the fall of oriath LABYRINTH

Here's my question, then.

Every time I see complaints about the Labyrinth, they're in the vein of "I die when my connection hiccups in the middle of a trap gauntlet! FUCK THE LABYRINTH!", or "this takes more time to do than one single map and thus breaks my speedclear rotations for the day! FUCK THE LABYRINTH!", or "this isn't completely identical to the endgame map grind! FUCK THE LABYRINTH!"

I never really see people who dislike design decisions with the Labyrinth, beyond protesting the one-life approach and how that can be disruptive and shocking to players who're used to Standard leagues and being able to face-smash for progress if they have to. Instead, all the complaints about the Labyrinth essentially boil down to "this isn't mapping SO I HATE IT! I shouldn't have to do it; GGG, take ALL the rewards out of the Labyrinth and put them in the normal game so I can get them by Vaal Cheeseclearing Shaped Strands!"

Frankly, yes - I do find that a silly stance to take. If you want to map all day long, do nothing but Vaal Cheeseclear the easiest map tilesets for eleven hours a day, there's absolutely nothing stopping you from doing that after the character-leveling process you have to take time out of your Cheeseclearing allocation to manage anyways. It takes maybe fifteen minutes for a normal-person run through a Lab tier - three fifteen-minute chunks out of your day for your six default Ascendancy points and you're generally good to go.

The rest of us have figured out the Labyrinth and moved on with our lives. I'm...slightly confused as to why so many people still apparently die horribly on traps ninety-nine runs out of a hundred when they're supposedly so much better at Path of Exile than the guys who just...y'know...do the Labyrinth, fumble the occasional run due to net glitches or simply watching a bit too much TV or whatever, but otherwise seem to manage it just fine?

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Shagsbeard wrote:

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1453R wrote:

How does it Ruin Your Entire Playstyle(C)

I played games for the last 20+ years HC solo SF. Every game. Even Minecraft. It's my chosen playstyle.


I played four characters up to Merci lab only to have them trounced by Izzy. No way I could learn the fight. It was over before I could even figure out what was going on. Way out of tune. Takes about a week for me to get a character to that level. Having it trashed without any chance to learn from it was maddening.

So I had to quit playing HC. That was huge for me. I regret it to this day... I should have simply quit playing all together. I went back to try HC again with Legacy and was fucked by bad habits developed because of the lab. It ruined HC for me.

I hate it.

I feel you man

when I plan builds, never plan on getting more than 4 ascendancy points

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1453R wrote:

As for the rest of it...again, I ask this: how do you compensate players who enjoy the Labyrinth/make a goal of mastering it when you take Ascendancies, Enchantments, and all those things you say are the "nice rewards" for running the Lab and give them to everyone else for free?

Nobody said anything about enchants or any other lab rewards except for ascendancies, which are one time anyway. In fact, I did stress out several times the point that uber lab is already very rewarding for people who are willing to do it - treasure chests can often net some useful stuff, and lab enchants can be sold for significant amounts of currency. Then why the f*ck ascendancy points also have to be gated behind this?? And for every single character that you make?
And people who don't want to run lab for enchants or lab specific uniques can, you know, SIMPLY BUY THEM. Just like you can buy shaper gear, atziri gear, rare bases from high tier maps. You know what you can't buy? Ascendancy points.

And if you are curious why some people believe lab is bad from the design standpoint, here are some reasons:

1) This is a top down view arpg where you move by clicking on terrain (or using a movement skill). It is not precise and sometimes even clunky, especially compared to games where traps usually make more sense - third person rpgs, first person games, platformers. All of them have much more precise movement than poe, hence there traps make more sense.

2) View. The view in this game is rather restricted in terms of range, and you can't rotate the camera. Not once did I encounter particular corners, where walls would obstruct the view so I could barely see the traps. In some cases, there were certain zones where traps would go on for longer than screen distance, without any "safe spots", which would allow you to slowly and carefully pass them. In such cases, the best tactic is just to yolo dash forward. So challenging. Much wow.

3) Length. Even dark souls would usually have a checkpoint of sorts after a difficult part with traps and hard enemies. Platformers have short levels, again, to somewhat reduce the frustration. Other games allow you to save at any point, or have checkpoints. Here if you screw up, you have to do it all over again from the start. Like a long level filled with traps and three boss encounters with no checkpoints or saves.

