Stop blocking ascendancies behind impossible RNG features

Hello,

I was always a hater against your ascendancy-system in terms of "unlocking" and "upgrading". In PoE1 I totally understand the labyrinth but not Izaro fight.
I always said: Perfect would be, you can choose if you want the lab with or without rewards. If you don't want rewards and only your ascension, there will be no bossfight.
This would allow players with builds that are not for bosskilling or just for support to get their ascendancy without begging or paying for help.

But PoE2 does this even worse. Not only you made it even harder to be even able to upgrade, you even put it behind 2 absolutely RNG bad features that are being liked by just a very small minority of players.

Small sidenote: The first 2 ascendancies are fine atm. Even while behind those RNG Features you only have to do the first floor and 4 rounds ultimatum, which are fine and accessible. Hence my wording UPGRADING being worse.

Asking me for a full blown sanctum run is just ridiculous, there is less than 0% chance I would ever manage a full sanctum run on my character. So I will have to farm farm for a 3-7 days for 40 to 60 ex to buy a carry (at least that are the prices I see atm) just to be able to have my last two ascendancies.

Same with ultimatum. The options you have are almost always build bricking. The mods are not about making it harder, it's about "what bricks it less so I might stand a chance". Stuff like "ruin" or aoe blood effects that span over the whole boss area, no matter where they spawn are just stupid. I have not seen any combination of mods that have let me at least being able to kill the second ultimatum boss.
I am full res capped, I have around 70% phys mitigation, I have multiple damage converts with increased maximum elemental resistances and still if a boss fight goes longer than 5-10 seconds (depending on the mods) you are dead. just because either you run out of flasks (if you have any) or the damage just ramps up because you have all effects spamming over AOEs that are bigger than the boss area and you have absolutely nowhere to stand for 1-2 seconds.

I can do T15+2 easily with 6 mods but I am absolutely unable to do my 3rd and 4th ascendancy, no matter what I try.

This is neither fair, nor fun.

Yes there are players that enjoy sanctum and ultimatum but this forced "Do this feature on full hard mode" is neither appealing nor enjoyable. All I want is my ascendancy points. I don't care about ultimatum or sanctum rewards as I hate these gameplay features.

I understand to not just give the ascendancy for free but don't gate it behind features that need dedicated builds for it.

I've just uninstalled after 7 back to back attempts on the 3rd trial. I'm level 70 doing level 65 trials, no matter what i do, i get hit by something random that i can't see. It's not worth the frustration and stress, I'll support something else that is fun.

I'm sure they don't read this, but congratulations GGG! I hope you're happy with your RNG filled trials gate keeping a vital part of the game which so many players will never be able to finish. Really good design.

Really sad about this because I've wanted to experience poe 2 for such a long time, and this stupid mechanic is one of the most frustrating things ever implemented into a video game.

PoE1s lab was really just annoying because it took TIME.

PoE2s trials take a lot of TIME and ALSO can instarip you harder than the current act boss.

And this is on top of PoE2 trials being rng filled.

Honestly trials SHOULD NOT EVEN BE HOW WE GAIN ASCENDENCY.

"

AkumaNoTsubasa#3919 wrote:

Yes there are players that enjoy sanctum and ultimatum but this forced "Do this feature on full hard mode" is neither appealing nor enjoyable. All I want is my ascendancy points. I don't care about ultimatum or sanctum rewards as I hate these gameplay features.

I like sanctum and I like ultimatum, I do not like being FORCED to do them.

I've had some of my best chances at clearing Sekhemas ruined due to RNG multiple times now. Either through forced pathing to take the curse that makes it impossible to restore honor for the final floor. I've had the door randomizer forced on me, which then triggered a forced path that made me take the earlier mentioned curse making it impossible to restore honor. It just guarantees dead runs unless you somehow manage to never take damage from then on - not impossible, but close enough to a rounding error statistically for the majority - espeically for melee :). The RNG feels terrible. Debuffs feel aggressively overtuned at this point, and some honestly shouldn't exist because your runs dead in the water the second they hit. It takes forever to get keys, and then it takes forever to get through room after room to have it ruined by RNG on floors 2-3 after you manage to hit a really nasty debuff. It feels like it's disrespecting players time and agency.

It feels like too much of a waste of time to even try at the moment for me, even being 10+ levels overdeveled for it, with a 70+% chance to dodge everything. It's time to take a break I think.

It also lacks the cinematic feel, story impact, and fun of the original trials from POE1. It feels like an overly aggressive roguelight minigame, for something that is technically "mandatory" content for anyone that wants to fully realize the benefits of their chosen ascendancy and subsequent power fantasy. This will leave a sour taste for many people who are veterans of POE1, but arguably far worse for those coming net new to the franchise.

The real rng problem with ascending right now isn't even any part of the trials themselves, it's the inability to get in in the first place, because you have to get lucky enough to have the rng entry key item drop.

"

The_Song#4903 wrote:

The real rng problem with ascending right now isn't even any part of the trials themselves, it's the inability to get in in the first place, because you have to get lucky enough to have the rng entry key item drop.

Literally this shit drops too much.

got a stash filled with trial key. So they drop plenty.

I've done 4/4 trial on warrior. 3/4 on monk doing the last one tomorrow after i hit 88.

I've had two tries on 4/4 on monk in shekema and failed both one to rng and one to the bugged boss.

Not being able to see the afflictions you get, and then getting hit by "You have no energy shield" is utter bullshit and needs to stop. Would be the same thing as " you dont have any life" WTF????

bump

I could almost live with the Sekemas trial if it removed the Honor system, as it requires a particular type of build and playstyle. Still, the debuff of adding a random debuff every time you receive a debuff is brutal. The stacking of debuffs is simply an RNG feature that isn’t fun.

The fact that a carry service (those with a particular build and playstyle) exists proves that the ascendency is too punishing for many people. On top of this, we have inflation in the game, so it's almost too expensive for new players. What will happen when a new player joins mid-season and can't get through the ascendency? They won't be able to afford the carry service either because of inflation, and they need their ascendency to generate the currency to afford it.