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

I know it's somewhat of a cliche but true leadership is determined during times of hardship. Translated to MMO terms, it is when things start to go wrong. With Lambda, one such example could be the team ran out of grenades (due to D/Cs, not enough DPS or otherwise) and the leader may have to direct certain players to go destroy the extra crate spawns. For BAF it could mean directing people to turn off turrets if fighting at helipad gets ugly or if the league needs to change to chokepoint method to deal with the runner phase should door coverage prove to be inadaquete. While it is true that some enterprising league members can recognize the need themselves and will attempt to rectify it without instruction, having an undisputed leader certainly would cut down on the confusion if things don't play out that way.

Conversely, cobbling a league together from the LFG queue reminds me of the old saying "too many chiefs and not enough Indians". On one hand you could end up with a dozen leadership types, all with their own preferences as to how the trial should be run. The rest of the trial would just involve ceaseless disagreements over where to pull NS/Siege to, door or chokepoint, who should handle ambushes, so on and so forth. On the other you could wind up with a dozen completely clueless people, none of whom actually wants to lead the trial. The blind following the blind if you will. As I've already said before, too many unknown variables.

Well, maybe leagues won't actually advertise for specific ATs but they do advertise for specific functions. If my league is melee heavy and has no debuffers/buffers, I would advertise for it. Whether it is Corr, Defender, Troller or MM is of no concern. Additionally, if my league is full of Blasters and other ranged ATs, I would advertise for some melee types whether it is Scrapper, Brutes or Tankers. Now I do concede that there is no need for a "perfect" league to beat these trials but discovering the weakness of your league and trying to find a remedy is still the most responsible thing to do.

I believe that preformed leagues must start in the same zone, unlike joining the LFG queue solo.

I can see that but at the same time my point is more along the line of why give us the ability to kick people from the zone but not include the ability to control who enters the zone int he first place?

People in this thread have made the analogy that the Trials are more like Hamidon and Mothership Raids than Task Forces in terms of teaming but I disagree. They have features from both but overall I think they are actually closer to TFs than they are to the existing open world raids.

Here's my basic compare/contrast:

Can you join an event in progress?
Hami/MS Raid: Yes as long as the number of participants is below the maximum for the event.
Trials: Yes, but only if the number of participants is below the minimum for the event.
Task Force: No

What happens if you leave the team/league?
Hami/MS Raid: Can continue to participate and get full rewards.
Trials: Cannot participate further.
Task Force: Cannot participate further.

When are new instances created?
Hami/MS Raid: Only created when all existing instances are full/nearly full.
Trials: Created whenever enough people to meet the minimum requirements want to start it.
Task Force: Created whenever enough people to meet the minimum requirements want to start it.

Can the event leader force people to leave?
Hami/MS Raid: No
Trials: Yes
Task Force: Yes

Can the leader control who joins?
Hami/MS Raid: No
Trials: Only in the limited case of a 16/24 man league.
Task Force: Yes

If you look at that list the Trials have a lot more in common with TFs than they do with Hamidon/MS Raids. If the devs had the goal of creating a MS/Hami style "open world raid" then IMHO they failed. What they created was a Task Force without the ability to control who joins the team.

If they really wanted to make it more like Hami/MS raid then they should have done the following:
People can freely enter/leave the zone with the raid in it (and have an interface that shows the current progress and team count of each instance of the zone).
Leaving/being kicked form a team does not remove you from the zone.

Instead what we have is a system that works almost identically to Task Forces except that the leader has no ability to control who is on the team without either filling the league (i.e. exploiting a loophole in the rules) or kicking people (i.e. being a jerk). IMHO this combines the worst of both systems. You lack the ability to fill up a league as you would on a MS/Hami Raid but lack the option of tight control you have on a TF.

From what little I know of other game's raids systems, the developers wanted something similar for this game. I would hazard a guess that the reason they didn't go the pure "join the queue and get whatever" route was because they wanted CoH's raid system to be friendlier.

However players started assuming that making the league before starting meant that the developers intended private leagues. That assumption is what we are facing in these threads. The fact that the queue adds players in the min to max range shows that the developers did not intend for private leagues to exist, unless it was a large super group that could field 24 players at a time.

