Incarnate Trial Comprehension Check
By
akarah the hunter,
Posted on: 2011-10-23 18:20 in Suggestions and Ideas
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This.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
It seems to me that when we start quizing our player base and requiring people to take tests, something has gone horribly wrong with the design of this supposed "game."
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Yep. |
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
It seems to me that when we start quizing our player base and requiring people to take tests, something has gone horribly wrong with the design of this supposed "game."
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I came up with something in an attempt to educate AE babies back when they were really running rampant. It was a simple quiz thing that happened every 10 levels.
The idea did not go over well. I was mostly just frustrated with people getting themselves killed on STFs and blaming the rest of the team because they'd never actually fought anything before. The SR scrapper with all 4 travel pools, 3 powers from his secondary and no debt badges was the prompt for the idea.
I wasn't too gung-ho on the idea and I let it go. If it's any consolation, this thread is much more polite than that one was.
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
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Your 'investment' is to have access to the servers and for your characters to be saved, etc.|
Originally Posted by NT_Flamer
If this were just a box game with free multiplayer, I'd have no problem with relaxing and not worrying about people not paying attnetion to everything that needs to be done, but because I pay (and so do all the other Incarnate Content players) 15 bucks a month, I expect a certain amount of payoff for my investment.
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You are not paying other players.
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| It seems that more people are fine with wasting time in failed attempts at trials and game content in general, which is really sad, but hey, You pay to play your way, I'll pay to play mine. Was just hoping that this suggestion would lead to a little less headache for those of us that like to get stuff done. |
City is a time-wasting hobby at it's root, just like all MMOs.
If you need to 'get stuff done', why not the laundry or playing the stock market?
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Because there was (still is?) a bug whereby triggering the cutscene before everyone had loaded into the trial would cause some or all of the loads in progress to fail and boot those players out of the trial without the ability to rejoin.
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Originally Posted by reiella
Just curious as to why for this?
One of the player's first time and haven't seen the cutscene yet? |
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Long post may be Looonnng...It's late, I don't know, lol.
Umm...Here's my 2 cents...Considering I kinda scanned quickly over most of the messages.
So, the problem is people not being 'ready' or 'not having any idea what they're doing'.
My idea...which is implemented on 'the other game' and it works quite well.
You form your league, and you Queue up, there should be a yellow outline around every name that turns Green (for Ready) or Red (For declined) BEFORE you even enter the trial. That way you can see off the bat who's paying attention, who's being the jerk-off who's waiting until the last second, and who might legitimately be afk.
That being said, you enter said trial. Regardless of which one it is, a red box would block you from going further (like the red holoboxes in the missions outside that let you know you're about to exit) that will disappear when at least half/all of the league is loaded in. I know there are slow loaders, and even the most patient sometimes doesn't want to wait the extra 2-4 minutes for someone to load in.
Kill mobs, kill mobs, and kill more mobs....
BOSS FIGHT!!!
And then you'd enter a form of 'stasis', like you were totally invisible and couldn't be hit by anything, and you couldn't hit them, and another 'ready check' comes up. Maybe at raid leaders descretion be able to scale how many need to be 'ready' before the 'ready league' could continue to let the stragglers catch up or something.
Rinse, repeat.
Sure, it's a few extra steps, but it's things that are already in place (for the most part) and it would make some semblance of sense for ready checks to be in place on iTrials (particularly UG).
Either way, if people are 'Ready Checked' it would let the Raid Leader see where problem children lie, or even those who may not have any idea what they're doing, and give the raid leader the opportunity to explain what to do, or even give the new person the chance to ask before being thrust head first into unexplained bash-kill hell.
Even to give the raid leader the ability to 'ready check' at will may not be such a bad idea, just to keep people on their toes.
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Gonna have to agree with the others and /unsign this. Sure it's nice to succeed at these things but the object of a video game is to have fun. Win/lose/or draw as long as I have fun I don't care what happens.
Adding more non-Incanrate Trials 1-50 would help teach players more about the Trial system - DFB is a good start, along with the Halloween one - but more would be good.
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To that I say:|
Originally Posted by NT_Flamer
If this were just a box game with free multiplayer, I'd have no problem with relaxing and not worrying about people not paying attnetion to everything that needs to be done, but because I pay (and so do all the other Incarnate Content players) 15 bucks a month, I expect a certain amount of payoff for my investment.
