I cannot lie. The last 3 or 4 trials have me now playing once or twice a week just to market. And kill 3 or 4 paladins on my MM at 5 am when i get up early before my kids and wife.
I agree sir. And i will love to see this thread live but alas it will die cause its a rant. And i know a couple things about rants.
But yes I would like to see some of the AE stuff go to live as some of AE(not the farms or broken crap) is Full of win cupcakes and grapefruit in season. And the stuff we were force fed is done by people that are not even into this game dont play, dont like comics, super heroes, or the genre.
If we had more "guest writers" write this stuff it would help
I am sorry if you life this stuff atm but I woulf rather farm demons, or freaks then run these boring nonsence, badge killing, wastes of my time.
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Yeah, the "suddenly, Incarnates!" bug is the best part of TPN.|
Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion
But enough critique, let's get to the issue. The trial was apparently programmed extremely poorly and not debugged. The thing kicks people regular and then you cannot log back in with the same character. Then when you do log in and try to join the trial you get to be in random person X's mission.
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The server getting really confused about which instance you ought to be joining isn't a new bug to TPN, but it does seem to manifest much more regularly with TPN than anything else.
@Mindshadow
The BUG is annoying and the trial is basically a repeat, repeat, repeat until done. Think of it as the BAF of the newer trials .. when the bug doesn't toss you out this is a gaurenteed 60 + thread, 2 Emps, X number of Astrals and whatever salvage you are awarded. It's easy to complete and complete quickly and unlike Mom or the UG doesn't require the league leader to do a Destiny check to ensure enough Clarions, Barriers or whatever are available.
Supposedly there are ways to avoid the bug .. I have a couple different league leaders I team with and depending on which you talk to there are different ways to avoid the mass map serve. One just keeps telling us all not to JUMP... Not sure exactly what that even means since I use Ninja run between buldings and frequently leap over obstacles to get to the next door. The other CLAIMS we all need to dismiss pets prior to the second Public Opinion Victory and respawn them once we attack Maelstrom for the final battle.. NO idea if that works or not since I don't even bother to rez my pets during the trial. Whatever .. for some reason BOTH leaders have a very good track record for not triggering the bug and for completing the trial.
Personally I agree .. MOM is a much more interesting trial. I love battling the nightmares in phase one and avoiding the pink clouds of death. The battle with Mother Penny is by far the most challenging phase of the trial and the final battles with Mother Malaise/Tillman are fun. If there is anything I'd criticize it's the cut scene...
1. We discover that Clavin Scott apparently is extremely crosseyed. LOL
2. We discover that apparently Paragon Studios Quality Control took a LONG vacation during the final stages of this scene since NOONE ever seems to be looking in the right direction except Penelope Yin.. and she is the only one with no lines!
and 3. After almost 30 levels, including First Ward, we discover that Calvin has based his entire resistance movement of a false memory. Sorry there big guy but the reality is you were never married to Aurora and you have been attacking and blowing stuff up for years based on that false impression!
Note to Emperor Cole from Scott
Dear Marcus,
Sorry about the devastation, the kidnappings, killings and such. Seems like my marriage never really happened. BTW.. know any cute girls interested in a relationship with a half crazed rebel leader? Tell them I am willing to blow stuff up to impress them.
Calvin
hehehehe Hopefully they fix the bug so it doesn't occur (SOON PLEASE).
�We�re always the good guys. In D&D, we�re lawful good. In City of Heroes we�re the heroes. In Grand Theft Auto we pay the prostitutes promptly and never hit them with a bat.� � Leonard
�Those women are prostitutes? You said they were raising money for stem cell research!� � Sheldon
If you don't like the raids, the best thing you can do is provide feedback in the beta testing threads. Once things are implemented in this game, it is much harder to generate the momentum to get them changed.
There are no words for what this community, and the friends I have made here mean to me. Please know that I care for all of you, yes, even you. If you Twitter, I'm MrThan. If you're Unleashed, I'm dumps. I'll try and get registered on the Titan Forums as well. Peace, and thanks for the best nine years anyone could ever ask for.
