Changes to the Labyrinth

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mlangwor wrote:

EIGHTEEN FUCKING TRIALS?

well 18 vs the 24 we do now. So i guess its a step in the right direction.

At least get rid of the trials.
Merciful Heavens - Won't someone PLEASE think of the children !! ;))

All the news lately has been great; keep it coming guys

That most definitely won't change the fact that i hate it from the bottom of my heart to go in there...

And the trials... omg such an epic waste of fucking time! Every league start... over and over again...
You guys rly need to make these things account based instead of league based (like the sion unlock)!

Boss farming is the thing that i miss most in PoE, its one of these things that i loved in D2.
But ubber lab farming is such a nightmare i attempted it once for a week and quit the game for a month!

So if the quest line now brings us through a later version of Sarn Encampment in Act 8 why aren't we only doing lab twice before uber?? It is wonderful that a few rooms are being removed to shorten the time it takes to get through, but three times around before endgame still feels lengthy. Giving three points for two lab runs would only truly affect Scion ascendancy anyway.

Farming for an enchantment you want is about as much fun as gouging your eyes out. The odds are so incredibly slim as to be foolhardy to even attempt.

I absolutely loathe being forced to run the lab as a requirement. I've ripped to it sure and that can happen anywhere but at least most of the game can be played in a way you find enjoyable (shape your favorite maps, fight some exciting bosses).

The lab isn't fun. The Izaro fight can be so ridiculous for life based builds as has already been mentioned. For HC players there is no way to try a lab run without planning to likely rip your character to SC so you can try out or practice content and then waste time remaking it for HC. If I were a new player I'd rage quit the first time I had to experience something so in congruent with the rest of the game.

For the love of this game, please, don't keep ascendancy points tied to the Lab. From all the comments this seems to reflect the thoughts of an overwhelming majority of your player base.

If you want players to run the lab several hundred times per league then just give Izaro a 0.0001% chance of dropping a crown that has a headhunter like stat on it and watch people flock to it.

I just want to say first that I love this game and the obviously passionate dev team behind it, and I plan to continue to play it for a long time, much like I did with Diablo 2. With that said, I simply cannot stand the lab and feel it is the absolute worst part of the game, by a wide margin. It's to the point where I haven't even bothered running uber on my last two characters because I hate it so much, and I wait to run the earlier labs until I'm beyond overleveled and overgeared for it so I can just blast through it and get it over with.

My frustration with the lab does have an easy solution though: don't gate ascendancy points behind it. The fact that ascendancy points are practically mandatory and literally define your build yet are gated behind the most frustrating aspect of the entire game feels like a poor design choice to me, and I know I'm not alone in this sentiment.

If you just made the lab even more rewarding through more treasure keys and more exclusive and powerful uniques (like Death's Door), I feel there would still be enough reason to run it for those who like it, and as it is it's already one of the most profitable things to do in the game if you have a good runner.

Overall I feel like it is just a very frustrating and annoying thing for many players (and I haven't even mentioned the tedium of trials) and it's something that GGG should at least think about changing. That's my two cents, sorry for the long post, thanks for reading.

edit: spelling/grammar

Just look at this thread. 95% of the comments HATE this content. Seems GGG is so afraid of going soft on players, they'd rather frustrate them than make lab changes to streamline character progression.

At a certain point in lifespan of a new game feature, it should be made more simplistic and significantly less time consuming, even somewhat trivial since more time sinking elements have been added. If you don't, you make the road of character progress even longer and more exhausting to the player.

Removing Cruel and Merc because it's boring an repetitive, but keeping other boring and repetitive progression dependant features like lab runs makes no sense.

The future was looking so good too with the 3.0 update. Keeping lab runs will be the nasty bitter flavor that keeps the freshness of 3.0 tasting as good as it should.

I, for one, enjoy running the labyrinth and am glad that it will remain in the game. If anything, it would be nice if there was more trap and puzzle content to make it a nice break from (mostly) braindead mapping. Izaro fights, in particular, are nice insofar that knowledge of mechanics play a significant role at least early in the league to determine success or failure.

That said, I think the problem occurs more towards endgame when farming for helmet enchantments. While the content is nice, the shear repetitiveness of farming for a helmet enchantment that is relevant for a character and the ease at which uber lab is cleared shifts it from challenging/rewarding to predominately braindead grind. While it is understandable that helmet enchantments do offer powerful boosts to a character and thus require commiserate effort to achieve, I think it would be more interesting if it was harder to get the enchantment by buffing Izaro, making more dangerous traps, etc. (in every lab clear after the first) but easier to customize the type of helmet enchantment received.

This would have the obvious consequence of lowering the value of helmet enchantments somewhat but I feel like the ultimate QOL that it offers would more than make up for it.