Snow Globe

Do you live outside of Canada/USA/Europe?

I've been the leader for these runs. I've tried instructing people, pleading with them, calling out the beams for those that couldn't watch the timer. None of that worked. So, this weekend, I started telling people to go sit in the hospital. Guess what? It worked. I did most this weekend with 8-10 players out during the final battle.

For the last two, I followed Arcanaville's suggestion to have only 3-4 players out (neither of us, or the other two chosen were happy about it). It was a bit of a fluke that I asked people to go to the hospital late so they stayed out of the way. Several did go the the hospital though allowing us room to move & see the pathetic excuse for a warning beam (a fuzzy, half-visible disk isn't a good warning).

If would be fair to say that I had some very well known players on this league (especially if you've been on Triumph):
Arcanaville, Blondeshell, Emerald Fusion, Tamaki Revolution, Sayaki, Taryn, Vanden, Fireflyte. I also had players that weren't as well known (if you are reading this and you were on the team, I don't think any less of you than the above players).

Nearly every run had someone that didn't know how this trial was done. I had to turn away plenty of people over the last month to keep the teams small. I couldn't get a stable, consistent team over the last month.

I've had several of these teams try to coordinate enough to get the bunker buster badge, yet nearly every time something happened to fail the badge (most often was not reading instructions). Given that I couldn't choose who I had (ie. I don't have a super group of 24 players to choose from), I did the best I could.

I'm not depressed. I'm absolutely furious. This trial (the badges and the mechanics) is the most poorly designed piece of garbage I've played in this game.

It wasn't a Master of Keyes by any means. It was only one badge (though one point we tried to do Bunker Buster). It was the 9th time I did Keyes this weekend to try for the Green Stuff badge (it was too awkward to try for it and Loves a Challenge), and I've been doing between 4-9 every weekend this last month for Keyes. I've decided to take a break for a couple weeks before pushing for the last badge (Loves a Challenge).

Tonight I turned away a lot of players after the 16th because I didn't want to risk the badge. Actually I didn't even want that many, but I felt bad enough that I went with 16 tonight anyway. I'm extremely ticked off that I had to turn people away. On any other trial or task force I have the policy of "Everyone is welcome no matter what skill level you are and bring whatever you want to have fun." I don't usually turn anyone away unless the league is full. I couldn't with this. I can't with the Lambda badges.

To me the purpose of this GAME is to have fun. That means everyone I'm teamed with should be having fun too. Telling them they have to go to the hospital or that I can't take them because I want to cut down the variables lessens my fun.

I can say with certainty that players didn't have fun on this. They might be happy with getting the badge, but I can say that most of the 16 players didn't think much of the strategy.

Well, I helped a league get the Green Stuff badge on Triumph.

I'm not happy about how it had to be done.

I dealt with the "unknowns" by sending them to the hospital.

Most of the league was told to stay in the hospital and pretty much have the heavy hitters beat on AM. Only I was a bit late telling people to go to the hospital so a few more than I expected stayed out.

Two players stayed away from the main fight but attracted the Obliteration beam more than not. Only 1 of those got into Line of Sight of AM and got targeted with disintegration once.

So, yeah. We did it. I don't consider this badge to be anywhere near the term "fun". It wasn't fun as a leader asking players to sit on the sideline. It wasn't fun for those that were in the hospital. It wasn't fun for those of us battling AM.

I'm glad I wasn't one of those people. Then again, I wasn't in that (Issue 9) closed beta either.

Nope, still not enough. Though that macro-level fail got a chuckle out of me.

Oh, you mean a thread full of "picture not found"? Wow, great job.

Additionally, 99.99% of the players couldn't do that, so who really cares?

I really hope they aren't thinking those will be the top sellers when people will have to pay real money to get. I don't think there is enough face palm in the world to express my thoughts if the marketing team did think these will continue to be bought when this goes live.

I feel the need to introduce you to the human race... You don't seem to be familiar with the species' tendencies to take the easiest path. You don't get people that don't like the harder trials to do them by making the "easier" trials more difficult. All that would accomplish is to get those players to stop running the trials that are now more difficult.

It is about to get worse. The Underground is far more straight forward, it takes longer, and it is an extended escort mission. Even with all that and the difficulty at the end of it, the Underground will be played far more often than Keyes. Oh and the Underground will also get 2 Empyrean Merits for completing it too, so Keyes will have direct competition for the extra merits.

The Keyes trial sucks on many levels. It sucks on several levels:

• Pointless gimmicks (Entanglement).
• Artificial time goals (the last phase originally was 15 minutes in pre-beta, and still had fails).
• Irritating mechanics (Pulse damage).
• Overwhelming players with information (constant text flashes desensitizes players to important warnings).
• Not providing adequate warnings for things that -do- matter (Obliteration Beam).
• Obfuscated animations due to all the player effects (Disintegration Beam).
• Actively showing players that the game will kill them without giving them an opportunity to defend themselves. (Combine any two: Obliteration Beam, Disintegration Beam, Time Stop).

