Hello guardians. Time for a feedback. Of course of Trials of Osiris. So, before I begin, I would like to say a few things and address some common comments I have seen going around the forum. If you care only about the feedback, feel free to go directly to the feedback portion. I am pretty new to the game. I started in October 2019. I liked the game until now. Not that I don't like it anymore. I still find the combat and gunplay fun, its just that I don't know where to use my guns. It is still a great game, except a pretty boring one. And let me tell you, I hardly get bored. I have played Warframe for 5 years, so it's sad that I am struggling to enjoy a game as vast as Destiny for more than 6 months. Now to answer the common responses - 1. [quote]"Get Good" or "Git Gud"[/quote] Lets just say, not everyone is born equal. People can have health issues due to which they may perform badly in a PvP game. People can have hardware problems that may stop them from performing like Frostbolt. Or people may not have the time to practice much to get to a level where they are good enough. Or, in case of Trials, people may not have a proper team, which is exactly my case. For me, I have improved quite a lot. I am still new, but I have successfully farmed every pinnacle PvP weapon, including the Not Forgotten(Not that it matters much). 2. [quote]Trials were always like this, even in D1.[/quote] Maybe. But that doesn't make it any good. If the current formula of Trials were good, they wouldn't have failed multiple times over the life of D1 and D2. With multiple soft reboots of Trials, it is pretty clear that it is not a good system, never has been. 3. [quote]Trials are pinnacle PvP activity. You don't get rewards in pinnacle PvE activities like raids if you do not complete them.[/quote] Now, this is a false statement. I have gotten Leviathan armor and GoS weapons without completing the raid. I did those halfway and still, it felt like it rewarded my time and effort. That is not the case with Trials. Let me also point out, that PvP and PvE are not the same. In terms of your opposing party, PvE activities can be learned over time and can eventually be beaten. PvP can never be learned, you can only learn to play better yourself to a point, but you can never learn your opponents as they keep changing. Even in real life, there is a concept of consolation prizes. And this is just a game. If people don't have fun and rewards, even if they are not the best rewards, people will leave, because again, its just a game. [u][b]Now that the above is out of the way, lets start with feedback.[/b][/u] 1. [quote]FIrst things first, lets look at numbers, as numbers usually don't lie.[/quote] I took screenshots of the total number of players in Trials each weekend after the Tuesday weekly reset, starting from the 2nd weekend. Mind you, this is the total number of players that played trials in that weekend, not the number of players playing at that point in time. 2nd Weekend - [spoiler] [url]https://i.imgur.com/rcPliuf.png[/url] [/spoiler] 3rd Weekend - [spoiler] [url]https://i.imgur.com/gmmhluP.png[/url] [/spoiler] 4th Weekend - [spoiler] [url]https://i.imgur.com/0AoQ0AQ.png[/url] [/spoiler] 5th Weekend - [spoiler] [url]https://i.imgur.com/spak3m5.png[/url] [/spoiler] As we can clearly see, Trials lost at least around 25-30% of its playerbase within a month of its over-hyped release(depending on the numbers on 1st weekend which I do not have). And if we project that the first weekend had around 500k players due to the hype, it becomes worse, as then, it has lost more than half its playerbase. And that is not healthy in any way you see it. 2. [quote]Lack of loot[/quote] Yes, lack of loot. No, I am not talking about lack of adept weapons or the lack of reward for losing. I am talking about lack of loot overall. We barely have any loot in trials. Aside from the armor set, we have ONLY 6 weapons, out of which, at least 2 weapons are not desirable archetypes by the majority(Rocket Launcher and Scout). Even if we include everything it has to offer, we have 11 pieces of gear for each class. Without repeating gears, it takes just 3 weekends for a pro player to obtain all loot if they go flawless each weekend. 