Labs should not be mandatory.

Nice suggestions! (Amount of lab haters would prolly explode though^^)

I think the uber lab in HC works pretty well if you are doing it without a dedicated build.

"

Sa_Re wrote:

Nice suggestions! (Amount of lab haters would prolly explode though^^)

I think the uber lab in HC works pretty well if you are doing it without a dedicated build.

I'm as casual n00b hoarder as you'll ever get, but even I got desolated by the current iteration of "Labyrinth"...

GGG wants us to "enjoy" traps? Great, make them a way better experience than the current one and I'm in. And dare I remind you, "Labyrinth" has a few more points where it feel as lacklustre as half-baked content in an ONLINE ONLY ARPG will ever get...

I also signaled a long, long time ago, in a thread burried far, far away, that the danger/reward ratios combine with "opie-op speed meta + instant leech + instant quit" are hurting PoE and make it a game not worthy of the "hardcore" status...

Steady (albeit too slowly), things are changing... Hopefully for the best...

Labyrinth got easier with 3.0.
Normal lab has no more traps in final fight and is much shorter than cruel or mericless variant ,which allows people to do it very early in story progession depending on the gear level.

The other lab difficulties are more rewarding than before as the shrine effects can make the Izaro fights or the lab traversal much easier, and additionally give nice side rewards (Keys).

I did normal lab with 23 as duelist, granted i had up to date flasks and some nice weapons.
Guess more determined players would do it with lvl 20 depending on experience,gear.

"

gandhar0 wrote:

Labyrinth got easier with 3.0.
Normal lab has no more traps in final fight and is much shorter than cruel or mericless variant ,which allows people to do it very early in story progession depending on the gear level.

The other lab difficulties are more rewarding than before as the shrine effects can make the Izaro fights or the lab traversal much easier, and additionally give nice side rewards (Keys).

I did normal lab with 23 as duelist, granted i had up to date flasks and some nice weapons.
Guess more determined players would do it with lvl 20 depending on experience,gear.

And this is the WRONG way to go with CONTENT YOU'RE INVESTED IN.

Nerfing content and "bribing" players to like is not the solution if you want that said content to have "WOW" factor...

I also recently went and ascended another character and did all "Labyrinths" underleveled or at most at the same level for "Uber Lab", with a goddamn Berserker using DUAL STRIKE and nothing more than a Tabula for up to the first 3 "Labyrinths" - and I still gunned for "moar damage + increased damage taken" without paying attention to VP, so no, "Labyrinth/Uber Labyrinth" do not pose "challenge" even when you disregard poe.lab...

And the sat thing is that it does not bring anything "worth to remember" too...

The "make lab great (again?) and keep it as mandatory" talk is a well intentioned misfire. Such efforts would quite possibly cause POE to lose even more players, going forward.

At the end of the day, lab's key features are as follows:

1. Long mazes without checkpoints along the way
2. If your connection poops out then you start over from the beginning
3. Trap gauntlets requiring precision movement in a game not well set up for precision movement
4. "Percent of life" damage on traps ignores most player defenses
5. Character definition is gated behind a platform mini-game, and not the main game or character-specific missions, as is far more usual in *RPGs
6. The process of defining your character is homogeneous for all character types

Good luck fixing this mess. You're not dealing with one or two things that irritate players with lab. You're dealing with an impressive collection of "player irritation enhancement" measures.

Think back to when Solaris was essentially a long maze and how many players just asked for the waypoint rather than deal with it. People voted with their feet in large numbers against experiencing the Solaris maze and it was much shorter than lab. You *may* get people to tolerate a long maze by having enough pieces of cheese available along the way and by essentially forcing them to navigate it. But, you're not going to have much luck with making that kind of content generally well liked.

Numbers 5 and 6 above may not matter to most experienced POE players very much. But, a goodly percentage of gamers who like RPGs will give POE a try and probably have at least one or two "WTF is this?" moments when they find out GGG went the cheap and easy route for character definition / prestige class skills (repetitive mini-game and not the main game, plus all prestige classes are earned the same way, with no character specific elements to that process whatsoever).

There is no wave of gaming companies following GGG down their "innovative" path by providing an in-game experience like lab, at least not in the *RPG genre. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then GGG can't be feeling too flattered, concerning lab.

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Turtledove wrote:

What Goetzjam says is absolutely false. The man with no honor returns to continue his crusade of arguing here on the forums for no purpose other than arguing. Goetzjam claimed he knew for a fact that I hadn't played PoE for much longer than I claimed and he called me a liar. He came to this false conclusion based on the fact that my account name had not been associated with any challenges number for a long time. I politely informed him that I had been playing standard to avoid as much loathsome labyrinth content as possible. I expected him to politely apologize for falsely calling me a liar. He didn't because he is a man without honor.

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goetzjam wrote:

Whats even more sad is the lab haters that seem to think insulting people over a game is a good idea.

Hopefully he gets put in his place by support.

