Yet another Trials Thread....

OK so this thread might be rehashing / beating a dead horse but I feel I must make this to vent my thoughts on the Ascendency system in POE2.

tl;dr The POE1 Labyrinth is better for many reasons.

These reasons are:
1. POE1 Labyrinth has infinite retries for the first three Ascendency levels. In contrast, POE2 requires tokens to access the 3rd and 4th.

2. Labyrinth has fixed monster levels so the difficulty is known.
POE2 the tokens drop at multiple levels up to 80 which creates a far greater variability required player build performance.

3. Labyrinth costs you some XP if you die but that can be handled / minimised. POE2 there does not seem to be an XP penalty but you lose the token which needs to be farmed / traded for which costs you time dealing with the sub-prime sub-optimal trade system.

4. Doing the Labyrinth more often will prepare you for success.
i.e. Persistence and learning pays off eventually.
In POE2, there is far more RNG in the form of debuffs in both trials which cannot be countered that will end your run as well as "hard luck" one-shots that abruptly end it.
Example the Zarokh hourglass trial. If the RNG creates a layout that is too spread out, you're screwed. End of run one-shot. No amount of persistence or learning or skills can counter this RNG. Similarly in Trials of Chaos, if you get certain combo of debuffs, your run is over.
Using a "luck of the draw" mechanic to determine if a player will pass or fail, is player hostile and not a test of skills, build power or game knowledge. Imagine determining the winner of a football match based on the coin-toss at the start? That would be ridiculous and unsporting. Right? So why is it OK to have that in a PC game?
RNG based mechanics should never lead to one-shots.
Heavy Damage or a debuff maybe but not end the trial run.

5. Labyrinth has really only one Boss that gets harder but the player can counter some of the boss mechanics by obtaining special things by exploring the labyrinth.
In POE2 none of the Bosses are impacted by anything that the player does in the trials. And in general the bosses are sets of RNG gimmicky one-shot mechanics that cannot be countered or tanked.
Bahlak Skyseer is a good example of such a boss. The tornado and the slashes.
Zarokh is another as I've described above.
Both of the above bosses at level 75ish are harder than the Pinnacle Breach Boss at level 82 due to their reliance on gimmicky RNG one-shots mechanics. The Xesht fight is engaging but there is a counter-play for everything and it feels sporting and a tough but fair fight.
These Trial Bosses being so are pushing players towards builds that can one-shot the bosses and trivialise the content.

6. In POE1 Labyrinth, there is greater agency as to pathing.
For example if a player wants to explore the Labyrinth for loot and so on, getting keys and finding the locks and dealing with the puzzles for monetary gain, or the things to assist the Izaro fight, they can deviate and backtrack or alternatively ignore all that and just go for the Ascendency Boss fight as quick as possible.
POE2 forces the player to engage with all the stages in a linear / on-rails style of play. The difference is jarring to say the least.

7. In POE1 the Labyrinth grants access to ascendency skills and gems that are an upgrade from the amount of player power required to complete the given Labyrinth.
The opposite is true of POE2. In order to complete a given Trial in POE2, the player needs to be so over-levelled for that Trial, that gaining those Ascendency points often feels pointless as they don't add that much at the level the player is really needing to be to get them.
An Analogue of this is like when banks will only lend you money if you can prove to them that you don't actually need the money.
In POE2, you can only get the final Ascendency points if your character is so strong that you don't really need that 4th one. So by the time you do eventually get that last Ascendency point, it doesn't feel significant.

i think a lot of players just dont even bother getting the 4th ascendancy point because sekhema trials are annoying as fuck and the randomness of chaos trials + getting the 3 entry tokens is extremely frustrating as well. it's not a fun time

"

Glowie_Zigger#5018 が発言:

i think a lot of players just dont even bother getting the 4th ascendancy point because sekhema trials are annoying as fuck and the randomness of chaos trials + getting the 3 entry tokens is extremely frustrating as well. it's not a fun time

Exactly.
The Chaos Trials need to be done 3+ times to get the three mcguffins to fight the TrialMaster?
If you happen to get duplicated mcguffins and not one of each, that's an RNG check moreso than anything that the player can control.

Using random-ness and forcing players to spend longer playtime to re-run these trials is not a skills check, it's a masochism check.

they're leaning way too heavily into the "chaos" theme.. Like we get it... It's chaotic. Lets think about the player experience now and cut the idealism just a tad. Both trials are awful experiences in their current state.

I think they wanted to make a skill based game. One that is challenging but also rewarding. One that has meaningful combat and so many options.

I am pretty sure the trials were designed in this self image.

What they actually made is the ultimate broken meta build simulator. This game is 0% based on skill and 100% based on having the right build with the right items.

Ideally you run some bots to make the cash to buy the best items. It also helps to have joined right from the start when key items were still affordable. Who needs new players anyway? The trials are one of the reason this promising game is heading towards obscurity.