The Labyrinth layout should change every time you enter.

I expect this thread to attract a lot of hate, because it is essentially asking for a kind of nerf.

Nerfs in general cause players a lot of anxiety, so let's look at why they are necessary. When you have a broken, overpowered skill or mechanic, devs become forced to balance the game around that (evidence is plentiful in the years of PoE patch notes). The consequence? You have content that can be cleared only by people using broken mechanics and skills, and everyone who prefers to ignore the broken meta and play "legit" gets left in the dust, to varying degrees.

Speaking of a broken meta, let's look at the Lab: I think most of us can agree that between 95% to 99% of the people who run it and/or really enjoy it make use of website resources which show you the fastest way through, ahead of time, and/or wait for an easy layout day so they can run through it really fast over and over. This seems obvious enough: One of the most popular defenses for the Labyrinth is, "It's not that bad; it only takes 15 minutes TOPS." And that statement can only be true if you know the layout ahead of time. The most interesting part of this situation is that GGG doesn't seem to mind; they rather seem to expect it.

Consider this a moment:

A labyrinth whose path is known in advance ceases to be a labyrinth.

What is the point of creating a Labyrinth, if you just expect players to look up a path through it before running it anyhow? It amounts to a kind of dishonest content, because it becomes a 100% linear path that is hidden from players who feel that "looking up the solution to a maze in advance" is a kind of cheating (in the sense that it subverts the implicit rule of a game--in this case a maze--and thereby ruins the fun), and from no one else.

This is the epitome of meta-cheese. And the consequences, predictably, are similar to the consequences of allowing a broken skill / mechanic to run amok: Players who prefer to ignore the broken meta and play "legit" are left in the dust. Those who want to play it as a labyrinth, i.e. without "cheating" or "cheesing" it by looking up the layout ahead of time, are the ones who end up finding it the least fun.

You want to know why the Labyrinth is so polarizing? THAT'S IT, RIGHT THERE. (Perhaps even more so than traps. It's just not as apparent.) Players who enjoy the meta and players who hate the meta are necessarily going to have a different frame of reference. That makes it much harder to see common ground. You know why conversations on religion and politics turn nasty so fast? Same reason: different frames of reference.

So how about making the layout completely random? Let's make it, you know, an ACTUAL labyrinth. For everyone. Then everyone will be on the same page, with the same frame of reference, and if there are things which need to be tweaked to make the labyrinth more fun, your players will be able to work with each other and with you to help figure out what they are.


Here are some potential objections to this idea.


Objection: The lab layouts are not truly random, or they are random but require human checking for each daily layout.

Response: Fine. GGG can start saving the layouts as they check them (they probably already do). By the time the change is ready to be implemented (next big patch, probably), about 100 will be available in the pool. It need not be truly random. It need only be highly variable. GGG can continue making daily labs and human-checking each one, if they like. Just add them to the pool.


Objection: People who run the lab regularly are going to scream and cry if you do this.

Response: Just so. Sometimes you have to expose a broken mechanic before you can fix it. So far GGG's response to Lab hate has been band-aids and bribes. This lessens the forum QQ (and bad publicity) but does nothing to address any fundamental issues.


Objection: Wouldn't it be simpler just to add more rewarding side areas to encourage people not to run straight through?

Response: This is a band-aid whose purpose is subverted as fast as it is implemented. Players simply look at layouts ahead of time and evaluate the risk/reward or time/reward of running to that side area and run the lab accordingly. It still is a fundamentally linear gameplay experience, even with a small bit of backtracking added.


Objection: Shut up about the Lab already. If you don't enjoy it, just don't run it.

Response: This is a popular straw man. It's not a real objection, but I'll address it anyway. So long as the Lab provides significant rewards (enchantments and currency), it cannot be 100% ignored, even if you never step foot inside. Enchantments are powerful. Currency inflation is real. Balance tweaks happen. Similarly, the existence of broken skills and mechanics also affects the game and therefore your gaming experience, even if you never use those skills or mechanics.


Got any more objections? Please post them (I know you will, even if I don't ask), and I'll try and add them when I have time.

