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

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Prebornfetus wrote:

Most the ppl do it just for the ascend points. Some others do it for enchants. A few more even farm it for lootsplosion at end. But nobody farms lab for the actual lab. Nobody is going omg I love traps and instant deaths I must have moar of that. You can gloss over a problem with rewards and requirements and shiny things but in the end its still a problem and that is leading to players leaving.

What else is there to farm? Endgame lab is pretty decent XP actually, given that it's level 75 and has several zones with good monster density. It's probably the best XP per key in the game at the moment. It still loses to gorge and plateau in XP per hour though due to being one or two levels lower and less linear.

I mean, as far as content goes, maps are pretty crappy. The areas themselves are completely non-interactive. Go in, kill the monsters, come out again. Very few bosses have any actual interesting mechanics. There's like a dozen different tilesets which are recycled over and over. Yet people run maps and no one complains.

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databeaver wrote:

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Prebornfetus wrote:

Most the ppl do it just for the ascend points. Some others do it for enchants. A few more even farm it for lootsplosion at end. But nobody farms lab for the actual lab. Nobody is going omg I love traps and instant deaths I must have moar of that. You can gloss over a problem with rewards and requirements and shiny things but in the end its still a problem and that is leading to players leaving.

What else is there to farm? Endgame lab is pretty decent XP actually, given that it's level 75 and has several zones with good monster density. It's probably the best XP per key in the game at the moment. It still loses to gorge and plateau in XP per hour though due to being one or two levels lower and less linear.

I mean, as far as content goes, maps are pretty crappy. The areas themselves are completely non-interactive. Go in, kill the monsters, come out again. Very few bosses have any actual interesting mechanics. There's like a dozen different tilesets which are recycled over and over. Yet people run maps and no one complains.

I got as far as "Yet people run maps and no one complains"

Ok, Brah.




(I started at the bottom, OK?)

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Phrazz wrote:

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Prebornfetus wrote:

But nobody farms lab for the actual lab.

Nobody farms Dominus for the actual Dominus. Nobody farms Dried Lake for the actual Dried Lake. Nobody farms level 11 maps for the actual maps. Raise your hand if you would do 1200 Voll kills, if there wasn't an achievement or a fancy card possible? Who would do 100 Atziri kills without any reward(s)? Who would even play this game without some sort of reward/progression?

Lab haters makes it seem like the rewards (enchantments, loot, ascendancy points) are bad things.

These are all also issues. Ppl should want to fight bosses for the experience as well. Each area should have its own identity and draw players in. PPL do it right now with plateau and gorge. PPL are farming these areas because of the actual area. Its fast and not much backtracking and full of baddies. They could do this with all maps. They could do it with bosses. They could do in acts. Give ur game an identity and theme and expand it...dont strip away it all to numbers and nerfs and blandness. Make mapping great again. Make trading great again. Make POE great again. GGG could take POE to the next level if they understood this

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TheAnuhart wrote:

I started at the bottom, now I'm here.. OK?)

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Shagsbeard wrote:

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Phrazz wrote:

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Prebornfetus wrote:

But nobody farms lab for the actual lab.

Nobody farms Dominus for the actual Dominus. Nobody farms Dried Lake for the actual Dried Lake. Nobody farms level 11 maps for the actual maps. Raise your hand if you would do 1200 Voll kills, if there wasn't an achievement or a fancy card possible? Who would do 100 Atziri kills without any reward(s)? Who would even play this game without some sort of reward/progression?

Lab haters makes it seem like the rewards (enchantments, loot, ascendancy points) are bad things.

That's because their "hate" is not objective. Nothing wrong with that. It's just very hard to argue from. "I hate it because I hate it" just isn't very convincing. So they reach for rational arguments against it... and sometimes reach pretty far.

They shouldn't have to. You don't have to answer "why" when you tell someone your feelings.

Im not lab hater, contrary i like it but, losing hard earned uber lab portals to disconnect + losing your progress time you spend inside = objective reason for hate against an uber stupid design decision (people with stabile connection have never understood the fact that game is not stabile at all for the rest and it is natural to expect desing decisions around a non stabile game play instead of this onetime oneshot mechanics).
And dont forget that enchantment mechanic is too random for being a reward.

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Prebornfetus wrote:

Ppl should want to fight bosses for the experience as well.

The experience waters down very quickly though. Computers lack imagination so the boss behaves the same way every time. Once you learn how it behaves, beating it becomes a matter of mechanical repetition. Would you watch a 5-minute cartoon 100 times just for the experience?

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Prebornfetus wrote:

Each area should have its own identity and draw players in. PPL do it right now with plateau and gorge. PPL are farming these areas because of the actual area. Its fast and not much backtracking and full of baddies.

In other words, they do it because of the XP and/or currency drops. They choose those areas because their layout makes them the most efficient way to gain rewards.

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Prebornfetus wrote:

Give ur game an identity and theme and expand it...dont strip away it all to numbers and nerfs and blandness.

The unfortunate truth of the matter is that anything becomes boring with enough repetitions. Then there needs to be an additional carrot to keep you playing. In some games it's competition against other players. Other games let you build your own environments. PoE's carrots are character progression (through both XP and equipment) and creating different builds.

