Ascendandy trials are not fun

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TheDecky#2021 wrote:

The trials in my opinion are the worst part of the game,

They were never funny....this part of PoE2 is created for fanatics of Souls Like System.

Agree 100%, I thought trials from PoE1 are annoying, well until I playing these in PoE2. I would playing trails than this, totally not fun and doing that on other alts, oh my boy, it will be so painful. I hope coming 3th way of ascension will be good.

How is this still in the game, hehehe?...Yes, third ascendancy is somewhat easy if you bother to engage with the oh so great sanctum mechanic and farm/buy relics, but nah. And the alternative ultimatum, questionable design to say the least...

The fourth trial being aspirational content and the fact that the game doesn't even have an alteration orb to reroll basic stats are knock out criterias for me.

I am happy to play through the campaign once it fully releases just to check it out but not more. Gating the 4th ascendancy behind a sanctum boss like that and offering no reasonable alternative because they have no actual endgame yet. Thumbs down from me.

And i did play Elon's maps at some point last winter lol, so i am just expressing my experience...

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KrazyIvanUS#9624 wrote:

Trials are not meant to be easy. This is the gate to end-game content that you either have to pay or pass. If you want easy content, there is always Diablo.

There's nothing "hard" in bricking your run because RNG decided your build is wrong this time. That's just laughably bad game design meant to stall players so they play longer and show better numbers for the investors.

Anything up till the third ascendancy is pretty fine. If you are constantly "bricking your run" it means you are just bad at picking rooms. Which, is fine. It's okay to be bad at some thing.

Before you get your full ascendancy points, it'd be nonsense to say these trials are unrewarding. The ascendancy points are consistently one of the biggest leaps in power you'll find. And during this time, at least Sekhemas will constantly be giving you new relics, so even if you lose a run, it is going to make the next runs easier.

And after the 8 point, you are talking really high level stuff. Sure Sekhemas takes centuries to do but have you heard of Diamonds? These things are hell to play but it'd be hard to find a better reward once you are at that level.

Are they perfect? No. Of course many things could be improved. But that's all that's needed, to improve them. Honestly, just tuning down the RNG.

BTW these are the rooms you want to pick:
- Prioritize rooms with boons.
- If there are no boons, prioritize rooms with "Pledge", since it can give you a boon.
- Otherwise, prioritize rooms without Afflictions
- If you gotta get an affliction, avoid the ones that will destroy your defence, remove the effect of your relics or remove information from next rooms. In that order.
- If there are no rooms with boons, pledges or afflictions, avoid Gauntlets because they drain your honour fast.
- Otherwise prioritize rooms with Honour, or water in that order
- Otherwise prioritize Escape, Ritual, Chalice or Hourglass in that order.

For relics you want to have a combnation of Honour Resistance, Max Resistance and Max defences. From third ascendancy onwards you also really want to aim to get bonuses against bosses. Also Max Defence > Honour Resistance > Max Honour. Max Defence will increase your honor as well. Honour restoration does not scale up with your max honor, so having sturdy honor is better than having more honor. One of your relics would probably benefit from having utility like Move Speed or extra Water, but don't overdo it.

Also YOU CAN LEAVE TRIALS BETWEEN ROOMS. So if you are getting tired of the trial you can just go somewhere else and do maps and then you come back.

the rng in those tirals is complete bul$££"t
u can fail a run just because u get some Dbuff that makes ur build unplayable foe example " u have no evasion" and u can receive this kind of bul%$£t randomly

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DarkDredd#2184 wrote:

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TheDecky#2021 wrote:

The trials in my opinion are the worst part of the game,

They were never funny....this part of PoE2 is created for fanatics of Souls Like System.

I don't like souls games and i never liked poe1 lab since it fist came out, but i run trials here pretty regularly here. Not sure why people hate them that much since they are the most balanced and well thought out content of the game right now.

Its exactly what some people are asking about- 'endgame version of campaign' in terms of game-play/pacing and 'meaningful combat'.

Personally i find the chaos trials rather fun and fast, and the sekhema trials incredibly dull and time consuming.

Regarding the sekhema trials, i am fine with time consuming, but not fine with bad luck, lag or other random issues making you waste a 1-2 hour run.

Regarding the chaos trials, they are fast enough that i like the design. If you get bad modifiers and/or just bad luck, just do it again. For the last ascendancy, every win (for each of the 3 fragment types) is like a 33% progress save point.

I hated the lab in PoE1. I am actually ok with the ascendancy design of PoE2 so far because of the options available.

The only thing I really dislike about Trial is the "noob-filter" on endboss. The machanic where you have to collect the time clock items. It is nearly impossible to fail this if you know what to do, but for someone who did it the first time and didn't check the internet before, it's a high chance to just fail it. Not very beginner friendly, especially since the first run to endboss takes much longer than every other run later (increased frustration alone for this case). At least someone who does it the first time should get any kind of help (Tutorial or a second chance or anything like this).

When I did it the first time I was even so much surprised about this mechanic, that I did not realize these collectables even exist (a friend told me about and I just had to say "I haven't seen anything"). After this I never failed again.

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AverBeg7#1689 wrote:

There is no creative way to skip anything, no meaningful decisions in pathing, you simply walk around the entire room and hit switches in a predetermined order.

Do it with a friend and you have such creative ways to skip some parts. Not only that, many trials are just half the amount of "work" you have to do and it is also kinda more fun to struggle with friends together.

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Half#3531 wrote:

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AverBeg7#1689 wrote:

There is no creative way to skip anything, no meaningful decisions in pathing, you simply walk around the entire room and hit switches in a predetermined order.

Do it with a friend and you have such creative ways to skip some parts. Not only that, many trials are just half the amount of "work" you have to do and it is also kinda more fun to struggle with friends together.

So your friend clears half a room and you clear half a room instead.

Yeah, I think you're missing the point. That's not the ability to use creativity and critical thinking to pass an obstacle more optimally. That's just regular old teamwork. Cool that you and your friend enjoy that, but I'm not gonna be farming Sekhema's with a +1 permanently. If me and my friends are farming together, it's gonna be in maps where we get increased quantity of items and more currency per player, instead of just less rewards for everyone except the Sekhemas owner.

In Sanctum in PoE1, the trap rooms often have shorter and longer paths. Not all switches are necessary (in fact there are rarely any). I much prefer using my brain for the chance to make the room faster, than to clear the entire room and hit every switch, every single time, the exact same way.

I know exactly where to go from the beginning. There are like 4 different trap layouts, and they all require you to hit, every. Single. Switch. It's garbage design. Legitimately they are brainless and time-sucking, when they could be instead a decently fun puzzle, if there were any player decisions at all apart from "don't get hit".

The only reason people that have hands fail these rooms is because they are sick of them after 5 seconds and lowkey want their character to die so they don't have to suffer the god awful gameplay.

Even just talking about it, who thought that levers that stop all control of your character would add anything to trap rooms? It adds 0 tension because you are completely safe anyway (you have to be or it would be BS), there's no actual decisions to make because you have to hit them all, it takes me out of control of my character so it takes me out of the game, it's frustrating because it's slow, and I've got to do this like 6 times a trap room? Probably at least 24 times in a 3 floor Sekhemas? Why? Is it just to sh*t in the player's cereal? Is it just to pad time to make the content seem more like a journey and less of a farm? Did someone on the team actually think it would be a "cool idea" to slowly pull 6 different levers? What atmosphere are we going for exactly, the world's least efficient and most understaffed factory line, where you are employee of the month?

These trials are awful, both Sekhemas and Chaos, and if you don't see it, then honestly you just haven't played them enough to care.