That is a good suggestion Dumbleberry. Unfortunately due to my style of play (character development) I tend to be short on cash despite huge amounts of playing. Playing on Beta would only exacerbate this problem, by eating up weeks/months a year playtesting. And you get nothing back. Take a look at Arcana. I mean, wow, completely reworked the way top players look at the entire game. Nothing. There are not even nominal rewards for doing this huge amount of work. *off soapbox.
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But... But... we're heroes! Doing good is it's own reward.|
Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion
That is a good suggestion Dumbleberry. Unfortunately due to my style of play (character development) I tend to be short on cash despite huge amounts of playing. Playing on Beta would only exacerbate this problem, by eating up weeks/months a year playtesting. And you get nothing back. Take a look at Arcana. I mean, wow, completely reworked the way top players look at the entire game. Nothing. There are not even nominal rewards for doing this huge amount of work. *off soapbox.
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to OP: yeah... TPN feels like a bizzarre grind. I've done it once. And like a lot of trials... I'm really not sure what I was doing or if it helped or not. I'm not sure there is a solution to the problem that as a member of a 20 person team, it's pretty easy to completely miss the plotline and strategy of a trial without jepordizing the success of the trial. I find with a lot of the shorter TF's and trials, the real fun comes after doing them enough time that you're looking for strategies and techniques to complete them most efficiently and quickly. This is something that takes running them repeatedly until enough people "get it" and know what to do without lengthy instructions. Thus learning the plot and strategy generally come from finishing the trial 5-10 times... not 1-2 times.
Maybe that's not the kind of game you (we) want to play, but it does seem to be the kind of game we are playing.
I gotta make pain. I gotta make things right. I gotta stop what's comin'. 'Least I gotta try.
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I think most of us have felt this way the first time we entered a new iTrial. And the second time, and the third time... This was especially true for me during my first few Lambda runs because by the time I was iLeveling my main, everyone on Virtue had done it so many times they were resorting to Speed Lambdas just to make it worth their while. To say I was completely lost as to where I was supposed to go and what I was supposed to do, particularly during the "sabotage" phase, is an understatement.|
Originally Posted by Shred_Monkey
And like a lot of trials... I'm really not sure what I was doing or if it helped or not.
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Now, the way I see it, either the iTrials were purposely designed to be cryptic puzzles with no clear rationale, or they ended up that way by accident. This is a failure state either way, as far as I'm concerned. Just like all the rest of the mission content in the game, it should be obvious and clear exactly what needs to be done, with reasonable opportunities to develop a coherent plan of action right from the very first time you do it. BAF is, more or less, designed that way except for the sequestering gimmick, but it stands alone in this respect, I feel.
Most missions in the game are do-once-and-move-on, and so they pretty much have to be designed so the average player of the appropriate level can succeed without having done that specific mission before. I don't feel that the iTrials should be an exception to that design philosophy merely because they are billed as the most "challenging" end-game content available.
NOR-RAD - 50 Rad/Rad/Elec Defender - Nikki Stryker - 50 DM/SR/Weap Scrapper - Iron Marauder - 50 Eng/Eng/Pow Blaster
Lion of Might - 50 SS/Inv/Eng Tanker - Darling Nikkee - 50 (+3) StJ/WP/Eng Brute - Ice Giant Kurg - 36 Ice/Storm Controller
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After my rant I been trying to let other peeps speak as much as possible. Here I am failing as usual at that lol. But I wanted to be clear. I like the complicated variations in things like Keyes (which I have not really run many times or learned), the MoM (straightforward yet challenging) and Lambda (a real test of teamwork in the sabotage phase, although in truth I can solo that on a tough toon for acids at least). But the TPN has 2 major problems. It is boringly repetitive right from the 1st run. About the 15th time I went back into one of the building I was like "Really? This is what we get?" The whole thing is just mind numbingly bad. The technical problems are really frosting on an crap-cake.
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Originally Posted by Wing_Leader
Most missions in the game are do-once-and-move-on, and so they pretty much have to be designed so the average player of the appropriate level can succeed without having done that specific mission before. I don't feel that the iTrials should be an exception to that design philosophy merely because they are billed as the most "challenging" end-game content available.
