NZGDC 2016 Developer Presentation: Labyrinth Design

To all the people screaming that ascendancy is "required" or give it to us free...

Need I remind you when the lab and ascendancy was released there was no buff to monster life or damage. Meaning you can still do content with out ever doing the lab.

True they added additional map tiers with uber lab. But let's be honest. Someone already mentioned it normal/cruel lab is a joke. Skip it and come back. Grind some maps and merc lab is easy too.

If your build requires ascendancy then don't make that a starter build. Get some farm in before making a character that's worthless without lab.

Uber lab is meant to be hard, the rewards are actually quite decent. Deal with it

If they give ascendency free then they better buff monster difficulty to compensate.


Personally I like unforgiving challenging content. I see ascendency as a very good reward for the decent challenge lab provides

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Hellsfire wrote:

If they give ascendency free then they better buff monster difficulty to compensate.

double dipping dream right there.

I agree with others..just get rid of the lab..It doesnt belong in this type of game.

interesting to see something from a game design work :)

multiple hate threads regarding lab including a 400 page thread.

presenting this in announcement just shows how out of touch ggg is you won the pissing contest thats for sure

you wont get any dime from me ...thats for sure aswell

the suck it or leave it attitude will break ggg onetime

whatever dont care anymore since lab my playtime is down to 1/10th so what.....still waiting for my battleforge reborn

Even though in my opinion the Lab is far from perfect, I find it quite enjoyable.

GGG did a great job in developing it and created content that differed from the usual brainless hack&slay. (We all like H&S, but variety spices things up!)

The Labyrinth provides an exceptional challenge with potentially great rewards, which is a great thing. However especially on lower difficulties where most Characters can not yet utilize their builds strength, the Lab can be rather frustrating.

Defeating hard Boss-Enemys can get difficult when your defenses don't match the challenge, or your mana regen doesn't work properly yet, and so on...
A Character lower than lvl 70 is mostly work in progress and therefore can have severe problems to kill a strong Boss-Enemy like Izaro without dying.

Depending on how good a player understands trap- and encounter-mechanics and how good their character can deal with them, the labyrinth can take Players quite some time. Some can do it in less than 15 minutes others take over 1 hour.

If a player constantly needs to be focused for over an hour and then dies (especially to something like lag), loosing all progress, feels realy shitty and a waste of time.

The point I see here is that the longer it would take you to complete the Labyrinth the more frustrating it gets when something goes wrong and you die and leave without any reward, especially if you need to get to the end to get the 2 ascendancy points, which are a necessity for most builds to work.

So it would probably be good to
*shorten the labyrinth runs somehow,
*nerf Izaro - The guys that farm the ueber-labyrinth and run OP Specs kill him with 4 Keys anyway - But unexperienced players get wiped by him and dying at the End is really the most frustrating thing ever, especially if he one-shots you because for non ES builds or those lacking enough Armor the Damage is extremely high,
*or give the players some fail saves for the day - like resume from last izaro encounter or something...(It takes them longer but not everything is lost)

Other than that I find the Lab really cool and hope GGG will continue with its great content design. The Ascendancy Classes were and still are one of the most interesting parts of the game and characterdevelopment to me and I think they should stay connected to the lab, not like some folks suggested in here...

Oh yeah... one last thing... decrease the brightness of Ueber-lab-traps indicators.. especially those that damage you when you use movement-skills to move through them... with all the dark and gritty look its really hard to see traps and trap-pathways beneath them if neon-green overlay masks them.

"

Hellsfire wrote:

To all the people screaming that ascendancy is "required" or give it to us free...

Need I remind you when the lab and ascendancy was released there was no buff to monster life or damage. Meaning you can still do content with out ever doing the lab.

True they added additional map tiers with uber lab. But let's be honest. Someone already mentioned it normal/cruel lab is a joke. Skip it and come back. Grind some maps and merc lab is easy too.

If your build requires ascendancy then don't make that a starter build. Get some farm in before making a character that's worthless without lab.

Uber lab is meant to be hard, the rewards are actually quite decent. Deal with it

If they give ascendency free then they better buff monster difficulty to compensate.


Personally I like unforgiving challenging content. I see ascendency as a very good reward for the decent challenge lab provides

Well most of us casual n00bs that actually like challenging content want it to be worth it, and God knows that I suggested lots of ways to make Labyrinth and monsters more challenging for the crowd that simply hates long boring sequences of traps upon traps - mind you I'm also OK with the traps in the Izaro fight, and I think they should be in every fight with a gradual increase in complexity, and those traps should affect him too in the same measure that we are affected...

I want less monsters in packs, and more dangerous too, as killing oceans of whites, seas of magic, rivers of rare, and streams of bosses/uniques takes a lot from the satisfaction when facing overwhelming odds and overpowering them with the help of skill, strategy and tactic...

Uber Lab is not hard, and everyone not bored to death by the pathing and cheesing up to Izaro fights could complete it, if the quality of the server-client connection is not disrupted, or real life doesn't take priority...

I would enjoy more killing difficult content that tries to kill me, using the enviroment in my favour, destruct the traps to make my own path if I choose so, and the best part would be that all of that wouldn't take nothing from those that love the actual gameplay, but would improve the "fun" for me exponentialy when losing time in Labyrinth...

Oh, and could we stop with the Hardcore semblance in Softcore already, all of us that would want to have only 1 chance to complete the content would do so by playing Hardcore, and make the Labyrinth a solo mandatory experience while you're at it, to render some meaning to all that beautiful designed fights versus Izaro, as you could already overlevel it, and the fights are the best part of it, and should be build defining...

Personally, I hate a lab. Why, because it looks sometimes like a Donkey-Kong in 3D- it's an another kind of game . Mixing with H&S for me - little ridiculous. Don't cross two kinds of gaming in this case.
I'm old school player ( 46 years ) and I've blessed a time when I saw a first time a Diablo - classic, pure fight with hordes of enemies. PoE is a fantastic successor ... but why this addit. content, I don't know... idea of Ascendancy points -fine, but rest ... no comments
And, one, very important factor - crippled performance. Do you think that " labbing", for example, with burning floor causes 2-5 fps; dc, crash instances is funny ?
It's so frustrating, why you put addit. penalty for players with AMD GPU, explain me ?
P.S.
Lab running ( I agree that normal/cruel and trad. merciless is generally easy ) is also dedicated for builds based on movement speed and huge regen of life/ES. It's an unfair,simply, it's big advantage with end-game enchantments. Probability with helmet's enchants - about 2-5 +/- /388. It looks like a lotto.

I love how one of the conclusions is "Watch how people play and listen to their Feedback"

The very first thing that came to my mind when I first encountered the Lab back when it was released was 'why isn't there another way through it?'. For a few minutes I was so sure in my thinking 'there must be two ways through, one shorter with traps, and another, longer, without traps at all'.
Yeah right. Gotta suffer through this 'great design' every bloody league, on every character.