SET FREE THE ASCENDANCY POINTS (or rework the lab) [New ascension methods/lab rework ideas]
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Wow, so much lack of understanding and putting words in other people's mouths to argue against... kinda glad I took such a long break from both the game and forums. (just read 40+ pages to catch up)
For me, I can get past traps just fine, and Izaro was challenging, but killable... not an issue of difficulty. I didn't like playing it at all. It's not a skill check; it's not testing worthyness of anyone. It's an exercise in tedium and battling crashes and disconnects and real life. The biggest issues I have with it is what it reveals about the designers. They do not respect my time invested, nor understand how to create a game feature where they KNOW people WILL have issues that make the content as designed either uncompleteable or super irritating to complete. So as far as I'm concerned, if they won't respect me, or plan ahead realistically, why should I stick around to be disrespected or disregarded? And why should I expect their future designs to be done with realistic understanding of the game format in mind (online, with many reasons for changing connection qualities, some controllable, some not) As far as the "it's optional content" arguement goes, I play games to progress my characters. To know there are key defining customizations locked away behind something I will not do, kills progression before I get started. What's the point in progressing my character if I know I can't draw out the potential and use it to have fun? Yeah, no point, just regret that I'd invest any time in the game to begin with. Obviously I'd never invest any of my time in "hardcore" modes of the game, since I hate losing my progress. Insisting on injecting this feeling into the standard game kills my enjoyment. Overall, the game's core systems of the skill tree, the complex itemization, the combat system in general, the complex interactions between special stats, the customization of my character... is what drew me into this game. The Labyrinth cancels out all the good, and makes me feel the game isn't worth my time. P.S.(I didn't even go into how heavily it favors certain builds, when it's the ONLY way to obtain ascention... why not have multiple ways, and just use the method that fits your style of play, showing that you can ascend in that area? Right now, everyone has to prove their build can surpass one challenge that is not an equally balanced check of skill for all character builds... how does the labyrinth make sense? it doesn't... on so many levels, from thematic to technical... it's infuriating and sickening that they think it's so great) | |
" I CAN'T stand malachi and the godless three. I still have to do them to progress. They are not hard, I just abhor the level design, and the fact I have to do it all in 1 sitting. So should everyone be catered to so they can bypass things they don't like? You are not special, this is a game, and if you want certain perks, you have to do the content to get them. If you don't like the requirements, then do without, which is perfectly feasible. At least you can still play the game without asc points, I can't do anything unless I kill malichi twice. | |
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I don't think that they would advertise the lab changes with the new expansion, should probably wait for patch notes and then jump ship.
I'm a forum warrior, i was born to post, raised to defend my league. Now my post has been removed, chained and exiled by mods who Ban. Ban is my brother; i do not fear it. I see it in the eyes of men and beasts that i troll. It will take me to play the actual game when i am ready and i am not ready.
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" "Respect" is a notion that is completely off topic and irrelevant here. I think that people should stop using this world in any situation thinking that it means something else than what it actually means. SSF is not and will never be a standard for balance, it is not for people entitled to getting more without trading.
