Apparently they can, but this week they cost One Million Gems so you cannot.
Believe me, I could use a Vulpphire Hunter fully traited.
2 Likes
I dont like the fact to use only 4 fixed troops of the kingdom.
My idea is to give access to all troop’s kingdom and option to put the hero with belonging weapon and class of that kingdom
If player dont have a weapon or class just add an epic weapon without forging levels
4 Likes
Having 4 fixed troops is the problem. Letting us use all troops, weapons, and hero class from that specific kingdom would make the most sense.
10 Likes
- Ability to use hero/weapon - limited to the kingdom
- Ability to level up class and apply class traits - limited to the kingdoms class
- Ability to choose from all of the kingdoms troops I own, regardless of rarity, to build my kingdom team
- If I own less than four of the kingdoms troops, the game to select one or more for me. (As it does right now)
@Kafka - I’m a level 1500+ account with 5+ years experience playing this game and I cannot beat Dragons Claw Trial X. This should not happen.
This mode needs to be rebalanced or fixed as soon as possible.
Implementing the above suggestions would allow the game to scale with the player’s progression in addition to providing some attractive flash offer opportunities. (Offer a missing weapon or troop). I know if it’s a weapon I want or need, I’d be likely to purchase it.
22 Likes
I can see where trial would go: a copycat of underworld. Maybe the dev team wanted to avoid this problem, but they failed.
I don’t think anything can fix this. It’s already done. Ask yourself why was this implemented. Feedback? Any feedback will change this trial update to something different. This trial update that’s here to stay. I don’t think the players asked for this. They ignored the players’ feedback, leaving us in this mess.
Sure, some players could say, just ignore this part of the game, but this kind of update is going to be the norm for future updates. Updates that no one is looking forward to, but yet everything connects and leads to a point where we need to achieve something in order to progress in the game.
There’s no promise anything will change. This is a fact. They have ignored past feedback. The kind of feedback that we thought would change the dungeon system, feedback that suggested giving players something to do with all the extra resources that are not needed. The feedback suggested stopping the grind on top of the grind, which leads to the game no longer being fun.
The way the game is changing is negative, so there would be nothing but negative comments when something like this happens. Any change that’s made to something the players didn’t ask for is just a band-aid over a wound that’s not willing to heal.
19 Likes
I could repeat a lot of what has been said above me, but for the sake of brevity I won’t. Just assume it’s there.
What we have now isn’t unlike attempting pure faction delve runs prior to the update that added potions to ordinary delve runs and the updates (still in progress) adding a 5th troop to each delve. Only it’s worse because you’re given a fixed team as opposed to assembling something yourself from the limited permissible resources, and it’s worse because you don’t have ways to mitigate the immense stat disadvantage by spending other resources to level the playing field. It’s a little easier, because you’re not limited in the number of attempts you can make in a single day and because you also don’t have to fight 3-5 battles to get through the “achievement”, but that isn’t very comforting.
If it were up to me, I think I’d amalgamate a number of ideas above, combined with a couple of tweaks:
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Restrict the player to troops and weaapons/class from that given kingdom; maybe restrict the player to the banners from that kingdom as well (including the delve).
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Force one troop because of the kingdom “theme” and let the player build around that; maybe you could restrict mythics from being used to keep the challenge as well – that would hurt in some kingdoms where the mythics really are good but wouldn’t hurt in others where the mythics suck.
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I’d even place a further restriction such that you may only use one of a given troop – e.g., no “double/triple” teams of Beetrix or Gobtruffle or Chalcedony/Greenwood/Seekra to loop an opponent to death in a screaming hurry.
I believe it’s fair to make this new game mode a challenge. But it has to be a challenge that gives the player a fair chance if they know what they’re doing and don’t get unlucky with things like skull cascades. A lot of players will gird themselves for battle and tackle a challenge; they will be much less likely to do so if it’s perceived to be the unholy union of an invasive government tax audit with Jury Duty and a weekend with the ex.
