Hi, brand new to the forums here. So a couple days ago, we got the new ordeal system. Challenges we can do to earn this new currency called "ordeals", which we use to buy entries in the research senter and in turn get rewards. On paper, that sounds great and pretty straight forward, the execution though leaves something to be desired. I will mainly go over the PvE side of the ordeals as I don't play the pvp and really don't have an interest to do so, aside from maybe doing the final achievements. So lets get started:

Generally, most of the challenges related to PvE can be done either in the operations mode or you could farm through the story mode, that's fine. However, some akin to the pvp ones, are too reliant on luck or very specific circumstances. Here is an example: Neurothrope Grounder. This challenge require you to kill this terminus enemy in the pve mode while it is on the ground. Doesn't sound too bad right? just damage it a bit, wait for the aoe blast and boom, should count. nope, not at all. You see, when it does that attack it is near the ground. only after shooting or hitting it with a couple melee attacks will it stop hovering a few inches above the ground and land on the ground. yup, that is how you have to do it. Again, doesn't sound that difficult, well that is until you remember that attack is not its most prominent move, honing energy blasts and beams are. Then do it on a lower difficulty? tried that, dies too quickly with a random team, so you have to try solo and here comes the final point of on the challenge being not well designed. spawn rate: as we know, all the tyranid missions except for decapitation, has the chance to spawn a terminus enemy. with the tyranids, if one spawns, there is a 50/50 chance it will either be a Neurothrope or a Carnifex. I think the point has been made here, it is very luck and circumstance based; how would i change it? change it from "on the ground" to "close to the ground", that would give it a bit more of a success rate.

Next up on ordeals were 2 are doable and one is nearly impossible; grab escape. lictor one is easy, you can literally farm this through on of the Tactical trials, the ravener, can take a little longer, but is doable since it does try to pin you here and there. Then there is the terminator one. I gonna be honest, i think i have only been pined once or twice, across the campaign and the chaos ops. This one is akin to the N-thrope one. you need the terminator with the bolt pistol to spawn, not soulreaper. why? because the one with the pistol is the only one that can actually pin you down, now add this with the fact that the spawn rate is random, even on higher difficulties. you could try to do this in the campaign mode, sure could work, but i don't remember what mission they spawn in and i have to hope that the ai teammates don't kill or knock it off me before i can complete the escape bar, that can make it a bit tedious and annoying. 

(small tid bit, can at some point a setting be added to change what prompt you use to escape a grab? I play on console and don't want to cause my controller to suffer drift stick because of a design choice i think isn't that good. a button prompt would be much better honestly. anyway, back to it)

The final PvE ordeal I will mention, has to be "your mine is mine". I have tried to knock back mines, seen them hit enemies, low diff, higher diff, not a single point of progression. It is a challenge that I don't think is remotely possible to do and it should be quite easy with the bugged spore mine spawn rate after the update. I honestly think it should be change to either destroy spore mines or make them do more damage on knock back to get kills. or maybe remove it all together and disperse the 7 ordeals you can get from it to other challenges that a much more doable.

I used three challenges here as examples and we are done on that front. I have technically touched on the difficulty side a little bit, but generally, the hardest once has to be in the pvp category. if you have already seen them, you know what I'm talking about. the difficulty is absurd for some of them and too reliant on luck as well as an enemy team that are low skill players. the play matches is fine, that you can do over the course of a couple days and some will occur naturally. I don't think I need to touch more on that.

Now, onto the final parts time investment and reward. It is no secret that as it stands (if my math is correct, feel free to correct incase I made a counting mistake) , you can currently earn 707 ordeals from all the current challenges. Categories reward in following order; Titus's story - 27, operations (pve) - 150, eternal war (pvp) - 166, combat squad (pve) - 148, extermination - 98, extermis and terminus targets - 92, collection - 26. Then there is the cost of how many ordeals do you need for each category for the research center to get their respective rewards: Adeptus Astartes - 171, forces of the imperium - 171, Tyranids - 180 (including the new Biovore enemy), Forces of chaos - 153. In total, you need 675 ordeals out of the earnable 707, with each entry costing 9 ordeals each. Now here comes another issue, say you only want to do pve, you lose out on 166 from the pvp, meaning you can get 509. Lets subtract again, this time the terminator challenge and the spore mine challenge, now you are down to 495 and if we were to also subtract the N-thrope challenge (which lets be honest is way to specific about its trigger conditions, but with time, effort and a whole lot of luck, it can be done, but shouldn't be feeling like it is impossible), you are left with 488. So lets just go with the 495 shall we? what can you fulfil with this amount? you can complete the adeptus, imperium and chaos. you have just enough to do exactly those three and have to do the ones you have already invested in. Also, did you catch something? You would think the pve players are screwed on this, in actuality by only doing pve, you can as said do three out of the 4. for the pvp side, those that only wanna play the pvp and engage with it, they don't get enough ordeals to complete as single one of the research categories.

so that brings us to this: with the amount of time and luck needed here, either you go all in or opt out to do what you enjoy and have fun with. IMO, as the system currently is, i will grind what i can and not bother with the pvp, terminator escape or spore mines knock back, that wouldn't be fun. a hope is that with the horde mode coming out, along with prestige ranks, more ordeals will be added that allow you to obtain all the rewards without having to play or do stuff you won't enjoy.

Now that we have gone through all that, what are some improvements that can be done? an exchange system could work as an example (its already here with armory date trade for higher value ones and for requisition points). I saw someone come with the idea (don't remember where i saw it), mention that an exchange system where you trade requisition coins for ordeals. here is my take for that; 100 R points = 10 ordeals. trade in say, 2000 R coins for 200 ordeals. a fair trade and it allows a player to have more fun playing, not so much worrying about completing  challenges. the challenges can still be there to get those points for free, but they could use a boost in reward like instead of 1, 3, 5 make it 3, 6, 10 or even triple the amount they currently offer.

The point of this post is not to bash the developers or make it so that only one side of the playerbase gets to have fun. the system is still new, still fresh and with good constrictive feedback, we could see some good changes. Thank you for taking the time to read all the way through, this is pretty much a manifesto of a post. If you have any feedback, ideas or thoughts, feel free to leave a comment.

For now Brothers and Sisters, venture out, purge the xenos and punish the heretics. For the Imperium, for the Emperor.