SET FREE THE ASCENDANCY POINTS (or rework the lab) [New ascension methods/lab rework ideas]

Hello everyone, I would like to express my opinion about " mazzes" and labirinth.

I would first like to apologize for my English.

Well, I'm not casual poE player and I have been playing poE since the release at OpenBeta (Jan / 2013) and I am very suportter of the game.

That said, I would like to talk about the Labirinth theme: its so annoying and unbalanced (and according to reddit ther are so many others players on community that share this same opinon). Another issue is the game style that you guys (GGG) are trying to install with the Labyrinth.
The idea of ​​interactive scenario is good but runs out the essence of PoE that is basically about items and loot, and makes better game since Diablo 2 on this scenario. However, what makes me more angry as a player 100% Hardcore is the lack of empathy with the Hardcore player in the maze. You see, an experienced player in the HC always tries to stay alive (with damage mitigation calculations, defensive skills, Gears geared to always keep with the best HP / ES / RES and always plays with a calculated risk and always there are a TP to be used. When we play in the maze, you first stay in a place where the risk of deaths is always imminent as any trap kills and disproportionate damage (even a lv 100 char can Rip even at normal labyrinth), is it fair for ur?! I will comment quickly about the “trials” which by the way are excessive and tedious in the three difficulties and totally unnecessary, but I think you guys already know this opinion.
When u ask any HC player , you can easily understand that the Labyrinth is completely optional. And the main to deal with this labyrinth is to pick up the points of Ascension, which have become essential due to the large "Nerfs" in skills and items that you guys (GGG) have made along the lasts pacths to try to balance the game.
Then, in a critical analysis of the labyrinth, I believe:
- Has been tested quite a few times before the launch in HC mode (tested I mean covered and do not use motion controller by adms playing in Hardcore mode, so I wonder, is there anyone of you guys playing in HC and make labyrinth );
- Energy Shield build base is totally ineffective in practice Labyrinth (has been said to be rebalanced);
- The ascendancy classes are extremamete OPS and mandatory for any respectable build that want to achieve high level;
- The absence of TP at labyrinth makes extremely difficult in the maze and often forcing the player to change the way you “can play” (and was told by guys that this was the objective) but this change without consulting the gaming community may seem a somewhat mandatory or dictatorial form of maneger a game,
- The Streamers who had access to the maze so before the official release had a big advantage because they already know this unbalance and change the style of play,

Thinking of a way to solve the problem, I propose a few suggestions:
1- Keep the Labyrinth as an auxiliary or complementary form of PoE (and not a plan for new and bigger changes and preserve the very essence of PoE - which in my opinion would be the challenge with boss fight and to find new and better items.
2- Who said escape from traps could be a nice ideia?! This is not PoE and I can find a list at steam about this kind of game and its no PoE!!
3- The ascendancy classes could be delivered as whem you kill a certain boss, for example a future final boss at a newe Act (V or any new area)
4- For those who enjoy the maze there are enouth reward with OP crafts items and chests


Finally, I would like to congratulate the excellent game but unfortunately thre was a big disappointment with the arrival of LABYRINTH. I would also likei fu guys could listen more to the HC players mode has to say before major changes in the POE or challenge the current developers to play more in hardcore mode.

Thank you and I will be even more grateful if this message reach the eyes of some adm GGG.

The developer interview nailed it: Lab feels like a speed bump. Those two little words brilliantly capture the annoyance and change of pace from the rest of the game.

Chris G: "...we had to make sure it was worth going through and not just a simple speed bumps section."

Sorry guys, truly love your game but you 180° missed it on this one. IMHYCO of course. :)


https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1654235

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Thraellic wrote:

The developer interview nailed it:

Chris G: "...we had to make sure it was worth going through and not just a simple speed bumps section."

Yup, and to expand the quote: "It was also a bit tricky to make it so that players wouldn't just want to skip through the whole trap section thinking "ain't nobody got time for this", we had to make sure it was worth going through and not just a simple speed bumps section."

But actually it wasn't tricky at all -- they just required that you had to go over the speed bumps to get ascendancy points.

"

ShaUrley wrote:

"

Thraellic wrote:

The developer interview nailed it:

Chris G: "...we had to make sure it was worth going through and not just a simple speed bumps section."

Yup, and to expand the quote: "It was also a bit tricky to make it so that players wouldn't just want to skip through the whole trap section thinking "ain't nobody got time for this", we had to make sure it was worth going through and not just a simple speed bumps section."

But actually it wasn't tricky at all -- they just required that you had to go over the speed bumps to get ascendancy points.