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A few days ago, a league I was on got kicked from TPN. When we could finally log back in, a bunch of us had lost the 60 thread reward from defeating Maelstrom part way through -- there seemed to have been some kind of short character roll-back, as the 60 thread drop was about 8 min before the kick. No dice from CS about getting the threads restored to teh character, so I'm leaving TPN well alone until I'm sure the bug is fixed. Having to restart is one thing, potentially losing rewards already gained is quite another.
Arc#314490: Zombie Ninja Pirates!
Defiant @Grouchybeast
Death is part of my attack chain.
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I guess this is another reason I don't run TPN, or, maybe my dislike of it is flavored by the fact that experience tells me not to run it. I'm just going to say that when you encounter something with a crash error so severe that it requires a rollback of the instance data, stay the **** away from it. "Rollback" is not a word that you want to be using when describing data in a production environment, certainly not repeatedly, and definitely not when it involves your data.
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Originally Posted by Grouchybeast
A few days ago, a league I was on got kicked from TPN. When we could finally log back in, a bunch of us had lost the 60 thread reward from defeating Maelstrom part way through -- there seemed to have been some kind of short character roll-back, as the 60 thread drop was about 8 min before the kick. No dice from CS about getting the threads restored to teh character, so I'm leaving TPN well alone until I'm sure the bug is fixed. Having to restart is one thing, potentially losing rewards already gained is quite another.
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@Mindshadow
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Everyone has their favorite and least favorite trials. For every person who hates TPN and regards it as a tedious bore, there is probably someone who loves it. Opinions are so divided on the storytelling and the task structure of these trials, that it is hard even for me to ferret out any sort of consensus on such matters. But whatever else one might say about any given trial, there is one weakness I feel they all share, and that is that they are constructed and presented in such a way that it is nearly impossible for a league to succeed the first time through. And sometimes not even the second or third time through.|
Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion
The whole thing is just mind numbingly bad. The technical problems are really frosting on an crap-cake.
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It is one thing for a group of players to be presented with problems/objectives and obstacles to solving/achieving them, to come up with a plan of action, and then fail for lack of good execution (or lack of good tactical improvisation when surprises come along). It is another thing entirely for the "challenge" to come in the form of a mission for which the objectives are cryptic, illogical, or given in the wrong order (e.g., the purpose of molecular acid isn't made clear until after you complete the phase in which you obtain them), or in the form of gimmicks that no league could reasonably prepare for or compensate for because of overwhelming (often autohit and/or irresistable) damage or lack of time. It is my feeling that any mission/trial that has a first-time success rate as abyssmally low as the iTrials is poorly conceived/designed, as a matter of axiomatic truthiness.
NOR-RAD - 50 Rad/Rad/Elec Defender - Nikki Stryker - 50 DM/SR/Weap Scrapper - Iron Marauder - 50 Eng/Eng/Pow Blaster
Lion of Might - 50 SS/Inv/Eng Tanker - Darling Nikkee - 50 (+3) StJ/WP/Eng Brute - Ice Giant Kurg - 36 Ice/Storm Controller
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Well said.|
Originally Posted by Wing_Leader
Everyone has their favorite and least favorite trials. For every person who hates TPN and regards it as a tedious bore, there is probably someone who loves it. Opinions are so divided on the storytelling and the task structure of these trials, that it is hard even for me to ferret out any sort of consensus on such matters.
