Some post-release advice for ALL players.

Laz, are you suggesting I can understand your intentions, at some point?

:P

Wow. Talk about terrible analogies.

When you take a test, presumably you have been learning the subject matter in a class dedicated to that subject matter, using materials that are part of the class, for a period of time leading up to the test. Studying for an exam should refresh and bring that knowledge to the front of your mind in preparation for the test, it shouldn't replace the class. You don't decide to take a physics final having never gone to class or opened the textbook until the night before. It is also not a requirement of any class I've ever taken that in order to be successful at an exam, you have no choice but to use someone else's notes.

Furthermore, exams are designed to test your knowledge and ability to apply the subject matter, not introduce new subjects. The ability to solve the questions comes from both your knowledge of the subject, and your ability to interpret what is being asked.

If you were going to make the terrible analogy that boss encounters are exams, then the game itself is the class. The developers would be the instructors, and the in game help screens would be the textbook. My ability to be successful at an encounter would depend on my ability to play the game and how well I interpret the various ques provided by the boss.

By your logic, having a boss that just stands there and is immune to everything but attacks slotted with a single level 17 accuracy TO, and who can one shot anyone that didn't 6 slot brawl, with absolutely no in game indicators to tell people these two conditions are in effect is a well designed encounter. As long as at some point someone writes an out of game guide about it, it's fine, right?

Edit: Actually, your analogy is even worse than what I outlined. Using your analogy, the best way to take a test is wait until someone else has already taken it and then just use the cheat sheet they made with all the answers on it.

All due respect, Diggis, but I think you want it both ways here. If you want to learn 'in the field,' you must be prepared to FAIL 'in the field.' Instant Success is generally not the way you learn, with a few exceptions - it's why the military has what is called 'Basic Training', and why engineers go to school before designing such simple contructions as, say, bridges and tunnels. They fail under controlled circumstances, after learning the pitfalls of their respective crafts.

In this game, it is indeed aok to fail 'in the field' - unless you take it as a personal insult, and equate 'failing' with 'being a failure'.

A game is, to some people, a series of challenges to be overcome to achieve a reward - be it a shiney, or that epically awesome song at the end of Portal. If it's too easy, no value (to some); too hard, and people quit. But some work in figuring it out is, to me, an acceptable 'cost'. And I find the trials a good balance, personally.

@Radmind - Justice Server
ClintarCOH - Twitter

Erm, so is the exploration badge system completely invalid and terrible game design, in your opinion? Because personally, without vidiotmaps, I'd NEVER find 95% of the badges; with it (a so called 'cheat sheet'), I like 'hunting down' the badges.

Perhaps the higher level encounters are 'puzzles' meant to be solved by 'groups' of players - occasionally, solo players can figure them out on their own, but more minds is more efficient, no?

So in that way, I'm doing the content I LIKE... with a little help from my friends.

Man, you're digging way too deep in all of this.

Let me make this simple for you.

Just because some people prefer to read up on content does not automatically make reading up on content bad, nor does it make the game bad. The stuff you need to do is presented to you in game. It is. Read it some time.

Some players may prefer to read more detailed guides written by people other than the devs. If you think THAT makes for poor players and a poor game, you have a problem no one can help you with.

Nope, don't want it both ways. I am more than happy to fail in a game untill I figure out what to do. However, as it's a game, there may come a point at which I am no longer enjoying myself. That is the point at which I'll either take a break and come back later, or look up a solution.

We are the raid server after all.

My argument isn't against the option. If people want someone else to solve all the encounters for them, go for it. In my personal opinion they've pretty much given up on playing the game at that point and are just performing for virtual treats to reinforce behavior, but whatever. That's a valid choice and they're welcome to it.

My argument is specifically against the idea that it should be required to use out of game materials. Or that the answer to any complaint about an encounter is "Just read the guide". Either by the game or by the community.

And I'm not against hard encounters. I like challenge. I'm against artificially hard encounters due to lack of in game information. If I've figured something out, but just can't quite execute what needs to be done, that's fine. I can get better, or try a new tactic, or find someone with more skill to assist. If I can't get something done simply because the game has put in an artificial limitation and not informed me in any way, that's irritating. That's bad encounter design. And having a guide that spells out what the game should have instructed doesn't make a bad design suddenly good.

