Thoughts on Trials after i12.5 - Mob Rule

Something just happened in game that made me come back to share a story.

A semi-full group of us were headed into the BAF. The Enter button showed up, everyone loaded in, and suddenly were very confused. It turned out the leader had accidentally queued us for TPN instead. There was a brief discussion about what to do. So we pulled together as a team and...

...all agreed to exit the trial and start over.

No matter WHAT the solo incarnate content is or how slow it is I will NEVER run an iTrial again after it releases. There isn't a slow enough that won't make any solo option infinitely better for me. I despise the trials. I despise the mechanics, I despise the general league mentality, I despise the gimmicks in them, I despise the failure rate, I despise the waiting, and I despise the standing around doing nothing WHILE waiting.

So my experience with ITrials is extremely limited. I've done BAF about half a dozen times, and in my experience, it's largely a roving mob. I've done one Lambda, which was successful, but I wasn't sure exactly what it is we were doing at the time, and nobody really felt the need to explain it. I figured it out mostly by watching what other people were doing. Then, about a week later, someone is recruiting for Underground. I figure what the hell, since I've got a level shift under my belt now and go for it. The trial was going fine until we get to the infested War Walker. Halfway through the fight it's becoming obvious we're not going to kill him and tempers flare. The net result is that half the league is foaming at the mouth with rage, and we all wasted an hour and a half of our time.

Since then, I've been running tip missions and leveling alts.

I'm not sure what it is about MMO development, but there must be a tenet somewhere stating "thou must create infinitesimally large scale raids at maximum level, and lure player's there with trinkets and baubles" because it's pretty common place. Not that that's all bad, and some people actually enjoy that environment, which is fine. Further, my own experiences are anecdotal, but they were unpleasant enough that I have very little desire to see all this high level content the dev's have been cranking out. Even still, it isn't so much the Trials themselves, but a mindset that has been introduced that got me to flex my middle finger at "that other game" and brought me back here.

City of Heroes is a different beast from the conventional MMO. It's tried really hard throughout the years to introduce a new paradigm, where the Holy Trinity is meaningless, you can play with whoever you want to play with, regardless of their level, and your sole motivation isn't some indefinite carrot on a stick you're meant to chase ad nauseum. It is for this reason that the ITrials confuse me, as it's a pretty conventional mechanism being added to an MMO that's tried to be unconventional. People enjoy large scale raiding. I'm perfectly content with that. In fact, I rather enjoyed Hamidon raids when they were about the only thing to do, and I still think the Rikti mothership raid is a blast. These events, however, are much less about the rewards (minus perhaps Hammi-O's) and more about the event itself, which is in stark contrast to trials.

I've seen a lot of people state "well the rewards would have to be pathetic to keep Trials alive", which is a valid statement, and something Paragon should be leery about. To pull an example out of a hat, if I were to get say 10 Empyrean Merits and a very rare in 10 hours of trials, or 5 Empyrean merits in ten hours solo, you're damn right I'll never step foot in another trial, and not because they are or are not fun, but because:

1.)I don't have to deal with 23 other people, with either they or myself screwing it all up, and;
2.) there's a mentality that latches itself onto large scale "epic" content for rewards. It's less about the game and more about the reward, and it's why I'll probably never look into the 800 lb gorilla again. It's a rat race that, in my meager experience, fosters hostility.

I'm getting long-winded here, but again, I'm content with trials existing, and I'm even content with a solo/small group path being the slower method. I don't have to become a 50+3 incarnate overnight, or even over a month. Just give me a reasonable alternative, so I don't have to contend with the mob.

I like the trials, while one of the trials i aint a huge fan of i do still love the majority of them.

