What would you do to make Keyes fun?

I don't get this; I'm guessing I've never done a trial with you or been on the leagues that you've been on (since I'm on a diff. server I assume) but...I can kind of see what you're saying about everyone splitting up and what not. But if you know what to do and as long as the leader doesn't say otherwise, why wouldn't you be helping collecting temp powers, using them, or helping clear mobs (when it was needed)?

Again, maybe it's just the leagues you were a part of but...the times I've been on Keyes (either leading or just a part of one) sure there are times when people are 'doing their own thing' but it's usually coordinated "splitting". Everyone knows that x is the target and as long as x is accomplished then who gets the glory?


During the 2nd reactor phase and beating up the EBs...you don't have to solo them...just go to where others are beating them up. *shrugs*

I always have all green inspirations (and depending on the toon, at least 1 BF just in case). It's usually recommended unless you have self-healing powers of some sort.

I can see how not having any stealth/invis. would be a pain in some parts (collecting temp powers in 1st and 3rd reactors) but if you know you can't collect temps without getting beaten up by the mobs...why not suggest to the leader that those with stealth/invis help clear the mobs on the 1st and 3rd reactors? Again, not saying you haven't done that but...*shrugs*

As far as this... my blaster didn't have stealth, and still managed to get in and get the glowies. Actually *stayed* in at one point. Never aggroed.

See my Guides and Tutorials

Yep. It's like they had several ideas for different trials, couldn't (or didn't have the time to) figure out how to flesh each out indvidually, and then said, "screw it" and just mashed them together.

That's probably the only thing I'd change. I enjoy Keyes though.

Just curious, when are you forced to solo 5 Vickys?

Actually, I think this would make Keyes *easier* but I don't think it would make it more fun. Removing some of the frustration wouldn't make the rest of it automatically more entertaining.

I personally don't have a problem with Keyes, but I do see where the flaws are in terms of it having wider appeal. I think Keyes has three fundamental problematic issues that have nothing to do with dying, difficulty, or badges per se:

1. It encourages leagues to scatter.

You're supposed to collect temps from all over the place and without someone literally assigning individual people to collect individual temps from individual spots which is unlikely, you'll just have a mass of players not sure if they should be going after the blinkies or doing something else. This has nothing to do with explaining the overall structure of the trial either: if you don't get that after one pass through, you're just an idiot. Have something shiny to play with. But that's strategy. The tactics aren't something that is coordinated with individual precision (at least not that I've ever seen) and that breeds confusion.

Plus, scattering is counter-productive to most people's fun in the iTrials, because much of our collective incarnate strength comes from cross buffing and concentrated damage: it comes from acting in groups. Lambda encourages us to split up into two teams, then rejoin. If the individual teams scatter that's their problem. BAF encourages us to split up into a few teams, then rejoin. It doesn't encourage us to scatter: rather the opposite the towers and adds encourage us to stick together in one big mass or a pair of teams or a triplicate group, depending on the strategy.


2. Its serialized.

Except for the early timer sections, the bulk of the terminal work for the last two reactors requires Antimatter to be present. That means however fast we collect temps and however many people have them, only one terminal at a time can be used. It takes a parallel task and forces it into a serialized structure. And this means it forces a lot of people to wait around for others to finish a task. And there's not much for them to do while they wait, once the terminals are cleared. Which they can be by one crazy blaster with a couple of lucks and poor impulse control (like me). It doesn't take an entire team to do that, but whole teams are waiting around to do something.

This situation does not occur in either of the other two trials, nor in TM or Apex, nor in any of the task forces in the game as far as I know, to nearly the same degree, except in a few odd cases that *themselves* are seen as bad (of course I'm talking about Numina).


3. Its meta-puzzle tricks are too gimmicky.

The autohitting turrets in BAF can be turned off. Sequestration can be managed. If you run out of grenades in Lambda you can actually earn more. If Maurader jumps out of Lambda someone on your league is an idiot. But while I believe most things are fair game if you present them correctly, even I have problems with a meta puzzle in which you can be killed by a power that you have to move away from, and the game occasionally prevents you from moving, and those two things can happen at the same time. While its *possible* to manage this in theory, I consider this particular combination to be asking too much. Its like the original Hamidon that was designed to have the players all attack from range and all simultaneously move to the same new firing spot at the same time when the mito bloom occurred, twice. Its worth noting the players actually *thought up* this solution to Hami, and mostly concluded we'd never be able to coordinate it well enough to ever be worth whatever reward Hamidon could possibly give.

If I got all my friends together in the same room to attempt a Keyes run and I could count on them to obey my instructions perfectly and without question, I think I could beat that part of the puzzle without too much difficulty by precisely timing the damage we dealt to Antimatter to prevent simultaneous Time Stop and Obliteration. I'd like to know if the devs have ever managed that feat except by accident.

So, I could do it. But it wouldn't be fun, not even for me. It would be work. I'd be working to defeat the devs' design.


As I said, I'm fine with the overall trial (still need those badges though) and I'm fine with the overall difficulty. I'm even fine with dying. But if you ask me how I would make Keyes more fun, I don't think I would be focused on simply removing the parts some find annoying, but trying to replace the parts that directly impede fun with things more entertaining. If its entertaining, people will not be upset about dying. Dying is what I think people are upset about because they aren't getting enough entertainment for their deaths.

