How would YOU design a Trial Participation System?

1. I would change the ENTIRE Incarnate system after the Alpha slot.

2. I would make the further powers all based off of either shards or threads and not both.

3. I would allow you to save TF reward merits to cash in for salvage or threads

4. I would use the trials to unlock the slots similar to how you defeat the Trapdoor arc to unlock Alpha.

5. I would have threads/shards drop in normal play. I would have mission ARC completion offer a random chance at salvage. It is MY mission arc I had to work through it and in some cases arcs are longer and harder than TF's.

These things allow for all of the playstyles people like, you can farm trials, you can do mission arcs, you can run TFs and advance. You can solo or team and all of it advances you.

I have been reading all the posts that I can find regarding this issue.

While there are some that would incorporate a mechanic based system where participation for certain 'goals' determines the end result.

Others want a pure random event such as we have in place for task/strike forces.

For myself, I would rather go with random without any participation rewards. There are simply far too many 'conditions' that could or would apply to result in 'participation'.

Keep the streak breaker idea in place, so you wouldn't forever be stuck with bad rolls per say, but keep it random so everyone is on equal footing whether they are a AOE damaging death dealing massive murdering machine of devastating proportions.... or.... a carefully crafted empathatic essence of nature who exists to support the AOE maniac

BOTH have viable places on a team, both have valid ways to participate and neither is useless to a team.

iXP would be applied equally to the entire League and equally to each person within the League.

WHY we are penalized for being asked to take a specific task such as AV instead of ADD's goes way beyond good design to me.
What would possess the design team to think it was a good idea or even fair to have iXP split among team and not even equal within a given team.

They have taken a clean simple system and twisted it into a convoluted mess that we currently are forced to endure.

For myself..
I 'had' been willing to run several through the incarnate system taking up much more time than normal.
Now.. with this current 'plan' in effect... I will limit my exposure to this to one maybe two characters. Forcing myself through this 'content' with more than one solely to be able to help my friends and teammates with a choice of characters.

What does that say about a system that is in place if someone who has been here since launch doesn't want to endure their 'participation reward' program?

Say I were to design such a system.

It would be hideously complex and need to have failsafes to prevent gameable behaviour:

1)Power activations.
Have the game track whether you have buffed teammates.
Of course, you'd need to put a stop on a player simply casting Insulation Shield on the same person, or just spamming a heal on a fully healthy person.

So...

First activation = Activation Threshold.
Repeated activations on stable/already activated target = Actvation Threshold - N.

In other words, if you bubble you entire team AND are attacking, you bump up the ladder. If you repeatedly spam your shield on someone, your chance of obtaining an extra rare goes down proportinately.

2) Tethering:

To prevent players rushing off and using AoEs on Spawns, implement a tethering system similar to the old reward system. Once you're too far from your group you get a thought bubble: "You're getting too far from your group! Participation Rewards may be decreased!" Of course, this would hinder people that are on "patrol" for Prisoners or other targets. This is likely gameable by having a pair of party members stick close together, using Recall Friend before attacking, etc.

3) Movement:

The game is already baked with a system that notifies you if you are away from keyboard for a while. You could use a system that counts movement ticks from your character. Of course, this is MASSIVELY gameable by having sprint/autorun on, toggling a travel power or just running into a wall for activity points, so there's a dud idea.

4) AoE vs. Single Targets:

Give extra credit to powerset single target attacks, so the Katana/Broadsword/Ice Blasters aren't lagging behind the massive AoE users. Potential gameability from people using Brawl in their queue, using temp powers like Nem Staff (if those aren't greyed out alread) and so on.
Of course, in this case you could have someone just putting an attack on auto and targeting a tough mob.

All these solutions are kludgy, inefficient and likely not worth a Dev's time of day. Players will exploit them to death.

Better solution:

Random rolls. Everyone starts with a baseline Common, bumped up when goals are achieved such as no prisoner escapes, etc. to an Uncommon. Master runs should always reward a random rare. The option for 10 Threads should be part of ANY menu. Sometimes you want those to craft something.
Additionally, you could just award 2-4 Incarnate Threads on completion of any trial.

Yes, you will get the "Centriole" rolls with a random table, it happens. It would at least be more "fair" than our current, obfuscated system.

Instead of an addition based system (do this amount of <insert criteria> to get base reward, do an additional amount of <insert criteria> to get base reward plus one), I would've done the following. Make it a combination system.