13 Likes
I’m for the 3 unique kingdom troops + Hero. Make sure the 2xp for classes is included. Hero can be anything to level classes.
You have to have the Hero talents to offset the huge power discrepancy at the Epic Trials.
No hero? Don’t even bother.
5 Likes
It appears that the trials feature is going to limit the player to a single kingdom for the selection of a team. So …
For each target kingdom, assign to it an “enemy” kingdom.
Allow the hero on the team, who may only use the class, the banner, and a weapon from the enemy kingdom.
The allies may only be selected from the enemy kingdom.
Provide the option to obtain boosts of some sort (potions, as found in features like the faction assault). The boosts may be time limited, perhaps only available during the week of the target kingdom.
5 Likes
Nobody knows me here but I’ve been playing this game since at least 2017; don’t recall exactly but I remember the old fancy card art. I play my own solo guild so progression is slow. I’ve got max faction renown with about half of the PF500 runs being “no potion”. I’ve managed to make it to the top 5 in PvP at the end of a weekly event and even flagged as #1 briefly. So I do know what I’m about in this game.
It took me four years or so to get enough orbs to craft ZG. That was fine. I’m patient.
Even the gem dragon multi-layer RNG mess doesn’t bother me. It took 19 eggs to finally get that sixth one. Whatever. I knew I would get it eventually.
But this … trials is bad specifically because it appears that the troop and banner choices forced on players to run the mode have no thought behind them. The simple choice would be to allow team building from within the kingdom. That makes it a kingdom class challenge on steroids but at least would give players a fighting chance while letting them explore deeper synergies within the kingdom theme.
What I find most galling about the trials is the horrendous time/benefit ratio. Yes, I did manage to win the level 500 Vulpacea trial with that trash team but it took multiple tries, each of which took an inordinate amount of time. For what benefit? A few copies of a pet? That’s totally not worth it. I’d rather do something else and wait for an Orb of Minions to pop up.
Aside: I won’t play Arena or Treasure Hunt for the same reason. The time spent is not worth the rewards gained.
So I’ll restate my simple suggestion. Open up trials for team building choice locked to the kingdom.
25 Likes
I have to ask @Kafka why you reduced the battlecrashers and campaign issues to help players with excessive grind, and then at the same time introduce the nonsense that are the trials. You just increased frustration for almost all.
You cannot masquerade the trials as a trial, they are simply not a trial, they are just totally anti what they are advertised as.
I’m honestly not going to add more to what people have said, they way the trials have been made does not make any logical sense.
We shouldn’t be talking about the trials. Why introduce something so polarisingly bad for all players. Is it fresh, no. Is it exciting, no. Is it good, no.
We should be talking about improving game play. Get CX to interact with players and let players feel like they can bring value, ideas into the game. You can add monetisation on top of anything credible, that interacts and brings forward ideas to help encourage gameplay and growth.
Trials are a worse version of Arena. They are utterly ridiculous, plus we got the broken pet offer on top to frustrate even more.
25 Likes
The issue isn’t the teams, it’s the overall design.
There are 15 trials in each set, 10 standard trials and 5 epic trials. The standard trials attempt to target lower level players, the epic trials higher level players. Each set imposes the same team setup, not owning a preset troop replaces it with a significantly hobbled loaner troop. This approach ensures that no matter which way you try to move, someone will get hurt:
1.) Compose teams of mostly of thrown together low rarity troops. This will allow lower level players to survive the first trials at a point where they still find the attached rewards useful. Higher level players will get murdered in epic trails, because those teams won’t stand a chance.
2.) Compose the teams mostly of synergizing high rarity troops. This will lock out lower level players for a long time, because they mostly get hobbled loaner troops to play with. Higher level players will be able to reasobaly play epic trails.
3.) Try to find a mix of both options above, which is what we have right now. This will likely break trials for everybody, because low level player end up with too many loaner troops and high level players with too few efficient teams.
