Cloudrest is similar to the Clockwork City's Asylum Sanctorium

themaddaedra

...in that it allows you to choose how difficult you want the final boss to be by either taking on or skipping its other bosses. However, unlike Asylum Sanctorium, Cloudrest has four bosses in total, making it more difficult and much longer to complete.

Now, are we happy about this? I mean i can't be the only one who did not hear any end-game trial guilds saying "oh, yes Asylum was a perfect idea and we want more like it!". In fact, i more like heard everyone complaining about it. It came out as kind of mini-trial but now it somehow became the new criteria? Is it normal to make an expansion trial based on an idea of a mini-trial?

Surely the new mechanics and how the new trial is going to feel remains to be seen, but it at the very moment seems like we are now repeating Asylum Sanctorium experience, which wasn't really amazing. We all just accepted it as a mini-trial and not the new criteria. When it first landed, we fought 3 bosses at once for almost an hour, then wipe at the execute, then repeat. Not even talking about bugs killing us hard, like poison cone hitting the most ridiculous areas. Now what? We gonna fight 4 bosses for like 2 hours and wipe at the execute and repeat? Is that how a hardmode should work?

This new idea of taking hardmode from final boss and merging it to the entire trial actually made people stop ESO. In my opinion, even though i will buy and play that trial hard, this direction is wrong as it goes.

Marabornwingrion

I hate Asylum because it's boring as hell. But Asylum came with DLC, so it's smaller content.

With Summerset we should get a trial as big as with previous chapter. I'm very disappointed that ZOS showed their laziness again.

Turelus

Not a fan of this choice personally. I like Asylum as its own thing, I don't want all the trials to go that way.

vHM+2 was just too punishing for good (can do vet HM content) but not great groups. Whilst the best guilds have cleared it all achievements many are still suffering and beating their heads against it without having much fun.

VaranisArano

Anyone else suspect that AS-style trials are just easier for ZOS to build, design, and balance?

BigBadVolk

Agreed a 100%, even with 2 bosses that boss fight is a cluster *** with the size of the area, cant imagine how much of a cluster *** will be this with four bosses, and overlapping green/yellow/red areas, it will be literally a disco fight
But seriously a big trial shouldnt be like this, vhof was nice it was balanced well with the amount of mob fight and boss fight mechanics meh from dps standpoint
But still intrested if they will repeat the mechanics too or go with a vmol kinda thing (I mostly mean zero resource drain mechanics mostly)

FlamingBeard

It's a terrible choice.

Even the guilds who can clear veteran Asylum Sanctorium hard mode consistently say that they don't really enjoy it much and just do it to get someone their skin or to try to get another Perfected inferno staff for their alts, instead of doing it to get scores or achievements.

Myself and most of my friends who have cleared vet HoF, vet MoL, etc have expressed less and less interest in Asylum hard mode as time passes since they know that only a few guilds have managed to clear it, and it's too much of a time-sink to do a progression in that place from scratch.

Why can't we have more genuinely-challenging (and FUN) trials in the likeness of Maw of Lorkhaj or Halls of Fabrication instead of the prohibitively artificially-difficult trial format of "throw a bunch of nearly-unavoidable damage at the raid group so that one person can screw up and wipe the entire group" style of raid?

This new "choose your own difficulty" format with "imperfected" items and no achievements worth getting unless you do the absolute HARDEST difficulty of the content is honestly not good.

Aliyavana

I like that they are fast for farming like nAS, but I can see why players want long trials like mol

Turelus

VaranisArano wrote: »

Anyone else suspect that AS-style trials are just easier for ZOS to build, design, and balance?

Possibly. I believe they've said they're happy with having the "three tiers" of normal (casual), veteran (good groups) hard mode (great groups) so maybe this will be how they do things going forwards.

I just hope Cloudrest HM isn't such a long slug and the trial has some other fights before the end. Even if it's set up like a normal trial but with the option to skip all bosses and go right to the final one with others as HM it feels a little weaker as a trial to me.

I want HM to be more interesting mechanics like the older trials, not just facing more bosses at once.

beetleklee

It seems like lazy design to me. Pretty disappointed, I was looking forward to the new trial. vAS+2 is a huge mess and not at all interesting of a "mechanic." It's annoying in a bad way, with AOEs up the wazoo.

I want more like the Twins fight. Interesting mechanics, it's hard at first but once you get good at it, it feels great. AS was an interesting idea and I was fine with it since it was a "mini" trial and I don't mind ZOS experimenting with stuff like that, but I hope this doesn't become the norm. I'd rather just do bosses one at a time and have HM last boss introduce harder mechanics.

I also didn't like how doing vAS+0 offers no better rewards than doing it on normal, except the purple overland gear but who really cares about that. vAS+1 is pointless except for a slightly higher score and practice. vAS+2 is a huge mess even for good groups.

I guess I'll form my final opinion when I do it, and hope the HM is more organized and has more interesting mechanics than the cluster**** that is vAS.

xaraan

AS was a fine thing to put out there as a one-off, but I don't want to see it become the new trial standard.