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| But whatever else one might say about any given trial, there is one weakness I feel they all share, and that is that they are constructed and presented in such a way that it is nearly impossible for a league to succeed the first time through. And sometimes not even the second or third time through. |
On the last 2 posts you both have good points. It should not be a guaranteed win. However, in pointing out the writing flaws many good points were made. The trials can only be "won" if you have a significant % of the crew who have run them multiple times before. This is true with the "Cathedral of Pain" and a number of other big events in the game. That is just poor writing, and there is little excuse for it. Instead of 15 minutes of Mother Mayhem blabbing about how much "Mother's children...." Yeah whatever. Less content, more pictures of objectives and explanations of what you do. Otherwise team leaders are SCREAMING in team chat during combat "Dont kill cameras" or "Dont Fly" I still have little idea what is going on in the Keyes Trial, and i've run it 4-6 times. I kill stuff and pray I dont get a temp power, I have no idea what to do with them. I am still completely unsure why I'm floating but know it's bad, and "disintegrating" cannot be good. Pink spots kill you, so thats a fast curve, but a heads up would have been nice. I'm back on trials after a very long break. I nearly rage quit over the horrid infamy sink my VRs were on my first trial character. I'm still irritated about that. I am trying to enjoy the content, but I am noticing one thing for sure. Big leagues are not good for the City. I can jump on my favorite channel and have 4+ members ready to do anything in a few minutes. 8-12 want in if its at all interesting. 16-24? You pull a PUG. PUGs and complicated stuff, wow, what an incredible idea. Lets take the most complicated stuff in the game and make sure that you have to do it with a bunch of random people, even if you've played the game for a very long time and are way dialed in. That only increases the coolierest factor, right? Hmmm.... Do any of the people sitting at the design table actually play this game?
I'm not sure what bizarro world you people are living in, TPN is one of my favorite trials, and it's pretty easy so I'm not sure why it doesn't get run as often as BAF at this point. Compared to Minds of Mayhem, which is unpleasantness wrapped in misery which I'm pretty sure I've never even successfully completed. I can't imagine preferring that suckfest to TPN.
"You don't lose levels. You don't have equipment to wear out, repair, or lose, or that anyone can steal from you. About the only thing lighter than debt they could do is have an NPC walk by, point and laugh before you can go to the hospital or base." -Memphis_Bill
We will honor the past, and fight to the last, it will be a good way to die...
I do not mind difficult. it should be difficult. I mind poor witing. TPN is easy because you just grind the same thing in different spots forever. It is dumb writing in the extreme. And poor programming as well it seems.
The Minds of Mayhem is indeed difficult. I only know what I am doing there because of a very good instruction from someone. In game. The Trial itself offers nothing of value in determining what you should do. That is the problem. You cannot write content and expect people to know what to attempt to do. That is sloppy and unforgivable from a content provider. Shame. Shame.
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I had a league where TPN crashed a few days ago, didn't get to keep the 60 thread reward because of short rollback from the crash. But I sent in a petition and support restored the threads I lost (63 apparently, the bonus and a few extras from mobs? Not sure how they can tell that I lost those too). All I sent was a short message, the title said I was involved in a TPN trial crash and had a mini rollback, text of the message said I didn't even get to keep the 60 thread mid trial completion reward.|
Originally Posted by Grouchybeast
A few days ago, a league I was on got kicked from TPN. When we could finally log back in, a bunch of us had lost the 60 thread reward from defeating Maelstrom part way through -- there seemed to have been some kind of short character roll-back, as the 60 thread drop was about 8 min before the kick. No dice from CS about getting the threads restored to teh character, so I'm leaving TPN well alone until I'm sure the bug is fixed. Having to restart is one thing, potentially losing rewards already gained is quite another.
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The most it'll rollback is to before you started the trial, I think. These mini rollbacks happen because your character data wasn't saved before the crash happened. The game doesn't update your stored character data all the time, I think only at set intervals and/or whenever you change (or attempt to change) instances. I remember a while back there would be some times where the servers would be unstable, and you could avoid rollbacks going too far by clicking on building doors. Clicking on a door was enough to get the server to save your current info.
Culex's resistance guide
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While TPN does have it's flaws (for me that's really just the repetitiveness of going in and out of buildings again and again doing the same thing over and over), it's my favorite trial as well. It's quick and to the point, it's very simple and currently offers the best time:reward ratio of any trial on live but also has a well balanced difficulty. If people aren't putting in the effort, goofing around, not paying attention, or the league has poor synergy or low level shifts, then things will go south, but that's how it should be.|
Originally Posted by DarkGob
I'm not sure what bizarro world you people are living in, TPN is one of my favorite trials, and it's pretty easy so I'm not sure why it doesn't get run as often as BAF at this point. Compared to Minds of Mayhem, which is unpleasantness wrapped in misery which I'm pretty sure I've never even successfully completed. I can't imagine preferring that suckfest to TPN.
