Lemur Lad

You need to make a character. After that, E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G is optional not compulsory.

I agree wholeheartedly with this. A pick up group of strangers or even people who aren't prepared to be your buddy and stick with you is not to be taken lightly. "On the internet no one knows you're a dog" has a lot of meanings, but in this case it means, no one on a trial has a way to know you need help or special consideration. You very literally jumped into the deep end of the pool, and somehow are surprised it took your breath away.

Friends who you have played with before will alleviate that. First because they can help and be accomodating, and second because there's less weight of embarrassment.

You felt judged, and that amped up your stress level to a point you weren't functional. There's no room for your brain to learn in that kind of situation.

All that being said, I think you can learn to have fun even in trials. You just need to figure out what your ground rules are.

I don't think it's as simple as some people are cut out for trials and some aren't. There's also people who want to be part of the learning curve for a server and those who don't (or can't). It may be better for you to not jump into the newest and shiniest trial when people are still figuring it out.

A big part of the chaos you saw was not because everyone knew what they were doing, but because people are still figuring out the best way to do things. If you'd had a buddy and both of you were clear on what you were going to do for each other, your experience could have been a lot smoother. Same goes if everyone around you is on the same page about the plan.

If you ever try a trial again, go with friends. Go with a trusted league lead who can clearly announce the plan and keep everyone mostly in line. Lastly, use the tools the game gives you to help keep the amount of chaos you see manageable.

By which I mean, have your minimap open so you see where people are going. Use your waypoints so you have a sense of direction about where to go. Either set your Follow Buddy as your waypoint, or put them in a Focus Group (a feature of the league interface) so you're not hunting for them in a sea of names in order to target them. Also, be prepared to move windows around so you can follow instructions, and see needed text.

Lastly, find a way to limit your input about who to listen to and what to worry about. You weren't sure what to do that would be helpful so you were trying to track all the events in the Trial and it overstimulated you.

In the end, you know best how to help yourself. I was just trying to give you a few game related tips to make dealing with the interface and the nature of groups easier. I hope you feel up to trying again someday, and you can feel free to contact me ingame if there are questions I can answer.

I'm not implying victimhood. I'm implying prioritization and patience. For a long time it was Either/Or (raiding OR solo friendly) now for the next while, it's going to be a mix of both. I waited patiently and greatly enjoyed the solo friendlier stuff, and I'm enjoying the raids now.

I'm not trying to knock down the people who are unhappy, just trying to get them to put things in perspective. I don't really understand what there is to be unhappy about, when you look at things from an even slightly expanded point of view, that doesn't rely on the obviously false premise that raids are bad and they're the only thing the devs are gonna add from now until the end of time.

I don't hold much stock in any segment of the player population who feels their needs are somehow the most important. I don't even think the people who waited a long time for raids are more important. I just feel that patience and foresight based on hindsight will get you a LOT closer to happiness than getting all mad and bothered about recent additions that aren't your cup of tea.

I don't buy the point that I somehow look worse for responding to overwrought hyperbole with a bit of impatience. People have a right to be bothered, but the price of that right is they need to accept the emotions provoked in others. If they want to have a reasoned and reasonable discussion I'm all for it. If they need to have multiple threads with the same complaints in different words all across the forums, I'm not sure I need to be particularly tolerant of their selfishness.

Good pick! I love the way the TF plays out even if, I end up with a disconnect when I step out into an intact Skyway after the TF. The whole TF is fun and involved and fast paced without being redundant or over involved.

Neither did he. He said content, it was very clear.

I'm pretty sure his point was, if the devs are working on both new content and iTrials, the OP has not much to complain about, and I agree.

The assertion that unless it's the Weekly or an iTrial it doesn't get run is frankly hogwash. That's the underpinning of most of the original post and it's patently untrue.

Want soloable incarnate level stuff? Great. Get in line, but don't be yet another person trying to say the whole game is going to hell in a handbasket because people who haven't had much to do with their 50s for the last 7 years are having fun giving them an airing for a few months.

Hate to tell you this, but it's always been this way. Generally anyone sidekicked beyond 5 levels isn't contributing a whole lot to the success of the group, most of the time. Sure, every little bit helps, but sidekicks are just that, sidekicks.

Don't hate on incarnate powers for making that difference more obvious.

wasnt talking about real money. was talking about the Emp merit unlock.

No you don't. Lots of auras from boosters are available at level 1, and with the new Vendors you can buy an unlock for Capes or Auras usable by any character.

And I understand that End Game means different things to different people, and not just trials. However there's a tendency among game developers (not just our's) to go after low hanging fruit. In this case that has meant they're making some raiding/trial content because it's one of the biggest holes in remaining in what this game has to offer.

The lack of it has actually driven away quite a few players over the years. People who like that sort of thing have tended to head to greener pastures. I'm happy to say I've seen a few of them come back lately.

