Has any more consideration been given to Lab? (it's terrible)

My characters are far overleveled, nothing in Lab presents a threat. Yet, more often than not I end up dying to lag (desynching back to a trap I'm not near), or DC and losing all progress. Lockstep is not an option for a lot of the players such as myself (in central Canada) who don't have a server within 2000 miles. I've even misclicked a logout at the entrance to final stage boss... Like it is just so awful, and you can't re-enter...

I personal feel that GGG does not even have close to the server availability or reliability to force us to endure mechanics such as these. Not even remotely close. It is such a horrible experience for someone not located near a server, and yet it is not only mandatory, it is pushed upon us repeatedly (minimum 18 trials and 3 labs) and probably ALOT more if you ever plan to get useful enchants on your gear. This is just the worst, it makes me sad they wasted so much resources making this awful content and force us to suffer through it.

I'd rather go study and work on my education than be forced through lab, which should tell you something. It feels like terrible work.

EDIT: before anyone tries to tell me Lab is not mandatory, it is no more mandatory than normal hillock. If you want to develop your character, it's mandatory.

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trav_dawg wrote:

I'd rather go study and work on my education than be forced through lab, which should tell you something.

It does.

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trav_dawg wrote:

before anyone tries to tell me Lab is not mandatory, it is no less mandatory than merciless piety. If you want to fully develop your character, it's mandatory.

FTFY

Haha thanks Scrotie

I'd love lab a lot more if I didn't get disconnected every time I try to enter the area with the shooting pedestals.

Well, for reals, it's not as mandatory as Normal Hillock. You can kill Utziri without Ascending if desired (or kill Utziri without killing Merc Piety). I just figure I'd cut to the chase of how important it feels rather than have another multi-page semantics debate about the meaning of "mandatory," which unfortunately is a rather objective word and not well suited to use in matters of opinion.

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trav_dawg wrote:

EDIT: before anyone tries to tell me Lab is not mandatory, it is no more mandatory than normal hillock. If you want to develop your character, it's mandatory.

Never tried, but can you enter Lioneye's watch without killing Hillock? If not, well...

Anyways, the next server to me is, according to Google Maps, 2597 km away. Pretty sure the routing makes things worse. I play on lockstep. I also play on lockstep if playing on the Washington D.C. server, which according to Google Maps is 8070 km away (pretty sure that is more than 2000 miles). What is your latency?

I've disconnected from the lab several times, but honestly, it is not that bad. I cannot play it at certain times of the day, but if I can play it, I do enjoy it. The technical issues should be fixed, but the "hardcore" aspect of it should not be removed.

I do hope they are working on their servers as well as the client, to make it more stable, though.

And clicking on logout before the final fight? Well, don't click on logout...

The lab is not mandatory .

I find the arguments that the lab is not mandatory to be ridiculous. What do you consider mandatory? Skill point quests aren't technically mandatory, but it's foolish not to do them since you get a huge boost from doing so. Getting to the point you can map isn't technically mandatory, since you can just farm ledge forever.

What you do in POE is build characters. Ascending completely defines many characters, while others just gain huge amounts of power. If anything in a game about building characters that increased in power can be considered mandatory, the lab is clearly in that category.

Regardless, even if you strongly believe that the lab is not mandatory and refuse to change your mind, how could that possibly excuse bad design choices that make it unfun for a large number of players? Whether or not it's mandatory is utterly irrelevant. You shouldn't care whether or not it's mandatory, because it doesn't matter whether or not it's mandatory. Whatever else it is, what we should really care about is whether or not it's good.

as there is no specific goal in this game - there cannot be anything 'mandatory' or not

Labyrinth is a content. Content with rewards. Powerful ones (albeit not really gamechanging as the game was a snoozefest without these ascendancy points). GGG decided that this reward is available to people that complete the Lab (as the story tells: are worthy).

You like it - you do it
You do not like it but want rewards - you do it
You really do not like it - you do not do it. But you do not try your best to change the game by incessant whines (not really at OP but at the selected few that will join us soon no doubt).

Current state is that selected few have a problem with Lab, most players dont care (that also means that is not a great success in terms of people 'farming it over Dried Lake' - that btw is pretty profitable for leveling if you ask me). There are (or WERE?) tech issues with the Lab - these suck and should be removed ASAP but as for the content itself? It is fair and fine.

If someone is so anti-Lab that he cannot do it 2-3 times per character (yes 2 times as these 2 extra points are really.. not needed for several classes) then it is an 'emotional issue' not 'gameplay issue'. Man up, do it, forget about it. these 30 minutes total are nothing compared to 100s of hours wasted when mapping

I guess there's some room for debate, but within the context of PoE I define mandatory as "you cannot access the Map Device unless you complete this content first." So Merciless Oversoul? Mandatory. Merciless Lunaris Piety? Not mandatory (but super worth it to kill).

Although, now that I think about it, I'm not sure how the hideout map device works with rerolls
It might be that, with characters beyond the first in a league, the only truly mandatory content is Normal Hillock.