It all adds up to a textbook case of what NOT to do as a game designer.

I don't think you really know this game's players that well.

It might be that I have to beg for 20-30 minutes across 5 channels to get a pug-keyes of at least 12 players going vs logging on and getting on a BAF. It is worse if I'm trying to get a badge run going. I've had people tell me that they aren't going to do Keyes every after they have done it a few times.

If I was told I could only run an ITF or Cuda, I would run an ITF every single time. ITFs are fun, Cudas are not. The same thought process happens with a choice between BAF/Lambda and Keyes. Keyes trials are not fun for me. I'm willing to do them because I want the badges, but I'd rather do anything else but a Keyes. Once I get the badges, I'll probably do BAF/Lambda/Underground/anything ELSE except Keyes.

You've done a bit more than I have. I'm around 350 trials total. Not counting some trials I did in April (sorting through herostats and log files from April still), I've currently got records for (as of last night) 154 BAFs, 133 Lambdas, and 32 Keyes.

Exactly.

Congratulations. How many people in the league?

After the last month doing 25+ Keyes for the master badge, I've yet to have the exact same team more than twice.

Bull. If you don't have access to the same 12 players, and a lot of those that hate VOIP, it gets far more difficult than you thing.

Can't really ask that of a PUG. And if the only option is a PUG, the players are hooped.

We've had runs like that. We've also had pets do whatever they want to. We even did Anti-Antimatter with 3% health remaining.

Vent or any voice communications shouldn't be a requirement for anything in a game that doesn't include voice communication.

This is a MMO, not a bloody First Person Shooter or Real Time Strategy. If you want difficult, play one of those. If you want work instead of playing a game, that is what real life is for.

I'm glad you have a close circle of consistent players to do what you did. Not everyone on every server can say the same.

Well, tomorrow I'll try out my "brutal" popmenu test. 36 main options (a-z 0-9) with 36 suboptions (a-z 0-9) each. The file is 1,408 lines long.

Essentially asking for BAF and Lambda to be made as difficult as Keyes is asking for a nerf.

So instead of making Keyes something people would want to do, you want to make less people do BAF or Lambda as well.

I think that is the dumbest thing I've read on these forums in my entire time visiting them.

And they are able to be done solo how?

Threads don't randomly drop outside of the incarnate trials.

Yes, you can get a single slot to Tier 4 (after you've unlocked it) after only a short 384 weeks (over 7 years).

Here is a revised table:


It includes 1,200 extra points for the Going Rogue: Complete Retail's extra month.

Edit:
Btw, the Grand Total is a bit off because it effectively buys Going Rogue: Complete Collection twice. It is there to illustrate the total difference between the Market and the NCsoft Store.

So what are you willing to give up so that more people will consider it "fun" to run it?

Keeping it the way it is seems to be a losing battle because you will not get players to participate in the trial by keeping it the way it is.

I've never seen anyone even care, except if they are being disintegrated at the time. As such the entanglements could be removed and release any server cycles devoted to maintaining them to make the player experience better.

If it isn't doing its job then it is wasting server resources.

They have had almost a year at this point. Complaints about the time stop have been made since Keyes was introduced to Close Beta last November. I think calling this "the drop of the hat" has a lost opportunity. Had the complaints been first made in June, I might have accepted that, but not now.

Yet not bright enough to think about the implications of killing players with disintegration while the players are being held with either the time stop or the hold from the obliteration beam. Then adding badges for not getting killed or avoiding a beam that has a 30' radius (I think, may be more) and hoping that 11-23 other people are capable of doing the same.

The developers trying to address (stop the leak) the situation (bad trial):


Yeah, and when Arcana starts tossing around phrases like "the devs should assume most players think it sucks donkey balls." They should realize that they've seriously have missed the mark and go back to the drawing board.

A single extra merit will not make this trial fun. Arcana has already said that a lot of my suggestions wouldn't make the trial fun, but they would likely get more players to actually DO the trial than a single Empyrean Merit.

The sad thing is that even if they see a few percentage increase in Keyes runs that some players and the developers will consider this a "win".

It won't be.

Server side is harder to judge unless it has to do with Microsoft.

Oh, the grid is still off by at least 1px x 1px.

He's using JQuery.

Yeah. However, it would be impossible to get Avoids the Green Stuff badge though.

But seriously, just how much evidence do we need that Anti-Matter is a Mary Sue? The amount of gimmicks in this trial is bordering on the ludicrous. It is like they took a dozen pages out of Grimtooth's Dungeon and tried to get as many deathtraps in the trial.