When Chris says that lab haters are a minority, how right is he?

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Isdp wrote:

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A 5% of people repeating the lab is an absolute failure of expansion.

Shhh don't tell that here.
You're going to be cruxified.

Well, to be honest I we don't have real numbers, so that 5% does not mean much. I do consider the lab absurdly boring, and definitely don't consider it as a worthy endgame content.

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Adser wrote:

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mark1030 wrote:

Not that those numbers mean anything, but not running the lab and hating it are two different concepts. How many people ran Atziri today? I'd guess it's a small percentage of players. Does that mean that most people hate Atziri?

Can you go kill Atziri whenever you want?

Comparing a 100% availability content with one gated behind farming/trading fragments makes no sense.

The easiest way to see lab acceptance is by checking how many ppl just did the lab to get their ascendancy points. A 5% of people repeating the lab is an absolute failure of expansion.

Fair enough. How many people ran the Harvest today? Or the Belly of the Beast? Or the Mines? How about the battlefront? The sewers? The Crematorium? How about any non map area besides The Ledge, Fellshrine Ruins, the Docks, the Library, Lunaris 2, The Upper Sceptre of God, or the Dried Lake? Does that mean people hate all these areas? Or just that they prefer certain areas to farm bosses and experience?

I run Atziri pretty regularly. I ran her today, too.

I didn't run core Mal, or Lab.

Neither of these are what I think are "good fun", although I prefer mad Mal to the lab.

The big difference between Mal and the lab is simply this:

Malachai is a good solid challenge and is pretty easy to get to.

Whereas, the lab is boring, full of easy to kill monster packs that just get in the way, and only has two redeeming features, Argus and Izaro, imo. The rest of it is crazy and boring.

Dodging and negotiating blades and spinning / flying traps on an arpg?? Come on, you have to be kidding...

Locking ascendancy behind the lab is wrong.

I run Atziri because I find it good fun, a bit of a challenge and much more interesting than Mal.

I never go near the lab.

I had one of my expert game player sons run the lab for me. Just to get the ascendancy points.

I never go in there myself after my first experience of it. I dislike it with a passion!

There are players here who farm lab for different reasons and who like it for the currency and enchants etc, and others who run it for the same reasons but don't like it at all, but like the currency and enchants.

Fair enough. However, why GGG gated ascendancy behind a frogger style of game play with traps and blades, what the hell was he thinking?

Damn! I've already said all this before in other posts, but every time I see players saying that the lab is a legitimate and good step forward in PoE, I have to disagree.


R.

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mark1030 wrote:

Fair enough. How many people ran the Harvest today? Or the Belly of the Beast? Or the Mines? How about the battlefront? The sewers? The Crematorium? How about any non map area besides The Ledge, Fellshrine Ruins, the Docks, the Library, Lunaris 2, The Upper Sceptre of God, or the Dried Lake? Does that mean people hate all these areas? Or just that they prefer certain areas to farm bosses and experience?

GGG implemented the lab as a relevant content, with people going back to it. Most areas are supposed to be temporal. How many ppl lvl 60+ do normal difficulty areas? They don't, because they are not supposed to go back there. "Normal" game progression means that you would end up in maps, with some non-map areas for specific farming or if you are not strong enough to clear maps.

If you design something to have replayability, yet almost all your player base does the minimum indispensable because you gated a strong power up behind it, you failed at your original mission. If the lab didn't have ascendancy points then it would have as many player on it as PVP, maybe even less. And you don't see GGG doing a major release for PVP do you?

I'm in the "hate it" group. In a game so prone to disconnects, errors on loading zones and being booted to login screen, lag, somehow the game thinking the connection dropped when other online games are still smoothly sailing at the same time... how could this seem like a "good idea?"

Yeah... starting over from the beginning from any of these things is horribly discouraging and NOT FUN. And I didn't even get into deaths in the maze either from traps or bosses - screen freezing while a giant pet monster rushes at you and you are suddenly dead... stream of green globs start pouring from boss and screen freezes and you are suddnely dead... I'd never take one step into the maze in permadeath leagues. (meanwhile, I can play many other games with no issues...)

Is a trap filled maze a good idea for a game? Maybe for an offline game, sure.

Am I in a minority in hating the maze? I hardly think so, unless you get into semantics of 51% or something. Does it matter if it's a minority that hates - passionately - the work of several months and is integrally linked (ascendancies give the flavor and difference to each starting class, right? these were defining things that everyone was supposed to choose... yeah, I'm not taking that seriously anymore) to the progression of any character (not just gear drops)?

I'd say it matters a whole lot that a lot of people, majority or minority, hate that content, and some just put up with it begrudgingly, but not enough to hate it... I guess "hardcore arpg players" will punish themselves with a horrible experience that is worse than grinding monster kills for horribly random loot to progress, and they'll be happy about it! Turns my stomache.

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kuukkeli wrote:

Just one statistic that's easy to find. In Steam the peak for players online today is ~6.2k (bottom is about 2.8k). According to ladders on GGG's page approximately 1.8k (116 of them in HC leagues!) players have done Merciless Labyrinth today (numbers taken about an hour before reset). What that actually means is open to quite a bit of interpretation.

