The things you "hate" about I Trials!

Don't take the title the wrong way I run trials constantly and with the group I have hooked up with I enjoy the experience .. however a lot has been written here of late about some of the frustrating mechanics of these trials and I thought this would be a good topic to explore..


okay one by one then

The Underground Trial .. An entire section of the map where basically I am in a race against infection that threatens to defeat me. There is NO way to fight what is attacking me all I can do is run as fast as I can and keep popping greens. {Great timing too since shortly afterwards we face the AV in the final chamber .. lovely time for a squishy character to be out of respites when the general rule of thumb is don't use heals... if you are confused you'll heal the AV} My Tank and Brutes manage this area just fine since they have a ton of hit points and great defenses but by controllers and defenders barely make it through alive at times.

Oh and the lichen phase has it quirks as well. I am not certain HOW this works exactly and I have been picked on numerous occasions to collect them. I am GUESSING here, please feel free to correct if I am in error, that like the grenades in the lambda we use to pacify Maurader the lichen can only be used one at a time. Once someone has thrown one at the warwalker you need to wait for it to wear off before using a second??? Okay I have had trials where I stood face to face with a WW that was at 100% and no matter how many time I clicked on a lichen in my trays i couldn't get it to work. IF this is the case couldn't they have at least come up with a warning like in lambda letting us know it was okay to use the glowies we collected again??

The TPN Trial .. A mechanic which requires players to avoid using any form of AoE while outside or risk failure. Yes there are ways around this issue .. the league I run with doesnt even try to deal with telepaths and simply runs from building to building defeating techs and accessing terminals but .. this is basically asking some players to stop using more than half of the attacks they spent 50 level obtaining. Oh I almost forgot to mention.. this also nullifies one of the incarnate powers you run trials to opbtain in the first place.. there was a thread on the forums the other day talking about a trial that failed because some one, NOT paying attention to instructions, used their judgement outside and killed off so many civilians the trial failed right there and then.

While we are on the subject of outside on a TPN.. this has been brought up repeatedly in numerous threads why is it that my super powered hero can easily be defeated and find herself in hospital because some irate civilain threw a brick at me? This can be annoying enough when rushing from building to building but have you ever noticed how LONG it takes for a Public Opinion victory to take affect? We teleport out of a building after gaining 500 points of PO and then my character is defeated by angry citizens while i am waiting for the offical notice to appear! If we gained their support INSIDE the facility exactly why are they still trying to kill me when I head outside to battle Maelstrom?

The MoM Trial .. Okay this one isnt too bad except it employs the same annoying "clouds of death" we find in the Apex Trial. Now my ranged characters could care less as the run around the outer edges dealing damage and avoiding the pink clouds but once again its a melee character's nightmare .. you cant stand and just fight you HAVE to hit and run, only use the powers you have with short animation times, or stand your ground and die again and again and again. I have a number of characters that have the master of badge for Apex.. every single one of them is a ranged character and not one of my melee characters has ever completed it .. [this is because after several failures I stopped sending melee characters anywhere near Apex].

Keyes Trial .. much better since the nerf! That constant death beam made the whole experience just annoying. I like to participate in battles not spend half the trial running back from the hospital. I guess if there is anything left thats anoying its the amount of things AM has to throw at you in that final battle. I have to avoid being obliterated, worry about being disintergrd and every time I turn around time freezes .. THAT last one is the one I'd like more clarification on. I have had times where I was within melee range of Anti Matter and while people all around me were held I was heading toward the generators to destroy them. And then on ONE particular trial I had died and was out of awakes so I headed to the hospital. I got to spend an additional 20 seconds inside because for SOME reason the time freeze Anti Matter used had me chocking helplessly at the door?????

