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

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raics wrote:

Not mine and I agree it is wrong, my aforementioned stance on the issue is 'lab is boring because you made it boring', the most boring lab runs I had were with builds that were too overleveled or too well suited for it. Not expecting many would share that view but that's the way I see it.

And you are entitled to your views.

My view, on the other hand, is that when you place a labyrinth, a "structure" designed to be frustrating in its self, in an isometric game, where precision placement is rather "inaccurate", and fill this labyrinth with puzzles and traps to avoid, you are bound to get A LOT of unhappy players. There are A LOT of us that straight out dislike platform games and everything they stand for, including puzzles.

When they designed this addition to the game, that is so "untypical" a Hack'n Slash ARPG, they should've made an alternative. It's not like it is game breaking for me, but for a lot of other players it is. I know I would've made A LOT more characters if I knew I wouldn't have to run the lab with them. The lab is not a positive thing for build diversity.

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Phrazz wrote:

My view, on the other hand, is that when you place a labyrinth, a "structure" designed to be frustrating in its self, in an isometric game, where precision placement is rather "inaccurate", and fill this labyrinth with puzzles and traps to avoid, you are bound to get A LOT of unhappy players. There are A LOT of us that straight out dislike platform games and everything they stand for, including puzzles.

When they designed this addition to the game, that is so "untypical" a Hack'n Slash ARPG, they should've made an alternative. It's not like it is game breaking for me, but for a lot of other players it is. I know I would've made A LOT more characters if I know I wouldn't have to run the lab with them. The lab is not a positive thing for build diversity.

If you dug up some of my posts from before you'd see that I agree lab wasn't a good choice if they wanted content that is certain to please as many players as possible, otherwise we'd gain ascendancies by running endless ledge. Trying something different on that scale was pretty gutsy and I wouldn't want them to stop trying new things in PoE even if they can't afford a fallback option, as was the case with lab.

You mean to say it's affecting replayability for you, not build diversity? The way I see it, they sometimes rely too much on cyclic, league-centric nature of PoE, we're doing it all over again every three months, masters, atlas, trials, gathering wealth, and we're also levelling each character from scratch, ascending and gearing it in smaller cycles.

If we look at the grand scale of PoE design, maybe ascending is their way of puffing up those cyclitos because the playerbase is higher now so gearing up became too easy. It's quite possible someone there worked out the optimal number of characters an average player should make during a league, maybe it got too high recently so they're looking for ways to reduce it to slow down the longterm burnout. I've tried to keep myself spoiler-free about 3.0 but Pantheon hunt might be another thing that was meant to extend the checklist.

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raics wrote:

You mean to say it's affecting replayability for you, not build diversity?

Both.

I view myself as a fairly creative person, wanting to try A LOT of builds. I can beat a lot of the end game (high tier maps) with creative solutions, combining certain defenses, gear and key nodes on the tree. Designing those builds are fun as hell, and give me a lot of joy. I've beaten The Minotaur with 2900 life with a VERY special, strange (and maybe idiotic) character. Bringing this guy through the lab was a fucking nightmare, as the traps ignore ALL base defenses in the game, except the pool. Which means that the lab, as the ONLY thing in the game, "forces" you to have a certain pool, unless you want to use 40 minutes in there. And to be fair, to be able to "trivialize" the lab, you build in such a way that you can run through the traps - so you don't have to spend time avoiding them.

It's not HARD or DIFFICULT to reach the threshold the lab requires, but it IS limiting, as you can do most of the end game without those "requirements" if you know what you're doing. HENCE; it is limiting build diversity AND replayability, if that's even a word.

And yes, maybe the lab is a result of certain statistics. I've often though of the lab as GGG's way of forcing players to meet certain thresholds to be able to face the end game, with the result of players spending hours in the end game BEFORE running the lab.

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Phrazz wrote:

I've beaten The Minotaur with 2900 life with a VERY special, strange (and maybe idiotic) character. Bringing this guy through the lab was a fucking nightmare, as the traps ignore ALL base defenses in the game, except the pool. Which means that the lab, as the ONLY thing in the game, "forces" you to have a certain pool, unless you want to use 40 minutes in there. And to be fair, to be able to "trivialize" the lab, you build in such a way that you can run through the traps - so you don't have to spend time avoiding them.

