[POLLS] Traps: What works, what doesn't, how can GGG fix what's broken?

I think the single biggest contentious issue about the whole expansion is the traps. And part of the problem is a substantial portion of the userbase doesn't seem to understand how they work. So, let's clear that up and try to figure out a way to solve with the problems.

Let's start with establishing how traps do and don't work, and what is and isn't intended. Now, we all know traps are INTENDED to be something you need to dodge. Something you can't tank or ignore. That is not currently the case: with enough regen or flasks compared to other stats, it is currently possible to Leroy Jenkins the traps without ever dying. On the other hand, some builds die very quickly to traps and have nothing they can do about it. The current situation is clearly not balanced, and I think it needs to be, at least, tweaked to balance it.

The current implementation as I understand it, is this: Armour, Evasion and Resistances do not matter. At all. Not even things like Fortify. It's all completely bypassed. Damage is quite simply a direct percentage of your total maximum Life+Energy Shield per second. With no restoration, everyone should die in the same amount of time in contact with a given trap, regardless of level and build. However, the problem is that restoration isn't figured into this at all. Regaining HP/ES from flasks or static regen can overwhelm trap damage, especially if your HP+ES is low, allowing you to ignore the traps. This makes what is normally a staple of Hardcore, getting lots of % Life nodes, actively hurtful against traps, which is part of why you see HC players complaining more vigorously about this expansion. Normal ES also does not regen while in contact in traps and cannot be flasked, putting it at an even worse disadvantage if you're not a Zealot's Oath build - and even then, you need a lot of regen to turn the tables.

This is all heavily complicated by lag and crash issues. Netlag, local lag, so many things can cause the game to freeze up while you're in a trap, getting you killed and ending your run and possibly your character as well. Better FPS/connection/general stability, both client and server, will at least help make traps more acceptable, but I don't think it will be enough by itself. And naturally, in Hardcore especially, unfair unpreventable deaths are simply unacceptable.

So, then, on to the polls. Feel free to explain your Other selection(s) and/or provide an ordered list here on the forums of which options you'd prefer to see. For my part, I'd prefer 3+Any or all of 4, 5 and 6 on the first poll; 2 would at least be more palatable than the current situation, which I consider outrageously broken. On the second poll, I favor 3 unless enough action is taken to bring the risk down to a dull roar (in which case, 2,) along with 4 and/or 5. For the final poll I strictly favor 3, because I don't think anything else will ever meaningfully work. Anything else is a failure.

Let's try and solve these issues constructively: Which ideas do you favor? Do you have ideas I haven't thought of? Let's help GGG shore up the current playercount hemorrhage and make Labyrinth something most players can at least tolerate if not love. Refer to http://steamcharts.com/app/238960#All, notice how sharp the falloff is compared to previous peaks. That is not a good sign as-is.

http://strawpoll.me/7127082 What, if anything, should be done about Labyrinth traps?
http://strawpoll.me/7127114 Should traps and/or labyrinth differ between Softcore and Hardcore?
http://strawpoll.me/7127171 Bonus poll!

Results links:

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TheLastZica wrote:

I think the single biggest contentious issue about the whole expansion is the traps.

Wrong. It's the fact that Ascendancy points are gated behind rinth.

Wow can't believe some people want traps dealing a flat damage. Yeah lets just make them all physical damage so armor characters can pretend they don't exist and evasion and es die from one hit, sounds great.

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Telzen wrote:

Wow can't believe some people want traps dealing a flat damage. Yeah lets just make them all physical damage so armor characters can pretend they don't exist and evasion and es die from one hit, sounds great.

I mean if evasion and ES actually died from one hit (less then half a second), armor would make you only last like 2 seconds tops.

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Telzen wrote:

Wow can't believe some people want traps dealing a flat damage. Yeah lets just make them all physical damage so armor characters can pretend they don't exist and evasion and es die from one hit, sounds great.

You do realize the current situation is quite literally no better with regard to, for instance, vanilla ES builds compared to life regen builds, right? Something obviously needs to change. If you have a better idea, feel free to share.

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TheLastZica wrote:

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Telzen wrote:

Wow can't believe some people want traps dealing a flat damage. Yeah lets just make them all physical damage so armor characters can pretend they don't exist and evasion and es die from one hit, sounds great.

You do realize the current situation is quite literally no better with regard to, for instance, vanilla ES builds compared to life regen builds, right? Something obviously needs to change. If you have a better idea, feel free to share.

ES is fine as long as you don't keep hitting traps one after the other, especially if you have some ES regen nodes. Percent damage is the only real way to make it balanced.

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Telzen wrote:

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TheLastZica wrote:

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Telzen wrote:

Wow can't believe some people want traps dealing a flat damage. Yeah lets just make them all physical damage so armor characters can pretend they don't exist and evasion and es die from one hit, sounds great.

You do realize the current situation is quite literally no better with regard to, for instance, vanilla ES builds compared to life regen builds, right? Something obviously needs to change. If you have a better idea, feel free to share.

ES is fine as long as you don't keep hitting traps one after the other, especially if you have some ES regen nodes. Percent damage is the only real way to make it balanced.

Yeah my CI char doesn't have any issues. And to be fair, I char with high HP shouldn't have issues too. Panicked Flasks still recover 1.8k HP or something like this, and have 3 uses, so even high HP chars shouldn't have issues.

