1. #1

    Great Trials Game in an awful package

    Hey there,

    after playing for a few hours and reading through a few threads here, I think I'm done with this game for now.

    I had a bad feeling when the beta came out. The whole game gave the vibe of a mobile game and it seems that it only got worse between the beta and the final product.

    First off, the gameplay itself is awesome as ever. I play the series since HD. I'm everything but a pro. I only finished one extreme track once (!!!) and that was the pinnacle of my "career". What I'm trying to say is, I like riding the trials tracks of the Trials Series. I'm a decent average rider, I'd say.

    Now, in Rising I'm at level 46 and the game just stopped for me. I can't unlock any harder tracks than "medium". I finished most tracks on gold and I have no idea at what level more tracks are supposed to be unlocked.

    The contracts give like 200XP per race and some stickers and cosmetic item nobody needs or wants. The contracts that actually give a decent amount of XP are borderline impossible for me. In order to fulfil a contract I have to beat another rider, which is chosen randomly I guess, who is like 25 seconds faster than me? Is that supposed to motivate me or do the devs have some weird masochistic fetish?

    And the cherry on top is, that if you do the contracts you pretty much destined to loose the race. And you have to sit through some idiotic animation of some random avatars. And as of right now, there are like three different (if not three than it's not much more) items in each category, so everybody looks the f*ing same and has the same animation.

    In any case, I'm not willing to grind this stupid contracts over and over again in order to get a higher level. Those contracts are simply not fun. Seriously? Do 15x frontflips and backflip 8x with no fault on a helium? Just unlock the hard track as soon as I have finished all medium tracks. Boom. Done. Progression!

    If I can't finish a track, I have at least a reason to try over and over again in order to unlock the next one. You know, like in every other game in like forever. Do you think a Mario game would be fun if you had to grind world-1 like 20 times just to earn enough coins and buy yourself a ticket to the next world? No! It wouldn't.

    So basically I paid 40€ for a mobile game that locks it's content behind some stupid boring mobile free-to-play mechanic. And they doesn't even have the decency to allow me to pay my way to the next levels. Not that I would do that!!!

    Unfortunately I also live in a country where refunds are not an option, so I'm stuck with this mess now.

    @RedLynx: What is your suggestion? Will you implement an non-grindy way to unlock all the tracks? You know, the ones I paid for. So no in app purchases or bs like that.

    I like to decide for myself how I want to spend my time. I'm a grown up and can totally do that. No need to force me to do the same thing a 100 times because ... I don't even know why anyone would ever do such a thing.

    And I'd love to see this "stadium finals" gone I think. I say "I think" because I don't know if they are optional or not. It seems like they are not. But, they are very annoying events and have nothing to do with trials tracks anyways.

    Just to round this up. Here are a few more things that make the package to a great mechanical game so awful (to me):

    Lootboxes
    Why are they in the game?
    Why can't I skip the animation?
    Why so many duplicates? For real! From my experience, at least 50% are duplicates. I had the same thing twice in the same lootbox a few times.
    I'm sitting on like 20 boxes right now and I have no intention to open them. You somehow managed to make an addicting mechanic so tedious that I don't even want the rewards from it. *slowclap*

    Map
    Why a map? Because every Ubisoft game has to have a map?
    The map is (as in Ubisoft tradition) cluttered with stuff and searching & selecting anything is unnecessary slow. And as I said, I only have unlocked a few medium tracks. So roughly half I would guess.
    It's also constantly blinking with information I don't care about. Why are you telling me, that there is a record on a track that is like 15 seconds faster than me? The whole thing is extremely distracting. Everything is screaming for attention. Everything is "important". Even the things that are not on the map, are on the map with this stupid floating icons on the edges. If you need a crutch like that, you should probably think about, if your original medium for presenting information is the correct choice.

    Track Central
    Can't say much about this because it doesn't load anything. Well it did once, but since then the tracklist is empty. I got tired after a few minutes and left.

