Labyrinth is still not fun. It's horrible content

Turtles are my favorite.

As many long time forum posters know, the opening post of the old thread SET FREE THE ASCENDANCY POINTS (or rework the lab) [New ascension methods/lab rework ideas] documents many different potential solutions that have been proposed over the years.

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Staglaitor_ wrote:

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Turtledove wrote:

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You should understand that the biggest ascendancy nodes are much more stronger than common passive skill nodes and you should deserve them

Do you want to significantly boost your build doing maps of insignificant difficulty?????????

Significant build-boost then significant difficulty

Labyrinth is not a common map, Labyrinth is a revolutional event in your game life

you should deserve ascendancy points

Ascendany points are not a garbage

PS
Of course there are some mistakes in the Labyrinth but for the most part Labyrinth is brilliant!

The Labyrinth is a classic example of a game designer trying to compensate for intrinsically unrewarding mechanics with extrinsically rewarding mechanics.

You need to understand this before you can coherently object to the criticisms of its so-called (by Chris) vocal minority.

The Labyrinth, as it came to be, was less a skill-based barrier to additional power and (much) more a pain-based barrier. For some builds (I know, because I have played them) this pain was minimized. (Unless the client crashed, of course.) Irrelevant. Rewarding players for tolerating intrinsically unrewarding behavior with extrinsic rewards will always amount to bad game design.

(See GGG's delayed or nonexistent treatment of OP skills because they "feel bad" to play for a similar example.)

GGG doubling down and adding additional loot-based rewards to the Labyrinth didn't improve this design issue but rather spotlighted its inherent weaknesses.

It turns out that game design and human psychology are closely linked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect
No one is surprised.

Supporting evidence relevant to PoE: If GGG removed the Labyrinth-exclusive extrinsic rewards which you get at the end of the run (ascendancy points and enchantments) and left only the loot chests and other rewards which can also be acquired in maps, less than 1% of the player base would even go inside. I doubt even the most die-hard fans of this content would disagree with that statement. Client crashes feel as painful as they do ONLY because this is the case. ONLY. Take a second to think about that.

And it's quite a damning statement, when you consider that a video game's content is supposed to be fun on its own merits.

I attribute the references to "deserving" the points to the lab story line being drummed into our brains as we run around the lab. Support for that position is that it seems to be a very common theme from people arguing the "goodness" of the labyrinth.

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gibbousmoon wrote:

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You are right in the cases when labyrinth-puzzle leads to nothing.
For example: - you solve hard puzzle and run into a dead end (navigation)

I am convinced that more difficult puzzle then more valuable prize a player should get.

Yes, labyrinth dosn't correspond to it sometimes.

BUT!!!! -PLS think about it!! when you go into the labyrinth then you think -aha, i need to surmount this trap and oh! oh! oh! it a pain!!! i don't wanna do it.
In this case you need mental attitude
You MUST repeat key phrase: -"trap overcoming leads to ascendancy node allocations!!!!"

In shot form : - traps leads to ascendancy nodes
You must pronounce it in your head

This is a mental attitude allows you to overcome traps with positive emotions

As i said in previous post - it was my own thought - there are mistakes in the labyrinth but ascendancy-node-reward compensates all trap-pains

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gibbousmoon wrote:

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If you say that labyrinth is "terreble" but meanwhile play for ascendancy-node-reward then it means that it's worth it and GGG knows it :)))

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Staglaitor_ wrote:

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gibbousmoon wrote:

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If you say that labyrinth is "terreble" but meanwhile play for ascendancy-node-reward then it means that it's worth it and GGG knows it :)))

Sorry, GGG is no where near as stupid as this assumes. It's completely ridiculous. Ignoring the fact that games are supposed to be fun would lead to absolutely horrible design decisions.

"its not fun its horrible."
meanwhile there are players who are making mirrors out of lab in numbers that are greater than these cranky crybabies.
please get real. you dont have to do it more than for 30 mins per character if you play the game at all.

you can ignore most of the game if you are incapable of accepting challenge or facing hardship.

just because 10 people hate this beautiful content does not mean ggg will do something about it. accept the fact that you are a very very very very very small minority and go on with the rest of the content. cuz I think its impossible to please everyone and positive outcome of the lab is bigger than the negative. your small voices can and will be ignored. lab will stay the same and I will fight for it to stay the same if it needs to be.

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MrsDeath_ wrote:

"its not fun its horrible."
meanwhile there are players who are making mirrors out of lab in numbers that are greater than these cranky crybabies.
please get real. you dont have to do it more than for 30 mins per character if you play the game at all.

you can ignore most of the game if you are incapable of accepting challenge or facing hardship.

just because 10 people hate this beautiful content does not mean ggg will do something about it. accept the fact that you are a very very very very very small minority and go on with the rest of the content. cuz I think its impossible to please everyone and positive outcome of the lab is bigger than the negative. your small voices can and will be ignored. lab will stay the same and I will fight for it to stay the same if it needs to be.

GGG has already done much to mitigate the not fun labyrinth. So you are already wrong in your false assertions. Your name calling and unproductive baiting is to be expected. However, please continue your wrongness is at least amusing.

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MrsDeath_ wrote:

Spoiler

"its not fun its horrible."
meanwhile there are players who are making mirrors out of lab in numbers that are greater than these cranky crybabies.
please get real. you dont have to do it more than for 30 mins per character if you play the game at all.

you can ignore most of the game if you are incapable of accepting challenge or facing hardship.

just because 10 people hate this beautiful content does not mean ggg will do something about it. accept the fact that you are a very very very very very small minority and go on with the rest of the content. cuz I think its impossible to please everyone and positive outcome of the lab is bigger than the negative. your small voices can and will be ignored. lab will stay the same and I will fight for it to stay the same if it needs to be.

"Labyrinth" is beautiful only for a small minority (as lore was never the main focus in an ARPG, although PoE has a decently "fleshed out" one), for the rest is at most tolerable, exactly due to the heavy rewards - which actually are mainly the damn Ascendancy points as enchants are more of a "miss" than an "impactful hit", especally when you want a specific rare, and sadly, the lootsplosions were heavily toned down...

"Labyrinth" is still undeserving of it's so called name, a proper one would have multiple interesting paths to undertake, even if only one would be the correct one, at the moment it's still a painful "straight line", towards some necessary rewards - the ascendancy points are a mandatory "power up" that can't be easily ignored these days...

I'm still hoping they actually improve it by making it more interesting and have the run to obtain the Ascendancy points ENTIRELY RANDOM (you can have the regular daily "racing" focused one available afterwards), as the JOURNEY of running the "Labyrinth" should always be the memorable experience it deserves to be, and the new "infused Offerings" actually make the content worthwhile, even at higher level, they just need to be made available in a reasonable manner if Harvest doesn't make it to core...

Heck, they could even add 1 of those as a reward for finishing "Uber Labyrinth" for the last Ascendancy points, or make it a specific drop under certain conditions during that run...

The "Labyrinth" could be so much more, if only they would remove the MANDATORY one chance at completion for "casuals" - so you can respawn at every Ascendant's Trial via a checkpoint a limited number of times like 1 for each Ascendant's trial reached (mainly to prevent a full re-run due to a random disconnect), and this would also only reward you with at most 50% of the drops, 1 tier lower enchant than usual, and only 1 of the ascendancy points (so for the comfort of not losing their run, players can opt to actually run MORE of the content at their own pace)...

And they could also keep the current way "Labyrinth" works for the players that enjoy the additional challenge...

They have so many options to make this content one of the highlights of the PoE experience that their reluctance to improve it, is beyond saddening...