Putting Infernal King, with his awful random respawning 3rd trait, on the enemy team without having access to any form of stun adds too much random variance to this challenge, making it needlessly frustrating. Either replace IK with a different troop or let us use a Blighted Lands troop with some form of stun to deal with this menace (none currently exists).
If you chose the latter solution, please replace Hellhound with the new troop. Hellhound is a very poor fit for the team; this is arguably the weakest troop from the kingdom, and does nothing to teach the player about game mechanics or to overcome this challenge.
EDIT: After completing all five epic trials, I can confirm that the suggested strategy just does not work with the provided team. Without any tank with significant skull reduction or any reliable form of board control, the player just can’t reliably cast Baphomet’s spell enough times before the enemy team can fill its spells and wipe out the players team. The player is stuck in a slow battle of attrition that is too stacked against them.
Please replace Hellhound with a troop with actual first slot utility (suggested options: Gate of Souls, Helgor the Guardian, Herald of Woe) and/or Herald of Damnation with a troop that provides real board reset ability (suggested options: Hellcat, Infernal King). I won my last two Trials by getting a treasure gnome spawn to replace IK in one game, and having Herald of Damnation’s death mark proc twice (after my first two troops perished) in the second. Players shouldn’t have to rely on this much random luck to win.
To make a Star Wars reference, that’s akin to asking Mark Hammill what he didn’t like about Episode 8.
Obviously, throwing the mode out and redoing it from the ground up is way too big of an ask here. And the fact that these Kingdom teams are so MASSIVELY unequal (re: Hellcrag’s Chalcedony and recall that Princess Fizzbang got nerfed for less!) is why we are questioning whether there was “really” “any” internal testing before pushing it out to release.
Did the devs actually run a few internal test battles at Tier 1? Probably yes, good. But what about Tier 5? Tier 10? Epic Tier 15? That dozens (hundreds?) of players are finding the higher tiers literally impossible directly implies that the dev team didn’t FULLY test the mode at ALL ends of the spectrum.
I’m willing to guess that if your team can assign someone to pull global logs of Trial battles and plot it by Kingdom/Tier, you will very quickly spot clear patterns such as (still guessing) Hellcrag and Vulpacea having the highest success rates (i.e. fewest defeats per tier) while other Kingdoms can barely survive Tier 6, let alone 10.
@TheIdleOne did an AMAZING job highlighting specific problems with specific teams – like how Broken Spire’s trials mention Burning gems, vs an enemy team with TWO FIREPROOF TROOPS (Lava Troll and Pyggra), making the setup literally counterproductive to the intended mechanic.
(Likewise, Glacial Peaks highlights Freeze, yet the enemy team features Borealis and Queen Mab who are Insulated)
But enough of that – my frustration is mostly vicarious here – as for some quick ideas on possible improvements:
Maybe assign only 2-3 required troops for the team (there’s no game mode yet with this type of restriction!), and allow the player to fill in the remaining slots with whtatever Troops they want (most likely Kingdom troops, but especially their Hero).
Even having just ONE free slot for a troop entirely of our choice (any kingdom/type) would be a godsend for team composition/flexibility. Does this team obviously suffer in Mana Generation? Give me two seconds because I have Clockwork Sphinx on speed-dial…
And here’s another super simple idea, too:
Allow the player to replay any completed Trials at their leisure (obviously without the one-time rewards, but still presenting the Gem offer for any Troops not already acquired + ascended to 4 copies of Mythic).
As far as the TRIALS go I’d like to see the following changes
include the hero, even if weapon has to be from kingdom
Allow class to be equipped, even if its the kingdoms class
Allow Banner to be equipped, again even if from the kingdom.
4)Allow us to pick our own team, again can be limited to any card in the kingdom.
This would allow the player to form teams based on their playstyle.
Many are upset because this is like facing dungeon bosses (which cap out at 260 on floor 20) but where they have no say on the team, and these troops are stronger than the dungeon bosses where we can pick out own team.
Speaking of Dungeon Bosses, can we to re-iterate how when they debuted the Gem Dragons there was no APPARENT thought in actually building new teams around the new Gem Dragons, and just copypasting the Dragon into an old team produced wildly mixed results? Y’know, like Rubirath having TWO Purple Mana generators (Green Slime+Dark Troll) on a team with ZERO Purple Mana users? And how Rubirath has no Red allies to benefit from its 3rd trait?
Next to everything else that’s been said about it (no synergy, no scaling for the player’s team when enemies get tougher, this teaches new player nothing at all, no way to boost player’s team, no hero xp, no class support, counter-productive banners, etc.), THIS is another layer of the problem, sheer TIME needed to win those battles:
This is end of battle (one cast of my top troop and I got the win) of Tier IX in Pan’s Vale.
