Thoughts on Trials after i12.5 - Mob Rule

Thoughts on Trials after i12.5 - Mob Rule

Since the announcement that Dark Astoria was going to be revamped as an Incarnate Content zone, I've found myself a bit more willing to do trials. The fact that my characters will not be 'Stuck' in a 'nothing but Trials' routine has been a warming change.

However, there are still some serious problems with the whole Trial scene. While the two new trials, TPN Campus and Minds of Mayhem have added new dynamics to the Trial equation, they haven't necessarily made everything better. They both have some serious problems of their own.

Positron has mentioned a worry that if the solo and single-group Incarnate content is more rewarding than the trial content, then the trials will wither and dry up. To me, this indicates a pretty serious problem. I've mentioned before that the trials are not very much fun. If the single-group and solo Incarnate content is fun at all, and it certainly has the potential to be, I think it's going to serve as a pretty rude wakeup call. I think that people are going to angle for the non-trial content because it won't be as painful as the trial content. The trial content will wither and dry up even if it is more rewarding simply because folks don't like them.

So why isn't the trial content very much fun?

The devs have stated that they want the trial content to be fun and accessible. The problem lays pretty squarely on the last bit. The content is NOT very accessible and is therefore not much fun. This happens for a few different reasons.

The first reason is the league mechanics. Despite assurances that it would be fixed, the 'Team-up-Teleporter' still seems to be reporting very skewed times. There was also no 'official' patch note that it was fixed. While this is broken, most people seem completely unwilling to use it. They have to volunteer to stay away from instances of any kind - the vast majority of the game's content - for an undetermined amount of time.


My suggestions to fix this are to first, exclude any players from leagues that enter the queue more than 60% 'full' from the average. A lot of leagues will announce that they're launching in a Global Channel and if players want in, they should queue. When players queue and get in 30 seconds later because they KNOW a trial is rolling, the average is reduced significantly. Likewise, drop the lowest queue times to help smooth the statistics. Last, the average should be of a 90 minute window. Lots of servers have slightly different peak times. If the average measures queue times since the last server reset, there will be long stretches of 'non-peak' times when the average is very low compared to reality, even if it were working perfectly.


Another reason is league leadership. I heard a player tonight on Victory announce that they had a team built in Pocket D for a trial, but needed someone who could lead it. That says to me that there is willing, but no confidence. The person who was confident enough to build the team did not feel that he could lead it. This is a problem. There are parts on all the trials where a lack of leadership will doom the trial to failure: the escaping prisoner phase during Behavior Adjustment Facility, the maze hunt during Lambda, ALL of Keyes, the Lichen-Infested Warwalker fight during the Ungerground, ALL of TPN, and the Mother Malaise fight during Minds of Mayhem. It's not enough that players are familiar with how to accomplish the goals. They need, at the very least, someone to make sure that the sub-goals are being accomplished in the right order, that anyone making mistakes is corrected, and that if someone is griefing, they are booted from the league.

The 'Vote to Kick' feature isn't exactly well-documented or very accessible.

BAF and Lambda have been around long enough that people will step up to provide leadership during bits they understand. Even then, it's still very possible to fail. MoM is MAYBE doable without the leadership since the goals are straightforward. Keyes, UGT, and TPN are simply not doable without a strong leader. That's not accessibility. If these trials are going to be 'fun' and 'accessible', then the goals are going to have to be SIGNIFICANTLY simplified. Even with the changes to make Keyes less punitive, there are still LOTS of folks who don't understand the goals after several runs.

That's bad design.

The alternative to simplifying the trials is to make them single-team content. You can expect a single team to be lead through complex challenges by a willing private. An army of 18-24 players needs a general.


Developers, let me challenge you here: We know that the trials scale and that the limits are arbitrary. Build test versions of Keyes, UGT, and TPN that will allow you to go through with 6-8 players. Go through them with teams of 6-8 and see how different YOU think they are in terms of fun.


My thoughts on Keyes:

All three reactors need to have the mechanisms for unlocking terminals be exactly the same. My suggestion is to remove the bit where you have to lead Anti-Matter to them and instead make it so you have to clear the Warworks away from them. Make Anti-Matter more aggressive to compensate for him not being at the reactors. If you want the terminals on the 2nd reactor to stay accessible, don't have the Warworks spawn on top of them until Anti-Matter arrives.


My thoughts on UGT:

This is a fun two trials. It NEEDS the extra rewards. However, the mechanism to use the Lichen temps on the Infested Warwalker is confusing. Make these work MORE like the Pacification Grenades in Lambda. We need screen popups that say something like 'Lichen Infested Warwalker is Regenerating. Use Lichens!' Ditch the glowing NPC lichens that help with his regeneration or make them destroyable like the crystals in the trap room. Most Leagues spend a lot of time trying to position the Infested Warwalker away from them. The fact that they CAN and that it seems to be NECESSARY to win the battle is, again, BAD DESIGN.

