Incarnate Trials: Failure/Success!?

So Issue 20 is here! People are clamoring to run the new Incarnate trials...

I want to know about your experiences on Virtue, not some other server. I'm sure not everyone has had a chance/gotten around to actually doing some, but as time passes that will change.


Launch Day/Night:
Participated in countless preformed Lambda trials that were continually swift and successful, which allowed me to slot my Destiny power. Only one of the Lambda trials I participated in failed, 7 people, random queue, and a few first time experiences -- had the issue of people not paying attention to their temp powers.

The one BAF I decided to join up on went extremely well surprisingly. We completed phase 3 with only 5? escapes.

Only server/lag annoyances I had was when the server at atleast 2 instances of the RWZ exploded, both of which I happen to be in. There was also the issue of a group of 16 players zoning into lambda and instantly getting kicked (trial crash).

--

It has been no where near as frustrating as I thought it would be and in fact it was a lot of fun.


So how about others

Wasn't bad, The new Legue options and new UI made for an "Off Balance" night, but overall everyone learned a lot. Only tried it once, but definatly forming up for some more. I think CoH did ok with this update.

Three BAFs. All successful. All very quick.

Two Lambdas. Both successful. Second one was a tad slow due to a crapload of adds.

Tried my first Lambda. I'd say it went pretty well, though we did fail in the end. I'm not familiar with the 'standard' approach to it, so I'm not sure if we were under staffed or not...

But eh. I learned some things. Hopefully I'll be more prepared for the next one.

Only real problem I had was the lag, which made it hard to get into melee range and hard to reaction to the fight quickly. Made me feel ineffectual, since I died... I lost count of how many times I died.

I was really looking forward to the trials myself, but am feeling a tad disappointed. Ran 3 Lambdas last night, failed all of them miserably. I had lots of fun fighting the mobs at the beginning and even in the crate/container hunts. Once Marauder arrived though the story totally changed. Running my Elect/SD Brute at 67% defense I was going splat within 30 seconds of returning from the hospital. The mobs around the AV continued to grow even after we managed to close all the portals (Orbs would TP in Seers, Seers TP'ed in PPD, Commanders TP'ed in more orbs, rinse and repeat).

It's the first day so I'm trying to remain positive but I'm really hoping that the trials are more than just a debt fest.

Lambda trial
Five attempts, one success which is fair for a release day I suppose. I was a late joiner on one of those attempts - about five minute left on Marauder, with as many people in there too. Queueing with the "In progress" doesn't seem like a good idea based on that experience.

On the other four trials we did reasonably well while it felt like we were understaffed. First run started with eight people, second with nine, third with 11 that dropped down to nine or ten, I forget which - all failures, coming from having earned way too few Molecular acids from the sabotage part. While we could eventually close down all portals, the incoming troops had simply built up to a too large number.

On the final successful run we were down to five people for a while, but the League leader started recruiting so we made it up to two teams of five. With a great effort in the sabotage part we had eight acids with us out to the courtyard, so the adds weren't that many. Still, we were down into the last minute when we finally pulled it off.

Overall an enjoyable experience even if there's going to be confusion on the Leagues for some time to come. Just helping people find the League channel is a good start.

The only issue I'm seeing right now is that the trials are starting with very few people - only 8-10-ish - which is a very low number. While plenty of forumites have a large network to pull together pre-made trial teams from this doesn't hold true for all players. With a seemingly low chance of success when you have about eight to ten random 50/+1's that are on builds that aren't min/maxed, I expect there to be complaints that it's "impossible". This is simply because the queue-thing favours short queue-times over building a full or almost full League, something I assume (haven't seen a full run, but...) would really improve both the experience and the chance of success.

Two BAFs. First successful, second not. Not sure how I feel about this stuff just yet...

Ran ones successfully.

Little to no desire to run them in the immediate future (As in this week)

Figured I'd let the sloppy drunk "THIS IS BROEKEN. MA TANK/SCRAP/BROOT GETS DESTROIED" comments disappear from the channels before I'd ramp it up.

Well now. I ran with a PUG'd group on my first trial, a Lambda trial. We failed. Contributing factors were an idiot leader who insisted on using broadcast because he didn't understand how to add league chat to a tab, people not smart enough to check to see if they had any acid in their temp powers (and refusing to do so when asked/told how to do it), and general lack of guidance. Only a couple people in the league had run it before. My initial impressions were not good, because I didn't understand how the trial worked and it sure seemed like Marauder had a lot of friends.

Second trial was a BAF, with people generally known to be good players from a certain mechafeline global. Went great. We allowed two prisoners to escape and didn't care. Only trouble we had was people forgetting to deal with the adds on the final Siege + Nightstar fight. Still finished successfully and had fun. Big factors were our leader explaining things beforehand, everyone putting their egos aside and taking direction, and the teams staying together.

