Trial of Sekhemas Feedback

Firstly, I am really enjoying the game. Stars aligned for me and I ended up with 3 weeks in December without any other responsibilities getting in the way, so finishing the year out playing POE2 non-stop was amazing for me.

I am a Sanctum enjoyer from POE 1 so I didn't have too much trouble getting my initial ascendency from Trial of the Sekhemas, but I ran into frustrating situations while getting my third and fourth sets of ascendency points. Some examples:

- Activating a switch on the 3rd floor that triggered a poison trap, wiping out most of my honour, which ultimately resulted in me failing the run. It was a few rooms before the boss and felt like an incredibly cheap "gotcha" that was disrespectful of the time and effort I spent getting through floors 1 and 2. I was annoyed so I logged out.

- Upon reaching the 4th floor for the first time, discovered that my main skill (bonestorm) was pretty awkward when trying to hit enemies on higher or lower elevations. Enemies were approaching and I couldn't hit them, so I ran up one set of stairs in an attempt to kill something, got attacked from above and below, got stunned, and lost all my honour. Kinda my own fault, but it felt very frustrating to lose the run partially due to the level design not suiting my choice of main skill. The run had been intense and stressful, but I had made it to the last floor with most of my honour. Losing almost immediately in the first room partially due to the layout being bad for my skill was incredibly demotivating and felt unfair, despite the fact that my misplay had contributed. The last thing I wanted to do was start another run, so I logged out.

There were quite a few more pre-patch (snakes in particular vexed me), but the above would still apply today.

All in all, finishing Trial of the Sekhemas was frustrating and exhausting when losing late in the run due to circumstances that felt cheap or could not be reasonably anticipated on the first attempt of a floor (e.g., the trapped switches). It didn't feel respectful of the time I invested in those runs because, upon losing in a way that felt unfair, I needed to repeat floors I already completed successfully. This felt like rubbing salt in the wound.

Due to the character power (and class fantasy) ascendency nodes provide, they feel almost mandatory to attempt & complete as soon as possible. Running the trials for the first time at the level they become available requires sustained concentration. Feeling that pressure to do something that requires prolonged focus and then feeling forced to redo it due to unfair circumstances made me feel drained and made me want to log out and take a break from the game for a while.

Note that I also failed other runs in ways that I thought were fair (misplays on telegraphed attacks, risking a pledge that hurt more than it helped, etc) and it didn't feel nearly as bad because I had some expectation of / control over those situations. In those cases I either re-attempted straight away, or went off to get some more power before trying again.

I am someone who enjoys the honour mechanic, has prior Sanctum experience, and got through the first two floors without much trouble, and the 3rd and 4th after a few tries. It must be significantly worse for those who aren't familiar with it, actively dislike it, or those who already struggle a lot in floors 1 or 2.

Suggestions:

Others have suggested removing the honour requirement for the purposes of ascendency, and instead using loss of loot as punishment for running out of honour. I think this could be a good idea. Losing the whole run feels too punishing for an element of progression that feels mandatory, and leaving the choice to the player to either restart or continue without item rewards gives some agency.

However, rather than granting ascendency points for boss kills regardless of honour (which I would prefer to the current situation), I would suggest another alternative: after completing a floor with honour remaining and moving to the next floor, give the player a checkpoint that allows them to restart the next floor (with rooms re-rolled) if they lose their honour there. They have this ability until they kill Zarokh with honour for the first time (thematically this could be explained as time resetting for some reason).

This allows learning the floors and mechanics (and recovering from an RNG-bricked run) while the player progresses their ascendency without constantly forcing a re-run of successfully completed floors.

To avoid trivializing the trial, the checkpoint should remember the relics, honour, and boons/afflictions the character has when the next floor is started. Brute-forcing a floor from a disadvantageous starting status could end up being more time consuming than just restarting from the beginning and doing better.

