The Truth About Trials

[Wutever]

The real reason why there's so many people complaining about trials isn't what you might think. It's not because they are unfun, bugged, too hard or favor certain classes.

Trials do exactly what the name implies - they test your knowledge, your build and your ability to play it.

Thus it is no wonder that they are perceived as too hard by a large portion of the community, especially new players. PoE2 has brought many players back to the franchise and attracted large amounts of new players. This has resulted in the majority of player base having no clue how to play the game or how make a build that doesn't end with barely enough DPS to kill a rare.

Trials are a reality check - if you are unable to clear a trial and Ascend you are not ready for the rest of the game, be it act bosses, maps or pinnacle encounters. Simple as.

[Zenogias]

Wutever lähetti viestin:

robruckus65 lähetti viestin:

The trials do nothing besides check your numbers and throw rng at you. If your numbers are too low it is going to be very hard or even impossible. Numbers just right shouldn't be much of an issue. Numbers very high they become easier than just running maps. Rng can screw you though and hit you with debuffs that can completely cripple you.

Which is kinda the point of the thread. They are a benchmark for your character and, judging by the thread many people are failing said benchmark. Though, perhaps partly due to not knowing how to pick afflictions and debuffs or due to poorly-explained fight mechanics (scorpion platforms).

That's the point ,I like your attitude.

I think it's too harsh for judging people picking the wrong afflictions,somebody does not use internet for spoiling the game,So if someone picking up the wrong afflictions you can not blame for not knowing all of the trial.

It's not fair for just picking up some affliction which might cause the whole trial to be a failure at the end,like slowing down movement speed by 25%.

Sure ,they can be countered like hare foot which increase you movement speed by 40%

At the first time I did not pick that boon even I had a chance because I don't know what lies at the end of the trial and I have only 3-4 rooms left to reach my final room with the boss,so I leave it and take the other boons instead.

If they did not make it through the last boss no one would know that was bad choice.
At my first time meeting with the 4th boss I failed on picking up sand clocks.

I did have some movement speed on my boots at that time but it's quite very less,just around 20% of movement speed.
Which sometime it can not made it through the trial,so after that I only use boots which at least 30% of movement speed only.

What make people mad is some kind of just a little mistake happens it can ruin the whole time you spent on the trial which I find this is quite too unfair to being good game design.

For an elite player like me failing a trial is not a big deal.I can do it easily one more time with a mistake learnt.

But if this is another newbie or newcomer ,it's a rage quit for spending time and patience to be judged as a failure in the trail,I think this is too harsh.

[Wutever]

lordfletch lähetti viestin:

they will change it because they have to , people play games for fun and players equal money.

Oh, I'm sure they will tweak the Trials, but, considering that both are adaptations of already existing PoE1 mechanics, I doubt there will be substantial reworks like some people seem to want.

There are, frankly, more important things for GGG to worry about, like class balance being an absolute travesty and half the builds in the game scaling to infinite DPS with barely any gear while other build deal no damage no matter what you do.

[JimmyKaz]

ture. i saw people pick random affliction of trials and whined about no es or eva. or pick see less rooms ahead and whined about getting put in a bad spot.
controling the odds is the main point of poe, if you know one affliction will royally f you up and kill your run. maybe you should not pick random affliction. POE was never as forgiving like most arpgs, if you can't deal with it, try another game.

[JimmyKaz]

Wutever lähetti viestin:

lordfletch lähetti viestin:

they will change it because they have to , people play games for fun and players equal money.

Oh, I'm sure they will tweak the Trials, but, considering that both are adaptations of already existing PoE1 mechanics, I doubt there will be substantial reworks like some people seem to want.

There are, frankly, more important things for GGG to worry about, like class balance being an absolute travesty and half the builds in the game scaling to infinite DPS with barely any gear while other build deal no damage no matter what you do.

depends, chris wilson said in interviews that servicing 10k die-hard players still get you enough money to buy a sports car. but i can see poe2 change for a more casual playerbase and leave poe1 for the hardcores. i fine with either.

[Zenogias]

Wutever lähetti viestin:

lordfletch lähetti viestin:

they will change it because they have to , people play games for fun and players equal money.

Oh, I'm sure they will tweak the Trials, but, considering that both are adaptations of already existing PoE1 mechanics, I doubt there will be substantial reworks like some people seem to want.

There are, frankly, more important things for GGG to worry about, like class balance being an absolute travesty and half the builds in the game scaling to infinite DPS with barely any gear while other build deal no damage no matter what you do.

Been with GGG for almost 10 years and being a royal customer who receive this game for free.

I will let you know one thing,that would never happen.

[Wutever]

Zenogias lähetti viestin:

Wutever lähetti viestin:

Which is kinda the point of the thread. They are a benchmark for your character and, judging by the thread many people are failing said benchmark. Though, perhaps partly due to not knowing how to pick afflictions and debuffs or due to poorly-explained fight mechanics (scorpion platforms).

That's the point ,I like your attitude.

I think it's too harsh for judging people picking the wrong afflictions,somebody does not use internet for spoiling the game,So if someone picking up the wrong afflictions you can not blame for not knowing all of the trial.