Additionally, there's a pretty serious problem in that all the Giant Warwalkers tend to get stuck in the walls causing the trials to fail because no one can hit them. This needs to be fixed.


My thoughts on TPN:

The 'Approval' feature on this trial is confusing. It doesn't make a lot of sense unless someone explains it to you and there's nothing that says, 'If you lose all approval, you fail.' Either eliminate it and go for a straight 'You need to activate X number of terminals' metric or spend some time explaining it IN the trial. A cutscene where H.D. explains it at the very beginning of the trial would be a good idea.

The 'Chase Maelstrom Away/Defeat the Telepaths' phase is the funnest part of this trial, but the mechanics for converting the Citizens are confusing. Leave the citizens BLUE until they're converted. Rather than have rioter defeats reduce the Approval Rating, add a badge in for not defeating any of them.

I'm personally really surprised that players are reporting that there don't seem to be any significant changes to this trial since it was in beta, despite the long delay. Why did you bother delaying this if you thought it was ready? Why release it if it wasn't ready after you delayed it once?

The rare recipe on this trial is really dumb. The fact that the Empyrean unlock is for one character only rather than account wide is also really dumb.


My thoughts on MoM:

The whole trial is pretty fun. The 'Create a void to fight Penny Mayhem' is the weakest part. The NPCs are hard to see and this mechanic is confusing. I suggest making the NPCs much more visible and to have the void NPCs be untargetable.

It's also confusing to try to figure out which room you're in when trying to keep Shalice from hurting Aurora. I thought I was simply lagging badly the first time I went to buff her and that the multiple clones of Mother were lag artifacts. There needs to be some HIGHLY VISIBLE graphics to differentiate the reflections, Shalice clones, and Aurora. I suggest very bright auras on the Shalice clones and the reflections. The two rooms could also be two different colors. A switch from red to green highlights would be adequate.

I would also do more explaining on the fight with Mother Malaise. The fact that the monsters can help slow and root Shalice is not readily apparent. Give us a popup like 'Defeat Monsters next to Shalice!'.


The fact that any of these trials is failable due to players simply not understanding what's happening is BAD DESIGN. It CAN be fixed, but the developers need to make some hard decisions either way. Either simplify the goals so a mob can understand them, or cut that mob down until it's a single group. I think you're going to have to do one or the other, or they will indeed wither and dry up the second there's an alternative.

But the Hollows revamp was cool.

Lengthy post, but I read it all. Though I have a feeling most will come here and just say "TL;DR." Also, just a quick note: I suggest proof-reading a post like this. There are some worthwhile ideas there, but it gets muddied by some spelling and grammatical errors. Just constructive criticism...

Re: League Mechanics: It think this will become moot by the time i22 is released. I believe the made mention of allowing the Teleporter to work from within an instance, which I think well do wonders for the league mechanic. If someone can queue up for a "First Available" trial upon logging in, and then run their 5 tip mission for the day (knowing that they could be TP'd away from one in the middle), a lot of people would be a lot less frustrated by the "recruitment period."

Re: Leadership: I agree 100% that this is a problem. And who can blame them? Leading trials isn't the same as stepping up to lead a mission team, or even a task force (which is really just a string of missions). Trials are too fast paced for a player to just "step up and give it a shot." You need someone who actually has run it and/or read up on it, who knows what they are doing. The instructions of a trial either come as walls of texts (stuck behind the big objective window) or blaring red and orange prompts in the middle of your screen, neither of which you have much time to read because you are busy fighting for your life against a lvl 54 boss. This, in my opinion, encompasses that "lack of accessibility" to which you were referencing.

The trials have a lot of high stakes (someone constantly in danger, a time limit, etc.). And, by conceptual design, that is as it should be. But it really is out of place when compared to the rest of the game. It is inaccessible because they are different from anything offered at lvl 1-50. (Even the DFB trial is just a straight-through, kill-all trial, with some different orders if you want the badges.) The i22 revamp of Dark Astoria will be accessible, by the very nature of it being a continuation of the playstyle offered throughout the rest of the game. If the Devs hope for the trials to continue being run at least as often as the DA stuff, if not more so, some major shifts will have to be implemented.

One of my biggest issues with the ITrials is how the from Keys on it becoming more and more anti melee. In the Anti Matter fight at the end of Keys I spend more time jumping from the Green Stuff then attacking the AV. And with MoMM and UG, it pays to have a ranged attacker than melee because of the buffs to the AV to those around them and more patches that kills folks around them. This why folks run Tin Mage II more than Apex. The darn patches in Apex. If the game does not root folks when they attack, I would not mind as much but it does.