To do that, I would try to find ways to reduce the amount of scatter the trial induces. Funny how the whole point of the hospital lock out is to prevent dead players from just diving back into the trial all by themselves when in Keyes specifically there is absolutely no advantage to that enforced grouping up at all. I'd be looking for ways to parallel-ize the trial. Brainstorming, suppose you needed to bring Antimatter to the terminal to "unlock it" with the first temp, but once energized you could apply the next two temps without him being there. But energizing the terminal summoned reinforcement guards. You could then have an Antimatter team bringing him to the terminals one at a time fast while a separate team or set of teams then clears the terminals and applies the remaining temps. You have the same basic structure, but you get more players simultaneously involved. That's not a completely thought out idea, its just what I came up with off the top of my head for illustration purposes.

And as to Obliteration, I notice if I'm actually staring at the timer, its easy to avoid (the last of your badge runs I was on, I dodged several until I saw two separate people get hit, then I stopped looking at the timer - as soon as I did, I got hit by a beam). Lets face it: CoH players are still coming up to speed on raid mechanics and having to juggle different sources of information. We will get there, see Lambda and BAF, but it will take time. In the meantime, we need to continue to provide a learning curve. Don't assume raid leaders will explain everything precisely, and don't expect players will understand them correctly when they do. Give them some help: in this case, the Obliteration beam should generate a visible and audible warning in the screen of everyone targeted at least four seconds in advance that is *impossible* to miss. Four seconds is what it will take to give ample time for a player to escape the Obliteration beam that a) doesn't notice anything until the blatant warning sounds and b) just completed activating an attack and c) has another attack queued. On average you're going to lose nearly three seconds between two roots and human reaction time, and it takes a good fraction of a second to move clear of the beam.

If you're just staring at the timer and not using *any* attacks, its trivially easy to avoid the patch. But getting twenty four people to do that every thirty seconds is an unreasonable burden, for now, for our current playerbase. In a year, it might be old hat. For now, its not.

And Time Stop should stop time. Timers stop. Disintegration stops. Obliteration stops. Everything stops but Antimatter. If AVs have purple triangles to prevent players trivializing combat by perma-holding the AVs, the devs should consider the ramifications of giving Antimatter essentially an unresistable mez through which he can use powers that can kill us instantly.

As I said, I don't mind puzzles and I don't generally complain about the meta gaming requirements of making high end challenges. So if I think its a little wonky, the devs should assume most players think it sucks donkey balls.


Oh, and just apply a mag 1000000000000 immobilize to people that are being disintegrated already. Seeing players run away from the team as fast as they can or run behind buildings or even just in circles makes me want to shoot them myself.

hehe, that would be nice

My failed stealth runs to get power cells and use them. Also, when my team fails to coordinate an attack on a Goliath and I'm the only one left standing. Sometimes another Goliath team happens to walk by.

In fact, we play on the same server most of the time, and I'm pretty sure I've been on a Keyes run with you. People mostly followed the suggestions in your post, and it was a pretty smooth and enjoyable run for that reason.

this is actually how i originally thought time stop would work, but after the original run on beta and left several posts of negative feedback about this (and the antimatter pulse)

Ooooh, well hi then I don't know the forum name to global name conversion...there needs to be a chart....



Not like this will change your mind or anything but, as far as I know, the auto-hit pulse is a percentage of everyone's HP. It doesn't do 50% HP dmg to Blasters and only 10% to Tankers, it's, again I think, 50% HP for everyone (more if you damage Anti-Matter).

This. I don't care if they up the Empyreans to 10 per run, I am STILL not running this. I will not form a league to run it, I will not join leagues to run it.

Its crap gameplay mechanics in my opinion, and I am not validating it by spending time on it. Not fun, not even very profitable: I'm out.

However, if the devs wish to experiment with increasing the rewards on live to 10 empyrean merits per run, in the interests of cooperating with the devs to make a better game I would be willing to make the sacrifice of helping run those.

Yeah, the magnitude of the pulse damage is just stupid. I ran the trial once on a character who didn't have top-notch self-healing. ONCE. Never again. Fortunately, my badge toon is /regen so I may actually get all those badges some day. Maybe.

I would shorten the reactor phase. Seriously, do we need to do that bit THREE TIMES with minor window-dressing changes?

Yeah it's so much fun you don't get to run it often . . .

Originally Posted by Shubbie Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.

These.

The amount of damage is fine with me mostly. I personally think it's a sucktastic mechanic for the trial, but if it's going to be included and not basically neutered into meaninglessness, it's about where it probably needs to be.

I just find the reactor phases boring and the end fight completely obnoxious. It's not obnoxiously hard - my problem has nothing to do with the level of challenge involved. My problem is that the challenge it does provide is achieved through some of the most irritating overload of "cheaty" AV tricks I have ever imagined. I have no serious problem with any of the "cheaty" things that the boss AVs do in the Lambda or BAF trials, or in the Apex or Tin Mage TFs. I like all of those, yet I greatly dislike the Keyes end fight, because it feels like someone tried to add all the tricks from all the other Praetorean TFs and iTrials to the end fight, and they created a mess.

I'd sacrifice the PANCAKE out of that.