It's not fair for just picking up some affliction which might cause the whole trial to be a failure at the end,like slowing down movement speed by 25%.

Sure ,they can be countered like hare foot which increase you movement speed by 40%

At the first time I did not pick that boon even I had a chance because I don't know what lies at the end of the trial and I have only 3-4 rooms left to reach my final room with the boss,so I leave it and take the other boons instead.

If they did not make it through the last boss no one would know that was bad choice.
At my first time meeting with the 4th boss I failed on picking up sand clocks.

I did have some movement speed on my boots at that time but it's quite very less,just around 20% of movement speed.
Which sometime it can not made it through the trial,so after that I only use boots which at least 30% of movement speed only.

What make people mad is some kind of just a little mistake happens it can ruin the whole time you spent on the trial which I find this is quite too unfair to being good game design.

For an elite player like me failing a trial is not a big deal.I can do it easily one more time with a mistake learnt.

But if this is another newbie or newcomer ,it's a rage quit for spending time and patience to be judged as a failure in the trail,I think this is too harsh.

When did I ever say that people need to read a guide? Play the game and learn from trial and error. I know I did, and I never played Sanctum league in PoE1. The issue is that Steam forums posters seem to be unable to do that and instead simply come here to moan.

Almost all the Afflictions are very obvious. Movement speed is quite possibly the most important stat in the game, as it not only makes you run faster, but also improves dodge roll. It makes sense that a new player could take it and fail a run because of it, but that should be an obvious lesson - next time do everything you can not do brick your movement speed.

Instead of asking for advice majority of Trial-related threads are something along the lines of "Waah, honour bad. I can't simply stand there with my zero DPS warrior and face tank everything? What do you mean I have to roll?" Never mind that melee already got a buff that largely alleviates any honour issues as long as the character is able to function otherwise. I swear, half the warrior players seem to think that damage is optional when it is the direct opposite.

JimmyKaz lähetti viestin:

ture. i saw people pick random affliction of trials and whined about no es or eva. or pick see less rooms ahead and whined about getting put in a bad spot.
controling the odds is the main point of poe, if you know one affliction will royally f you up and kill your run. maybe you should not pick random affliction. POE was never as forgiving like most arpgs, if you can't deal with it, try another game.

Pretty much this. Removing honour won't do anything to solve the problems these kinds of players are facing because they are apparently incapable of engaging their brain for long enough to read and plan two steps ahead.

You might think that if that is the case then the Trial can no longer benchmark their character's ability to progress in the game, but I don't think that is true. Does anybody really think that somebody who can't figure out how to not end up with 20 Afflictions by the end of a run will be able to figure out how to efficiently progress in the endgame?

[Bansheebutt]

Arlen lähetti viestin:

Understand your skills, support gems, and how to use them mate.

Why would I do any of that when spamming molten blast for 10 minutes worked fine and was easier.

[Salt Engineer]

Wutever lähetti viestin:

Salt Engineer lähetti viestin:

Side question, with all your skills, did you run a streamer's build guide or did you git gud and roll your own build?

For which of the 5 characters?

For my SSF Titan I took the idea of running 50% bleed in the passive tree from a guide, rest is pretty much homebrew since I found totems to be boring. Generic Stampede spam for clear, HotG and Sunder for single target, Earthshatter as filler for rage and armor break so that Sunder and HotG can deal damage.

There aren't really that many builds that are any good for mace. No matter what you do you kind of end up with either totems or some kind of Stampede HotG build depending on whether you manage to get a phys DPS mace or a +6 to skills one.

I see you dodged the question there, but it's really a moot point. The point was different builds vary as to what's relevant, and as a result the least bad pick is also going to vary. It makes it very situational. What you need for melee is far different than as any form of ranged.

Wutever lähetti viestin:

Zenogias lähetti viestin:

That's the point ,I like your attitude.

I think it's too harsh for judging people picking the wrong afflictions,somebody does not use internet for spoiling the game,So if someone picking up the wrong afflictions you can not blame for not knowing all of the trial.

You might think that if that is the case then the Trial can no longer benchmark their character's ability to progress in the game, but I don't think that is true. Does anybody really think that somebody who can't figure out how to not end up with 20 Afflictions by the end of a run will be able to figure out how to efficiently progress in the endgame?

The assumption is that disagreement is because people don't know what's going on, and OP is the smartest guy in the room, which isn't the case. Plenty of complaints are from people who have already been through the myriad of changes required in PoE 1, and we see the same mistakes being repeated, and they have the same fixes.

The game is largely built around RNG, in large part because there is no way of tracking where afflictions are in advance, or what those specific afflictions are. Assuming no modifiers, you see two rooms in advance - but that has no bearing on whether three rooms away has a line from top to bottom, and they're all detrimental to your build.

When they are, it's about picking the least bad choice for your build.

DirtyMick lähetti viestin:

I've seen tons of comments from poe1 players complaining that they put the worst mechanic (trials) from poe1 into poe2 and locked ascendancy behind it. I don't think it's a new player thing. I think most players just don't enjoy playing it.

