Beating a dead horse, but trials are awful

0.3 has been great so far for the most part, but trials are still some of the worst content imaginable (in my opinion, as well as many others' I imagine, as it's a pretty commonly brought up topic).

They're just not really that fun (especially for being required content to develop your character) nor are they really that "challenging" - they're more just aggravating and a massive waste of time for any characters who aren't over-geared and over-leveled enough to trivialize the content itself.

Many of these issues could easily be fixed and I think it's good to identify some problems and solutions.
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1. High level trials are too long. There's nothing fun about spending 45 minutes doing trivial puzzles, with little to no challenge to your actual character whatsoever (outside of arbitrary debuffs thrown at you), only to encounter the scorpion boss, or the tornado bird, or Zarokh, etc. for the first time and die instantly because you don't know the fight or what to expect from it... because you've never done it. That is not a fun gameplay loop - that's the type of content that just makes people not want to continue playing it after the first try.

How many times do I need to prove to the Sekhemas or whatever that's I'm capable of clicking a crystal in a single run. The first time was mind numbing as is. Just lower the number of rooms per floor by removing repeat rooms. I shouldn't have to do multiple of the same "challenge" in slightly different arrangement every floor. By floor three, I'm questioning why I'm even doing any of this when it would be easier and more time efficient to just pay someone else to do it while I do literally anything else.

2. Honor is just bad. I'm sorry, but there's no reason honor even needs to exist as a mechanic. What gameplay does it create? It seems to exist to just punish specific playstyles and character archetypes for no apparent reason. It's confusing and aggravating for new players and basically pointless to everyone else.

3. The "challenges" themselves. There is nothing fun, or challenging, about running between crystals. There is no thought involved. You just run to touch the crystals. There's usually few to no mobs to fight. What is even the point of this "challenge" besides wasting time?

The traps in the gauntlet sections are just annoying while offering little to no challenge as well. Wouldn't it make more sense to put traps in, oh I don't know, the rooms that want you to navigate them quickly (you know, the crystal rooms)? Now that might actually be something interesting - a time trial where there's actually traps and hazards to navigate quickly through in order to meet the timer. A nice break between fighting and an alternative gameplay style to actually mix things up.

4. The debuffs. I find the debuffs to be more annoying than challenging, while adding very little gameplay... because the obvious strategy is to just pick the least impactful ones. Huh, I wonder what I'm going to pick; my character gets thrown in the sun and dies instantly or an orb of blood does whatever, who cares, it does nothing. The "choice" of the challenges is like having the choice of eating broken glass versus having a sandwich with mayo on it if you don't like mayo.

Many of the debuffs are only an issue depending on what the challenge of the room is; information the player doesn't know. Boy, do I love moving this stupid statue when there's a massive ground AoE that I can't stand on or I get stunned. Worst of all, there's no actual danger; my time is just being wasted - the 7 mobs in the map have been long dead.

I feel like both the buff/boon system of Sekhemas and the debuff system of Chaos trials both could use some reconsideration.

Going along with the theme of upside/downside in PoE2, why doesn't this apply to trials, particularly Chaos? You could be given three choices with an upside, say increased quantity or rarity, maybe even a change to the item displayed, with a corresponding downside. It could be a fun and interesting new way to craft items; do I pick something with less downsides to survive or do I take something more difficult for that item modifier I want?

For Sekhemas, the boons and banes just don't often make much sense within what the trial actually is. Increases and decreases to player or monster strength really don't mean much because you spend the majority of the trial not fighting anything. Increases and decreases to player defenses don't make any sense for the most part because we're playing with an honor system that reinforces the idea that our defenses in this scenario aren't directly tied to our character's defenses in the first place.

