Ascendancy Design Is Trash

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Orion_3T#5225 wrote:

New player here. This is just bad design. There is absolutely nothing in the game to tell me what Sacred Water does or how to use it. I tried looking it up online and found nothing except 'There are special shrines to spend it to get honour back'. Well maybe but I didn't find one yet.

External information is fine for tips but should absolutely not be required to be able to know what an obviously crucial game mode mechanic does.

The game does a good job in explaining mechanics with the extra info options but this needs to be explained. Just te,l uswhat Sacred Water is for and how we might make use of it. So far I did not find a single way to use it, and I have been looking.

I just watched Ben_ go through a run while I was at work, and even he was puzzled by some of the options/wording that came up during the trial.

Also to add, escape. The tip says disable all crystals, ok great. Disable how? I tried using it, no option to do so. Kill eenemies? Oops too late it exploded. The tip that pops up was not helpful it needs to give some clue how disabling is accomplished.

I looked at my video replay and there is just nothing there telling us what to do. It would be trivial to include this so 'look it up online' is not an excuse.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

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Orion_3T#5225 wrote:

Also to add, escape. The tip says disable all crystals, ok great. Disable how? I tried using it, no option to do so. Kill eenemies? Oops too late it exploded. The tip that pops up was not helpful it needs to give some clue how disabling is accomplished.

I looked at my video replay and there is just nothing there telling us what to do. It would be trivial to include this so 'look it up online' is not an excuse.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

It doesn't tell you what to do, but when you click on the crystal is shoots a projectile in the direction of the next crystal. Basically ignore the monsters and run to the next crystal till you reach the end and then you can kill mobs. Kinda dumb but one of the easier trials to complete.

There wasno option to select the crystal. I followed the first crystal's line to another crystal and was unable to interact with it in any way.

So, maybe a bug. But I was specifically looking for this as I had seen a tips video and that's what they appeared to do.

If it's a bug that's not so bad, it is a Beta after all.

But either way for an instant fail mechanice this should be clear and bug free.

Ok I figured it out. On console it doesn't let you interact with anything while there are enemies near. So you can't pickup items or generally interact. This apparently includes the crystals.

I would suggest interactions required to avoid an instant fail of a potentially lengthy run need to prioritise the crystals.

The trials mechanic needs to change, big time, as a warrior i hate every second i'm in there...

After a few more tries the Honour restoration trials did start appearing, I guess I was unlucky or just didn't know what I was looking for. My nooby ass and ad hoc build did get the boss down to near death then ran out of honour so it does seem doable.

If Honour is based only on health and energy shield it seems weighted heavily against Strength builds, so far as I can tell they don't have greater access to health and considerably less access to energy shield, this seems odd.

If I go do some other content for a bit and save up some gear focused on health and ES it should help.

Other than the initial lack of clarity it is growing on me. It has upsides like being tense and rewarding long term planning. But when new the lack of upfront info is quite a hurdle, I can see why many players would quit over this.

Sekhema trial is fine-ish, I don't mind it. Losing a big chunk of honour to some random projectile is a tad much. I think having it be more rewarding - not necessarily for currency, but at least more rare items from the chests could help a lot, especially early on. We are getting rolled because we are weak - we don't have gear.

Wouldn't mind the Chaos trial if the default monster stats weren't as rough as they are. The debuffs, especially monsters always crit/80% phys as extra chaos are just brutal. For endgame, post-uber-lab kind of stuff I think that's ok - it's supposed to be difficult (and rewarding!) but in campaign that's too much, I think.

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Skeith4000#4000 wrote:

Making Sanctum the way to get Ascendancies was a huge misstep.

This I totally agree with. It's a case of over designing something that needed by necessity to be less painful (though I didn't mind Labs in the end). Instead they made it much worse.

I'll start with I'm not a great player. My max level ever is like 94-95. I have an alt problem and love playing different builds. No idea of the total hours I have played but I'm sure it's way too many.

I've never killed uber bosses or let alone uber uber or placed on any ladder. I,ve never gotten any of the top loot like mage weaves or head hunters. I tend to stand in things and get hit. I don't care about min maxing my gear to get 3 more dps. I honestly don't care about that though.
I know what I enjoy and have been playing poe1 for around 8-9 years. I'd say it is my most favorite game.

I understand this is early and things can change but at the current state and vision for the game I don't see poe2 taking poe1 spot for favorite game.

I don't mind the pace and think the story and so much of what they added are amazing. I don't expect anything less from ggg. I'm not sure how I feel about the difficulty. I never tried ruthless for a reason. I'd say let it be a choice, but then I fear if I didn't pick hard I would be excluded from parts of the game.

I hate how you ascend now. I've always hated sanctum and ultimatum. I skipped those in poe1. I understand it's a skill issue but if playing poe2 means you have to be the best of the best then I won't be able to play it.
I don't want to have to farm a zone for an hour to get a little stronger to spend hours getting to a last boss just to fail and start over again. I'll willingly give hours to the game but not when I feel forced to.

Don't take any of this as anything other then someone sharing their thoughts. I am hopeful for the games future and still love everything GGG.
Have an amazing day and thank you if you've read this far and thank you GGG for everything.