Minimum Participation Standard

So I lead an 8 man Lambda trial today. Everyone was on one team. We cleared the courtyard, dropped the sentry and then all went and collected the grenades. We then killed Marauder.

We all got 10 threads.

I'll take the E-merit but it really makes me wonder about this participation standard if you can complete the trial and still get the door sitter reward.

Team makeup was 2 tanks (Inv/SS and ?), 1 scrapper (DM/SD), 1 blaster (?), 1 Def (DDD), and 3 Ill controllers (ill/rad, ill/storm, ill/FF)

That is weird. I don't suppose any of you have logs of the trial? I'm sure Arcanaville would like to see them.

If I had to guess, my theory would be that with 3 Illusionists the Phantom Armies were doing to much damage so none of you needed to activate enough powers to count as "participating.

The only time I've ever gotten 10 threads (aside from doorsitting testing) was on a 8 man lambda, where we were all on one team. I believe 5 of us got 10 threads, one person got a common, one got an uncommon, and the warshade got a very rare :P After that, whenever we run an eight man lambda, we split us into two teams, and we haven't had the problem since.

i think theres prolly some sort of oversight with the participation score because lately ive heard that small teams always get shot down with the rewards prolly because the participation thing is set too high or meant more for full trials

from personal experience i also got 10 threads on a MoLambda run (before the badge fix)

ive also seen a screenshot of a duo lambda and the poeple in that trial still got components, so this just goes to show how ****ed up this participation requirement is

Well the participation metric goes along the idea of "what is each person doing to help the raid succeed?" It seems like somehow, missing half the temp powers reduces the team's odds of success, and therefore the rewards you're entitled to. That would be my guess based on the information given. Next time, have 4 guys hit the labs and 4 guys hit the warehouse, see if the same thing happens.

This is one of the only things I strongly dislike about the Incarnate trials - The lack of transparency. It's generated a lot of people who have an aversion to Trial content believe they're being screwed over by the participation system rather than just the RNG, but I have absolutely no way of proving this one way or the other. People get screwed by the RNG all the time and that's almost an accepted part of life, but when people get screwed by a hidden, Byzantine system it feels six times as unfair.

And as frustrating as I find that, it can't be one tenth as frustrating as it is for people who haven't had my luck.

I've done several 8 man runs and we usually split the team on both maps for the extra astral. We were just short on time this run so we fanned out on warehouse.

normal run is 2 teams of 4. this was just something to try.

I want to echo the suggestion above that if you have logs of the trial, get them to Arcanaville. If you can coordinate getting everyone's logs to her, that would be even better.

What logs are you all speaking of? Combat logs or Defeat logs?

Because I was on that team and we all got shafted, it's a shame to see that happen, it just goes to show that this participation game mechanic is totally borked and isn't working as it should. The devs really need to remove this from the trials and let us get the random reward as a random reward disregarding the participation.

The devs are trying to keep things fair with the participation system, but its actually hurting many smaller teams such as ours. Let us police the leechers as we have in the past by kicking them or flagging them through the global note system so we know not to invite this person in the future. Get rid of the participation system, it's not working.

All I can say in regard to the trial itself is that very much stinks. I would also suggest that you send in a bug report and PM Zwil with this thread with as much additional information as you can give them.

In my mind, no matter what the explanation is of why it happened, it still means there is a problem with the participation system. I agree with others as well that right now, the system is hurting more than it's helping.

Was it a speed run since you were short on time?

Did you skip killing the turrets? You said you cleared the courtyard, did you skip the streets? When you got the nades, did you kill very little inside other than the crates? Did you kill 30 IDF reinforcements or did Marauder go down before that?

I wonder if there is some minimum threshold of enemy defeats.

It was a speed run because I like to do them fast. As I said in the OP, we skipped the streets and guns and cleared the 60 in the courtyard. Only difference between this and a "normal" speed run was we focused on grenades and skipped the acids.

The irony is that we left all the doors up so we should have had plenty of Adds getting caught up in the AOEs. I think we killed something in the area of 15 of them. We did not get the 30 Astral.

Regardless, my point is that the participation just demonstrated that just completing this trial is not enough to earn a reward.

Well, the developers have already stated that the formula for total participation is Personal Participation + Group Achievement Bonus (how many objectives they complete). Time has never been mentioned as a metric, but I imagine that there is some minimum number of enemy defeats that must be achieved to reach the full group bonus.

The problem isn't with the participation system in this case; it's with the Lambda Trial, for allowing (and in attempting to get the side badges, even forcing) players to skip objectives in a "successful" run.

The award of 10 Threads for a speed run may even be intentional as a way to discourage farming for Incarnate Salvage, though I don't want to believe that's the case, as it crosses a line that has been pretty clearly drawn--being a better or faster player has NEVER been penalized before*, nor should it.

*Though in some cases, like with Reward Merits, players speedrunning content penalize everyone. But at least then, it's across the board, and not just the speedrunners.

I would say that, in Lambda's case at least, a larger Group Achievement Bonus should be awarded for the defeat of Marauder... but at the same time, you should know that you're hurting yourself in the long run by avoiding the chance at earning Astral Merits.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!