In a trial focused on traps, puzzles, and less on combat, the boons and banes should be related to the traps and puzzles and less on combat. Negative boons should revolve around making the traps more dangerous or adding new traps (like the Chaos trials have for some reason with the statues that shoot lightning, the heart that tethers and forces you to move, etc.) That would actually create new challenges and forces the player to interact with the content they're doing in new ways. Which is good gameplay. I feel like many of the debuffs are in the wrong trial and would make more sense being swapped to the other.

For the actual combat banes for Sekhemas, it could have to do with the rate that enemies spawn in hourglass rooms, or bosses in blood chalice rooms now are stronger, etc. That increases the difficulty by making the content harder, not by making your character feel worse to play, which would feel a lot better. Getting killed by something that's too strong feels way less bad than getting killed because the character you've been building for the last few weeks is artificially crippled by random forces you didn't have control over.

Long post, but hopefully constructive. Would like to hear what people think; it's obviously a pretty big point of contention in PoE2 and it's important we continue talking about it if we want it to change or improve.

bump

You wrote a giant essay instead of learning literally one of the easiest content in the game?

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Coconutdoggy#1805 wrote:

You wrote a giant essay instead of learning literally one of the easiest content in the game?

His point is "The trails are easy and boring."

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Trabotrapego#3505 wrote:

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Coconutdoggy#1805 wrote:

You wrote a giant essay instead of learning literally one of the easiest content in the game?

His point is "The trails are easy and boring."

Nah their post is all over the place with points. And this is not it.

And also full of AI "its not this --- its this"

Keeping and/or forgetting to get rid of the classic italicized, dashes, and the "its this not this" responses, these things spit out.

1) Something is too long

45 minutes spent. Doesnt like dying to something they didnt know the mechanics to.
Okay GPT so we should always know the mechanics to every fight before we enter them.....



2)

... I dont really want to go further as this came from a chat input and not someones actual thought. As the person will just repond with another chat input.



GGG please, the AI chat copy and paste is so blatant here.

What are you even talking about, lol? Oh man, someone typed a whole paragraph, that's more reading I've ever done in my life - must be AI!

My whole post talks about why the trials are boring and unfun. Nowhere in the post did I say they were too hard.

"not challenging" was typed nearly a dozen times in my post and somehow you still managed to miss the point lol

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SplashKing#6352 wrote:

2. Honor is just bad. I'm sorry, but there's no reason honor even needs to exist as a mechanic. What gameplay does it create? It seems to exist to just punish specific playstyles and character archetypes for no apparent reason. It's confusing and aggravating for new players and basically pointless to everyone else.

I kinda agree with this. This system forces you to build glasscannon in order to solve the Honour mechanic, and oneshot bosses before they can land a hit.

Probably if they want to keep it as a mechanic they should only apply honour damage by traps which are immortal and the same for every build. For mobs and bosses we already have life and defense and hardcore nature of trials themself.

If that makes "too tanky" characters could run those trials then without any issue, then some kind of gentle timer could be applied or bosses with filling arenas to prevent 30 minute bossfights.

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Nikuksis#6962 wrote:

Probably if they want to keep it as a mechanic they should only apply honour damage by traps which are immortal and the same for every build.

Here comes blink with scepter on the swap weapon.

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bestsss#7863 wrote:

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Nikuksis#6962 wrote:

Probably if they want to keep it as a mechanic they should only apply honour damage by traps which are immortal and the same for every build.

Here comes blink with scepter on the swap weapon.

More various traps then. In boss arenas as well (hello Izaro) etc. Its solvable.

Imagine poe1 lab where you have to really avoid being hit by traps (and cant stack 1500% movespeed). Sounds fun imo and rogue-like as it supposed to be.

The trials are easy chaos lenght is pretty low tho it should be 5 ish min longer. But Sekhemas are i agree too long there should be options to skip to places like first boss or 2. boss and the tradeoff would be afflictions. You choose 5 negative afflictions and you can enter the boss room from the first room or something like it. Would solve lot of problems tho it should only work on the first or 2. boss the 3. and 4. boss and rooms should be mandatory.