Junior Member
Hello!
I've been playing Trials Rising for a couple of weeks now (played the open beta and bought the game the day it came out), so I have a decent grasp on how it works.
First the good stuff:
The feeling, steering and gameplay is as enjoyable (or maybe even more so) than previous Trials games. It looks great, has lots of interesting stuff going on in the background, and has some very impressive set pieces. The sound is good too, and the music is better than the other Trials games. All in all, I have nothing to complain about when it comes to gameplay, graphics, sound etc.
The bad stuff:
The progression system. It's not fun having to race against others all the time. It's definitely not fun feeling like you're losing all the time, even though you're doing decent races. Trials Evolution did this a LOT better. It made it much more compelling trying over and over again to beat a track.
I don't think it's just the thing about racing against others. Trials Rising seems to be working AGAINST you all the time, which takes a lot of fun out of playing.
I'm almost tired of the game already, at level 65 and after a couple of weeks of playing. Trials Evolution stayed fun for several months, and it's not because of the gameplay (which is even better in Trials Rising), the graphics (also better), the sounds (also better), the tracks or the setpieces.
The thing that makes it lose the fun factor is the progression system. It feels like it's in your way and like it's put there to make you NOT progress. I can't quite put my finger on exactly what it is, but my educated guess (I'm a game developer myself) is that it relies too heavily on negative reinforcement rather than positive. Negative reinforcement has for a long time been known to work worse (on most people) than positive reinforcement, and IMO it's a mistake to build a progression system on negative reinforcement rather than encouragement.
All in all, Trials Rising does most things right, but the progression system makes me want to stop playing the game almost immediately. Where in Trials Evolution I would play for hours and hours, trying to get those records, I find myself playing Trials Rising for pretty short periods of time before I get annoyed and quit.
While one could say that it's just because I'm bad at the game, I'd say I'm a pretty decent Trials player (I've finished most Trials Evolutiuon tracks on silver or gold, including the extreme tracks), so I don't think that's the issue here.
I want to like this game, and in most ways I do, but the progression system is so offputting that it's making me not want to play the game.
Senior Member
Hi frep73,
The progression system in rising is definitely upsetting a large number of players and like you say seems to just hinder people's progression rather than encourage it. The stadium/stadium finals are the worst for disencouragement because once you have completed one and go back to play it again it suddenly places you against the very top players making it almost impossible to win and what's worse is that if you don't win then it won't save the time you got even if its your fastest time so the only way to improve your time is to beat the top guy in the world.
I managed to push past the tedious progression to get all the tracks unlocked and now I am able to play the game fairly normally just picking tracks and improving my times (except for the stadiums they can wait until they are patched). It's a shame that a lot of people will miss out on a great game because most will give up early due to the tedious progression, it seems you need to actually complete the game before you can play it.
Hopefully we won't have to wait too long for an update, I know redlynx will be working on fixing this although we haven't heard anything from them yet.
