Why Trials are so Frustrating
I've been very happy with Path of Exile 2 so far, and agree with most of its design choices. It is pretty clear, however, that the Trials have been a blunder, specifically as they pertain to ascending. There are a couple of reasons for this, but they come down to them emphasizing "the wrong kind of difficulty."
Difficulty in games is made of up three different components: Challenge, agency, and punishment. Challenge is the knowledge and skill requirement to complete the task. Agency is how much of the outcome you have control over. This usually means luck, but it can also represent things like the Trial of the Sekhema being much more ranged-friendly than melee-friendly. Punishment is what happens to you when you fail.
When we look at most popular "hard games," we see that they tend to be relatively high in challenge and agency while being low in punishment. Super Meat Boy, one of the first very popular "hard games," is a perfect example of this. Mechanically challenging, almost no luck, and levels are very short with no lives system, meaning almost no punishment. Indeed, the worst-received part of the game was how some areas do have lives. Punishment just isn't very popular. It's why From Software has been placing checkpoints closer and closer to boss rooms with each new Souls-like they release (and why Path of Exile 2 places them right outside boss rooms). It's why games that emphasize punishment, like Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy or Jump King, are remembered more for the creator content they spawned rather than the actual gameplay. It's why most players don't play hardcore.
Path of Exile 2 usually follows this formula. Boss fights are challenging, agency is high (perhaps you get back luck on drops, but the fights themselves don't have high luck components), and punishment is quite low (though it does increase in maps). This is what makes the game feel good and satisfying, and it does it very well.
The trials invert this relationship. Neither the Trial of the Sekhema nor the Trial of Chaos are particularly mechanically complicated. They do have some challenge, but they're mostly just about avoiding combat or fighting in slaughter arenas that often feel more like stat checks than curated encounters. Even the bosses (at least the ones I've seen so far) seem like they're less complex than the bosses throughout the campaign. Agency is also substantially reduced - every time you complete an encounter, you have to face another form of RNG, and sometimes something happens that is out of your control, and it screws your run (not to mention the fact that the Trial of the Sekhema is especially anti-melee, further reducing agency for those players). The punishment is also substantially increased - if you fail, you have to try again from the very beginning. If you're going for your third or fourth ascension, you also need to find another entry key, which can take hours.
The Labyrinth also had many of these exact same problems, especially when it was new. That's why it was unpopular, and that's why, over the years, it was changed to become less tedious and unfriendly to run. But these new trials take the problems of the Labyrinth and massively amplify them, and do so in a game that has a substantially different feeling from Path of Exile. Path of Exile 2 emphasizes actual mechanical and moment-to-moment gameplay. That the trials de-emphasize that type of gameplay, which only makes the contrast sharper and more painful.
I actually think Sanctum and Ultimatum's designs are better in Path of Exile 2, despite what I've said. They are better at being what they want to be, and as long as that's an optional challenge, I think they've done a pretty good job. But they're not optional. Path of Exile 2 forces us to do them in order to get a substantial amount of player power. Is it any wonder people are as frustrated as they are?
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Melee classes in general feels more punished.
its easy but you have to go 10lvl above recomended
The Labyrinth also had many of these exact same problems, especially when it was new. That's why it was unpopular, and that's why, over the years, it was changed to become less tedious and unfriendly to run. But these new trials take the problems of the Labyrinth and massively amplify them
I actually think Sanctum and Ultimatum's designs are better in Path of Exile 2, despite what I've said. They are better at being what they want to be, and as long as that's an optional challenge, I think they've done a pretty good job. But they're not optional. Path of Exile 2 forces us to do them in order to get a substantial amount of player power. Is it any wonder people are as frustrated as they are?
Pretty much this. WoW had Torghast in its Shadowlands expansion, and a large part of what made people hate it was its (repetitious) necessity. Making a niche mechanic mandatory for everyone is something I figured GGG would have learned from by now.