For the record, I have the same issue with 3rd party addons in other games. When the developers start developing encounters based on everyone having a supposedly optional 3rd party informational addon, that's bad.

Though this has deviated from your OP, for which I apologize.

I disagree, in general, with the premise that that repeated failure should be viewed as a secondary goal almost as viable as success itself, but that's a fundamental problem with the endgame progression raiding treadmill itself, not with your particular post. Failure I can understand and accept as a consequence of challenge and as a learning experience. But when the best path to success is to fail over and over and over until the goal becomes to fail 'just one more time' in order to have the right number of widgets to make success possible, or even just easier, then I'm turned off of the activity.

That sounds like the one I was on on Justice yesterday. It was a PUG from the LFG tool, I'm pretty sure I was the only one who knew the drill. We went in, got about 4 grenades and six acids. Collected the rest of the acid outside and just kept going at it until the timer was over. It was a valiant effort and we made it much farther than I expected to on a PUG group who had no idea what they were doing.

My SG ran an ITF last night to play with the judgement powers, and it took us about an hour and a half just because of how much fun and goofing off we were having.

brb, pulling Requiem with judgment...

EDIT: Upon reading the comments above, I really love you all on Justice who put up with me leading raids...and will put up with me leading trials

Truth. First 24 people logged into Pocket D after the mega maintenance just stomped BAF.

My lady loot was good to her child as well. Got a rare drop!

The obvious point was that I went in and did pretty good (and we won) when I clearly had no idea what had to be done beforehand, having never even looked at this stuff in beta or read guides or had any prior information or anything like that. Or, in other words:

Is simply wrong. You can expect things not going as planned from the get-go simply because it's more difficult and it's a bit more involved than "tank and spank". But the mechanics are not complicated, you get BIG FLASHING messages every time something happens, and you only need a handful of people (which can easily be you) moving forward decisively to be on your way to victory - without having to fail repeatedly or climbing over a mountain of your own corpses or anything like that.

So...

Rolleyes indeed. I'm 6 for 6 in Lambda (so it's not "I did one and won!") with three different characters (scrapper, stalker, defender), the defender wasn't even alpha unlocked and I was quite useful all the way through. I'm 0 for 2 in the BAF, and I know why we failed too. There's a difference between expecting one may lose, and expecting that there's a chance one may lose.

I was obviously speaking only of not knowing what reward I should pick, not about what to do during the Trial. As I stated as explicitly possible, that we had a very good League Leader. Thus the obvious inference is that he explained everything quite clearly (and the "bewildering new system" I referred to was an obvious reference to the new currencies, as well).

Obviously...

(remainder of your reply snipped, as I don't see much point in responding to something obviously based on a complete failure to comprehend what you were responding to)

You have a nice day now, hear?

The rest of your post, which I quoted, contradicts that assertion. Which leads me to...

Fan of irony, aren't you?

Given your obviously rather less-than-weapons-grade comprehension skills, I can see how you came to that conclusion. You are, of course, wrong...but far be it from me to stand in the way of your snark and nerdrage. You have a nice life.

Oh, and congratulations on being the first person I've ever ignored on these forums...after nearly seven years.

We just completed Lambda with 7 seconds left on the clock - and if that feeling I got from doing that wasn't fun, then I don't know what is

Projection, that's what's for dinner!

I post about being able to do fine without knowing anything about the trial on the very first try, you reply about constant death and no-fun-learning from failure while simultaneously talking about the requirement of leaders knowing everything, expectations of failure until sometime in the future a win may be taken, and how the hard part was figuring out the salvage (i.e., the very opposite of what I pointed out in my experience), and I'm the one with no reading comprehension AND the nerdrage.

It just doesn't get any better than this. Well done!

I love these trials, personally. The pace doesn't leave much room for roleplay, but that's my only complaint, really. They're a lot of fun. Went right down to the wire on taking Nightstar down before Siege repowered on a BAF we finished moments ago...edge-of-your-seat stuff!

