Problem: Kicked from BAF because "I was an add and he was doing a 16 man only"

Ah now there's a totally irrational solution to the problem. So rather than have the Devs create a feature to allow league locks, which it seems obvious the majority here wany, lets go 100% the other way and place the entire incarnate system in the hands of a system that is flawed and sucks:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...&postcount=333
(let me clarify: the question came up if any of the things I tested in this post were possible or impossible. This does not mean that if you join the queue waiting list you can not access those menus or travel .. you can go from zone to zone, enter your base, slot enhancements etc.. the SCREENs will appear. BUT if you do each time you will need to click on the LFG tab and once again request to put on a waiting list to be invited to join a team. By doing any of these things you essentially remove your request.)

That link is to a post in another thread where I went and experimented on what the LFG forces players to endure.

1. Travel is impossible. Don't use a train, the ferry, helicopter or Ouro portal. The full screen graphic will remove your request for a team and you will have to start all over.

2. Acces to you SG (if applicable is impossible) again the full screen zoning menu will drop your request and you have to request again

3. Aside from street hunts you can't do missions.. accessing any door will bring up another full sized zoning menu and you will be dropped and need to start over when you come back out.. you can;t eventry to JOIN while inside a mission

Want to do other things while waiting..

4. You can not conduct a character respec... the full screen menu will delete your request for a team and you have to start again when done

5. You can't create a new costume or alter an older one .. THAT full screen menu will drop you and you'll need to reapply when you are done

6. YOU can create enhancements(IOs) IF you are in a spot like the RWZ while waiting.. You can't access your enhancement trays and slot them or buy enhancemenets at a store or WW and slot them because that full screen menu will drop your request for a team and you have to start all over

So plan on not doing much of anything once you clcik LFG and select one or both trials. You can buy some inspirations as long as you don't need to zone to get to the place to buy them. And you can have a conversation in local, broadcast or global chat. that's about it


So what else can we expect from LFG if we can't pre-form leagues any more?

7. Minimum league size for the BAF is 12 for the Lambda its 8... the LFG will take the minimum number of players required for a trial and send out invites. With a full sized BAF you can earn about 10 to 15% of the iXP required to open a new power. So figure on earning about half that on a trial that has half the members and spawns mobs half the size. So it takes between 7 to 10 trials on a 24 man team .. figure needed around 14 to 20 if every league has only 12 members. Doing the math that means each incarnate character you decide to do trials with will need to now do around 28-40 trials just to open up their judgement and lore slots. Providing the majority of those trials are succeses and drop A and E merits lets go with the lower figure of 28. Then head on over and start doing Lambdas!

8. Currently league leaders can move players around from one team to another as they recruit so when they enter the queue all 3 teams have a good mix of ATs so they all have good defense, good damage and all stand a good chance at survival and at earning decent rewards when the trial ends. The LFG just takes the first 8 or 12 players available at tosses them into a trial. Leader can still move personnal around but whatever you have you are stuck with since you can't invite anyone once inside. Some teams will be fine and complete trials Others will fail miserably. Considering the queue doesn't care what it throws together in a trial .. plan on the failure rate to increase.. so that number of trials needed just to open the tier one power may increase again.

9. Good news for those in the queue now.. currently the wait time to actually get an invite to a trial is between 20-30 minutes. THAT's about half an hour sitting around doing nothing waiting for the game to find you a team. IF SG got his way and no pre-built league can join the queue wait times will be reduced. At the time of day when players are on line, available and looking for a trial. AT other times the wait will probably be just as long if not longer .. finding a league at 10 AM EST on a work day is not easy since a lot of the player base is at work or in school. THAT won't change a bit. And the queue gives you no way of seeing how many other players are waiting to join a trial.. HOWEVER if you go to the RWZ and join a pre-built league now you can easily see that .. "oh we have 20 of 24 slots filled.. 4 more and we can start!" Until the button appears asking do you wish to join the queue? you have no idea if 2 other people are looking for a trial or 200.

Yeah that sounds like a sound marketing strategy that will vastly increase the satisfaction of the player base. Or maybe it will increase the number of players not renewing their subs .. I think I can hear the marketing department screaming NO WAY! right now.... not to mention the CFO.

