How would YOU design a Trial Participation System?

So the cat's out of the bag, the trials give rewards as a participation system that may or may not be malfunctioning and/or be very gameable and possibly encourage egoism on teams. That's not what this thread it about, that's over here.

This thread is for pie in the sky, no concerns for time, money, or manpower brainstorming of how the perfect participation system would be. Basically, if you were to make one of these from scratch, what you it look like? What would your system weigh as participating? How would rewards be given out?

As far as I see it, a good participation system must do the following:

• Reward teamwork
• Encourage completing the trial quickly
• Encourage people to do more than the bare minimum of the trial

What it should not do is reward behavior that makes the trial unnecessarily difficult or be a cause for animosity among the players. Meaning it should look "fair". This is not easy, as human behavior is random at best, there are a lot of ways to participate in a good way on a trial, and computers are bad at grading human behavior.

To kick things off, I'll go first:

A good participation system in my book considers two things:

• League Accomplishments
• Personal Accomplishments

The League Accomplishment is the baseline, so to speak. How well did the league perform on the sub-objectives of the trial? Did any prisoners escape? Did they get all the acid pickups? Did they go for style points and take out Marauder without grenades? How much time did they use? Basically, the more badge/Astral Merit worthy accomplishments the team does, the better the reward baseline is. So if you were in Master of... territory for a trial, there'd be rare drops at the end.

The Personal Accomplishments is a lot more difficult to do. Easy part is hitting things and doing damage. The mobs need to fall and it's certainly worth it help to do that, so "doing damage" is a good baseline to compare to here. Buffs and debuffs are more tricky as they aren't equal. I'd probably add a point value to each so they'd match up with doing damage for increasing accomplishments. You know, make powers weighted. Some buffs and debuffs are very potent, but are short lived, others last a long time. Ideally, the points would be gained for keeping the buffs and debuffs active, not from the casting itself. A balancing nightmare, but a fair nightmare, at least. I'd likely add a honey trap for being on follow, not moving and/or only using a power set to auto. That should tank your Personal Accomplishment.

And how does this make for a reward? You look at League Accomplishments first, setting the base rewards for the entire team. A speed run doing as little as possible, or a run that barely made it in time would be in the Common area, a team that got all sub-objectives done and finished in good time would be generally in the Rare area. Each trial would, of course, have things that add or subtract to this score. Prisoners escaping, Siege or Nightstar reviving, missed acids and grenades and so on would be negative.

Then we add or subtract Personal Accomplishments. If high, you'd get bumped up a category, if low you'd get bumped down one. If caught in the honey trap, you get the booby prize. To makes sure this is fair, I'd make participation unique per archetype. Scrappers and Stalkers get a bonus for attacking hard targets, Blasters and Brutes get a bonus for taking out a lot of weaker targets, buffers and debuffers get a bonus for maintaining their buffs or affecting enemies with debuffs, and crowd control types get bonuses for using their crowd control. Ideally, every single power should have a weighted participation value per archetype.

The reason for splitting it up like this, is to make sure that everyone plays to win the trials in a way that benefits the entire team. It's less likely to cause infighting as if you work against the trial for personal gain, you risk bumping the entire trial down a reward level. Meaning you get nothing out of it as you couldn't go up more than one level from the trial result, anyway. It does, however, acknowledge that some runs have MVPs, and they should get a little bonus for that. But you only ever get a Very Rare is the trial was not just completed, but utterly dominated and destroyed and you were a big part of making that happen. As in all objectives done fast or a Master Run (if they're not the same.)

Finally, I'd consider making at least the participation values viewable by the players. Just a "Low-mid-high" thing, perhaps with a progress meter next to it, both for personal and league values. Transparency is a good thing, it causes less FUD and speculation.

But this is only my idea, and I'd like to see what everyone else thinks would be good for a system like this. Except for "scrapping it". Again: that's over here.

TL:DR; What does your ideal participation system look like, and why?

And now I wonder why I took the time to write all this. Guess I care more than I thought.

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Aegis Rose, Forcefield/Energy Defender - Freedom
"Bubble up for safety!"

With great care

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@Golden Girl

City of Heroes comics and artwork

The only fair way to do it is to make it purely random.

The only reasonably fair way to do it so that it seems fair to people is to make it random with streak breakers.

Let the trial leaders be responsible for kicking out duds.

I predict any other scheme that one could come up with will have some unintentional drawback or bias.

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First thing i would do is find a way to screw over the masterminds.

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I wouldn't.

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Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
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Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!

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Aegis Rose, Forcefield/Energy Defender - Freedom
"Bubble up for safety!"

My participation system would be as thus:

Were you part of the league that completed the task?
Were you present at the trial for any part of it?

Congratulations! You participated!

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I would make it random, with two influencing factors:

1) Minimum participation threshold. Ideally, this should be just high enough to discourage doorsitters or /afk autofollowers. Fall below the threshold, and you get nothing. Above the threshold, you get the same chance for a reward as the rest of the league.

2) Completing objectives that currently give astral merits and accomplishment badges would also increase the chance for getting a better reward table. This would give incentive for leagues to go for the 'hard' objectives in a trial beyond just getting the 'master of' badges.

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Arc#314490: Zombie Ninja Pirates!
Defiant @Grouchybeast
Death is part of my attack chain.

Maybe move once and use one power every 60 seconds?

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@Golden Girl

City of Heroes comics and artwork

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Aegis Rose, Forcefield/Energy Defender - Freedom
"Bubble up for safety!"