My other issues is that the trails are not fun. Even on Khan or Apex, I had fun for the most part. On Keys and those following it, I did not have fun. It was stress full and on UG, it just takes one mistake to end it. One. sorry that is not fun. I want to log on and have fun playing a hero. Not button mash but have some fun play a hero on a team beating up a foe that threaten our little world. I'm not seeing that in the Itrials anymore.

And do not get me started about the lack of story in these trials. I'm looking forward to the revamp DA and if the Devs do not understand why folks want to play small group stuff more than these trials, then I wonder what game they are playing. When devs from the big game on the block states that the strength of this game is how we do taskforces and story arcs and you move away from that to copy what the big game does, you are losing sight of what makes this game fun.

In short I think I would enjoy them all more if I could run them for a team of 8.

If a significant proportion of the level 50 population feels similarly inclined then the iTrials will be run a lot less once Dark Astoria gets it revamp. I have no idea whether or not that will be the case.

Make no mistake, I want to run the trials, but the league requirement and team-up-teleporter are all things that put me off. I've done the Underground and I enjoyed it greatly but it was a right royal pain in the **** to get on one. Not sure if I will ever join one again. I will make the effort to do the new ones at least once, after that? Who knows.

A few points.

A) The trials are fun for a lot of people, myself included. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to form four or five of them on any given afternoon on my server (Protector). Just because you don't enjoy them doesn't mean they aren't fun to play at all.

B) The trials are not 'anti-melee' or 'anti-ranged' or 'anti-' much of anything for that matter. Some trials are harder for some ATs opposed to others yes, but no one AT has been singled out with any of the gameplay aspects put into the trials (Stalkers getting a special entrance in the Keyes bunkers aside). The big damage pulses and patches? They hit everyone in-range. Confuses? They confuses everyone they hit (do melee characters get hit more often due to where they stand? Yes. Is it simple enough to have someone with CM hit you with it by asking them, or just carry some breakies? Also yes.).

C) The trials are not 'light on story' either. The only way the trials could be considered light on story aspects and plot is if you consciously skip over all of Prometheus' dialogue, and all of the dialogue and scenes in the trials as well, and ignore the fact that they are part of a massive, interconnected story-line that spans all levels of the game (with the iTrials being the conclusion/endgame). Hell, the MoM trial has numerous sections in-between each phase where you can talk with various NPCs for information, with no rush or anything.

Note that all of that doesn't mean I don't want the solo I-content to be fun, or interesting. I want it to be both, with story content as well! It'll give me even more ways to get more incarnate stuff in addition to the trials, and lets me do something for those lulls when iTrials aren't going on. However, trying to paint it as 'iTrials are horrible and the Devs should make them different because they're bad and nobody likes the trials!' won't work because, well, it's simply not true. Sometimes the trials have to be modified a bit yes, but that doesn't make them 'bad' just difficult to manage (and even then, that can be improved. It's gotten to the point where folks can lead successful runs the day these things come out with a group of people who've never done it before, because they've done the other trials and learned from them).

I just hope that they buff the rewards of their precious little iTrials instead of nerfing the solo path rewards to the ground to keep whoever it is that is running trials running them.

If they took the confuse and pink crap like the blue stuff in Apex out id enjoy running them better.... I suck at ranged and get wooped when I get in attacking distance of the target :/

The problem isn't whether or not trials are fun or not. The problem is rewards ratio.

Take Skyirm as an example, players are breaking the game into tiny bits simply because it's easier to level skill by exploiting the system than playing it the way it's "Intended" to be played. Now, in a single-player game that doesen't matter much: In a multiplayer game however, it DOES, since people gauge their character's power/fitness i relation to others. Which means that if there's a smoother path to advancement, a lot (not everyone, but a significant chunk) are going to feel forced to take it, so as to not fall behind.

That means that if there's a more effective, less challenging path to something that's what's going to get run, even if players think it is boring as hell.

So the devs have to find a middle-path, balancing rewards and challenges.

A couple of things I hate about the trials - waiting 20 minutes or so while they get organized- brb's , zoning , alting . Then somone usally doe not press go.
I play on about 5 servers but getting a trial on Triumph seems to require a membership to some secret club. Multiple times I have seen people ignored in broadcast. I kn ow there are channels for this but if you join one but are blocked from communicating till you get permission how is this working.

I used to think trials were hard, but then I took an arrow in the knee.

The bigger the team size, the simpler the objectives need to be. This is a basic tenant of mob mechanics.

Incarnate content should consist of large leagues of mostly brainless button mashing and/or solo/small team, story driven intricate puzzlers. The best incarnate content would be large, easily understandable league events that are very difficult if some league members haven't run the solo/small team content as an independent prelude.

Anything else will not be fun for most people, even if the rewards are great.