If you (generic you) stop assuming a developer granted players a divine right to a private league and instead look at the system as a means to organize players while inside a trial, I'd think that you (again, generic) would see that the developers wanted to help players find a team doing the trials without knowing anyone. It really isn't that hard a concept to understand, certainly not as difficult as people in these threads are making it out to be. However instead of seeing the open invites as a good thing, the group-thought seems to be centred on how outside people are unwanted. To me that is putting the cart before the horse.

These trials are meant to get players together to over come the tasks in the trials. You are supposed to be randomly thrown together by Prometheus. Excluding (or kicking) players because of narrow (and frankly isolationist) views is completely counter-productive.

Instead of asking why can't we lock the teams, you (again, generic) might want to look at why the developers put the rules in place to add players to trials that are above the minimum, but not at the maximum. I think you might be surprised at the answers you might find.

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

See my Guides and Tutorials

If you (and we'll just call it generic you) stop and ask yourself, does the playerbase, on the whole, want to be forced to play content (new, old, high level, low level, whatever) with people they don't know, or would there be a considerable amount of the player base that wants to only play with just their [friends, SG, family, what-have-you] because of a number of reasons that don't even amount to being [jerks, *******, bullies, rude, selfish, or whatever words you've (specific you) decided to ascribe them because you don't like that they would want to do such a thing], you might be surprised that what people are asking for here isn't such a horrible thing.*

If you want the turnstyle to be succesful, it's going to need to be a useful tool for all of the player base. Telling people they should just stop playing the way they've been accustomed to for 7 years, isn't making it useful to them. It's just a facist response when you say, "you need to play this way" as if the way we'd like to play is fundamentally wrong.

*sorry for the incredibly long run-on sentence.

My problem is that I don't see that being the norm if people can lock the league.

My problem with the idea of a league lock is that this will be the norm, not open leagues.

I agree that it would mean that less people get kicked, but I don't think kicking is rampant.

I don't get a thrill out of saying that people that are kicking are jerks. However I am really saddened by the attitudes expressed by those wanting free reign to kick people for little to no reason.

Guess what, if that is your attitude, then maybe the Trials are not for you. That isn't a bad thing. You don't like the queue system. Great, do other content. I don't like PVP so I don't tend to go into PVP zones except during off-peak times (well, since Issue 13 most of the time is "off peak"). I've not been in an arena match outside of a single match since early Issue 18 beta.

If players don't want to face what the queue might give them, those players are free to participate in the rest of the game.

I sincerely hope that you are not calling me a facist. I'm not the one telling people that they should just stop the playing the way they've been accustomed to. The developers are. You are entering the queue and not expecting to get others from the queue is completely irrational.

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

If you have an affair in a public park, do you expect to be able to kick everyone out of the park because you don't know them ?

No, I don't.

But I also don't think that the devs have the right to sell me what looks like a private house (raid instances that are created specifically for each individual league) and then tell me it's really a public park.

That's what I'd call a 'bait and switch.'

We have teaming now. We have the ability to hide from searches. We have global friend lists which allow you to form a team without ever looking at the team search window.

This hasn't prevented people from forming PUGs. I'd suggest that PUGs (including partial-PUGs) are the most common form of teaming for missions and TFs.

Frankly - and coming from me, this is saying something - I think you're being overly cynical and pessimistic about it.

Of course, I also think the LFG tool was released half-finished, too.

OK, so which is it:

A. Locked leagues will be the norm - which implies, frankly, that kicking and similar behaviour are the norm NOW (which to me also implies you should be eager for a solution to curb it,) or

B. Kicking isn't rampant, in which case this will be an option used on occasion by special groups who just want to try something specific (whether that be an SG-specific event, AT-specific, Friends only or what have you.)

Then stop saying it, because it's not true (other than in individual cases. Sure, some people are. Kicking someone, however, is not the benchmark for jerk-ness.)
They have free rein *now.* Providing those controls will let those who want specific groups to have them, while letting those in the LFG queue avoid them and not - as someone else put it - "waste their time" getting put onto a group that didn't want them there in the first place.

See my Guides and Tutorials

Here's the thing. They might not want private leagues to exist but they allowed private leagues to exist, they just made them mildly inconvenient. People join your league and you kick them. BAM! Private League.