It's a good thing to have a well rounded game, even if it takes a while to get to it. I'm not opposed to a robust endgame system for all types of players. It's the demanding insistence that it all be delivered now, and on a stick, with glitter, that gets unreasonable.

It never would. I don't take the forums personally except in the most extreme cases of personal attack, and this definitely doesn't qualify.

That, and you're not a Forcefield MM who goes AFK right on the ambush spawn point in a BAF with Force Bubble on. Those people get 1 starred and can die in a fire.

And I wasn't particularly happy waiting years for more raid type things, but I didn't break out the pitchforks and torches all over the forums about it. Sorry it bugs you more than me.

Bill you and I have talked enough that I know you know that development can be glacial at times. I still like you and respect you even though we disagree on what that means for the Incarnate system. But I think this is gonna be one of those times where waiting is the only option. At least until we see what the Paragon Market has in store.

Sorry to disagree, but this is a contrived explanation Pacur. The new stuff is tied to the new trials because they're the assets they completed and decided to add to this system. That's all, and it's not any more involved than that.

However they did concede the kind of mistake they made with Vanguard and the RWZ and they made most of these new shinies unlock account wide so that people would only have to do the trials enough times to get the credits once, instead of once for each character.

It's simple. The devs come up with a theme park event system they want people to play, and they tie shinies to it. In this case though they've learned from their mistakes and don't expect people to jump the hurdle in perpetuity.

Ultimately we agree that new assets should be tied to new content. However there doesn't need to be a mumbo jumbo explanation that doesn't satisfy most people. It's a matter of economics, and not much more than that.

You wait for the next round of non trial stuff. Just like people who like big group raids/trials had to wait for years for something they liked.

Acting like everything from now on forever and ever is gonna be related to this feature and locked behind a wall you're unwilling to climb is shortsighted at best, moronic at worst.

Really helps to surround yourself and keep in touch with people who don't like to do the same things over and over. I run with a lot of different people on Pinnacle (looks like a several of them have posted in this thread). I keep track of the ones I get along with and we end up doing a wide variety of things on a given week.

Sure we tend to gravitate toward some of the popular options for a given week, but even so we do our best to change things up with different team mixes and alts.

The game is as boring and repetitive as you LET it be. Running the same thing more than once is only boring if you fixate on 'omg this is the Xth time I've done this'

Sorry your tolerances for fun and variety are such that you're 'done' with a fun new TF like Mortimer Kal after only 3 times. I think that has more to do with your mindset as a player than it does with this game, because the game really does have more to offer when you don't put the entire onus for fun on the game itself.

"most" ? "exclusively" ? Bad way to start your premise with such a gross inaccuracy.

About 1/3 of my playtime is taken up by trials, that's recruiting included. Last night I ran the Usurper arc with a friend, helped 2 other friends get Portal Jockey, and ran some tips on my lowbie Cold Defender.

I get a pretty good handle on what's going on on the server because I'm nearly always watching PinnBadges with half an eye. Even on a day like Patch day, Trials are barely over half the things happening.

Do they take up a lot of people during prime time? yup, but they're by no means the only thing people are doing.

I don't find this to be the case at all, especially since they added the Notice -> 40 Threads conversion. There's been a slightly smaller inclination for people to do annoying WSTs, but during the Kahn week, there were 3-15 runs forming in the channel pretty much every day (rough estimate based on the hours I was online epanded over the entire day).

Every game on earth gets repetitive and boring once you're familiar with it.

As for the rest, despite what you say, you're not being forced. Your options are limited, and this is a downside of an incremental introduction, but you always have the option of not participating and doing other things you find more fun until such time as they do get to adding more variety.

Basically, the devs learned their lessons about over introducing content without incremental feedback when the game came out. They need player information and feedback to make better things as the system expands, or we end up with moribund content like Boomtown and the Shadow Shards.

The downside to that development plan is your choices as a player are limited until they have time to expand the system. If that's not to your liking you can wait patiently like people who enjoy the raids had to wait for years to get some things they like to do.

PS- without any insight into your team building methods, I find your anecdote about forming WST groups to be completely inaccurate and not at all similar to my experience or the experiences of many other people I know. I find your broad generalizations to be unreliable at best, misleading at worst.

Nope. non50s can't claim the pieces. That's how they kept them to 50 only, instead of recoding the Tailor.

And this trial involves most characters in the other aspects, so what's the problem? Really no need to nitpick one detail out of the entire trial and ramp things up in your head so badly that the entire thing hinges on this one ability, because it JUST. AIN'T. SO.

And really, out of a trial of 24 people it's not at all unrealistic to expect a couple people with some sort of Ally heal, or for melee types to take the self heals in their armor sets, which most of them have.

Just like things go a lot more smoothly in a BAF where tanking ATs are smart enough to watch their sequester rings, and there are a couple controlly types to make Prisoner escapes go easier, Keyes has a few points that are really smoothed over by some heals.

Totally not the same thing as relying on healers, and I kind of resent your hysterics making it sound like it does.