More Lab stuff...yaaaaay....

At the current state i do not think the game is balanced around them.

Monsters were not buffed, maps werent buffed, map bosses werent buffed, Atziri wasnt touched, neither was Uber Atziri. Items were untouched for the most part.

Nothing in the game changed during 2.2 that would make your character weaker, only stronger. Now if we are talking about 2.3, there is a possibility that it will be rebalanced around the assumption that people are always taking ascendancy sub classes.

They are creating new monsters, theyre fixing bug instances where monsters werent properly dealing damage, theyre making the top tier uniques harder to obtain.

I say possibility because its not confirmed it will actually be harder without them, and i fully plan on testing my non-ascendancy characters when 2.3 hits to see if thats the case (i doubt it will be). If i have issues running the same content without the points that i normally could do perfectly fine without the points i will absolutely agree that theyre mandatory at that point.

Then wake up. Because it will be.

That said, strictly speaking, you're 100% correct, of course.

Strongboxes are optional. Masters are optional. You can play the game without them, too.

The entire game is optional.

The lab has vitamins in it , try it .

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gibbousmoon wrote:

Then wake up. Because it will be.

That said, strictly speaking, you're 100% correct, of course.

Strongboxes are optional. Masters are optional. You can play the game without them, too.

The entire game is optional.

You cant say it will be because theres no guarantee it will actually be until we play it. They add in new monsters all the time and none of them have been exceptionally powerful aside from revenants and devourers who have seen nothing but nerfs.

And people do play the game without them. HC players often avoid them, im one of the players who hate masters but you dont see me complaining.

I have all level 7 masters in standard and a level 8 eleron on Perandus. I cant give two shits about leveling them the majority of the the time, Masters have been out for years and id rather just use a service because its more convenient for me.

Just so.

The entire game is optional.

Wait... what were we talking about again?

Oh no!!! More free content added to the game which I don't have to participate in!! Blasphemy!! Blasphemy I say!!!

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Tin_Foil_Hat wrote:

lol people still saying that Ascending is mandatory and trying to use that as an argument to combat their laziness.

You are right when getting paid I need to do things I hate, and life should be equally unfun even when relaxing.

Games should be shitty unfun experiences to prove I am a man, and that I can "take it".

Oh wait I play this game for fun and while it shouldn't be easy it should be fun when hard not feel like I am peeing blood.

I also do not put rocks in my shoes.

When I picked a cat as a kitten I picked the friendly one not the one who bit my face off so I could prove I was a man too.

I guess I fail as a human because I like to enjoy my home life. I am sorry I do not meet your POE standards.

"

Heelon wrote:

"

Gigaus wrote:

Yeah, and it's a waste of development time and resources. If they're just going to keep churning out stuff for a single strip of content that still is having major issues, to the point that it's practically unplayable, then it's a massive waste of time. Great, it's optional and no one needs to do it; Watch a healthy majority of players just nope their way passed a couple weeks and months works because it was tied to a sinking ship...And then get upset that content that's amazing on it's own is gated behind a shit show.

For you it might be a waste of development time. But they aren't developing the game only for you but for thousands of players. Some like it some don't that is always the case for every content that has been added. I do not like running it but i like that it exists and that i can buy the resulting items for my characters whereas others are running it for profit or simply enjoy it as an alternative endgame.

You're right, they are making it for thousands of players, so if a large chuck of those thousands of players say 'I don't like this, I don't want to do it' and skip the content while it's still optional, than that by definition is a waste of development time.

Let me put it this way. If they suddenly added in a pet system, where you could permanently tame pokemo-- specific creatures, and a majority of players skipped that content, would it make sense to then dedicate a whole update or expansion to adding more content focused around this mechanic without changing the core nature of it that's driving people away?

And for the record, I'm not going on about this because of the ascendancy points. I think it's really stupid and near-sighted to attach these to the Lab, but that's not the main reason I'm posting this. I'm more upset that GGG is pushing us towards this when even the people supporting it have said 'I don't like it' or 'it needs serious work.' I want to see content that will be around in a few months, that make me friends go 'I want to keep playing this game because it's fun', not stuff that in all likelihood be removed come a few cycles to be reexamined and overhauled. Or worse, cause droves of players to leave.

----

And I'd like to say this now, you all my be right that at this moment the Lab is 'optional', which is...Have you ever played another dungeon crawler? For intents and purposes, literally everything beyond the main story in Normal is 'optional'. You don't need to play through Cruel or Merciless, you don't need to do maps, you don't need to level masters and craft your gear, or do league events. Lab is optional like Maps are optional. It is but it isn't.

But from the post that the developers themselves put out, they have expressed their intent to make the Lab-- not Ascendancy points, the Labradoodle itself-- a core and mandatory part of PoE. The reason this post exist isn't because I think the Lab is mandatory now, but because it is going to be. Content isn't balanced for in the update it's released on; It is in the releases afterwards though. How much of the rest of Path was changed in the updates after Maps release? How much of the rest of the game was altered and rebalanced when Masters and their crafting and selling of Uniques had been around for a couple updates? What about when act 4 and golems and jewels were released? Those were minor compared to Lab and AP.

The AP alone is a literal game changer; it changed the game from 'you can technically do everything with every class, some classes have a harder/easier time than others though' to 'Your class now defines what you can and can't do.' That's a huge swing, even if it wasn't offering game breaking mechanics. Free chaining and extra shots? Another charge of X Y and Z? Free armor for being around a guy that reserved his HP? 25% less damage on all hits forever? 100% extra elemental damage every 10 seconds? You can't seriously believe that they're going to introduce all of that, and then say 'nope, we're not going to change the game one bit, we'll just let you ignore all our previous balancing and mechancis to faceroll your way through our game'. They will balance the game around the assumption you are going to do the Lab-- because they are going to expect and near demand you do-- and have the AP to get these overpowered passives. Overpowered for this current build. Standard for the next.

And the Lab.....The lab and Act 4 seem to be a signal that Path is going for a shift that many others have gone for and failed, and that's positional difficulty. The 'don't stand in the fire' mechanics, and 'manual dodging'. It's not about what you build, all your builds save for a niche few specifically designed to counter this, will be all the same level of strong and weak, and your play style is irreverent. you're all the same, you have to stop what you're normally supposed to be doing, to instead move around and avoid engaging the things on the screen, to instead physically avoid the things on the screen. Yeah, because that's what I want to do, play tag with a glitchy entity in my ARPG instead of fight and loot.

And most notably, this is not going to be an 'alternative' End-game piece. This will be the new end game, because they will try and push it. Hard. How many game devs out there do you know that sink months of work into a piece of content that they expect every player to be playing through as a standard at end tier, then turn around and say 'Okay we're done! You can play this if you want, or completely ignore it!' I can tell you how many; 0. I can map out what they'll do, they'll try to get us to do it with the carrot-- the promise of something 'good' if we complete it repeatedly...and when that doesn't work, we'll get the stick, where we're essentially penalized for not having completed this content. They're only attaching AP and Enchants tot he Lab; How much more content will be attached to it with passing updates?...Better question, how much content was attached to previous major updates, like Maps and Masters?

Lab is 'Optional' now. But this coming update has specifically said it will be mandatory later.