3. [quote]Lack of loot for flawless players[/quote] Lets get this straight, pro players have no loot incentive to go flawless. They get absolutely nothing special for all the sweaty gameplays. No adept weapons, no permanent ornaments, nothing. As a matter of fact, its worse for players that go flawless since it dilutes their loot pool which I will discuss later in the post. 4. [quote]Lack of loot for non-flawless players[/quote] Or you could say, lack of methods to obtain the loot. Why was it necessary to lock the engrams behind 3 wins every single week? I can understand it being locked for the first time as it won't have any loot in it until you unlock something. But once you unlock, for example, the scout rifle in the 1st week, you should at least be able to cash in the token in the 2nd weekend even without winning the 3 matches, just to get the Scout rifle. Although I must say that the token-engram system is pretty terrible on its own, but at least it should not have been locked behind 3 wins. 5. [quote]Token Farming[/quote] Oh boy, what do I say about this. This is probably the biggest reason for that huge decline in playerbase. Please do something about this. This problem is made worse by the fact that the more someone goes up the ladder, the more their loot pool dilutes. It is much more efficient to just wait for Eye of Sol to come back at 3 wins and farm it than to dilute your loot pool by going up to 7 wins to unlock it. I hope Bungie understands the concept. And I have seen many people say just increase token gain at higher levels. The thing is, if the token gain is not exponential at higher levels, then it wouldn't matter. Because it would still be much efficient to play against a pool of average players than to go to higher levels and play much harder matches. 6. [quote]CHEATERS[/quote] Please for the love of Cayde-6, do something with the cheaters. Nothing much to say here. [u][b]So, Trials is flawed, much like most of my passages. Now what?[/b][/u] Well, lets fix it. 1. Bungie needs to acknowledge the whole problem and not just part of it. I get it that it is a pinnacle PvP activity, but it is still a game. And not even a competitive tournament at that. So, reward everyone. Yes, rewards can differ, but everyone should get something. 2. BIG ONE - Fix the token farming problem. If you take my suggestion, remove the token system and re-introduce the weapon bounty system. Or at the very least, increase token gain at later levels exponentially. For example, if I can get 1 engram worth of tokens from winning the first 3 matches, people should get at least 5 engrams worth of tokens for making it to 7 wins. 3. Add flawless loot. Yes, add adept weapons. Add armor with glow that changes color for being flawless. Add masterworked high roll armors to the flawless chest. People who go flawless deserve that. 4. Remove reward lock Everyone will not be good at PvP. But people should be rewarded for trying and for keeping them motivated. Getting good is not a motivation for the majority of the players. Getting loot is though. 5. Cheaters. Again, please spend some money on a better anti-cheat. Clearly, your existing anti-cheat isn't working, even if you have one that is. [quote]And if Bungie is feeling generous, this is what the new Trials should have been, in my opinion.[/quote] 1. Add adept weapons and special glow color and ornaments for flawless. The regular armors will also have a glow, but it will be a static color glow, say blue or white. Once someone goes flawless, they will get the ability to change the glow color to their choice and also add flawless ornaments to the armor. For now, adept weapons would suffice. 2. Rewards at 1st, 3rd and 6th match. Then it is ok to lock loot behind 1st win. 3. There should be only one type of card which can be modified using modifiers like mercy and others. 4. Do not let players reset their card once they go flawless that weekend. (Don't react, read ahead) 5. [quote]This is IMPORTANT [/quote] The essence of trials, as I understand it, is to help or block the passage to the lighthouse. So, flawless players should be able to play the 7th match repeatedly, thus helping or blocking the passage for players that have won the first 6 matches. After every few carries or blocks, say 5 consecutive carries or blocks, they get another flawless reward and for every carry or block, they get tokens. And modifiers like mercy or confidence can be applied to this 7th game as well. What this will achieve is that it will reduce paid carries and cheaters from matches 1-6 to a large extent, thus letting a majority of the players enjoy the game mode up until their 7th game, the final test for them. And that's it. I hope you guys had a good read. And I also hope it reaches Cozmo, dmg04, and the developers and they work on it.