The only ones that might get hurt by traps a bit more are Guardians that are Lowlife and have above average HP to convert them into armor. However they could just deactive some auras to benefit from Flasks.

It should also be noted that no trap can actually kill you on itself by just stepping on them or moving through them, with the exception of the burning floor. If you move throw a saw blade, spiky rotating pillar or those discs you cannot die and a single hit from a spiky trap won't kill you either. So most traps can be bypassed by simple moving over them, without actually looking at the traps, since you take so little damage by passing a sawblade or something similar that they are not really threadful.

I actually feel that this implementation is the one that is the best they could do. They are not really dangerous for even the chars that are not well suited for them (like CI chars, which have below average movespeed and cannot use flasks) and are actually easy to pass by chars that have those benefits of being able to utilize flasks and higher movespeed. Since at least LW and Flamedash is avaible to any character there is always an option to partially skip some trap setups.

A flat damage amount would simply mean that chars would either be able to just sit in traps all day or if they are balanced around those 8k+ HP/ES chars that those with less would just die instantly if they come in contact with a trap.

What they maybe should look into is a method to decect heavy lag spikes. A player usually can only cut his connection after he runs into a troublesome situation and you can't really simulate lag spikes without terminating your connection. So basically having a lag spike detector in the player to server communication might be something to look into. If thats possible and allows HC to get a pass on clearly unavoidable deaths it might be a reasonable thing to do. They can still Alt+F4 anyway and they would still have to redo the labyrinth, but I noticed that exspecially on burning ground a lagspike can be really tough, all the other traps just move through you without much damage but the burning ground just kills you, even though it is the trap that is the easiest to avoid under normal circumstances.

Quiz 1: What should be done about traps?
#3 for sure. I find it quite silly that in a game revolving around levels and gear GGG would turn around and create content where those things are irrelevant in the best-case scenario.
Though I believe that is all that is needed, were something else to done in addition I would prefer #6, #4, then #5 in order.
Alternatively to the above, 2 or 7 would also solve the problem. But they solve it in the worst ways. with #2 everything is fair and therefore better than the status quo, but would only increase the number of complaints. #7 is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. Tons of developer time and resources, not to mention marketing, spent on a large amount of content just getting thrown out.

Quiz 2: Should traps and/or labyrinth differ between Softcore and Hardcore?
Voted #4 because a more stable game is always a good thing, even though it isn't relevant to the question.
For actual answers, as long as it isn't #3 I don't care. Hardcore players, whether the kind that "can't have fun without risk" or the kind that just wants to feed their ego, should not be asking for an easier game than softcore. The very idea is ludicrous and counter-productive.

Quiz 3: Player vs. Player in Path of Exile?
Abstain from voting. I have zero interest in the topic.

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Emphasy wrote:

It should also be noted that no trap can actually kill you on itself by just stepping on them or moving through them, with the exception of the burning floor. If you move throw a saw blade, spiky rotating pillar or those discs you cannot die and a single hit from a spiky trap won't kill you either. So most traps can be bypassed by simple moving over them, without actually looking at the traps, since you take so little damage by passing a sawblade or something similar that they are not really threadful.

I have to be misunderstanding this paragraph. You can't seriously be saying that traps cannot kill you. What do you actually mean?

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I have to be misunderstanding this paragraph. You can't seriously be saying that traps cannot kill you. What do you actually mean?

Well there are different kind of traps.

1. Moving traps

There are sawblades, that move along a direct line. There are those rotating pillars that move along rails and there are rotating discs that move along marked paths on the floor (and sometimes the levitate). All those 3 traps can pass through you without killing you if you just stand still, although you take even less damage if you move through them.

2. Traps that hit a certain location

There are these giant cleavers that swing at a spot marked with a crack in the floor and there are spike traps. These two traps don't kill you with a hit either. The spike traps are a bit tricky, since you should stop moving if you are hit by them, you can't move anyway but I sometimes feel if I try to move on top of them, when they did hit me I take more damage, still not enough to kill me, but its unnecessary. The big cleavers to cause bleeding so it is recommended to remove that... but actually it is really hard to get hit by them and they seem to do the most damage.

3. Poison Darts

Again just moving through them is enough. Sometimes they should along a path you have to walk but sticking to the left or right makes them usually miss anyway (not sure if the character size stat matters here). Alone they are no big thread, but they can be annoying if paired with some other traps, but they always have clearly noticable safespots you can recover in (or just LW from on to the next).

All of those traps are not really dangerous for short lag spikes (and I'm speaking of short, not more than a second). They will kill you if you didn't recover from a recent hit, but if you usually avoid the traps and just get hit during a lagspike they won't kill you. If you have longer lagspikes they might be able to kill you (they need some time till the next hit occurs, but it can be troublesome), however in that case just regular mobs might be dangerous as well.

So what I meant was that those traps, will not be lethal in one trap-cycle or one hit, if you keep standing there and the sawblade moves through you again and again and again they will of course kill you, a single hit though will not and the layout is very fair in terms of allowing recovery for ES based chars or getting enough potion charges for life based chars. Most of them also allow just regenerating your HP if you have any form of regeneration.

4. Burning ground

That one just kills you if you have a lag spike for one second you will take one second damage on the floor and it does kill you quite quickly. It is easy to crossover but really unforgiving if you lag out on top of it.

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Emphasy wrote:

So what I meant was that those traps, will not be lethal in one trap-cycle or one hit

That was the important bit I missed, makes a lot more sense now. Thank you for the in-depth clarification.