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

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rictiln wrote:

What gives you the right to decide whats fun for me? The lab has never been fun for me. It's tedious and a horrible experience each time I had to do it. The final one is the worst, because it limits builds, unless you are geared to the point that the rest of the game becomes trivial (at which point, there is no point in continuing that character), that can complete it successfully while being mandatory due to locking ascendancy points behind completing it. It is a bad enough experience that it sours the feel rest of the game, which is fun. Difficulty is fine, but it needs to be done in a way that feels good. The lab simply doesn't satisfy that requirement.

If I was inclined to do so, it is absolutely trivial to make a build that can clear the final lab without effort while getting every single key. But what if I don't want to play that kind of build? And what about every other build I would want to play?

The difference between Atziri and lab is that one is entirely optional, and one is not. One is something you make a character to farm efficiently, and one you need to do on every character. One is enjoyable to do, and one is not...

What is really telling is all those supporter tags under your name. You've spent 1,000s of dollars on this game. Clearly you like parts of it enough to do so, and that's fine. But having done so also clearly makes you unable to accept any criticism of your precious baby. After all, a game you've spent that much on can't be anything but absolutely perfect, right?

I'm done with the game until GGG admits that the lab sucks and fixes it.

There's nothing in the lab that invalidates builds aside from those that rely on Vaal Skills. It's always doable if you have anything approaching a functional build for the rest of the game. I'm sorry that you're not having fun in the labyrinth, but you should probably examine why that might be -- because the labyrinth itself is not terribly different from the rest of the game, it just has some different hazards.

We can debate about whether or not the labyrinth is optional... personally I think the fourth Labyrinth is about a mandatory as a level 100 character. Besides, Normal and Cruel labyrinth aren't much more difficult than Act 4 of their respective difficulties, and Merciless labyrinth is only slightly harder than a 68 map. Their challenge is not out of line with the rest of the game, especially considering what they represent.

I'm not sure what nebulous quality you feel like the labyrinth is missing, but I think you'll be waiting a long time for GGG to "admit the lab sucks." Further, I have given GGG a decent amount of money because I make a pretty comfortable living, they produce a game that I greatly enjoy, and I feel like they deserve it. If the game was suddenly taken in a direction I did not like, or GGG as a company ceased to operate with the incredible integrity I admire them for, would I not be among the first to be unhappy with such a development? I am no blind fanboy, I'm aware that Path of Exile and Grinding Gear Games are not perfect. On the other hand, I'm quite cognizant of the vague, subjective complaints that always accompany new additions to video games, especially those that hold the key to content players feel entitled to. The labyrinth is the enemy keeping players from their power fantasy points, and every time it defeats them, their animosity grows.

The labyrinth is not tedious -- it takes about as long as a map does to complete -- it just demands something different. You're apparently committed to hating it, and that's unfortunate, but you'll be better served by actually playing something else. Voice your (constructive) complaints, and if the lab is such a dealbreaker, stop playing. That will get GGGs attention. If I'm wrong, and a significant enough portion of the playerbase stops playing, they'll make changes to win them back.

Its very different than rest of the game.

Hey Aim WTB xyz for 10c.
Can you wait 10 min in lab?
Sorry got it somewhere else.
Awe.:(

No or low exp compared to maps.

Same layout all day long. (some ppl look at that as a plus tho)

Time not worth reward on enchants IMO since they are not game making and odds astronomical anyway for something applicable. Time is well spent mapping which pays for itself and then some with good rares, exp and currency.

Basically I only go there for ascendancy and I do plenty of grinding elsewhere from crypt maps at low level for justicars to uber farms.

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laycast wrote:

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rictiln wrote:

I'm done with the game until GGG admits that the lab sucks and fixes it.

You know that's not going to happen right? lol

Chris already said that he is fine with people disliking the lab.

He's going to change his mind when he starts looking at how quickly players are dropping out of this league. Based on steam charts recording the amount of players playing over the last week, 30% of those that played at the start of 2.3 are already gone (26k down to 18k). Previous leagues took closer to a month or longer to lose 30% of players. This is only on Steam of course, but there is no reason to think this isn't representative of the non-Steam players as well.

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Tykero wrote:

There's nothing in the lab that invalidates builds aside from those that rely on Vaal Skills. It's always doable if you have anything approaching a functional build for the rest of the game. I'm sorry that you're not having fun in the labyrinth, but you should probably examine why that might be -- because the labyrinth itself is not terribly different from the rest of the game, it just has some different hazards.

Just wanted to chime in on this point, specifically.

I have a Chaoscaster Shadow I ran for a bit in early Talisman; Contagion/Essence Drain build w/Wither totem, all the Chaos bacon they added in Talisman release. I only ran it up to mid-fifties since other stuff ended up being more useful overall, but I try and go back to it periodically since I love those sorts of builds (multiple interlocking active skills and an active playstyle, instead of "hit Vaal Spark > collect drops").

