Concerns from a lab lover
" well thats the presumption, right? Its seemed to be the intention before, but that doesnt mean its always the intention. Im not going to make threads directly against it because theyve not said thats the sole reason why the lab is the way it is, but my points can be taken against it should that be the case. If thats the reason then Im challenging that reason. IF, big if. Im certainly not going to just resign myself to this as an unchangable facet to everything in this game and never point out that we need actual content to play, I will make threads and say what Im feeling. We dont need content for bots on timers to play and sell through rmt websites so that I can sit in trade chat and pay to bypass the content. I came here to play this game, just like Anuhart, just like all the other people whove played ARPGs since diablo 1 in the 90s. Play, the, game, not pay someone in trade chat to skip the game for me. I had d1 from launch, d2, Ive never even been to d2jsp, not even once. I dont give a shit about all that crap, its a game, you play it, thats the point. Trading happens as a side thing attached to the game I play, not vice versa. I want the dev time to go towards content I actually spend my time playing. I think theres an aspect to them that loves the economy, of course, and I share some of that. Im not sure how much they intend things to feel worthless and how much is simply a difference of opinion on reward in a lot of cases. Ill talk about it while we are here but Ill spoiler it because its kind of off topic, I just made this thread to beg them not to make it white map only and to say I think the hat grind is very off putting. It was just a throw away one mans opinion.
Spoiler
this happened with atziri frags, well we made this massive endgame grind and then stuck most of that grind in non endgame areas so that endgame players have to pay other people to bypass the majority of this endgame task. Fuck it just buy mortal sets guys, the entire epic grind we added was for bots on timers, sry. Fuck sake, seriously? and theyre still not in maps, we should have hounded GGG to add vaal side areas to maps, its absolutely insane that they are not in maps and we should never have let that slide. Heres the more general issue. Questing zones, worthless to grind for higher level players. Questing side zones, worthless for everyone all the time. Well we added this sac frag grind to make them worth while, we added these trails to make them worth while... What they dont seem to get is that the content is inherently worthless to play, it doesnt become worth while by adding this 1 little carrot, that just makes people hate you because they feel like you are forcing them to play inherently worthless content. They actually feel angry towards the devs because they are incentivising them to do something they despise, it stops becoming a waste of time we ignore and starts become a wasting of time you are twisting our arm to endure. But we dont have to endure it right? We can just not play sacrifice of the vaal content, we can just not play lab content. I mean thats only the game content we came here to play, that we are helping to fund. Personally I think its more that theres aspects of this that GGG dont quite factor into decisions rather than they are just a bunch of trade chat fascists who worship economics and only economics. Maybe thats true I dunno, theres certainly a lot of people who have just resigned to this theory and given up all hope but Im still clinging on to the idea that their vision is a little less bleak and maybe their idea of reward is just not really in line with what actual long term players are feeling. Example, people talked about Abaxoth not dropping maps on the podcast, like why would you fight him, why care about dealing with beyond now? and Qarls response was "Well he drops items" and yep, thats fair enough, he does drop items. It sounds fair enough but what hes actually saying is he drops 1.5 alterations and an augmentation, because the item diversity is so high that 'items' are not a short term reward. Items are something where "well if I keep killing mobs for 8 hours per day maybe once this week a really good rare or an exalt might drop, at some point, maybe not". That is in no way ever going to be a reward that makes killing 1 monster worth any serious effort. If he cant drop maps hes no good to anyone, that is ALL we are caring about, finding maps when mapping, if it doesnt drop a map its worthless to us in terms of reward. But you would have to be a mapper and not a developer I think to really get that, if Qarl tried to map enough to have that feeling the game would stop existing. Dont get me wrong here Im not saying its a bad thing he doesnt see it that way and bashing Qarl at all. But its a split in how things are perceived on both ends, and I dont think you can completely rule out that maybe some things just land off point from some of our perspectives rather than being intentionally so horrible to serve some economic objective. |
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" Well put. This should have been outside of your spoiler section, because it points to one of the most important fundamentals of game design: make ALL gameplay worth doing. That principle seems to be ignored more and more as expansions are released. And adding individual carrots to compensate for gameplay which isn't worth doing is not a compensation at all. It instead does exactly what you say, and encourages resentment. It's true of Vaal areas, it's true of maps, it's true of the Masters, and oh boy is it ever true for the labyrinth. It's true in every single area of the game. The fact that GGG decided in early days to allow all currency to drop as early as the first area means that they *got* this, I think. At one point. Perhaps they are forgetting, or have forgotten, it. Wash your hands, Exile!