Now lets use some SG logic. Repeatedly as this topic has been discussed and discussed and discussed I have heard "the queue will place players on teams even if that league leader doesn't want them. there is nothing wrong with this and it is the way it is designed and working as intended." or words to that effect (this is not a direct quote but does cover the general meaning of statements made repeatedly) Okay but the Devs didn't see fit to disable the Kick function on league either so, using the same sort of logic, any leader that feels the need to kick the 1 or 2 players the queue adds to league they built and held to a particular size in order to cut lag and increase the chance of success is ONLY doing something that the game allows so its not being an <censored> at all its using a trial tool provided BY the DEVS the way it was designed to be used and is working as intended. Don't feel bad guys .. your not <BLEEP> your just using kick function as it was meant to be used.

Yep, though I like Baron's approach. Team majority rules and whatnot.

Yeah if the TL is willing to do that then I applaud his efforts.

Sanity check. Suppose you intended to get at least a rare power in each slot including Judgment and Lore. It takes seven common, 1 uncommon, and 1 rare component to make that rare power. Suppose further that the best you get is 50% common and 50% uncommon, and you never get a rare. That means the one rare you do need will cost eight Empyreans or four uncommons (and inf). Suppose you want to save the Emps. That means it will take a total of seven common and 5 uncommon components to craft that rare, 12 components in all. 12 runs will get you that at 50% common 50% uncommon. Past that point, you'll have more components than you need to craft that power.

That's significant, because that means if it takes more than 12 runs to unlock a slot, you should probably consider burning astral merits for iXP if you are impatient. You're bound to have at least 36, and probably closer to 48 astral merits in 12 runs. It only takes 30 threads, or about 8 astral merits to unlock Judgment and only about 45 threads or 12 astral merits to unlock Lore: 19 astral merits total. That's achievable in about 6 runs, and you will still end up with plenty of them left over once you have enough components to get rare powers everywhere.

iXP is really not the major bottleneck in the system. In fact, 38 astral merits is capable of unlocking all four powers, which takes only about 10-12 runs of *either* trial to get. In thread terms, that is about the number of threads necessary to buy about 8 common components.

To put it another way, the player that gets *no* iXP at all can fall no further behind the player that gets *huge* amounts of iXP per run than about 8 total trial runs across all four slots. It cannot take you twice as long or three times as long: it can take *at most* eight more runs.

I agree with this in theory, however there is one caveat to add. If you purchased all of your iXP for the post-Alpha slots with threads it would cost 375 million inf which is a not inconsiderable amount, especially if the player does not spend time on the markets.

Baron's approach is fine IMO. Nicer than my approach. If I'm the leader I'll take extras if they get added. I won't ask, or care, how the rest feel about it.

Agreed.

That's a good point.

There are plenty of leaders that don't deserve to be leading for whatever reason. I don't think if they deserve it or not is really relevant. Their league/team/supergroup. They can run it however they want. If their leadership is that bad, people are free to leave for greener pastures. I think what we have now works good enough.

I do like the Vote to kick option.. as for your add on to vote to kick leader I have been on a few teams where I'd had given anything for that option. But for the most part.. If someone, that is even moderately competent, has taken the time to build a team THANK GOODNESS! Since this whole incarnate system began I have been amazed at the number of players with multiple 50 and loads of Vet badges that seems scared to death to leade anything. It amazed me when I arrived in IP the week the STF was the WST and found close to 20 players all standing around .. waiting for someone to form a team. twenty players is practically 3 teams so all any one of them had to do was pick the team they wanted.. since they had plenty of options .. and had a chat with Statesman. I ran several Kahn TFs the week it was the WST simply because I didin;t feel like sitting around for an hour.

Now I have yet to lead a trial mainly because I dc to often from the lag and don't want to force leadership on anyone else if my computer decided I need a break and I go POOF!. But it has amazed me the number of players that will NOT lead. And on the trials I have seen leagues that were amazing.. everything going so smooth it was wonderful. After a quick trial or two the leader thanks everyone and says he/she has to run and the next thing you know .. the league is gone and I see people I was JUST teaming with advertising for a team again. YOU WERE ON A TEAM ..why did you leave? Because no one wanted to take charge!

So while I have had a leader or two that... well lets just say that voting him out of his job would be the nicest thing that ran through my head while on his team. Some of the others would get me arrested LOL
But for the most part HEY if you found anyone actually willing to recruit and form a league.. hang onto them. If they are really bad we all have a way of voting even now... LEAVE their team and go find or form another!

Uhm . . . people not wanting to take the Star is nothing unusual in this game. It's been that way for 7 years, why would incarnate trials be any different?