That's like suggesting that builds should be randomized because otherwise people just follow build guides.

You're attempting the impossible anyway - there is nothing that could make the Labyrinth fun.

"

Truper17 wrote:

That's like suggesting that builds should be randomized because otherwise people just follow build guides.

You're attempting the impossible anyway - there is nothing that could make the Labyrinth fun.

Ignoring for the moment that your analogy is completely broken, that could be a really fun 1-hour (voided) race! You get a level-90 character with a completely randomized tree, equipped with a set of completely randomized uniques. Then see how far you can get.

Only problem is the Labyrinth Ladder. I don't know how popular that actually is at all but what do you do with the fastest person jewels?

Personally like the idea of an ever-changing labyrinth. It does make sense. All I could forsee is them making two doors when you enter the plaza. One is the set lab for racing for jewels and either nerf/completely remove any rewards from it, and you can buff the rewards a lot for the random one due to the extra time everybody would take exploring. Downside, enchants from uber would become super expensive if they could only be obtained through the random lab.

All in all, I like the idea, but what is to stop anybody from saying "I want this lab to be harder so I won't look up the layout and I won't use the map provided at the doors. Unless old habits die really hard you will likely forget how exactly the path went every time until you do it 4 times in a row or something.

"

The_Reporter wrote:

It would be better for the lab ladder racing. The same guy might not win every time lol

Because somebody simply getting more difficult rooms at random is totally fair. People who practice lab running tend to win, kinda like how runners in real life practice to be in the top positions... Strange that.

"

PleiadesBlackstar wrote:

Only problem is the Labyrinth Ladder. I don't know how popular that actually is at all but what do you do with the fastest person jewels?

Personally like the idea of an ever-changing labyrinth. It does make sense. All I could forsee is them making two doors when you enter the plaza. One is the set lab for racing for jewels and either nerf/completely remove any rewards from it, and you can buff the rewards a lot for the random one due to the extra time everybody would take exploring. Downside, enchants from uber would become super expensive if they could only be obtained through the random lab.

All in all, I like the idea, but what is to stop anybody from saying "I want this lab to be harder so I won't look up the layout and I won't use the map provided at the doors. Unless old habits die really hard you will likely forget how exactly the path went every time until you do it 4 times in a row or something.

Actually, the lab even though random has a lot of things that are easy to figure out. The Name of the areas shows if they are dead ends and you also now how many exits you have. The only thing you can not use because they are harder to find are the secret passages which sometimes aren't even that helpful.

I did both Cruel and Merc lab today for my Juggernaut and although not being fast it took about 10 minutes for Cruel and 15 for Merc. The final Izaro fight was a bit messy because I let the portals open and my char is only lvl65 and I was often blocked by all the adds spawning that I couldn't get a good passage to Izaro to damage him :P

Apologies for disrespect to the original poster, but I'm impatient and wanted to respond to this, which is where I stopped reading:

"

"It's not that bad; it only takes 15 minutes TOPS." And that statement can only be true if you know the layout ahead of time.

This... this is not true, unless maybe you are referring to uber lab and/or 4+ key clears?

You might have had a case when the Labyrinth was first released, but the QoL patch they added made it really easy for anyone paying a certain amount of attention to easily navigate unknown labs. Or 1-key Merc labs, at least. Annexes and Enclosures are always dead ends. The relative directions on the lab map always correlate with relative direction in reality - if the lab map shows you entered from left, and has lines going up and right, you know that the up line is the left fork and right line is the right fork. With this, you can very often pick the right direction as soon as you enter a lab room. With few exceptions, when you run into a Golden Door, the path to the Golden Key room is nearby.

Another possibility: they changed Lab majorly for Atlas? But I read no patch notes about it.

Anyways, I'm strongly tempted to suspect original poster has not run labyrinth enough to notice all the little cues and tricks you use to speed up labyrinth, but I didn't finish reading the post so I can't say that with any amount of certainty. I really should read the rest. Maybe later. But personally I feel comfortable with average 10 minute lab runs on a non-lab-optimized character on labs where I have 0 prior knowledge about it, 15 minutes tops as original poster put it, as long as we are talking about merc lab 1-key.