1. The progress you're "supposed to be making" is to unlock slots and slot powers. Virtually all of those powers and effects, except for two raid-specific buffs work outside of the trials. Even Alpha's shift works outside of trials and its a reward-breaking buff that lets you attack lower content without reward penalty.

2. The instant you exemp lower than 50, you lose your Incarnate powers, as well as any other powers more than three levels higher than the exemplar level. Exemplar always takes away abilities to moderately normalize your strength against the content for balance purposes.

3. Most MMOs don't let you exemplar at all. It took years for WoW to add the feature long after City of Heroes did, and when they did it was *still* a novelty. So most MMOs don't have the problem you specify because most MMOs don't allow you the option to even see the situation where the problem could occur.

4. In effect, the trials are a replacement for higher combat level content. If they had just added ten more levels, we wouldn't be having this conversation because no one would be asking to keep level 55 when doing level 50 content. They would have just outleveled it and had to either exemp down to it, or never do it again, period. The Incarnate system is *superior* to that, because almost all of its benefits can still be used in level 50 content. Even that is potentially game-breaking levels of power they are allowing us to have. But people should not be focused on the two tiny things we don't get to keep outside of Incarnate content, they should be thanking the devs for the 99% of the benefits we *do* get to keep. Because its never been true in this game that you were allowed to keep higher level powers in lower level content. That's new. I do not get to keep Nova and use it in Synapse. I do get to keep Ion Judgment and use it in ITF. The fact that I don't get to keep Lore shift in ITF is so minor of a situation relatively speaking its actually bordering on looking a gift horse in the mouth.


Also, I'm now 5 and 2 on BAF, 4 and 1 on Lambda. No more losses since day one. Either the players are a lot smarter and adaptable than the doomsayers were predicting, the trials are a lot easier than some were asserting, or Triumph is the most awesome server in the galaxy. Or possibly all three.

Incidentally, at one point there were two simultaneous trial leagues running in Pocket D, plus two ITFs gearing up, plus a Sutter being organized, all at the same time. On Triumph. That would be like finding out Union just spawned Rikti War Zone number twelve. I honestly would have never guessed the activity level would have been this high on I20 release. The people guessing that almost no one would want to run these trials seems to have guessed incorrectly. The trials are becoming clockwork for those that have been on at least one successful run and have seen how its supposed to go down. Incredibly, in only a couple days I'm seeing a shift in attitude that whereas I thought the feeling was that BAF was harder and Lambda was easier, now I'm getting the vibe that the thinking is that both are easy, but BAF is faster.

All that worrying about being able to take down the AVs within a ten second window, because ten seconds is so short? Completely immaterial. The hospital door sync? I have yet to hear anyone complain in league chat yet. The only thing people complain about are other players that don't seem to follow directions to the detriment of the league, and even that is extremely rare. When an attempt fails, the leaders explain what went wrong, tell the league what to do different, and usually most people want to go again.

I'm sure someone out there is having disasterous experiences: I've been hearing about them. But I think they happen when everyone doesn't know what to do, or are being led by leaders that don't lead crisply. The leaders I've seen all knew what they were doing, and even if they got it wrong once or twice they adapted and eventually led their leagues to wins. As this knowledge propagates outward, I think this moreso than the actual Incarnate power will inexorably improve the success rates for the trials across the entire playerbase.


However, I will make this observation. Right now, the turnstile isn't working as a good way to throw people into these trials, for this reason. Leagues organized outside of the turnstile try to fill for maximum. So when they enter, they enter complete, with no fill room. Turnstile people are therefore likely to be all completely random. Which means also that the members and leaders will be completely random. Which increases the chances for poor organization. I think that more than anything else can lead to failure. If a turnstile league took a minute after zoning in to elect effective leaders and follow them, even if they fail they should reassemble and redo with the same people to increase their chances of success. But I doubt that is happening as often as it probably should.

So now I do have a recommendation for players. If you're having multiple strings of failures, my best recommendation is find out where your server is forming leagues - its mostly Pocket D on Triumph - and go there, and advertise for an invite, and wait. Jump into one of those static repeating leagues, and your chances of success probably go from whatever they were, to almost 100%.