Shad0wfire99

Not happy. vAS is a world boss. Calling it a "trial" is a joke.

FlamingBeard

VaranisArano wrote: »

Anyone else suspect that AS-style trials are just easier for ZOS to build, design, and balance?

Yes, because it means that they don't have to plan for challenging but well-designed mob pulls like in MoL or HoF.

If all you need to do is make a cluster-f**k of AoE damage and even re-use previously-seen mechanics (St Felms), then suddenly every single trial you slap a pricetag on from that point can just be a slightly different version of the previous trial with different aesthetics and attack particles/animations (but with the same general idea of overwhelming the raid group with constant AoE spam so that you can claim your new trial is "difficult").

I sound very salty about this because I am extremely salty that only the same 50-ish people get to hog the vAS leaderboards with their alts every time it's the weekly trial and nobody wants to bring even experienced players on a skin achievement clear run without paying tens of millions of gold.

In my opinion, people like myself who are good enough to consistently clear vHoF and vMoL do not deserve such a huge brick wall in front of at least the collectible achievements.

Keep your stupid Perfected weapons behind hard modes; I don't care about my already-high magblade DPS getting any higher; but I want to look neat without having to farm gold for a month with no breaks or taking 5 months to find a group good (and patient) enough to clear some of the least interesting and most lazily-designed PvE content I've ever seen.

Anastian

I remember when trials (raids) were huge clashes between a group of brave souls and the endless armies of evil. In other MMOs, such contents involves a truly epic setting where you are saving the world or fighting the worst badass, with his host of evil minions. I am not entirely sure such a short content can deliver the same feeling of epicity: sure, I understand that having trials that last 1h or less are more "user friendly", but you are taking away from the overall feeling of a MMORPG which should primarily be a great experience, not merely content that provides loot, a small bit of a challenge and some place where to spend hours to learn mechanics that are close to being unfair.

I mean: look at vMA. It's still my favourite content (vMoL being close) because it feels like you are journeying through the madness of a Daedric Prince's mind. Did Asylum Sanctorium ever come close to conveying such a feeling? No, I'd say.

VaranisArano

FlamingBeard wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Anyone else suspect that AS-style trials are just easier for ZOS to build, design, and balance?

Yes, because it means that they don't have to plan for challenging but well-designed mob pulls like in MoL or HoF.

If all you need to do is make a cluster-f**k of AoE damage and even re-use previously-seen mechanics (St Felms), then suddenly every single trial you slap a pricetag on from that point can just be a slightly different version of the previous trial with different aesthetics and attack particles/animations (but with the same general idea of overwhelming the raid group with constant AoE spam so that you can claim your new trial is "difficult").

I sound very salty about this because I am extremely salty that only the same 50-ish people get to hog the vAS leaderboards with their alts every time it's the weekly trial and nobody wants to bring even experienced players on a skin achievement clear run without paying tens of millions of gold.

In my opinion, people like myself who are good enough to consistently clear vHoF and vMoL do not deserve such a huge brick wall in front of at least the collectible achievements.

Keep your stupid Perfected weapons behind hard modes; I don't care about my already-high magblade DPS getting any higher; but I want to look neat without having to farm gold for a month with no breaks or taking 5 months to find a group good (and patient) enough to clear some of the least interesting and most lazily-designed PvE content I've ever seen.

That's pretty much my thought on it.

Its a lazy easy way to balance a trial. You don't have to painstakingly test for balance, you let the groups running it balance it themselves by deciding how many bosses you can pull at once. As long as each added boss gets progressively harder and the All Bosses HM is still able to be accomplished by the top tier groups, boom, you're done.

Vaoh

The wording didn’t really say it would work the *exact* same as Asylum did.

I’m inclined to think it will be like AA/HRC/SO/MoL where there are adds between bosses. However, we will be allowed to skip fighting those bosses and take all 4 of them on at the end if we want.... aka “Hard Mode”.

That’s my guess at least. It could also be just like Asylum was.... a mini-trial Hopefully not.

BuddyAces

So basically they took the cheap route where they could also make something with as little time as possible. Heck, maybe I'm wrong and it's a well thought out trial but comparing anything to a.s is the biggest mistake this Dev team should do.

Nifty2g

I was hoping with this trial it would be something like Maw of Lorkhaj, not just random trach packs thrown in but Lorkhaj hands down is the best trial because even the track packs require some sort of strategy to do them effectively, it's not just stack and burn with the trash you actually have to do mini mechanics between them.

This is a disappointment because this type of trial just feels lazy compared to the usual, and how long was thing in the works for? A year? Why is it a mini like trial if it was at least a years worth of work.

So yeah, it's a let down for me, for what summerset is I really did expect an all out trial but instead we got a mini trial for a Chapter

Lynx7386

Personally I'm a huge fan of the asylum trial: it's short, quick, and there's no meaningless trash mobs to wade through. 90% of other trials are just killing trash that really gives you nothing worthwhile. I would much rather spend 20-40 minutes doing a trial like asylum and come out of it with a powerful weapon than spend 2-3 hours on other trials and get nothing worth my time.

