Are masterminds hurt in the participation tables?

Aye, however I'm not buying it. They already stated there was a Mastermind issue. And a comment of "Uncommons are out of balance" does not account for why the "statement" took so long to prepare and had to go through Marketing.

I suspect this is a smoke and mirrors affair to cover the changes they'll actually be making to participation.

Probably because the Participation mechanic as a whole is proprietary. Any statements made about it would have to go through marketing to ensure they didn't unveil anything that might benefit a competitor.

But all that statement effectively said was "It's all working fine, but Uncommons are set to be too common and we'll fix that". It doesn't wash with me - a statement like that didn't need the detail it went into or the sanitisation of Marketing.

But... well, I've stopped playing iTrials until the fixes are in. Including the Mastermind fix(es).

Taking a break for the holiday, but I can't do this since I am too close to my T4 Barrier, but I might take a break after getting it. Have 7 Empyreans to get before I get my 1st very rare component. Assuming I don't do the improbable and get a very rare component to drop. Anyone can get 2 T4s in a month through just Empyrean merits by doing both every day and assuming that 4 rares drop or you craft the rares.

qft

the number of 'good' MM players who have commented on low rewards, and indeed my own experiences, definately lead me to believe there is something affecting MMs. Especially since the announcement contradicts itself.

"once you pass the threshold thats it"

"if your league does well, you're more likely to get a V.Rare"

erm... What? Seems a bit off.

Given that I can play my now tripple shifted MM in a way I feel has the best participation factor and get common - uncommon (1 or 2 rares ever)

I can then go on my unshifted (at all) Traps/Sonic Defender and drop a rare, nearly every time.

So i've got to face the fact that either, the Devs are misinforming us. The Devs dont fully understand their own system OR the 'R'NG is not so random, and has it in for my MM.

Either of those I don't particuarly enjoy the idea of.

Originally Posted by VoodooGirl [*]Watching out for the Spinning Disco Portal of D00M!*

Did they actually come out and state that there was a Mastermind issue? I thought they'd just said they'd look into Masterminds because *we* stated there was an issue, not that they'd confirmed that the issue exists.

On re-read you may be right. The sentence in question was "When a part of our community shows concern, such as Masterminds have, we will investigate the rewards and make tweaks as needed. In fact, you can expect to see some changes from the first round of metrics and feedback in an upcoming patch."

I took that as reading that there were changes due to Masterminds because of this feedback. I still believe this is the case, even though as you rightly point out the devs haven't said so explicitly.

This is why I'm asking for Masterminds to go and test it out - I can't do it myself (like I have with other Mastermind changes) because I can't access the US Test Server.

But they also clearly said that once your participation pushes you past the "10 Threads" option, which I didn't even know existed, then its just down to the RNG.

So how come my level 50+3 MM gets commons and the odd uncommon

while my level 50 (pre plusses) defender (and a trapper too, so rellying on pet entities) gets rare pool nearly every time (seriously, 1 common, 1 uncommon, 7 rares)

Originally Posted by VoodooGirl [*]Watching out for the Spinning Disco Portal of D00M!*

Considering my friend's mercs/traps MM got mostly rares as well (he doesn't post) on his BAF runs, I'm chalking it up to random is as random does right now. Especially since I get rare table on my Ninja/TA MM often enough as well.

Originally Posted by Back Alley Brawler Did you just use "casual gamer" and "purpled-out warshade" in the same sentence?

Due to first time victories on BAF and LAM you get a rare?

Might be one of two possibilities IMO...

#1: The "Well" rewards players for the powers they use to further the trial. Since most MM abilities are "channeled" through their pet abilities, and most of their OTHER abilities focus on improving their pets in some way (not players) this skews how well we "work with the team" as it is actually our buffed pets working with the team.

Or, #2, I believe this personally: Rewards are broken down, also reflected by your AT compared to other players of the same AT, how you make yourself stand out to "the Well" in regards to your class. I have noticed, playing with several other MMs, that the ones with less-frequently played builds, tend to score better, especially those builds with debuffs and a lot of active powers.. such as Thugs/Poison, with Poison debuffs, and active thug abilities (such as using Gang War) This may not even necessarily rule out #1, if say Bots/FF MMs don't get credit for using FFs on their bots - which is how they *should* play their character - compared to a MM with Dark Miasma, with buffs and debuffs that inadvertently hit other players.



I have noticed that while you do not get credit for "Healing Points" I do actually seem to do better when I actually *do* heal. This could be a balance issue - the game rewarding people for *using* the heal to heal someone at an opportune time, rather than the raw amount of healing they've done, so that you're not excluded if your build is in worse shape than Mr. 5 Billion. (Which I am..but.. I'm also not the only guy who gets good rewards!)

Some things I've noticed on BAF in particular: spamming debuffs on the prisoners scores big points, doesn't matter if they actually end up being useful or not. On MO runs, people on reinforcements only seem to get worse tables- as though the reinforcements aren't an objective "The well" is looking for - same applies if you've got a very heavy DPS stack on one AV, and you're holding steady waiting for the other team to catch up. Though that could simply be due to the fact that you'll just be standing there doing nothing in either case, since the adds tend to die within 5 seconds, and you wait around for 25. You don't tend to get a good reward table, even if you're successful in a full MO attempt, in the above cases. On the flip side, I've seen GREAT tables by going for Strong & Pretty alone, by dragging the AVs to the reinforcement spawn point and going crazy. If there's truth to the above observation, I think that it's certainly broken ATM, since to work together, you've sometimes got to idle until the opportune time.





I would like to also add that on MOST of my toons, I've noticed that being level shifted and using the new slots doesn't ACTUALLY improve the tables. In fact, when I got all the slots, I realized that I was more effective on my Defender, as an example, by simply blasting everything to death. However, after a huge streak of Uncommons, I went back to debuffing regularly, and started to see Rare and Very Rare tables again. (By AGAIN, I mean I had gotten 12+ Very Rares up to that point... nearly every run was rare/very rare, but with no downgrade option, I held on to 'em. Eventually did convert some of the V.Rares to threads) The only thing I could figure, since this was before the announcement that stated it was participation based, was that "The Well" looks for specific criteria for giving rewards, and it is not necessarily what we would think as being effective and contributing to the team.

I DID notice that on my melee toons, however, the slots DID contribute to getting better pools - this may have simply been an issue of dying less often, and therefore being more active towards furthering the goals. YMMV.


My point, however, is that when you're on a team full of +3's it's easier going, so the need to use your buffs and debuffs, i.e. work together beyond just killing things incredibly fast, is no longer there, but I think that this is actually what helps you get the better tables.


/rant