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Overall I love TPN, it rewards people for working together as an efficient cohesive group.
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Did I miss the question?? I mean this is the PLAYER QUESTIONS section of the forums... just saying.
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Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion
So.... I have done TPN 2 times so far. Well, really once. The second time I was booted spectacularly. First, I would just like to say, it seems to be written by someone with absolutely zero creativity. How this horrid piece of drech was chosen to be glorified as an incarnate trial is beyond me. I guess it should give hope to all poor writers everywhere. Yes, if you have your characters kill the bad guy, run here, run there, run over there, kill the bad guy again, then repeat a few dozen times it could be picked to be the major part of a game! I know there are counters and goals involved. But step back and look at the big picture. The bulk of the work is just drech. Compare this to the MoM. Wow, beautiful. The MoM is like what Salvador Dali would have wrote if he was interested in video game missions. But enough critique, let's get to the issue. The trial was apparently programmed extremely poorly and not debugged. The thing kicks people regular and then you cannot log back in with the same character. Then when you do log in and try to join the trial you get to be in random person X's mission. So, the TPN. Epic fail from conception to delivery. Outstanding.
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Originally Posted by Paladiamors
I love you, I Burnt the Toast!
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When you run new characters through the 1-50 content, what do you estimate your chances of success are on any given mission? When was the last time you actually failed a regular mission? When you did the new Positron TF for the first time, what were the odds of success in your mind going in?|
Originally Posted by DreadShinobi
Walking into something under the premise that you should automatically win is not so good.
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After 50 levels of content, including TFs, players rightfully believe that they have the tools to enter a trial and insure decent odds of success. Not automatic 100% odds of success. But something reasonably good; something perhaps close to 50%, with odds improving the better their plan and its execution. And yet, what is the first-time success rate is for the iTrials? Low single-digit percentage, at best?
Why is that rate so low? The reason, I feel, has nothing to do with player incompetence or unrealistic player expectations, and everything to do with scenarios that deny any reasonable chance of success by deliberate design. The trials don't just throw challenging problems at you, they make too many of the success vectors reveal themselves only as a consequence of failure. And that is what I categorically dislike about them.
NOR-RAD - 50 Rad/Rad/Elec Defender - Nikki Stryker - 50 DM/SR/Weap Scrapper - Iron Marauder - 50 Eng/Eng/Pow Blaster
Lion of Might - 50 SS/Inv/Eng Tanker - Darling Nikkee - 50 (+3) StJ/WP/Eng Brute - Ice Giant Kurg - 36 Ice/Storm Controller
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Missions =/= Task Forces =/= Trials. |
Originally Posted by Wing_Leader
When you run new characters through the 1-50 content, what do you estimate your chances of success are on any given mission? When was the last time you actually failed a regular mission? When you did the new Positron TF for the first time, what were the odds of success in your mind going in?
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Trials are timed and therefore can be failed. Normal missions and Task Forces (other than specific exceptions) are not timed and therefore cannot be failed. Your comparison doesn't work.
By paragonwiki's definition: "A Trial is a type of mission arc that is similar to a Task Force/Strike Force but with fewer missions. Trials contain unusual encounters with enemies that require a high level of cooperation between team members to conquer. Special rewards are given at the end of trials, such as respecifications or enhancements that affect multiple attributes. Most contain a timed finale mission."
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| After 50 levels of content, including TFs, players rightfully believe that they have the tools to enter a trial and insure decent odds of success. Not automatic 100% odds of success. But something reasonably good; something perhaps close to 50%, with odds improving the better their plan and its execution. And yet, what is the first-time success rate is for the iTrials? Low single-digit percentage, at best? |
And none of the above changes the face that if you go into something not knowing what to do or having never run it before, your chances of success will be lower. There is nothing wrong with this.
First time success rate highly depends on how well a player can adapt to new situations, how self directed a player can be in figuring things out, and how good the leadership in the trial is. That said, for first runs low single digit percent success rate is a gross exaggeration.