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Originally Posted by Dread_Pirate_Wesley
Get used to disapointment
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Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
English does not borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, hits them over the head, and rifles through their pockets for loose grammar.
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Nothing gives me the right to decide, but I do have the right to suggest. I don't think the devs intended for players to bumble through the trials not paying attention the the mechanics as they go along, otherwise, why make the mechanics to begin with?|
Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
Umm, yep. That's how it looks from where I'm sitting.
If you're not, answer me this: What exactly is it that gives YOU the right to decide the level of competence required of other people playing the game? If you didn't think you had that right, you never would have made this suggestion. Just sayin'. It doesn't necessarily make you a tool, but it most certainly makes you an elitist. You're saying in this thread: "No one not up to my arbitrary standard of competence should be allowed to play the content I enjoy." And it's not cool to exclude paying customers from something just because they may not be as good at it as someone else. They are paying just as much money as you to play the game, thus they deserve access to exactly the same amount of content without having to pass a frigging test to play it. |
This is a Suggestion section of the forum after all and not the Demand section. I just feel that something like this could help ease the pain of a lot of players that do these trials on a regular basis.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
How is the part in bold even possible? Missions in City of Heroes either succeed or they (pretty rarely) don't. There is no variation in "form", proper or otherwise.
Oh, wait, you're talking about not qualifying for one of those "I'm so 5UP44 1337 I did this without $ARBITRARY_NON_FAILURE_CONDITION! Don't you wish you were as awesome as me?" badges, aren't you. Yeah, that's not success "in the proper form", that's a peen-buffing bonus badge. Expecting people to pass some sort of training process (apart from, I don't know, playing the trial a few times) in order to get some arbitrary "perfection" badge on the first try? That's toolery, son. Thank you, drive through. |
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Originally Posted by MajorPrankster
Your 'investment' is to have access to the servers and for your characters to be saved, etc.
You are not paying other players. What you call wasting time and sad, I call relaxing and playing a game. City is a time-wasting hobby at it's root, just like all MMOs. If you need to 'get stuff done', why not the laundry or playing the stock market? |
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Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Gonna have to agree with the others and /unsign this. Sure it's nice to succeed at these things but the object of a video game is to have fun. Win/lose/or draw as long as I have fun I don't care what happens.
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Adding more non-Incanrate Trials 1-50 would help teach players more about the Trial system - DFB is a good start, along with the Halloween one - but more would be good.
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I had hopes that I wasn't the only person facing this problem, but obviously I am in a VERY small minority in this case. I can either make myself as loud as possible (which while fun, takes a lot of effort) or just give up and keep allowing people to fail trials.
Guess this "elitist" will have to deal with the way things are currently.
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Yup. That's too much to ask (not that you're really asking, but hey).|
Originally Posted by NT_Flamer
Elitist tool huh? Not expecting basic competence huh? I guess it is too much to ask for players to pay attention during the more difficult levels of content.
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I've been playing this game for over 7 years now. In the early years, I did the PUG thing a lot.
I have many horror stories about player buffoonery from that time. Enough of 'em that I don't really PUG anymore. I hit a saturation point and I backed out.
That's pretty much your only option here. If you don't like the downside of interacting with the general populace, remove yourself from it and build an alternative. There are tools provided for that purpose. Use them.
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| Was just hoping that this suggestion would lead to a little less headache for those of us that like to get stuff done. |
A lot of people just don't share in your level of investment. It isn't their job to conform to your expectations. It's your job to go and find people who're of the same mind you are and do stuff with them.
We're all here to play for our own enjoyment, not yours.
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And it would......by making sure that the "incompetent" players never bother with them again. |
Originally Posted by NT_Flamer
Nothing gives me the right to decide, but I do have the right to suggest. I don't think the devs intended for players to bumble through the trials not paying attention the the mechanics as they go along, otherwise, why make the mechanics to begin with?
This is a Suggestion section of the forum after all and not the Demand section. I just feel that something like this could help ease the pain of a lot of players that do these trials on a regular basis. |
You really think requiring a TEST before you can do something is going to encourage people to learn how to do it better?
It's not. What's going to happen is most of the people you're complaining about are going to go "I have to take a test before I can do this? Screw that, I'll do something else instead."
The devs are having a hard enough time getting people to do anything other than BAF and Lambda, why do you want to make it even harder by reducing the number of players that are willing to do it by gating it behind a completely pointless test. I say completely pointless because people click their way through things without reading them all the time. Eventually they will get the answers right and will not have read a damn thing in the process.
