Challenge done right!
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2011-01-15 16:39 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Aurgh...
+4 Rikti Bosses? That was painful.
GM level Kraken 'Hatchlings'? Oh Christ alive that stung...
I remember the Sewer Trial. I woulda liked to have been a LOT more prepared.
It was good, yes, but I objected to the enforced +4. At that level, that really hurt.
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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I have done my first sewer trial a few months back, and the above statement was the first thing that came to my mind afterwards. It really is a fun and challenging event and I was surprised at how different it was from other old stuff in the game.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
The Abandoned Sewers Trial needs to be an end game TF,
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@True Metal
Co-leader of Callous Crew SG. Based on Union server.
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I don't think the Kraken are GM level, at least not in terms of what GM actually means these days. They're more like particularly hard-hitting AVs without much of any status protection. Most of the ones we killed, we did so while they were perma-held, so I honestly couldn't tell you how hard they'd be normally.|
Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Aurgh...
+4 Rikti Bosses? That was painful. GM level Kraken 'Hatchlings'? Oh Christ alive that stung... I remember the Sewer Trial. I woulda liked to have been a LOT more prepared. It was good, yes, but I objected to the enforced +4. At that level, that really hurt. |
As for the +4 enemies... Yeah, that sucks, and their being only bosses ever. I'm still not sure why enemy level is being used as fake challenge, but to be honest, that's doable with enough support. About the only time I got seriously killed was when I rushed ahead to grab aggro a bit too far before the team or when I got smoked by the Hydra head.
Really, though, it could lose the enemy strength and it's still be an insidious Trial to run because you're on the clock and you NEED coordination to so much as stand a chance at victory. The fact that the Hydra Head's shield is still bugged and doesn't show after ALL THESE YEARS is a problem, of course (they fixed the Mole Point interiors, but not that?), but other than that, it's the coordination needed to take down the generators simultaneously, hit the head with Particle cannons that root you down for I believe five seconds AND protect the Particle Cannon Wielders that make or break the Trial. All the added difficulty really does is necessitate a fairly strong team of characters, but you can have the best characters around and you'd still fail without proper communication and leadership.
If you want to make something challenging, that's the way to go.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I think it could do with more exploding space halberd bombs 
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
Funnily enough, everything you listed as great are the reasons I don't enjoy this trial much... Or other "skill", team-based tasks in online video games.
When you think about it the level of coordination required for the Sewer Trial is ridiculously low (albeit higher than on most other tasks ingame). What can make it hard is the tools we are given to communicate are vastly inferior to real life equivalents (i.e., simply talking outloud).
Because of that, basic coordination can be challenging, but that's challenge in the sense that you have to fight against the clunkiness of a videogame interface - by which I mean not only typing is slower than talking for most people, but you can't play/fight at full efficiency while doing so, and worst of all there's no guarantee other players are reading your text at all and/or reacting nearly as fast as they could.
In other words, this is akin to challenge yourself by tying one hand behind your back. Some will have a blast doing that, some will find that ultimately boring.
I like the sewer trial, I like the Apex TF, I'm ambivalent about Tin Mage (I find it somewhat dull).
Now here's the thing, I like the Sewer Trial and the Apex TF for the same reason: they require players to spend time moving around the map rather than just standing still and fighting. They do it in a slightly different manner but I, personally don't see any fundamental difference between it. I slightly prefer Apex because it encourages movement while in combat which has a more epic feel to it as opposed to the "destroy the generator to hit the weak spot" style of the sewer trial.
Oh well, just my $0.02
Well, Samuel Tow deserves credit for being a good side man since that helped smooth things out to.
Abandoned Sewer Trial is both very hard and it has a number of quirks that make things easier. Hatched Kraken wind up being glass cannons in a way. I've watched them two shot Scrappers and tag the whole team with Foot Stomp since the radius is bigger than standard. At the same time, I can permahold one of them with my Blaster alone. I'm not doing much damage during this time despite Voltaic Sentinel blasting its little heart out but it's not a team wipe. You can figure out which temp you're about to get before you grab it if you want to structure your team a certain way. It's also probably the only part of the game where AOE can be a bad thing.