4) Connection issues. I am one of the lucky few who live close to their gateway and don't suffer AS much from connection issues (doesn't mean that people who don't have a perfect internet should be just ingored). However, controls and hitboxes in online games will never be as precise as in an offline game. Combined with an already not so precise arpg click based movement, the arcade like elements become even more frustrating. In any other part of the game the lag is not as deadly (with exceptions), since it is one thing to get an extra hit or two from random monsters on a map, and whole different story to lag back a bit and end up in a trap that deals % damage of your health.

5) Tiny final arena (uber in particular). Now, many bosses in this game have this problem, however with izaro it is even worse. Depending on the layout, you can barely move anywhere, since the center is blocked, traps are everywhere, and pillars in uber can sometimes deny you the last islands of safety, making it difficult to move around and dodge in a fight were you are assumed to move around and dodge, since izaro is a very heavy hitter.

6) Can be cheesed easily. Probably one of the most ironic aspects of lab to me, is the fact that a proper lab runner can beat it in around 2 minutes. By stacking VERY high amounts of movement speed, you can simply ingore all traps since they stop dealing damage to you altogether. And Izaro? You just nuke him with loads of mines detonated by a totem (so far the fastest way of killing him due to a glitch, that GGG is officially fine with). So challenging. So skillful. And with all the above mentioned issues, second best option is to be able to facetank everything. Facetank traps, facetank izaro, give little to no sh*ts about anything. High es pool with vp is one way, another option that I know is super high regen.

So in the end, does this content promote skillful, thorough, careful play, or even thinking? NO, because you can make it stupidly easy with certain playstyles, while getting crapped on with others. And that is fine. What is not fine is that I have to go through this with every single one of my characters. In almost any other scenario, I can do something - for example boss X is too dangerous for my current character, I will clear the map with him and then kill the boss with my other character who is more capable. Rolled a bad map for character Y? Fine, I will do it with character Z! So I am rewarded for having different builds, which are different enough and have their strong/weak points. But with lab? NO, F*CK YOU, every single one of your characters has to do this!

Like I said before, absurd.

And how do you solve that issue without demeaning the Labyrinth?

The entire point of the Labyrinth, and the Ascendancy update as a whole, was "Do this challenging thing and earn some character power for doing so". Being handed Ascendancy points for free because people consider them standard issue these days, and not "a thing you're rewarded for doing a challenging thing with", sits wrong with a lot of folks who pulled their big girl panties on and figured out the Labyrinth to get at that character power.

It feels bad to think of Ascendancies as just some nonsense thing you get given at four discrete character levels for no reason. That's crap, especially when the new ten-act system is trying to do away with "because we said so" explanations for Shit What Happens To Your Character, i.e. the resistance penalties thingus.

How do you preserve the nature of an Ascendancy as an extension of one's base capabilities - an Ascension from your mortal state, if you would - that must be earned via challenging trials one must undergo...without requiring players to actually exert any sort of effort, tackle some sort of hardship, or undergo any sort of trials to get at them?

/facepalm

Poor, poor, OP. He had a reasonable question about the lab in 3.0, and instead of just giving him a link with the info of what was discussed by GGG, all of the lab lovers and haters piled on this thread to continue their tireless debate here.

You know, I love the lab. I also understand why people hate the lab. It's all been said and done, so why do we keep arguing about it? People range from loving to hating it, and that's not going to change, so why practice this futile endeavor of arguing about it... everywhere?

A.) Because I tend to hang out in GH&D, not GD, so I've avoided most of the Labyrinth Hatorade parties. It's semi-fresh ground to me, and I'm bored at work so eh why not.

B.) Because Labyrinth Hatorade parties bother me; the assumption that Ascendancies should be as simple and no-brainish to grab as bandit rewards irritates me, and the further notion from most Labyrinth decriers that the Labyrinth should be as absolutely unrewarding as possible and as much of the Labyrinth's reward structure should be exported to "the real game" as possible irritates me more. Again - I have exactly two options to get Shaper or Atziri gear if I want it: learn those awful fights, or buy the stuff from people who did so.

Why is the Labyrinth expected to be different?

C.) ...I'm bored at work. And unexpectedly, MECH is producing actual debate points so that's cool and worth my time to engage in discourse with. I'm legitimately curious to see what people propose for actual solutions to their problem of "I don't feel the Labyrinth should be essential for character development".

I can see that argument, but by the same token I like the fact that Ascendancy skills can be challenging to get. it makes them mean more, and means the payoff when you do finally acquire that spike in character power is intensely satisfying. Some of the best moments of all my time playing PoE were barely scraping by Uber Izaro after an epic teeth-and-fingernails boss fight to finish off my Ascendancy on characters who weren't awesome at the Izaro fight. I don't want to lose that, and would protest fiercely any plan that proposed making Ascendancies some cheap-n-easy thing you get for minimal effort because that's boring.