Will i continue to run trials when the solo content is released? Yes of course i will, why? Because i like to team with others and have a good time. To me, its fun

Now the trials do indeed hurt certain powersets a LOT more than others, they dont hurt certain ATs but certain powersets. My regen or willpower brute/scrapper can't last more than a few seconds in a trial due to their -regen powers, however my stj/nrg scrapper? Well he owns trials now! He is my ONLY character in which i feel like i can take on a mob within a trial and defeat them with ease.
For example on the keyes trial, my scrapper will now go to the different levels and clear them of the mobs to make it easier for people to use their powercells.

I just ran my first ever MoM trial last night and though it took me a few minutes to understand all the mechanics of it inside, i do love it! The purple clouds in the first mission? Surely as a scrapper i should moan nonstop about them right since i cant get in close enough?
Nope! That is what the APPs were for [imo], to add a different something to your powers that werent available in your primary/secondary. While the clouds are up i just attack from range nonstop until they go away and i can do some serious damage again.

Some people do have genuine concerns about the trials from a neutral standpoint, however everytime a new trial comes out i am seeing X amount of the same people complaining about each trial that they hate it and that it should be changed because majority of people dont like trials. I say majority dont like trials because thats what most of their posts do sound like, that people dont like trials.
For example the OP of this thread did give off a clear vibe that trials are disliked by a large majority of the playerbase, this couldnt be further from the truth. Majority of people do like the trials otherwise there wouldnt be so many run so often on a daily basis.
Only speaking for myself obviously, but whenever i read a thread where the OP states something like that, then the whole post loses a lot of weight in my eyes. Simply because its gone from a balanced and well thought out post on how to improve a trial for the majority to being a very biased view focusing purely on the negative sides of the trial.

There are a few things in this game which are hardly run and they are the ones that should have threads about asking people what would they do to improve them to make them more popular/run more. ITrials are almost at the point in which there are a different trial suited to each persons needs [imo].
What we should be asking ourselves now though is how do we improve/make more popular

• Hami Raids
• The original sewer trial
• Hollows Trial
• Eden
• Shadow Shard TFs [obviously this gets brought up a LOT]
• Respec Taskforces

Quote:

So my experience with ITrials is extremely limited. I've done BAF about half a dozen times, and in my experience, it's largely a roving mob. I've done one Lambda, which was successful, but I wasn't sure exactly what it is we were doing at the time, and nobody really felt the need to explain it. I figured it out mostly by watching what other people were doing

This can be true though for majority of Taskforces/Trials in the game already, a good leader of a trial [especially an incarnate one] should never start a trial without first making sure everybody knows what they're doing. From my own personal experience i can say that we have VERY good leaders of iTrials on Union [people like kisana/sophia etc] who lead them very often and always makes sure the entire league knows what to do and when.
Sadly i think your experiences have come down to bad luck with a not very vocal league making sure everybody knows what needs to be done I know some people dont want to be the "only one who doesnt know" , but like my experience on my first MoM yesterday, i run by the rule that if one person doesnt know it then there are another 3 who dont too. True enough, more people said they hadnt done it either.

Edit2 [woot for edit!]

Just to add that i know some people are really against the idea of trials/content that can only be used by gathering large teams, those people i think are right and do need the solo content, im just against the idea of people saying that X needs to be changed in some form then when something different comes out saying that they still dont like it and carries on for quite a while [like all the trials we've had so far].
[This post totally made sense to me when i typed it but reading it back . . . not so much! Ah well! ]

I believe I read at one point that data mining shows most people aren't playing the trial content.

I think it's ironic that a lot of the people who say they love the trials are the same people who have clamoured for shorter TF and trial content. I'm sure that one of the reasons why the UG is not as popular as the ABF is simply its length. It's a long slog through repeated Clear-Alls, and I dare anyone to try suggesting 'Shall we have a 5 minute break for a stretch and to put the kettle on?' in one.

The Shadow Shard TFs, on the other hand, are a relaxed take-your-time affair if you're not on a PuG. Getting too late? Baby crying? Landlord calls? '/t hang on guys, afk a minute'.

Eco

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."