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" I think the point is not to 'skip' parts of the game. The game as a whole has many things to offer, and they can't satisfy everyone at the same time. Nor will everyone like every part as much as the next person. So as a safety net you can do the things you enjoy doing, and use the effort in those areas to pay for the areas you don't like. Pretty solid game philosophy imo. There is simply no way to entice everyone to every part of the game. Having said all that though, i don't disagree with what you said. But i also think that if i like to do A and i dislike B there isn't any shame for me personally to grind A to pay for B. The whole 'pay to skip' attitude never made sense to me. You got that currency somehow right? You earned it by played some part that you did enjoy. Again, i also believe the effort they are putting into labyrinth is a waste. Because it will never be my cup of tea, no matter how many rewards they put in. It's sad that after so many rejected posts they did not only embrace the lab more but also entangle it further into the core game, and like you said encourage white low level mapping if you are set on actually earning the items for end game lab yourself. | |
" Me: play it once to get ascendancy points, don't bother with helm enchants, continue to be amazed that roombas, traps, and buzzsaws were ever implemented into the game. I honestly don't know how GGG could make the lab more fun. Right now it's something you have to 'endure'. 177 Last edited by toyotatundra on May 25, 2016, 10:42:01 AM
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" it took me 190 runs only to get achievment. also it yielded about 20 exa net in sold enchants. you doing it wrong. No rest for the wicked
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" I'm enchanting a near perfect abyssus, aren't many of those in standard, and I check poetrade frequently. There are some rolls like ground slam angle, etc that I can sell, sure, then i'll have to buy a new near perfect abyssus which there is only 1 that fits my standards atm, but the next abyssus I am going to enchant(for t4 EQ duration) after I finish the current one, is going to have perfect or 1% off rolls, so I am definitely not buying that one. But the point is, I am not running lab looking to make a profit; I'm running lab to look for an enchantment that I want on a specific item with specific roll ranges for a build that I am going to play (meaning item not for sale). If I wanted to make a profit, I would be mapping, 6Linking, crafting, selling crafts n 6links. Edit: Also, let us not forget they are still working on new skills, The helm enchantment list will eventually go past 400. And this is farming in standard, a death here and there due to mistake is not a big deal, out of 220+ runs now I've only died 3 times, but if it was on Hardcore, that would be 3 characters lost with many exalts worth of gear, so best of luck trying to get the enchantment you want on hardcore. Last edited by SIQI on May 25, 2016, 1:08:10 PM
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It would be nice if helmet enchants were grouped into smaller buckets to choose from, like melee or totem or projectile. This would make it a bit less grindy.
I considered making them tradeable consumables, but they would get out of hand really fast and some of them are really powerful. Considering the power creep in this game, they should not be that easy to get. Maybe if it was a tradeable consumeable but the exact enchantment was still unknown. When this game was still in OB, the statement was that perfect gear was a long term goal. Maybe with the inclusion of temp leagues, long term has been shortened to less than one month, but some of the entitlement on the forums these days is obscene (in general, not this thread specifically). Enchantments are not mandatory, they are gravy. You get to deterministically choose your Acsendancy class (which is also optional), with a bonus of getting a good enchantment on your perfect gear, or having to buy something that may or may not be as good. The only mandatory parts of this game are: Act 1 - Hillock, Brutus, Merveil, Act 2 - Fidelitas, Bandits, Weaver, Vaal Oversoul Act 3 - Tolman, GemlingQueen(Docks, Battle Front) Piety and Dominus Act 4 (normal and cruel only)- Voll, Piety, Malachai and godless three. Pretty much everything else in the whole game is optional and unnecessary. Not doing it will gimp your character, but it is a choice. Different people are going to like or hate each different part of the game, and nothing is going to appeal to everybody. Sometimes you have to do crap you hate to get the rewards (or you can trade for it). Last edited by FarmerTed on May 25, 2016, 2:53:28 PM
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GGG belives in order to extend a game's lifetime out you need to add RNG to everything. Infact, it's doing the opposite. People get frustrated and quit.
Dynamic Environment - Day/Night, Rain/Lightning - http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/110100
GGG's design philosophy in three words: Quantity over Quality. | |
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We added some awesome content (even if you don't like it, you should).
We are gating it behind RNG and low level content, or you can buy it. At the end you will get 2 ascendancy points for the first time. But here's the good bit, you can run it again, and again, well, after the whole RNG and low map thing for every run, but never mind that, just buy it, right? Why would you run it again when you have your 2 points? Well here's the carrot: You get to enchant your hat, you can totally roll over your enchant that took 300 runs to get in merciless with the odds of not downgrading it being like 1000:1. You will totally want to do that, right? Top design right there. Casually casual. Last edited by TheAnuhart on May 25, 2016, 6:15:41 PM
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" This is the lens we need to view this issue with. _________________________________________________________ As-is the enchant system is broken. 1. It put's too much emphasis on having uniques in slot which can hold any number of concurrent enchants 2. Pure RNG =/= progression. We need a way to revert or keep an existing enchantment if the new one is unwanted. This would not increase the chances of a favourable enchantment, but it would allow one to progress from none > useless > meh > ... > ideal IGN: Victory_Or_Sovngarde It's not a 13 week development cycle, it's a 13 week supporter-pack cycle. You can play any build you want, as long as it's the current meta. Last edited by Ashen_Shugar_IV on May 26, 2016, 2:59:18 AM
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