Ascendancy Trials Feedback: Understanding Player Concerns

Well thought through and well-written, OP. I wholeheartedly agree.

Making the Honour-system be something that just grants you extra rewards (like keys in PoE1 lab) in Trial of the Sekhemas would be the least effort fix. Like many others though, I'd really just like to see both Sanctum and Ultimatum mechanics be moved to what they were originally designed to be: optional mechanics.

Another thing that made people dislike the lab in PoE1 was that it was awkward to run. For the vast majority, it was a fiddly, frustrating thing you had to do to get on with the game you enjoyed. From that perspective as well, the PoE2 trials are much worse than those in PoE1.

We're trying to be reasonable here, GGG. Look at the amount of posts deriding this system or just outright begging you to remove it. This will lose you a very solid chunk of the player base if you keep it in.

+1

Trials need a complete rework.

+1

i wasted so much time cause i lost duo to honour. im overpowered but honour gets me. i like challange and im fine with the difficulty through campaign first time, but sanctum behind ascendaries? who the f was that high at work?

love :*

+1 great feedback, trials need a lot of balancing, like the idea of Honor only being used to fund rewards at the end

I would like to point out, and I sincerely hope that GGG reads this and considers it.

Early access is effectively your beta test, and you're using us to do it.

We are absolutely ok with that. 100%.

OP is a really good place to start.

Thank you for that!

+1

I'd like to add to this from a perspective of a player with limited PoE experience.

I wanted to experience the game on my own, I don't understand all the ins and outs of the skill tree and what the "best" builds would be. Still, I managed to create a character which I was able to progress through the campaign (in Act1 cruel now). I have come to love a lot of the game designs. Especially the bosses - while challenging to me - are great and I appreciate learning their mechanics.

But then there are these ascendancy trials which feel completely out of place. The honor system seems to ask of you not to have a character that can survive its opponents, but not to get hit at all. Have I entered a different game? The spike in difficulty compared to everything before and long after is unreal.
While I mastered my first ascendancy, I'm level 51 now and am not able to clear the level 38 chaos trial for my second ascendancy.

This is one of the most frustrating experiences I have had in a long time, especially because the rest of the game feels very good and I would like to continue playing it. While I'm used to bash my head against such a wall trying to get through somehow, this might be one of the cases where I just have to walk away. I fear a lot of other new players to this game will get to that conclusion much earlier than me.

GGG, I would ask you to take all this player feedback very seriously and adapt your game asap. I want to enjoy your game, but the implementation of ascendancy is making it very hard to do so.

The OP's post was seriously well written, calm and well thought out.
I pretty much agree with everything he said.

I basically sat Sanctum league out. I really disliked it. Sanctum really punishes Melee and that's what I'm playing in POE2.

The rest of the game to me is astonishingly good but that is a different topic.

Couldn't agree more I avoided these mechanics in POE1 and dismayed that they are mandatory now. You cant even overlevel yourself to make it easier as the starter coin is levelled to the mob that drops it. I would literally prefer to have to craft a 20piece item with stupidly low drop chance than waste my time throwing myself at these trials. Long story short, there is nothing that i would prefer less than the current arrangement.