Post your reason why you hate doing labs.

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Axetwin wrote:

I'm of two minds when it comes to the labs.

The first is, I like the idea of them. I like them in concept. Needing to dodge deadly traps, using trash mobs to replenish your potions. Navigating a pseudo maze with secrets and rewards for those that explore a bit. I find Izaru's mechanic to be really interesting. A really well done showing of how risk vs reward could and should be.

However, and this is the other side of things for me. As good as all of this sounds on paper, and in concept. It fails in practice. Starting with the Trials themselves. I understand that they're there to teach you what to expect in the lab itself. So here's my question. Why do we have to do the trials in Cruel and Merciless? The traps aren't any different, they honestly don't even feel like they do more damage on higher difficulties. There's no new spins on how they work. So why make us do them all over again, if we've already completed it once before?

Someone else brought this up, but I feel it needs repeating. ARPG's in general do not do precision movement well. It's easy to start attacking something when you need to move. To click on something to interact with it, and see your character not move at all. Or if you do move, you stutter, start and stop movement. Or worse, the pathfinding freaks out and takes you in a stupid directly in the complete opposite direction. POE is not excluded from these issues. Labs compound these issues because you are required to do precise moves. Yes, I know you can bind a "move only" action, problem is not all builds have room for this. Trying to switch weapons usually results in lost buffs and/or summons. Which you then have to stop what you're doing and reapply......everytime you need to weapon swap to get past a particular trap set up.

Labs feel too long to utilize the one and done mechanic. Either make them shorter and only give us 1 attempt per run, or make them long and implement some sort of checkpoint system. Probably after each Izaru phase. If you're worried about people trying to brute force it by simply dying over and over again, you can put in a system to where if a player dies more than once in the entire run, the chests at the end will be permanently locked. One by one.

The only difficulty curve involved with lsbs comes down to enemy health and damage. That's it. Character progression is locked behind a level and gear check. Is your level high enough not to get wrecked by trash mobs? Check. Is your gear good enough to let you facetank/heal through all of Izaru's attacks because of how super aggressive he is? Check. I understand wanting to challenge players in the hunt for better loot and items. That should be a challenge. Locking basic character progression behind that same wall does not make for a fun playing experience.

Labs aren't optional. If you want to reach the full potential of a build, you NEED to do them. Which means it comes down to how long you need to put them off before you can attempt them. It's recommended you be a minimum of 10 levels above the lab you want to attempt. That doesn't seem like good design. I don't hate the labs, I'm just super disappointed in how they work because in the end, more often than not they're just an exercise in tedium.

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MECHanokl wrote:

I will just copy the reasons I dislike lab that I posted before:

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!

This is absurd.

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YoursTruly86 wrote:

What if I wanted to play a niche build or "a build of my own" and wanted a specific enchantment on it and there is no market for it? I can name you one right now ... I wanted a hrimnor's resolve helmet with % damage for flameblast but POE trade does not have it and there is no one with that enchantment on trade chat.

Will trading helps? Will the 0.26 % chance to get desired helmet enchantment rule helps me?

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PleiadesBlackstar wrote:

The "I hate the lab too!" Claps on the back are getting a little ridiculous.

I mean, it's one thing if it was in that giant megathread that some like to link to of people that want the lab to end but to continue to have all these new threads pop up and have the anti lab people circle jerking like this is really old.

I'm just waiting for somebody to start patting someone else on the back for giving somebody else a back Pat. Come on...