Trial Team Feedback

[MikeHermit]

The negatives matter far more than the positives. Make an event impossible for the player, and it will be nothing but negative. Even if, after the 23rd time, they beat Epic 1, they will be pissed that it took that long, not rewarding that they overcame such a difficult obstacle.

We aren’t even afforded a way to outthink the opposing team with strategy. Just luck. Luck that skulls don’t fall for the AI, luck that the AI doesn’t summon. Really, these are the only luck that matters. And the player has to be lucky nearly every turn.

It isn’t fun. That is the negative that needs to be fixed. Making it fun, that is the positive that the Devs need to focus on. Because . . . it is a game, not a chore, unless you make it one. People don’t play games for the chore.

[Slotharingia]

I have not read all the above posts, so I may be repeating. Sorry if that is the case.

1. Make epic trials doable for anyone who completed the previous challenges. Currently, they seem geared towards players who have everything at max, and even then they are stupid (why would you want to use the worst team imaginable when you have much better options at your disposal? And if you do want to do this, you can do it of your own volition in Explore mode). Everyone else is just meant to sit this out until they completed everything else in the game?
2. Let people build teams using any troop and weapon from the kingdom, using the related class - that would actually teach people something and be relevant to the rest of the game.
3. Restrict the above to troops under base mythic /no event related troops/ no doubles/only one legendary etc., though that’s still pretty stupid since why allow it in the rest of the game/have those troops at all, but if restriction is the name of the game, that suffices. There’s no valid reason to stuff people into a straight jacket of poor choices, forcing them to repeat something extremely unfun over and over with no class xp while hollering about reducing grind.
4. How about making us use the team from last week’s kingdom versus the current week’s instead of a rubbish team from the current kingdom versus a better and much higher level team from the current kingdom?

[Jonathan]

@gow

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.

This worked for me, ty.

[Dust_Angel]

Thinking about next week I tried a few Pan’s Vale trials on baby account.
Shaping up to be another splendid exercise in stupidity that can be affectionately nicknamed as “stalemate hell” - buckle up for epic trial battles of epic duration.

[MIXAH]

Here’s a wild and crazy thought…

Test the teams before you commit them to the trial.

Or just let us pick our own teams. I’d even say heroless is fine if we can pick from any of our inventory within the kingdom.

Next week for Pan’s vale, I have all the mythics. I should be allowed to use them.
Don’t need to elaborate more on what others have said.

[mitamata]

Cross-posting

@Fourdottwoone

Next week is Pan’s Vale kingdom event, with an even more toxic trial setup than Khetar:

Disregarding unsuccessful attempts, a succesful run (if even possible) will likely take hours of chipping away at 1000 health troops that constantly get topped up again by Faunessa. There’s no way to stall or counter, so the fun factor is bound to go through the roof.

Here’s a simple and easy to implement request, exchange teams. Move the team on the right side to the left, shove the roadkill over to the right. Thank you for preserving our sanity.

[Slotharingia]

This,again, looks terrible. We are we stuck with a troop that does extra damage to bosses without a boss on the opposing team. So we are meant to debuff them. Cool since we will likely be silenced half the time and they can debuff us back.

I don’t get it. These battles are described as teaching players something. What exactly? What NOT to do? To avoid kingdom specific teams at all costs due to the inevitable aversion acquired? I’m certain every one of us doesn’t need that lesson, as w’ve surely all come up with terrible teams that lose instantly or leave us stun-locked in endless battles - either due to lack of choice, because something sounded better in our heads, or because we didn’t check the opposing team before entering the battle.

[Rastafar]

You asked - What do we like?

I assume everyone likes the Starry Pet idea - the opportunity to make kingdom teams even stronger by giving them more bonuses. That’s a nice reward for higher level players.

Beyond - that - current trials system is not fun and extremely tedious, difficult and in many kingdoms, just unfairly balanced.

Enemy teams should not be be resistant/immune to the kingdom mechanic. That doesn;t show off or teach the player about the mechanic. Your team should have synergy and not mana block itself. For example in Khetar this week, Bone Dragon and Keeper of Souls - use same mana - so there is no quick way to charge up Keeper, whom you need at bottom to have any chance of surviving. And the friendly team should be given Alistar to show off triple skulls - not the enemy to tear us apart in a few skull hits.

