So far, being disintegrated seems to be as lame as it sounded on paper

Ok, I've had my rants, constructive suggestions time:

• Make the disintegration FX _much_ bigger like a big sprite ring with a vertical spike to give people a chance to notice. Also its a signature power, it deserves to look impressive.
• Set up a "no other special abilities" flag or self-buff power that fires at the start of Disintegration and Obliteration beam that last for the duration of the power to prevent them overlapping with each other and with the time-freeze, when these overlap you get potentially unavoidable deaths which is not fun at all
• Put FX on the terminals, blue aura when uncharged, red when locked, have the blue stack x3 with uncharged so that one layer is removed per charge
• Make the Gamma pulse FX fade in and out a little slower, there have been time I've blinked and missed it not realising that my heath is now <50%
• Make Anti-Matters regeneration either pause a little before it starts or ramp up (then level off) to give people time to scramble over there
• I'd scrap the entanglement schtick, it penalises Melee too much (Oh just thought, alternate option: if there was something other than AM that the players could wail on that would help in the battle, like if the regen terminals could be pre-damaged a bit (before the timestops happened), that would give one of the entanglement halves something to do rather than just move away from their opposites)

I actually really like the AM fight, especially compared to Marauder. (Big brick with a ton of HP but very few tricks) and AM (very squishy but has an entire bag full of nasty tricks)

Just as a hypothetical, since I haven't run the Keyes raid yet, but it seems like his "penalty" for failing to Disintegrate a player is not in line with the benefit for success. Zeroing out endurance on an AV seems rather meaningless in and of itself, since they have so much and recover so quickly. Perhaps if the risk was a bit more balanced to the reward, it would feel less frustrating to people?

Did this raid on a pug last night easily my least favorite. AM would frequently aggro on my henchmen causing them to retaliate, breaking any attempts at effective keyes strategy which meant i either had to give up my dps and survivability by putting them into passive which made them fodder for the other npcs or releasing them. Only worth it for the emp merit i needed to get the glad def proc, don't think I'll ever do it again

On my last Keyes run I got targeted for disintegration twice, both times typed 'heal me', got healed, and went on my merry way. It simply requires a little bit of awareness, and fingers to type with.

I seriously read all 6 pages of this thread and I'm actually not shocked at all.

In the past 3 years people (not necessarily in this thread) asked in fact begged for end game content and we finally get it an this is what people act like. We've had years of solo content, easy content, and TF/SF that are meant for teams and yet have been soloed by many players. This game is entirely too easy. And for the most part it should be, it allows players to get familiar with the game and like it for what it is. Now that we have end game content for the more serious hard core players, the people who were so use to putting people on follow and auto casting an attack power are now upset because they can no longer do that with these trials.

When the BAf and Lambda was given to us, people complained and now look at it, they are being run on a daily basis and being torn apart by the common player. Give it time and the Keyes will be too. Last night we ran a total of 8-10 Keyes trials and of them we failed once. Not too bad for a new trial and a bunch of new players to that trial. But seriously, it's not hard to expect to have to bring support. I see many people complaining about having to make sure they have healers on the trials. You guys look at this as a bad thing, I look at it as "It's about time" We now have a reason to accept and want to bring healers to the leagues. The Keyes trial does exactly that. And I love that the devs gave us a reason to want to bring healers.

Our league eanred 2 of the badges last night and to be hoenst, it was a blast and we all had one hell of a good time doing it, yes it took coordination, but that was the fun part. Figuring out the strategy for the trial to earn those 2 badges. Now we still have 2 badges to go and probably the harder of the 4 badges. But I can honestly say I look forward to earning these badges. When I earn these badges I will truly feel I achieved the badges instead of them being given to me.



The final phase of this trial is not hard at all, it just takes people paying attention to what they are doing.

• Disintegration - When you are being disintegrated heal, it's that simple. there are 3 ticks of damage, just make sure you are at full health on the 3rd and final tick and you will live.
• Obliteration Beam - very easy, look for the very large green patch on the ground and get the hell away from it, don't stand there in aww "What's this green stuff" or "Oh, that's pretty" Run away from it and continue fighting.
• Finally, debuffs you will notice some players have red bubbles on them and some have blue. This is very easy to get around. Blue stay near Blue and Red stay near Red. Mix them up and you will be seriously debuffed in all aspects.

I've only really got two comments about this Trial and Trials generally which I iterated some time ago.

Firstly, I'll be glad when Positron gets raiding out of his system. He's said for a while now raiding is something he wanted to do in the game and he got his way. That being said, I feel raiding is somewhat antithetical to a game that used as a selling point no level cap increases, no gear, and everyone being on a level playing field. It's great that raiding players are getting to raid, but tying story content and the notion of advancing as an Incarnate strictly to the raid mechanic is a wrong move in my opinion and I'll continue to be vocal about saying so.

Secondly, with the move to a free to play hybrid model and therefore a reasonable expectation of an online store, gating cosmetics such as costume pieces and emotes behind a raiding system is wrong, plain and simple. To me it sends a contradictory message that the same items are being held in different aspects of the game for apparently no good reason.

Let me clarify that statement; if raiding is in the game and people enjoy doing it, that's great. But have the reward be proportional to the activity. Emotes, costume changes, auras and so on are cosmetics to the game, period. The Incarnate abilities are concrete, improvable and measurable benchmarks of time spent in that activity. I don't agree with those abilities being solely tied to raiding, but that's a seperate discussion.

What I am saying is that raid rewards should be raid-specific. Temporary powers with raid benefits; more suits like the Ascension Armor, which at least visually and in terms of points spent equals elite gear. I personally think that which is being gained in Trials will become available in the store anyways simply by a measure of demand. Interest can't be manufactured in the Trials and Trial playing is as much a limited demographic of players as PvP is. It's not a mainstream gaming activity, as much as crafting and badging are the same.

I've personally only unlocked the abilities on the BAF because I was bored and have done a total of two Lambda Trials because...it simply doesn't interest me. I should have more alternatives to gain, as I stated before, cosmetic rewards.

I will break my rule here and say a third thing; please please don't preach the Trials as 'learn to play' arguments or 'the game's been so easy, isn't it great that it's harder and challenging?' City of Heroes has never positioned itself in the mold of other MMO's in that regard. If the game was so easy beforehand, why did these people stay and play? If it wasn't for the qualities that distinguished itself from the other games and had things that they did not, they would not play. I won't begrudge people who like raiding their activity, but please don't sell it as the playstyle that everyone wants to do. A lot of us are here because we don't like the hardcore style and the level cap and the gear. Please bear that in mind.


S.