The Trials of Ascendancy serve no purpose and are annoying
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I'd like to mention firstly that my complaint has nothing to do with the Labyrinth, but the seemingly pointless and unrelated tutorials you are forced to do multiple times to get into the labyrinth.
They offer no rewards, are easy but time consuming and are a terrible barrier to entry of the Labyrinth. In addition, outside of some very minor lore, they serve no purpose, despite being advertised as a way of introducing players to the Labyrinth, which is flawed. Firstly, until now, there has been zero introductory mechanics to PoE content outside of natural progression i.e stuff gets slowly harder. The Labyrinth already has natural progression because there is a Normal, Cruel and Merciless version which get progressively harder. PoE has never taught mechanics, why is it doing it now? Secondly, the trials only introduce the most obvious and common sense mechanics of the Labyrinth and make no mention of anything else. There is no in game tutorial for the boss mechanics, dark shrines or how to progress in regards to dead ends, golden/silver keys or doors. Not being introduced to this content is normal for PoE and nothing to complain about, but why is there an introduction to the easiest and most common sense part of the Labyrinth that doesn't actually prepare you for the Labyrinth? Thirdly, if they are meant to teach mechanics, why do they have to be done three times in each difficulty where they don't change? They already made it so people in the perm leagues don't have to do it (or do it once or something), but doesn't this highlight the pointlessness and flaw in this? For Hardcore players that RIP you have to do these trials every time and even if you aren't in hardcore, if you re roll or when a new league starts, you have to do it all over again. I'd be very interested to hearing some thoughts on why the Trials are a good thing to have in the game, because right now they are the worst part about the new expansion. Whether you like or dislike the Labyrinth itself is subjective and GGG will improve it, especially with difficulty, but I can't see how anyone could like the Trials. My suggestion is to remove them entirely because I can't think of a single reason of why they are good, or if you believe they need to be in the game for introductory purposes, make it so you only need to do them once. Another solution is to make the trials easier to access and teach all traps in one go. Last edited by Dragol#2845 on Mar 8, 2016, 4:40:29 AM Last bumped on Mar 9, 2016, 4:27:36 AM
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" It's because GGG has this belief that everything "big" added to the game must have these little stepping stones reaching up to it or somehow be intrinsically flawed. Like, for instance, we couldn't just have Elreon's full crafting system with Multimodding available as an option for item changing. You instead must go through a mind-numbingly repetitive rote exercise of 10000 Elreon missions that are in practice WAYYY over-levelled, braindead repetition that you could do with your eyes closed (literally). The trials are pretty similar. I wrote about this in more detail in my "QQ thread" if you're interested https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1599749 |
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" Fair enough, but everyone has to run 18 trials and 3 Labyrinths on multiple characters too? Hardcore players will have to go through it many times and anyone doing leagues will too, you can't deny that the plight of standard players is at least partially present in other players? You don't really do the trials as you level up necessarily either, a bunch are in optional areas and generally the best tactic for time would be to come back to them later, but either way it is tedious. And sorry, I didn't mean to say that the lore was flimsy or bad, I meant that the lore is the only thing the trials have going for it, but it isn't worth how much of a hassle and waste of time they are to players. But this isn't hate against the Labyrinth like I said, I have no problem with needing to do it three times minimum, because it was made to be replayed and it fits into the natural progression. It is also going to have issues on launch that GGG will improve and the enjoyment of it like I said is subjective, so I'm not going to go into bombing the Labyrinth. The post is 100% focused on the trials. Also I wouldn't be too angry about it if it was optional, but getting your trees isn't, I don't mind doing Labyrinths because I feel they have a purpose, but something that stops me getting into them for no reason, I do mind. " I disagree, GGG has never added stepping stones such as this in any of their content, instead they have added natural progression, such as with maps and masters like you said. Leveling masters is more of a grind and you can begin leveling them from Normal and you do not have to level them again until a new league, so it isn't the same thing. Also the majority of good enchants for general play can be gotten from level 4-5 which is very easy, if I had to relevel all my masters every time I died or made a new character, that would be a similar (though *much* worse) problem. You have more of an issue with grinding, which I think is a lot different to having to replay pointless gating content. Heavy grinding is actually something that is subjective and some people love it, in fact it gives PoE a lot of its replayability, along with build diversity. Also multi-modding and those very high level enchants can be gained from trading and other players, so your complaint is more valid for self-found stuff which is also subjective and I personally think PoE is about trading with others and other games like Diablo 3 is about self-finding. Last edited by Dragol#2845 on Mar 7, 2016, 11:03:04 PM
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As far as the trials go, I'm inclined to partially agree.