This was the whole point of that. Lab runs were easier for a few reasons. Your build sucks, or you have trouble navigating the traps? Cool, buy a carry. Follow along with the layout on poelab to pre-plan (unlike with Trials). Farm a few extra offerings just in case - which using tools like in PoE 1, would be tracked, like divs/hour was, and home slice was mocking above.

What people are grumbling about is GGG taking two specific mechanics that people didn't like, Ultimatum and Sanctum (which OP admits to not having played), and gating progression behind it at pinnacle levels.

Even labs, which were far better received at pretty much every point, saw a change to accommodate both the high level end-game (i.e. eternal labs) rather than trying to combine it with the uber required for ascendancy. Due to the RNG, and a significant number of people being unable to get enough lab drops, they buffed the rates ("but who would track trials/hour!?!?" he said).

Part of the difference between how labs and sanctum were viewed comes down to honor. What you can tank or recover is a moot point if you're slightly behind the server in the middle of a trap layout or a Formula 1 mob swarm from a couple screens away.

Yes, you can adjust for some of that, but you will also be punished with RNG - both in the trial itself, and whether or not your server or the net has lag - or any other number of things. When people are complaining about melting bosses, but getting one-shot popped by a white mob or two, maybe gating progression behind those same systems isn't the best call.

I mean FFS, the initial pass of the trials had you insta lose due to DoTs like fire/poison. There's a reason people are grumbling, and it isn't just cause they aren't the uber pro super leet gamer.

[bradams]

Holy cow, OP been strangled by AAA's artificial game lengthening strats for too long.

Making you slog through boring content for an entire hour to get to a boss that has a gimmick mechanic that, for the first time in the entire game, WANTS you to run into what looks like damaging AOE attacks AND requires you have specific buffs to do it in time, which punishes you by deleting your last hour of play if you don't catch on to the trick in under 3 seconds or have the right buffs, is not "preparing you for the rest of the game", its an intentional time waster, nothing more.

Same with the prior boss, the scorpion one. Having its attacks hit you with the hopes of reducing your honor to failure unless you stand on the platforms that THE ENTIRE PREVIOUS FLOOR HAS TAUGHT YOU NOT TO STAND ON BECAUSE THEY ARE TRAPPED, is intentionally deceptive, for the sole purpose of making you fail so you waste the last 45 minutes and run it again. The entire point in trials is to trick you into failing and wasting as much of your time as possible because you are not being rewarded AT ALL throughout the time you are playing it. You get your reward at the end of each part, so it hides its tricks and gimmicks only at the end of each part for maximum time waste.

People can run maps over and over because killing giant packs of enemies and getting good gear is the entire point of the game. Running the same trials over and over, most of which are "boriningly run from crystal to crystal" or "run through the same trap room for the 50th time not getting hit lest you lose 50% of your honor from 1 fireball" isn't fun because you aren't getting any gear and generally aren't fighting anything. That's like if Devil May Cry locked all of its weapons behind a Magic The Gathering card game. That's not why people are here. Its not why people are playing this game, and the fact that GGG KNOWS that nobody wants to play this content and thus ended it with a gimmick boss who's sole intent is to instantly kill you regardless of how good your gear and build are by either tricking you, or just making it undoable without the right buffs, is proof of this. They know nobody would touch this content unless they were forced to, so they force you to by putting ascendancy behind it, then force you to AGAIN despite your gear and build being strong enough to beat it by having a boss that tricks you into failure so you have to run it again.

Trials suck. Its objectively bad content that doesn't fit into the game its being shoved into. It has no redeeming qualities. People defending it are coping.

[arisia]

Fun enough I didn't found the trial hard, I passed from the first try (second, as the first time the game crashed, but w/e), what I find hard is the last boss in Arc 1, stpidly hard for no reason... I killed all the other bosses from the first try, this one I can't even get to half hp bar because apparently my dps is not enough or something, which is strange seen that I had no issue melting the other ones. So unbalanced is not funny.-

[Pervy]

Bansheebutt lähetti viestin:

Arlen lähetti viestin:

Understand your skills, support gems, and how to use them mate.

Why would I do any of that when spamming molten blast for 10 minutes worked fine and was easier.

Use totems for agro and pin, and spam molten blast, makes warroir easy in the first trial true.

[KillJoy]

Don't know why people insist in arguing about this. It's simple: honor system needs to go.
What is so difficult to understand about it, or why are we even arguing about it?
IT NEEDS TO GO.

[Nightskies]

It doesn't need to go. The players who fail to face the trials need to recognize and accept exactly that: they are failing the trail... or... if not having fun, are stressing out too much about it.

They need to develop skill, learn, adapt. Once they have, it becomes fun. That is why the trials are good.

"But..."

No, no. Every single complaint short of bugs and clearly unintended mechanics are wrong. Its not critisim, its complaining.

I applaud your persistence, Wutever. But I don't think they care for being told they're bad at the game.

[grei]

A clown reward for a clown thread.

[frikazoidzerg153]

skill check?! What skill check? The part where one run you can get horrible debuffs and one where you not so bad debuffs... it is like night and day difference and there is ZERO skill involved in al of this.