The worst piece of content I've ever seen in any game

I have been playing PoE since the closed beta and i have enjoyed everything offered by GGG till the Lab showed up. I never make posts especially to complain but I have had it. When it first showed up, first time i did it was something new and didn't mind it on my first character but now every league, every character having to repeat the most boring, tedious and annoying piece content is getting on my nerves.

Now that I have moved from the UK to Asia for work, it just got even worse with lag spikes.Get almost to the 3rd boss room, lag spike, you're DEAD. Fight the boss, lag spike, you're DEAD.

I don't mind dying (that's why I play softcore)but having to slog through the same thing over and over is pretty annoying and not fun. I wouldn't even mind Izaro being harder if it would just mean I wouldn't have to just keep running for 10-15 mins everytime I die.

I believe people play Diabloesque games to slay hordes of monsters and not to run through empty spaces dodging annoying traps which serve no purpose than to infuriate people and slow them down.

I can't believe how ignorant GGG seems over this issue. For so long I have been a non-vocal player but I have literally had it with this system.

Either have an Atziri style dungeon which is short with 3 boss rooms or have a checkpoint system/give us more portals for uber as an option for people just wanting ascendancy points. The Lab we now have can be for people who want loot and enchantments.

Before people say 'Git Gud', I know I'm not a good player but when I do Atziri and fail miserably, I don't mind it and I know it was my fault but dying on Izaro makes the game feel like a chore especially playing with traps and slow darts, you dodge the one shot mechanics next thing you know you;ve just been slowed into a trap and poof you're dead. Those kinds of deaths will normally serve as a lesson learnt on where to dodge but having to run again for 10-15 mins makes it more of a punishment than a lesson to improve on.

And before people blast me, YES I know there are many threads on this matter but I wanted to voice my concern.

End of rant.

"

You're 100% correct. However, the bullies will be along shortly to tell you how to 'git gudder' and you'll love it eventually. ;)

U RANG?

GGG is not "ignorant over this issue" since the vast majority of players see the lab for what it is, a challenging piece of content that rewards you with insane power in return.

If the internet connections were solid enough that lag spikes were either small and manageable or even nonexistent, then the lab would work out much better for its 1 portal only.

And for quite a few people, that is thankfully the case.

However, as the OP mentioned, he's in Asia. Where in Asia is unknown, but considering the connection problems a lot of other people have reported for various Asia servers it's safe to say the OP is in an area with poor connectivity to GGG's servers. It's anything from an ISP issue to infrastructure, and so on.

There's a balance between pushing game design and realizing the limits of said game. Unfortunately, it seems GGG isn't quite designing around some of the biggest flaws in PoE when making new content.

If there was an item called "Blessing of the Goddess" or whatever that gave you a second try at the lab after you died and served as a checkpoint, then that would mitigate the biggest problem with lab and give players with poor connections a way to actually make it through.


The challenge of working around a shitty internet connection is not an enjoyable or compelling one. Considering the entire point of playing a game is to be some mix of enjoyable and compelling (Spec Ops: The Line wasn't exactly enjoyable, but damn it was compelling), a game that doesn't deliver on that fails at being a game.

So the challenge of the lab should be trivialized for those with stable internet connections to make up for the deficiency in others' connections? I disagree with that...

NO ONE IS ASKING FOR EZ PZ LAB. JUST ADD THE FKING PORTALS LIKE MAPS WHY MUST LAB BE A ONE SHOT ATTEMPT.

"

Docbp87 wrote:

the vast majority of players see the lab for what it is, a challenging piece of content that rewards you with insane power in return.

No question that the lab rewards you with insane power, out of all proportion to its difficulty. Why is that?

The whole point of my post isn't to trivialize the lab. I just hope they rework where it's not a chore. I like to enjoy challenging content which I am able to overcome after several failures.

The problem with the lab is you run around for 10 mins till you get to the challenge which isn't fun.

If we take Atziri, the trash is a challenge then you have the bosses to deal with, but with the lab all you do is avoid mobs, run from room to room. The golden door is another choice for poor design, it's like someone at GGG thought entering 12-15 rooms was so much fun enough /s, let's force the player to run around another room.

If they give us portals like normal maps, it wont be trivializing the content but helps buffer dc and lag.

They could even give 3 boss rooms with one portal for each phase without making us run around so many rooms.

To be fair, all bosses should be like the lab, not necessarily the areas.

"

The whole point of my post isn't to trivialize the lab. I just hope they rework where it's not a chore. I like to enjoy challenging content which I am able to overcome after several failures.

Because this is simply not true, reality is more like "I can't kill it but I can hurt it" and if you hurt it often enough it dies. And because you essentially have unlimited continues, you can try forever, so if you do just a single point of damage you will win, which I kinda found odd in the first place. If you die at a boss he should get his HP back, as do you.

I was a bit surprised that people find the idea of a boss you have to kill without dying so troubling. This is how essentially every other game works. You die, you go back. Actually if you go back in time even further you might have to start the whole game over, which is essentially hardcore. The question always was how far back the player should be placed. You could argue that winning one of the Izaro fights in the lab could be a checkpoint, because the lab in total has its length and is propably the longest part in all of PoE without a checkpoint, but anything beyond that is totally unnecessary, because it would require a serious increase in difficulty.

So while the lab has to be done in one run it isn't really hard. 90% of it are a regular lvl68 area with normal mobs. A few traps in between which are actually easier to pass than the mobs, if you do the lab at lvl68. And a boss, who is hard, but not harder than Merciless Malachai if you avoid some of his harder mechanics. One thing that could arguably be done is showing his daily fight mechanics right at the start before you enter maybe together with his weapon set and the traps in the last fight. That way people wouldn't have to search for them online.

Diablo had its fair share of traps and similar, plenty of arpgs have these mechanics in place. I find it quite funny how people keep trying to say what does and doesnt belong in the genre as if they dictate what the genre is, not to mention that these mechanics have been around for ages.

http://diablo.wikia.com/wiki/Traps