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

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Fruz wrote:

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joachimbond wrote:

I agree with OP.

He needs to have some sense communicated to him.

He's out of touch with his game. He's developed "writer's myopia", and can no longer (if he ever could) see the content objectively, at all. It's something that happens to almost all creative people who have long-running projects.

If you guys think that sending e-mails directly to Chris will help, then good luck with that .....

Chris is well known for appreciating and responding to direct feedback, especially e-mail. He responded inside of an hour to my e-mail, with a kind message describing the team's intentions at present. If he doesn't care about the feedback, he does a damn good job of pretending otherwise!

That said, it's bad form to spam the guy with a bunch of complaints, and counterproductive as well. He's busy as sin. That's why this is the first time I've ever done this (despite having spent dozens of hours making long, detailed feedback and bug report threads in the past).

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Fruz wrote:

And a player freshly arrived in the game has more of an objective and useful point of view and knows what the game should be ?
lol

Try thousands of hours over multiple leagues, ever since closed beta.

Not that that's relevant. Even if I WERE a brand-new player, the content of the original post speaks for itself. The characterizations I have made of labyrinth haters, and my suggestions on how to appease them without angering labyrinth lovers, are either legitimate or they aren't. They include no appeals to authority.

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innervation wrote:

You didn't even have to leave the thread topic to make your example - the Lab itself is an obvious case of this.

You could tell that in designing the lab that they were so immersed in what it was, and so familiar with how it started, that all of the things they've scrambled to fix about it would have been obvious (and were obvious if you could go back and check the feedback forum March 3-7). Because they designed it from the start, they never had to deal with dead ends and backtracking. They didn't have to run the trials + labs on 5+ Perandus characters and feel what an absolute drag that is. Because they were testing on temp characters, they didn't feel the shit RNG of 1-in-350 chance of getting what you want.

The real player experience is hard to feel out when you design something from square one with whatever character/gear you want. It's hard, if not impossible, to take on content that you're intimately familiar with from a completely fresh perspective - but that's what you allegedly have QA for.

They might have been subject to the same blinders, which is what you allegedly have alpha testers for. We've heard numerous reports about how useless the alpha testers were, and how eager they were to keep bugs and powerful things to themselves, so there went our third layer of reasonable testing. Maybe some of them did pass along feedback like this, and the devs ignored it out of arrogance...kind of like what the OP said to begin with.

I assume that GGG has a testing organization separate from the developers. What you call alpha testers. This is the common and best way to do testing before releasing the product. When a buggy software product is released, it is usually because the schedule was too tight and the test organization was not given enough time/resources to shake out the bugs, at least that has been my experience.

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gibbousmoon wrote:

Chris is well known for appreciating and responding to direct feedback, especially e-mail. He responded inside of an hour to my e-mail, with a kind message describing the team's intentions at present. If he doesn't care about the feedback, he does a damn good job of pretending otherwise!

That said, it's bad form to spam the guy with a bunch of complaints, and counterproductive as well. He's busy as sin. That's why this is the first time I've ever done this (despite having spent dozens of hours making long, detailed feedback and bug report threads in the past).

Then lucky you, your e-mail did not get lost in the spamming sea that his e-mail box is probably like.
I know that he is great about feedback and that's why we can find many podcast/interviews on youtube I guess, but there is probably surely( or a team ) that scraps the feedback section 5 and the others ) to extract the content first.
If he does go through all e-mails and check the content, this is probably taking him a very considerable amount of time ( maybe you had a catchy and interesting subject also ).
If you did get an interesting answer, could you share it here ?

I was not speaking about you concerning the freshly arrived players.
Because old players are much more likely to really know GGG's line of doing things, and the direction that they want the game to take, which I feel is very important.
I've seen many "I just arrived and this item is too rare, up the droprates/nerf this/remove this (please)" kind of post on this forum, maybe you have seen them too.
I never said that your "complaints" were not legitimate, this part of my message was an answer to somebody else.
( btw, missed that part about your OP : I live in Japan too, and I can usually do the lab quite fine with ~150ping. My complaint would be about the visibility inside the lab, because the more you get hit, the less you see, and therefore the more you are screwed - unless CI - )
I also like the suggestion about adding puzzles to unlock trapless ways ( I would still see couple of traps left on the way, but nothing too dangerous, while still having people need to be careful ).

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Turtledove wrote:

I assume that GGG has a testing organization separate from the developers. What you call alpha testers. This is the common and best way to do testing before releasing the product. When a buggy software product is released, it is usually because the schedule was too tight and the test organization was not given enough time/resources to shake out the bugs, at least that has been my experience.

Exactly

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Fruz wrote:

Then lucky you, your e-mail did not get lost in the spamming sea that his e-mail box is probably like.
I know that he is great about feedback and that's why we can find many podcast/interviews on youtube I guess, but there is probably surely( or a team ) that scraps the feedback section 5 and the others ) to extract the content first.
If he does go through all e-mails and check the content, this is probably taking him a very considerable amount of time ( maybe you had a catchy and interesting subject also ).

Or maybe I caught him on a weekend morning, when his inbox was extra empty. ;)

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Fruz wrote:

If you did get an interesting answer, could you share it here ?

It would be rude to post it directly, but he essentially said that they were considering decoupling the Ascendancy points from the Labyrinth, that it was a more likely outcome than that they would change the Labyrinth substantially (news that disappointed me deeply), and that it wouldn't happen in the upcoming patch.

