Another Labyrinth camplaint post

Full disclaimer: I'm going to complain about the Labyrinth. Yes, I totally died there, last night actually. I'm not going to complain about the difficulty of Izaro, or the traps, since I've only tackled normal so far.

I'm going to complain about the huge, un-interruptible time sink it causes, and the fact that dying once effectively wastes that time.

A friend and I ran the Lab yesterday. We were very thorough: we explored every room, got all the keys, fought Izaro twice and handled his mechanics (idols and portals), and generally had a pretty good time.

Then, two hours and almost a dozen rooms in, while showing him a locked Silver Door, I get clipped by a saw blade and die. There goes all the effort and time both of us put in.

I actually have no issue with the traps being dangerous, or with Izaro and Argus (big demon-bull thing, I think that's his name) being difficult. It makes the game more exciting, and offers a great alternative to leveling via mass slaughtering hordes of white mobs.

So, my question is this: what's wrong with lab checkpoints? Having a checkpoint before each Izaro fight would give those who died, or disconnected, or were interrupted, a way to recover, while still being punishing to people who are careless. Having to re-fight Izard and re-clear all the rooms you completed prior to exiting / dying in the Labyrinth still sinks extra time and effort into completing it.

There's a reason a lot of games steer away from multiple-hour projects that cannot be interrupted and have potentially no payout for players. There has to be a compromise between making the Lab 'lol easy / casual' and its current state.

The time you spend in the Labyrinth is not wasted. The layout stays the same for the whole day. You can just go back in and run through all the areas you already explored from entrance to exit. You will only need a fraction of the time in your next run.

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Justnn wrote:

Full disclaimer: I'm going to complain about the Labyrinth. Yes, I totally died there, last night actually. I'm not going to complain about the difficulty of Izaro, or the traps, since I've only tackled normal so far.

I'm going to complain about the huge, un-interruptible time sink it causes, and the fact that dying once effectively wastes that time.

A friend and I ran the Lab yesterday. We were very thorough: we explored every room, got all the keys, fought Izaro twice and handled his mechanics (idols and portals), and generally had a pretty good time.

Then, two hours and almost a dozen rooms in, while showing him a locked Silver Door, I get clipped by a saw blade and die. There goes all the effort and time both of us put in.

I actually have no issue with the traps being dangerous, or with Izaro and Argus (big demon-bull thing, I think that's his name) being difficult. It makes the game more exciting, and offers a great alternative to leveling via mass slaughtering hordes of white mobs.

So, my question is this: what's wrong with lab checkpoints? Having a checkpoint before each Izaro fight would give those who died, or disconnected, or were interrupted, a way to recover, while still being punishing to people who are careless. Having to re-fight Izard and re-clear all the rooms you completed prior to exiting / dying in the Labyrinth still sinks extra time and effort into completing it.

There's a reason a lot of games steer away from multiple-hour projects that cannot be interrupted and have potentially no payout for players. There has to be a compromise between making the Lab 'lol easy / casual' and its current state.

dont explore the whole lab.

it stays the same every time for 24 hours.

why complain about the lab being a time sink and not the massive experience lost when you die? because the lab actually forces you to try instead of sitting in auto pilot watching totems etc.

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Mythabril wrote:

The time you spend in the Labyrinth is not wasted. The layout stays the same for the whole day. You can just go back in and run through all the areas you already explored from entrance to exit. You will only need a fraction of the time in your next run.

It's true that I know the layout, but that doesn't make the rooms smaller, or turn off the traps, and so on. Ultimately, dying means trekking through a dozen more rooms, even if you know them better the second time through. It also, I believe, means re-killing Izaro all three times. However you slice it, that's a huge time investment, one which can give no reward if third-stage Izaro kills me and / or I'm unlucky or careless.

I don't really find the idea of repeating this cycle ad-nauseum throughout three difficulties too appealing, especially since I'm sure Izaro just gets more crazy after normal. A checkpoint system would at least have me clearing one or two thirds of the labyrinth over, instead of the whole thing. That's not even getting into the actual grinding required to get the enchantments you want, where late deaths will only be more frustrating.

Answer this: Isn't the entire game a time sink?

Well, GGG has said that the labyrinth is intended to challenge players, so at a guess the reason why it works the way it does it that they want to provide the player with interesting tradeoffs while tempting him with greed - that's classic game design when making optional content that is supposed to be difficult and rewarding.

Take your example - you say that you and your buddy spent two hours examining every nook and cranny before finally dying to a trap.

Knowing that any death would reset your progress, it appears that you still made the decision to attempt a full clear of the Labyrinth, getting maximum treasure keys, finding all the silver keys to unlock the silver doors for rewards, solving all the puzzles.

That's a bold choice, and one I can fully understand, but it is a choice.

Weigh that against a lesser goal such as e.g. making your way through the labyrinth as swiftly as possible, bypassing much of the content, something that carries a much lower risk of dying to traps as you'll be faced with considerably fewer traps - and, moreover, if you do die, you have not spent as much time doing so.... but your eventual payoff will be less.

And if you approach the Labyrinth like this, it is not a multi-hour project. There's a lot of purely optional content in every labyrinth, much of it requiring backtracking through trap filled areas, that is easily skippable

It is a classic case of risk vs. reward with the treasure keys, secret caches, and silver door treasures, is what I'm getting at. Having lab checkpoints would pretty much eliminate this aspect by letting players brute force their way through, one death at a time, should they so desire. (Though likely only people who'd just leveled would like to approach it this way).

Don't get me wrong; I understand where you are coming from and share some of your frustration, but given the effort/reward structure in the labyrinth, I don't think checkpoints are a good idea.

If you do not enjoy the challenge you can always outlevel it. Then it takes 15-20 minutes to complete. Less once you know the layout.

I really, really enjoy running the lab - it forces you to optimize your gameplay, in particular once the lab ladder is in.

ya, it took me like 2 hours to get to the end where it was 2 FPS and shit flying everywhere. Too long, too ridiculous.

I don't mind the lab being difficult, or Izaro being difficult. I really like those challenges. I understand the risk / reward nature of the lab. GGG included so much content in the lab, with all the secret passages and everything. I'm worried that there will be enough experiences like mine, that just rushing Izaro is going to be the de-facto means of playing through the lab, because of how disheartening it is to explore the whole place only to be sent back to square one.

This is why I think checkpoints prior to each Izaro fight would be good. Yes, maybe someone could brute-force and die their way through, if they don't mind losing all their XP and running through all of the rooms again, and of course having to re-fight Izaro. It ultimately wouldn't be a good way to clear the Lab.

Having checkpoints would only help promote exploration, because if you get killed, you have less of the lab to have to trek through, so there is less time lost.

Honestly, my friend and I are just going to zerg Izaro today, because of yesterday. It would be sad if that became how people ran the lab, instead of actually checking out the lore, poems, and other goodies in it, but no one wants to re-do the same zone over and over.

Why do keys disappear from your inv when you leave the area? Ya, you wasted your time