baron_inferno

And it's working now... how? The only thing that the LFG tool has accomplished thus far is dumping a few extra players into existing pre-formed trials. It has failed to supplant the need to pre-form trial leagues due to its inherent flaws. This isn't just some hypothesis either. People have done testing with it since the moment i20 was launched. I have tried it myself and the result were less than adequate.

What you're asking people to do is to basically respect and accept a broken tool/system that is barely functional. That's is neither a valid or reasonable request.

I know it's somewhat of a cliche but true leadership is determined during times of hardship. Translated to MMO terms, it is when things start to go wrong. With Lambda, one such example could be the team ran out of grenades (due to D/Cs, not enough DPS or otherwise) and the leader may have to direct certain players to go destroy the extra crate spawns. For BAF it could mean directing people to turn off turrets if fighting at helipad gets ugly or if the league needs to change to chokepoint method to deal with the runner phase should door coverage prove to be inadaquete. While it is true that some enterprising league members can recognize the need themselves and will attempt to rectify it without instruction, having an undisputed leader certainly would cut down on the confusion if things don't play out that way.

Conversely, cobbling a league together from the LFG queue reminds me of the old saying "too many chiefs and not enough Indians". On one hand you could end up with a dozen leadership types, all with their own preferences as to how the trial should be run. The rest of the trial would just involve ceaseless disagreements over where to pull NS/Siege to, door or chokepoint, who should handle ambushes, so on and so forth. On the other you could wind up with a dozen completely clueless people, none of whom actually wants to lead the trial. The blind following the blind if you will. As I've already said before, too many unknown variables.

Well, maybe leagues won't actually advertise for specific ATs but they do advertise for specific functions. If my league is melee heavy and has no debuffers/buffers, I would advertise for it. Whether it is Corr, Defender, Troller or MM is of no concern. Additionally, if my league is full of Blasters and other ranged ATs, I would advertise for some melee types whether it is Scrapper, Brutes or Tankers. Now I do concede that there is no need for a "perfect" league to beat these trials but discovering the weakness of your league and trying to find a remedy is still the most responsible thing to do.

That's Pavlovian response for you. Some people have been involuntarily conditioned to automatically reject anything that resembles a "raid" in any MMO. It does not matter how the actual raid itself is structured or designed, the fact that it feel like a raid is enough for them to rail against it without mercy. Maybe it was due to previous unpleasant experiences with raids. Or perhaps it was due to the fact that they weren't able to participate in them before due to time/playstyle constraints. Who knows.

How can raiding in other MMOs not be relevant to this discussion? Most of the complaints about trial/raids have been along the lines of accusing CoX of becoming a raid based MMO like most of the other ones out there (again, a total falsehood). The comparisons between CoX and *other* MMOs have already been done from the very first post in each and every one of these threads. You can't have it both ways.

One of the best movies... ever..

Having actually done those types of grueling raids on many occasions before, I believe your analogy is inaccurate. If you must cast raids in a negative light, a better analogy would be:

Raids/trials in CoX = Being poked with a tree branch.
Raids in other MMOs = Getting skewered by a wooden stake.

As I've already explained in previous posts, the reason why players are using a central meeting point for these trials is because relying entirely on the LFG queue to form league teams is not a realistic option at this time. More of often than not you will be placed in under strength/sized teams with baffling AT composition. Remember, the LFG tool does not care about your AT, power sets or level shift. It only cares about how much time has elapsed before it decides to dump everyone in the existing queue (whether it is 8, 10, 12, etc) into a league and hope for the best. Such a random system introduces far too many unknown variables into the equation. To be honest, if we aren't forced to launch the trial via the LFG queue tab, I would bypass it entirely.

I assume you're referring to my very first post in this thread so I shall respond.

What should I do instead? When I originally set up the league and recruited the players who actually *bothered* to make it to Pocket D (as if that's somehow a chore), there was no way of knowing how many people would join from the LFG queue is there? Should I tell the whole league to just twiddle their thumbs after we've already entered the trial while I re-arrange the teams? So in actuality, letting the queuers stay is simply not good enough. No, I actually need to re-adjust the whole original league of 16 in order to accommodate the extras. Do you even realize asking for league leaders to do that will actually have the exact opposite effect of encouraging them to just boot the queuers and be done with the extra hassle?

Tell you what, when you have the league star, you can run it how you like. I'm already taking the time and responsibility of setting up the leagues (often back-to-back) because many others won't, now you wish to place more burdens on top? This might come as a surprise but like the queuers, I am also here to play a game and to actually enjoy the process. If I have to lead them so be it since I don't mind it. However, I am *not* here to play micromanage-a-league as that is not fun for me. I swear, you give a yard and next they want the whole effing mile.

Edit: I see some people arguing for equal rights to trial as well as fair treatment for the LFG queuers but there is something else that is quite absent. What about the rights of those who went to Pocket D to pre-form the trials? When I lead 16 player BAFs, I advertise it exactly as such in broadcast. Everyone who joins the league has the expectation of potentially better end reward, better iexp distribution, a bit more challenge and perhaps in the process, more fun. And now because of 1 or 2 LFG queuers, the whole formula has to be tossed out of the window in order to appease their needs. Did I somehow inherit the role of a babysitter that has to coddle everyone in the league just because I have the star? So let's say if I do spread out the teams and as a result, the original 15 are dissatisfied since their expectations of better iexp distribution is no longer being met. Just who is the dick for wanting to put the league leader in such a no-win situation? That's not asking for fairness or equal rights, that's asking for preferential treatment.