The first part of the system would be designed to weed out the leechers/idiots by downgrading end rewards for unhelpful behavior. Minimal performance qualifier if you will. For example.

1. If you stay defeated for more than one minute without going to the hospital, you get 10 threads as the end reward.
2. If you sit in the hospital for more than one minute without exiting into the main trial map, you get 10 threads as the end reward.
3. After you are in the trial map, if you go more than one minute (for BAF) or two minutes (for Lambda) without actively affecting a mob (doing damage, debuffing, holding, etc) or assisting an ally (healing, buffing, etc), you get 10 threads as the end reward.

Now these were just some examples. The duration of inactivity or even the criterias themselves are of course up for debate. In anycase, if you don't commit any of these bad behaviors, you would be qualified to participate in the second portion of the system which is a roll. The probability table would look something like this.

10% chance for very rares.
20% chance for rares.
30% chance of uncommons.
40% chance for commons.

Personally, I would much prefer a system such as this as opposed to one that uses highly subjective and mysterious criterias to measure the contribution of a particular AT. How would one design a participation system that has to account for so many variables such as overall team competency, trial strategy, lag or game crashes (quite common since i20) anyways? Frankly, given how the current system has already screwed over MMs and some other ATs to a lesser extent, I honestly do not trust the devs enough to rely on their definition of "participation". Oh sure they can tweak the existing criterias but chances are that will only lead to some other ATs getting the shaft.

I'd do it randomly, with a streak breaker that slowly increases the chance for a very rare or rare the longer you go without finding one.

Maybe, if participation must matter, have the amount it increases by be weighted by that. Either way, I'd make it so that you're guaranteed a very rare somehow without spending out the *** with inf.

It needs to be random, period.

Then you also allow for the TF merits you get to also allow you to buy Incarnate salvage and this would include having them listed on the Hero/Villain tips rewards - I mean 11 missions over 2 days is harder than a 30 minute "Trial."

The same with mission ARCs - I just did the Roy Cooling arc on my stalker and it took several hours to finish - why not give me a chance to get salvage if the arc is within the level range for a Incarnate reward.

In my opinion this was made far more difficult than it needed to be and as always simple is better. Open it up make it more player friendly and everyone wins.

If I MUST make such a system, here is how I would work it:

Each trial would be broken down into "Acts". Each Act would have different "Danger zones" in it.

During each Act, if you enter at least one Danger Zone and use a power on a target (not yourself) in combat mode, you earn credit for being active during that Act. The more Acts you're active in, the more likely you are to get a good table at the end.

Example: BAF.

First Act: Clearing the Warworks. All spawn locations are Danger Zones.

Second Act: Defeat Nightstar. The entire inside of the BAF is a Danger Zone, as you don't know where she'll be pulled to for the fight.

Third Act: Prisoner Escape. Areas along the escape paths are Danger Zones.

Fourth Act: Defeat Seige. Again, the entire inside of the BAF is a Danger Zone.

Fifth Act: Defeat Seige and Nightstar. Once more, the entire BAF is the Danger Zone.

You could still beat this system, but it would at least require you to do something and move around some.

Participation System: Remove it. For more details on my opinion on why, see the existing threads on the subject.

Reward Structure: I have been thinking about this for a few days. IMO, while random is better than "participation" based, its still bad. I would much rather completing the trial simply drop 200 or however many threads, and you crafted everything from there, sans influence cost.

I would also remove 3/4ths of the drops and roll everything into a single salvage type by tier, because the different salvage types within a tier are meaningless and only add clutter. There is no functional difference between a "Genomic Analysis" and a hypothetical "Common Incarnate Orb" except that one is arbitrary and the other clear. Different salvage types have meaning when the source of obtaining them varies or when they can be traded. None of that is true here.

iXP: You didn't ask about this, but IMO iXP should be based around completing the trial and not farming the map. The "strategy" of killing 9 crates and farming until the clock runs down should not be the ideal approach for unlocking slots. Specifically, killing enemies should not grant iXP. Completing each phase of the trial should grant it,in the same amount, to every member of the team, with possibly an XP bonus for fully completing.

