Haven't really ever commented on lab, but I hate it.

"

Pyrokar wrote:

BUT, if you put all of these smashes/lasers in a small room without any space to breath but a little platform here and there and you say "go through it" or you'll just be stupid, then it becomes mario. Doing that to the hardcore players is not prudent or fair since you don't play mario with one life. Especially online.

And that is only one issue that makes it feel like mario. There are plenty others, like character choices which should matter in an arpg.

If you don't get this then you will never get it.

It has nothing to do with Mario, you can just do the whole thing walking/running ( its easier and faster to use move skills like .... everywhere else in PoE ).

There is a small portion of the lab that has traps that you need to go through, with a relatively low trap difficulty level once you get it ( cannot say about the uber lab tho, have not ran it yet ), there is a small portion of the lab where you need to pay attention instead of facerolling everything, yeah.

It's fine because there is no one shot ( except for Izaro or Argus of course ), and it's over quickly.


Character choices that matters ?
It does.
For example :
ES and HP are not being handled the same in the lab.
LW and WB are different when it comes to traps.
Block helps with some traps.
IC helps with some traps.
Move speed can help with some traps.

One more time, the Mario with one life comparison is plain stupid.
Pots makes it easy, or if you are full ES, you have quite some margin to find a safe spot, and there is no one shot trap.

"

Fruz wrote:

It has nothing to do with Mario, you can just do the whole thing walking/running ( its easier and faster to use move skills like .... everywhere else in PoE ).

There is a small portion of the lab that has traps that you need to go through, with a relatively low trap difficulty level once you get it ( cannot say about the uber lab tho, have not ran it yet ), there is a small portion of the lab where you need to pay attention instead of facerolling everything, yeah.

It's fine because there is no one shot ( except for Izaro or Argus of course ), and it's over quickly.


Character choices that matters ?
It does.
For example :
ES and HP are not being handled the same in the lab.
LW and WB are different when it comes to traps.
Block helps with some traps.
IC helps with some traps.
Move speed can help with some traps.

One more time, the Mario with one life comparison is plain stupid.
Pots makes it easy, or if you are full ES, you have quite some margin to find a safe spot, and there is no one shot trap.

It has everything to do with mario, i tried to walk and you can see what happened in the previous page.

There is a big portion of the lab that is mario because it has traps. The uber lab trials are even more disgusting. It's not complaining about paying attention but for the game style.

It's not a one shot but if you die in about a second then it's pretty close and if it's on a lag spike then it's 100 times more infuriating.

Character choices matter?
I told you i can build to facetank everything, but i nearly died in a second for example:
What i said in the previous page.

One more time, the Mario with one life comparison is pretty accurate.
Finding safe spots in death plastered rooms equals platforming therefore it's mario.

"

Pyrokar wrote:

There is a big portion of the lab that is mario because it has traps. The uber lab trials are even more disgusting. It's not complaining about paying attention but for the game style.

This.

I myself managed to just tolerate traps last league.

Now, after leveling a build, and just barelly starting doing maps in HC Prophecy, just when I was really starting to like the build... got the reward of experiencing an uber trial.

No, it was not Mario. Mario was an ok game. This was frustrating and disappointing.

Lag spikes are a problem in HC, yes. Last league I didn't have any issues, but this time I occasionaly get a complete freeze, for about 3 - 5 seconds and then everything happes in fast-forward. It's a weird lag spike that registers all my commands and it executes them, so it's usually not deadly when playing in maps, but in the Lab it can be very deadly.

Just earlier I got one such spike just when Izaro popped out. There is no way to survive that or if it happens during a trap gauntlet.

But tbh, playing HC in PoE was always a gamble. Good ole Desink, server instabilities every patch, freezes, burst damage one-shot design balanced around logout scripts... That's why I could never take HC seriously in this game. Well, maybe when "paid leagues" and "offline mode" happens.

"

fm1081 wrote:

No, it was not Mario. Mario was an ok game. This was frustrating and disappointing.