If you lose all honour on a floor:

- You can no longer gain honour on the floor.
- You lose all keys and cannot gain new keys for the remainder of the floor.
- You cannot open the door to the next floor.

The player then has the choice to spend a barya to re-attempt the same floor from their previously checkpointed status (if they feel like they might be able to make it with the new knowledge gained / better RNG) or start a new run and try to do a better job with the new knowledge / relics / loot acquired.

On beating a floor boss with honour remaining, the chests can be opened (if desired) and the door to the next floor can be opened (if you started the run with a barya that has another floor), and you're automatically checkpointed when entering the next room. Zarokh's unique drops can be moved to a platinum chest in the final chest room, with Zarokh dropping a platinum key only if he's killed with honour remaining to avoid intentionally farming him without honour.

While it would still be frustrating to lose in ways that feel unfair, it's more respectful of the player's time, it's not quite as much of a setback. I think if it worked this way I would have logged out less and enjoyed the experience more while still feeling challenged.

I second the idea of checkpoints between floors. I found the first trial okay, hated the Trial of Chaos (but completed it) and now tried the 3rd floor Sekhema for the first time. I will not try it again soon, it's a massive amount of time wasted on RNG minigames that just aren't fun.

I feel like trials actively prevent me from playing the game.
What is the design intent behind preventing players from progressing by forcing them to do something they do not enjoy?
It's a fine system for people that enjoy it, but why lock ascendancy nodes behind that; it's not like the "skill" (luck) needed to complete them translates to the rest of the game.

Specifically what I dislike is the idea to start over from zero each time.
It's always tedious and either time wasting and boring or frustrating when you get bad rolls / cheap shots.

My first time on reaching floor 2 I had to deal with the new traps; it's not clear how they will work exactly, most new players will lose some honor to them – then I got one-shot by a skeleton sending a fire carpet through a wall.
The idea to then having to do 8 ROOMS AND A BOSS again, plus 16 more is just a hard NOPE for me. I can foresee how often I will have to try (or how lucky I must get) and it's just not worth it.

One reason is that the room progression isn't enjoyable. I don't particularly care about keys and holy water or carefully picking the next room when I can lose all that stuff on a whim anyway. And even if there are no one-shot mechanics, I just know that the bosses will be hard, that I will need several tries and the thought of having to run through all the rooms and doing all these mini games over and over again is simply a hard turn off for me.

I'm fine with having to run the gauntlet of 8 rooms and kill a boss, but a string of 24 or 32 rooms? Sorry, I have no time for that. I also don't see why it must be this unnecessarily punishing and frustrating.

- Why do we have checkpoints in campaign maps and before bosses? Why not force the player to clear the entire map again? That would be the Sekhema way.
- Why isn't everyone forced to play hardcore?

Because it would be overly punishing and the majority of players isn't interested in that. It's not even about skill either because RNG plays such a big role.

Personally I don't like the honor system either. It's basically a removal of all the defense option in the game and locking healing in RNG rooms that you may or may not get. It's a convoluted way to force players to dodge and not tank (huge unfair advantage to evasion builds), which IMO is a poor idea in a game with RNG mobs, modifiers, maps and rooms. I hugely preferred PoE1's lab where you could deal with traps like with any other source of damage.

I guess one way to fix it would be to always have the option to refill your honor with holy water at the end of a room, but that way the player loses out on the opportunity to buy stuff with the water. Keys and other rewards would have to be bought with the water too. That way it's not a marathon, but you still have to clear a room without losing all your honor and you're still incentivized to dodge or you won't get any rewards.

They just need to stop making lazy filler content for things like ascendancies.

They did the same lazy development for POE 1 with one-size-fits-all "ascendancy" trials that made everyone do the exact same trials in order to progress their class.

Every single ascendancy class should have its own ascendancy and that trial should test the ascendancy's strengths and weaknesses.

If they aren't going to implement something like that then they just need to remove them. They have no point and specific classes will always have a harder time completing those trials and some classes no problem at all.