Frankly, if LFG queuers want equal treatment, come to Pocket D like everyone else and I guarantee that they will get it, at least from me. I don't turn down invite requests unless the league is critically short on something. That is the reality of how "fairness" operates in CoX when it comes to grouping and there, I finally said the very thing that undoubtedly has already crossed the minds of some people in this thread.

Yes, much. Thank you.

And might I add that I didn't think her... assets... could be emphasized even more than it was during the BAF cut scene. Boy was I wrong.

Would've been better if it was a picture of mother mayhem.

This thread is going to get locked soon....

Therein lies the problem. The "forming league" function of the LFG queue is simply not useful right now and it certainly isn't doing everything it is advertised to do. Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't gathering a large group of players together for the purpose of completing a trial the purpose of the tool? In fact, it is my opinion that by introducing the LFG tool, the devs in effect attempted to eliminate the need of having a central gathering place to find leagues for these trials. Yet, if we truly relied solely on the LFG tool to build the trial league, we'd often end up with 12 people without a semblance of balance in AT composition what so ever. I have tried it when i20 first came out and I was thrown into 10-14 player BAF leagues without either debuffer, buffer, or even tankers/brutes. Needless to say everyone quit right off the bat and I never went back to using it. Probably never will in its current form.

This is especially an area of concern now that the devs have came out and commented on *some* of the specifics behind the participation system and how it affects end rewards. If I recall correctly, league performance is one such criteria. If people continue to use the LFG tool to form ineffective leagues, wouldn't the resulting poor performance make the trial not really worth running in the first place? The logic also applies to pre-formed leagues with the additional extras tossed in. If you have a solid league in place, why would you introduce some unknowns into the equation which may, or may not, affect your own reward?

Now, due to these existing deficiencies in the LFG tool, many people have found the need to gather at a central location to form leagues once more. In that respect, the LFG tool has completely failed in at least one part of its original intended purpose. You can not force players (the vast majority I might add) who chose to ignore a tool that is obviously broken into accepting the few who actually decides to utilize it.

Doubtful. Even if BAF reverts back to its state prior to last week's patch/fix, there will still be some time dilation when you run it with 24. Remember that the BAF lag (particularlly during the runner phase) has always existed since i20 launch and the only thing the patch from last week did was making it worse. Until the devs resolve the server side issue, I will most likely continue to run 16 player BAFs.

How about putting big 36 point font size, bolded red letters above their heads saying "I have <x amount> of Acid/Grenades".

I don't think anyone here has suggested that the devs do not care about farming at all (exploitive or otherwise). They've been quite vocal about their desire to stop exploitive farming (see AE abuses) but somewhat less blunt when it comes to farming in general. That was the point I was making. Even though the devs may openly disapprove the general concept of farming, they quietly tolerated it none the less. Why? Because they have no choice in the matter.

Farming is not a new issue. It has been around since the days of Mudding. The developers at just about every MMO has had to deal with this reality at some point. Dare I say that eventually, based on my own observations in the half dozen or so MMOs I've played in the past, they do come to that very mentality I mentioned above.

What's the alternative? It is literally an exercise in futility for developers to try to eliminate farming entirely from their MMOs. First of all, they run the risk of alienating a sizeable chunk of their subscribers so it doesn't make a whole lot of business sense, especially if it's a smaller game with less subscribers to begin with. Secondly, the resources required for such constant vigilance is beyond the means of most developers. On one hand you have hundreds of thousands of players (if not millions) armed with their creativity and on the other you have a few dozen developers running the game from a reactive/defensive position. Is there any reason to believe that such a game of cat and mouse will ever end? Just how much resource and time can the developer devote to such hamster wheel of an operation before they finally realize that they will have to be make some concessions in order to not get completely bogged down?

Getting back to CoX, being that it is a game based almost entirely on instanced missions, the task of eliminating farming becomes a virtual impossibility. In games like EQ or FFXI where farming is extremely rampant (some may say fact of life), at least there were the factors of spawn competition and timer for the players to take into account. With instance based games like CoX, there are no such concerns. We can repeat just about any mission we want, at any time we choose. Short of adding a anti-repeat timer on every mission in CoX, there is just no way to stop players from running higher reward missions over and over. Even then the players can just keep track of their time of completion and run a continuous string of different higher reward missions whenever they are up, which is exactly what players in some other games do to get around spawns timers.

The above is just yet another example of how reactive anti-farming solutions implemented by the developer will accomplish little other than to prompt the players to come up with new countermeasures. It is a bottomless pit. Now I'm not saying that the developers shouldn't try to fix exploitive farming but frankly, it is a waste of development time to devote an undue amount of attention to the so called "farming" problem.

Good name as I'm sure most of the players will be in tears by then trying to figure out which icurrency goes with which slot, conversions, counter-conversions, upgrades, sidegrades, downgrades, diagonalgrades, breakdowns, teardowns, etc, etc.