    Performance
    I play on the Xbox One X. Usually a pretty quiet machine. For some reason Trials Rising makes the fan blow all the time. Especially when anything with network is going on. Which is pretty much all the time. Even if the game is in the background the fan blows. And I know it's the game, because two seconds after quitting the game the whole system is silent.

    What the hell are you doing? Mining bitcoin? This is a serious problem! I fear for the well beeing of my hardware.

    Music
    Not my cup of tea. But I found the slider to mute it. :-)

    Multiplayer
    Who thought it would be a good idea to force-feed us this competition aspect? I mean leaderboards okay, but this current implementation is just a vehicle to "excuse" your loot boxes, isn't it? I mean I always drive against 1 extremely slower and 2 much faster riders. Which in turn means, that even if I finish a track in a decent pace for me, I get mocked at the end because I didn't win. And I can't even watch the replay of the winning rider if I wanted.
    Besides that. Everything takes a very long time because the game has to find and load other players data. Show it to me and at the end show some silly animation and all that stuff. You could however just let me play the damn track. Without loading anything from your servers, you know. The things that assumingly run on toasters in your office kitchen.

    The good parts
    I don't want to come around as too angry. ;-) So here are the things that are good:

    * The tracks are absolute top-notch as usual
    * The handling of the bikes is good as always
    * The mini games are a nice little distraction. But why are they locked behind an XP wall?
    * The tutorials are a good addition, even though I don't understand why even those are behind the XP wall? Why is the next lesson not unlocked when I finish the one before?

    I really hope this grinding thing get's fixed. Everything else I can live with, but not grind. Life has too much to offer to waste it on sh*t like that.
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  2. #2

    Well said.

    I am in complete agreement. Feels like you missed out on mentioning the atrocious loading time for tracks in single player. The only thing that makes me want to beat my head on a wall worse that that is dealing with Ubisoft support. I have exchanged quite a few messages with them. At first they seemed helpful, then the seemed like they were just replying without reading the case notes... now it’s out right obvious they have no idea what is going on with the glitches and the stadium final tracks not unlocking. At this point I feel like they are total jokers.

    This is definitely the most memorable Trials game in the worst way. Atleast I only bought the $20 version or I would be twice as mad!
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  3. #3

    Absolutely!! I fully agree

    I have been playing trials since HD as well. And you hit the nail right on the head! i don't like how the game does not unlock hard maps when medium is complete and i don't like how skills games and university is all locked up as well.

    I think they have done a lot of the locking to make people play more and give them more time to entice you to make micro transactions for store items. But the store is so bugged right now i wont be spending any money on this game.

    You gave a solid review and feedback lets hope they listen!
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  4. #4
    Ollusc's Avatar Junior Member
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    100% agreement here. I just want to unlock the harder tracks as normal. Having to win the awful stadium finals to have a go at technical extreme tracks is absurd. They are two total different types of event.

    The whole career is a hot mess.
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  5. #5
    The entire loot box and XP leveling which is the root of so many gamer complaints is all unnecessary. The game doesn't need XP at all. Here's how:

    + Your leaderboard position could be your "level", showed prominently in the UI instead of hidden in your stats page (perhaps only shown if your position is better than 50% or whatever, so it wouldn't look depressing for new players).
    + Contracts and tracks could reward gold bolts and blue acorns like they do now (remember no XP), and then all cosmetics could be bought direct from the Store with those currencies. The contracts would become 100% optional then, which is fine since there's a ton of content in the game anyway (almost twice as many tracks as Fusion!) Contracts would be purely a source of replay value and a route to more cosmetics, not a progression requirement.
    + The later tracks could be unlocked by medal count, like in earlier games, and the University events and Skill Games gated the same way.
    + No leveling means no lootboxes needed. The only loss to players is fewer gold bolts from scrapping dupes, so just adjust the economy of Store prices or Contract rewards accordingly.