In many ways that's what really pisses me off about this. If they did not want private leagues to exist (which may or may not be the case) then actually preventing private leagues is a much better solution than the half-***** "solution" they implemented. There are a number of solutions they could have taken that would actually prevent private leagues. The simple option would be to limit how many people can queue in a single group (either single players only or single teams only depending on their preferences) which would prevent private leagues.

First off why shouldn't players have the ability to team as and how they wish? In some ways this is similar to the various arguments that have gone on about the Incarnate Trials being the only means of progression in the system. While that is not something I feel particularly strongly about (since I enjoy the trials) I think it ties into this. People want to have control over their team based experience. In some cases this is a matter of team size (those who want solo/small-team options) in other cases it's a matter of simply limiting who they play with.

Yes, there are people who don't care whom they team with as long as they get their shinys but a system should aim to appeal to as wide an audience as possible.

Except they didn't. They implemented a system where people can be added to trials between the maximum and minimum at the start but not mid-way through. They then undermined this by allowing leaders to remove those people if desired.

From what I can see the Trial/Queue is essentially combining three different systems:
1. A Team Formation Tool
2. A Locked Team Event (i.e. Task Forces)
3. An Open World Event (i.e. Hamidon/Mothership Raid)

However, I think it is combining them in what has to be the worst way possible.

We get a team formation tool that not only provides no incentive to use it but in fact actively disincentives people from using it (since it forms minimum size teams). We get the fact that people can join your event without your permission (the downside of open world events) but unlike normal open world events we also lack the ability to invite people to join an event in progress (since it becomes a locked team).

Now if the devs goal was to make the Trials open world style events that would have been fine with me, but combining Open World Events with Locked Team Events is, to me, completely and utterly illogical. What is the goal with that?

The idea of a heavily instanced open event is not a new one (there is at least one other MMO that has them) but if that is the goal then it really needs to be open for the duration.

If I was a developer and I was given the goal of creating a system for handling instanced, open events here's the process I would have used (slightly based on a similar system from another MMO). When you bring up the queue you get a list of available instances, each one shows the number of players present and the status of the instance (waiting for players, in stage X, resetting etc.). You can join any instance that is not at the cap. Once an instance reaches the minimum number of players a "pre-event" starts, at the simplest this would be a timer, ideally it would be something similar to the first stage of the current trials; the main point would be to allow time for the instnace to fill up a bit before the trial properly starts. Once the "pre-event" is complete the trial proper starts. This proceeds as the current trial with the only difference being rewards. While the current trials give some rewards during the trials and a large bonus at the end rewards would be more evenly distributed throughout the trial with the understanding that players may well come nad go as the trial progressed.

The system that we currently have sort of works but from what I can see it's failing at it's design goals (whatever those may actually be). If the goal is to allow for easy creation of teams (which I suspect is the case), it fails because it has created the perception of only forming bad teams. If the goal is to allow for the creation of TF style teams it fails because it lacks the tools to do so effectively (not just a league lock but things like allowing people to express a preference for leadership or team size). If the goal is open world events it fails because they AREN'T open world events.

Now it's entirely possible that I am mis-reading the devs intentions and their goal for the system is something I can't see. But I think they really need to review what their goal is and how they can adjust the system to support it because from what I can see it isn't achieving their goal.

Lots of bait and switch in this game

So my attitude of asking for a way to control team size, is a bad one, and I shouldn't be playing iTrials. I know, those aren't your words verbatim, but you're not willing to just come out and say it.

You're example of not liking PVP isn't even comparable to what's being discussed. Now, if you said, "I don't like this particular aspect of PVP that forces me to do something that isn't necessary for the game to function for everyone else" then made a suggestion for making a better implementation of said function, well then, you'd be making a more adequate analogy.

Instead, you're acting like the trials and the turnstyle queue are one-and-the-same thing. They are not. One is content, one is a tool. They are meant to work together, yes, but not liking one does not mean that you should stop using the other. And until the devs come out and say it, any intent you'd like to hypothesize is conjecture at best.

And those players are free to kick unwanted people who get queued in. I'm at least asking for a way to avoid that. You're just telling us to stop asking, and calling us irrational to do so.

It's so irrational we would consider making a suggestion. Much the same way you did towards the participation and reward system of Trials.

