New player feedback on Labyrinth & Game in general

good feedback. i like your idea with the skill point "optional" quests.

lab is a very good combination of reasonable difficulty and great rewards. personally i dont see a reason to change any of its features.

i can offer few advices to make it much easier though:

- invest a little bit into life regeneration, it significantly helps not only with traps, but also with final encounter, as you may run out of flasks if your damage isn't high enough

- sources of physical mitigation are very useful. basalt flask and endurance charges (which you get from enduring cry) will make it much easier. don't forget about fortify

- if the izaro encounter is too difficult, try to disable all his buffs from phase 1 and phase 2. izaro without buffs isn't that big of a threat

- if it's still too hard, let someone else do it for you, it will probably cost you few chaos only

keep in mind, it is not supposed to be easy, but is completely doable. it will become much easier as you will gain more experience.

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Turtledove wrote:

Chris Wilson said the stupidest thing he's ever said when he tried to turn this thought on its head and said something like, "We wanted to give a taste of hardcore to softcore players with the labyrinth." He made this statement when labyrinth was first released]

IIRC, Chris also explained that GGG put a full lab into normal difficulty because they saw many players dropping out early, so they wanted to make sure that those players got the full experience of the game and didn't miss out on the lab even if they didn't progress to higher difficulty levels. In my eyes, the irony is extreme ;)

I suspect that the top brass were so enamored of the lab that they were blindsided by the negative reaction.

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Slaanesh69 wrote:

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fwd wrote:

Lab is completely optional and not story-blocking for new player. If someone feels that experience is too hardcore he could just ignore it.

This oft used line, that of the lab being completely optional, is patently false. To extend this ridiculous sentiment to its conclusion, the game is optional so why are you playing it.

Again, I am mostly indifferent to the lab, I put up with it but do not really like it, so I am not casting for a side here. But this "optional" statement needs to be put to bed.

Indeed, this argument was utterly ridiculous when it was first trotted out on the release of the lab, and it's even more so now. Partly as result of similar discussions, someone back in the day completed the game using only white items (magic items being "optional")


https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1686833/page/1

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Synopse wrote:

Topic was: Completing the campaign without doing labyrinth.
You caimed: there are a lot of player doing that.
I never did that, so I want to ask someone who do that, before trying it myself.
That is a valid question, since I don't want to waste my time on something that nobody ever did.

If you're going to waste your time, probably better to do it on things that haven't been done before ;)

Of course you can complete the campaign without doing labs -- I did so on my last run through the game right after 3.0 came out (having decided to quit the game primarily because of how ascendancy pts were locked behind the lab). It was SC, but I only had a few deaths despite running blind with no experience and almost no knowledge of the new bosses. (I didn't death-zerg Kitava, but I did use a lot of town portals...)

How many people actually do it that way, I don't know.

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Culblade2 wrote:

I am amazed that we still have the Lab in this game after all the hate from the players and how quickly GGG dumped Bestiary.

Still hate the lab always will.

Indeed... The Bestiary at least was a good idea. Just the implementation and execution was bad. Lab was from the start a terrible idea that was terribly executed...and the only way GGG got people to play it, is by hanging big fat shiny carrots at the end of it, else there is not a person that would even look at that garbage.

Bah, if only they would actually address the issues of "Labyrinth" and actually make it meaningful so all the "Lab" supporters that see it as more than an annoyance get to explore it and experience it relying on their characters, and their gameplay skill...

If "Labyrinth" would have RNG runs for the Ascendancy points, and would actually require all party members to always be present when facing Izaro, with the appropriate difficulty adjustments of course, EVERYONE could say that finishing "Uber Labyrinth" was a " milestone" into their character's progression.

Until then, GGG goes the wrong way, via shortening the content - worst decision ever regarding "Labyrinth" IMHO - and "bribes" players with everything they can...

If only Bestiary had a better implementation, it would have been a great addition to PoE due to advancements regarding deterministic crafting - which is also the only kind of "crafting" that makes sense...

Alas, we're talking about GGG and PoE, where the squandered potential abounds...

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sofocle10000 wrote:

Bah, if only they would actually address the issues of "Labyrinth" and actually make it meaningful so all the "Lab" supporters that see it as more than an annoyance get to explore it and experience it relying on their characters, and their gameplay skill...

If "Labyrinth" would have RNG runs for the Ascendancy points, and would actually require all party members to always be present when facing Izaro, with the appropriate difficulty adjustments of course, EVERYONE could say that finishing "Uber Labyrinth" was a " milestone" into their character's progression.

Until then, GGG goes the wrong way, via shortening the content - worst decision ever regarding "Labyrinth" IMHO - and "bribes" players with everything they can...