The BAF .. while much less of an issue than others mentioned here the prisoner escape phase can be a nightmare for single target melee characters. Blasters, Troller and Defenders sit at a choke point and fire away at things running toward and a way from them but my tanks, scrappers and brutes either man a door, which highly upsets some leaders that insist I should be at a choke point, or I wind up racing around like a maniac for 5 minutes trying to get in more than 1 hit on anything! Of course my melee abilities shine when we battle the AVs so it doesn't feel like I spend the entire trial watching other people work.

Lambda.. Here again we see a phase that sort of discriminates against certain ATs. During the glowie search Tanks, brutes, Scrappers, even WS and PBs in Dwarf mode can easily wander around ignoring the mobs as they destroys glowies.. Squishy types on the other hand find themselves dying and paying the hospital a visit again and again. The rest of the trial is fine but it can be a real pain during that part.

NOW... general annoyances.

Any trial any time.. how often do you enter the Q and those well thought out teams your leader put together are a huge MESS when you actual arrive inside? Lately? It seems like always! In many cases it even requires whoever the game as selected as the new offical trial leader to turn control back over so the ACTUAL trial leader can straighten out the mess.

Any trial any time part 2... this one is hit or miss but the other day I ran a Keyes, TPN, MoM and UG on my brute on full sized leagues. EVERY single trial that day I had to send the leader a tell asking to be reinvited because the game had kicked me off the team as we tried to teleport inside.

Now as I said at the beginning none of this has driven me away from doing the trials and on the league I run with I actually enjoy doing them but I do wonder exactly who on the Dev team thinks that coming up with one annoying restriction after another on every new trial is winning over players? I hear it all the time in broadcast in the RWZ.. "I'll do anything BUT .. {insert name of trial you can't stand here}" This is ually followed by a remark about how said trial sucks or worse. Okay I look forward to comments and other opinions. Please dont turn this into a flame war

The thing I hate the most about them: the time it can take to form them if your server population is currently low. And I hate the resulting sense of "better do it now while others are forming" pressure this also creates, even when I'm not in the mood for iTrials.

It's been a part of my love-hate relationship with all team required content and even at times teaming with friends who enjoy RPing. Sometimes I'm just in the mood to log in and be asocial. These pressures to team while the getting is good can run counter to those impulses. And I don't in any way blame the Devs for this. It's just one aspect of my fickle vascillating self.

I hate the warehouse map in Lambda. I do fine has long as I look at the floor and move around. Probably need to get a new computer. But idk. hardly lag on hami raids.

There have been numerous times where I would fight like my life depends on it, granted I am participating on everything possible and not just sitting there like I’ve seen some people do and all I get for my hard work is a fricken common incarnate salvage. I had one person that didn’t do much work at all and got a VR, so I really think your reward is based on your participation is just bull crap.

Incarnate Trial rewards needs to be looked at because there is something really wrong, how can you reward someone who actively participates in the trial and give them in a sense a lump of coal (common) and then turn around and give someone who doesn’t do crap a VR.

This my friends is the one thing I hate the most about these incarnate trials.

I hate that they make so many concessions to custom team building that the potential convenience of the LFG system is rendered moot. They could have just *not* implemented the LFG system and put an iTrial contact in the game world (or even just the contact list of level 50s) instead.

I don't want to say I "hate" anything, but I strongly disagree with some of the design choices. To name a few...

1. Untyped damage is used too heavily. We have toxic and psi damage for a reason- Most people don't resist them well. Incarnate enemies already have massive tohit and the AV's resist debuffs, so I hardly think most peoples defenses would cover it all the time.

2. Mez that Clarion at t4 doesn't fix. The gimicky holds in Underground come to mind- I got this tier 4 Incarnate power so that I have it when I do Incarnate trials. It would only seem logical to me that it would, well... Work.

3. The Lambda badges. Yeah, the Keyes badges are harder, but I think they're also one of the best incentives to run the trial. I like Keyes. The Devs like Keyes. The Devs want you to like Keyes, and they want you to play Keyes. Fine, I get that, and I understand the MoM nightmare badge for the same reason... But there is absolutely no reason to have MoLambda take three runs other than to grief people who want the badges. The trial gets run to death, the extra incentive is hardly necessary.