That said, I have faith that they'll make a good change regarding this. It took them a bit too long to improve the labyrinth, but again, I'm hoping they've learned from the past.
If they are kept as ascendancy challenges, I hope they look at two things:
- Debuff severity and RNG.
- Honor HP.
Both of these need some tuning from my perspective.
Cause trials suck
I find some of the restrictions force you into certain play styles. Some make it harder, but some like idk, lightning circles on ground - make it impossible for me
Poor design atm
Eventually ggg will balance
Because you are not supposed to finish them 2 days after league start.
Keep upgrading your gear until it’s easier. Be strategic about it, don’t pick shitty mods.
The problem with the lab was having to open Poe.lab because the layouts were annoying. That’s not the case anymore here
I have found the Trial of Chaos to be very buggy. I ran it in the regular questline 4 times, 3 times the run crashed (only time PoE2 has crashed for me), and the 4th time my minions killed some mobs on the other side of a bridge that rose up when the last mob was dead. I could lower the bridge myself to get out, but then there was no way to raise the bridge back up while on top of that area, so I couldn't proceed.
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I thought it was funny once I realized Honour was my new "health" bar as I kept dying with full health.
Then I had a chuckle when I realized to keep my HONOUR, I have to run, dishonourbly, away from fights. It's the exact opposite one might expect.
Running is more honorable than staying and fighting honorably.
Did u stack relics that increase your honour resistance? You did right..?
I LOVE this game…..EXCEPT FOR THE CHAOS TRIALS 🤬
PLEASE fine tune this BS, GGG 🙏🤞🤞
I did the entirety of act 2 without finding the trial. I don't like how obscured they are, there's no indicator on the map or anything, you just have to find it.
Sanctum was and is a type of content not that many enjoy, it was that way in PoE1 and it got copied to PoE2. I for sure dont like it at all, when I realised I had to do 3 or 4 for more Ascendency Points I just wanted to quit right there. Then I thought, hey.. there is still Ultimatum. So I went in there, as the Mods kept Stacking on, at the 2nd Boss I just folded and got 1 Shot despite being fully res capped with Infernalist Hellhound and almost 2.5k Life. Yea idk what the hell I am supposed to do. I can't do Sanctum because I absolutely despise it, and even then I would need to Trial and Error it while getting better Relics to somehow make it less frustrating, or get 1 Shot in Ultimatum because I didnt pick a full Tank Class. I just settled down and stopped caring altogether until they fix the most frustrating parts of it.
This is a really good philosophical breakdown. Can you please post this on official forums and email Jonathan.
I won the with 20 honour and my mate had 29 honour's by the end.
While frustrating, I haven't felt like that for a while.
I am generally not expressive, but I cheered alot after that win.
the main reason of why trials are frustrating is they aren't a static difficulty with huge variance
i really like the layout design and everything but it just happened to be that i hated both of those leagues sanctume and ultimatum
I'm not agree with you, i hated lab because Game crashed so many times, i lost all the progress due to crashed, many of those times at the end of the lab, before take the points. There was a league when I had to run the merc lab 12 times all of them crash at some point, I quit league.
Sanctum is just Bad.
I fail to see the reason they do not just give us 2 trials with 4 points each until the later acts are complete. Same vibe as making respecing costly. Now is the time to experiment and change builds. They nerved my build yesterday and it took me 40k gold to adjust my tree, it wasn't even a complete redo, we can't test stuff if we cannot swap builds easily. Lvl 60 for reference
Lab was always a stat check. They just need to be tuned to not brick so often, ultimatum in particular. normal Sanctum is whatever come back in 5 levels.
Sekhema could be drastically improved if you just remove the honor system. That should at the very least make it much more doable for melee. As for chaos trials, it definitely needs some retuning. The mods are too powerful right off the bat.
I'm loving the game so far, but the ascendancy trials are somehow worse than Labs in PoE 1.
I think optional must mean something different in New Zealand. Some sort of dialect difference. I don’t understand the hard on ggg has for gating ascendancies behind side content completely different from the main game. They are obsessed with this and refuse to compromise.