26 minutes of constant playing in ONE BATTLE, I didn’t take breaks to make coffee or something - this is simply ridiculous.
Ask yourselves: how many people HAVE that kind of time to play ONE battle? And then multiply the time needed by the number of earlier failed attempts. By number of kingdoms. Is this really what you want your players to suffer through, 30-minute battles? How and why someone believed this will be FUN? Who has that kind of time? I certainly don’t, especially on top of all the other events that are happening at the same time!
Well… the biggest problem with the mode is no way to scale your team to the difficulty as the difficulty rises. (At least, not in the kingdoms I have tried.) So it currently functions a lot like pure faction with no potions or hoard levels. Short of creating a system of potions and hoard levels for the trials (bad idea!) I’m not sure there is a way to fix that without a complete overhaul.
I think that swapping in hero/weapon for one of the troops would help a little bit, depending on the limitations on which weapons/classes you could use. That would sort of negate what you guys are going for with the mode, though. Of course, what you are going for with the mode, is another big problem with the mode. Heh. That is, you are trying to teach new players how to play teams that nobody on earth would ever play, in ways that nobody would play them. Another tough one to solve without an overhaul.
Perhaps a tiered system of sorts would work. The first X# battles stay the way they are, next X# you get three of the pre-ordained terrible troops and you can bring your hero/weapon. Final X# you create your own team from the kingdom troops. I don’t think this would solve the basic problems but it would certainly cover them up for you.
What I would like to see with the trials, is that they end.
Here’s an example of, not only the trials but gow mechanics in general:
When you start the trial there’s a little hint section. In one of my trials, the hint was ‘Freeze your enemies to prevent them from getting extra turns’. Well… there was only one enemy that had extra turns, - - - and they were IMMUNE to frozen. Typical. And how am I possibly going to win a battle when my highest life levels are 60ish, and the enemies attack and life are in the 200’s? That’s the whole point.
And they say this is supposed to help new players? gfy. To be forced to use troops that you haven’t leveled because they basically suck, or to use troops you don’t even have, is just unfair. I’m not using all those souls to level up troops I’ll never use. And when a battle is over, you need 1 million gems to buy whatever? Once again… GFY.
Started writing several times and dropped it several times as the endeavor seems so futile anyways…
Short answer - ideally, remove all restrictions, players should be able to choose for themselves and use whatever they like. At the absolute minimum - they should be able to choose for themselves and use whatever they like from the specific kingdom.
Just forget this “trials teach players X and Y and Z” agenda - firstly, forced teaching never work and, secondly, doing it on ones own terms will be more successful than trying to “learn” from those who are clearly out of their depth when it comes to creating teams.
If players has gotten this far, they already know what skulls do. How and what is this supposed to teach? Certainly, how to not make a skull team.
I did beat Trail 9 on my LVL 280 baby account (L10 kingdoms, normal guild tasks finished; L19 no traits Carrion Crow; L18 no traits Apophisis, L19 all traits Keeper of Souls, standard non-owned Bone Dragon which brings teamscore to around 7,000 in the end) - not enough raw stats for Trial 10.
However, just because I know what I’m doing and could drag that joke of a team so far doesn’t mean it’s all fine and dandy - it’s still stupid.
Let me have a team of my choice and I will beat every trial at that level of progression - and won’t get artificially locked out of said game content and Trial rewards that I’d be happy to use right now, not six or nine or twelve months later when their impact on my account improvement will be visibly diminished.
That was my experience today on the last battle. Whittled their team down to one troop left after about 30 mins after my bottom troop got transformed almost right off the bat. Then the AI’s last troop cast ONE time and killed my top 3 troops. I then lost the very next turn. My biggest thing is it says this is to teach newer players how to play. Is having to spam one troop 75x in a row(assuming they don’t get transformed) teaching anyone how to play? It felt like using Gobtruffle teams in Factions casting over and over to get to level 500.
You took everything we have hated about ARENA which we have communicated VERY CONSISTENTLY and made Trials a more horrible version of the same. Bring back team choice and the hero. Nobody wants Arena on steroids as a kingdom progress blocker. This game mode is garbage.
Yet another poorly thought out and implementated design. It’s obvious nobody in the office plays the game, let alone understands the mechanics. If this was the case then it would be crystal clear not to even bother with this. Keeping the game fresh? More likely turning players away.
Especially when an optimized PVE team would be able to win in 2 minutes or less.
As much as I disagree with statements like this as a matter of principle, I DEFINITELY support the notion that whomever is in charge of making the design decisions seems completely tone-deaf to actual feedback.
And I don’t mean intentionally tone-deaf, either. You can be tone-deaf by sheer virtue of complete insulation from feedback. And feedback that prompts zero change “is just words”.