This can be done with a variety of teams if people pay attention. Haven't done one in a while but I tend to run them half pug. It doesn't always succeed, I think my success rate is roughly 60/40 maybe 65/35, but it's certainly doable. Things like Base Empowerment Buffs really shine here since a little stealth or 5% psi or toxic resist add up. The interesting thing about this run is that I didn't wall of text the team like usual. After a brief primer to the team it really was on the fly and they rose to the occasion. As far as communication, only a few things are needed like calling to regroup, checking to see how the generators are doing during that phase, etc.
I think the listening part is where communication breaks down. Sometimes running sewer trials is like trying to herd cats with lasers. Adding on to that, it's one of the few parts of the game where you can outright lose as opposed to feeling overwhelmed and deciding to give up on your own. I think these two reasons are a lot of why some seem borderline scared of the trial. Good buffs/debuffs obviously help but it doesn't guarantee victory like most other parts of the game. People have to pay attention. I think it's also one of the few TFs you outright can't solo.
I think some of the newer challenges have the right ideas even if the actual execution is off. I haven't done the Incarnate Trials yet so I can't comment on those. Protean forcing you to move is fine but you sort of just hoverblast if you fight at range while you have a hard time if you're melee. I actually feel the final battle of the Barracuda Strike Force is pretty epic but there's a few issues here and there concerning the temps, part of that is actually due to the players. I like that the devs are trying to add more fire and other hazards to missions to teach positional awareness. Even if the devs don't get new challenges perfect, they should keep trying and we should give feedback. It's just an issue of constantly tweaking things. The bigger issue is that people gravitate towards easy rewards even if they would otherwise enjoy it. You can get a ton of Vanguard Merits but so can running Boreas. Sewer trial has a larger merit reward than ITF but people won't gravitate toward that.
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I disagree with you here on a fundamental level. The level of communication required isn't nearly on the level you present it, and I say this because I managed to kind of userp Zamuel and co-lead the Trial with him, and the level of communication I had to send out wasn't anything out of the ordinary. You certainly almost never need to chat in combat.|
Originally Posted by Nihilii
When you think about it the level of coordination required for the Sewer Trial is ridiculously low (albeit higher than on most other tasks ingame). What can make it hard is the tools we are given to communicate are vastly inferior to real life equivalents (i.e., simply talking outloud).
Because of that, basic coordination can be challenging, but that's challenge in the sense that you have to fight against the clunkiness of a videogame interface - by which I mean not only typing is slower than talking for most people, but you can't play/fight at full efficiency while doing so, and worst of all there's no guarantee other players are reading your text at all and/or reacting nearly as fast as they could. |
Things that need to be said are announcing where the glowies are so the team can gather on you, clear the surrounding spawn and click them, announcing what to do with the generators BEFORE a fight, announcing what to do to the head after they are down, and then simply doing it. About the hardest part is getting people to do status reports so you know who has what and who's where, since you have no map and no way to tell who has which temporary power. Is that a limitation of the system? Yes, it is. It's not insurmountable by a long shot, because all it requires is people who pay attention.
Really, that's all it comes down to. You don't need so much good leadership to win this Trial as you need people who actually read chat and follow instructions, and we were blessed with a team of communicative people yesterday. And I'm sorry to say, but people not reading chat is not a failure of the system. It's a failure of the people. Yes, when people don't listen and don't cooperate, the Trial turns into herding cats, especially since it's so easy to fall off the catwalks, get lost or just wander off. But that's where the challenge is - organisation, coordination, communication.
Someone once said that, in war, if you know where your own forces are and where the enemy is, you've won half the battle. No other task in the game makes this more true than the Sewer Trial. If you go off on your own, you die and your team fails. If you kill what you weren't supposed to kill or do what you weren't supposed to do, your team fails. This is not a Trial which requires self-awareness, it's a trial which requires TEAM awareness, and this is what teaming should be all about.
I can tell you one thing: I've teamed a lot for a lot of TFs, and I couldn't remember the name of a single person even after a four-hour Shard TF. In just a little over an hour and a half of Sewer Trial, I knew the names of all my team-mates, because their names were relevant and because knowing who was who, who could do what, who had what and who was where was relevant to the task at hand. THIS is what teaming should be like: Not a question of stats and Internet guides, but a question of people's teamwork.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Heh, only a little |
Originally Posted by Zamuel
Well, Samuel Tow deserves credit for being a good side man since that helped smooth things out to.
