Labyrinth has killed any motivation to make new characters for me.

Personally I wish they had never introduced ascendant classes. Flexibility was one of the trademarks of PoE, and the ascendancy classes seem to send a message that they are going in the opposite direction.

I also think that since they are in the game, they should be based on the storyline, not a "reward" for doing the lab.

What is wrong with this enlargement:
The issue with this arguement is that we do not have a definition for what compiles the normal "game" since it seems that everyone is hinging their definitions of necessary on what that implies. Which is why we are getting drastic variations on both sides of the argument.

In my opinion, "necessary" evolves with a game. It reminds me of a dev blog during WoW's transition from a traditional MMO skill setup (with a bunch of bars with dozens of skills), to a limited set of 5-7 skills (or whatever they have now). they also eliminated their skill tree and you pretty much had one choice every 15 levels or so

Their reason (well one of many they listed)? because as the game evolved, they found that the bulk of the players were choosing specific talents, no matter what the build. they decided that there wasn't a reason to have those skills in the trees since the average player was going to choose them anyways, so they merged most of those into the classes as passives.

so what started as optional choices became automatic and unchangeable. Why? because the game evolved based on what the players were doing. The PLAYERS, over time, established the norm and what was necessary, and blizz responded by adjusting the game to fit this.

Now, I am certainly not saying that PoE should simplify its skill tree (I shudder at the thought, i love the complexity of PoE's passives tree and skill system, it's what compels me to play the game) What I was pointing out was that as a game evolves, you have to take that evolution into consideration when you see the meta-game as a whole.

In all honesty, hitting 100 isn't even "necessary" from a pure technical standpoint. nor is using all your skill points. I could be a player that does PvP only, and has no characters past lvl 30. I could be a casual, and am happy with getting ANY of my toons past 85.

It's not even necessary that I play the game. I could hand my account over to my son and let him play, and hop on once in awhile to watch my currencies grow. or perhaps I spend 95% of my time trading. got my character to their mid 80's and I trade now. people do that.

So what is really necessary? IMO it's changing the game to fit what the playerbase in general does. like Blizzard did. if 95% of the players are taking the Ascendant classes...they are no longer an option really. if 50% are...perhaps they are an option, just a popular one. I have yet to see the numbers, so I can't say. But I can say that most of this argument is because people have different opinions of what "necessary" is.

What I would like to see:
Ascendancy class removed from lab. Added to either Malachi's quest (you don't get squat for the quest anyways, I always thought it was the worst quest in the game), or added as a leveling hieriarchy. at lvl 30 you unlock ascendancy. then you get a point every X levels.

either of those two options would be fine with me. Also the horribad RNG on helm enchants needs to go. perhaps allowing a weighting based on what skill gems are in the helm at the time? no guarantee, but higher chances if you have that skill in the helm that you'll get that enchant. This could work with multiple skill gems. i.e. if you have 4 skill gems in a helm, your chances to get one of those are much higher, but it's sill a tossup. something like that (this is off subject, so I apologize).

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Temjiu wrote:

Personally I ...

That sounds reasonable to me. Another suggestion I've seen is after killing Malichai, if the character hasn't ascended yet for that difficulty then a quest option opens to fight Izaro without the trap junk. At that point, one could go to Act 3 and go through the Labyrinth to ascend or just fight Izaro.

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Pyrokar wrote:

btw - i regularly check profiles of 'lab-lovers' and oh boy most of them are standard-heroes

MFW calls people "standard heroes".



Youre acting like playing Hardcore is harder, it isnt. If hardcore was actually harder then people wouldnt be speed running labyrinth there, and they are. There are clearly people who love labyrinth who play hardcore as well.

The fact that your argument is breaking down to league discrimination is honestly just embarrassing.