freaking lab leaking into the game under the guise of boss rework!

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e1337donkey wrote:

You guys complaining about the lab don't even know why the lab sucks to begin with. The lab has these trap gauntlets that have you duck and weave through them. You don't engage them with your skill gems, you don't build for them with your passive skill tree, and your items don't mean very much against these traps. The core game itself doesn't mesh with lab.

This boss however is different, because the fire trap is supporting the boss in the room. Your engaging an enemy with your skills, skill tree build, items. While also dealing with a switch/trap mechanic. This is the kind of fight the lab should have had more of.

+1, but -1 for still in the end supporting lab traps, so you end up at a net 0

Just fyi

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The_Reporter wrote:

I've never complained about anything else.

I made a few posts complaining about the death penalty. I don't believe that I've complained about that since they cut it down from 15% to 7.5% and I don't remember complaining about anything else?

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e1337donkey wrote:

One of the biggest draws for this game has been its vast skill tree, gem / support gem setup. To be able to complete control over any ability you use, what supports you want to use, where you want to start on the skill tree. Using this knowledge combined with the constant release of powerful uniques, and now the ascendancies.. you can craft some interesting characters.

Every single area and challenge in this game exists with a player vs monster mentality. Except the lab, this is why it falls short. You want to make characters that you can push further and further into maps. Doing maps, atziri, core malachai, etc. You shouldn't be put at a huge disadvantage because your build didn't include a high ammount of life regen. It should be fair to everyone entering, that you can put your build to the test and use the skills you've earned to get past it.

Side note... Diablo 1 , 2, 3 (Which I only played for a month) Never had traps even remotely close to the lab. An arrow flying through a door when you open. A giant wall of fire appearing on the ground when you open a chest. Those are traps yes, but not on the scale the lab has them.

Okay, so I can isolate two different things going on here:
1. Traps don't die. DPS is irrelevant against them.
2. Traps deal damage in percentages. Life nodes, ES nodes, life on gear, ES on gear, etc, are irrelevant against them.

There is nothing new about circumstances which render elements of one's build irrelevant. The first two Diablo games not only had unkillable hazards, but also things like Elemental immunities which could make heavy investment into a skill irrelevant for a fight. PoE already has/had monster/map affixes like Hexproof, reflected damage, Corrupted Blood and Blood Magic which either invalidate certain forms of build investment or punish certain builds much more heavily than others.

I think the reason the Labirynth is such a godforsaken cancerous meme in Feedback is that it is an area devoted not just to one of these "immunity" concepts, but two of them, with excessive redundancy. Unkillable threats? Probably a good idea. Percentage-based, instead of flat, damage? Another cool idea. Applying both concepts simultaneously to the same threat? Um, okay, as a one-of to make That One Monster Some People Love to Hate, but the game probably doesn't need six different versions of it. Making all six versions anyway, then putting them all in the same area? Salt incoming.

That said, this thread, to me, represents precisely the wrong attitude. The component concepts behind traps, properly separated to prevent overdose, are good ones, or at least very much in line with traditional ARPG design. Using these concepts sparingly and spread over diverse content is the correct method, not the incorrect one; it's not like the Labirynth, it's what the Labirynth isn't.

I still think, no matter what, every good games need a frustating part. It just push us to go further and makes the reward taste better. Accept it or not it's how it is. And the current state of the Lab is very scary and frustating which is nice.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

That said, this thread, to me, represents precisely the wrong attitude. The component concepts behind traps, properly separated to prevent overdose, are good ones, or at least very much in line with traditional ARPG design. Using these concepts sparingly and spread over diverse content is the correct method, not the incorrect one; it's not like the Labirynth, it's what the Labirynth isn't.

Exactly! Sprinkling some traps around to make monster killing more challenging equals more fun. Having screens full of traps that have to be traversed equals labyrinth which is not fun and is more like Frogger, Prince of Persia, and Mario than PoE.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

builds much more heavily than others.

I think the reason the Labirynth is such a godforsaken cancerous meme in Feedback is that it is an area devoted not just to one of these "immunity" concepts, but two of them, with excessive redundancy. Unkillable threats? Probably a good idea. Percentage-based, instead of flat, damage? Another cool idea. Applying both concepts simultaneously to the same threat? Um, okay, as a one-of to make That One Monster Some People Love to Hate, but the game probably doesn't need six different versions of it. Making all six versions anyway, then putting them all in the same area? Salt incoming.

That said, this thread, to me, represents precisely the wrong attitude. The component concepts behind traps, properly separated to prevent overdose, are good ones, or at least very much in line with traditional ARPG design. Using these concepts sparingly and spread over diverse content is the correct method, not the incorrect one; it's not like the Labirynth, it's what the Labirynth isn't.

Even in the instance of percentage based, unkillable threats it goes even further beyond that. There are plenty of percentage based damage mechanics in POE (burning, freezing, shock, RF, blood rage, etc) but the bigger issue here is that it invalidates too many things. The ONLY counter to traps is regen.

Even in the cases where GGG includes a mechanic that is blatantly bullshit (physical spells, as an example) against one segment of the game, it still has more than one way to deal with it and doesn't by existence invalidate every build that doesn't include X mechanic. Lab traps specifically DEMAND movespeed and life regen and damn any builds that don't do at least one of these well.

And they even added extra things in there that shit on people using movement gems, because why would they want anything but life regen allowed to help people complete lab.

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diablofdb wrote:

I still think, no matter what, every good game needs a frustating part. It just pushes us to go further and makes the reward taste better.

Grammar corrections mine.

Technically, I agree with this. However, the key word here is "a." A frustating part makes us plan ahead, theorycraft, anticipate the moment, face the fear, overcome. Good shit. Making a marathon out of consecutive functionally-identical frustrating parts, on the other hand, is masochism.

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Turtledove wrote:

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The_Reporter wrote:

I've never complained about anything else.

I made a few posts complaining about the death penalty. I don't believe that I've complained about that since they cut it down from 15% to 7.5% and I don't remember complaining about anything else?

Small correction: The death penalty in Merciless is 10%.