I assume it was some kind of Pathfinder? I've seen those killing Minotaur with a non-amount of life. Dunno, man, that's an advanced, gimmick build in my book, not something I'd like to see devs adjusting the game around. PoE does technically force you to get a certain pool size or get out, because it's so tricky to mitigate all damage types at once.

Already said about building for it, if you want to farm some part of the game you certainly want a build that would enable you to do it in netflick mode, there's nothing new about that. Sure, if they suggested reworking traps to ignore everything I'd be up for it, but I don't think it's an issue.

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Phrazz wrote:

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SingThisCorrosion wrote:

But did you read what I wrote? Read it again.

Haven't you been reading what they are saying? The lab is "fair". It doesn't discriminate. If you're not choosing the type on defenses that the lab is favoring, it's your builds fault. If you're not stacking reduced physical damage taken, health regen and endurance charges on your witch, shadow or ranger, it's not the labs fault, it's your build or you.

The lab favors physical mitigation, health regeneration and movement speed. If you're choosing some of the MAIN defenses of the game that the lab ignores (MoM, evasion, block, dodge), it's on YOU. Or your BUILD/class. Because the lab is FAIR.

/sarcasm

Even tho they know it's true, that the lab isn't fair against all the defenses the game offers, it's still a "git gud" issue. I can beat the lab with all classes pretty fast, and it IS totally doable, but it isn't fair. Far from. Make dodge, block, evasion, MoM have some sort of impact on traps? NO!!! Only health regen, movement speed and reduced physical damage taken, because that is "fair". All builds have an equal access to those defenses...?

No, the lab isn't fair, it will never be fair. But as long as it's doable for all classes, it doesn't have to be fair, so they can blame YOUR choice for going MoM (as an example).

Ebola is fair too, since the monkey who bites the person doesn't discriminate. Aids isn't as fair since most of the people in this forum will never get it since it requires sex.

Fair or not, Lab is boring and a waste of time.

And who wouldn't watch a drunk viking do magic like throwing knives at his new partner? Especially after what happened to the old one :).

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raics wrote:

I assume it was some kind of Pathfinder? I've seen those killing Minotaur with a non-amount of life. Dunno, man, that's an advanced, gimmick build in my book, not something I'd like to see devs adjusting the game around. PoE does technically force you to get a certain pool size or get out, because it's so tricky to mitigate all damage types at once.

Already said about building for it, if you want to farm some part of the game you certainly want a build that would enable you to do it in netflick mode, there's nothing new about that. Sure, if they suggested reworking traps to ignore everything I'd be up for it, but I don't think it's an issue.

It was a MoM, dualwielding Gladiator.

I'm not advocating for an "adjustment based on certain" builds in the lab. I just want the game to reward creativity and knowledge of the game, instead of streamlining builds into certain thresholds, like I feel the lab is doing. But this is just a minor issue of mine, as the end game will fuck you over if your build isn't solid anyhow.

I don't want traps to avoid everything. I think maze runners are fine. If you enjoy the lab, run the hell out of it and enjoy the rewards. I feel that if you heavily specialize in OTHER defenses than "reduced physical damage taken" and "Health Regeneration", it should reward you in some sense too. Because it is kind of annoying to specialize in a defense, and to have a relatively large portion of the game ignore it.

It kind of reminds me of an RPG I played some years back, called "Two Worlds 2". Like any other RPG, you specialize your character via choices, gear and points into certain stats. The only problem there, was that the final boss had to be beaten by these stationary, huge crossbows at a ledge, shooting it at certain timed intervals. Your choices, your creativity, your gear and so on had NOTHING to say at the end of the day, and you could beat him with no points allocated - naked.

While the lab doesn't do that, it does not reward creative choices regarding defenses. It doesn't reward ANY defenses, apart from the pool. It is kind of sad, in my eyes. But still, this is just ONE of many points that in my mind makes the lab a boring content.

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Phrazz wrote:

I don't want traps to avoid everything. I think maze runners are fine. If you enjoy the lab, run the hell out of it and enjoy the rewards. I feel that if you heavily specialize in OTHER defenses than "reduced physical damage taken" and "Health Regeneration", it should reward you in some sense too. Because it is kind of annoying to specialize in a defense, and to have a relatively large portion of the game ignore it.

Sure, that would be a better approach, but it's much easier to have them just ignore everything than try to utilize every defensive method and it kinda amounts to the same thing. It's a lot like bosses with penetration, you know you have to take a lot of damage from them, regardless if you invested in defense or not.