I was hoping Poe 2 would be different, and it will probably be why I stop playing sooner rather than later.
The greatest failure here is honor on a fundamental level.
They created a game where you can build a character 100 ways to avoid damage, some of which is intentionally taking the damage in order to heal or do your own damage. Then they add honor and now only a very specific type of game play is correct?
Yeah honor is dumb as fuck and a failure in design relative to every other design they have in the game.
I think it's mainly just balancing right now, some debuffs are nasty. I felt the trial was pretty fun otherwise
Trial 2 is fine. It's hard, it took me hours, but you get lots of XP and loot while trying. 3 rounds + boss is more than enough tho, I am not looking forward to the 7 rounds version.
Trial 1 was easy, but very unfun. Honour is not fun
Signed. It's great optional content. It should not be part of the core character progression. Or should be in at a much lower difficulty threshold as a break from the core campaign and a way of introducing this style of extended league mechanic prior to endgame.
But gating character progression through high RNG/punishment mechanics to this degree has never felt like good design.
I think they would both be amazing optional side content in the endgame, but definetely should not be obligatory.
It's a TRIAL. not a fun carnival
this is also a problem with endgame mapping. and its even worse if you try to play with friends. one of you is going to die adn then sit there with their thumb up their ass for 20 minutes while the other meanders around the map like a dingdong.
i'm alright with death being more prevalent in poe2 but i need to feel like i can get back in the fight with little to know lost time or else im going to go do something rewarding like playing in traffic
I think you're right. Just curious, but do you have any ideas for how you would design an ascendancy trial? I think it's good to gate the player power behind a serious test of your build, I just wish the design was better.
I'm stuck at the first Ascendency trial. I'm gonna be nice and say it this way - I'm not looking forward on playing those.
Also, I'm literally stuck, I can't progress with out the trial completion. Basically I need to hit the lottery and get easy rooms. :(
echoing what you said about the ratio between difficulty and punishment: maps giving only 1 life is a problem imo. if GGG leans into the dark souls playstyle (like i hope they continue to do, please no 1-click screen clear power creep like poe 1..) then they should also allow multiple attempts like dark souls. you have to repeatedly try to kill dark souls bosses over and over until you play it well enough to win. that can't happen if you only have 1 attempt while mapping.
all that said, i hope there are nerfs on player power. something like this shouldn't be possible https://youtu.be/4amI6glez9U?si=94ZzYVFkqoP01BW9 having actual risk and engaging with boss mechanics is where the depth of combat most exists. if you one or two shot bosses, all that depth goes out the window.
Worst experience in my gaming - Poe 2 trials as warrior.
Trial of the Sekhema does get a whole lot easier if you invest some time into running it to gather good relics. But this further extends the time investment required to get your ascendancy class. It's very understandable why this is so unpopular.
We will eventually be seeing a 3rd Ascendancy Trial alternative when Act 4 is released, but it's likely going to be a rework of the Trial of the Ancestors league. So it's probably going to be just as polarizing as TotS.
I get the impression that the Trial of Chaos was meant to be the fallback option for players who absolutely cannot abide the very polarizing mechanics used for the Act 2 and Act 4 trials. It's a lot closer to the baseline combat experience of PoE2, with some extra modifiers and environmental hazards. The problem is that they difficulty is dialed up to a crazy level right now so that it's arguably harder than TotS.
I have come to think of 3rd and 4th ascendancies as potential player reward if you manage to do the content, just like breach rings for example. And not an intrgral part of a build. Ascendancy nodes are weaker compaerd to poe1 anyways.
Just because content is available at your level doesnt mean its available at your skill/equipment. The same as end game content is available at certain level, but not for current equipment. Yes, melee classes are punished in this game, but it doesnt mean they cant do it.
i think they need to make casual/expert modes for this game...cause for new players it's super hard.
But for veterans in ARPG's/POE1 it could be super easy...