Indeed it is rather Prince of Persia combined with Tomb Raider. Mario was way more fun.

Even the combination of Boobs and Guns was not sufficient to get hooked on Tomb Raider for me. I played Prince of Persia in 1993 and remember the experience - it came back when running those "only 15-20% of the lab that are affected by it"

Yes the argument that although its painfull it is very rewarding is a good one. Still the issue remains that certain defensive mechanics and therefore builds/class have a great advantage in the entire trap crap. We will never end this discussion as well. I think the sides of haters and lovers are quite equally balanced here. There is people that easily get the hang of this. I am sure they all had a NES
or SEGA and are blessed with the gift of liking this kind of game elements. They can not understand
why the other half is unable to do it as it is easy for them. Other way around, we "haters" can not get how a person can like such a thing. And for us it is very disturbing that this has became a very important element of the game with uber-izaro. Nobody can deny that. The Merc lab can be ignored after
going one time for it, if you don´t like it. You can ignore doing Uber Atziris if you don´t like it. But you do not get around this. It can not be ignored. Uber Itzaro is mandatory content at this moment, those who describe it as "optional" are just wrong.

However it is fun to continue here and reading through the entire mud fight here is at least a little joy, so i can finally find a positive thing about the lab. Sad it´s in the forums and not ingame.

"

Turtledove wrote:

"

Severance2hBlade wrote:

Can we now stop connecting the fun factor with skill & ability? It's getting old.

How ironic! wouldn't you agree? :-)

Sorry my post was unclear. I thought it was ironic that sidtherat posted immediately after severance2hblade's post. Sidtherat is the "King of the Labyrinth" and a "good guy" in my book. But his posts are always the same, which is to assume that people do not like the labyrinth because their skills need to be improved.

Here's an additional thought on a contributing factor as to why lab haters and lab lovers seem unable to understand each other sometimes. People that love the labyrinth generally run it many times for enchant and racing. They know the patterns of the traps and know the best paths to take. People that hate the labyrinth generally run through it just for the ascendancy points and will never learn the patterns. This 45 to 60 minute per run issue is unbelievable to someone that runs the labyrinth in 10 minutes or faster. Hence, the disbelief when it's pointed out that Chris Wilson said that a run would take maybe 45 minutes to an hour.

"

Fruz wrote:

"

Turtledove wrote:

Traps do not scare me

How long is your average lab run you said ? 40 mins ?
How much of this time is dedicated to going through traps ?
Because the rest is just standard PoE, only with more rewards ( and slightly more interesting areas imo ).

I don't know that my average would make much sense since I avoid the labyrinth as much as possible. My average could easily be 40 minutes or longer. Really way longer because I have gone off to eat or take a break in the middle just because I needed to take a break. The last time I did it, I tried to speed through the regular gameplay parts to try to reduce the disgust. It was probably about 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes, I didn't actually try to time it. This technique to try to speed through it did make it a bit more bearable.

It is true that the rest of the labyrinth is standard PoE gameplay. But for me, when I decide to go into the labyrinth, I'm already dreading and hating it even before I enter. The whole time that I'm in there I'm disliking it, even when it is the regular game play times. This is just my personal experience. I don't know how common or uncommon that kind of reaction is?

"

morbo wrote:

@Casual_Ascent,

Looking at your name and join date, I'd say you built your account around Lab hate. Like, specifically created for Lab hatin'... :)

Not sure how seriously to take you. Maybe make your account public, so we can help with build suggestions?

I made my account public, enjoy.

I do not play HC.

I understand though how Labyrinth would be extra bad for a HC player. You focus on maximum survival. You are able to faceroll bosses. Yet, a stupid trap 20 levels below your character level can practically one shot that character. I think that is beyond ridiculous for an arpg!

"

Turtledove wrote:

I don't know that my average would make much sense since I avoid the labyrinth as much as possible. My average could easily be 40 minutes or longer. Really way longer because I have gone off to eat or take a break in the middle just because I needed to take a break. The last time I did it, I tried to speed through the regular gameplay parts to try to reduce the disgust. It was probably about 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes, I didn't actually try to time it. This technique to try to speed through it did make it a bit more bearable.

