A great game hidden behind a tedious grind | Forums

[FizzDFG]

You are missing it's a Ubisoft game.

[dreampage]

I'll try to illustrate the problem.
I think it's one that a lot of people are having.

I want to play Trials.

I don't want to play skill games, I don't want to do 15 frontflips and wheelie 40 meters. I don't care about online multi-player. Thank goodness the shambles that was FMX has been removed (small mercies and that).

I just want to play trials.

Here's the problem - I have now got a gold medal in every single available track.

The absolute only way for me to make actual meaningful progress are to do these stupid, boring challenges or maybe do the boring stadium finals:

This is my map now:





and my stats - 80 out of 80 golds.



You'll see the Spanish Stadium is locked out and I have to grind out 6 more levels to get it.

If I am unable to do those Red Bull contracts that's it....end of game unless I replay tracks over and over and over and over again.

The only thing I can equate it to is if you play Sonic The Hedgehog on the Mega Drive but you were forced to get all of the Chaos Emeralds to get to the later levels.

(Thanks for the suggestion for buying the helium. I haven't purchased it yet because I didn't know I had to in order to make progress with the core game of Trials. Another dunderheaded decision. Just unlock it for us because I've missed this and I'm certain other people will as well.).

Bottom line - if you get gold in all of the 'leagues' you should be able to progress in the game.

The XP level requirements are just completely arbitray, non-sensical and essentially force you to stop playing Trials in order to play Trials.

I'm currently at the same position as you, only a little bit higher (level 75). Today I played an hour and literally couldn't progress meaningfully towards the next level. The remaining few contracts are just too hard for me to complete, ridiculous goals. Replaying tracks only pay 100 XP / run. I'm stuck. Whoever designed the career progression misjudged the math by a mile.

[IImayneII]

did you buy the helium and donkey? it gives you more contracts.

[ixbrandon]

did you buy the helium and donkey? it gives you more contracts.

I think you're missing the point where we just want more tracks unlocked as we complete them, rather than all these silly contracts that reward minimum xp to progress further.

[les_zep1]

I'm currently at the same position as you, only a little bit higher (level 75). Today I played an hour and literally couldn't progress meaningfully towards the next level. The remaining few contracts are just too hard for me to complete, ridiculous goals. Replaying tracks only pay 100 XP / run. I'm stuck. Whoever designed the career progression misjudged the math by a mile.

I did an update post under that one!

I've basically gone from a roadblock in the 70s to a bigger roadblock in the 80s.

Progression lives or dies by your ability to complete contracts and not on your core skills in Trials. That is absolute madness.

I think I could platinum medal 20 more tracks and I would still struggle to unlock the extreme tracks at this point. I can't be bothered to do the maths on it but I would have to get a lot to get through the next five levels on medals alone.

Is it so hard for the developers to address this crippling design flaw on some way?

Personally I would fully respect it if they came out and said 'guys. We admit it. We have f**ked up'

Here are 4 quick ways you can fix this needless pain:

1. Make the unlock total the sum of all xp you get from getting a gold medal on all the tracks available to you.

2. make platinum medals worth loads of XP so they are worth getting early.

3. unlock everything if you graduate the university of trials with a minium of an A in every section.


Or most obviously....

4. Just unlock the next tracks if you've completed the previous league tracks. This seems so obvious it's incredible I have to write it down.

That's 4 ways you can change the game to stop pissing everyone off.

I simply cannot understand why you have denied the tracks you have created to people behind these absurd, arbitrary self imposed walls you have put up.

Yes I am pissed off because for me the extremes and above are where my interest lies and I'm annoyed that I have to go through this rubbish to get there.

However, I'm more pissed off on behalf of other people who can't do the contracts and as such their game has basically ended with a whimper.

[Euler13]

@IImayneII: I bought the Helium and I've done all the contracts available. To be honest I can't be bothered doing a load of similar contracts using the Donkey. This is not why I bought the new Trials game.