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" Respect is completely relevant to this topic. It's not important to you maybe, or even the original poster, or anyone else who dislikes the labyrinth. To me, I value my time. You might not value yours. The design decisions incorporated into the labyrinth show a gross disrespect for the time investment of players. Respect means, according to at least one dictionary, "courteous regard for people's feelings." To be disrespected is to be ignored, not considered when making decisions, inconsequential, even to the point of being insulting or offensive by words, actions or inactions. Respect for the time investment of players would not allow the design decision to make game crashes cause a player to restart (BY DESIGN, not bug). Having respect, the developers would recognize that this concept does not work in an online game (due to internet stability of varying qualities in a global game), or any game that may quit unexpectedly due to crashes either in client or servers (something plaguing this game since at least Perandus league - at least that's when it started for me). Respect for player viewpoints would not invalidate a person's viewpoint as a "vocal minority." (even if they are a minority that is vocal, they hold a perfectly valid viewpoint; that attitude is disrespectful) I understand as a small game company, they have limited resources, so they have to prioritize development time. They can't spend that time on trivial changes to pander to the whims of anyone who complains about anything. The labyrinth content has shown itself to be far from a small group. If anything, I'd say the "lab-lovers" who think there is nothing wrong at all with it, are in a much smaller group. I don't think all "lab-lovers" are particularly passionate about the Labyrinth as they are just against changes influenced by complaints on the forums, assuming it's a slippery slope that would lead to some catastrophe. Players do not always know what they want and many are only desirous of change for self-interest, but there are cases, like this, that do not need to lead to such an outcome. Both groups are passionate, but respecting the group that strongly desires change, by implementing one of several solutions presented, will not negatively impact the rest of the playerbase. I respect that some people like the labyrinth playstyle. I respect that some people like masochistic punishments. I respect that some people like "grinding" for negligable rewards. My personal suggestion to "fix" the labyrinth situation has been posted 2 times (not spammed everywhere because I respect other forum-reader's time, and it's really mainly for GGG's staff to consider, not you) but I will repeat it here, because I respect your time and don't want to waste your time looking it up, since it is my example of a very respectful solution to implementing an alternative to the labyrinth. It's actually listed in the Original Poster's post now, but seems to be ignored by people who think all "Lab-haters" want everything given away free on a silver platter. My solution keeps the original labyrinths as-is. Enjoy to your heart's content. It adds an NPC that opens a secret passage from the intitial entrance, to a sequential battle with Izaro in 1 room. It begins with a wave of undead labyrinth builders who were sealed inside to prevent them from revealing the secrets to future runners. Then comes Izaro in the same room, then another wave of monsters to refill flasks mainly, then 2nd Izaro, then more monsters for flasks, then 3rd Izaro, in the room where everyone else fights him, with all the same mechanics, just no moving between maps. * This respectful solution maintains the difficulty of the battles. * It offers no rewards beyond ascention points. (no chests, no drops, no enchants, only ascention). * It is even potentially MORE dangerous than the original fight, since you don't get the trinkets from the reliquary that can nullify some of Izaro's bonuses on certain days. * Ascention points are still linked to the Labyrinth and lore therein. * It uses existing gameplay and battles, which should reduce development time to a bare minimum to resolve the situation. * A 1-map-battle removes the potential for crashes when moving between maps. * Ascention points are no longer "trap avoidance points." (people have clearly shown that trap avoidance is a trivial matter, and does not qualify anyone to be considered of greater worthiness to attain the unrelated ascendancy classes. Traps retain their status as dangers that people going for treasures and enchants must navigate. Ultimately, a more fair method, IMO) There may be other respectful solutions. (I prefer this one)
Spoiler
Xtorma, I hate the Malachi fight too, mainly because of the tiny arena and horrible graphics performance. (I was taken by surprise by having to do the 3 bosses every time, and had to re-do them my first time through that place, and was annoyed as well.) However, I won't petition for change, because I figure performance improvements are always in their plans. If, even with perfect graphic performance, I couldn't handle the fight without dying to the tiny arena, I'd just continue death-zerging Malachi, seeing myself as Malachi's worst nightmare that can never die! Muahaha. Anyway as to the Labyrinth comparison, crashes don't reset your progress on the 3 mini-bosses unless you can't reconnect before the instance resets. I can live with that.
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" Crashes and bugs will always occur because the game cannot be perfect, period, that is completely irrelevant to respect. If you came to play PoE thinking that it was a perfect game, wrong expectations. Everywhere, you will loose some progress if the game crashes, nothing even related to respect in the slightest. If GGG had claimed from the start that the game was 100% stable, it could have been different, but it's not the case. " No. They never invalidated any viewpoints, you are just interpreting what they said. They are creating their game to target a specific audience, they are also creating the game according to what they like, not everybody can be pleased by that, period. Nothing, absolutely nothing about disrespect here. Plus, making public announcements is something that is delicate and should be done with a lot of consideration, it takes times and responsibilities and I can understand that GGG is not throwing answers to everybody on those forums. Btw, they mentioned the lab several times in some podcast, the people QQing ( at least most of them ) on the forums are just ignoring it. If there are people that have not been respectful recently about this matter, it's the people talking shit about the lab, spitting on it and more, branding their opinion as facts on a content that GGG has put a lot of work to develop. That, I would call disrespect. I like the fact that your idea keeps some consistency with the lore, however I don't think that allowing people to just zerg their way ( brainlessely it seems ) to the ascendancy points would be a good thing. SSF is not and will never be a standard for balance, it is not for people entitled to getting more without trading. Last edited by Fruz on Aug 14, 2016, 3:32:03 PM
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To Fruz, Didn't say the game would never have crashes and be perfect, I said they need to design AROUND the fact that the game will crash, and not penalize players for it. When scaling a mountain, mountaineers need to respect the dangers present, and cannot ignore them. They must plan around the problems that will occur. Perhaps this isn't how you define respect.
