Ascendant Orb

Dear GGG,

I've noticed that a lot of players on this forums and ingame including myself are not happy with your labyrinth added in the 2.2 expansion. We have different reasons why we dont like the labyrinth/trials. Character progression is gated behind such a dubious content.
What would be an awesome feature that solves some of these problems? --> the Ascendant Orb
This orb drops at Izaro and can be traded with others.
People that decide to do the lab themselves now have a currency that they can sell. Others that do not like the lab can buy this currency and ascent without doing labs and trials.
I would also suggest adding this orb for the uber lab.

I know GGG invested a lot in creating this content, but in my opinion you divided the player base.
With the AC classes and points you raised the level of the characterization. (=awesome)
Now you have to do the labyrinth in order to get those points.
A lot of people used to try new builds and created a lot of chars. They stopped with that behaviour.
Is that a good sign? I rather prefer reskilling a leveled char instead of making a new one.

Such an orb won`t be that much work, but it would satisfy (i guess) all players. (If not lmk)
This ascendant orb has been mentioned before in this topic:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1609216

Kind regards,

TheDeathX

The price:

1 Exalted, 1 Regal and 1 Fusing.

Now SSF only have to rawgrind 3 exalts and use them just to bypass lab! - the result? Glorious.

-

Seriously though, i think lab just has to be rethought. Here are just some random ideas.

Reducing size of the lab, for example (depending on how they reduce to spread points in 3.0), so that what's now normal would be directly to boss fight, cruel would be 1 special phase and then boss fight, merciless would be the full 3 phase fight we have now. Improving traps and the formula they scale from such as their damage having a limit depending on area level and improving some of the most annoying layouts.

Make improvements to how easy it is to boost others(and to how easy it is to avoid being attacked for a random lowbie), like shortcuts that can be opened.

Also worth reconsidering the death full lab reset stance - i don't think it does anything good really. Gauntlet modes in games i never felt the attraction, they are either irrelevant or annoying, which in reality turns out for a tiny subset of builds it feels right but for those who fall outside that bracket its either game-ruining or entirely irrelevant.

Improve the arena in the lab - that layout, especially the last room has got to be a cruel joke, some builds will face their worst nightmare under those conditions - it is the epitome of what everyone hates about lab, traps and other stupid shit and here they won't even have time to stand still they are forced into this retarded boss in a far too small room, which can stand at the end of 10-30min of clearing lab.

The "spawns" on izaro phases are far from balanced, especially comes to mind those charge disrupters.

It's not even close to balanced, try to play this fucking lab with like 50 common builds GGG and see your balance in there and how annoying the entire place is for many builds is outrageous! - it becomes a real problem the moment everyone needs to get through there(forced) to complete their character(major powergain locked behind). You can close your eyes all you want, but don't tell me you don't know inside your heart this piece of content is not ideally placed and causes gigantic dislike among a huge fraction of the playerbase. When i ask around most people are positive(including myself) towards ascendancy expansion because we loove the master classes. But nearly everyone can't wait to be done with lab and forget all about the particular forced piece of content again. Then there are the farmers motivated by profit, they like it as the direct result of that people in general don't (that's what makes it lucrative, less competition).

What do you even get from sticking to your guns on this deathless-gauntlet mode with no checkpoints? Scare away those who are already frustrated? have no impact OP-meta builds except that rare occurrence when it turns into annoyance because you failed something dumb like trap.

Actually i believe you didn't do it for any balance or endgame considerations, but actually because you thought it would be nice if there was this ancient labyrinth which could be found which held secrets your character would need to ascend into greatness. I like that too, arcane knowledge hidden. I like labyrinths, secrets, hidden passages and even traps. I am thinking that you don't want to just nerf it into oblivion. But this piece of content is annoyingly implemented and you can only pretend that is not so because the evidence from the very beginning has been impressive. I don't know exactly why, but i suspect is simply because your game is about choice and you force many peoples choices not to work with lab because implementation.

And i know you are the world champions of ignoring community and sticking with some awful decision for nothing less than years despite it being so obviously bad and then after way way too many years you finally realize you need to do the simple adjustments that have been discussed from the very start. Don't pull another of your ignorant moves please, like you have just done AGAIN with life/es balance, for way too many leagues now you let life suffer and become more and more out of balance with the game and it is not acceptable you just let half the game rot like that when the most simple changes in the world like increasing % on life nodes would have made things far better and it just cannot under any circumstances be seen as thoughtful behavior to your community. Stop this acting against us like we always don't know what we want/don't want and subject us to 2-4 years of suffering and telling you the same before you address it often in a super simple and straightforward way you should have done no more than half a year after content release.

Yeah dumbing down the content is the best way to approach the single largest form of power a player can achieve outside of gear. /s


GGG isn't going to invest a significant amount of time adjusting the lab, they have 3.0 content to work on and then upcoming leagues. At most you will see is what they've said they will do, which is make normal and cruel level ones shorter (they wont be cruel and normal, but the 1st and second entires) and make the uber lab slightly longer.