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You had the wisdom and organisation, I essentially played the drill sergeant who was always going "OK, move!" "Keep together!" "Generator clear! Move to the next!" "People, report!" "Generators down! Attack the head!" and so on. A lot of the times, I said things people essentially knew, but I felt I had to say them just to keep the team from slowing down, because the Trial is on a timer, after all, and I've failed the thing multiple times for running out of time. You're the one who put the team together, made the briefing and organised us to the end, though, so you deserve the credit on this one.Quote:
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Originally Posted by Zamuel
I think the listening part is where communication breaks down. Sometimes running sewer trials is like trying to herd cats with lasers. Adding on to that, it's one of the few parts of the game where you can outright lose as opposed to feeling overwhelmed and deciding to give up on your own. I think these two reasons are a lot of why some seem borderline scared of the trial. Good buffs/debuffs obviously help but it doesn't guarantee victory like most other parts of the game. People have to pay attention. I think it's also one of the few TFs you outright can't solo.
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The Sewer Trial is the first time I actually had any idea what the hell was going on on a team of eight, and that's because you HAVE to know that, or you fail the trial. You can't just sleep-walk through this thing, expecting that the catchall solution to every problem is to just kill it with fire until it goes away and if you close your eyes and recycle your attacks, everything will be fine eventually. And despite all the bosses, the game never really threw spawns all THAT big at us, at most around 7 or 8 enemies, roughly 4 bosses to 4 lieutenants.
The Sewers Trial doesn't come down to the fights, it comes down to the coordination, and it requires people to wake up and be alert. It doesn't matter how many times you've run this, you can't run it on auto-pilot. You have to think, act and react, and this is what makes team play... Well, into team play, as opposed to just five people soloing a TF and three people playing healer. It's more than just one more mosh pit and one more mountain of hit points. It's a situation where people have to be aware of not just their own selfish selves, but of the team at large, and more content should be built like that.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I think the thing that got to me was the combination of a somewhat viscious time-limit when fighting +4 bosses, the mobs around Hydra and the Mini-Krakens, AND the ambushes that spawned at the generators whenever their health came back up. It was a case of "Ok, killed that bit, now we- oh not you lot AGAIN!" Needless to say, we didn't even scratch Hydra itself during my run. Mebbe if I run it again with a slightly less impromptu team.
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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You have something on the order of around 20 seconds between when you kill a generator and when it gets repaired. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less. That's nowhere near enough time to kill them one by one. You need to split your team of eight into four teams of two, spread them around the generators, damage them to about below 50% and then wait. As soon as everyone's in position, give the order, kill them all at the same time and shoot the head. It's really the only way to do it.
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Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
I think the thing that got to me was the combination of a somewhat viscious time-limit when fighting +4 bosses, the mobs around Hydra and the Mini-Krakens, AND the ambushes that spawned at the generators whenever their health came back up. It was a case of "Ok, killed that bit, now we- oh not you lot AGAIN!" Needless to say, we didn't even scratch Hydra itself during my run. Mebbe if I run it again with a slightly less impromptu team.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Okay, I don't want to devalue your experience or anything, but please imagine for a moment that instead of a team of players who work together well and are willing to report back, you had three or four prima donnas who don't need no stinkin' communication because *they* know what they need to do and if the rest of the team doesn't fall in behind them, well, too bad for the rest of the team.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
And you know what? It was actually fun, and fun because it was involving. Feeling the need to type "Keep shooting!" in team chat as hordes or Rikti beamed in, desperately begging the Particle Cannon wielders to keep shooting the head and trust the rest of us to protect them is a feeling I don't get out of ordinary, or indeed even extraordinary content. This involves me, as a player, into the game in a way that no amount of planning, research and building can supplant.
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Do you think in such a situation, you would be able to correctly pinpoint the source of your failure? Would you say "The Sewer Trial is difficult, but I think we could have done it with a better team and more communication", or would you say "We wiped again and again, it was frustrating and unfun, this is another example of why I hate TFs"?
