Introducing... Septipheran's Saturday Shenanigans!

The common element required in Lambda, BAF, Keyes, MoM, and TPN (much like Hamidon 2.0) is having a good set of team leaders and a team coordinator. The Underground trial is the only trial that doesn't really need team coordination... it's more of a league-wide slugfest.

In the previously mentioned iTrials, there are independent objectives that need to be accomplished in parallel. Once these objectives are identified, the team leaders need to know their roles, and lead their teams to success. If the teams are successful - in turn - the league will be successful.

Septipheran, it appears that you haven't found competent team leaders to handle the objectives. I would recommend identifying knowledgeable players to handle the team lead roles on the leagues you run. Then...
1. Assign them an objective - hopefully they are aware of the objective and can instruct their team on the objective.
2. Load up their teams with toons that will help them achieve the assigned objective.
3. Coordinate when the various teams execute their objectives.
4. And lastly... watch the success roll in.

That is how the previously mentioned iTrials have succeeded.

Alright, sorry I offended you guys. Maybe I have just been incredibly unlucky with my experiences on Protector when it comes to new Incarnate trials.

I remember when Keyes and Underground both came out. The first thing I did was attempt them both on Protector because that's where my main is. Both failed for days, every single run I saw and was on. I also played both the day they came out on Virtue, and have yet to fail either trial there.

I noticed the same thing with TPN and MoM, at least within the first few days. I go to play them on Proector, and they failed every single time I tried. Once again... Virtue? Picked up almost all the badges (have yet to get one from each trial) by accident in PUG's. I have never failed a MoM on Virtue, and I failed one TPN.

Last weekend when I went to organize that MoM on Protector, people in Protector Vigilance were saying things to the effect of, "There's no way to get badges! We can't even complete the trial!"

I know there are lots of good players here, but I also know that there are lots of horrible players here. The trouble is that it's such a small server that if the majority of one group of people aren't on, you're forced to pick from the other group.

In Sept's defense he has said to me on several occasions that Protector has some awesome players. That being said, I think there were 2 major problems on that failed MoM run last saturday.

First was lack of experience. Many on the league had never even done it before, and among those that had, more than half had never finished it. I know my own inexperience with it fouled me up at one point.

The second problem was our balance of ATs. If memory serves about a third of the league were scrappers, if not more. I think in situations like that you should see if anyone is willing to alt. I know you don't like telling people what they should play on these, and I totally agree with that, but asking and telling are different things.

As someone who's been on protector long enough to see the best AND the worst it has to offer, I can see where Sept is coming from. I've seen some of the smoothest iTrial runs on this server, and I have alts on several other servers to compare to. Conversely, I've also had some of the worst iTrial experiences on this server. It still amazes me when I'm on a PuG Lambda and several people don't know how to check their temp powers. I honestly don't know how you could get to 50 without at least stumbling across that along the way. Well, actually I DO know how someone could get to 50 without learning anything about the game, several ways in fact, but that's a whole other discussion. Ok, I think I got sidetracked there.

Anyways, later tonight (8 pm est) I would like to try to pick up Avatar Assassin from the Underground trial since it's the only badge we missed last time.

We might have to run it a couple of times because it kind of comes down to luck, but something we could try is keeping an eye on the Avatar's health, slowing down around 20 and stopping completely at 10 if a seedling isn't up. I'm 99% sure that there is a counter showing when the next seed will spawn, so we can try to watch out for that more carefully this time.

Clarion destiny is very important for this trial, so slot it if you have it. Level shifts are encouraged but not required. As always, play what you want to play. I might appoint Zaloopa to be the alt police if we end up with a league full of Scrappers again (I'm taking your last post as volunteering for this duty btw, Zal. )

One thing I might suggest - for some of these newer trials, you will fail spectacularly if you have a lot of people who aren't fully level shifted, and Underground, MoM, and TPN definitely fall in that category.

You may need to get kinda hardhearted about insisting on level shifted characters.

Just a suggestion.

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Ugh, my power went out for almost 6 hours today so I wasn't able to do this. I'll put the Underground run together at some point tomorrow.

Woohoo, we picked up Avatar Assassin today! Next week I'd like to finish off MoKeyes by picking up Avoids the Green Stuff and Loves a Challenge. These were the only two we missed last time, and ironically probably the two that are easiest to pick up. Don't touch the shiny objects. Don't stand in the green death. Don't get dead. BAM! Badges. See you guys next weekend.

I didn't see many of our regulars online tonight, basically it was just Stone and Exercitus. Granted, I didn't actively try to recruit either because someone decided to form an Underground trial in Vigilance at our normal starting time.

I know stuff like this happens and people are definitely entitled to run other trials, but personally I think it's just in bad taste to form a trial at the exact time when a weekly trial event is run... Especially if you're active on the forums and within the Protector community, which this person was. On such a small server, it's hard enough to put together a league for this kind of stuff as it is.

THB,

I hesitated about posting anything in response because I don't want to seem antagonistic. I'm not jumping into the fight here, I'm hoping to clear up a misunderstanding.


I was on Teamspeak with Major T and the rest of the group that usually starts trials each evening. There are a few other people that lead trials, but I think I'm safe in saying that most nights, it's Major T or Huron (aka Bad Hat Larry) who start running the trials.


At no point did anyone on TS say a word about there being a weekly event, at no point did anyone say we should just stomp all over THB's event. Frankly, I don't think a single one of us even remembered that there is such an event. I mention this because I need you to understand there was no “bad taste” involved. We run trials every night... it was our usual start time... we started running trials. And, as a side note, not a single person who joined our league mentioned your event either. Not one person, neither on TS nor in the league apparently even remembered you had an event.


I can't say what might have happened if you had taken just a moment to remind us that you had a planned event, but I can say that there have been many many times when we held off recruiting for something we wanted to do to let another group have a shot of getting a league together.


I think, if you had reminded us you had an event, we would have been happy to step back and let you do your recruiting.


So, I'm sorry this happened, but it was not intentional, it was not deliberately rude or inconsiderate. We just did what we do every night.


This is a new year. Let's all try to be happy in it and get along.

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