If only Bestiary had a better implementation, it would have been a great addition to PoE due to advancements regarding deterministic crafting - which is also the only kind of "crafting" that makes sense...

Alas, we're talking about GGG and PoE, where the squandered potential abounds...

Yes bestiary without the nets would have been good. It's going to be so nice to get rid of the nets finally.

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Synopse wrote:

Topic was: Completing the campaign without doing labyrinth.
You caimed: there are a lot of player doing that.
I never did that, so I want to ask someone who do that, before trying it myself.
That is a valid question, since I don't want to waste my time on something that nobody ever did.

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ajo wrote:

I just want to point out that this is something that I have done multiple times back in the days when I hated the lab. If I didn't see a carry-service or didn't have cash, I would just move on. Even now in flashback I've seen a lot of players without ascendancy while leveling, so I guess people still does it.

Thanks for the feedback.

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ShaUrley wrote:

If you're going to waste your time, probably better to do it on things that haven't been done before ;)

Of course you can complete the campaign without doing labs -- I did so on my last run through the game right after 3.0 came out (having decided to quit the game primarily because of how ascendancy pts were locked behind the lab). It was SC, but I only had a few deaths despite running blind with no experience and almost no knowledge of the new bosses. (I didn't death-zerg Kitava, but I did use a lot of town portals...)

How many people actually do it that way, I don't know.

Thanks for the feedback as well.
Thought it would be a more intersting challenge. It is still on my list but not with much priority. ;-)

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Synopse wrote:

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ShaUrley wrote:

If you're going to waste your time, probably better to do it on things that haven't been done before ;)

Of course you can complete the campaign without doing labs -- I did so on my last run through the game right after 3.0 came out (having decided to quit the game primarily because of how ascendancy pts were locked behind the lab). It was SC, but I only had a few deaths despite running blind with no experience and almost no knowledge of the new bosses. (I didn't death-zerg Kitava, but I did use a lot of town portals...)

How many people actually do it that way, I don't know.

Thanks for the feedback as well.
Thought it would be a more intersting challenge. It is still on my list but not with much priority. ;-)

According to someone playing everything except lab will teach you how to play labyrinth. :-) Which was a silly idea really. Even the trials don't teach you, at least not me. It wasn't until getting into the lab itself or the endgame trials where I had to learn the different lab game play.

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Turtledove wrote:

According to someone playing everything except lab will teach you how to play labyrinth. :-) Which was a silly idea really. Even the trials don't teach you, at least not me. It wasn't until getting into the lab itself or the endgame trials where I had to learn the different lab game play.

Lol. Yes, that's so true. You have to learn it the hard way. We all had to. :D

Actually, I am curious how the gameplay experience on campaign differs if I skip all the labs.
Maybe I will give it a try instead of doing the league. There is no reasion for me doing it, since I hate timers. For me, they are breaking and annoyed me for many years while I was doing greater rifts in D3. In the end, they they made me quit.
If I suppose to waste my time on gameplay experience I maybe don't like then doing the campaign skipping all the labs sounds much more appealing than going for timed maps again.
Yet, I am undecided, but I will let you know, if I'm ready to start that little experiment.

Anyway, I was able to shoo a troll during my decision making... ;-)

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Synopse wrote:

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Turtledove wrote:

According to someone playing everything except lab will teach you how to play labyrinth. :-) Which was a silly idea really. Even the trials don't teach you, at least not me. It wasn't until getting into the lab itself or the endgame trials where I had to learn the different lab game play.

Lol. Yes, that's so true. You have to learn it the hard way. We all had to. :D

Actually, I am curious how the gameplay experience on campaign differs if I skip all the labs.
Maybe I will give it a try instead of doing the league. There is no reasion for me doing it, since I hate timers. For me, they are breaking and annoyed me for many years while I was doing greater rifts in D3. In the end, they they made me quit.
If I suppose to waste my time on gameplay experience I maybe don't like then doing the campaign skipping all the labs sounds much more appealing than going for timed maps again.
Yet, I am undecided, but I will let you know, if I'm ready to start that little experiment.

Anyway, I was able to shoo a troll during my decision making... ;-)

My experience with non-ascended characters is that they get to maps OK and get through to mid-level maps OK. But, the game is balanced around having ascendancies and, to make up for not having them, I needed to be a bit higher level for whatever content I wanted to attempt. Also, at about mid-level maps, it can get harder to progress at all, depending on build.

Builds that do best without ascendancies seem to be pretty much the ones you'd probably expect, such as totem builds and minion builds.

I've never tried melee without ascendancies, so I can't be absolutely certain of this, but I think melee is particularly likely to struggle without an ascendancy.

In case you decide to try, hopefully this ends up being helpful.