Character index
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This does seem more a case of a team meshing well and winning, rather than "challenge done right". I think one would get the same feeling on most of the TF's/Trials given similar circumstances. Well, maybe not the boring original TFs |
Originally Posted by Silver Gale
Okay, I don't want to devalue your experience or anything, but please imagine for a moment that instead of a team of players who work together well and are willing to report back, you had three or four prima donnas who don't need no stinkin' communication because *they* know what they need to do and if the rest of the team doesn't fall in behind them, well, too bad for the rest of the team.
Do you think in such a situation, you would be able to correctly pinpoint the source of your failure? Would you say "The Sewer Trial is difficult, but I think we could have done it with a better team and more communication", or would you say "We wiped again and again, it was frustrating and unfun, this is another example of why I hate TFs"? |
Furio--Lvl 50+3 Fire/Fire/Fire Blaster, Virtue
Megadeth--Lvl 50+3 Necro/DM/Soul MM, Virtue
Veriandros--Lvl 50+3 Crab Soldier, Virtue
"So come and get me! I'll be waiting for ye, with a whiff of the old brimstone. I'm a grim bloody fable, with an unhappy bloody end!" Demoman, TF2
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Just like a sub-20 minute Apex TF? |
Originally Posted by Furio
This does seem more a case of a team meshing well and winning, rather than "challenge done right".
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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It's a challenge in micromanagement. That tends to be the issues of "challenges" in MMORPGs -- either it's the challenge of brute forcing something into a pile of goo or else the challenge of "tricks" that you need clockwork precision on or else you've just wasted an hour or two. Especially in the second case, you then tend to wind up with one person who can make the whole thing an effort in futility and veterans who either don't want to team with "newbies" (or else browbeat them the entire time to ensure success).
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Originally Posted by Silver Gale
Okay, I don't want to devalue your experience or anything, but please imagine for a moment that instead of a team of players who work together well and are willing to report back, you had three or four prima donnas who don't need no stinkin' communication because *they* know what they need to do and if the rest of the team doesn't fall in behind them, well, too bad for the rest of the team.
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Know how I said I don't have a 100% success rate? Perhaps the most audacious comment I've heard is "I'm a defender I don't have to read chat". This...was not a successful trial. I'll admit that I may view things differently but usually I do view it as "AST is hard but we just needed a little more coordination" especially if individual members of the team are full of themselves because I see where the rest of the team is trying their all.|
Originally Posted by Silver Gale
Okay, I don't want to devalue your experience or anything, but please imagine for a moment that instead of a team of players who work together well and are willing to report back, you had three or four prima donnas who don't need no stinkin' communication because *they* know what they need to do and if the rest of the team doesn't fall in behind them, well, too bad for the rest of the team.
Do you think in such a situation, you would be able to correctly pinpoint the source of your failure? Would you say "The Sewer Trial is difficult, but I think we could have done it with a better team and more communication", or would you say "We wiped again and again, it was frustrating and unfun, this is another example of why I hate TFs"? |
I guess for reference I'll note this specific trial run it was 1 hr 14 minutes (including the hunt portion) and 50 deaths. I've been on some faster and some with lower death totals but it all comes down to the team meshing as an actual team. While a failed trial is frustrating, people enjoy, dare I say appreciate, a successful one since it's different than just running tips/papers/radio or ITF.
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I would have, actually, because I know how the Trial works. I understand that someone approaching the Sewers Trial for the first time with no prior knowledge is going to tear his hair out, but when you have at least one person who knows what needs to be done (and in this case we had at least two - me and Zamuel), there really is no excuse as to why the Trial should fail miserably, other than "other people."|
Originally Posted by Silver Gale
Okay, I don't want to devalue your experience or anything, but please imagine for a moment that instead of a team of players who work together well and are willing to report back, you had three or four prima donnas who don't need no stinkin' communication because *they* know what they need to do and if the rest of the team doesn't fall in behind them, well, too bad for the rest of the team.
Do you think in such a situation, you would be able to correctly pinpoint the source of your failure? Would you say "The Sewer Trial is difficult, but I think we could have done it with a better team and more communication", or would you say "We wiped again and again, it was frustrating and unfun, this is another example of why I hate TFs"? |
One of the single greatest accusations I can level against most City of Heroes content, the "challenging" type more than anything else, is that it teaches people that they don't have to think. If you've run one ITF, you've run them all. Just blitz through the whole thing, blitz through Romulus, bada bing bada boom. Until you find out that you CAN'T blitz through Romulus, and then half the team turns into petulant children who rage-quit the moment everything isn't going great instead of trying something else or communicating with other people.