Your "solution" would just be a needless annoyance that isn't going to actually make anything better.
And I'll repeat it, the very fact that you are making this suggestion in the first place means you believe you have the right to require that everyone meet a certain criteria of competence before they are permitted to do something.
The worst part is, you aren't even willing to weed out the "undesirables" yourself, you're trying to get the DEVS to do it for you.
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
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I'll chime in here and totally agree with ClawsandEffect. Long before we institute a test to decide if a player is competent to join a trial we need one to determine if a player is ready and able to LEAD one (this next part is strictly sarcasm .. you have been warned)|
Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
And you really think this is a good idea?
Yeah, let's force a 12 year old to take a test before they can do something in a video game. THAT will bring the subscriber numbers up. How about you stop being such an elitist tool and accept the fact that not everyone is going to be at the same level of competence? And also the fact that even with a test people STILL are going to ignore what the trial leader is saying. If your suggestion is implemented, all that effort the devs have gone through to entice players into the trials will be undone. No one is going to take a 3 part test that you are required to pass in order to take part in OPTIONAL content. Dumbest suggestion I've seen lately, G'day. |
Has leader ever successfully even participated in the trial being formed.
Does the leader know the various successful techniques currently being used to complete the trial being formed and are they capable of briefing new trial participants on how these work [special note.. the use of the phrase.. "just follow everyone else and do what they do" does not count as a briefing!]
Is the potential leader known to have a history of rage quits... [clarification.. things aren't going exactly the way I thought they would and team mates are dying. POOF I quit the league Good Luck!]
Is the leader able to communicate their instructions without THE NEED TO CAPITALIZE EVERYTHINGS!!!!!!!
LOL now I play on virtue and trials run day and night but even on one of the busiest servers in game there are times when traffic is light and finding 16 or 24 players available and ready to run a trial can take a good deal of time. You want to make that process even longer by requiring players to pass some TEST before they can join one. And I have seen posts here from players on less populated servers describing long and frustrating waits building a league. /unsigned
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Functionally, no, there is not. The outcome is the same. If the "perfect run" badges are off the table, then the only functional difference, apart from the time taken, is that you don't think the latter courses are slick and efficient enough, and for that you would lock less capable players out of the content? I think not. Peer pressure does enough of that already. We don't need to introduce an official discriminatory mechanism into the game as well.
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Originally Posted by NT_Flamer
No, this has nothing to do with badges. (...) But there is a difference between beating Siege and Nightstar at the same time, and allowing them to Rez not once but TWICE in the same trial (yes it has happened) or Marauder being allowed to go enraged for longer than 30 seconds in a non-badge run.
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Honestly, I think this could be handled with some potentially very simple behind the scenes coding.
For example, let's see my scrapper, Wild Riot, wants to run the BAF. As Wild Riot, I've run BAF probably 5 times. As @NovaFang, I've completed BAF probably 30 times. I've never been a league or team lead on any of my runs (and I have no desire to ever do so). So perhaps there could be some interface or read-out somewhere the basically catalogs for the sake of the league leader that shows:
Wild Riot (@NovaFang) 5:0 @ 30:0
That would tell the leader, "Hey, Ive run it before -- I've never lead it -- I probably know the sequence of events for the trial, I may not be flawless on this particular character but I know it well enough to be functional." If I wanted to play on my defender, Hui Ren, it would be:
Hui Ren (@NovaFang) 0:0 @ 30:00
Again, "hey, the player knows the sequence of events but has never run nor lead it on this character, so there may be some hiccups."
On my peacebringer, NovaFang:
NovaFang (@NovaFang) 12:0 @ 30:0
Effectively translates to "I've done this enough times on this character that I know what I'm doing and I really don't need instructions. I may even be able to lead a team."
And if anyone argues about what happens when multiple people use the same account... EULA already says not to do that. What about people using multiple accounts... I'm one of those people and I believe we're the statistically minority, so feel free to speak up and say "I've run this 1000 times on my main account" if you want.
Take a step back and realize that nothing is guaranteed. You can detail every aspect of "what it takes to succeed this trial" with a league of nothing but +3 t4 toons and still have something go wrong. Please take into consideration that making mistakes are a part of the learning process. I just can't imagine that every itrial you have attempted has ended in failure. In short I can't agree with your suggestion(s).
It seems to me that when we start quizing our player base and requiring people to take tests, something has gone horribly wrong with the design of this supposed "game."