McNum

...what?

I mean, +1 for capes, but still... What the fudge?

So the cat's out of the bag, the trials give rewards as a participation system that may or may not be malfunctioning and/or be very gameable and possibly encourage egoism on teams. That's not what this thread it about, that's over here.

This thread is for pie in the sky, no concerns for time, money, or manpower brainstorming of how the perfect participation system would be. Basically, if you were to make one of these from scratch, what you it look like? What would your system weigh as participating? How would rewards be given out?

As far as I see it, a good participation system must do the following:

• Reward teamwork
• Encourage completing the trial quickly
• Encourage people to do more than the bare minimum of the trial

What it should not do is reward behavior that makes the trial unnecessarily difficult or be a cause for animosity among the players. Meaning it should look "fair". This is not easy, as human behavior is random at best, there are a lot of ways to participate in a good way on a trial, and computers are bad at grading human behavior.

To kick things off, I'll go first:

A good participation system in my book considers two things:

• League Accomplishments
• Personal Accomplishments

The League Accomplishment is the baseline, so to speak. How well did the league perform on the sub-objectives of the trial? Did any prisoners escape? Did they get all the acid pickups? Did they go for style points and take out Marauder without grenades? How much time did they use? Basically, the more badge/Astral Merit worthy accomplishments the team does, the better the reward baseline is. So if you were in Master of... territory for a trial, there'd be rare drops at the end.

The Personal Accomplishments is a lot more difficult to do. Easy part is hitting things and doing damage. The mobs need to fall and it's certainly worth it help to do that, so "doing damage" is a good baseline to compare to here. Buffs and debuffs are more tricky as they aren't equal. I'd probably add a point value to each so they'd match up with doing damage for increasing accomplishments. You know, make powers weighted. Some buffs and debuffs are very potent, but are short lived, others last a long time. Ideally, the points would be gained for keeping the buffs and debuffs active, not from the casting itself. A balancing nightmare, but a fair nightmare, at least. I'd likely add a honey trap for being on follow, not moving and/or only using a power set to auto. That should tank your Personal Accomplishment.

And how does this make for a reward? You look at League Accomplishments first, setting the base rewards for the entire team. A speed run doing as little as possible, or a run that barely made it in time would be in the Common area, a team that got all sub-objectives done and finished in good time would be generally in the Rare area. Each trial would, of course, have things that add or subtract to this score. Prisoners escaping, Siege or Nightstar reviving, missed acids and grenades and so on would be negative.

Then we add or subtract Personal Accomplishments. If high, you'd get bumped up a category, if low you'd get bumped down one. If caught in the honey trap, you get the booby prize. To makes sure this is fair, I'd make participation unique per archetype. Scrappers and Stalkers get a bonus for attacking hard targets, Blasters and Brutes get a bonus for taking out a lot of weaker targets, buffers and debuffers get a bonus for maintaining their buffs or affecting enemies with debuffs, and crowd control types get bonuses for using their crowd control. Ideally, every single power should have a weighted participation value per archetype.

The reason for splitting it up like this, is to make sure that everyone plays to win the trials in a way that benefits the entire team. It's less likely to cause infighting as if you work against the trial for personal gain, you risk bumping the entire trial down a reward level. Meaning you get nothing out of it as you couldn't go up more than one level from the trial result, anyway. It does, however, acknowledge that some runs have MVPs, and they should get a little bonus for that. But you only ever get a Very Rare is the trial was not just completed, but utterly dominated and destroyed and you were a big part of making that happen. As in all objectives done fast or a Master Run (if they're not the same.)

Finally, I'd consider making at least the participation values viewable by the players. Just a "Low-mid-high" thing, perhaps with a progress meter next to it, both for personal and league values. Transparency is a good thing, it causes less FUD and speculation.

But this is only my idea, and I'd like to see what everyone else thinks would be good for a system like this. Except for "scrapping it". Again: that's over here.

TL:DR; What does your ideal participation system look like, and why?

And now I wonder why I took the time to write all this. Guess I care more than I thought.

D'aww. The Dark Side just got a little cuter. Smart kid, and her bowing to Vader was just perfect.

I wouldn't say no to a guaranteed stun on Repulsion Bomb or a low unresistable knockback portion to Force Bolt, but I can see why not, too. Forcefields is really good at what it does, it's just not that versatile. There are pretty much only two ways to mitigate that when you play one. Pool out and get some extra abilities, or hyper-specialize and go all out Defense buff. I chose hyper-specialization. Well that and the Medicine pool. Decent defense and Aid Self is another way to stay afloat.

I'm not sure I'd call the playstyle laid back, though. It's true that the 4 minute time on the bubbles gives some breathing room, but that's just more time to spot-heal, blast, use epic holds and so on. If people do die, there's also Vengeance, rezzes and re-bubbling the rezzed to consider. And that's for normal play, not when something needs to be caged or an area needs a Force Bubble. Sure it's not the frenzied blender style play a well built Scrapper provides, but it's still pretty busy.