Thanks for taking up the initiative, it’s a lost cause though. I don’t believe there’s any way to save trials by reconfiguring teams, that’s just shifting the pain around to other players. This really requires fundamental changes to the game mechanics, which involves coding effort, and that’s guaranteed to not happen.
27 Likes
^ This.
To me it looks just like the DEVs don’t care or don’t know better both shows a lack of respect for the customers.
10 Likes
This is just my opinion but it looks to me like you took things from the Arena (that almost everyone hates) and mated it with pure faction from the delves (I’m talking level 500 PF here) and expect new players to be able to get through the trials. Never going to happen.
I finally got through the epic trials. I hated every minute of them. Will I do them every week just to get a useless pet? OK maybe not useless, but really close. No, probably not.
If you want to limit the troops to the kingdom, fine, but let the player choose the troops to use. At least the player will get experience putting together different troops to make a (maybe) winable team.
At least lest the player choose the banner. Two red troops and the banner is set to minus red? Really? Not even a new player would choose that banner for those troops.
And I totally missed the part about increased loot from winning the trials. Low gold. No extra gemstones or ingots which can be critical when you’re a new player. I player the Challenges before to get ingots I needed to upgrade weapons. I played them to get gold and gemstones and souls. Now you get a pet that’s only going to useful ones it’s fully upgraded (which will take from gems than most new players have - well, and a lot of older players, too) and will only be useful when you’re using a straight kingdom team (which no one does) or doing pure faction in a delve (which most new players aren’t going to have access to).
Trails might be here to stay. Since you’re getting so much negative feedback, I’ll assume that’s a given. It doesn’t mean that people are going to play them. I hate Arena so I don’t play it. (I consider the weekend Arena weekend off to do other things.) I hate pure faction level 500 in the delves, but I play that because of the rewards to kingdom, reknown, gold, etc. As far as I can see, there isn’t any good reason for anyone to play the trials, especially the epic trials which can take a long time better spent farming for gold or trophies.
Sure, keep the trials. You’re going to anyway. That doesn’t mean people are going to play them. A semi-useless pet isn’t a good enough reason. Let us choose the troops. Let us choose the banner, one that actually helps the troops on the team. Give some decent rewards that are really going to help players. Since you’re probably not going to do any of that, I’m going to mostly pretend Trials don’t exist just like I do with Arena.
9 Likes
What was it again that devs like to call each new addition to the game - despite it rarely being that?
→ “fun”
Oh, indeed, so much fun. I’m glad I had the previous gamemode done and only have to care about a handful of silly matches with troops I’d never even touch to get the silly glitter pets. But kudos to you for finding a way of implementing another gem sink for those who like to keep their pet collection fully complete.
devs are on the hook now. careful. don’t scare those shy beings away again. 
@Kafka despite all of the current shituation with this gamemode - why is it that hard to work together with the community just once beforehand on new game additions? why does it always have to be a big surprise that with release is seemingly completely untested, filled with gamebreaking flaws, numerous bugs and despite it being loudmouthy described as “fun” just nearly always “isn’t” because it is just more silly stuff to waste additional time on each day/week? I don’t even believe in any fruits growing out of this feedback thread. The topic is created, posts are being made, maybe even read, maybe even commented positively on by devs - but I fail to believe that impactful positive changes will happen in the near future and ever for the players as long as it can’t be monetized. I also was surprised noone thought of implementing a stat booster for just 49,99$ each week for this gamemode…
14 Likes
Allow players to use any owned troop of the related kingdom
5 Likes
Pan’s Vale will be horrible at epic levels. Sylvasi will strip away all attack from a troop with one hit and Faunessa will then give life to enemy troops faster than it can be removed.
The enemy team could be nerfed, or giving the player a copy of Starflower might be sufficient. And/or give the player Argos or Nyx to give them a fighting chance to prevent Sylvasi casting.
This is urgent. Pan’s Vale is scheduled for the week commencing 8th May.
2 Likes
Or at least have some external playtesting and actionable feedback at alpha stage rather than just at beta? Maybe that already happens but: the pretty much universal reaction to this has been that these teams are not well constructed and that playing with them is not fun. This could have been course-corrected so much earlier rather than pushing to release and hoping to rebalance later.