The devs have said nothing. They remain silent for now. You want to speak for them and demand we not play content or want to play content with select groups of people. You hide behind "speaking for the devs" and push what only comes across as what you would have us do. Sounds facist to me.

I've never said I don't expect others to be queued in. You want to attribute this irrationality to me despite my repeated comments that I am making a suggestion, or that I don't like this set up. In the question forums I did ASK if it was possible, but never said I expect this is how they should work despite being informed it doesn't. Maybe calling others irrational makes it easier to ignore all the points people have made about how better control of the LFG Queue would be more beneficial to the game, but it's not going to make you right.

It isn't an either/or.

People will lock leagues even if they wouldn't normally kick someone that came in from the queue.

You and others are assuming that only people that will kick others will lock the leagues, that isn't likely the case. Far more likely is that people will lock the teams and continue to lock the teams even if they wouldn't normally kick an additional player.

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

Okay, slightly better analogy than the wife-beating analogy that someone removed.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

Part of this is caveat emptor.

Part of that is someone who goes to a Hyundai dealership and buys a Hyundai and is ticked that someone didn't roll a Porsche out for them instead.

The structure of the raid system was a KNOWN factor for a good long while before i20 dropped.

So who is at fault if you (generic "you") are un(der)informed about how the system works?

*Holds up huge, illuminated mirror.*

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

Correct. It's a metric.

Booting a member of a TF who comes into the map, door-sits, and simply hoovers up drops and exp ranks really low on the jerk-ness scale. But it's still measurable (like the ability to determine normal background radiation levels).

Booting someone who was actively participating in a TF, trial, raid, etc right at the end and possibly denying them end-of-event rewards is dinging the opposite end of the jerk-ness scale.

Booting someone who popped in on an Incarnate trial is a floating value. Simply dumping them with little to no explanation still ranks high on the scale.

Explaining one's position before a boot lowers one's position on the scale.

Asking if the player would consent also lowers one's position.

But it doesn't remove one from the scale.


They have free rein *now.* Providing those controls will let those who want specific groups to have them, while letting those in the LFG queue avoid them and not - as someone else put it - "waste their time" getting put onto a group that didn't want them there in the first place.[/QUOTE]

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

I agree. They shouldn't have allowed private leagues in the first place. I suspect the league structure is a limitation of the team structure coding.

I'd actually agree with this as well.

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

Noticed you cut the rest out.

Here's one you didn't bother putting up:

The *exact same league leader* will *sometimes* lock a queue for a special event and other times NOT lock a queue for a special event.

Just like the *exact same person* will sometimes solo or team only with friends, and other times will put together or join a PUG.

Don't throw "It isn't an either or" at me and set your OWN "either/or" as an absolute.

Will SOME people always lock? Sure. And right on the other end of the scale, some people will always just run PUGs. And everyone else is right in between.

See my Guides and Tutorials

There is no "scale" for just booting someone for something the team leader has *zero* control over. If they could control the invites, and then invited and immediately booted someone, you'd have a starting point for that.

So... again....

Let people lock the leagues if they want to and avoid the situation entirely on *both* ends.

See my Guides and Tutorials

Actually I thought I did say it, but in a nice way. How about this way from Second Measure:
You don't like the LFG queue system. You've made that abundantly clear. That system is the only means we have to access the trials. I don't see that as changing any time soon.

Over the years there have been many suggestions for the player problem of Badging vs PVP zones.

That content is only accessible from that tool.

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

Locking the league will become habit and they'll eventually just stop rationalizing why they are locking.

More people will lock the leagues than will leave them open. I'm seeing it already with people just trying to use the team lock for this. Allowing locking will kill any chance for the LFG to actually work.

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

And it's working now... how? The only thing that the LFG tool has accomplished thus far is dumping a few extra players into existing pre-formed trials. It has failed to supplant the need to pre-form trial leagues due to its inherent flaws. This isn't just some hypothesis either. People have done testing with it since the moment i20 was launched. I have tried it myself and the result were less than adequate.

What you're asking people to do is to basically respect and accept a broken tool/system that is barely functional. That's is neither a valid or reasonable request.

True, but that is the way Snow prefers it. And obviously what he wants is more important. And if you think what you want is more important, that makes you a jerk.