Ascendancy - Ultimatum

Looked through other posts but wanted to separate my few cents.

In general I want to state that POE2 is great game that certainly needs tweaking, improving and modifying before release. I understand clearly that this is a work in progress project.

As for the ascendancy topic - I dislike the changes compared to Trials from PoE1.
Why:
- Ritual & Ultimatum were both my least personal favorite mechanics in general.
- Ritual is still logical and playable in POE2 but it highly favors ranged characters or characters that can "kill before taking damage". That is not much good if you are close range, armored character soaking up hits.
- Ultimatum as a ascendancy is utter dissapointment. With Ritual you have options to select between positive or negative impacts of your progress. Ultimatum just slams you with 10x negative options by the end you reach (if you reach) the boss. This is full on punishing players when gear is scarce, upgrades are very limited and damage is hitting to the area where not everything dies in an instance and you got to dodge and roll around to survive.
- I am currently running Merc @lvl 45, got enough damage but I cannot survive the BS going on in ultimatum. I have no issues with progressing through the story content. Last time I died in second Ultimatum area as some explosive things chased me, i stepped on a lift and started going up but those flying balls flew up ON the lift and detonated as I had no option to escape or move even. Meaning I cannot get 2nd ascendancy due stupid mechanics and I need to overlevel by a long shot just to survive.

Agreed.

After my first character, I saved all of my ascendancy currency to run it overleveled. Goal being to get my ascendancy and never touch the content ever again.

I detest sukhemas and ulti, both of which force me to choose the safest of a group of terrible options, in succession, until I win or lose.

The issues are pretty obvious. Its a timesink where progress is never saved. If you're on say Sukhemas last boss, you have to trudge through three floors just to play the new stuff. Not fun to me.

It'd be like if I had to go through maps 1-15 to get to a 15... EVERYTIME. I'm actually pondering which is worse. Haha, getting to map 10 and dying, starting back at 1 again, LOLOLOL. No one would play for long.

The unfun of slugging through content to get to the fun, cancels out the fun. Its not rocket science. Soon as that happens you stop playing.


To illustrate further, recently I went to an old arcade place. We're talking old games, mechanical. Clever games.

The best game in the place, opinion, was this chicken egg game. You squeeze a handle, a ping pong ball is tossed. Two players face each other, and you're trying to pass and catch the ball. Theres a scoreboard, you get a point per catch, the highest of the day is on the board.

There a net in the middle, as you catch more, it lifts higher and you have to pass higher, which is more difficult, to clear it and make catches. Meanwhile the game is making chicken sounds n shit, playing hillbilly guitar music- its actually hilarious. Its super super simple, but the grip pressure, angles, distance, net- make it complicated.

The best thing was, no one knew about the game, it was kinda out of the way in a corner- although it was quite loud. We laughed our asses off and played for quite a while, eventually beat the score of the day, raised it to a sweet 18.

I didn't have to choose a terrible option to increase the difficulty. It automatically did, and it didn't lift the net from the bottom to the top in one go. Just a little bit, but enough that you watch and your eyes get big, stop stop stop. You make faces at each other as you angle to shoot higher, lol. So much stupid fun.


Not 300% increased crit chance, then enemies always crit. Not spinning lasers that completely stop you from using hard hitting abilities that channel. Not stupid things that you don't know what they do, until you die- oh, and YOU HAVE TO START ALL OVER. A heart spawns on you and if you leave it, it stuns you- but it also looks like its going to explode and damage you- so do I have to leave OR OH BOY OH BOY OH BOY. The goal of everything is to limit your movement.

The funnest part about the egg game, was the lack of expense in trying again, and the consistency. It was the same thing everytime, like the old mario, you could learn it, memorize it. You had to do it all again, but it was repetition, it was the same. You could easily see improvement, progression, growth.

Not get random options everytime. Which are not repetitive, which change the rules, which create frustration and lack of progression- because the goal posts are constantly moving.

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Not get random options everytime. Which are not repetitive, which change the rules, which create frustration and lack of progression- because the goal posts are constantly moving.

I think this is a really underrated comment. I appreciate that there ARPGs are loaded with randomness, but most of that randomness is reward. You, as the player, are actually trying to minimize the amount of randomness in the hazard that you face through skilled play.

But the trials just beat you over the head with random elements that are beyond your control. In the initial stages it gives you the illusion of choice, "oh I'll take this because it's the least bad," but at some point there really isn't a choice any more - it's all bad. And it feels bad. And then you die because you *had to take* some negative affliction or chaos trial.

If the trial had fixed properties - when you reach floor 5 you get this predetermined negative affix, when you you reach floor 10 you get this predetermined negative affix - then you as the player could plan ahead, minimize the variance of the hazards you were going to face, and eventually succeed on your own merits.

For example, Slay the Spire accendencies are 20 known, fixed, difficulty increasing affixes. You can plan around them. There are almost no random events in the game that simply fuck you over, almost everything that happens in the game can be planned out. When you succeed in Slay the Spire, you did so on the merits, not because you just lucked into some bullshit. It's the opposite in PoE accendency trials right now. It's more than likely you win or lose based on arbitrary BS that you had very little control over.

PS - I bring up Slay the Spire because it's the obvious inspiration for ToS.