Using Ion on Civilians in TPN (Yes, this happened)

Yo man, I'm chill. If the guy who used Ion reads this thread, I'm sorry I called him out. A combination of events combined to make it aggravating, but right now it is more funny than annoying. Originally I wanted no one outside because I was in a PuG trial, with inexperienced leaders (including me), and because I knew that it had less of a chance of having someone screw up outside.

Eventually, a third leader emerged and suggested we switch to having an outside team, and we ran with that. So I kind of saw someone like this happening. It didn't make much of difference anyway, as I still managed to get most of my T4s done in about 3 days.

Yes, I overreacted. Yes, it was partially my fault for PuGing on Freedom (aka "slumming"). To be honest, I have no idea who used the power, as I wasn't on the outside team and can't remember the names of anyone who was on it. I never even got the ability to 1-star the guy so I could avoid him, and I've probably teamed with him since.

However, I'm hardly the first to post like this, and it serves no purpose to vilify me. In fact, posts about anonymous people doing or saying stupid things are quite commonplace in these forums, and generally are not seen as abusive or demeaning. Instead, people should try to learn from these threads. I know I was stupid when I first started playing (I distinctly remember making a barely understandable first thread and being laughed at), and the forums are one of the greatest sources to learn about the game, if you don't wear your heart on your sleeve. For instance, basic knowledge of the game seems pitifully lacking on Freedom compared to the other servers I've been on, but virtually no vet that has spent time on the forum has been one of those asking for "1 Tank/2-3 Healz pst!" (I made that up, but you get the point).

Part of what makes this game fun for me IS the fact that it is casual. I like the fact that I can make a build that can solo the hardest content in the game if I play with half a brain. To me, hardcore games are simply unfun, requiring tons of mental effort and constant effort, and all the effort is wasted when new content is introduced. I guess I play the game for a power trip. And that's fine. Just like it is fine that you like challenge. But don't condemn me for what I like, and I won't condemn you for what you like.

To be fair, I never asked for the option of failure to be removed. I even said that I respect others who want more challenge in the game, despite the fact that I personally find challenge in a team environment to be unfun. I do not like challenge that comes from external factors like teammates because those factors aren't controllable, while internal factors like my build, attack chain, and inspiration use are completely controllable. I don't hate challenge itself, but the challenge I like tends to come from me trying to accomplish tasks by myself in controllable fashion, such as soloing an AV or running a fast Pylon time. There was literally nothing controllable about the TPN wipe, and thus it wasn't challenging to me, but was instead irritating.

And just because I have multiple characters that can solo TFs doesn't mean that I never team. On the contrary, I team for the social experience, despite the fact that in many ways I run more efficiently by myself (I've soloed the ITF faster than some teams I've been on, but that doesn't mean I had more fun on the solo-run).

I didn't intend to vilify you personally. You're right, posts of this nature are commonplace; I wish they weren't. I just don't want relatively new players getting the idea that they're supposed to know everything ahead of time or else they'll be mercilessly mocked by the veterans. Shoot, since it's sometimes months before I get around to running new content, I'm right there with new players in being way behind playing "new" content.

Yes, but that's taking the position to absurd levels. That argument says because there's a fire pit at the bottom of the slippery slope, all surfaces must be exactly level lest we ever build one that burns us.

I don't think the devs should create things where one poor or even just accidentdal action by one player leads to failure for everyone. That's what the badge criteria for "Avoids the Green Stuff" does, and I think that's crappy.

To a more limited extent, that's what mechanics like the UGT War Walkers targeting, the "Will of The Earth" mechanic, and Mother Mayhem's "Suffer In Silence" all do. I am not a fan of these either, but don't consider these as bad because they don't necessarily lead to binary failure and can be mitigated by the actions of others. Compared to those, the requirement to not blast civilians in the TPN is simply not very heavyweight. I think most complaints about it are much ado about nothing.

No, it's saying that when you are designing activities for large groups of people, that the activity needs to take into account the psychology of large groups of people. If it were true that all of the trials had equal opportunities for a couple of confused/griefing players to implode it, I wouldn't single out UG, MOM, and TPN from the rest. The mechanics of those trials, specifically, are the ones that currently suck.

It's funny, because allegedly the trials are designed for use with an LFG queue that allows people to join them anonymously--there was a protracted battle to even get a closed league feature put in. The later re-branding of trials as some sort of raiding guild thing with a 10 minute explanation prior to playing is a reinvention that came about much later. Message board collective memory being what it is, everyone seemed to forget about this extremely bloody battle after closed leagues were reluctantly added.

Don't worry about it Combat... players have been coming here to rant and let off a little steam after a bad mission/tf/trial almost as long as the forums have existed. I do it occasionally myself and here is how I view doing it..

I get a chance to vent and release any negative energy I have after whatever went wrong. MORE IMPORTANTLY .. I detail exactly what happened, minus anyone's actual name to stay within TOS, so that other players out there that read it can see what happened.. pass it along and hopefully learn from it. Trial leaders that constantly offer up warnings during instruction are a direct result of someone, somewhere passing along the result of what happens when somebody did (insert action that resulted in chaos). Players that enter a trial and know WITHOUT instruction not to attack say civilians during a TPN are a result of this same sort of thing. It doesn't matter if it here, on a global channel or during instruction from a league leader prior to entering a particular trial.