That build is categorically incapable of clearing the Labyrinth by itself. It is entirely possible that I just suck at path of Exile, of course, but Izaro is a hard stop to Chaoscaster degen builds. He appears to be almost entirely immune to degeneration, and this is after I acquired a mid-level 5L for the character to cram as many More modifiers on Essence Drain as I possibly could.

Not every build that isn't new-potatohead-mishmash can clear the Labyrinth. My Chaoscaster is never going to acquire any Ascendancy points outside of farming up some exalts to pay for a lab carry, and I flat refuse to do that.

I understand that content changes and players have to change with it, but when the Ascendancy passives are absolutely critical to progression in GGG's new Path of Exile and yet are gated behind content which is somewhat cruelly arbitrary in who gets to clear it and who doesn't...well, I can understand the frustration, too.

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1453R wrote:

He appears to be almost entirely immune to degeneration, and this is after I acquired a mid-level 5L for the character to cram as many More modifiers on Essence Drain as I possibly could.

Strange, haven't heard of anyone else running an ED build having problems with him.

And about vaal skills, there's something we should keep in mind. They aren't intended to be used exclusively, vaal skills are designed to be nukes you use in tough encounters. You may create a build that relies almost exclusively on vaal skills but you shouldn't really expect from devs to provide any support for it. Actually, it's quite the opposite, as shown by the balance changes in last patch.

Oh the steam charts, yeah they drop for EVERY GAME because, wonder why there is something called Euro 2016 and a lot of people are watching it here in Europe. Nearly everybody of my friends or People i know, have set up grillparties, holidays and soon since 3 days ago. Maybe there is not Impact in the USA but for Europa it is a really huge Impact.

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raics wrote:

Strange, haven't heard of anyone else running an ED build having problems with him.

And about vaal skills, there's something we should keep in mind. They aren't intended to be used exclusively, vaal skills are designed to be nukes you use in tough encounters. You may create a build that relies almost exclusively on vaal skills but you shouldn't really expect from devs to provide any support for it. Actually, it's quite the opposite, as shown by the balance changes in last patch.

On the Vaal skill thing: I actually quite heartily agree. While I totally understand the desire to figure out ways of breaking any given thing the game has wide open - that's sort of the reason we're all here, eh? - I always kinna ended up frowny-facing when I heard of one-button map clear builds like Ye Olde Vaal Spark. Those skills lose something when they're more than emergency fallbacks or boss killers - and I've always hated one-button builds anyways, in any game I play.

On ED: ...well, maybe I do just suck at Path after all! All I know is I have the thing rigged with Controlled Destruction, Void Manipulation, Rapid Decay, all the things you do to make it burn as hard as you can (with the exception of me experimenting with Pierce support/tree nodes, because "Other Allies Can't Die" packs are an outright Issue with ED/Contagion I tried to solve with piercing ED projectiles, but still!), and yet even when I've got Izaro tagged up and Withered to within an inch of his unlife, he just sits there and marinates in the Chaos juices without any indication that he's actually taking damage.

Which is horsebunk, because I can drop a Vortex field on him with the EE Vortex degen build I mostly cribbed from Ziggy and he melts like pasta in a furnace. Stupid friggin' Izaro...

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1453R wrote:

On ED: ...well, maybe I do just suck at Path after all! All I know is I have the thing rigged with Controlled Destruction, Void Manipulation, Rapid Decay, all the things you do to make it burn as hard as you can (with the exception of me experimenting with Pierce support/tree nodes, because "Other Allies Can't Die" packs are an outright Issue with ED/Contagion I tried to solve with piercing ED projectiles, but still!), and yet even when I've got Izaro tagged up and Withered to within an inch of his unlife, he just sits there and marinates in the Chaos juices without any indication that he's actually taking damage.

Which is horsebunk, because I can drop a Vortex field on him with the EE Vortex degen build I mostly cribbed from Ziggy and he melts like pasta in a furnace. Stupid friggin' Izaro...

Yeah, that would truly be horsebunk... might be some recent bug, haven't played ED since the introduction but a buddy is doing it right now in Prop, I'll ask him how he fared.

While I respect any players right to have their say about the lab and voice their opinions on this game we all mostly enjoy, I cannot agree with those who say that CW and GGG are taking this game in the correct direction.

I believe that the way PoE is going now is crazy! To me, it is like we have gone off the rails.

This game is now totally different from when I first started playing it.

Traps, saw blades, mazes, ultra boring tedious frogger / super mario style game play with disconnects, lag and unbalanced monster packs coupled with a stupid end boss...

Plus ... the Ascendancy points all gated behind this craziness.

Really? Come on GGG, you have got to be kidding.

New content is good, and needed in a game to keep our interest. But new content that is almost totally alien to the genre?

No, I'm not going to quit PoE even though most of my mates have already gone, I intend to hang on because I like this game.

However, I believe that GGG have gone off the rails with the lab thing, it just leaves a sour taste for me.

If I didn't want the extra points I would never go near the stupid lab, ever.

It's not too late, they can remove the lab. I might even start playing again if they did that.