TPN Campus Trial - 48 Hour Review

So, I just did my first TPN (got to the third Maelstrom fight)

THIS WAS ******* AWESOME! It wasn't tedious the way OldKeyes could be (where what you were doing mostly was waiting for AM to get taunted around) or drawn-out the way UG can be (where you spend an hour in easy mode only to be wiped by the final boss) But there was so much glorious, glorious chaos! Everyone had something to do that needed doing, and you really had to stay on your toes to complete it (we didn't because of civilian deaths)

My only beef is that I think the rewards might be slightly underwhelming, but as far as trial design goes this was the most fun yet.

People who complained about wanting something other than Tank&Spank bosses? This is it.

I just tried this method of ignoring the outside threats and focusing only on buildings. I have to say it worked very well, even for an inexperienced league.

By the way, just thought I'd throw this out there, but it's actually possible, given where Maelstrom is wandering around, to completely avoid his supervorpal. If the building you're headed to is Visualcorp, the door's right next to the hospital, he never sees you. For the Main Building, there's a west door on said building in basically the same area, again, he doesn't see you. For TPN Today, just go north around the main building and TPN Today itself, down the east side of TPN Today, and voila, you're at the entrance without Maelstrom seeing you.

Frankly, it only took me like two instadeaths to think "Hmmm, I wonder if sprinting straight past Maelstrom's face is a bad idea. Maybe there's a path that doesn't go directly in front of the really angry 54(+2) AV..." Yeah, this path to TPN Today is a bit long, but it's the furthest building anyway, and that's only really where you're heading 1/3 of the time, and if you have any decent travel power, it's only about 1, maybe 1.5 seconds longer. And I figure, if you walk out in front of a 54(+2) AV, whose defeat is practically the whole goal of the trial, and you do it all alone without massive defenses, well, you kinda signed up to get killed.

I have been on several successful TPN runs now (around 10 I think), and except for the "Fair and Balanced" badge runs (2) we have not kept a team outside. It definately seems to make the trial easier for everyone to understand and it reduces the chance for any accidental civilian deaths. It is also a good way to get the badges for clicking all 4 terminals/HD health and completing each 500 pt challenge in 8 minutes.

I actually think this will be the "standard" way this trial is run, due to the lower level of complexity.

One thing that we have experimented with was having 2 players use the Incandesence Destiny to port the league to the required location. While the 2 people with league TP are running to the correct location the league stays out of combat. We are still fine-tuning this method, and it is very possible that we will find a better way, but it is fun to work it out.

For our (somewhat accidental) MoTPN run, we went with four teams, two groups of 6, a group of 4, and a group of 8. The two six-person groups were well-balanced and their role was for the inside buildings, with two tanks to taunt spawns away from techs, and two designated people whose role was killing techs only. The four-person group had ST damage specialists for hunting telepaths, each equipped with a "targetcustomnext Telepath" bind. The eight-person group was an AV killer group with a tank, debuffs (two rads), buffs, healing, and damage. Everyone was inside on phase 2, the four-person team was outside on phase 3, and the four- and eight-person teams were outside for phase 4. During phase 4, the inside teams used lore pets to beef up their damage (since they were 8 people lighter).

We cobbled this together with about ten people from our regular group and the remainder pick-ups from our server (Protector). We didn't bother checking for level-shifts. We just made sure each team understood their role, keeping instructions to a minimum. We had four team leaders who knew what they needed and then they traded the players who showed up between teams until they had compositions that would fulfil the roles they had to play.

One or two bad experiences does not a bad trial make. One or two (or ten) failures does not a bad trial make. If all trials were winnable on the first go round, that would represent as much a (or possibly even greater a) failure than trials that take time, patience, and experience to succeed at. Imagine the devs having the gall to think players would have to learn how to do something before being able to do it well. For context, the individual members of our regular group ran 2-4 failed TPNs (public and private) each before we had this success, and each time we learned something new. Our collective experiences conferred the required expertise to devise our strategies that ultimately resulted in our first and many subsequent successes. Did we nuke a few cameras and civilians? Of course we did. But we learned, and we didn't let it happen again. Did we let H.D. die because we didn't know we were protecting a television? Of course we did. But we learned, and we didn't let it happen again. Did Maelstorm whoop the pants off us with his steroid infused vorpal judgement a few times? Of course he did. But we learned, and we didn't let it happen again.

There's nothing wrong with TPN, or any of the trials. I actually enjoy TPN a lot, and it is a refreshing change from BAF and Lambda and Keyes, a good option when there isn't time for a UG or if there are too many players for a MoM.