If no one ever vented their frustrations and shared their storied it would take the player base a LONG LONG time to learn all the little tricks required to succeed on the new Incarnate trials... This all starts with the folks that test on Bata passing along what they learn and then continues with teams/leaders experimenting and refining strategies until the trials become relatively easy and players with limited amounts of time to commit to the game don’t find themselves wasting time over and over on failed trials.
Do some posts result in the inevitable flame wars? YES lol unfortunately we have a huge player base and there are always those out there that think only 1 way of doing anything can possibly be right. BUT .. there are also a lot of folks that benefit from every "OMG look what happened to me on X trial last night posts".

IMO, the interaction between the LFG queue and iTrials has been a severe miss from the get-go on the devs' part. The concept of "end game trial" has always had strong elements of incompatibility with "randomly assembled group of players". While many leagues are formed "by hand" in ways that seem random (as in with whoever is at hand), many are not. They just seem random because the leaders don't relay in league chat what they are doing with people they have other communication channels with (global channels , SG chat, etc.) to round out a league. Unless nearly everyone is under-shifted for a trial, you only need a small core of people playing the "right" things to provide a solid pillar on which to build with otherwise mostly random people. A leader with a handful of friends can make sure a league has core roles covered without having to rely on the pick-up members to be able to perform those roles. Everyone feels included and the trial usually goes well.

In my opinion, the LFG queue has been one of the most floundering features the devs have added to this game with the possible exception PvP (though generating far less angst). It could provide excellent utility, if only anyone knew what it was supposed to really be for, or if it bore some resemblance to how a lot of people actually form teams. It seems to have been created with a sense of "build it and they will come" that simply never materialized.

But, SHINY!

Originally Posted by Shubbie Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.

Now add glowies that will fail the trial if *not* clicked that are only 1 pixel different the insta-fail glowies and have them spawn in the same areas but randomly scattered with a one minute timer to click all the right ones simultaneously.

Oh I definately agree 100%. The group I run trial with works JUST like that. We actually have a private channel the core grouip belongs to and any recruiting we do begins there. Depending on the trial after that our fearless leader will open it open to whoever is available and out there looking. We do role calls prior to starting to see who has what destiny slotted and many of us have 2 or 3 different ones so we can switch to fill a particular need. We can even alt from one character to another to fill a hole before we start although usually we can all just play what ever we feel like that evening.

Now if someone joins us and proves to be a good player that can follow instructions and plays well.. we invite them to join the channel and they become a part of the core.. heck I have even run other task forces with players from the channel cause I know the chances for an easy run are much better.

Now while I am here I also agree with Tex.. the LFG is broken, has been broken and I dont ever see it being fixed in regard to the trials. I dont know if they ever took any steps to make it better but at one point when all the arguing was taking place if you tried to find a league using it this was what you dealt with:

1. forget travel between zones .. hop a train, a ferry or even use the portal to ouroborus and you automatically got bumped of the waiting list and had to start all over when you got to the new zone

2. Don't try to enter your base for anything .. just like the portal .. you got bumped and had to join the q again when you left base. THIS one i know still exists!

3. You can craft IOs, if a table is available, but if you tried to slot them to enhance your build you were knocked out of the q and had to join again.

4. You cant do any sort of door mission while waitin or you get bumped as well.. about the only thing you can do along these lines is street hunt so its best to be in a level appropriate zone.. since all the trial s require you to be 50 level that means the RWZ, Cimerora, Grandville or Peregrine.

5. Lastly after discovering all the other things i COULD NOT do I tried joining the LFG and waited to see if I could get a invite to any league.. 30 minutes later I got tired of sitting doing nothing and dropped out fo the q and joined a league forming in the rwz.

Now I am not saying the lfg is worthless.. I have used it a number of times to join death from below trials with new characters, It also worked fine when they gave us the halloween trial this year. But the biggest problem is the lfg will build a team based on the "minimum" requirements for a trial.. so it would grab the first 8 players it finds looking for a Lambda, as example, and throw them into a trial. It doesnt care it you wind up with 8 stalkers, 8 blasters or even 8 tanks.. the requirement is 8 .. you get to deal with figuring out how to win with no buffs, debuffs, holds, etc or with whatever you find yourself lacking. CAN you imagine trying to do a BAF with 12 TANKS none of which has a level shift yet! Okay you can probably pull and deal with the AVs but does anyone honestly think you will survive the prisoner escape phase? THAT is the sort of thing that is possible with the way the lfg is set up. Its not a trial leader and doesnt bother to look to see if you have aggro control, support, dps, ect.. it just throw together the minimum amount to run a trial and say "GO HUNT, KILL AVs!

You're......actually serious about that.....aren't you?

I'm not even sure I have the words to adequately explain how stupid I find that notion. Even my term of "pants-on-head stupid" fails to describe it.

