This has to be intentional, maybe trying to drive people away and onto another game?
These trials are quite possibly the worst thing that has been done in this game, and believe me, there are a lot of contenders for that prestigious spot.
12 Likes
Splendid move – lean on your community to provide the competence and care that you plainly can’t spare for your own game.
Makes sense though. You’ve squeezed us for ages now to do unpaid bug testing and QC that you can’t be bothered with. Why not go all the way and shanghai us into also working out the design and content choices you’re too important to get right.
6 Likes
Dear lord! Khetar is impossible for me to complete. I’m already at a higher level enough to complete other parts of the game but this is ridiculous! Am I supposed to wait a year to max my stats just to wait for another year to come across this kingdom to see if I can complete it? Why?! I hate this part of the game. I want to boil it in hot water and then put it out into the freezing cold only to pour acid on it! I hate this, I’m not wasting my time 
11 Likes
As a high level player i cannot believe how hard these trials are, i have literally spent almost all day trying to finish the last two khetar trials and it is just simply inpossible…
Easy fix:
Let player’s choose their own troops that are locked to that kingdom, in this case with it being khetar, let players choose any troops from khetar, simple.
7 Likes
Been trying all day, literally impossible
4 Likes
Ist the offer still 1.000.000 gems? Or back to 200 again? I won’t bother starting at all if prices are still up.
Still a mil.
I despise what they did with the trials. I can’t pick my own team anymore. And with the Trials that I haven’t even started with, I’m stuck with a team that THEY chose? Uh uh. LOL
1 Like
Congrats devs, once again, you changed a mode that no one asked to be changed. And you made it utterly impossible to play.
Forcing a gimmick team that has no synergy and can be 1 hit KO’d by the overpowered AI team is not fun to play and doesn’t teach players how to play, if anything, it teaches that the game is stacked against them and relies heavily on pure luck to win.
You can add Trials to the ever growing list of game modes that aren’t worth the time to play. Maybe instead of designing new ways to try and get new players to spend money so that they have a fighting chance in any game mode, you actually listen to the feedback and suggestions from your playerbase before they all end up quitting.
With each update its like you’re actively trying to get your playerbase to quit by making the game unplayable.
14 Likes
I know most people will hate me but Khetar is doable. I just beat the final level (350) after about 12 tries. I used 3x seasons medals and put Keeper at 3rd and bone dragon last. I only cast when all 3 converters are ready and the order is usually keeper/apophasis/bone dragon. Try to keep your turn. Enemy Aziris is your friend. Keep him alive longer as he mana blocks. Get all your troops loaded once he is one skull away and then bash all the skulls you can to kill Alastair quick. That is the key in my runs. Hope this helps.
Maybe anticlimactic, but I kinda enjoyed it. It brings back thenl PF delve feeling that I have lost since all delves are done. I am not saying this is a good mode for all players but some may find it fun to play if they are bored.
2 Likes
I have a suggestion: let a dev do a live stream for the Khetar trials with a new account, then with a veteran account.
Show us how you win this.
No cheating. No high stats dev accounts, no AI giving you preferential treatment - just normal player accounts.
19 Likes
@Kafka As plenty of folks have pointed out, the combination of high enemy levels (especially for Epic Trials) and inflexibility of team composition makes these battles almost laughably difficult, even for end-game players. Even at lvl350 these are tougher than PF500 delves IMO, due to the team restrictions and lack of ability to level up a hoard for a stat increase.
Last week was only doable thanks to looping, and this week I’m sure many players will give up trying (and perhaps even give up on the game mode altogether) due to frustration. Many future weeks will be just as bad or worse if no action is taken.
In an attempt to be constructive, here are a few ideas:
- Limit the game mode to only troops from the kingdom, regardless of player ownership. This would let players without certain legendaries or mythics in their collection “try before they buy”, so to speak, and would still allow you to upsell players on troop purchases they don’t have (this could be via gem purchase or even real money purchase).
