A few suggestions to the labyrinth to make less people hate it.

First off, let me explain why I do not like the lab personally. Izaro is not that hard and he has never killed me. I started playing this game for the first time at the start of this season on HC league and I am really enjoying it, but the traps in the lab are the bane of my existence.

Every. single. death. in this game have been from traps. It's not because I need to "git gud" it's because of my connection with this game. This is literally the only game I play where I get massive lag spikes every now and again. In maps when I lag I can either alt+f4 or just play piano with my potions until it stops, but in lab it's insta death.

My last character that died, for example, I leaped out of a trap in merc lab to have the game rubber band me back into the trap where I couldnt move or use hp pots and I died.

Now, here is how they can make lab/izaro part of progression, but the traps not a necessity to progress through the game.

#1. Make the lab full of puzzles, and not the death puzzles already in the game. I'm talking about actual puzzles that make you think to progress through the lab. You can still make it "challenging" this way by making random unique enemy/boss encounters throughout the game when you solve a puzzle into the next major area of the lab.

#2. Make side areas, like there are already for silver keys, for extra loot at the end of the last boss. So you aren't forced to go through traps, but if you are confident in your abilities to get through them, make the rewards extra keys for the chest room at the end of the lab.

Those are just two suggestions that I think are really solid in terms of how to fix the lab and still make it challenging or rewarding depending on how you think about it. If people are still having a hard time with izaro, well, I don't know what to tell them. Maybe make a new build or not go full glass cannon.

I hope people can give some feedback or a developer of GGG reads this because I have only been playing this game for a few weeks. I am already getting quite sick of having to restart new characters because of random lag spikes in the dungeon.

I suggest using Lockstep for your networking mode (you still might get some rubberbanding sometimes, but it will be heavily reduced). Also, play with the ping counter (press F1 twice) running all the time so you know when you are getting laggy, and don't try to run a trap gauntlet around that time.

I get random lag spikes sometimes too, but thanks to lockstep if I ever die in the lab now, I usually realise its my own fault (eg: because I thought I could run through those spikes with 500 ping...) The character starts visibly lagging after around 150ms ping, and if that happens you can just find a safe place to wait and ride out the lag.

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As for your ideas, they are good. Adding some puzzles to the lab that are actually puzzling would be fun for me. And adding semi-useful rewards behind difficult trap gauntlets sounds like an ideal situation.

The visibility in the lab is poor. The inset map is useless in the lab, at least as far as I can tell. If visibility could be improved and the map made useful it might help? I would still hate it but there would be less to complain about.

problem with suggestion #2 is that 'extra loot' is not enough

we are showered with tons of loot from everywhere and - speaking for myself here - it makes no difference

the only extra loot people would care are T1 uniques, exalts and stuff like that. noone will care about 10 pairs of Wyrmscale Boots so these side rooms would remain empty

it is a very very tough balancing act between useless and mandatory in this case. this is a greed driven game

Best way to make everyone happy is put the AP behind Malachai and just delete the fucking lab.

Having lab lock ascendency out from certain builds was one of the biggest goofs ive seen in gaming history. Especially since the game lags at times and ur character has to be in a certain small spot to do some areas in lab and this wont be where u click sometimes. Total facepalm. I agree with post above. Delete the lab and start over. You could just have char gain 1 ascend point at level 20 and then every 10 levels after making everyone done at level 90. EZ fix