Union CoP runs

Just a heads up that I'll be resuming normal service for CoP runs very soon, the holiday season has obviously effected us all and whilst I'd have loved to have camped out the CoP for the holiday season, work and family have kept me quite occupied and away from Paragon for the last few weeks.

Keep your eye on globals, should be some chatter about the Cathedral coming very soon!

Ok just an update guys and girls (and mutant's, robots, catgirls etc etc etc) of Union.

My intention is to get CoP's back up and running as of Friday 21st January, however, due to work I will not be availiable until 20:30, so I would like to ask that interested parties head to Pocket D prompty just before this time so that we I can login, we can thrash out some teams quickly and then get raiding!

The following friday, the 29th January I would like to invite representatives of any villain groups interested in hosting the CoP on a more regular basis redside, into my current SG base to discuss hosting the raids. Over the last few issue's raids I have noted several requirements that VG's could also follow, to allow all those dastardly villain and rogue incarnates to earn the badges and salvage! :P

There IS more upcoming raid news of another nature too, however the details are being put together so please stay tuned for more information!

TZ

I'm glad to hear about the CoP. The 29th is double XP weekend. I'll be active on Union but growing new characters. Any weekends after that I'll game to run CoP with you.

Are you online now? Is your SG villain or hero?

bah! apologies I missed you, I'm normally on fridays for CoP's and during the week at odd times. If you can't find me (look for @TsumijuZero) the also @Soul Storm and @G Healer are online during the week as well.

We have had a fortuitious 2011 so far, with 2 successful runs of the CoP tonight, once against Lanaru the Mad and again against Ruludak the Strong. Both runs were executed by the teams flawlessly and I look forward to the same again in the coming weeks!

When's the next run?

Hi.

Let me prefix this by saying that any you/ye here is a general you/ye.

While I do appreciate the effort that a number of you put into these CoP runs, I really wish you all would be more upfront about what is and isn't welcome.

Tonight for example there are still repeated calls in chans for 'anyone welcome' even though teams were already quite full and there are people standing around. There are more people in waiting than space on the 3 teams yet here at 20.20 in chan ya'll are asking for more people.

I gotta say that sitting in Pocket D for 20 min and not getting a team while others sail in 20 min after recruiting starts and get straight into team really does not make me think well of the whole endeavour.

I know, I know teams need 'balance' and all that but I really wish you'd at least update your calls to be whatever you'll take ONLY. At least then the rest of us who don't fit whatever balance you decide you need on each team don't waste time standing around. Last call in chans was at 20.25, teams were filled and it kicked off at 20.26. People who had been waiting since before 8 were still left standing around DJ Zero.

Everyone isn't welcome, please please stop advertising so

*edit for bad spelling

The current problem that we have is that we have 3 team leaders, who have to balance their teams for the 2 stages of the trial, without any real kind of visibility of who has what. As an example currently I have to get the team leaders to type out who and what they have each time a team member changes, and unless people stand by their team leaders it's incredibly difficult to see who still needs a team.

Additionally, citing myself as an example, I would only ever really jam one or two scrappers into my team at most, as I can fufill the scrapper requirements myself. If a blaster runs a team, its unlikely that person will take 3 blasters etc.

The league system will make all of this much easier to handle, as we can invite and swap people around without making people leave teams and re-invite.

I do sincerely apologise if you wern't able to get into one of the teams last night, I've always asked people to turn up with what AT's they want to bring and we'll organise the best we can with what we have, as I've never been a fan of private raids, or asking everyone to turn up with characters they might not always want to play.

I like to think we jam in great mixes of all the AT's, however there will be situations where a team needs something to make the trial work and someone turning up with just the right stuff will get an invitation.

We did have a lot of advertising for ranged/support/tanks last night, I know the team leaders were asking if anyone had anything they wanted to swap to etc, so I hope you spotted those calls in broadcast.

E-Mail me ingame @Tsumijuzero and if you missed out, i'll always try and get you a spot on the next raids!

Yeah it's clear that it's tough to organise and having people arrive at different times and not standing by DJ Zero if LFT and lots talking in broadcast doesn't help. Like I say I do appreciate the effort that goes in.

But and to stick with my main problem, if I'm in Pocket D before 8pm and there are less than 24 people standing around waiting for a team; I pretty much expect to be invited to a team. If shortly after that there are MORE than 24 people in Pocket D waiting for a team, I expect the chan calls to stop while you fill with what's already there. I really don't think that is so unreasonable. It's frustrating when you can see toons sail into advertised events 20+ minutes late for kick off and get a spot because they have the 'right' AT and leave others out.

It is a bit of a double edge sword because there are badges/components etc but I'd rather see a failed raid every now and again to at least give everyone a chance to take part and have some fun. The next time they run it they'll have a much better idea of how it goes and maybe will know to grab some Vanguard tokens and a heavy to help out and to craft a dagger and the next raid is better.

While I appreciate the offer of a spot, I've missed out and been left standing around 3 times recently (the first and only time I got a spot on badger was great and I did really enjoy that) which is gonna be at least an hour if not closer to two of time simply wasted standing around Pocket D. I am done. I really do hope the League makes this all better for everyone but until then I wish you luck with all these raids.

Random thought on the Leagues though, the CoP is 10-50 so if a 10 jumps into a League (as they have every right to do!) will that not screw the entire balance?

I do appreciate the feedback, we do try and organise the raids as best we can, yet there are difficulties in doing so. It's a really difficult balance to strike, do we invite the people turning up early and say tough to people that can't always camp out Pocket D early? Do we run raids with total PUG's and risk repeated failures that cause people to turn up less and less? Do we pre-subscribe the raids and turn it into an almost private affair?

As it stands we've always found the fairest way is to get enough people to fill the three teams, then sort it out so that we can see who has what and try to get a balanced raid out of it. I do apologise again if you have missed out on a few runs, given the chance I'd take 50 people in each time, but we have to work with what we have. If we need melee or ranged AT's though and there aren't any that fit the bill, we do tend to shout out for what we need and see who can swap, but it doesnt always work out perfect.

I do conceed your point of learning the raid, my SG allies have really learnt the CoP inside and out to the point of being able to run their own raids (my intent has and will always be for the Strykers to be able to run them during any peak time so long as there are enough members online) with or without my prescence. It would be brilliant to get a lot of more inexperienced players in and taking part, at the moment that will take time to achieve.

With regards to the League and CoP, we can still take lower level players into the trial, but their ability to contribute is highly limited, so we tend to take 45+ because of the difficulty and powers required for such a task.

My thanks for your well wishing, I do hope to see you turn up now and again for our attempts to bring CoP to the masses so to speak and its regrettable that it's worked out that you've missed it 3 times.

Again my apologies profusely and not being able to get everyone in, time on fridays and numbers are against us and we try our best.

Are you online now? I'm ready to join you SG. gcarlisle2, Europa Attitude

I'm just on a lunchbreak from work, but i'm on later tonight if you're about.

tell me when so I can be online.

are you online now?

Well I logged on a little late tonight but it was quick enough to get the last spot on the raid. I zoned to the SG base and was elected leader. We managed to take the Purple AV down without a hitch. We've really got this nailed down to a fine art now.

Apologies for my lack of prescence tonight, I've had a few issues keeping food down this evening

Does this run every week? If so, at what time? I really need to step on the gas and mature my characters on this side.

Yeah this run is on Friday nights meeting in Pocket D from around 7.30pm to form the teams. We start the run around 8pm and sometimes do more than one run on either Blue or Redside.