it cant be said too many times: Keyes Island feedback

I play on Champion (mostly). I'd love to run Keyes but I've never seen one run. BAFs and Lambda, zillions. Haven't managed to get interest in starting one either. Very bumbed. Even the LFG has been unfruitful for me.

I guess I'm seeing why there's not so much interest after reading this thread.

I know people are running them, they must be, but not frequent enough for me to catch. Sigh.

Interesting replies. Without quoting here, there and everywhere, here are my concerns:

*Great idea about pulling up this and that guide to get through the trial; were I interested in pursuing Keyes further, I'd give 'em a shot. However, I cannot help but feel that a trial that requires a primer or three to get through is sort of.... fail.

*LAWL on being Held IN THE HOSPITAL. For freaking real.... lol. Its not enough we have a 20-second gating to contend with; let's Hold the players too, in case the ten-second access is up when they rez! Yeah.... we need to hold them in the hospital LONGER, oooohhhhhhh yeeeaaaaah. Great idea.

*derision*

*I did manage to see the notice about not hitting Anti-Matter to avoid the Green Pulses of Doom. I promise you, I was too busy trying not to die to see any further pronouncements. They may have been there, but I didnt see them. And that wasn't because I'm a stupid person, this thing is just sheer unpleasant chaos from the instant you zone in.

*tying Very Rares to Keyes and the Underground trial? Sure hope Underground is a lot more fun than Keyes! I'll be honest, if every completion of Keyes gave out a 100% chance of a rare PvP IO recipe, I'd still have to think a lot about running it again.

I don't like Keyes, and I have no intention of cooperating with the developers trying to force me to do something I hate. In this case I will advance as far as possible, and just forget about abilities requiring VR to craft.

*"Dodge the disintergration ray!" [this was said today during the run.] Dodge it?! I never saw where it was coming from to begin with! How can you dodge anywhere when you have eaten all your BFs trying to get out of being alpha- or beta-held, only to be held yet again? [It takes about 3 regular BFs to break out of that, as I recall.]

I can't remember the time I had as little fun in the game, as I have on Keyes trials. Ugh.

Uh, alpha and beta interactions don't hold you. You're getting held by the Obliteration Beam. Which, incidentally, is also what they were actually telling you to dodge.

I dunno, it sounds like you don't know what to do and you're blaming the trial for not catering to that.

i think the biggest problems with keyes is that its ridiculously tedious if you dont have a coordinated group tp speed through 90% of each reactor before AM shows up, the avg time it takes to complete the trial is 3 times as long as a single BAF, and the avg num of merits per run is higher on the BAF

the BAF is the fastest, easiest, and most rewarding trial to run, there is almost no point to running a keyes trial unless you want the extra emp merit a day or actually like the trial

whenever i want to work on incarnate progression, i do strictly BAFs because i can get up to 8 astrals in 1 run with a random PUG team, the most i usually get from keyes trial is 3, maybe 4 if i already got the emp for the day

the alpha and beta entanglements do almost negligible amounts of debuff and i didnt even notice they had a DoT component because its so minimal, honestly it just clutters the screen more with the "entanglement shift" popup

the constant dying because you dont have a heal due to the antimatter pulse is also just annoying, yes were 50 and debt is pointless, but with the hospital on a timer and being sent there EVERY ~90 seconds is just awful, the only rule ive figured from this portion of the trial is "heal and stealth or GTFO" because if you have no heals or no stealth your going to be dying a LOT

as i mentioned in my previous post, i hated the trial the first time i ran it before it was even on the live servers and i posted the same feedback then, and even then i swore that once i had the badges i would never run the trial again no exceptions

i too hope that the underground trial is loads better than this one, if it is, i may actually start running the trials again since i barely run them as is due to repetitiveness and because i hate the fact all the trials are forced speed runs

Little info for you.

It is hardly ever ran on Union. There is one case where someone on Sal's Badgehunters tries to organise a MO attempt 8:00pm on a Tuesday.

That is the only time they ever try and run a Keyes.

Not great advertisement towards someone like me that you have trouble convincing that iTrials are worth my time and energy in the first place.

I've only done one Keyes Trial so far. So, I obviously don't have much experience to draw from regarding it. I'd like to try it a few more times.

I didn't read much about it beforehand. I wanted to, just to be prepared, but I also wanted to experience it more than read about it first.

We had a pretty inexperienced league (lots of first timers) with a few people who seemed to know it pretty well.
They did a good job of explaining things beforehand and it all seemed pretty simple.

Getting in, it was simple, but a little tough to follow at certain points... and that is really mostly due to the vertical aspect of the reactors.
This may have been more difficult for me, because I usually play a flying character, but I was on a non-flier Super Leaping character... and that aspect was driving me a bit nuts.

Mainly, after I figured out the whys and whats for the "go up and clear the upper levels" and once I fully grasped that we had to lure Anti-Matter to each terminal thingy... Then it started to make more sense.
However, it seemed to me that things would have been better if we traveled together in big groups.** Instead, most everyone was running a bit wild and that seemed far less efficient (to my very uninformed brain).
At the very least, stick together as teams within the league.
**Any advice on this? It just seemed like we could have easily been chaotically pulling Anti-Matter this way and that way (as multiple people were yelling out, "Need AM over here!!" "Pull AM over here!"... yet we did manage anyway), as opposed to (what I would have liked) a coordinated group trek up the ramp, knocking out one reactor thingy after another, pulling AM as we went (but keeping him away from AoEs and attacks), in orderly succession.