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Fruz wrote:

( btw, missed that part about your OP : I live in Japan too, and I can usually do the lab quite fine with ~150ping. My complaint would be about the visibility inside the lab, because the more you get hit, the less you see, and therefore the more you are screwed - unless CI - )

Arcane Vision helps with this. But then I agree with most people who say the need to optimize your passives to deal with the lab is indicative of poor design which is inconsistent with the rest of the game.

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It would be rude to post it directly, but he essentially said that they were considering decoupling the Ascendancy points from the Labyrinth, that it was a more likely outcome than that they would change the Labyrinth substantially (news that disappointed me deeply), and that it wouldn't happen in the upcoming patch.

Which is essentially the same he said in the interview and considering that he is not some kind of dictator he can't say anything else without discussing it with his team.

I also doubt that discussions alone create any difference here. They likely noticed that enough people did the labyrinth and got their ascendancy their that a change was not needed. Because interestingly a lot of people complain but still do it... even when they have their ascendancy already. Those discussions are mostly the same as when the labyrinth was released.

They also have to create something to earn ascendancy points as an alternative, which is not something that is done on the fly, since they seem to be something they want players to work hard for.

The fact that they are considering another ascendancy way instead of tweaking the lab is a little bit disappointing to me also, but it's very understandable I think.
I could see only the normal laby require ( to pick the ascendancy class ), and then another way to get the other points in higher difficulties for those who want.

The normal lab does not have such hard traps / paterns, so that might be ok.
A new system to get the other points would need to be less rewarding and more ti;e consuming than the lab, imho.

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gibbousmoon wrote:

Arcane Vision helps with this. But then I agree with most people who say the need to optimize your passives to deal with the lab is indicative of poor design which is inconsistent with the rest of the game.

I will be able to pick next patch !
Right now the 3 or 4 points needed to pick it are just not worth it.

the whole lab drama reminds me on the permanent loot complaints, a vocal minority which didn't like the competitional aspect ggg intended kept complaining over months, some player's output reached impressive 100 to 200 posts repeating the same arguments and creating threads of immense post counts.

and yes, most of those players stopped playing the game afterwards, leaving others who liked the competition with a less competitional game which just got similar to other games. and more boring.

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if you don't like the lab, just do it once and buy items from players who did the lab to get enchantments. what is wrong with the game providing advantages to a broad variety of play styles?

for example, the lab is perfect for players who play less often but have the ability to easily make their way through some areas which require clever positioning. that some players don't like doing it opens them a shot at the market by providing item enchantments.

please accept that the guys at ggg provide the challenges you have to master and don't try to change the game to win, again.

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Fruz wrote:

If you guys think that sending e-mails directly to Chris will help, then good luck with that .....
And a player freshly arrived in the game has more of an objective and useful point of view and knows what the game should be ?
lol
GGG's staff has wayy more data that we'll ever have about PoE, and if you think that you can see the game objectively and Chris doesn't, you are being very arrogant, to stay polite.

You've obviously never written a book or video game, or undertaken any sort of creative effort such as painting. Otherwise you would know that what I said was true.

So take your "data" and play with the numbers all you want. The fresh player's experience is something that GGG lack, and cannot get, except by listening to the new players who take the time to tell them why/how their experience was enjoyable/unenjoyable. That's not quantifiable by data, any more than the numbers who run the lab are indicative of how enjoyable the lab is. The lab is a shit sandwich. There's a reward inside, but you have to eat the shit sandwich to get to it. GGG currently reckons that the relatively high number of people running lab means that they ENJOY it, when 9/10 of the people i talk to in-game say the lab is cancer EVEN IF THEY RUN IT REGULARLY.

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So take your "data" and play with the numbers all you want. The fresh player's experience is something that GGG lack, and cannot get, except by listening to the new players who take the time to tell them why/how their experience was enjoyable/unenjoyable.

They don't need experiences though. Data is all that is required unless their is something that has issues, in which case the reasons can not be gathered that easy. However if their Data shows that the Labyrinth is appreciated by a wide enough player base that is totally fine. At this point experiences are completly meaningless. If you are an artist and sell your picture for a bunch of dollars you likely don't ask those people that didn't bid for it why they did, you just make another picture with similar style and sell it again.

If people complain about the labyrinth and still play it over and over it doesn't really matter. Of course they want to create an enjoyable experience however the only real important part is how do they react in game.

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GGG currently reckons that the relatively high number of people running lab means that they ENJOY it, when 9/10 of the people i talk to in-game say the lab is cancer EVEN IF THEY RUN IT REGULARLY.

Well most people I met actually like the Labyrinth, they don't like the helmet enchants and how differently the izaro mechanics behave (iE inconsistent), but not really the labyrinth in general. And considering that why on earth should you run the lab regularly if you do not enjoy it? There is no reason to, you need an incredible amount of runs to get a worthwhile helmet enchant (and not just one that benefits your build at all).

And considering the threads about it, a shitton of people don't like the map system. Should they remove it? They know the frustrating parts about the labyrinth, and they fixed a lot of them and acknowledged that the helmet enchanting can be frustrating.

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vio wrote:

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If lab is same as the loot from back than, than ohh boy, the only minority are people like you. If I also remember good, they even did a poll, and people that where against permanent loot where crushed.

It was a great change. If it didnt happen, almost no one would play in parties, and we would have this forum still full of the valid complains about the loot.