I really like them lore and flavor-wise, and how the hedgemaze one prevents you from rushing the lab as soon as you hit act 3 (which helps players not do it too early). However, you're right in that it seems rather pointless other than that. The tutorial has already been completed, and you're not really learning anything new after the first time. The traps don't get more difficult in the lab either (at least, I don't think they do). I'd like it if you only had to do each of them once (so, probably normal difficulty), or add a silver key/door with a chest into the trials. This way there is some reward involved, and they help teach the newer mechanics of the lab instead of just dodging things that, let's be honest, you can tell just by looking at them that you shouldn't run straight through them. |
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Partially agree, partially disagree.
The trials in merc I have not yet reached (too obsessed with cruel lab), but in cruel I found in general the trials were still too easy. In normal they were a walk in the past, didn't even need to think, could pretty much facetank. In Cruel they also felt easy. Some of the 'traps' in the actual lab in normal were far harder to navigate than the trials in cruel. I think it should be 'easy' in normal, but then after that these trials should be difficult. They are static map design, so they should be able to make it very difficult, very specific location. |
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"Emphasis mine. This makes me wonder... what if: - Normal Difficulty only had two Trials (one of which is in Act 3, one earlier), and Normal Labyrinth only used those two trap types - Cruel Difficulty only had two Trials (different from the Normal Trials, but also one from Act 3 and one from earlier), and Cruel Labyrinth only had four trap types - Merciless Difficulty had only the two remaining Trials, and used all six trap types - (here's the kicker) For each character, your Normal, Cruel and Merciless Trials are randomized within the parameters given, so each leveling experience has different quests for each difficulty (36 different possible combinations) This would probably mean that only the Merciless Labyrinth would be same for everyone each day, so there's one downside... but overall I think it'd be pretty cool to make it two random Trials per difficulty. It would make every Trial a once-per-character thing, and thus a true tutorial. (It is unfortunate this flies in the face of Chris's recent Labyrinth announcement regarding permanent league characters, because I feel this would be a better way to handle that problem as well.) When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted. Last edited by ScrotieMcB#2697 on Mar 8, 2016, 12:08:19 AM
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But if you don't do the trial (at least 3 times per character), how will you ever know to avoid those spikes that shoot out of the ground!??! You crazy man, you got to figure this stuff out before that big bad lab.
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" Nah, because this is tying trials in with the labyrinth and I don't agree with doing massive overhauls for the Labyrinth when the trials is what is flawed. They're a black sheep due to their pointlessness and the direction of having tutorials is totally unlike PoE. You can't get around these facts about the Trials; -They fail to prepare players for the Labyrinth, the traps are common sense and only a small part of the labyrinth -GGG never directly prepared players for new content in the past -Having to do the same thing multiple times contradicts the belief they are a tutorial, why do you need to do the trial again when you have completed the Labyrinth at least 1-2 times -The Labyrinth has natural progression already and eases players in like all the other content in PoE through 3 difficulties, Normal is the easiest etc. -They add very little content to the expansion, nobody is going to say after losing the trials that Ascendancy doesn't have enough content. -The Labyrinth is entirely optional, if it was required to finish Normal, then perhaps a tutorial for it would make more sense, but this is not the case and as I said, it isn't a good tutorial anyway. Due to this, outside of lore, they don't serve any purpose, if GGG believe that the Normal Labyrinth is too hard for new players (as in new to the Labyrinth), or it is too overwhelming without a 'tutorial', nerf the damage of the traps and the final boss for the Normal Labyrinth. But as I said, this belief would be flawed because the trials don't prepare players for it anyway, there's more to the Labyrinth than floor traps. As for why GGG included them, I don't know and I don't want to conspire about it, PoE is my favourite game, I'm not here to accuse them of fleshing out the expansion poorly or whatever. I'm just giving feedback that there's no clear reason to have these trials that I can think of which is reflected by how they were implemented/function. " Would have been more helpful to me if the trial was a text popup that said "the Cruel fat bat cow miniboss hits as hard as Merc Malachai". Last edited by Dragol#2845 on Mar 8, 2016, 1:24:11 AM
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Dude, the Trials in Normal are tutorials. You might hate tutorials and think traps don't need them, but that doesn't mean they aren't tutorials.
Having to complete a tutorial multiple times, however, is pretty lame. Not really a tutorial the second time. When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted. Last edited by ScrotieMcB#2697 on Mar 8, 2016, 2:12:51 AM
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I actually like this suggestion. Trials are so basic, but they really don't prepare you for what the lab really is.
I think more people would complain less about the labs if they didn't have to do the pointless trials...or the trials were just a single zone comprised of all 6. Either, or, but I find they add nothing at all to the game. |
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