The game teaches us that it's OK to be a buffbot, that it's OK to be a mindless Scrapper, that it's OK to just push buttons and rely on Pavlovian reflexes and if you just bring enough debuffs and enough DPS, everything will be fine. The developers throwing more numbers at us just means we throw more numbers at them back, and I enjoy challenges that cannot and should not be solved by bigger and bigger numbers.
Yes, it comes down to micromanagement and yes, it comes down to finding agreeable, communicative, responsible people. Zamuel pulled those people from team search and channels, and I have it on good authority we were all perfect strangers at the start. Hell, one player didn't even know where the Abandoned Sewers were, and he still did perfectly fine on the Trial.
If "find non-brain-dead players" is the prerequisite for a decent challenge, then that's a prerequisite I can respect. This isn't a question of doing math, of min-maxing or even of being a great player. It's a question of being willing and able to read, and if that's too much of a challenge for people, then I feel sorry for the world.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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To be honest, I can't say this is the case, or at least not ENTIRELY the case. I've run plenty of successful TFs that were done by sheer weight of numbers, where every fight was solved by just hitting the closest thing to me until it's dead in melees big enough to where I lost track of where my team-mates were. But that didn't matter, since we just blazed through everything. I've done TFs where the leader sat down, told each of us what to do, and we just played out our roles, and even that hasn't felt all that satisfying, since it didn't feel like my intelligence as a human being was all that terribly relevant when my task consisted of "Stay there and keep taunting the Healing Nictus."|
Originally Posted by Furio
This does seem more a case of a team meshing well and winning, rather than "challenge done right". I think one would get the same feeling on most of the TF's/Trials given similar circumstances. Well, maybe not the boring original TFs
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Hell, I even ran probably the most fun TF I've done a week ago. It was an ad-hoc Numina TF comprised of only four people - Myself on a Brute, a Defender, a Mastermind and a Tanker. For some reason, it fell to me to be the primary damage dealer, and as such set the pace of the TF, and the Defender was kind enough to focus the bulk of his efforts on me, so I de-facto led the team around the instance end even ended up tanking Jurassik. It was a very fun TF that actually made me feel useful for a change, and all the people there were decent and agreeable who worked together as a team.
None of those successes come anywhere even close to the Sewers Trial, because this is the first task in a LONG time which made me feel like I - the person behind the keyboard - actually played a role in the encounter. It's the first task in a long time which felt like it took more honest-to-God literal skill than just the right build and right team make-up. Sure, we needed a team which could handle +4 bosses in large numbers, but like I said before - even the best of teams could not have done this without the right PEOPLE involved. And the right people didn't need any superhuman skill beyond basic intelligence and cooperation.
This, to me, is what makes a decent challenge. I've failed this TF four times in the past, and at a time when it was EASIER as we finally beat the trial at level 41, which you can't do any more, and at no point did I rant and rave about how the Trial sucked. I knew what we had to do, and what we had to do was work faster and waste less time standing around wondering what to do. Not a single time have I felt that the Sewer Trial was badly designed, including the very first time I did it with almost no preparation or forward knowledge and failing miserably by running out of time with over half the Head's health still remaining.
This is what newer TFs and Trials need to measure themselves by, not Reichsman or the RTF or even the ITF.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I guess I just don't see it as a "better" challenge. It's not especially "worse" either, but it reminds me of old school Complete Heal chains from Everquest or something. Cast your CHeal, sound off, next cleric waits the prerequisite time, fires his, sounds off, etc. Druid waits for the cleric sounds offs and fires a patch heal. Main tank calls off aggro, secondary tank maintains aggro just under the main tank. Main assist calls targets, melees make sure to stay behind the target, etc etc. You can have some idiot players in there but as long as the principles are sharp and know their jobs and communicate, it should all go okay. Tick-tock-tick-tock.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
If "find non-brain-dead players" is the prerequisite for a decent challenge, then that's a prerequisite I can respect.