Last one of the night was another Lambda with people from the same global. We wiped out all the portals in short order, because everyone was clever enough to look for the acid in their temp power list. Then it was on to the adds, which were cleared really fast because we stuck together. We then dealt with Marauder's jumping about for a short while, and then he died. The end, we won. Major points for the leader explaining everything in advance, for people doing as asked, and for being methodical about clearing adds then engaging Marauder.

I think these things are going to get a lot easier when everyone and their dog has the new Incarnate slots populated. As it is they are not that tough, but they do punish those who are unwilling to organize.

I tried one BAF run, and one Lambda run. Both were joined via the LFG system.

The BAF run failed, I think - both my wife and I managed to crash out during the third phase, and by the time we got back, it was all over. The team was doing well - it might have failed because everyone crashed at the same time.

The Lambda run I joined was also unsuccessful. It moved like clockwork until the last phase, when several people got confused about temporary powers, and Marauder just had too many spawns with him by the time we got all the gates down.

Learning curve - it'll get easier as more people learn the tricks of the trials.

Haven't succeeded once. I HAVE, however, had some great turnstile PUGs and lost to the timer on L-Sector TWICE. (Marauder was under 10% both times and the time limit screwed us.)

Win or lose, I'm enjoying the trials immensely.

Ran LS once...success! \o/

Ran BAF four times...last one was a success!

So far my impression is this...you can recover from dying multiple times, if the team stays. Sadly, I saw lots of people just basically quit the trial if they got any amount of debt. Basically, it looks like a lot of PuG players are of the mind set "If I get debt I'm leaving."

But that's just the first day impression, which probably isn't far off, seeing as how I remember that's how people were with the ITF when it first came out.

Lambda Thrice. First time we weren't successful because the "leader" decided that all the damage dealers would go for the weapons while everyone else would get the containment cells. Not a single cell was gotten. No weapons crates were gotten.
Second try, everyone on the team got booted back to login, on a premade team.
Third try, 2 crates were gotten, and 6 cells were gotten. It was the premade team. Then I mapserved and couldn't get back on the server.
3 attempts, none successful.

BAF once. We failed because of the ADDs that Siege got. The damage dealers focused on Siege completely, then got killed because of the reinforcements. And the reinforcements weren't attacked causing an unwinnable situation. If you ran into the reinforcements, you'd die because of the aggro. If you didn't run into them, you'd cause more reinforcements to spawn. Simply put, unwinnable.

Lambda once; failed due to time expiration versus Marauder.

BAF three times; the first succeeded, however the next two failed. The first failure was due to time expiration versus both AV's at the same time. The second failure was due to time expiration versus Siege and the 9CU's.


- B.

Did mostly lambdas, none suceeded. All pug teams and by the time we got rolling we had maybe 6 people. Way to many people dropping out. So far I am luke warm on these. It feels again like they have tweaked the game to 'cheat'. I have tanked against a lot of level 54 mobs and AVs and been fine. Now my tank feels quite squishy against these. And it's not like a stone tank can retreat very easily.

B.A.F: Total Success 1/5, getting to the Nightstar & Siege fight before reinforcements wiped us out 3/5.
Lambda: Total Sucess 1/3.

It's the first night, people are new to this and are still unlocking new incarnate slots, it'll come easier with practice.

I ran 2 BAF trials. First one failed (overwhelmed by reinforcements in the last phase). Second suceeded.

Hmm. 2 Lambdas, 3 BAFs. No successes.

The Lambdas? One trial crash, one mass boot-crash in the middle of the second which screwed us all over though it was going well.

The BAFs? Boot crash midway killed us off in one. In the other 2 people started suffering AV ADD and the adds got to the point of ridiculous. As a Stalker when it reaches that stage I may as well AFK and eat a sandwich as no amount of defense will save me when the 9CUs start swarming.

Two BAFs, both failed at the last phase, and a Lambda that failed when Marauder chased us out of the facility. 56% Judgement, 24% Interface.

I'd have more, but I got distracted building an obsidian tower in Minecraft.

So far i did a lot of Lambda and beside league issues/bugs, we dont seems to have too much issues completing it.

As for BAF, we failed a few, most of the time because ppl having hard time to get there baring. So I stole a map and enhenced it a bit, to make it clear where the spawn points are. We used it last night, and stressed everyone to camp the spawn points. out of 3 runs,

Run #1: only 2 escape got out, Run #2 and #3, none at all. We won the 3 runs. For me BAF is about phase3.

link to the map

If you have a good crew of players, that listen, and you give them clear directions, things can go pretty smooth.

My only complain would be about the league bugs (hopefuly will get fixed soon) and the lame lag.