There should be both types, however, because not all players like the same things.

Runefang

I was really hoping they wouldn't do this. I don't mind AS as a concept, mini-trails are a good idea but they're DLC level not Chapter level. I expect a new HoF or MoL frankly.

FlamingBeard

Morrowind got Halls of Fabrication, a full-fledged and well-designed trial. It's fun!

Asylum Sanctorium? None of the silver surfers I've talked to have mentioned "fun" and "vAS+2" in the same conversation as one another...

The people saying that Summerset doesn't have enough to constitute being priced as a Chapter just became more emboldened to say so due to what we've just learned about Cloudrest.

And I'm inclined to agree.

BigBadVolk

Vaoh wrote: »

The wording didn’t really say it would work the *exact* same as Asylum did.

I’m inclined to think it will be like AA/HRC/SO/MoL where there are adds between bosses. However, we will be allowed to skip fighting those bosses and take all 4 of them on at the end if we want.... aka “Hard Mode”.

That’s my guess at least. It could also be just like Asylum was.... a mini-trial Hopefully not.

Ye that would be better then AS, I would also add that instead of little bots that shield the boss instead at certain point (health percentage) the final boss retreats and on HM +1+2+3 one of the bosses appear as a kinda of wave while the boss heals himself up slowly ofcourse and when you defeat them or one of them they permanently die or smth like this could work and could be way less of a ***

FakeFox

So it will 15-20 minutes of the exact same 3 mechanics again? Great, can't wait to fall asleep.

Seriously, it's a okay idea for one small trial, but that's it. AS is fun for a few runs, but then it becomes insanely boring and frustrating. Multiple bosses with separate timers just become a complete cluster*** of overlapping mechanics. A hardmode should be hard because of complex mechanics that require a large amount of coordination and planing, not because there are so many random red circles on the floor that you can't even see what hits you. Trial design has become somewhat lazy with CWC. If you think about it vAS mechanics are nothing but different sized AOEs.

I really hope there will at least be trash, but even then the whole screwed concept of fighting all bosses together is still there. Having multiple short and fast paced encounters is what makes trials fun for me. It allows for so much planing on how you do each boss, how you stack the trash, what setups to play, how to make you build fit every encounter, etc. and that is what I play trails for.

FlamingBeard

Please at least exclude Asylum's "enraging" mini-boss mechanics from Cloudrest...

I like having to avoid damage strategically, not unavoidable RNG teleporting instant-kills because the overwhelming mechanics prevented DPS from burning a particular butthead mini-boss.

Dracane

I'm happy about it. Because I don't want to wait months, before zone chat random groups offer normal runs. I want to hear the story behind it and as soon as possible.

I personally like Asylum, because it's faster and I suppose Cloudrest will be significanlty harder to deal with.

FlamingBeard

Dracane wrote: »

I'm happy about it. Because I don't want to wait months, before zone chat random groups offer normal runs. I want to hear the story behind it and as soon as possible.

I personally like Asylum, because it's faster and I suppose Cloudrest will be significanlty harder to deal with.

It's not going to have a story quest if it's like Asylum Sanctorium.

I really hope they reconsider this format for Cloudrest and all trials made after it.

Saucy_Jack

FlamingBeard wrote: »

or to try to get another Perfected inferno staff for their alts

If you're switching to your alt, place your equipped perfected inferno staff in your bank. Now your alt can use it!

Huzzah, I just saved everyone having to do it over and over until they get another perfected inferno staff. You're welcome!

Dracane

FlamingBeard wrote: »

Dracane wrote: »

I'm happy about it. Because I don't want to wait months, before zone chat random groups offer normal runs. I want to hear the story behind it and as soon as possible.

I personally like Asylum, because it's faster and I suppose Cloudrest will be significanlty harder to deal with.

It's not going to have a story quest if it's like Asylum Sanctorium.

I really hope they reconsider this format for Cloudrest and all trials made after it.

Not a big quest, but at least some information and lore. I'm highly interested in everything I can get to know Doesn't have to be big.

MLGProPlayer

aliyavana wrote: »

I like that they are fast for farming like nAS, but I can see why players want long trials like mol

What's there to farm in nAS though? It's vAS HM that drops the perfected weapons.

MLGProPlayer

I'd like to see us get meaningful weapon drops from different types of content too. HM DLC dungeons, another arena, etc.

zaria

xaraan wrote: »

AS was a fine thing to put out there as a one-off, but I don't want to see it become the new trial standard.

Pretty much this, had we got another CWC expansion in an daeric real with an mini trial I would had no issue with it, not bundled with an chapter. or an standard and an mini trial at once. No complains.

Pink_Violinz

Seeing as vAS hm is the most boring trial concocted, I am super disappointed to hear this. So many of us were waiting for a new trial, and this is what we get. The only reason why I do vAS hm is for the skin, and I suspect this won't be different.