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All very clockwork and a "challenge" in its own way but it doesn't feel like an especially heroic challenge. It's more just finding out the trick to work the system. Once you've cracked it, the only challenge lies in finding people with a functioning brain to go through the motions. But that's always going to be the issue with MMORPGs.
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To be honest, the reason I call it a "better" challenge isn't so much because it's somehow morally superior, but rather because I hate stat-based "challenges." When it comes to something like Reichsman or the Recluse SF, it really comes down to bringing the right characters with the right builds and possibly formulating the required drill of how things are supposed to go. To, this doesn't so much constitute challenge as much as the computer is a cheating meanie. It feels like a cheap challenge that players are more or less forced to cheat in order to overcome.|
Originally Posted by Jophiel
I guess I just don't see it as a "better" challenge. It's not especially "worse" either, but it reminds me of old school Complete Heal chains from Everquest or something. Cast your CHeal, sound off, next cleric waits the prerequisite time, fires his, sounds off, etc. Druid waits for the cleric sounds offs and fires a patch heal. Main tank calls off aggro, secondary tank maintains aggro just under the main tank. Main assist calls targets, melees make sure to stay behind the target, etc etc. You can have some idiot players in there but as long as the principles are sharp and know their jobs and communicate, it should all go okay. Tick-tock-tick-tock.
All very clockwork and a "challenge" in its own way but it doesn't feel like an especially heroic challenge. It's more just finding out the trick to work the system. Once you've cracked it, the only challenge lies in finding people with a functioning brain to go through the motions. But that's always going to be the issue with MMORPGs. |
What I like about the Sewer Trial is that you really can't plan it like clockwork, for the simple fact that glowies move around and things don't always go smoothly. At the very least, you can't always predict if you'll get a worthless Thermite cannon or a very useful Particle Cannon. On my run with Zamuel, someone accidentally killed a generator before we were ready, so him and I had to essentially bring the team back to the generator FAST, handle the Rikti who beamed in, leave the generator standing and then move on. It's not the "regular as clockwork," to quote Hans Gruber, part that really interests me, as much as the need to react to circumstances as they happen in real time.
Personally, I hate challenges that can be rehearsed and blitzed through. I prefer the ones that make people think on their feet. Valve's AI director is a VERY good step in the right direction, as it ensures that no level ever plays out the same twice in a row, and it forces people to both explore their environment and think on their feet. It's this process of decision-making in real time, and team-scale decision-making at that, that is the most interesting to me. Just basic run-of-the-mill combat is fun, sure. When I'm by myself and grinding through a mission. But when I get together with a team and I approach a challenge that's supposed to be so damn great, I want it to be creative and interesting, not cheap and cheating.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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May I call issue to the +4 assertion? More of just a nitpick since I thought they were mostly +2 or +3 since I did see some red and even orange con enemies. Granted, the base concept of fighting things above your level is to be acknowledged.
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Part of that specific problem is PvE enemies versus human intelligence. You could probably do whole threads on that topic.|
Originally Posted by Jophiel
It's more just finding out the trick to work the system. Once you've cracked it, the only challenge lies in finding people with a functioning brain to go through the motions. But that's always going to be the issue with MMORPGs.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
At the very least, you can't always predict if you'll get a worthless Thermite cannon or a very useful Particle Cannon.
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I have a question Sam, have you tried the Apex TF? I may not share your views on Tin Mage, but I do find it incredibly boring. The Apex on the other hand, I find to be a lot of fun. If you have people who have never done it before and you don't communicate beforehand what to expect during the Battle Maiden fight, you'll find that the new people will die, a lot.
Once more I agree with Sam, pretty much everything in the OP was dead on for me.
The Sewer Trial is one of the few in the game that really requires team work, requires the team to communicate, work together, plan and adapt together, hell just moving down that long column with all those Kraken and Rikti, trying to keep everyone together and not have anyone fall off or rush ahead, moving slowly further and further down, together, as a team. It is very fun and challenging. To be honest if they made it a level 50 trial with some nicer rewards I'd probably do it more often, it'd be slightly less painful and more rewarding, but it's still a good trial.