Now tell me, when you buy a bookshelf and ignore the instructions while putting it together, whose fault is it when it falls apart? Yours? Or the company that made it necessary to follow instructions when assembling it?

Instructions are part of any facet of life. Saying that you should be able to ignore them at will and still succeed in everything you do is one of the dumbest theories I've ever heard in my life.

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.

I don't expect newbies to something to know everything about it before they do it.

I DO expect them to listen to the people who have done it before though.

I have issues with anyone who walks into something they've never done before and refuses to listen to more experienced people because "They know how to do this!".

And that isn't just confined to the game.

If you've never, say, driven a forklift before, you should listen to the guy telling you how the controls work before you take off with it. It's just common sense. (which is very inaptly named)

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.

I don't think that is what that poster is saying. I think what s/he is actually saying is that it's a matter of degree.

I'm also kind of tired of hearing about all these things that are "the players' fault." I don't like crappy games or aspects of thereof. That's not a "fault." And IMO MOM and TPN are embaressingly bad in their current state. I'm willing to accept them only on the assumption they'll eventually be adjusted. If they aren't, well, IMO that's a fine way to spend $200,000, or whatever it cost to put that together.

The best things I can think to say about the latest trials are the environments are nice, at least they backed off on nerfing rewards in other trials, and solo/small team content can't get here fast enough. If the next incarnate slots require running the new stuff in its current form that will be it for me though.

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.

That's the problem, most of us don't give 2 ***** about getting the civilians of Preatoria on our side. Why should we this is WAR. WAR WAR WAR. War means blowing the **** out of your enemy because it's for the greater good. Nuking preatoria is the only reasonable choice at this point. Again I use real life situatation We nuked Japan and and didn't care about their civilians.

That's the complaint this writing is stupid as ****, it makes zero sense and it's extremely hard to take seriously. Who ever wrote this as well as the last few incarnate trials well this may sound harsh but I would can their ***.

Did you take a poll?

No, that's not the complaint. That's a complaint. It's one I accept, but it's not what people are discussing here. They're discussing whether, whatever, the story explanation for it, whether it's bad (or how bad it is) for there to be mechanics in the trials that individual people can use to screw up everyone else.

What you're pointing out is that the explanation for why it's bad assumes our characters' motivations, particularly for characters which are villains or vigilantes, which is a complaint that goes far beyond just this trial.

No. The argument is not about whether instructions exist. It's about whether the mechanics those instructions are intended to address are good or bad. If one of these trials included a dialog box that said "Free candy?" and clicking "Yes" failed the trial, the fact you can provide instructions to click "No" does not automatically make it a good mechanic. Yes, you can succeed at the trial by just following instructions. No, that mechanic is not cutting edge.

The trial itself is undecided on whether your AoEs are a danger to friendlies or not (cameras: yes, civilians: yes, HD: no). If nothing else, attacking a civilian should have personal consequences for the attacker. Having the whole trial fail is completely unnecessary and 180 degrees seperated from the supposed intent of the trials.

The trials are what they are. Given what they are, if someone can't read instructions given by a leader, or forgets what they read, that is their fault. Extending fault to the devs for creating a situation where reading comprehension is required is misattribution. You may feel the devs should not have created such a situation, but that is a separate issue. Given that situation exists currently, it is the responsibility of the players putting themselves in the dev-created situation to obey its rules. If they fail to do that out of ignorance or accident, that's likely acceptable because most of us stop being ignorant or repeating the same mistakes. If they do it repeatedly or very exremely (like standing outside and firing repeated attack chains at civilians, not just one AoE) while ignoring calls by others for them to stop, then that's not acceptable.

If people can't deal with that, then they just don't need to play these trials.

By the way, I don't know why you think the MoM trial is so bad. There's one mechanic in it I think needs adjustment. If you die in the Penelope fight room, you're often very screwed unless you get a full health rez from somewhere. You see, you rez (from any rez) without your level shifts for a short time. I don't know why, and that's not unique to this trial - it happens anywhere. The issue is that you are subjected to extremely high environmental damage in the Penelope phase, which is even higher if you lose your level shifts. As a result, if you don't have a lot of base HP or get rezzed with full HP, you can die again before you even get to move.

It's not a good trial for unshifted characters. I wish it had a label on it to that effect, but that and the above deaths thing are the only issues I have with the trial.

At least we agree on something. Not exactly what I'd call a high water mark in terms of design victories though, when people walk away from your game because it sucks.

That's not how I see it at all. I see it as those people sucking. I'm sorry, but this stuff is not that hard. Perhaps you view this attitude as self-professed "elite" players dissing the "little guys" but we're talking about an awfully low bar for "elite" here. This isn't "listen to a detailed discussion of the trial beforehand and remember the details". This is "don't do X" or "stop doing X right now!"

Plenty of us are just fine with that. And we're not going to be tolerant of those who aren't. As usual, there will by derriere-hats who take positions like mine too far and are tyrants with the league star. That's unfortunate and I don't advocate it, but that's life.