Overall though, these are just pet peeves. I really like all the trials, I like running the newer ones especially because I'm bored of BAF and Lambda, and TPN and MoM are a couple of the most fun things in the game for me.

And a quick side rant:

I think the Devs made a mistake in releasing MoM, UG, and TPN when they did. If these trials were the only ones that provided *non-purchasable* Incarnate XP for new slots, I guarantee that they would get run just as much if not more than BAF or Lambda.

As it stands now, the I Trials serve as Empyrean merit farms for most people- We already have every single power available and stockpiled goodies. The new alpha/interface/judgement powers were a nice addition but it really just encouraged more BAF/LAM/BAF/LAM! The only incentive for playing the newer trials is that you like them or you're saving Emps up for a PVP IO (or the previously mentioned badging.) For people like me, who happen to like the trials themselves, it's kinda crappy.

The thing I HATE about iTrials the most:

There is guaranteed to always be ONE person that fell asleep at the keyboard and we all have to wait until they wake up and click the green button...

I'm just not happy with my luck on the RNG for Salvage rewards or threads. Some of my characters take weeks of daily runs to upgrade from constaint comman and uncomman drops, breaking down merits is also one of the only ways they seem to get anywhere.. While I see other people constaintly geting so many VR they have to break them down to get rolling.

I've also yet to get anything above a Comman on TPN,MoM, Or Keys since they were added with supposed higher droprates for R/VR.

In general, I love the incarnate trials. The Praetorian storyline fascinated me from the beginning and seeing it continued is great. But, there is one thing about the incarnate trials I really hate:

A single person can quickly cause the league to fail the trial - often instantly. For example:

TPN - use judgement on civilians = instant fail.
Lambda - dance in the cutscene then aggro Marauder and run out of the courtyard = instant fail
BAF - get 3 circles while the league is together. Every league member held = instant fail
UG - Judgement or Destiny powers on the Avatar while confused. Also, incandescence on the league during an ambush can cause Desdemona's death = instant fail
Keyes - Kill anti-matter before the end of the trial = instant fail. This usually only happens when people are trying for the Anti Anti-Matter badge.
MoM - Use knockback powers or aoe mez powers during phase 2 or phase 4. Not an instant fail, but a likely one



I run the incarnate trials almost every day because they are a nice source of the rewards that I want. However, I have seen each of these trials fail due to the actions of a single person. Sometimes it isn't intentional and the person really didn't know that their actions would do that. Still, its a big annoyance to everyone on the league feeling that they just wasted 30-60 minutes. I really wish that the trial design would prevent that kind of failure from happening.

1. The dysfunctional LFG tool, especially now that it's being used for other things, DfB and events. People dropping DfB if AVs won't spawn. Oh noes! My XP/sec is going down .1! Better make the LFG useless to everyone else to make sure that doesn't happen to me!

2. Slideshowriffic. Before the cutscene skip if everyone had seen it it wasn't until my third BAF I knew there was a cutscene. Going from TFs and world events Destiny, Judgement, and Lore can't have made things any better with the frames-per-minute issue.

3. Raiders and the "great" community they bring with them. I got into CoH to get away from them in that other game. Now that game is the pug friendly one and this one is getting the Mos Eisely vibe.

4. Lost in a sea of supers. I'm the 10th one from the right on the third row.

5. You gotta be super to beat up pedestrians. You go from smashing every AV in existence at once, solo, to smashing warwalkers in small groups to getting taken out by pebbles.

My only problem is the players.

There's always ONE person in every PuG league who, despite having all the instructions laid out in plain English, goes and seems to either forget everything, or purposefully does NOT follow instructions:

Biggest example? On a Keyes, we were going for "Avoids The Green Stuff". So what happened? First time an Obliteration Beam Reticle appears, everyone scatters...except one person who runs past us and head-long INTO the reticle.

Threads about hatin' iTrials.