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| Why is that rate so low? The reason, I feel, has nothing to do with player incompetence or unrealistic player expectations, and everything to do with scenarios that deny any reasonable chance of success by deliberate design. The trials don't just throw challenging problems at you, they make too many of the success vectors reveal themselves only as a consequence of failure. And that is what I categorically dislike about them. |
It's not as bad as you make it out to be.
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For me, it doesn't have to do with the ease or difficulty of the trial. I never "expect" to win any trial I walk into. The problem with the TPN trial for me is the terrible writing and supposed story to go with it. There's nothing interesting there for me. Maybe there is a decent story waiting to be told under the piles of repetitiveness, one-shot-Maelstrom kills, and endless "who is H.D., where is he, and why do I care if he lives" questions. There's just nothing interesting there to grab my attention.|
Originally Posted by DarkGob
I'm not sure what bizarro world you people are living in, TPN is one of my favorite trials, and it's pretty easy so I'm not sure why it doesn't get run as often as BAF at this point. Compared to Minds of Mayhem, which is unpleasantness wrapped in misery which I'm pretty sure I've never even successfully completed. I can't imagine preferring that suckfest to TPN.
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I've gone into each iTrial with an open mind looking at the story being told and why I'm there doing what I'm doing. When the game mechanics are so bad to me that I lose sight of the story instantly and focus more on the grind in front me, that to me is a problem with the writing and presentation. Yes, I will stand here and say that I prefer the Minds of Mayhem trial over TPN. It has an interesting story, difficult or not. I never failed a TPN trial, but I have failed MoM trials. But, for me, the MoM trial doesn't have crap game functionality in front of me drawing my attention away from the story being told, and I can enjoy it much more.
I've run the TPN trial exactly 3 times, got all the badges associated with that trial, and never ever plan on setting foot in it again.
Main Character: Ice/Storm/Ice Controller (Justice, 1340 badges)
Hmmm.
I have done a LOT of trials, and here's my Distilled Thoughts.
I've run the TPN maybe...20 times? Never had an issue with it.
HD is basically Max Headroom for Praetoria. He's important because he's willing to defy Tyrant's iron grip and show people the truth. (if you have layed Praetoria and know the Canon, this is a Big Freakin' Deal.) So you have to keep him alive when his station gets jacked, and not wreck his stuff, so he likes you, and more importantly, he shows you to the public in a good light. The Primals aren't really baby-eating monsters? Who knew! 
All the 'pointless running around' is keeping HD alive and then getting the story out. Very heroic 'new-age' storytelling. The Media Is Important! (feh)
I'm not a fan of the mechanics, but I totally understand the story that drives those mechanics. I think they could have made it more linear, a running battle all the way across the Praetorian zone, with Maelstrom harrying your group the whole way, and it would work much better. But that's just me. (OMG, put the whole thing on the rooftops, how freakin'epic would that have been?)
Mythology drives story. Story drives content. Content makes money. 
Of all the trials, and I've done all the live ones many times, my absolute favorite, by a WIDE margin, is the Underground. I love the 'dungeon crawl' aspect, I love the palpable way the scenery changes as you drive deeper in the Hamidon's SERIOUSLY alien realm, I love the mechanism of escorting and protecting Desdemona because it makes sense, I love the creepy bad guys and how they change as you get deeper and deeper, it's just a fantastically well written story wrapped up in a tremendous set of interesting and challenging mechanics.
After the stupendous, knockout, good UG trial, I like the BAF next. Yes, it's been done to pieces, but the mechanics are neat, it's simple, the story flows smoothly...and the camel-toe jokes never get old for me.
The Lambda is my next favorite, close on the heels of the BAF, due to the awesome and well-supported by story mechanics of that last fight with Marauder. Love it, Love it, Love it, love how he leaps around, preventing it from being a tank-n-spank. Also, the last line he mutters is simply the cherry on top.
The MoM is very interesting, but I can't enjoy it too much because I have a personal bugaboo about cheater mechanics and that's got just a little too much of that crap for me. (Unresistable and psionic my rosy-red backside....) But it's all story supported, and the story progression is freakin' awesome. The best single part of that whole trial is Metronome. What a FANTASTIC character. I sincerely hope the 'Two Penelope's' and the their incorporeal boy-toys get a lot of attention, because that is some seriously mythic stuff right there.
