required for ascendancy points. I'll guess that they would lose more players than they would gain if they don't change direction but I'm sure that if the player loss was significant enough then they would recognize it and change it eventually before they went "defunct".

It's a lot easier for a company like GGG to go under than you'd think.

Online games aren't the huge money-printers that they used to be back at WoW's peak... Let alone to the degree that people thought they were. Keeping PoE up and running day after day is EXPENSIVE.

On top of that, what we HAVE seen gives a strong indication that, while GGG's monetization scheme DOES allow their ~100 employees to all sleep soundly at night, it DOES net them substantially less money than the more typical "Pay-2-Win Fremium" BS model used by most "Free-to-play" games.

So they're having to spend a LOT of money on operational costs, while taking in a fraction the money that much simpler games are; for a comparison, "Clash of Clans" rakes in $2+ billion a YEAR, yet given the simplistic, server-light gameplay and model it uses, their overall server load for their millions of players... Is likely less than for a SINGLE major PoE realm. And I'm pretty certain that PoE does't even take in $10 million a year.

Once you run like that, it's a much tighter margin, which means that there's less margin for "error." If they lose half their playerbase, they WILL have to close down many of their realms to stay afloat... Which will hurt them further. If such a trend isn't reversed, it, historically, can kill a company within a year; within 5 would be easy.

"

Turtledove wrote:

In summary, before GGG will change the labyrinth they have to first fix the bugs and performance issues. They probably believe that people leaving earlier in this release than previous releases (see steam charts http://steamcharts.com/app/238960#All) is more because of the bugs and performance problems than the labyrinth game play. So they will wait a bit after that is all fixed before they decide to change anything having to do with the labyrinth.

For the initial drop-off, the performance issues were definitely a huge part. But past the first 48-ish hours, the actual reaction to the content is almost likely the main cause of loss.

And there's a huge problem in terms of priority... Contrary to as much as GGG may talk about "fixing the performance..." It's not a quick, easy, or short-term fix... Even if they DID focus all they could on it, it'd take until at least 2.3 before we saw it.

The core issue is that Path of Exile uses a set of homebrewed engines that, for all intents and purposes, are from a previous decade, but being loaded down to handle current graphical and audio demands. As a result, we have a graphical engine that can't handle overdraw to save its life, and an audio engine that freaks out whenever it has to layer the sound of striking more than 2-3 enemies simultaneously.

Part of this is because, boiled-down, it's a case of a bunch of fresh college graduates taking their crack at a big-time project. The actual solution won't be to make some changes to the specific effects or audio pieces, like they've been doing for months. They will need to, if not ENTIRELY scrap and replace the engines, massively overhaul them, replacing entire sections and routines, now that those programmers are now no longer fresh graduates, but several-year industry veterans who've learned what actually works and what doesn't.