The only other problem we had was that some Master Mind was pounding on Anti-Matter for quite a while (despite us all repeating that we should not do that)... We eventually solved that.

The end fight seemed fine.
Really, all of it was pretty cool, but a little long (somewhere around 45-55 minutes, I think) and a bit odd (with the clearing out and then bringing Anti-Matter over to each thingy... it was a couple of weeks ago and I've already forgotten exactly what we were doing there, hehe).


I'll say this as well (since I clearly haven't typed enough boring rambles here, as it is).
I would really enjoy content with these varying and multiple goals and procedures that was designed for a small team 2-6 or so.

I would find that so much fun. And I think I would enjoy repeating that.
The thing that kills the Trials for me, usually, is the double digits of people that you have to try and coordinate, get to understand the plan, follow the plan, not mess up the plan, try and help, roll your eyes at... watch run around like headless chickens...
And, to be less down on others, it's just that I would honestly find it far more fun to have a small focused group doing such a thing together.
I love the mission where two of us have to be at the computer terminals at the same time.

I would love one that required four of us... in something like the Keyes Trial.

Imagine: Three other players and I are getting set up at our separate locations within a special 4-Person Trial.
Golden Girl: On my way... some punks along the way...
Electric-Knight: I'm all set... the guards seemed a bit shocked to see me.
Zombie Man: I've been waiting at my terminal for... 5 minutes now. What's taking you so long? I ran over and soloed the next objective and came back... What's your status Steelclaw??
Steelclaw: ... Top Ten Reasons Steelclaw isn't at his location yet...
Electric-Knight: Uh oh...
Steelclaw: 10) Wait... what is LEAGUE chat? 9) Hey, anyone else ever notice that [WALK] makes my butt stand out more? 8) Speaking of butts... I wasn't *supposed* to follow GG?? 7) I'm glad that the temporary jet packs work in trials now... You all look like ants from up here!! 6) Okay, I made it to the terminal earlier, but I wasn't too familiar with the operating system, so I went to the Apple Store and asked some questions... Did you know that there's an app for making spreadsheets in-game???
Zombie Man: afk real quick to correct someone on the forums...
Golden Girl: I'm at my terminal now. Sorry it took so long, but a few guards misinterpreted my wink! :P
Steelclaw: 5) I would have been at my terminal already, but I had to rescue a kitten out of a tree... 12 different times! 4) Did anyone else just feel a tremor in the force? No wait... scratch that... remind me not to eat during a trial... 3) Okay, so what was the plan again? 2) Alright, I was just looking over my spreadsheets and... you guys are all willing to do this trial with me 73 more times, right?
Zombie Man: back
Steelclaw: And the number one reason that I'm not at my terminal yet... 1) I had to type this list!!!


Okay... Not sure what happened there, but...
Still, I'd really enjoy small team content with the complexity of the trials! The things we do on the trials really don't require 16+ people. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have multi-team leagues! I'd just love content like this for smaller teams as well! A lot more, personally!

I've run it once. We failed but I still found it interesting and intend to do it again.

I had read up about it but still found it somewhat confusing. Next time I think I will at least have a clue

Still not sure why we failed, timer? A more explicit fail message would have been nice.

I played the trial when it was on Test. I found it to strongly resemble kicking dead whales down the beach. The Incarnate trials in general are just tedious farms and Keyes is the most tedious of the bunch. I doubt Keyes (or any of the trials really) would get a second look if they didn't provide Incarnate components.

While I would hold my nose long enough to run it for some of the badges, I have yet to be fortunate enough to catch anyone forming one on Virtue, and going into the queue for it is a waste of time.

The trail isn't fun because of the problems of COH's old UI.

If you could control a bit more of the UI and where some things go (like captions that pop up on screen) it would make seeing the things you need to do, in order to see things on the fly, better. Also the giant text that flashes on screen needs to stay on a bit longer so that everyone who is focused don other things, like NOT DIEING, sees it.

At certain points because of the UI it gets VERY hard to see the things you need to avoid.

I'm glad this trial exists for people who like.

For me I'll keep running my BAFs/Lambdas.

This game, like life, is full of choices.

EDIT: It's not surprising that Keyes isn't run more. It's a very hectic trial. When you have a BAF and Lambda, and I suspect the new Underground trial being very laid back and easier to get components on . . . well you do that math.

This ofcourse is a problem, as since it's not run more, many more folks won't learn it. And if they won't learn it, it makes each new run seem like the FIRST TIME it's run. I don't envy trial leaders who need to basically explain it EVERY time. Unlike the BAF and Keyes.

I don't know. . . I just have a feeling by the time the Underground trial comes, many folks STILL won't have run a Keyes or have run it enough to learn . . . cause it's not run that much even on the most popular servers.

Whenever I do an Incarnate trial I always wonder just how many people actually see "League" text?

Plus the last few trials I have done we have been waiting for someone to click the green button. Never a good sign I think