Trial of Sekhemas is just stupid design!

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Smackarelli#7742 wrote:

Keep the honour for people wanting challenge , let me at least be able to try as many times as I want without a Djinn Barya for my ascendancy skills. Because farming for those so much time too...

So you're saying you want easy obtained strength through max ascendancy skill spend because from what you're saying you and many others will be able to complete the trial easily.

Then what? That's lost content, my character functions just fine on 6 ascendancy points what pseudo feeling are you after that will make you think that a super easy ride will make things better?

You need to suggest alternatives for trial gameplay, yes the no defense debuffs are essentially lazy difficulty designs but what else would make things challenging enough to make most people nerd out and enjoy the true sophisticated ARPG game experience.

2 slot relics can go up to 70% increased defenses, I don't know what OP is smoking

I like it, BUT I think they should get rid of honor resistance and just give you 75% honor resistance because it feels really OOF until you get 75% honor resistance.

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TrunktenUK#3407 wrote:

If you're getting hit often you are mechanically poor. All monsters have obvious designed attack patterns and the trials do not contain swarms of creatures like in End Game where you'll be overwhelmed with decisions.

The 1st boss of trial is easy, 2nd and beyond is increasingly scaling difficulty and your character requires the ability to apply crowd control debuffs easily and/or have great debuff threshold to complete.

Nobody is forcing you to do any high level Trial/Chaos instance but if you're sweating doing the first 4 ascendancy points well I don't think you'd be able to complete old school Mario/Sonic games.

This doesn't compare to those at all and those games were difficult because at the time we were children that were terrible at video games. Those games now are a breeze.

Difficulty doesn't always = Fun.

There is a difference between fair difficulty and bullshit difficulty. The Souls games are an example of fair difficulty because most of those games you feel like it's your fault when you fail. PoE2 is wants so desprately to be a souls game but it's not when random bullshit on the floor hits you, or a projectile that should not have hit you at all hits you, the game constantly failing to communicate what is hurting you. That's one of the trials BIGGEST problems. Not only that, but the fact that you have to do THE ENTIRE TRIAL over AND get a random drop to try again is just horrible design.

Unless your a masochist, no one is gonna sit here and think back on the game and say they liked it about the game. People are gonna hate that fact because the game doesn't respect or care for your time. At the very least in Souls games you can run to the boss or it simply puts you RIGHT by the boss. They make up for that by making them harder. The combat just isn't that intuitive to make any of this feel good. Maybe if you had other defensive options to react to things besides rolling or shield it might make boss fights a little more interesting but they really aren't. It's just stay out of fire and push space bar when the game tells you to.

The other issue with trials is they are not even the fun. It's not the fun kind of difficulty that feels rewarding. When I finish it, I don't feel like "Yes! I did" kind of feeling you get from other games. It's a miserable slog and even when you do finally manage to do it, you don't feel good about it. Feels like I had a migraine the whole time and it still lingers from how stressful it is. You get more so the feeling of "I am so fucking glad I don't have to do this again... for now".

Either way it is tied to character power and it's one of the most important parts of character power. Maybe for your build those point's don't matter but they can make a difference for other builds. The way they are now also discourge trying to do different builds. PoE2 already punishes you for not having an optimal build. It's a carrot on a stick and people are going to chase after it. It's another thing to punish you for not having an extremely optimal build. Feels like you can't do anything fun for a build because the game even outside of this is designed with you being so optimal.

Also bosses DO NOT have obvious attack patterns. This is the most obscure and horribly communicated game I ever played and it's because of how muddy the art style can be. Every thing just blends together.

Finally, I think the entire thing is lazy. The rooms are repetitve, most basic and boring challenges so it's not even an enjoyable expirence when you strip all of this away and no one would ever engage with it if you it didn't hold one of your most important aspects of your character hostage. Honestly, I say scrap it and do something more fun. Because at the end of the day, if your not having fun then why bother?

The game is already really difficult. It doesn't need to be this excessive about it.

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Chaogod#6305 wrote:

This doesn't compare to those at all and those games were difficult because at the time we were children that were terrible at video games. Those games now are a breeze.

Difficulty doesn't always = fun

I think you make a strong point of a huge demographic being a lot younger which would naturally provide difficulty BUT if very old school games had any actual punishments for dieing such as map/stage resets then I believe that would easily translate into "adult difficulty" as the precision of jumps were quite technical and the on the fly decision making of a constant moving stage that only goes forward.

High difficulty may be a far stretch from fun and its a perspective, its a games job to appropriately educate and excite the user and clearly there's a portion of the playerbase with limited workrate and/or possibly a misunderstanding of the reward structure for high difficulty tasks and I'll counter with:

Developers are responsible for providing fun but players are responsible for their own tailored = fun.

I'm not going to quote the rest, but I'm puzzled.

I'm not a Souls/Elden Ring player but I thought these games had many "bullshit" instances of where you fall to your death + hitbox issue, so I'm confused because POE2 for me personally I've not encountered any "errors" of the game (hitbox, falling etc). Ofc players weren't happy with swarm mechanics "removing" dodge roll with accurate hitboxes and that got addressed so that players could have an easier time, personally I think this is gameplay taken away from the game and I think players should of had to have spec'd into dodge roll buffs/passives to appreciate better movement.
To further on from Souls Games, I'm not sure why its VERY fun to die and spawn repetitively in an advantageous place always. I think there's evidence to suggest Souls enjoyers more so appreciate the "pick up and play" convenience factor and that is a console trademark...and with all single player console games, there's a swift love and die/completed relationship factor which will never achieve the true heights of proper community and reward gaming.

I see no evidence of a "lack of" reward for Trials, there's a very nice natural drop chance with them + chests to open + ascendancy improvements.

However I do agree with on bosses specifically that there's a need for more telegraphed game design for damn sure, especially with many instances of this game being 1 death and start over. Also I agree with "punishment for a lack of optimal build", this game does have problems with people experimenting and I certainly think there's a lack of diversity in builds vs potential power.
I think this these things need to be addressed as a priority before we even begin to talk about "difficulty does not always equate to fun" because the game needs a good challenge level that the player must respect for an online community/league trade hub, otherwise its almost a 100% single player experience that, for most, will be a "won and done" experience for most and alongside hurt the try hard/proud workrate playerbase because their game ends up being far too easy once figured out.

This stupid game mechanic with random affliction where you only have an energy shield and it takes it away. So instant death. Not sure who thought of this ridiculous game play where we want to slow you down or make you fail without a choice in the matter. Garbage mechanics, and garbage experience. What a let down this game has been.
But hey GGG, keep thinking of nerfs and not fixing the broken/garbage mechanics you have atm.

I really don't like the last boss Zarokh, the Temporal Unique's hour glasses' collection.
The hour glasses sometimes appear too far away that never can be reached.
Even those hour glasses are in good position, you also need increase movement speed's boons or equipments.