Open Letter to Chris Wilson (on making the labyrinth more inclusive)

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innervation wrote:

@OP I'd like to add something for consideration. The podcast quote that jumped out to me came right after what you quoted. It was 'Divisive content is ok'.

I think that's a dangerous attitude to have given the unprecedented number of ways people have to spend their time and money these days.

Would you rather create content that half your community rates 10/10, but the other half rates 0/10?

Or would you rather make something that everyone rates as between 7 and 8/10.

As an artist, you should prefer the former. As a f2p developer you should prefer the latter.

I just wanted to say, that this view of no risk taking and not offering anything anyone could dislike is (imo) the reason so many AAA games nowadays are just mediocre or almost play themselves as long as you keep pressing buttons.
Meanwhile indie-games and stuff like Dark Souls 1 thrive, because they offer what some people love 10/10, because they're not originally produced to create steady income, but as art.

It seems to me lots of traditional ARPG players don't even like playing games and learn and enjoy new experiences, but just want the feeling of a steady income (xp/hour) themselves.

Very excited to see how the lab changes with side-areas supposedly becoming more interesting.

I very much agree that the labyrinth needs some tuning and changes. I suppose I'll add my thoughts to the relevant parts:


1: Traps. I have not had the misfortune of bad ping (since mine rarely goes above 60 due to being in the middle of Texas and California), but I certainly have had a similar experience when I played PoE on an out of date video card. When I had it, I could get a stable 20-30 FPS in most cases and 10-20 during combat, but when I went up against Malachai... It was a slideshow. Most of the time during the Malachai fight I couldn't get above 5 frames per second. So of course I did what I could to be as tanky as I could be, but until I bought a new video card I literally could not beat Cruel Malachai because of needing to react timely to get out of the incoming damage. I perhaps could have made it through the Labyrinth with that setup, but it would have been such a maddening affair that it would have been better for my health to simply not run it. I would not have trusted my computer to let me get safely from one end of some traps to the other, and I very much expect it's exactly the same for people who don't have good connections to a GGG server.

Requiring precision movement and jumping, etc is only feasible when the input is similarly precise. Megaman games are good because the controls were very tight and well done. If something went wrong in Megaman then it was the player that screwed up, not the game.

The same is not true for Path of Exile. If something goes wrong it could very easily be the servers having problems or the game itself crashing, and there's little to nothing the player can do about those situations even if they have exceptional reactions. That is why I personally do not play hardcore, and also why a great many people find the Labyrinth so painful to go through. They (rightfully) do not trust the game to be reliable.

If the labyrinth is only going to allow a continuous one shot then the game must be reliable. The traps and other challenges are simply too dangerous to allow otherwise except on very specific builds that can effectively "outgear" the traps by having ludicrous life regen and other such defenses. Tightening up PoE's control scheme and making the servers and game itself more reliable would go a long way to making traps as they currently are feel more acceptable.

Much of the Labyrinth feels like the trend that GGG overestimates their game in terms of both graphics performance (hello Perandus mobs!) and networking performance (What do you mean I'm back two rooms and standing in... Damn, gotta reroll the character now).


2: Backloading. Obviously there should be a reward for completing a challenge, but the rewards given in the labyrinth often don't feel worthwhile for the investment. To use a metaphor, how many people are gonna walk five kilometers for a chocolate bar or a cup of coffee? Obviously some, but also obviously not a lot. The reward needs to be worth the investment. Sometimes that means making the reward at the very end quite large because the challenge is hard, but something to note is that everyone has some level of challenge that they simply cannot or will not do regardless of the reward. Sometimes having a reward or helping hand during the challenge will enable the person to complete the whole thing, but sometimes not. It depends on the challenge.

Alas, at least one of the rewards feels like a challenge itself: Helm enchants. Getting one that's useful to your build feels nearly impossible, and trading for one is cumbersome and expensive depending on the skill (hello Spark projectile helms being well in the exalt range). In the upcoming temp league there will be a Prophecy or whatever that allows for enchanting twice in hopes of getting the enchant you want, but realistically it will feel like just another chance to not get a useful enchant. The rewards themselves shouldn't be so random.


3: Unfun tasks. I would dearly hope that the developers don't project what they feel is fun onto the players. Sometimes the devs' and players' interests do align, but when they don't then the game and the players suffer for it. The main point here is to build for how the game actually is, including how the players are. You don't serve chicken to someone who ordered a rare steak, even if you're head over heels for chicken.