Remember, Myth->Story->content->money.
I like the TPN less than MoM, see my thoughts above about it.
Dragging along at the back of the pack is the Keyes, and it's a shame. I love Dr. Keye's rant and the story behind it all, omg that boy has some ISSUES, but mechanically, the trial itself is just a freakin' trainwreck. Lowering the utterly brutal zone-wide punishment helps a lot, but it's still just way too chaotic for me to enjoy it at all. The extensive use of cheaters also gripes me silly, but ehn, so it goes.
So, to sum up:
Run BAF/Lam/UG for your main trialing enjoyment, toss in a MoM if you can handle all the psionic and unresistable crap you get spammed with.
Do the TPN if farming is your thing and story bores you, and avoid the damn Keyes like the plague.
Simple!
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I think it has to do with player laziness --- or a players lack of available time. And this insane business model that requires the customer to test the product before it goes live. |
Originally Posted by Wing_Leader
Why is that rate so low? The reason, I feel, has nothing to do with player incompetence or unrealistic player expectations, and everything to do with scenarios that deny any reasonable chance of success by deliberate design. The trials don't just throw challenging problems at you, they make too many of the success vectors reveal themselves only as a consequence of failure. And that is what I categorically dislike about them.
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TPN was on beta before it went live. So was MoM, and every other incarnate trial. If you are VIP, then you have access to the Beta server and could tell the devs before it went live that it was lousy. Believe me - I am not standing on some pedestal. I'm kicking myself for not using the Beta server when I had the chance. There are several problems with TPN, and to a lesser degree, MoM and UGT. (They are my own issues with the trial, not including the kick bug of tpn)
TPN has been out for some time now. It is incumbent upon every player to not only experience the content before it goes live, but to read the guides on the trial before you go. Why? Because the trials are not straightforward. They have mechanics that we haven't seen in game before. There is no way to know to pull voids to Penelope Yin unless someone tells you. (If there is, it's so vague or nebulous, I've never seen it)
I mean this half sincerely, and half sarcastically, mind you. If you've done any kind of a search on TPN, you'd have read how some folks get kicked out for some unknown reason. You already know it's a snooze fest from the player commentary. I applaud the OP and everyone else for giving it a try or three.
Myself, I don't enjoy it much. I'll do the trial with some friends if they want, but left alone, I'd rather do MoM or UGT. Those trials may require a good bit of instruction until the players get the gist of it, but once they do, they are simple and fun.
So, put my vote on TPN needs some revision.
"Most people that have no idea what they are doing have no idea that they don't know what they are doing." - John Cleese
@Ukase
Let's be honest here.
All the Incarnate trials are grinds in one way or another. We are basically forced into doing them over and over (and over and over and over) ad infinitum if we want to power up our Incarnate abilities. It's not only repetitious, it makes no sense from a story point of view that the exact same thing should happen over and over again (but then, being able to repeat any Task Force, etc. makes just as little sense, when you get right down to it).
Singling one or more of these out as somehow being "more grindy" than the others seems a bit like straining at gnats while swallowing camels.
So.... I have done TPN 2 times so far. Well, really once. The second time I was booted spectacularly. First, I would just like to say, it seems to be written by someone with absolutely zero creativity. How this horrid piece of drech was chosen to be glorified as an incarnate trial is beyond me. I guess it should give hope to all poor writers everywhere. Yes, if you have your characters kill the bad guy, run here, run there, run over there, kill the bad guy again, then repeat a few dozen times it could be picked to be the major part of a game! I know there are counters and goals involved. But step back and look at the big picture. The bulk of the work is just drech. Compare this to the MoM. Wow, beautiful. The MoM is like what Salvador Dali would have wrote if he was interested in video game missions. But enough critique, let's get to the issue. The trial was apparently programmed extremely poorly and not debugged. The thing kicks people regular and then you cannot log back in with the same character. Then when you do log in and try to join the trial you get to be in random person X's mission. So, the TPN. Epic fail from conception to delivery. Outstanding.