"Where does he get those wonderful toys?" - The Joker
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Originally Posted by Rikis
I have a question Sam, have you tried the Apex TF? I may not share your views on Tin Mage, but I do find it incredibly boring. The Apex on the other hand, I find to be a lot of fun. If you have people who have never done it before and you don't communicate beforehand what to expect during the Battle Maiden fight, you'll find that the new people will die, a lot.
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Tin Mage is (IMHO) boring, the Director 11 fight is mildly interesting but the rest is just a slog through hordes of +4 clockwork with humongous -recharge debuffs (which I think are auto-hit as well).
Apex on the other hand has an enjoyable first mission (which really manages to feel like a running street battle) and an interesting boss fight.
I'm currently starving, I'm tired, it's 1 AM and I've been at the PC for hours, so if I'm a bit incoherent or spastic, please forgive me.
Recently, we've gone over what "challenging" means time and again, especially in relation to how we feel about the new supposedly more challenging Incarnate TFs. Most of us can agree that having some challenge is a good thing, but I happen to be among the people who don't believe that what's being done in the new TFs is the right way to achieve it.
Why bring this up in yet another thread? Well, because I want to talk about something completely different - the Sewer Trial. I personally hadn't done a Sewer Trial since some time in 2004 when Samuel Tow was still in his upper 30s and the it wasn't a TF, but rather a mission given out by some woman in Founders' Falls that anyone of any level could join, but could not pick up Thermite or Particle cannons. I hadn't, that is, until tonight. I can safely say that this is one of the hardest fights I've fought in this game in quite a while. I can also say that I have not been happier with the game in YEARS.
I want to thank and give credit to Zamuel for putting this TF together essentially on the fly, basically from people he got together through globals and team search. Well, and me, since I'd been complaining no-one does them any more pretty much for as long as I've been in the Victory global channel.
So why the thread title? Well, I've done a lot of the supposedly challenging TFs in this game, and I can tell you that they can't hold a handle to the kind of challenge that the Sewer Trial presented us with. Most TFs tend to go without a word being said, and if there is need for explanation, it's usually enough for someone to quote ParagonWiki and off we go. If things aren't going well, it's usually because we didn't bring enough DPS or enough debuffs or whatever.
The Sewer Trial is different. Sure, you're fighting spawns comprised entirely of +4 Rikti Bosses (that's a dozen at a time) and a series of AV-level Hatched Kraken, but that's really not what the Trial is about. The Sewer Trial isn't about bringing the right characters or the right powers, it's not about explaining it beforehand. It's about coordination on the fly and thinking on your feet. It's a bout a team working as a team should - with organisation and discipline.
This run of the Sewers Trial reminded me of something I remember fondly - this is the only task in the entire game that has ever made me say "Team, report!" and actually have the team report their status back to me so I know where we stand. And the Sewers Trial requires a lot of that. Why?
You need to know who already has what temporary power. You need to know is at which generator. You need to know when each generator goes down. You need to know who has the Particle Cannons and who you have to protect, or be protected by. This requires communication and coordination in order to do in time and without dying a zillion times, and I am eternally grateful to Zamuel for putting in the effort of leading it, while I essentially did my best to rush the team as much as I could
Let me put it this way: I have never before had to ask a team-mate where he is right now, what he is doing and when he will be done. Having to have that kind of situational awareness and being able to get other people to communicate their status so everyone knows what everyone else is doing even though you're scattered all over the map is, in my opinion, a true test of the player and indeed a true challenge. This beats the fight with Reichsman hands down. This beats a fight with a buffed-up Bobcat so hard it's not even funny. This one TF beats practically every other piece of content I have ever attempted, for the simple fact that its challenge does not stem from just throwing big numbers at you, and indeed from not throwing what is effectively quick-time events into a fight, such as Protean's power syphon.
And you know what? It was actually fun, and fun because it was involving. Feeling the need to type "Keep shooting!" in team chat as hordes or Rikti beamed in, desperately begging the Particle Cannon wielders to keep shooting the head and trust the rest of us to protect them is a feeling I don't get out of ordinary, or indeed even extraordinary content. This involves me, as a player, into the game in a way that no amount of planning, research and building can supplant.
The Abandoned Sewers Trial needs to be an end game TF, because it's more fun than anything I know of in the end game.