Extremely divisive content should probably not be a keystone for the entire game or character progression. Thankfully it seems GGG is realizing that the labyrinth is so divisive based on how they are changing it so the players only have to run it once to get the ascendancy class points. But as already mentioned, optional unfun content gets ignored, and GGG is in the business of making sure as much of the game as possible is fun. PoE is a game and as such needs to be entertaining, or at least compelling.

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Antaiseito wrote:

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innervation wrote:

@OP I'd like to add something for consideration. The podcast quote that jumped out to me came right after what you quoted. It was 'Divisive content is ok'.

I think that's a dangerous attitude to have given the unprecedented number of ways people have to spend their time and money these days.

Would you rather create content that half your community rates 10/10, but the other half rates 0/10?

Or would you rather make something that everyone rates as between 7 and 8/10.

As an artist, you should prefer the former. As a f2p developer you should prefer the latter.

I just wanted to say, that this view of no risk taking and not offering anything anyone could dislike is (imo) the reason so many AAA games nowadays are just mediocre or almost play themselves as long as you keep pressing buttons.
Meanwhile indie-games and stuff like Dark Souls 1 thrive, because they offer what some people love 10/10, because they're not originally produced to create steady income, but as art.

It seems to me lots of traditional ARPG players don't even like playing games and learn and enjoy new experiences, but just want the feeling of a steady income (xp/hour) themselves.

Very excited to see how the lab changes with side-areas supposedly becoming more interesting.

Dark Souls is a game that's punishing, but also tight and well done. If you screw up in Dark Souls you know you're the one to blame. PoE's labyrinth is punishing but not tight, and when something wrong happens in it, it might very well be the game itself or the internet connection causing issues.

If Path of Exile could be played offline then the Labyrinth could actually be a damn fine part of the game. And maybe having a different viewpoint besides the isometric perspective would help too.

I'm curious if the lab stuff would feel better if it was done from a different perspective than the current isometric view, or perhaps with different controls such as shooters or perhaps more puzzles oriented games like Metroid do things.

A lot of the complaining in the lab's case is GGG has strayed from what PoE was originally about: hack and slash roleplaying. The lab's traps don't exactly make someone think "ARPG" now do they?

Really nice read gibbousmoon. Dont have that much to add, except I like your way of thinking and suggestion.

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Antaiseito wrote:

I just wanted to say, that this view of no risk taking and not offering anything anyone could dislike is (imo) the reason so many AAA games nowadays are just mediocre or almost play themselves as long as you keep pressing buttons.
Meanwhile indie-games and stuff like Dark Souls 1 thrive, because they offer what some people love 10/10, because they're not originally produced to create steady income, but as art.

It seems to me lots of traditional ARPG players don't even like playing games and learn and enjoy new experiences, but just want the feeling of a steady income (xp/hour) themselves.

Very excited to see how the lab changes with side-areas supposedly becoming more interesting.

They could make every change I've ever asked for to the Trials and Lab and I still wouldn't like it, and wouldn't run it. I would just hate it less. The content would still be divisive, it just wouldn't be mandatory any more.

Remember Ambush league when they introduced strongboxes? Pretend that was a 50/50 love/hate league. That's ok if it's divisive because that content is COMPLETELY optional. The labyrinth has core parts of your characters power, progression, and identity gated behind it. That's when divisive content becomes NOT OK.

Edit: I'll take back the part about I'd never run it, conditionally. If the rewards were good enough in side areas (a thing they said will be improved) I might consider it fun. But I'd do it with the mindset that I'm playing a different game. The delving into a maze, getting lost and backtracking, and playing against the environment can be fun if you see yourself as a treasure hunter playing it's own unique game. I'd probably make a character built just for running the Lab and not doing maps. A new character for a new game.

As we know though, currently the side rooms (silver chests) are a joke, and even if you kill Argus for a second key what do you usually get in the end room? An enchant you didn't want, 6 yellow items, 2 fusings, 2 scouring, and a handful of armourers scraps. Doesn't make you feel like much of a treasure hunter. It makes you feel like a frustrated asshole that logged into an ARPG only to blow 30 minutes playing not PoE and getting nothing for it.

Mhhh it seems like a shit ton of people playing ES builds and therefore hating the labyrinth.

For me the traps are not the problem at all, sure they can hurt a lot but nothing a life potion cant fix.