Calling a viewpoint part of a vocal minority, and essentially blowing off the topic and ignoring it, is the very epitome of disrespect (at least it's not blatant, perhaps just un-intentional disrespect, diplomatic blunder at best) To me, respect plays an important part in many of these issues. It's not the only factor, but it's important to me. And yes, it's respect. | |
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My point is that you are completely miss-using this word.
For example, "danger" is not something that you "respect", there is nothing about respecting anything in this case. Even the definition that you used earlier does not fit at all there ... Building around the fact that anything could happen at anytime would be ridiculous, it would make the game worse than boring, and people would just easily exploit whatever they would want. Those problems are not all on GGG's end ( some definitely are ), and from there you cannot expect GGG to build around players having disconnections from their end. The thing is to know when it is acceptable enough, and it most likely is atm ( it was not really at the start of Prophecy, we can say that I think, but it's different right now ). And ... it has nothing to do with respect. They are not ignoring it, Chris said that the people complaining where a vocal minority, and stated other things about the lab, that lead to think that they liked it the way it is. As I said earlier, if you are expecting GGG to answer everything here, fix your expectations. This section is here so that people give feedback and suggestions, it is not a Q&A section, it has never been and I do not think that it will ever be. People expecting answers here got it completely wrong. GGG is a company that creates a game that they deem good, if you do not like it, sad for you, but it cannot please everybody. Nothing about respect, one more time. SSF is not and will never be a standard for balance, it is not for people entitled to getting more without trading. Last edited by Fruz on Aug 14, 2016, 3:52:09 PM
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Spoiler
" " Very well put and thought man. I dont only see it as disrespect (i completely understand your viewpoint though) towards us but a sign of dishonesty and cowardice as well. I too value my time and i refuse to suffer something that -hear me closely- not only i do not like (biased personal opinion) but is a totally new experimental game inside core PoE that alienates with its mechanics and playstyle the players (subjective point of view). I didnt sign up for arcade platformer, but ARPG. Thats disrespectful and dishonest to the players. On a recent interiew about the AoW expansion there was a rather interesting part (thx AceNightfire for reminding to me) "Grinding Gear told me it wanted to make sure that players could ignore the Atlas entirely if they didn t like it, not wanting to alienate current players", but labyrinth is exactly that, it is forced to everyone, and thus alienating a good portion of the player in the proccess. Thats dishonesty and contradiction. As you very well put it, calling vocal minority a part of your supporters/players is disrespectful. On top of that saying that "many like it and many hate it" and "its ok to have divisive content" its a whole new level of bullshit. Not having the gravitas and prestige to once and for all quench the complaints by simply posting a development manifesto supported by stats and other information about their future plans, design process, reasoning etc is cowardice and disrepect. Ignoring valid points because they decline to see it as a problematic content (even if by admitting "many hate it" etc comments they do see it as problematic) only show lack of character and values. Thats not the GGG that created Path of Exile, but GGG that created Ascendancy expansion. A fitting analogy would be GGG being the blizzard north making diablo ! & II, and GGG being activision-blizzard making diablo 3. If you also dont mind, ill use your suggestion as part of some others in the opening post since its quite similar to some of them but yours has "labyrinth lore" (and quite good if i might add, similar to how King Minos -from whom the whole thing is inspired- imprisoned daedalus and icarus cause they knew how to navigate it, being the builder and his son). Lastly an advice to you, as you already realised by the recent answers you got, WK dont really understand reasoning and valid points or they choose not to. They dont have literally anything of value to add, and usually derail the thread with nonsense or insults- and im being modest. So save yourself the trouble and dont waste your time with them, since they ignore anything valid against the labyrinth except the things they make up, in order for their posts to seem as "adding to the discussion". Regards, from a person who wasted a lot of time talking to the willingly ignorant and rather selfish people. Inundated with cockroaches, I am
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1609216 - labyrinth rework ideas/suggestions | |
" Lab is not forced. if you want the perks, you do the content. The same goes for atlas. you don't have to do it, but if you want the map drop bonus perks, you have to do the content. Every game works like this. You are not special. |
