Punishment pushed to the extrem combined with bad Gamedesign - Trials etc.

While i dislike the XP system since it pretty much leads to me not really playing casually or for fun at random - loosing 10% is just soo much - risking it isnt worth it ...

This is to some extent bearable - but what is not are the Sekhemas Trials the design simply is awful.

Punishment:
- 10% XP lost
- Item to go in lost
- all keys you collected lost
- all water you collected lost
- all progress gone

Sorry but this is just insane - especially since one of the higher trials with 4x a full run is really long. And since thats not enough you actually can get - and sometimes not avoid debuffs that make your run impossible - for example loosing evasion with an evasion build etc. - you most of the time can avoid it - but often not and if you have bad luck you will be pretty much screwed the longer it continues.

Whats even worse is that the last boss has a lot of HP and requires lots of damage - BUT - since that is not enough they added a one-shot-mechanic that instantly kills you without telling you how.

Maybe it was a bug or i was too cocentrated on the pointer - at first i didnt even go in since most of the time those mechanics are traps. So i went in after some time and im rather sure nothing else spawned but i cant say for certain. So after having about 90% of my honour left and the boss about 30% down i got frozen and he oneshotted me from full health and shield.

To be honest - thats not fun difficulty and also not fun gamedesign - its just frustrating especially since you loose all the stuff listed above at once and have to redo a rather long run just to get to that point again. To be honest - since i can get the points otherwise i will simply not play those trials anymore - its not fun.


I am all for difficulty and advanced mechanics - but you cant do them in a way that makes you do a lot of work just to get there with mechanics not really that clear or buggy that oneshot you.


And this wasnt even my first frustration with this crappy trial - one of my first runs with the second trial ended with me going into the treasure room - game-crash - cant go back there everything gone ...

As it is now i will probably just spoiler myself with other ppls videos to avoid random one-shots after long runs ...



But these problems are in other areas of the game aswell - for example maps - so you can do 99% of the map fast - but there is that one random mob that suddenly almost/or does oneshot you without any warning.

Or running a map and almost getting instakilled by burning floor that seems to not even be nerfed much by resistance. Not to mention that you die so fast often that you simply cant react. Combined with often not even seeing the floor ...



DIFFICULTY is fun when it is fair, when you have time to react, when a mechanic is made in a way that you realize it or by using similar mechanics before etc.
Its the same with other things in the game aswell - there is no real way to know whats a trap and whats a button at first glance aswell. I even stuck in one of those trials since i didnt want to run into what i thought was a trap but i had to since without using its teleport back you cant solve the puzzle - but how are you supposed to know if you avoid everything to avoid any damage in trials by traps?


I seriously dont get the design of this game - why is the punishment always set to MAX and unclear one-shot-mechanics set to a point you only reach by playing for a rather long time?

It's not even that it's difficult. It's just insanely punishing.
When you take a step back and look at it neutraly you realize the crazyness of it:
1) you see a boss for the first time after battling your way through a one hour long trial
2) you get one-shot, not because your build is bad or you lack skill, but because you encounter a dedicated one-shot mechanic for the first time
3) you then get punished 5 fold on top of the time you already lost for doing poorly against the boss you are trying to understand and learn
4) You have to refarm the key and slog through a one hour long runback to the boss.

No wonder people absolutely hate these trials.

"

It's not even that it's difficult. It's just insanely punishing.

Exactly this. Don't let the forum trolls with undeservedly large egos fool you: this game is Vampire Survivors with better graphics, not Dark Souls III. Putting in stupid punishments and radom one-shots does not make a game a high skill game. Vampire Survivors could add those to the game and it wouldn't make it a high skill game.

"

voodoochile78#9787 wrote:

"

It's not even that it's difficult. It's just insanely punishing.

Exactly this. Don't let the forum trolls with undeservedly large egos fool you: this game is Vampire Survivors with better graphics, not Dark Souls III. Putting in stupid punishments and radom one-shots does not make a game a high skill game. Vampire Survivors could add those to the game and it wouldn't make it a high skill game.

The weird part is that this game seems to be at its best and fun hardest in campaign with random builds and regresses to 1-2 button meta screenwipe builds where most skills and mechanics suddenly stop to matter but in the endgame combined with mechanics that seem to do their best to actually punish ppl playing the game outside of those one shot builds.

I hope they find some middleground. The same applys to currency drops the difference in drops is just too extreme to keep the game viable for non hardcore gamers.

I think what could maybe also help would be some sort of system that at least givers players the possibility to see what killed them - for example in Maps etc. otherwise you cant even learn or improve.

"

Slart1bartfast#0332 wrote:

It's not even that it's difficult. It's just insanely punishing.
When you take a step back and look at it neutraly you realize the crazyness of it:
1) you see a boss for the first time after battling your way through a one hour long trial
2) you get one-shot, not because your build is bad or you lack skill, but because you encounter a dedicated one-shot mechanic for the first time
3) you then get punished 5 fold on top of the time you already lost for doing poorly against the boss you are trying to understand and learn
4) You have to refarm the key and slog through a one hour long runback to the boss.

No wonder people absolutely hate these trials.

There are other games with similar mechnics - but they either dont put the boss after lots of content or they "spoiler" mechanics of the boss by mobs/minibosses before.

This is especially in a game in a mode that pretty much trains you to not step on anything suspicious.

Bosses are one thing, I just learned to tap a spell and roll until my Flame Skulls disappear (Boss is still after ME ofc, not minions that are actively attacking it...)

But the other are those stupid rooms that require agility in a game like this... FFS... Who thought it would be a good idea? What's next - mario-like platforming? It's already a doge roll simulator if you don't want to get 1-shotted. I just got owned by an idiotic fire trap that I rolled into from other fire trap -_-

Health orb should serve as a warning when depleting - not as a 0/1 fail state. Even blizzard understands this and they are more than thick.

"

_N0ctus_#6387 wrote:

I think what could maybe also help would be some sort of system that at least givers players the possibility to see what killed them - for example in Maps etc. otherwise you cant even learn or improve.

If you're on PC and you dont mind third party tools, check out PoE 2 overlay. Its extremely helpful, but one of the many things it does is clip a replay of every death and automatically play it back for you.

It has kind of made me more mad, though, to rewatch my deaths, because about 95% of them are unavoidable.

I don't know what they were thinking with trials...

Honor makes many builds completely unviable, and then putting complex boss fights in that have a learning curve, while only giving people one chance per token is ridiculous.

People do their easy tokens first because it's their first time, die because they're learning the mechanics, then get punished for it because they lose their easier, low level tokens.

It's just bad game design.

+1