“If you were building the teams for each Kingdom’s mechanics the way they’re described in game, what teams would you build for everyone to use?”

I woudl more likely build the enemy team - but even then, I would want my hero on the team so I could use weapons that may turn the tide - even if they are limited to the kingdom’s weapons. .

[Nrthrnlad]

For those saying that this only works for fully upgraded players: not really. I’m rounding to 1500 with most of my delves maxed and my kingdoms upgraded. My guild activates our guild buff bonuses every week. This system is still a cluster. I don’t have many stat buffs left to collect.

This new mode isn’t “bad for new players”. It is bad for everyone.

Curious, was this space created simply to allow us to vent, or will there be any response to our valid feedback?

[Starlite]

Some of this, from @xolid99 is spot on.

Introducing new game modes or changing existing ones is not going to keep people interested. Especially when they’re so horribly designed.

I hope there’s nothing else in the pipeline where you’re trying to fix or replace something that isn’t broken…

What we would like to see you do is fix the things that need fixing. With Steam showing a fall-off in players, the only way you can save the game is by doing some of the things we’ve been asking for since we saw them. Examples: 1) all the bugs from the chat revamp are still there; 2) the Guild Wars interface still looks like it was coded by a monkey, during non-GW weeks; 3) - 99) see all the old posts.

Make the game better, not more!

A TV set is not improved by adding a new channel. The TV set still has all the problems it had with just the old channels. To improve the TV set, you have to improve the On-Screen Display interface or fix the bug that makes the subtitles on SBS display out of sync – or whatever.

Trials

Trials are not fun. And from what I’ve seen, they fail to teach anything. If they were intended as a teaching tool, you need to go back to the drawing board.

You’ve said that Trials are here to stay, but sometimes it’s smart to recognise something is no good and throw it away.

I suspect that any change to Trials team selection is going to be a band-aid solution, at best. You really need to rethink what it was you were trying to achieve, whether that was worth doing, whether it was fun, and perhaps how you can go back to achieving the important purpose that was intended.

As for specifics…

You’ve dug yourselves this hole; it’s not going to be an easy one to get out of. But here’s some more-extreme ideas:

a) Set the player team restrictions in the same way you do for World Events: sometimes by kingdom, sometimes by role or type or colour. It’s enough for the enemy team to be restricted to the kingdom.

b) Reward players for using troops from the kingdom rather than forbidding or penalising them for using other troops. For example, multiply the kingdom’s pet bonus by the level of the trial.

c) Allow the class for that kingdom, but with any weapon. (Very obvious.)

d) Lock in three troop slots but allow us to use any troop in the fourth.

e) Make us the same level as our opponents (or half the level, or whatever). The logic being, if we’ve learned something, it won’t be too difficult, but if we’ve learned nothing, then the stakes are higher for messing up a move.

Which of these is right? I’m afraid you’ll have to do the hard work of testing them out to see what works and what doesn’t. That’s what you’re paid for.

Miscellaneous

Restricting trials to just one week is perhaps needlessly annoying. I deliberately didn’t do last week because I was waiting for someone to tell me you’d fixed the million Gems bug. But no-one did, so I forgot.

The rest is off-topic, but I think it is relevant because of what it exposes…

The last couple of times that Nimhain “revamped” a kingdom, she basically did exactly the opposite of what experienced players wanted from a kingdom revamp. This is very disturbing, because it reveals that she (and her team) are on a very different planet to the players. Unfortunately, this kind of inwards-looking “bubble” is very common in most jobs.

Why have players said they wanted kingdoms revamped? Because many of the troops are essentially useless in player teams. Players want troops to be more useful to them when building teams.

What did Nimhain do? She made the troops harder (or more annoying) for the player to defeat (in explore, etc), but in no way more useful in player-built teams.

We want troops that are useful to us, not troops that are useful to the AI.

Even more than that, every additional bit of randomness added to the game makes it less fun. The skill in Gems of War is in finding ways to make the game less random and more controllable by the player. When we lose this ability to apply our skill – when we lose control over the randomness – we get frustrated, and players stop playing.