You can't just add a cost to every "problem" and think its a good solution. Whats next an orb that levels your character to 70 for you?

I seriously doubt that community is actually nearly as divided as the cult-of-lab-hate on this forum would have you believe. I would wager the actual majority of players think the lab is fine, or just don't care. They see that Ascending gives massive power, and to get it you run the gauntlet. People don't come here and post when their opinion of the lab is "Its fine the way it is". You will only ever get the yelling from the few who vehemently oppose the addition of the lab (which was added a YEAR AGO, and doesn't seem to be going anywhere)... The lab is here to stay, and with a little knowledge can be made trivial enough to run that you can get your points with so little time invested, that your proposed system just isn't necessary.

"

TheDeathX wrote:

Dear GGG,

I've noticed that a lot of players on this forums and ingame including myself are not happy with your labyrinth added in the 2.2 expansion. We have different reasons why we dont like the labyrinth/trials. Character progression is gated behind such a dubious content.
What would be an awesome feature that solves some of these problems? --> the Ascendant Orb
This orb drops at Izaro and can be traded with others.
People that decide to do the lab themselves now have a currency that they can sell. Others that do not like the lab can buy this currency and ascent without doing labs and trials.
I would also suggest adding this orb for the uber lab.

I know GGG invested a lot in creating this content, but in my opinion you divided the player base.
With the AC classes and points you raised the level of the characterization. (=awesome)
Now you have to do the labyrinth in order to get those points.
A lot of people used to try new builds and created a lot of chars. They stopped with that behaviour.
Is that a good sign? I rather prefer reskilling a leveled char instead of making a new one.

Such an orb won`t be that much work, but it would satisfy (i guess) all players. (If not lmk)
This ascendant orb has been mentioned before in this topic:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1609216

Kind regards,

TheDeathX

As the switzerland of this lab debate, I think this ascendancy orb thing is a neat idea. Definitely needs to be something that only has a chance to drop. Not stupid low, but not guaranteed either. Maybe 20%.

Sometimes I make a shit, edgy character to fuck around with some shit, edgy mechanic and have to ask one of my friends to run me. That's a pain in the ass for everybody. I'd rather spend 20c and be done with it sometimes.

EDIT: Hybrid idea! Spend chaos orbs at the plaque, get your ascendancy points. Lab haters pleased, much needed chaos sink achieved.

Anything that means less lab is good in my eyes.

Even though this wouldn't be much help for me on SSF it would definitely encourage me to create more alts since I can just use my first, more powerful character to get my Ascendant Orbs.

"

Sofunk wrote:

...I think this ascendancy orb thing is a neat idea. Definitely needs to be something that only has a chance to drop. Not stupid low, but not guaranteed either. Maybe 20%...

+1. I run the lab for the AP points and usually if there is a prophecy which requires it. But I dislike it a lot and might consider trading for such an orb instead. If the player could choose to get this orb OR the enchant, it would remain relatively valuable.

I think the lab would get much less hate if it had a few tweaks. Many things have been suggested
- not so damn long. Not every char is a speed runner, but every char needs the AP.
- or WP before Izaro
- trade without leaving it
- or allow to get the AP somehow else.

And before the usual "but it requires skill, we can't take that away" argument comes: Nope. It requires the currency or friends to pay for a carry and trade to get good gear. Dodging the traps is really not that hard. So for those who simply don't like the gameplay, a tradeable orb would just cut through the bullshit. People who enjoy it or use it to get rich can still run it.

What they should do is streamline the lab for those who only run it for the points, and at the same time put something in there that actually gives you a reason to not just run straight through. It has cool puzzles and stuff, but why do them when all you get is a chest with slightly increased quantity and rarity? They could for example make unique items that can only drop from these chests, or divination cards, or whatever. And if they changed the helper relics against Izaro so that you still get the additional treasure key when you use it, people might actually go get them.

Just my 2 cents. I enjoy the lab, so I don't get all the hate towards it, but I can definitely understand it being a pain for some.

But I like the idea of the orb being a non-guaranteed drop. Even though I would restrict the orb to drop in the Merc and Uber lab only. Normal and Cruel relatively easy, since you can overlevel it by a lot of levels. Sure it pushes your ascendancy further away if you have to wait for a higher level to run it with ease, but I did it on many char when I did not felt comfortable doing it at earlier levels.

Definitely an idea I'd like to see developed.

"

Sofunk wrote:

EDIT: Hybrid idea! Spend chaos orbs at the plaque, get your ascendancy points. Lab haters pleased, much needed chaos sink achieved.

Not good enough. I propose following change: Gamble chaos orbs at the plaque, get your ascendancy points. Now this is a proper GGG-style mechanics which they could acknowledge.