Answered the beta lab questions below. Obviously big spoiler so I hid it under one:

That's useful to know. Haven't had a chance to dig heavily into the beta yet, nice to get a status update. Resistance penalties bit is particularly interesting. Makes me wonder how they're handling death penalties as well - are those just straight-up gone until you get to maps and start eating the Merc penalty, or do the Resistance debuffs also trigger Cruel/Merc death penalty flags on you as well?

A discussion for another thread, sadly. Nevertheless, thanks.

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teketoria wrote:

Spoiler

- lab entrance has a WP now and the icon to it is next to your HO icon on map

so when trap kill me in lab i can return by summoned portal scroll or WP?

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1453R wrote:

And how do you solve that issue without demeaning the Labyrinth?

The entire point of the Labyrinth, and the Ascendancy update as a whole, was "Do this challenging thing and earn some character power for doing so". Being handed Ascendancy points for free because people consider them standard issue these days, and not "a thing you're rewarded for doing a challenging thing with", sits wrong with a lot of folks who pulled their big girl panties on and figured out the Labyrinth to get at that character power.

It feels bad to think of Ascendancies as just some nonsense thing you get given at four discrete character levels for no reason. That's crap, especially when the new ten-act system is trying to do away with "because we said so" explanations for Shit What Happens To Your Character, i.e. the resistance penalties thingus.

How do you preserve the nature of an Ascendancy as an extension of one's base capabilities - an Ascension from your mortal state, if you would - that must be earned via challenging trials one must undergo...without requiring players to actually exert any sort of effort, tackle some sort of hardship, or undergo any sort of trials to get at them?

I believe there are solutions that would make lab much better. Despite how it may appear based on my previous statements, I like the IDEA of lab, but not the execution, at least in a game like poe. There were several good suggestions from other players in different threads, so I will try to summarize those that, in my opinion, would make the most sense.

1) Tone down the iron-man mode. Instead of forcing people to start all over, allow the option to start from the last izaro fight that you did. You died during izaro fight 2? You get to spawn right after the first fight, with all locations re-setting except for treasuries and mysterious shrines. If you die, you lose one total treasure key (or all of them). If you don't have any more possible treasure keys to lose, you lose your enchant. After that, no further penalty (or extra exp loss). Obviously this is subject to variations, but the base idea is to still punish the player, yet allow a less frustrating experience for people who simply want to ascend. It won't affect proper lab runners, since dying would not be an option for them anyway. It also won't affect speed runners and hc players for obvious reasons.

2) Change traps from direct damage to combat altering stations. What I mean is a sort of mix between totems and current uber lab pillars, but invincible, with buff/debuff effects unique to lab. For example you may have a pillar that raises monster speed and attack damage to absolutely crazy levels (way more than onslaught or map modifiers), or a pillar that gives extra projectiles and inc area of effect to monsters. If you combine it with also significantly increasing danger of monsters in the lab (seriously, right now they are a joke even in uber), you get potentially challenging situations. You won't die to stupid static boring traps, but to crazily altered monsters. You can even keep traps like ground spikes, but instead of dealing massive damage, they may instead give you a long debuff (for example, 100% inc physical damage taken) that cannot be removed by anti-curse flask. You can choose to wait it out, or risk it and proceed. I believe there are many potential possibilities, but I hope you get the idea.

In other sections, you can replace long trap parts with proper puzzles, something similar to the ones that are located near treasuries sometimes. You can even incorporate some cryptic poems that you would have to read to figure out how to solve it. Granted, people would with time memorize the solutions, but it would be another skill that proper lab runners would possess compared to regulars (instead of just stacking movement speed and burst damage very skillfuly).

Even izaro stage 3 would benefit from it. Without high damage traps, you will suddenly receive actual room to move around, however with a risk of running into a nasty debuff that can possibly screw you over. Stepped into a spike trap? Well damn now you can't let izaro hit you at all, you have to avoid his attacks at all costs.

You can even have parts were by stepping on hidden plates, you would spawn enemies with certain specific abilities, or bands of nemesis monsters (teleporting volatiles lol). There are so many possibilities, which I believe can make it more engaging, more in tune with general top down arpg gameplay, and potentially even more immersive.


Will it significantly change the lab for facetankers and speed runners? No, because facetankers would still facetank even super buffed monsters, while speed runners would yolo run, but will be forced to memorize puzzle solutions. But who cares, if it makes it more interesting for the majority of players, who are usually something in between?

I do believe that lab as a concept has great promise, but its current execution just depresses me.