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Prebornfetus wrote:

Make mapping great again. Make trading great again. Make POE great again. GGG could take POE to the next level if they understood this

I'm curious, what do you envision as PoE's "next level"? How would you keep people playing the game for thousands of hours for the game itself and not the rewards it offers?

hmm just lost another one to a combination of poison and pillar i can honestly say i lose 300% more chars now since the indroduction of acendancy with server issues stutter ect today was the last straw

i hope all the shitstorm and loss in revenue is worth it chris

LETS SAY IT CLEAR YOU FUCKED UP hope you pay hard for it vocal minority my ass

on break till ggg gets his shit fixed

game is no fun for me anymore ( % traps in hc so fucking retarded)

time to move on

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Tiandal wrote:

And dont forget that enchantment mechanic is too random for being a reward.

Just to add 20c, GGG will add tons of new skills and all of them will get AT LEAST 3 different enchantment so to farm one or two enchantment you need prepare 2-5k offerings. [Removed by Support]

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databeaver wrote:

How would you keep people playing the game for thousands of hours for the game itself and not the rewards it offers?

You asked so prepare to be amazed?! If you actually read all of this then kudos to you. Should I make these a new post?

Everything in the game should complement sucking players into the game and keeping them. If their are no loot/rewards then ofcoarse nobody is going to play. You cant design the game so that ppl play the game just for the game itself and not loot but u can design it at least so they dont quit over the game itself. The number 1 thing that has gotten POE into trouble is they are turning off players. The lab is terribad. EX nerf is terribad. 1 shotting everything as a player or being 1 shotted terribad. Standard has become forgotten. ect ect and so on and so on. You just need a winning formula to get players and then have those players make alts. POE has gotten away from its winning formula. To get to the next level it has to get back to the formula and then never look back. If it gets to the next level it starts competing with D3 and it could even become as legendary as the Diablo series. Here are 10 problems they should immediately look at to get on track.

1) Admit lab as currently made was a mistake. AT the very least remove ascendancy from it. AT most remove it completely from game. Tier 11-15 maps then would have a chance for en enchant shrine and boss to spawn in it. Ascend points u get 1 per 10 levels starting at 20 so u are finished at 90.

2) Revert XP nerf to maps. As mentioned in other thread the fatigue system is used. This greatly helps casuals gain xp and somewhat limits the most hardcore players to gain lv 100 but nothing like it is now.

3)Condense 3 difficulties into 1 run through game. Repeating the same content 3 times to get to mapping and whatnots wasnt fun for me and I imagine its the same for others. 1 time though is enough. Condense norms, cruel, merciless into one run though game. There has to be a way to make it work.

4)1 shotting is a problem. Either by the players to monsters or bosses on players. This is one of the hardest to fix. I have no idea how u address this amount of power creep. Ascendency and general player progress has made some ultra strong players that 1 shot entire screens. Giving some bosses the power to 1 shot the player isnt the answer howeever.

5) Standard is neglected. The goal of every temporary league should be to be added to standard in some way. More content to be played is always good. We have had several leagues now that have never been added to standard. Standard has gotten somewhat stale. You always got to be injecting life into this mode.

6)Unused gems need updates. Gems are one of the biggest cores of the game. The more gems you have that are totally outdated and sucky and the more builds that arnt being made. Fix this. Update gems that are not being used.

7)Performance is still a big issue. This is a huge one. This is definitely leading to players leaving. You just cant have massive lag spikes in game. New ppl see this and it could be leavesville for them. Players dont put up with this. Its terrisuperbad. I am not convinced your PC is at the heart of all these problems. POE has some sort of coding issue here. This is esp magnified when in lab/hardcore and you have to be in a certain spot to survive and u click there but ur character goes somewhere else and dies. If u want to see this issue at its worst get a femur of saints and cast vaal haste and vaal summon skeletons with regular haste aura up and cast flesh offering. You go back in time its so bad. Completely unacceptable.

8) Uniques could use some work. This goes without saying I am sure. Games like this will always have balance issues in uniques but that doesnt mean you cant start to tackle some of them. Most uniques in POE are trash and could use an update but some are completely over the top and invalidate entire crafting options and rare pick ups. I am looking at you Reach of the Council. The more valid unqiues you have at each gear spot the more builds that get made.

9)Trading super slow. This entire game is about trading. The premium tabs helped a bit but players are just afk most the time or too busy to care for that item you want for 1chaos or whatever. Its foolish to go self found as RNG is just to varied. You might not ever get what u want or need. You pretty much have to trade so embrace it. You can either go full tilt Auction House or go incremental and give us 10 Buys Orders and 10 Sell Orders at a time per account.

10)Ramp up mapping. No repeat tilesets on maps. ALL Maps each have a player friendly layout and theme. Everyone likes plateau and gorge because of layout. That is fine then. Run with it. Make all maps this way. I can think of tons of layouts that ppl would love. You could have a spiral inward leading in to a boss room. A spiral out going to boss room. A serious of portals on islands. An oldschool 1 room with 1 exit to another room and so on and so forth. Maybe some maps have more weak monsters, some have higher chance for strongboxes, some have more rare monsters, ect. Higher level maps should always be desired and would be balanced xp wise this way with perhaps even a slightly higher chance for uniques or something. Always have eye on encouraging players to progress. Perhaps tier 16-20 is needed as well for the most well geared players. Whatever draws u in there would be a map for it.

This is just 10 things they could fix. I bet others could add another 30 because we are passionate. We want POE to succeed and be great and GGG to make alot of money. We want POE to be great again.

Yes this is all very demanding and time consuming. We may never get them in POE. But at least for POE 2 they could make it happen or at least avoid some of these mistakes. Maybe somebody looks at it and gets inspired. I am trying to help POE cause I love it too....well at least I used to love it. Cheers - PBF