    Gamers would have been happier, it would have been easier to develop, and they wouldn't have received so much negative buzz from early user reviews upset about the progression and the presence of lootboxes (even if they are benign) that it shows as Mixed in Steam, so it likely would have sold more too.

    The map is a mess too, and while the filters are useful it only serves to remind what a mess it is to begin with.

    It all kind of feels like the two studios had two roles: one did the tracks and one did everything else, and that team had too many people so they came up with all this busy-work that unfortunately had the end result of making the game worse.
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  6. #6
    @Scruffy

    I agree

    It's the whole lack of context behind the xp system and loot boxes have in the game. And, the whole racing festival skill game backdrop and sponsors; very strong whiff's of the game needing a proper story to it, cue Forza Horizon or The Crew. The game definitely knows it's own identity in what it is and does gameplay wise, but doesn't know how package the rest to the same effect... so copy something else. Does it want to be a straight racer or give rpg racer elements so there's definitely a very strong whiff of different design ideas there. It reminds me of Ea telling Free Radical that the main character in Timesplitters 3 had to look like Vin Diesel just because it was cool at the time.

    If it was to more rpg at least give us a bike creator. As I've said in another thread, being able to different attchments to the bike's which then effect it's physic whilst giving visaul feed back and context as to why the bike is acting a certain way.

    I think the map screen would've been fine had a lot more of the world been used instead cluttering the same areas. I'd have loved to have seen places like Mexico, The Andes, Antartica. Africa, Australia... wheelie up the Sydney Opera house..
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  7. #7
    Originally Posted by Vort1gon Go to original post
    I think the map screen would've been fine had a lot more of the world been used instead cluttering the same areas. I'd have loved to have seen places like Mexico, The Andes, Antartica. Africa, Australia... wheelie up the Sydney Opera house..
    I assume the southern hemisphere will be for the expansions.

    I disagree about having items to affect the bikes physics. It could make designing tracks harder, and nullify leaderboards
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  8. #8
    DCAustin007's Avatar Member
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    FULLY AGREE;

    Ubisoft / Redlynx, please add a way to unlock all tracks, I'm in the same boat as the author here, and do not know what I need to do next.

    Also, can you please add an option to OPEN ALL LOOTBOXES AT ONCE. Thanks.

    This game needs help, it's not too late to salvage it. Please.
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  9. #9
    Originally Posted by DCAustin007 Go to original post
    Ubisoft / Redlynx, please add a way to unlock all tracks, I'm in the same boat as the author here, and do not know what I need to do next.
    Check if you've done all the Skill Games and University events, that's probably some good XP. There's probably some easy Contracts there too. Buy the Helium and Donkey, and get the free sponsor from Uplay, that will unlock a ton of Contracts. Do the "beat this track with this bike" Contracts for easy XP and gameplay variety, and try to do some 5K ones too. There's a KTM sponsor too, I don't forget how to unlock that, maybe you need to beat a particular Stadium Finals event? Anyway, you should have ton of of easy to beat Contracts.
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  10. #10
    Yeah, the 2nd dlc goes for the Southern Hemisphere, can be seen in game store description

    But things which effect the bikes physics are already in the game though. For example,, Bike runs at 150%, Gravity at 110% are set as requirements for some contracts. The tracks are already designed for it so there's no stepping out from what isn't already there; there is just no on screen visual representation/context for it as there was in Fusion.

    All I'm saying is give these effects something which is visually tangible and let the player choose to gain more xp if they wish. You can choose your bike..

    In regard Leaderboards. There's Ubisoft contract on Alcatraz where the bike runs at 150%, can get a ridiculously quick time if it can be controlled. However I'm not sure if that registers on the leaderboards or not, will have to check. If it doesn't register then adding custom stuff to your bike would worj in the same way and nullify your time. It makes it an optional way to make xp and have fun.

    As Isaid in the other thread.. I'd love to see a pizza carrier on the Donkey.. and do a level with out dropping any.. bit of fun and not out of context.
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