"Too few players to continue". What's going on?

So we have a league of 12 doing Keyes, no problem. At some point, one person disconnects; no big deal, that usually happens. We complete first reactor, we complete second reactor. All is going well. We get to third reactor with 11 players, collect 8 glowies, and this giant red text appears:

"TOO FEW PLAYERS TO CONTINUE!"

Trial instantly failed. 30 minutes down the drain. What the hell, devs? Just WHAT THE HELL?

Gotta stop those filthy soloers somehow.

Now that's messed up. It really should be up to the League to decide if they're down too many people to continue onward or not.

A time limit should be sufficient to say "you gave it a shot and couldn't do it, goodbye!" A specific check on the number of players still in the league is terrible, especially since there can be extenuating circumstances such as disconnects or a griefer that needed kicking; neither of which necessarily means the team is incapable of completing the task at hand!

This is ******** and should be changed.

and I spent another hour of my life waiting for the GM's to fix their game...again

waste of time

Hrm, I wonder what exactly the conditions are for that (ridiculous) auto-fail. My second live Keyes run started with 15, but by the final stage we'd lost a few and only had 11. It still let us play through to completion.

(I'm not 100% sure if we had 11 at the start of the final stage, or if that last player dropped during the final stage)

I was on the team where this happened and I agree - this is a ridiculous auto-fail. If we had some warning that it would happen, then we could have planned for the possibility. And given the years of experience we all have with task forces, where the mechanics are apparently different, we had no reason to think that this kind of auto-fail could even happen.

Also, it happened at an odd time. It was at the third reactor, but not at the start of the phase, where it might have made some sense. It happened after we had broken open 2 bunkers and were working on the third. It really did come as a complete surprise to everyone on the team.

If the devs are going to put this kind of mechanic in the game, it should be consistent and players should be provided with notice of it. However, it would be better if it just didn't happen at all. There are existing mechanics in the trials that cause failure if the team runs out of time or fails to make the objectives. Those should be sufficient.

The developers have already set a precedent for:

1. Allowing a Task Force to continue even if the number of people falls below the minimum for the trial, so long as it's not just ONE person. One person is not a team.

2. Keeping logged-out on the team and still counting them for the purposes of team size calculations. A team of 4 people online and 4 people logged off is still an 8-man team.

Which of the two precedents is honoured, if any, is down to the development team, yes, but allowing either or even both is not unprecedented.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I'm thinking what's happening here is it uses the same coding that Task Forces do. Players are always "members" of the task whether they're online or not unless they physically quit or are kicked. So that's why yours failed with 11 where others are reporting being fine with that number or fewer.

I understand the whole "slippery slope" dilemma, but there is a precedent already with Task Forces and there's two sides to look at this from. Currently, a Task Force will stay together as long as at least two players have not quit. That's why people can duo or solo them (provided the other person logged off, not quit). What I'm assuming is we have the same situation here on a slightly larger scale, where the number before a disband is upped to match the larger size of the task.

I'm sure the Devs are well aware that certain groups and players would try to see just how few people they really need to put up with to get through the trials, so they put a handy cap in place to ensure that players are required to, well, actually play. I think rather than demanding the limit be removed, we should question the actual number. 11 is just one below what it takes to start the trial and I agree- that's too easy for someone to willingly ruin for everyone. Perhaps it should be if the number drops below 8?