Changes to the Labyrinth

I posted this before but it's worth a reminder:

OK, if you absolutly must keep it...

Suggestion nr3411:

One entrance/labyrinth that scales up the further you go
Ramp up difficulty after each Izaro encounter, final strech Uber traps and so on.
Get 2 points per Izaro
The trials you suggested unlock each next step
Same enchants as now but after each Izaro
One chest after each Izaro and bonus keys after Uber.
Keep the mechanics as it works right now (diruptors, conduits and so on)

Advantages:
Can keep the lore intact
Linear progression
Easy to get the first few points
Keeping "loot runs" about the same as now


:)

So interes....... ResidentSleeper .

I dont expect much from you guys anyway.

The changes sound ok. But please, look into the Uber trials RNG / spawn rates. There is something wrong with them, if you can only unlock Uber at lvl 91+

The spawn of trials should be biased toward those which the player has not completed yet.

I guess it's good that they did it, but they should have made ascendacy be part of character selection - you get 1! ascendacy point right then and there, and then take it from there.

Hey all of you who have been playing since Beta -- remember before there was a Labyrinth? Before Ascendancies? Before the Scion? Before Masters? Before Vaal content? Before Act 4? Before Dominus even?, when Piety was the end boss? Yeah, we do. Before integrated Trade and H/Os, OMG...

To all of you who haven't had the benefit of playing the game pre-Ascendancy, THIS GAME USED TO BE SO MUCH HARDER. With the exception of OP gear items that have since been nerfed for balance, and those Aurabots that were just SO EXTRA, playing the game past level 65 was way more challenging, with fewer options for endgame viability. Especially Solo Self-Found.

The Ascendancies are great and offer mechanics and customizations for builds that really let you push to lvl 90 and beyond and face the Atlas bosses. But the game is still doable with mediocre gear till lvl 60-70 without even doing Normal Lab yet. The Labyrinth and the ascendancy points are not required, but they are so strong, they are worth the effort, even if you don't get them till mid-to-late game.

The comments about hating the Lab and getting rid of it are not-helpful, and really take for granted the players who like the Labyrinth and the effort GGG put into that entire expansion. Also, within the storyline of the game's mythology, it makes sense to have to earn the Ascendancy points.

I agree that changes should be made to how the traps and Izaro buffs can lag the game into un-playability when all firing off at once. I have a decent PC and Internet connection, but yeah, in the Lab, in Breaches, and Rare Maps with lots of mods, even opening Strongboxes are more or less certain death.

GGG, since you're planning on shortening the Labyrinth in easier difficulties anyhow, why not also consider alternatively changing the combination of certain traps? Or allowing Secret Areas and Secret Passages to bypass Golden Doors and not just hop to rooms you may not actually want to travel to in the first place? Or give us a "skeleton key" to open all Gold and Silver doors, but gated behind an equivalently annoyingly challenging (or just tedious) puzzle? Also, I get that the trap combos are kind of what make the Labyrinth daily changes brilliant from a storytelling point of view, but from a performance point of view, the challenge isn't in the traps themselves, but in the ability for some players PCs to even render them. Like, with no lag, I could get though that annoying scissor-door/Roomab/Poison dart corner of Hell if there was no lag, but that single trap combo is like a 50/50 gamble with everything going off at the same time and spiking my lag. Might there someday be a type of switch -- maybe hidden by a Secret Area -- that would turn off one type of trap in the current room? I for one would be willing to spend more time overall running a Labyrinth layout if the Layout in general were more friendly to my PC.

Also, I actually like the Labyrinth, and farming the merciless one has helped me with the Chaos recipe more than Dried Lake, enabling me to purchase/trade in that transitional leveling period around 70 [in a league's first character] when mediocre 4-link gear is no longer going to carry me past tier 6 maps, but I haven't made enough currency from leveling league starting character to be able to afford anything good, or even to craft much of anything useful beyond chroming and 4-linking.

The Lab needs some performance optimization, but it serves the story and the gameplay well.

And, like i was expecting, not a single word on the (imo) most aggravating flaws:

1) add waypoints before each 3 Izaro fights (if i play standard, WHY must i be forced with your "hardcore flavour" and repeat all from the beginning if i die? Expecially if i die at third fight...)

2) don't make anymore traps clusters so long that they go offscreen for 2-3 screens away, so that a poor player is forced to run "blindly"


Hard ears, hard heads: GGG's in a phrase

Earlier labs being shorter is great news although they feel pretty short once you get the feel of the lab, but this is great news. Not so great news is the trials remain...

"

yazzlecat wrote:

I hate the lab. With a passion. I'm saddened by this news.
Screw the lab. Make it an endgame boss so I never ever have
to run it again. Then move the ascendancy points behind something else.

A lot of people hate the lab and running it every league really ruins the
gameplay for me. That's how much I hate it.

This ^

Are we going to face the gods, right? Well, it was so difficult to give to the player 2 points for every god killed (assuming the gods will be at least 4)????

Lab is the worst nonsense in this game. Why are you tainting this new 10 act system with it? It should be side content. It should not be required progress for earning powerful skill points and it shouldn't be the only way to earn enchants. You could have really easily rolled ascendancy skill points into the new quests. No one wanted you to nerf normal and cruel lab, this shit was already trivial. The problem is trying to enchant your helm with something relevant to your char and just having to build around uber izaro in general for your final ascendancy points. I still don't have it on my legacy occultist after like 26 attempts. This char can do all kinds of late game stuff effectively but it's cursed my existence to kill 3rd phase izaro even with previous mechanics mitigated. He just melts through me like I'm not even there, at any range no matter how hard i concentrate on dodging him because I'm not built to face tank and I'm not fast enough to dodge back and forth in the 5 feet we get with 100% accuracy. I can do T15 maps all night no problem but I can't do this garbage content but this garbage content is absolutely required for the progress I want. What about your players who aren't awesome twitch players and will never be no matter how much they practice? Fuck us right, we don't deserve ascendancy points and enchants because we don't meet some arbitrary bar of twitch skill.