It's almost as if they knew it was a piece of shit and wanted to make sure they forced everyone to suffer through the sadistic torture. Although I'm sure that wasn't really the intent, just a 20/20 hindsight ironic observation from someone that cannot stand the trap gameplay.

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goetzjam wrote:

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sublime234 wrote:

I don't know if this has already been brought up...

Give the ascendancy points once all trials are completed in each act, and keep the ascendancy just additional end-game content.

Maybe have a neutral 'lord of ascendancy' dude who gives you the points and explains the labyrinth when you unlock it.

The trials can be 100% cheesed by a rush, nty, you want additional power you earn it.

and the lab itself hasn't been shown to be 100% cheesable? 4 minute runs?

come on, goetzjam, you're fooling yourself. There are a handful of builds that are optimized for fast lab runs, and that in itself is an exploit. This has opened up such a huge can of balance worms for GGG... i hope they can put in checkpoints to the lab, because the hardcore aspect is failing hard, and the softcore playerbase is fed up with it.

how do we "earn" those points? by simply beating izaro in his final form? OBVIOUSLY.

let's just cut to the chase, man. give us the boss... this flappy-birds bullshit is just ... bullshit.

@Thraellic

That had actually escaped my attention. Good catch


@lipejmr

Many of the issues you talk about have been mentioned here but the thread is too long to actually find them with ease. Of the suggestions you mention i think everyone is in the OP.

I only want to stand on a point you made regarding streamers knowing the labyrinth before the release etc.

It was not only steamers but a whole bunch of alpha testers. Me included in that group. We were actively searching for bugs/glitches regarding every aspect of the game, and following that we were looking for overtuned content (izaro for examble was way more deadly in alpha, the same applied to the trap damage). Because we were focused on those things we did not really (at least at the first 4-5 days) wondered about the labyrinth itself and how players would find it from an entertainment point of view.

It was after i ascended with two characters (1 marauder 1 duelist both melee) that i found that while it was less than a week of testing the labyrinth wasnt really all that refreshing and new. It hitted me afterwards that the playstyle is not the usual one but one i was used to play when i was still a boy and i liked playing football in the streets and cholate flavoured everything. I had played the labyrinth when i was playing Prince of Percia 15years ago, i had passed all those jumping/dodging tests during contra and mario etc, i had no interest on doing it again and definately not when im playing a hack and slash RPG.

At that point i made a thread (or posted in the lab section, not sure) there saying how labyrinth might not be well received for many reasons, and besides the initial hype people will indeed hate it, not because it is not fun but because it is a wrong step in a unknown direction.

People ofcourse hyped as they were did not give much attention to the basic notion, and it was only after 1-2 days when i started a conversation in-game that people understood what i was trying to say. And indeed there were enough individuals who agreed that this whole experimental step might be a very bad turn for the game. The issue there was that we didnt make our voice heard enough.

And thats what we observe here now, its almost two months, the hype regarding the new content was over after the first month, when people wanted to try it. But the numbers are way greater and thus hype is bigger (group behaviour). The WK are to egotistic and stuborn to even admit they have no reason to actually argue, but they are way too insignificant to affect anything. The "neutral ones" are actually the whole issue here, they just follow the masses, they dont care to give feedback, valuable feedback that could give once a for all an answer to why the fuck this content has divided so much the community. They might just dont care, and even if the lab/ac change they will continue playing without talking at all. Those neutrals that existed in the alpha too, people that only cared to play the game earlier without giving a fuck what happens.

Anyway what i wanted mostly to point was that during the alpha testing, hype was the main reason people there did not consider judging it from a different point of view (like the one presented in the OP). Not that it would have mattered, we were only asked to check bugs/glitches/tuning, the labyrinth would have stayed as it is no matter what we said.

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Regulator wrote:

@Thraellic

That had actually escaped my attention. Good catch


@lipejmr

Many of the issues you talk about have been mentioned here but the thread is too long to actually find them with ease. Of the suggestions you mention i think everyone is in the OP.

I only want to stand on a point you made regarding streamers knowing the labyrinth before the release etc.

It was not only steamers but a whole bunch of alpha testers. Me included in that group. We were actively searching for bugs/glitches regarding every aspect of the game, and following that we were looking for overtuned content (izaro for examble was way more deadly in alpha, the same applied to the trap damage). Because we were focused on those things we did not really (at least at the first 4-5 days) wondered about the labyrinth itself and how players would find it from an entertainment point of view.