Design-wise, we might say morphed Dominus or Malachai are worse than the lab, there's little space to work with and they also do physical damage which your build might not be able to handle well. They're also act bosses which means you have to defeat them and the amount of farming you can do before them is limited. If they did serious damage instead of gnat bites and you weren't able to just zerg them if all else fails we'd have riots here.

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raics wrote:

Sure, that would be a better approach, but it's much easier to have them just ignore everything than try to utilize every defensive method and it kinda amounts to the same thing. It's a lot like bosses with penetration, you know you have to take a lot of damage from them, regardless if you invested in defense or not.

Design-wise, we might say morphed Dominus or Malachai are worse than the lab, there's little space to work with and they also do physical damage which your build might not be able to handle well. They're also act bosses which means you have to defeat them and the amount of farming you can do before them is limited. If they did serious damage instead of gnat bites and you weren't able to just zerg them if all else fails we'd have riots here.

There's not many bosses ignoring both elemental resistances, armor, evasion, block, spell block, dodge and spell dodge. An experience player knows that one defense often isn't enough, you need layers. In the lab, you can have four layers being ignored. Rewarding? Hardly. And I do think (agree?) that limited "working space" on bosses also is something that is streamlining builds into certain thresholds, taking away lot of freedom and creativity.

But don't let me start debating the whole game. Then you will start to notice my utopic wishes for the game, and that is another discussion.

No, the lab is PoE's "Achilles' heel", and I think it is taking away more than it adds.

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Regulator wrote:

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mark1030 wrote:

I've only periodically poked my head in here so I may have missed some actual suggested alternatives. But it just occurred to me that GGG set the value of ascendency nodes to be equal to 5 passive points (5 regret orbs to refund one ascendency node). So instead of having the lab give ascendency points, just have them cost 5 passive points each. Each lab could give you 10 passive points instead of 2 ascendency points. Then people who skip the lab could still get their ascendencies without going through the lab.

Thats actually a very solid suggestion mark1030, but unfortunately not at all in line with any other suggested and the purpose of the thread because it doesnt adress none of the issues we presented throughout it.

To give you better to understand, we overall think the lab should be only for farming and not gate character progression cause the playstyle is so different and unfitting to poe. The suggestion you made still locks character progression points behind it, so we would still have problems with the design and implementation. The same would apply if in the future GGG puts passive points behind a game of chess, a racing simulator or a city building simulator inside poe, like they did with the platform mini-game that they called lab.

Thanks for trying to help though

I suggest that you incorporate it in XVI as a combination option. Add a three sentences such as: Two character tracks might be made available to choose between additional passive points or ascendancy points. The ascendancy track would remain the same as to day. The additional passive points tracks might be married with one of the other ideas in this OP most any of the options with the possible exception of VIII might work for this track.

edit: My thoughts on this suggestion is that if the passive skill track was almost as powerful as the ascendancy track then, it might also open up some other interesting options for builds as well as possibly some additional interesting options for leveling paths, assuming GGG also provided a way to switch character tracks, like they do for bandit quests and passive skill point refunds.

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raics wrote:

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SingThisCorrosion wrote:

But did you read what I wrote? Read it again.

I did, you can do merci lab with a 3,5-4k life evader and uber with ~5k, those are the minimum numbers your build should have at starting and higher mapping stages which are the points people will attempt the respective labs at. It's easier with builds that have good phys mitigation, sure, but it's still fine if you don't, I'm playing life eva quite a bit myself.

No you didn't read, or you quick read just the first line.
I said that is a problem on cruel where most characters don't have good gear yet except if you trade or have stashed which isn't very newbie friendly, you don't have almost any currency when you reach cruel lab. Merc lab is easier on this point because you alredy have some good gear and currency.
And 3.5 4k life is not enough, you will get one shoted by his ranged attack if you are not quick enough, lag etc. You can't say it's your fault for not being able to dodge every hit, that would be an endgame boss case like the shaper where the difficulty comes from there, dodging everything which is fine is the final boss. But the lab is not just a thing for endgame viable builds, it's supposed that every decent planned build should be able to do easily because it awards you your class specialty, the ascendancy which is a must if you want to avance in the game and finish merciless difficulty because the game assumes you already have it when you jump to the next difficulty.

I'm not saying they nerf boss dmg or life, maybe a bit on cruel and like someone said make not every damn thing on the lab be phys/regen viable so other builds can work around it.