- Allow the hero to be included, but impose one or two restrictions like:
- Require the hero weapon to be a weapon from the current kingdom
- Require the hero class to be from the current kingdom (e.g. Necromancer for this week)
I think the above options would offer an interesting and unique way to achieve all of your stated goals.
This keeps the “try before you buy” mechanic in place, and if it would be too damaging to the ecosystem to allow direct legendary/mythic purchases you could still make them available for use in this game mode but limit purchase offers to epic and lower troops. By limiting troops to the current kingdom you’d also introduce players to game mechanics common to troops from the current kingdom.
Regardless what is decided, I think it’s critical that the teams aren’t dictated to us and set in stone. No single team will be right for everyone, and one of the most interesting parts of this game has always been creative teambuilding to find synergies given a reasonable set of constraints, as is evident in nearly every other game mode.
I sincerely hope this is remedied in a reasonable way that makes Trials challenging but not as near-impossible as they are currently.
16 Likes
Leave the current troop setup for each kingdom as it is, but:
Every three fights, allow for a troop to be replaced freely with another one from this kingdom available to the player.
1-3 - Premade team - “Learn the ropes”
4-6 - Can change 1 troop - “You probably have realized this team can be optimized”
7-9 - Can change 2 troop - “As you grow more familiar with the troops, you can explore different options”
10-12 - Can change 3 troop - “Your experience allows for further optimization”
13-14 - Can change 4 troop - “You now have full control of your troops”
15 - Can change 4 troop, allow use of kingdom class/weapon - “Unleash the full power of this kingdom!”
18 Likes
Just make them cost what they cost in the soulforge.
It would still be limited by player resources (so wouldn’t introduce too many mythics or legendaries into the game).
It would also slightly alleviate the soulforge issue of the mythic cycle being way too long by now.
7 Likes
The problem with is idea is that there are only 15 levels in 1 kingdom each week. All others are limited to 10. The only kingdom that has the extra 5 levels is the one being focused upon that week. Hence the “epic” trial levels. You need everything unlocked by level 10.
Regardless, trials are horrible without fixing the disparity in your team’s skills and the enemies, AND getting rid of the prechosen teams.
3 Likes
Every kingdom now has 15 levels, they are just not accessible most of the time. Not everything needs to be unlocked by the regular ending level 10.
I specifically chose this approach to keep the idea of “teaching” players that is supposed to be the reason for the creation of trials in the first place, and to help overcome the increasing stat disparity without making it too trivial. Classes / Kingdom weapons can be really powerful, so it’s reserved for the final battle.
@Kafka, here’s my “quick list” of simple ideas that could vastly improve the mode: (and “vastly” is defined not by how good the mode could be, but because of how bad it is currently)
Player team composition
- Allow ONE free slot for a player-owned troop of their choice (preferably any troop at all, but same-kingdom can still work). Just because you want Trials to feature a specific tactic or gimmick during battle doesn’t mean ALL FOUR troops MUST strictly follow that pattern – in fact it’s bad team composition to do that! For example, if we could just put Alastair on our Khetar team this would MASSIVELY improve this team’s survivability (Stoneskin + teamwide Armor buff + Barrier self) while not meddling with the overall theme of “create more Skulls to deal damage”.
- AVOID giving the player more than one Troop with the same exact Mana combination, as this must invariably leave one of them Mana Locked. (e.g. Keeper of Souls + Bone Dragon in Khetar, both Brown/Purple users.) Yes, I know, this is somewhat mitigated if one of them can be used as a frontline tank / “meat shield” and not for casting spells, but good team composition revolves (in part) around being able to funnel Mana to any specific Troop at ANY time.
- Similarly, check the player’s team against the Kingdom banner and AVOID troops that necessarily require the -1 Mana color to spellcast.
Enemy team composition
-
First, you have to at least concede that the astronomical stat levels associated with high-tier (especially Epic) Trials will invalidate ANY strategy that isn’t Chalcedony you were trying to tutorialize in the lower tiers. Everything ALWAYS eventually boils down to “do X amount of damage without dying” anyway, no exceptions, and past cpu level 100+, all it takes to doom one match to a quick (or worse, slow!) failure is ONE lucky turn for the AI.