Why is Lyrasza’s Lair rated as one of the hardest Pure Faction delves? Because defeating it feels like pure luck and very little skill. We really do hate that.

Sorry for the rant. I’ve been sitting on some of this stuff for months and years.

[Slotharingia]

@Nrthrnlad

For those saying that this only works for fully upgraded players: not really. …

I guess it’s some kind of optimism. The vague hope one may manage to do it with double stats.

[Nrthrnlad]

I have spent the last hour trying tactics shared here. They make sense. But it doesn’t matter. Even if I grind the opposing team to one troop, Magic AI RNG kicks in and they annihilate my team.

This needs to be reworked from the ground up.

Just troop/class/weapon restrict to kingdom and let us pick our teams.

WE DO NOT WANT ARENA MAXXXXXXX.

[MIXAH]

Exactly this.
I’m almost level 1600 and maxed out all stats currently available from kingdom power levels, delves, etc. My normal team scores are over 20k. All delves are done, and I’m “skilled enough” that I’m frequently paragon in a Bracket 1 GW guild.

The teams offered in this mode are absolute garbage and can only function as a learning tool as described on the battle screen “Oh hurrdy durr you have skull creators, so do skull damage” at a low to intermediate level. Even at level 100, these teams are absolute garbage. It’s almost as if the devs don’t know how to play their own game.

Even as someone who finished the Khetar trials yesterday - I will say this - THERE ARE NO STRATEGIES for this. It’s pure luck.

[sylverscale]

@MIXAH

It’s almost as if the devs don’t know how to play their own game.

What? No! No way!

[Boris]

I suggest that applying the appropriate Delve hoard bonuses, including potions, to the player team might be an appropriate fix. It would give no bonuses to new players, and make it much easier for the veterans.

[Just]

@sylverscale

@MIXAH

It’s almost as if the devs don’t know how to play their own game.

What? No! No way!

Of course, they know how to play their own game, they just don’t play because they simply don’t know how to build a functioning team.

[TheGrinch]

The goal of the trials, as stated, is to teach new players how the game works, right?
Well, how about then having different enemy team at every tier, with a different challenge? Also, what if there’s a choice of 8 troops instead of fixed 4? How about exposing the user what the enemy team is strong at and what build would work?

I would enjoy a nice challenge, but give me something to work with. And please stop with the luck bs. My KoS did not spawn 3 times in a row. They’re spawned almost every time. So clearly it’s not the same chance. I just hate builds and teams that can only be passed if you’re lucky. How’s that “learning”???

[WWDiver]

Why fix something that isn’t broken???
aka why make the challenges into what it is now? Challenges were fun and I enjoyed doing them.
Trials???
Don’t know how the regular are since I had the challenges done a long time ago already but I do know that the epic trials this week are totally unplayable … I managed the first two (barely) but the third is not winnable or you need to have a ****load of luck and even then I have my doubts.
So … now about that rebalancing …
Don’t know how you’re gonna rebalance something that can’t be rebalanced unless wiping out the monstrosity and start over …

[Tresk]

Good plan. If you are new to the game, do not play this mode. It will NOT teach you anything about the game, other than maybe what teams to NOT use for things. heh.

[Tresk]

Heya Kafka,

I already posted in this thread but I wanted to point out a very good example of one of the many problems with trials.

Take a look at the trial for Bright Forest. The hint for the poor unsuspecting and trusting newbies says to “inflict Faerie Fire to increase the damage they take from spells.” To (I guess ) drive home that point, one of the player’s 4 troops is Pixie.

Pixie’s spell does one thing. It casts faerie fire on a single target (plus extra turn). Now we will just ignore the fact that nobody who has ever actually played this game would ever waste a troop slot on a troop that only does that. For the sake of this example, we will pretend that isn’t just a terrible idea.

OK so we are armed with our faerie fire and ready to go! Except… 3 of the 4 enemy troops are immune to faerie fire. Well ok, one of them is not immune! Hmmm it’s the least scary enemy troop. That’s ok, it’s a mana generator, maybe we want to prioritize that. Except… it is STEALTHY! lol

So this means 1/4 of our team is essentially useless as anything other than frontline tanking. It’s marginally useful for that, but if the point of the trials is to teach the mechanics, why make the mechanic irrelevant in the battle?