This is in response to your inappropriate message me to me when support didn't react. I'll guess that your proper response was obvious to support and so they saw no need to react. Since it is apparently not so obvious to you, let me assist you. Your proper response should show remorse and probably use some words like "liar" and "sorry" or "apologize".

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Sa_Re wrote:

"

goetzjam wrote:

Whats even more sad is the lab haters that seem to think insulting people over a game is a good idea.

Hopefully he gets put in his place by support.

To be fair, only very few lab haters post such embarrassing stuff or put people on a list without their permission.

The purpose of the list is to prove to people like sidtherat that more than 7 people dislike labyrinth game play. I will happily remove anyone that does not want to be on the list. Although that has occurred extremely rarely.

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Sa_Re wrote:

...

"

goetzjam wrote:

Whats even more sad is the lab haters that seem to think insulting people over a game is a good idea.

Hopefully he gets put in his place by support.

To be fair, only very few lab haters post such embarrassing stuff or put people on a list without their permission.

People making a post in a publicly accessible place have voluntarily given up their right to keep their views private. I'm confused about how aggregating publicly expressed opinions is somehow inherently wrong, particularly when the links are provided to the posts in question so that anybody reading it can read the original source material for any poster.

Aside from the foregoing, the number of individual accounts posting about disappointment / frustration / dislike / hatred of lab is at this point close to the 1,000 mark. It would be very time consuming to ask the owner of every account.

Support is likely backed up dealing with the new payment options and troubleshooting that, so I will give them the benefit of the doubt for the time being.

However, insulting a user over and over again will eventually catch up to you. Again, if you don't have anything nice to say, its best not to say anything at all, which in your case would almost always be absolute silence.

"

goetzjam wrote:

Support is likely backed up dealing with the new payment options and troubleshooting that, so I will give them the benefit of the doubt for the time being

I'm surprised that you call the police on such an insignificant matter.^^

"

EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

1. Long mazes without checkpoints along the way

You can run through the first three in a few minutes. If you need a long time to complete them you need to get better I guess?

"

2. If your connection poops out then you start over from the beginning

Annoying but again, they don't take long. With a leveling weapon, the thing in normal lab that takes the most time is to wait for izaros animations to end.

"

3. Trap gauntlets requiring precision movement in a game not well set up for precision movement

If this was really an issue people wouldn't complain that the labs are so easy.

"

4. "Percent of life" damage on traps ignores most player defenses

Which is a good thing imo. But you can use defenses against them like high regen, armor etc.

"

5. Character definition is gated behind a platform mini-game, and not the main game or character-specific missions, as is far more usual in *RPGs

Many classic *RPG dungeons are all about nasty traps. If you wanna make a point, use the term ARPGs here, not *RPGs.

"

6. The process of defining your character is homogeneous for all character types

How would this be different without the labs?

"

Think back to when Solaris was essentially a long maze and how many players just asked for the waypoint rather than deal with it. People voted with their feet in large numbers against experiencing the Solaris maze and it was much shorter than lab. You *may* get people to tolerate a long maze by having enough pieces of cheese available along the way and by essentially forcing them to navigate it. But, you're not going to have much luck with making that kind of content generally well liked.

The difference for me here is that the lab areas are pretty straight forward while the old solaris had many dead ends. One reason why most areas are very linear now is to nerf maphacks in racing btw.

"

Numbers 5 and 6 above may not matter to most experienced POE players very much. But, a goodly percentage of gamers who like RPGs will give POE a try and probably have at least one or two "WTF is this?" moments when they find out GGG went the cheap and easy route for character definition / prestige class skills (repetitive mini-game and not the main game, plus all prestige classes are earned the same way, with no character specific elements to that process whatsoever).

They designed a unique dungeon with interesting boss fights and a decent story around all that. What you describe as superior is handing them over the most boring way, at level ups, like most RPGs do.

"

There is no wave of gaming companies following GGG down their "innovative" path by providing an in-game experience like lab, at least not in the *RPG genre. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then GGG can't be feeling too flattered, concerning lab.

Because most modern RPGs' gameplay is boring and way too easy even at the highest difficulties. I wish more devs would design interesting dungeons. A modern example for such a design is Legend of Grimrock.

TL:DR: Stop demanding GGG to dumb the game down. Leave its unique elements be, mapping already became way too mindless.

Lab is boring, not because its easy but because its tedious repetition of annoying mechanics.
Also its only 'easy' for specific builds and/or for people with significant experience running it.

To top it off, the loot/reward portion is pretty disgusting.
I've personally never actually had any valuable* loot drop from lab or had the helm enchant I want come up for the character I'm running lab with.

Since lab is boring/tedious the only reason to do it is the "pay-off", and beyond the forced run for your class defining abilities the pay-off is abysmal.

From a time investment stand-point you're better off running maps for currency and buying what you need.

*meaning loot I'd either wear on the build I'm doing in the league where it dropped or that would sell for enough to buy something I want.