The real problem for me is that i feel forced to play the labyrinth over and over again until i get my daily burnout because i want a certain enchantment and there are enchantments which are very powerful. Without those enchantment the character somehow feels "incomplete".

I think for most people this really is the reason they hate labs atleast for people i have spoken with. For the trap fix: just dont play ES builds in lab - lab trap problem solved.

My solution for reducing the labyrinth burnout is to get some kind of labyrinth coin each run and if you have 50 lab coins you can choose an enchantment from the list of total enchantments. This way no one feels cheated if hes doing his lab No# 300 and getting again that totem radius or life for the fourth time this day. In addition i think that there are waaay to many shit helm enchantments which artifically extend the grind.

this was a good read, i really like most of the ideas you wrote down aswell as i like the lab (atleast i like it more than mapping).

i run the lab often, sometimes because i hunt for that cool enchantment, sometimes explore it and from time to time try to speedrun it, the ideas around the lab and what you can do in it are nice but there are still things that are not so cool.


for farming/ exploring:

- it is wonderful to find a darkshrine behind a wall but then you realize there will something bad happen, sure you get a minimal iir/iiq increase but finding that perma vulnerability shrine makes me wish to never seek for shrines in there again, sure there is no fun if there is not a little risk with them but there are far more negative shrines than nice ones, it was a cool thing back when you got something like a chaos warband (you rarely encounter somewhere else) out of the shrine but i feel like you removed all the cool mods from the shrines, i would wish for some intresting mods from it not the same sh... mods you avoid each time when you roll a map -- in short i feel near to no reward for exploring it.

- the fear of disconnects makes me want to do it fast instead of to farm/ explore there, the longer you are in there the more likely it is that you get a random disconnect and need to do it again from the begin.


for speedrunning:

- the ladder is a nice thing but many cant enjoy it because the timer seems to include the loading times (why not stop the time each time as soon as the area transition pops up in the top of the screen till your invurability buff from area transition ends in the next?); this takes all the fun away for all guys with a not so top gaming rig.


still i like it, but it could be so much better for us all...

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Jackinthegreen wrote:

Extremely divisive content should probably not be a keystone for the entire game or character progression. Thankfully it seems GGG is realizing that the labyrinth is so divisive based on how they are changing it so the players only have to run it once to get the ascendancy class points. But as already mentioned, optional unfun content gets ignored, and GGG is in the business of making sure as much of the game as possible is fun. PoE is a game and as such needs to be entertaining, or at least compelling.

The latter half of this statement is spot-on, but I'm afraid you misunderstood the announcement, as did many others (myself included). They are only allowing subsequent characters on your account in a given league to skip the stupid mini-tutorials (so-called Trials), NOT the labyrinth. We were all blinded by our hope and optimism, and misread that part. :P

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Jackinthegreen wrote:

If Path of Exile could be played offline then the Labyrinth could actually be a damn fine part of the game. And maybe having a different viewpoint besides the isometric perspective would help too.

I'm curious if the lab stuff would feel better if it was done from a different perspective than the current isometric view, or perhaps with different controls such as shooters or perhaps more puzzles oriented games like Metroid do things.

A lot of the complaining in the lab's case is GGG has strayed from what PoE was originally about: hack and slash roleplaying. The lab's traps don't exactly make someone think "ARPG" now do they?

Offline with a gamepad might be fun, particularly if trap movement was oriented vertically/horizontally, and you your gamepad has a good dpad on it. But that's... Frogger. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Frogger rocks!

But yeah. Precision movement in a quasi-isometric game is a lot more fair and fun with a gamepad.

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gibbousmoon wrote:

Hi Chris,

I'd like to address something you said in your May 22nd interview. I'm sending this to you personally, but I'm posting it in the feedback forum ("Open Letter to Chris Wilson") as well [...]

If that means that you sent him an e-mail directly .... It's probably a very bad start ( as constructive as the content of it may be ).

Chris is a strange dude. He said a lot of strange and illogical thing during this and older podcasts or forum posts.

I still remember when he said that they balanced the game around alt f4 and its ok because this exploit was possible in diablo, and they often used it (good that they didnt used bots or RMT xD, or we would have those two also as normal things), and because of it, they though its a normal part of the game.

Similar thing he said about 3 difficulties. Its ok because its some holy trinity bullshit, used by other arpg, but he doesnt address that thats actually a bad thing that a lot of other arpg have, not a good one. And having two difficulties doesnt prevent you from them being more different and unique.

But anyway, I agree with your post OP.