It was after i ascended with two characters (1 marauder 1 duelist both melee) that i found that while it was less than a week of testing the labyrinth wasnt really all that refreshing and new. It hitted me afterwards that the playstyle is not the usual one but one i was used to play when i was still a boy and i liked playing football in the streets and cholate flavoured everything. I had played the labyrinth when i was playing Prince of Percia 15years ago, i had passed all those jumping/dodging tests during contra and mario etc, i had no interest on doing it again and definately not when im playing a hack and slash RPG.

At that point i made a thread (or posted in the lab section, not sure) there saying how labyrinth might not be well received for many reasons, and besides the initial hype people will indeed hate it, not because it is not fun but because it is a wrong step in a unknown direction.

People ofcourse hyped as they were did not give much attention to the basic notion, and it was only after 1-2 days when i started a conversation in-game that people understood what i was trying to say. And indeed there were enough individuals who agreed that this whole experimental step might be a very bad turn for the game. The issue there was that we didnt make our voice heard enough.

And thats what we observe here now, its almost two months, the hype regarding the new content was over after the first month, when people wanted to try it. But the numbers are way greater and thus hype is bigger (group behaviour). The WK are to egotistic and stuborn to even admit they have no reason to actually argue, but they are way too insignificant to affect anything. The "neutral ones" are actually the whole issue here, they just follow the masses, they dont care to give feedback, valuable feedback that could give once a for all an answer to why the fuck this content has divided so much the community. They might just dont care, and even if the lab/ac change they will continue playing without talking at all. Those neutrals that existed in the alpha too, people that only cared to play the game earlier without giving a fuck what happens.

Anyway what i wanted mostly to point was that during the alpha testing, hype was the main reason people there did not consider judging it from a different point of view (like the one presented in the OP). Not that it would have mattered, we were only asked to check bugs/glitches/tuning, the labyrinth would have stayed as it is no matter what we said.

Regulator, please don't feel bad. Alpha testing cannot catch these kind of issues, by its very nature. It can only catch bugs/glitches/tuning issues, as you mention. At that point the train had left the station and it couldn't be stopped. All that could be done is to make the train track and arriving train station as good as possible for arrival. This was a fateful decision made at the earliest stage of the development prior even to the design stage, in the concept stage. The concept was fatefully flawed, IMHO. There was a miscalculation that this fundamental change to gameplay would make the game actually feel like a different genre of game and therefore alienate a significant percentage of the dedicated PoE fans.

"

Turtledove wrote:

White Knight
A gaming term used to describe a male gamer who, in a desperate attempt to get himself laid, will attempt to woo or impress any female gamer he comes across online by being overly defensive of her and giving her special attention, such as playing as a healing class and only healing her.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=White+Knight

OH NERDLOVE YOU KNOW NO BOUNDS

Seems that the two biggest and most popular threads these days are "The lab sucks and is the worst content ever" and "WTF is Ascendency Points having anything to do with the cancer lab?" ... so lame if the lab doesn't get drastically changed/removed.

Also fun fact, a post that has been stickied as the #1 post since Jan of 2013 has < 90k views when this and the cancer lab post has only been up for under two months and almost has 20k views and more posts.

I think it's pretty clear, the lab is cancer, remove it.

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Turtledove wrote:

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goetzjam wrote:

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Regulator wrote:

Added as many suggestions as i could find and are in line with the notion of the thread in the opening post. If you have a sugestion post it here or link the thread you made the suggestion. Thank you.

Heres my suggestion, stop this pointless thread of yours.

Thank you Regulator! Your recent updates have made me feel that perhaps all this effort has hammered out some nice ideas! I think the OP presents a very nice summary that should be useful when GGG decides to give this issue some more thought.

Goetzjam, I would like to nominate you for the prize for the most consistently both unhelpful and unpleasant posts. Without your posts here this whole exercise would have been much less frustrating and more pleasant. On the plus side, I probably have a more satisfying sense of accomplishment right now. Thank you for that! Please try to accept the fact that PoE is not quit perfect yet. Hopefully feedback and suggestions here can help get it a bit closer. For those that cannot accept the fact that PoE is not yet perfect then I suggest that you consider trying to start campaign to eliminate the Feedback and Suggestions forum. This would seem to be a more direct application of your efforts towards your goal. Kindest regards,

I think you're misunderstanding the concept here: feedback about feedback is also feedback. Look at it like an elaborate and dressed-up version of, "All in favor, aye... All opposed, nay."

1st guy says:

"I hate traps sooo much, they are literally worse than ten hitlers!"

2nd guy responds:

"Uh, yeah, that's clearly the rantings of a deranged person."


It's like, unless you think this thread should play as a statement of demands and not actual feedback and suggestions (gasp!), there's your point-counterpoint right there.