How many people play through Steam vs using the GGG client (on some older Reddit discussions people estimated that steam was ~40%). I have no idea if that's true or not but maybe we can assume it's 50/50.

According to https://steamdb.info/app/238960/graphs/ there's been almost 150k Steam players during the last two weeks. I'd say it's pretty safe to assume that there's at least 15k people who've played PoE through Steam today.

By our 50/50 assumption that would mean 30k players total during the day. Out of that 30k only 1.8k has done Merciless Labyrinth: 6% of the players. That 6% includes players who are just getting their Ascendancy points (~20% of these players used 30+ minutes in their run).

If these assumptions are anywhere near the truth it seems that only ~5%* of daily players are doing any voluntary Labyrinth runs. In HC leagues that number is even less (at least I don't think that SC has over 15 times more players but I may be wrong on this one considering that permanent HC is, to my knowledge, pretty dead).

That 5% doesn't seem to say that Labyrinth is popular and only disliked by minority. An expansion that only one in twenty players wants to play sounds more like a complete failure to me.

*If we assume 50/50 for Steam / GGG split and assume that half of the people on Labyrinth ladders each day are new we're very close to 5% again. This implies that 5% most likely isn't underestimation (if half of the people on ladders finish in 15 minutes or less they've most likely done the Labyrinth before).

That's very interesting, ty for posting. While I've made it quite clear where I stand, I consider myself a fair person, so I'll defend the Lab on a couple of my thoughts on these numbers.

1) 5% is still overestimating people that like the Lab, because some of those players are playing for the race, and others still are farming for a helm enchantment. They may dislike the lab, but really want a certain helm enchantment on one specific unique helm.

2) 5% is also simultaneously underestimating people that like the lab - some of those 30k players were surely playing characters below level 70, which means they may not be interested in running the Lab on that given day.

3) The monster density, experience, and loot (non-enchantment) suck in the Lab. It's possible that you'd see a lot more than 5% run the lab if those two things didn't suck compared to merc farming or low maps.

4) Using one day of results doesn't necessarily capture interest in the Lab - especially not a day this late in a challenge league. I think the people playing now are not representative of the player base as a whole, but I don't know nearly enough to speculate how their particular demographics differ. This could be underselling or overstating interest in the lab.

5) You may be holding the Lab to a standard it wasn't designed for. I'd have to go back and look, but was their intention for the lab (in it's current 3 tier iteration) to be run daily by most players? Because that's what your analysis seems to imply.

6) To that point, It's GGGs fault for designing something this narrow in scope, and confining it to it's own little box in the game. You can tell that they saw this as a flaw too, because the trials are scattered about through the acts in an effort to make it feel like it has a much broader scope than it realistically does.

I'm pretty sure most people just do the lab for ascend points and enjoying the lab a few times and then quickly forget about it.

Which isn't hate or like but more of a massive disappointment on how boring and annoying the lab is.

If I didn't have to run the lab to get points then honestly I would never step foot into the lab outside of maybe trying to get helm enchants. The labs are annoying, generally long unless you optimize your time practicing labs, and provides almost no reward unless you get the helm enchant you want/want to spend alot of time selling helm enchants.

They need to redesign lab as short exciting ultra dangerous sprints with boss fights inbetween each sprint.

Not this long drawn out marathon inbetween each section with a boss fight with 1 interesting mechanic.

I really think that the view that GGG has on this is colored by the challenges they added related to the lab. As soon as I had my challenges completed I never went back outside of being forced to get ascendancy points on alts. In the two week I didn't even bother to do merc lab.

In the coming league I will be running lab for any challenges just like before and I'm sure there will be something in there you have to grind out. My build also needs a lab unique, so I'll be in there to get a few of those for myself.

The thing is, what I don't like about lab isn't really the lab itself, it's Izario. He does way too much damage per hit, but that kind of BS happens all over the game. Im playing path of armor with an evasion character so I have to deal with getting nearly one shot all the time.

I am glad that new stuff is added to the game. I would just be happy, if it's optional. Like interface - thank you GGG for adding new interface with cat and skulls, but why you've taken old one (those with chained girls) from us? If we would have choice everybody is happy - those who likes new interface will use new one, the rest - old one.

Same thing is with Lab. Now it's not matter of choice. We are made to do the lab, because Ascendancy points are not optional at all.

To be honest I have to say, that from aesthetic point I like it very much. Not all of it, but most. It's pretty, when we compare it to the rest of poe. But playing it... It's just a chore. I've did it few times, and my reason was to get ascendancy points, and get some challenges. But I don't like it at all. Why I'm saying this? To let you know, that I wasn't part of "happy silent majority". I was silent, but unhappy with it.

Oh, and last but not least - when I've entered Lab for first time I was sooo excited! Traps which are scaling damage with player took all the pleasure from me.

I dont hate the Lab itself, I hate the challenge needing me to hit all enchantment types :/ tryin at that for over 2 weeks now...
Ofc im not running it all day because thats what I rly dont like: Running lab a lot. It would be fine if i had to hit like all enchantments but 2. That would make me hate lab way less or not at all :D