The Trials/Ascension Are the Most Anti-Fun Mandatory Mechanics I've Ever Seen in a Game

TL;DR - The trials are the most anti-fun thing in any game I've ever seen in my life, and I say that with zero exaggeration. ANTI-FUN.

Ascension is integral, not a fun side thing, so making it borderline impossible was a horrible idea. No one I know can complete any of it but the first two, and it's making me want to quit.

Me, the guy who beat all but 1 boss on the first try and found the game "too easy" until I realized I can never beat trial 3+.

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The honor system is the most rage inducing game mechanic I've ever seen. You can't out skill or out spec it the way the game currently is, if you get bad luck. Even if I beat it all, it's MISERABLE and makes me want to quit. The point of a game is fun, why should I play something that's literally the most anti-fun thing in a game I've ever experienced? And I played League of Losers, so I know what anti-fun is very well.


I fail every attempt at ascension 3, it was, not figuratively, bugged/rigged with invisible things just mysteriously taking thousands of honor points off of me, more than once, and I never found/figured out what that is. No enemies on-screen, just free auto losses when I was doing well/at full honor.

As of this patch, it's... improved? But the chains of constant unavoidable curses make it borderline impossible, I just fail then fail faster every attempt, and I'm the guy who thought my friend was trolling when he said X or Y in the game is hard. I beat every boss on the first try, minus the one with the soldiers who one shot me the first time that appeared.

-50% of your absolute damage, +50% max HP of enemies, enemies take 50% damage, you lose all armor, you lose all evade, you lose x% of movement speed, you lose half your max honor, you go from xK honor to 0 in 4 touchs no matter how much defense for it you stack, etc, etc. And I'm supposed to beat a minimum of 24 rooms in a row with those stacking nonstop? No one who worked on it could have seriously thought anyone was going to do it, and this is all a test, right?

I WISH I recorded a video of my last run so I could show how insane/preposterous it was, with the curse rolls/unavoidable shit I got I think it was actually impossible, not just for a human, just actually impossible. It's VERY clear this stupid idea was never play tested + beaten by anyone internally, so why the fuck was it released?

This is the only thing, in any game I've played in years, that actually makes me rage, it's not an optional reward, it's a key part of the character, and it makes me hate this game. It has to be actually borderline impossible for melee players.

I was having a ton of fun until I hit this wall at the endgame of not being able to ascend no matter what I try to learn, because what gets me in the trials seem unavoidable and beyond just a skill or stat check. Some I encountered seemed actually impossible, no way out.

the stacking debuffs made it actually impossible for me to avoid the two bosses on floor 2 of sekhemas. my movespeed was extremely nerfed AND all of my armor was removed by debuffs. I also had a 'can't restore honor' for the entire second floor. and the enemies were buffed several times in various ways.

i don't really know what else to say about it other than I won't be attempting it again. It was a massive waste of time

FUCK Sanctum, FUCK Honor, FUCK this god damn bullshit.
Not constructive at all but I do not care anymore.

DELETE Honor. Please.

I agree. Its simply not Fun. And i play a Game to have Fun...weird i know.

I forgot to even say it in the original post:

The ENTIRE ascension system needs to be deleted & remade as something else.

All of it, it's completely anti-fun:
Even when you "easily" beat it (first two), it's just absolute misery, every part of it is the opposite of fun, nothing about it is rewarding, an entertaining challenge, or anything of the sort a sane person would find to be a fun thing to overcome. There's not a single thing in it I would want to play for entertainment/enjoyment. It's just relief and residual anger after beating it.

After each of the first two that I managed to pass, I thought to myself "Wow that was so miserable, no part of it was anything that can even be made into fun with heavy changes, I hope none of this remains in the final game. They need to delete this entire system."

I like the idea behind the mechanic.
But it definitely could use some improvements (many fixes came out on the last patch to be honest, I haven't tried it yet), and I think it can be made a ton better via balancing.

One of the things I don't like much is Minor / Major boons and curses (the contents, not the mechanic itself).
It should feel like a roguelite but it doesn't feel like one at all.
Most minor curses are so huge that they can single-handedly kill a run, while boons have pretty much no impact.

I once got a MAJOR Boon "Recover 17 honor per room", made me laugh hard... seventeen honor... I would not even recover a 1 hit equivalent in an entire floor. While at the same time a MINOR curse gave me a huge -40% damage.

I don't see anything on my screen. I don't see enemies, I don't see their abilities. No visual clarity.

In trial with chalice, you are required to go down which is reducing your visual range due to camera angle. That is only increasing odds of being hit offscreen.

Boons seem mostly irrelevant, afflictions are more like middle finger.

It would not be that terrible, if enemies were not that fast, there wasn't that many enemies, space was that much constrained and rare enemies weren't so ... archnemesis.

Playing trial with 74% honor resistance, even if I complete many rooms without loosing honor, I get some lame affliction which bricks my run.

It only makes you play most broken build which ignores all mechanics by abusing imbalanced class/skills/items. Otherwise you have bad time.

+1

If they only ran a check to see how many players are in maps but have not done 3rd ascendancy.
Is this the best suggestion that came to one's mind when it comes to ascension ?
What were the other options ? Delve to level 6000 and have simulacrum with no gear ?

I agree, even with the 'buff' of 35% less honour damage for melee, then entire mechanic feels horrible. Just like Sanctum certain builds will have an advantage, that is not a good method of Ascension.

The debuffs can be brutal, they don't need to be. The entire reason the Sanctum debuffs where so hard in PoE1 was because it gave insane currency, in PoE2 it doesn't.

Playing this as melee is the reason I will no bother ascending. I could understand it being this difficult if the Ascendancy skills where actually much more powerful, but as it stands this is just not fun.

Again... I will want to logout feeling frustrated, that is a horrible feeling for a gamer and will result in me not logging back in, that is the simplest way to put it.

Remove Honour, if we die, we die. This is more cohesive with the rest of PoE2. I am astounded at how entrenched they are to keep this mechanic that is universally hated.