So with the exception of one contract, which I can't do: 17 seconds of inverted airtime and catch up some insanely fast rider, I've run out of contracts. Nothing left to do. No way to progress (other than Donkey contacts). What now?


(The two silvers are from two of the skills games I didn't have the patience to grind to gold, but that's not going to get me to level 58, which appears to be the next unlocking stage.)

I just want to start playing Hard and Extreme tracks!

This is ridiculous. Has anyone else had this problem?

[igrvks]

I am currently roadblocked somewhere between levels 70 and 80 and to be honest I am finding it really hard to find motivation to grind these circus trick challenges just to unlock more levels that actually give me any challenge. Up to this point I have a minimum of 0 fault gold on every single track aside from the latest set of hard tracks, which I just ran through quickly last night to see their layout, still getting gold for all of them first try though. I even got a regional top 10 time on one hard difficulty track without even trying, I just copied the leaders line for a platinum time.

I just find it astonishing that Redlynx made the decision (or it was made for them) of including this progression system of mindless grinding with random variables, but then the XP rewards make absolutely no sense. Like mentioned previously in this thread, getting 5400 XP for a relatively straightforward no lean challenge but 350 XP for a platinum time on a hard difficulty track is a absolute joke.

Getting 0 faults? No XP reward. Getting a variable XP reward calculated by how much did you beat the ghost or contract par time? Keep dreaming. Additional XP for completing a "less than X faults" way under the limit? No way. Even getting squirrels only give you a 2000 XP bonus after collecting 10 of them, making it more efficient to grind those ridiculous Fox contracts that give you like a 200 XP a pop, normally not even making them worth your time.

Either the entire XP system needs a massive rebalance or alternatively common sense could win and players should unlock next set of levels automatically after getting all golds in a league.

As a fellow Finn I would like to quote our former President Kekkonen to the Redlynx team about this unbalanced mess of a progression system.

Saatanan tunarit!

[Iron__Golem]

Totally agree, I have just hit lvl 56, I have done most contracts but there's just a few like 12 flips and beat a player on lights camera action, spent around 30 mins trying to do it then my patience ran out, now I'm stuck I've just unlocked the red bull contracts but I don't wanna do no lean stuff but I'm forced to, it makes no sense, I would say I'm an average player I have mostly completed every trials track since HD bar the few dodgy extreme tracks on the fusion dlc and the fact I'm now locked out unless I do these tedious contracts makes no sense at all, I have never been a ubisoft fan, the day they acquired red lynx was a sad day for me and I thought fusion was as bad as it was gonna get but they have out did themselves with rising, it's such a shame because level design and gameplay is some of the best, but locking you out of tracks because you don't have enough xp, the fact the ghost system is a joke and also it's been a week now and still no communication from redlynx and in this day and age that is not acceptable

[dreampage]

At this point I don't want to hear the word "contracts" anymore. Who on Earth designed this? Why do I have to make these idiotic goals, doing 8 backflips and 11 front flips or whatever, and still win the race without releasing the gas, to even remotely have a chance of unloking more tracks? I could even not care about Extreme tracks but there are still a bunch of Hard ones that are not on the map because I can't unlock the damned stadium to finally progress. No, I simply can't do levels "without leaning" for Red Bull because it's bloody hard on one hand, and has nothing in common with the spirit of the game on the other. Also, buying the Helium gave me a bunch of 500-1000 XP contracts which, at this level (75) don't really matter, they just annoy me.

I think the natural progression would be this: complete all the levels (any medal) in a series in order to unlock the stadium and that's all. Contracts give you more XP should you want to get more gear crates. Otherwise, just complete the tracks and enjoy. But this contract system is outrageous. I can't really progress even 1-2 levels now, let alone all that's needed for the damned stadium. Why did they have to grindwall the later tracks?

[JaminBen007]

Look on the bright side. The second you unlock the extreme tracks you never have to do another contract ever again. The whole fame “xp” system becomes irrelevant. I haven’t done a contract since.