It is true that the rest of the labyrinth is standard PoE gameplay. But for me, when I decide to go into the labyrinth, I'm already dreading and hating it even before I enter. The whole time that I'm in there I'm disliking it, even when it is the regular game play times. This is just my personal experience. I don't know how common or uncommon that kind of reaction is?

Well I don't fully understand that feeling.
I am sometimes scared of traps, but after the short trap part is done, I'm just all good doing standard PoE and enjoying the Lab's content ( including the lore ), and I do actually feel a bit relieved ( some traps I just don't care ).
Maybe I'm just not taking it too seriously ( I went through the HC cruel lab couple of times during Perandus, and it did not bother much more I think. I was a bit more scared maybe ).

I guess my averrage running time is 30 mins maybe, at least.
I like killing more stuff and exploring a bit.

I will stop discussing about "Mario" or "Prince of Persia" because it's almost pathetic in some cases I think, too far-fetched and of bad faith.
I'll just try to ignore those comments, it goes nowhere.

"

Rakelholz wrote:

Yes the argument that although its painfull it is very rewarding is a good one. Still the issue remains that certain defensive mechanics and therefore builds/class have a great advantage in the entire trap crap. We will never end this discussion as well. I think the sides of haters and lovers are quite equally balanced here. There is people that easily get the hang of this. I am sure they all had a NES
or SEGA and are blessed with the gift of liking this kind of game elements. They can not understand
why the other half is unable to do it as it is easy for them. Other way around, we "haters" can not get how a person can like such a thing.

Altho some builds may have an advantage, I don't think it's that of a big one, really.
Altho for some haters, comparing it to a game they never played in such a way is a bit ridiculous don't you think ? How could you know actually what the game that you never played would be that kind of feeling ?
I have played a bit of Mario in the past, and I can tell you : it has nothing to do with the traps apart from the fact that some situations require timing. The jumping part is stupid and completely out of context for example.

"

Severance2hBlade wrote:

Bottom line is i don't want to spend a second inside this insidious environment called Lab, but GGGs implementation doesn't actually leave room for absolute decisions.

It does.
It does leave less room for mistakes tho.

"

Pyrokar wrote:

Character choices matter?
I told you i can build to facetank everything, but i nearly died in a second for example

What I said in the previous post, I just gave you example on how build decision affects the lab.
It affects it less obviously.
And I told you that GGG does not want you to be able to facetank the lab, deal with it.
So are you getting frustrated because there is something that you cannot facetank ? Well I think it's a good thing, we need more of those.
What's the point of having challenging content if you can actually facetank all of it ( nothing challenging anymore ) ?

I'm not advocating for network issues, as Morbo said, it has always been the case, now there is the lab where it's slightly deadlier, but the network's code and people's connection are becoming better at the same time.

"

Fruz wrote:

"

Pyrokar wrote:

Character choices matter?
I told you i can build to facetank everything, but i nearly died in a second for example

What I said in the previous post, I just gave you example on how build decision affects the lab.
It affects it less obviously.
And I told you that GGG does not want you to be able to facetank the lab, deal with it.
So are you getting frustrated because there is something that you cannot facetank ? Well I think it's a good thing, we need more of those.
What's the point of having challenging content if you can actually facetank all of it ( nothing challenging anymore ) ?

I'm not advocating for network issues, as Morbo said, it has always been the case, now there is the lab where it's slightly deadlier, but the network's code and people's connection are becoming better at the same time.

I think that you're still missing the point. I think his point was what I mentioned in my last post.

I don't play HC.

I understand though how Labyrinth would be extra bad for a HC player. You focus on maximum survival. You are able to faceroll bosses. Yet, a stupid trap 20 levels below your character level can practically one shot that character. I think that is beyond ridiculous for an arpg!

For example, I haven't seen any statistics but people have mentioned that it appears there are fewer people playing hardcore, the assumption is that it is because of the labyrinth?