As I see it, Forcefields is pretty much a buffer for mistakes. If a Blaster draws aggro from a full spawn, he'll die more often than not. With bubbles, he'll have 15 seconds to live. Easily enough to get them off him. This makes forcefields good on PuGs. Plus a brightly colored Dispersion Bubble is a great visual aid to see where you need to be.

Wait, the League members are green? I see them as cyan. Which includes the League Leader, even if he's on the same team as you. So Team colors override League colors except for the League Leader. Also, why can't I see him in my nav bar? It'd be useful to at least have the option of a colored star marking him when I'm not on his team. For that matter, why not a colored star for each team leader?

Since we're taking UI here, for the Lambda Trial, the "You got a Temporary Power!" float can easily get lost in all the other text floating around, but it's actually pretty important to know that. Could that info be added to the UI somewhere, perhaps in the objective window? You can target Marauder directly through it, so it'd be nice if there was a way to use a grenade or acid directly from the objective window, too.

Sound advice, as far as I can tell. Sure, it's always more fun to win, it practically always is. But failing a trial isn't a total loss. You get iXP and Threads, some times a lot of it. Plus you can learn from it. I did a Lambda and learned that we probably needed to use more Acids next time, for instance. It's the other way to play: Play to Learn. If you don't learn, you'll never win, or only on a fluke. So learn, get powerful, then crush the trials.

That and I'm actually amused by having some CoH content that puts up a tough fight. I'm so used to slapping a pair of forcefields on the team, keeping them in range and helping the defense capped team tear a path through anything that moves. It was easy and a little stupid. I can't do that on these trials, which is refreshing.

I'll probably be annoyed at the grind later. But not yet.

This one is just plain mean:

Yes, the only way up or down is that narrow staircase.

I just remembered something I do with practically every character along these lines. All my characters have a "nice" outfit. Formal clothes, if you will. Dresses, tuxedos, things like that. I tend to not do things that could get those outfits dirty. I know that they technically can't get dirty, but those outfits are pretty much non-combat only. I even toggle on Walk with them. No running, no getting dirty, no superpowered combat. Just walking, maybe flying, around. I usually use that in Wentworths.

So when that mission in the RWZ asks for you to dress up formally, I did. I do so on every character, too. I want more missions like that. It's so nice to have missions that aren't just wall to wall enemies. Social missions can be fun.

I got a Trick Archer who has a non-winged original costume and four winged ones. I try not to fly when she's in the original costume, but it's basically a full-body transformation going on. Her winged form is powered up, but it doesn't mean she isn't going to pull out a bow and cover you in oil, then set you on fire if you attack her in her base form.

I should probably get the Animal Pack and try out an even more birdlike costume for her, come to think of it.

You've played only melee types for seven years? I know just what you need: Storm Summoning.

It's fast, it's absolutely crazy and it's chaotic. It also requires a very keen sense of positioning if you want to play it well, but with seven years of melee, you know positioning, I'd wager. It does have a ton of knockback, but that's part of the fun. Just think where you're sending the victim and it'll be fine.

If you want something less mad, it's fine, but everyone should try Storm at least once.

I'm also a fan of Forcefields, but I don't think I'd recommend it as a first Defender to anyone. It's fun in its own way, but it basically caps out at level 22 and stays that way all the way to 50.

I got a few:

• Allows characters of any level to group together and still both be useful and get full rewards
• Allows you to fly anywhere - at level 14
• Where 10 on 1 is a fair fight, with you being the 1
• Where what you have is all still there when you log back in, nothing decays
• Where raids can be done by a pickup group, usually in less than an hour
• Lets you fight time traveling alien Nazis with giant robots in Ancient Rome (Yes, really!)

That is a pretty impressive list, though.

Come to think of it, the Freakshow. Do we ever defeat them, or at least get some kind of finale? I know the infamous Dreck mission in the parallel dimension, but is that it? There's also the Sister Psyche TF, of course, but that's an introduction, mostly.

Also, concerning Nemesis, I too think he's a bit overexposed. He's supposed to be Nemesis. Lord Nemesis to be exact. Whenever he or his troops show up, it's supposed to be big. Like the end of the RWZ arcs. "You may applaud my audacity." That's good Nemesis. I wish we had less smalltime Nemesis plots, and more giant plots. Okay, bonus points for the mind control railways, but that's a bit cartoony, even for him. Not everything should be a Nemesis plot, but when it turns out to be, it should be major.

Actually, if we're going to do something clever, have the Mysterious Letter Writer send us on one final mending in time: The moment where Nemesis becomes Silos. I want to see what made Nemesis become the master of time travel. It will tie into the Coming Storm, of course.