NZGDC 2016 Developer Presentation: Labyrinth Design

I really do hope that the person responsible for Lab development had been fired.

i used to hate Labyrinth with all my heart

and still do )
Lab mostly dont fit for this game because of my gamestyle - i play slowly and carefully, i develope my single char in a week or two with maybe few hours after work and on weekend. And when i rip because of my careless actions or some random devourer shit - its fine, and most of time all rips are educational about something RIPpy in this game something to avoid in the future and be more carefull about. But when it cames to the mandatory Lab its not fine, its painfully unavoidable. And rips there dont make me any pleasure.

Ater some time Labs became like an exam of your game knowledge, you cant just yolo it trough with any build, you have to watch at least few guides, every time remember all the tricks, which are not that much actually, about Izaro buffs specifically. And thats it! You can pass it, be glad about it, but still hate it very much. And I still RIPPin fkng every fkng time on some BS spikes or some burst izaro mzfkng crits with traps all over around slowing me down! meeeeh

With all my hate i have to admit - first two levels of Lab are pretty much a cake. You can pass them at your 60th levels easy. And most mid-map builds are fine with 4 ascendancy points. But pushing end game Labs is just out of my personal reach, every league i probably got the merciless Lab once or twice if i got lucky, and i still never got an Uber one. You just have to spend more time ingame for this to have more characters to reroll after constant rips, to have more gear, partying etc.

1 offering - 1portal in 1 labirint.
4 offering - 4portals in 1 labirint.

ezz

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Dan_GGG wrote:

"

Erasculio wrote:

This is more a guideline for what other designers should avoid than a showcase of a successful part of the game.

This talk is definitely intended to present to other developers what we found worked and didn't while making the labyrinth, and what we learned in the process.

Hopefully, you learned that naming it "Labyrinth" when you make a cool layout that forces you to go in a straight line on a semi-randomi daily pattern is a very wrong thing.

"

Sexcalibure wrote:

The parcour is boring, when lab was announced i was expecting ambushes of monsters, puzzles with painful result if you fail, choices like decent champion race

A bad choice was made when introducing the mechanic as such when needing precise movement in a game where every lag spike might pose an unusual difficulty when dealing with said content...

You have added destructible traps on a timed basis, couldn't you add the same principle to all the traps on a per hit basis - make it 100 hits with a damage minimum of 15K/hit, also render the maximum damage as efficient as that minimum, and give us the opportunity to destroy the so called "obsacles" that you are forced to navigate/"cheese" with high MS and use of movement skills...

It would bring us slow folks satisfaction due to having the opportunity to make a path more slowly than the speedsters, but also feel that we progress more fairly and safely - we can go toe to toe with bosses, but with traps we either have to not get hit, or get hit repeatedly and die...

Also, the traps should complement the monsters more, and using them to fight some monsters should be a great opportunity for increasing the tactical gameplay...

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Dan_GGG wrote:

I figured people would find it interesting regardless. Hopefully the content of the talk indicates that we are paying attention to feedback.

It's interesting, as Ascendancy fights versus Izaro are one of the best addition to the endgame, but making the finding of Offerings mandatory to access Uber Lab, in a "Hardcore likeness" of 1 go, when dealing with an online game where server-client communication leaves to be desired is an assinine move towards the Softcore crowd, that rely on having a few chances to complete the content...

Why not make Labyrinth a solo mandatory experience if you chosed to force players to "cheese" through it? You would then force players not only to "improve" their skill when navigating through the gauntlets, but also you would force them to meet a gear/build damage/survivability check...

I see so much wasted potential with the route that you used, but you can still improve the meaning of the "Labyrinth" if you want to...