Take the original Stone Herald of Zero-To-Death Combos: Not only is this more broken than a previous troop that WAS nerfed and for a lesser offense even, but the planners actually doubled down on it by introducing even MORE Troops following the same pattern. Did literally nobody in internal testing ask “wait, isn’t creating +15 Gems of a Troop’s own Mana color tantamount to an infinite loop?”, or were they told “just stick to your job” by the planners?
The new journey infinite loop troops are their “Fix” for journey scoring being a nightmare because of turn reductions. They could just eliminate the turn reductions.
I mean, if you are going to pick the team/banner for us, is it too much to ask they all work together. What’s the point in giving two near worthless cards that both solely use the weak mana on the banner? Just let us pick weapon/team from the associated kingdom. This just feels like an even more restricted Arena (which no one likes, in case you need to be reminded).
Only thing to say is how clearly NO ONE even tested shit like Urskaya. like… literally at the very first level of that you can see how dumb praying for skulls(with not even a skull generator, just passive falls or enemy generation) and praying for the enemy team NEVER match skulls even though THEY can generate skulls on their turn.
It’s the most stupid and clearly untested thing I’ve ever seen.
Turn reductions? I know Switch hasn’t had very many Journey events but I have not seen anything uniquely unusual about the mode or its battles. What am I missing…?
Wait, (reviewing 6.0 announce post) I see it now. You mean the -1 mile penalty for battles longer than 10 turns (up to -10 total) ? Meh, not much impact for me.
(Alternatively, what if these looping Journey troops had boost ratios based on matching enemy types instead of allies?)
Hero for sure - Given how hard it is to get to 100 level for each Class - I play as much with a hero for that week so I can get as far as I can. I don’t have all day to do Class Trials during the week.
I tend to build heavy damage teams. The current one for the Epic Trial has 1 pretty good damage creator and the rest are useless. I was very lucky to come into the Epic Trial with Todd fully Mythic, and Silver Elite level, so I could hold my own through the Epic Trials
I would like to BUILD my own team from the Kingdom. Not be appointed a team - especially for my kingdoms.
Maybe if I were a new player - that would be good for the first three kingdoms, but after that, let me pick my own.
More so, the on thing I haven’t seen is - I was saving my ‘Quests’ for grinding when I need extra keys or something. Now it seems that has been taken away.
It would weaken those units substantially, perhaps to the point of uselessness.
For those of us who play in very-high-bracket Guild Wars, we’re used to seeing a lot of defense teams that include a Hero using the Doomed Tomes. Those create gems (a mix of a given color and skulls) boosted by the number of enemies of a certain color. They’re absolutely brutal early in a fight when they can quite literally loop themselves against the enemy team, murdering them with the combination of scatter damage and all that skull generation without giving up the initiative; once a couple of enemies have been killed, it’s still dangerous but less likely to loop. Mind you, it might already be “too late” by then, but that enemy Hero is less effective after he’s killed some stuff.
Assuming that you could even find opposition with three or four of that enemy type? It would be absolutely killer early on for the same reason that they’re killer in their current state, but the effectiveness would drop off pretty quickly as the troop loses its’ ability to loop itself. And it would be a pretty pathetic troop against most opposition that wouldn’t trigger the boosts, likely as useless as most newly-released troops are now.
Such a change would certainly “fix” the “problem”. But I suspect that most of us would claim that the “fix” goes way too far and that there has to be some sort of “happy medium” that can be found.
There’s just no way there was any thought given to this “addition” whatsoever. In no way was it designed to teach anything except pure frustration.
Doing the epic trials on Switch is crazy. If i don’t lose my triple skull damage troop in literally the first minute, i lose all of my troops’ armor from Venbarak’s spell, which also takes the mana i need.
Infernal King respawns almost every time he’s killed with no way to Stun him. Herald of Chaos seems to only eliminate Attack which removes the only way to deal any significant damage.
The hint is to burn enemies to do continuous damage and use spells with boosts…what boosts? The double spell damage from Baphomet? That works great if any enemy stayed burned for more than 1 turn…great use of an almost useless status effect. I guess youre supposed to let Burn kill things…? 3 dmg/turn at 400Life+Armor adds up to how many turns before you even break armor? Not to mention Infernal King is immune to Burn…Really!?
You give the enemy team a troop with Mana link for the 3 purple troops they use. Venbarak has a 75% chance to disease all enemies, (and again destroys most all of your armor on cast), and 2x skull dmg vs diseased enemies. This is an absolute joke and you clearly don’t play, test, or think about anything you’re doing.
Typical. And how am I possibly going to win a battle when my highest life levels are 60ish, and the enemies attack and life are in the 200’s? That’s the whole point.
Once again… GFY.