• Make the participation system only account for the Threads, Common and Uncommon Tables.
• Increase Thread costs for crafting Common and Uncommon components (by at least a third) to make the new restricted Trial Rewards worthwhile.
• Remove random component drops from initial "Master of" and initial Badge Credits and replace with a single Empyrean Merit (also backport this for those currently with a badge).
• Make the Rare and Very Rare components only craftable with Empyrean Merits.
• Realign the crafting cost of Rares and Very Rares in Empyrean Merits in light of the above (perhaps reducing by a third? Balanced vs. devs original estimated timeframes in any event)

Were it necessary to have a participation mechanic, then above all else it must be transparent. I would tell people exactly what they have to do to be considered 'participatory' by the system. If telling the players what constitutes participation would allow everyone to break the system, then it is a bad system.

Even if they eliminate the Mastermind flaw and various other aberrations from the current system, even if the system by some miracle of analysis was a reasonably fair metric of participation it still will cause egregiously counterproductive behavior just because the one time a player ran around aggroing the entire Training Facility without actually killing anything, or left Brawl on auto, or they stood on one leg and recited the Badger song in League chat over and over was the one time it graced that player with a very rare, and the players have no way of knowing whether or not it was unrelated.

The trials already have objectives that award teams for completing them: phase changes and achieving badge conditions even if you already have the badge, both reward Astral Merits. Remove the participation system entirely and make a random reward table pop at the end of the trial.

Make Astral Merits convert into useful things besides 4 threads. Perhaps even let them convert in some number into the much more valuable and rare/very-rare convertible Empyrean Merits. Or directly into rares/v-rares, or a 'random roll' - say, 5 or 10 astrals rolls you a random salvage item that has the same chance of being a common-uncommon-rare-veryrare as the reward tables for completion, but doesn't give you a choice of which specific salvage item it is.

Problem solved, IMO. People are rewarded for succeeding and succeeding at "skill goals" - the badge conditions - that encourage teamwork and cooperation to achieve. They could instead opt to run 'speed runs' for quick completion for the phase change merits at a higher pace than working in concert, but options aren't a bad thing and I can't imagine that getting a bunch of bonus merits wouldn't at least be competitive with speedrunning.

The requirements of the Lambda Trial temp power badges would have to be changed, though, to balance it against the BAF. I routinely run master BAFs, I simply don't have the right combination of friends with -regen, -res, and psionic damage to comfortably try for master lambda on a regular basis. We would happily run without using acid temp powers every time, though, if we didn't have to eschew getting any grenades and effectively do a master-style run but without gathering grenades to get that badge. Notification of who uses temp powers in Lambda would be nice too, so that anyone who ruins the run can be appropriately dealt with.

Secondarily, notifications when someone clicks the tower glowies in the BAF, and notifications when Nightstar and Siege have 'left their areas' would be useful. Maybe have their hp bars or names change color when they're in "Keep 'Em Separated" position, so people can move them back where they belong if necessary. The first is just to prevent griefing and intentional run failures, the second is to make it easier for the widely-spaced teams to tell if their counterparts are in place.

"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."


This part won't work. For one, some ATs (like my Ice/Storm Troller) do better standing still. I once soloed a door and not only did not let a single Minion through but also laid some hurt down on the Lts via Ice Blast, Tornado, Lightning Storm and so on.

Everyone I know runs Hasten on auto. SR and SD use auto for their Status Resistance. Sometimes Auto is lazy but sometimes it's necessary. As for Follow, my Scrapper uses it with Leap to catch runners.



"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."


This part also won't work because even though most BAF teams that I've seen are pre-built they are often not an optimum mix. They have too few of something versus too much of something else. You don't always have enough control for every door and so on. In this case the other ATs have to think outside the box and rise to the occasion. If a sub-par mix of toons manages to finish they should be rewarded for the good job, not penalized for having to work outside their comfort zone.


"Ideally, every single power should have a weighted participation value per archetype."


Likely true and sadly will never happen because going over every possible permutation of every single Power would drive the Devs to the nut house.

Besides that there's slotting to consider. If one Blaster likes to Blap then he might slot his Melee heavier than his ranged powers. In that case it might be better for the League if he Blapped. But unless the weighted values also accounted for slotting it wouldn't be fair.

Unfortunately the only way to REALLY do it is randomly. Weight it to prevent Leeching (character has to fire off one attack every 15 seconds or whatever) but other than that make it utterly random.

That way someone might get messed over on one Trial and get the big prize the next. As it should be.

I wouldn't. I'm not competent to do so.
The more I see, the more I suspect the current set of devs aren't either.
Better to chuck it and just go with "random, but completely fair."