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TheLastZica wrote:

I consider lab a huge failure comprised of lazy game development. Ascendancy in general was probably overall the worst expansion (Atlas is second worst.) Mobile and timed percentage health damage traps in a game with latency and many outstanding performance issues? Terrible, terrible idea you should be collectively ashamed of. It's not "hard," it's not a "challenge," it's just stupid and plays havoc with all the other existing game systems, encouraging the user to use one of a few mechanics that completely trivialize it to the point it may as well NOT EVEN BE THERE. Why exactly should a frail witch survive just as long against a pillar of blades as a bulky marauder wearing full plate? It makes NO SENSE.


Unlink ascendancy classes from lab. Or better yet, drop them altogether. The passive skill tree is vastly better and the ascendancy keystones would be better if moved into the main tree. There's no NEED for class-specific nodes when the start point already provides so much flavor.

Jeez, time travel exists. Pretty sure above post and many similar in this topic must have fallen through a wormhole and end up in a future because there is no way in hell this was written in 2017.

Normal and Cruel lab is a joke that a blind person with just left hand can navigate through. Traps are rare and only of less threatening types. Izaro is fully tankable with little to no mitigation. Runs should not take more than 20 - 25 minutes to get through.

Merciless lab is still manageable, both traps and Izaro, but you should be prepared with decent flasks at least.

Uber Lab is painful for certain builds, mostly Izaro as pretty much any builds have ways to deal with traps--movement skills trivialize most traps, ES laughs at spikes or saws, 3+ endurance charges make those traps much easier as well, etc. Izaro is hitting hard, therefore, you will have to make careful preparation and ideally run lab on day when he is less dangerous, dual swords, sword and shield.

My only gripe are Ascendancy trials. Even if you have to complete them once per difficulty in a league, they are still annoying. Normal, Cruel and Merciless trials should be merged into one set of trials in Normal difficulty as a introduction to Labyrinth's mechanics. There should be a portal to trial entrance from Sarn once you discover the trial while leveling.

Uber trials should be made easier to obtain--introduce mechanics that will ensure that only those trials that are not yet completed will spawn in a map if random generator decides that a trial should be present. This would make it less painful to get those last few without a need to group up or pay for it in global820.

The labyrinth is one of my fave additional contents into the game (along with the masters...). GG to the designer/developers: You did an amazing work!

Reading this thread I fear for the future of Lord's Labyrinth. If GGG decides to make any element of lab easier as part of "listening to feedback", me and players of similar tastes will know for sure that potential casualisation of game (brought to light with XBone annoucement) is going to happen.

I already said it several times, but I was pleasantly surprised and was hopeful for this game's future when Labyrinth was introduced, Ascendancy balance is horrible, but lab is amazing. Over the time other aspects of game are becoming easier - direct result of Ascendancy imbalance. Ironically Labyrinth can still bring out lot of controversy.

Alright, now for my feedback. I think Lord's Labyrinth is too easy. Normal, cruel and merciless can stay how they are as they mainly serve as advanced tutorials and nothing you will ever farm again unless you go for "demi" jewels.

Now, Endgame Labyrinth can be trivialised by stacking regen, movement speed, attack speed for movement skills. Only thing that people are scared of from time to time is overbuffed Izaro(+ darkshrines if they somehow decide to grab some, which people tend to overlook because only fraction of them are rewarding, mainly one with curses, vulnerability is amazing). I don't believe Izaro needs any further fine tuning of his damage, but he could use some HP buff so that people just don't kill him before he can even attack.
As such, I'd propose introducing hard cap on movement speed(say 40-50%), cooldowns on movement skills(whatever doesn't allow you to skip entire trap gauntlet by just mindless spam), regen(10%ish, kaom's ways are worst offender on life builds in this case), physical reduction(mainly comes from endurance charges, so cap it at 12%, 3 charges or something) and something that would make it bit harder for ES again(it wasn't fine before but it's too easy now).

Oh also just realised that removing invulnerability frames on things like whirling blades would be good idea, with good timing you can get through any trap no matter how little no none sustain/mitigation you have.

ROOOMBAAAS ! :-)

very interesting

labyrinth sucks ass, I hate every time I have to go through that shit

Thanks for sharing. :D