-
DO NOT put buffers/healers in the enemy team EVER. Khetar is a salient example where we have an enemy Alastair constantly buffing Armor (and of course its own Barrier), meaning that we can spend 5-10 minutes trying to charge spells and wait for the stars Skulls to align just so, only to watch Alastair shrug off all that damage in JUST ONE CAST. (One memorable battle I had ended in a stalemate between my Clockwork Sphinx vs. enemy The Silvermaiden, where literally neither of us could out-skull the other’s buffing ability, so after literally 40 minutes of trying I finally threw in the towel and forfeit. Of course, when I tried again I picked better targets and won in less than 5 minutes)
-
Similarly, DO NOT put any stat debuffers in the enemy team EVER. These invariably create stalemate situations where neither side can win, but only the player can lose. Sylvani in Pan’s Vale is a great example: at super high levels, one cast is probably sufficient to completely zero the Attack stat on one of your Troops – like getting Entangled only it’s permanent. (Yes, I know that stealing enemy stats is kind of a Wildfolk trademark – but please, be reasonable about which stats and how!)
-
AVOID enemy troops with “[Mana Color] Link” type traits. We’re already struggling enough to keep the enemy from casting as-is, letting them stack mana color bonuses to cast even faster only makes it worse.
-
AVOID enemy troops that are explicitly immune to the theme of the Trial (e.g. Fireproof enemies in Broken Spire, Insulated enemies in Glacial Peaks). It’s utterly counterproductive to ask the player to use something that literally can’t work beyond Tier 2 (if not Tier 1).
-
Summoners … can probably be left as-is, as long as it’s a standard, Magic-dependent summon (no same-level summons e.g. Stonesong Eyrie’s passive traits). That way, once we’ve managed to kill one Troop its replacement is always necessarily weaker. Of course, it also varies by what other effects the summoner performs, so this probably needs review on a per-team basis.
23 Likes
First off, this mode is completely broken. It’s not fun, the teams are bad, and the rate at which you earn pets to help is so obviously pay to win it’s gross. If you only get one pet per tier you’ll never get far without a purchase, particularly at these difficulty levels.
If I were to try to fix it, while having some semblance of the seemingly intended design, I’d start by allowing full freedom to create a team from that kingdom. Whatever troops you have you can use at their current level, dupes if desired. I’d also allow banner customization.
It would be preferable to allow the kingdom class to be used via a hero, but if we’re trying to have this be faction delves for the overworld I guess it is fine to restrict to troops.
I would up the rate at which pets are earned such that you gain pet levels at set points and can have a legendary pet going into the final tier to align with delves.
All that said, I also wouldn’t have released this in its current state. So bad. Khetar challenges are a travesty.
2 Likes
This is the best response so far! Lots of players feel the same. Some even left, got enough of this bullshit.
With all due respect, but if you want to teach game mechanics, use more than 4 troops, give choices, etc. Locking down to 4 troops that don’t even sync up correctly is not the way to go. New players won’t even spend time on these trials. Check stats, i bet they’ll confirm that.
It’s stunning that instead of making the game more enjoyable, it’s made worse with every update. People come here to chill, relax, have a good time. And they get stress because someone thought using exactly 4 teams is a good idea???
Are devs even playing this game??? Did they try to win this week’s epic trials???
I strongly suggest before launching features like this to make a damn poll and ask players about some feedback. Or, even better, launch it in preview mode for players over level 1500 - let them play a bit and they’ll give valuable feedback for 500gems. Roll new features, but don’t rush them. Think more than 5 seconds on them
2 Likes
My two cents: I don’t necessarily object to being stuck with 4 specific troops. I mind that the choices were so, so badly made, it’s almost unthinkable that worse choices could have been made.
With Khetar you forced players to use a skull spam team that can’t afford to go off, and has a pressing need to target the last troop which can realistically only be done with one troop. Mana blocking makes it worse. These picks are dreadful. It would be generous to say they were poorly thought out; I don’t think random picks from a hat could have been worse.
5 Likes