1. Make the system almost entirely random. That's the fairest for everyone.

2. Instead of trying to apply various participation metrics, which are almost impossible to work fairly across AT's, have metrics for a LACK OF PARTICIPATION. If you spend more than x% of the trial 'inactive', your reward table suffers. Auto-firing powers will not work to negate this. Moving around does not apply either. You need to be using actual powers. Is this still 'gameable' by standing off alone and firing AoE powers? Yes, but it's making the person do SOMETHING. If you have to be doing something, the vast majority of people will do something useful to the team.


Trying to apply metrics based on helping the team are guaranteed to be unfair. If you based it x% on dealing damage and y% on buffing, some powersets will suffer. Change the percentages and different powersets will suffer. There are too many varied powersets for such a system to work fairly.

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Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project

Speed doesn't need to be encouraged. The repetitive nature of the trials already encourages "let's get this done as fast as possible" play.

Completing MO objectives should be encouraged. The MO objectives for Lambda need to be rethought, so people don't have to make the trial significantly harder in order to achieve them, and so none of them are mutually exclusive. Completing MO objectives could lead to a better reward table for the whole league.

A "bare minimum" activity threshold would be fine. Time spent dead could also count against individual players' reward tables, beyond, say, a 30-second window to allow teammates time to use Vengeance and/or rez you. After that, you hosp or your reward goes down. Beyond that though, any effect of participation on the end reward should be league-wide.

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Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper

Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
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Personally, I haven't run enough raids to see the biased pattern that others are experiencing, so I can't speak much to it. I'd have no problem with a 'weighted random' system, though, if that's what's being used.

Examples of "weighted"
1) Random number of 1 to 20... plus some 'participation threshold' set at various stages (participation isn't just damage-dealing) If that threshold is met, user gets a +1 to the number. There can be several such stages in the mish and doesn't reward the person that 'sits out' a stage, but doesn't severly punish him either.

so, imagine 1-11= common, 12-16 uncommon, 17-19 rare, 20+ very rare. You met the threshold for all 4 stages, so you get a +4. RNG rolls a 5. You still get a common(5+4). I went AFK during a stage and only got +3, but RNG rolls a 16. I get a rare.

Its still VERY random, but does give some reward to participation.

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2) Different from above in that, for each stage I get credit for meeting the "participation threshold" I get a RNG roll. The highest-roll value wins. You're AFK most of the mission, you get the minimum of 1 RNG for successful completion. You roll a 4. Tough luck. I hit all 4 stages. I roll a 11, 5, 12, 17, and 2. The 17 is used.

Both keep things pretty random, but both give significant weight to an "active participant." Measuring participation can vary by AT and stage, so something whose tactic for success doesn't mesh well with masterminds pulling out their pets could have an easier participation threshold than other AT's... for that stage.

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We already have a highly sophisticated system in place for determining when a player is not contributing sufficiently to success.

That system is called "the league."

If a league succeeds, it gets rewards. If a league leader sees dead weight, they kick it. If a league leader fails to kick dead weight, they lose their league. Nothing more need be done.

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@SPTrashcan
Avatar by Toxic_Shia
Why MA ratings should be changed from stars to "like" or "dislike"
A better algorithm for ordering MA arcs

My participation system, based on the BAF trial as it currently exists. The Lambda trial would need to be tweaked for this to work:

* Entering the zone: 1 point
* Moving at least 100 yards and activating at least 10 powers that affect a target other than yourself: 1 point
* Each optional badge goal completed by the league: 1 point

The rewards table grows based on how many points you have:
1 point - 10 threads
2 points - add Common iSalvage
3 points - add Uncommon iSalvage
4 points - add Rare iSalvage
5 points - add Very Rare iSalvage

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Random. It's the only way to prevent gaming the system and unintended consequences.

Even making them random causes some gaming to take place, as players will repeat the content to garner more rolls (even learning speed run techniques). However, this is not unwanted as the content is being played.

But don't set the percentages at 'stupid' levels (thinking back on Everquest's near-impossible camps), as this will create frustration and discourage play. It's a fine line.

One last thing: Add reporting of who uses temp powers to the combat spam. I'm very tired of doing Master of Lambda runs and being griefed by players using temps to destroy the attempt. Social consequences need to result, and reporting of who did what is a reasonable request so the players can take appropriate action.

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"When heroes fail, the Angels will save you."

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HAMIDON NUKE RAID GUIDE

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Well given how the Devs handled AE, a great idea in theory, but anyone with 5 mins play time in PI could have predicted would end up the farming tool it has become...
My trail participation system would be..look at whatever the devs came up with, and do the polar opposite.
Random system pls

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I would much rather have random. Any system that rewards a certain type of behavior will just get more of that. Once people figure out what gets the best reward people will do whatever that happens to be.

If being on the ambush team somehow caused better rewards, people would help out on ambushes even if told not to so they could get the reward they seek.

If jumping exactly 87 times got you a very rare, people would be hopping all over the place.

Let the league leader kick the leachers and the stupid or those that just dont listen and those that get to the end get the random reward. Sure maybe increase the chances of a better reward based off of what the entire team is able to accomplish, but not on individulal actions.

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I have been thinking on this, and I can not come up with a system that will not cause more problems than a random or near-random system.

Therefore, I say random, but look at the upgrade/downgrade costs on the rewards, so that a string of bad luck on the rewards does not become an overly unfair situation.

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