I feel we’re also seeing stuff get through beta test that shouldn’t have – bugs that should have been a release blocker rather than pushed to release. Was the missing confirmation dialog one of these or was it more of an internal “oh hey, we missed this regulatory requirement, immediate must-fix” discovery? I dunno; but it’s yet another release that needed an immediate oops workaround to address breaking behavior.
For my part: the mission statement in the release notes was that Trials are intended to “teach new player game mechanics”. I think the key question is: what game mechanics?
The key mechanic in the game is team construction. So if you’re going to force fixed teams here, at a bare minimum they need to be viable teams without glaring construction problems: no anti-synergetic troops, no severe mana blocking, no counter-productive banners. But further: if you intend that the teams are a teaching opportunity then they should teach good construction: synergism, troop roles, survivability.
The “no hero” thing is just straight-up weird as a constraint: making effective choices and uses of classes and weapons is another key game mechanic. And look: I suspect you’re no-hero here because classes, and class talents, are global whereas you want to make self-contained trials teams that aren’t dependent on class talents that the player may not have unlocked or selected. But hero-less teams are rare in normal gameplay for a reason! It’s hard to build effective hero-less teams and that makes it even more of a problem that the trials teams seem to have been slapped together without much design.
But I guess the game mechanics you’re trying to teach are more granular? Freeze; entangle; devour; one-cast-only; the core mechanic that troops from the kingdom use. But again: putting together an effective single-mechanism team is hard; requires more thought than simply slapping together four troops with that mechanic; often requires support from other troops without the mechanic; often requires support from troops outside the kingdom; and again, very much harder without a hero+class.
I think basically what I’m saying here is: if the intent is that the Trials are a teaching opportunity, then the teacher’s examples need to be good! Players should be coming away from Trials feeling like they learned something: like, “huh, I don’t usually use mechanism XXXX but that was a really good and fun XXX team!” I don’t think the teams currently offered are fulfilling that at all.
How do you fix this? I’m not particularly keen on the repeated suggestions to “allow all owned kingdom troops”; we already have that, it’s called Class Trial, and the Weekly Events often have similar constraints.
I think you have to put in the work to build better Trials teams; teams that actually work and that actually serve as good exemplars of team design.
You should consider including mythics – and maybe either exclude the mythic from the purchase offer, or offer the same 4000 diamond cost as a Soulforge craft to purchase the mythic. You should consider including a hero/weapon – and maybe here you force a fixed set of class talents. You shouldn’t hobble teams by depowering troops that the player doesn’t own, or that the player owns but hasn’t ascended or traited: give 'em all full ascension and traits so all Trials players are on a level field.
The community might help here by suggesting specific teams, and that could be a fun exercise in rebuilding a little badly-needed goodwill. But the parameters and constraints need to be specified a lot more tightly; as it is, the “what teams would you build” request is just too broad.
I also, frankly, don’t have much confidence in specific team suggestions being taken; I’d note that there’s been repeated specific feedback on how the introduction of the gem dragons broke synergy in many of the Dungeon teams by blindly replacing existing troops with gem dragons, and on how this could be improved by better troop selection in those teams, and: crickets.
16 Likes
BRAVO!! Your entire post is very well said. Thank you for taking the time to write it!
5 Likes
This brings up another point… Given that we want the trials to be based around a team from the Kingdom, why does the enemy team also need to be from that Kingdom. Most Kingdom themed mechanics are far more exploitable against troops from other Kingdoms because troops often are immune to that Kingdom’s abilities (ie most Glacial Peaks troops are not vulnerable to Frozen effects because they have the trait insulated).
Additionally, because the epic trials will only be during the Kingdom of the week this means that both teams will be juiced an extra 10-20%. Since the base stats of the enemy team are much higher this will always slate things significantly against the player. If the enemy team was from a different Kingdom this bonus would not further stack the battle against the player.
16 Likes