The Myth of "Hard" raids.

If you want my expert opinion, the trial difficulty goes in this order:

Easy: Standard BAF, Standard LAM, Standard Keyes.
Medium: TPN, MoBAF,
Hard: MoM (both standard and master runs), MoLAM, MoTPN.
Hardest: UG (both standard and master runs), MoKeyes (if successful).


A player can do the easy and medium content with no shifts and have little problem. From there, you start to need things. As for the rankings, let me explain things in reverse on the list...

The reason why I have the UG listed as hardest is because that is one of the few trials where you can fail despite everyone doing things right. There is no immunity to the gimmicks, only actions you can take to lessen the blow. Should team makeup be particularly unfavorable, the war walkers targeting attacks can put and end to the team simply because there is no one there who is capable of standing up to it. At the end, the Avatar is still a very hard boss, even with clarions. Combine that sometimes crap happens, and Desdemona will draw aggro and get killed due to umpteen reasons. Now that people are getting the hang of MoM, the UG takes the throne as the king of difficulty.

The MoKeyes is more speculation than anything else, since I have yet to actually attempt a run. However, the badges are all incredibly difficult, and two of them are geared toward making the trial more difficult. I do not have the scale of pulse damage memorized, but getting Antimatter under 10% health at a reactor seems like it could lead to team wipes and stalling very easily. Not destroying terminals means the team's offensive output needs to be outstanding, and healing capabilities profound to avoid anyone being disintegrated. If you can't avoid being DIS at the end, going for the MO would spell defeat for the team.

MoM's is a "perfect storm" for difficulty. Heavily focused on psionic damage means that players take a ton of damage, the purple patch ensures that damage output is hindered and defenses shredded, and each AV has gimmicks that can wipe the team. The inability to use the hospital means that mistakes compound quickly, and player losses quickly culminate into a slippery slope of destruction. However, by following precise instructions and knowing the tactics, a PUG of 51+ can complete the trial. Thankfully the trial is designed to let players give instruction.

MoLAM is rarely attempted, but it is essentially running a LAM under all the conditions that would normally lead to failure. To get the badges, you have to do specific things that end up making it so you can't use either pacification grenades nor the molecular acids, causing adds to build up quickly against an unstoppable wall of an opponent. Without good coordination and well constructed team, a league will be overwhelmed by the sheer numbers and raw power of the IDF.

MoTPN is also rarely attempted, but the rise in difficulty ascends this trial into hard territory. The reason why "all inside" runs seem to work so well is that it is idiot tolerant; with 24 players running about doing terminals, there's a good chance that some of them know what to do. To do MoTPN, you need to split the team 3-ways at one point, thinning the numbers. Though this is more effective, it requires upmost coordination and also requires that all people know what exactly what they are doing. This turns the trial from idiot tolerant to idiot prone; those guys who never bothered to pay attention escalate from a miner nuisance to a serious threat.

Swimming a hundred meters is challenging-for a 5-yr old. I don't think most adults would say that swimming 100 meters is particularly challenging, however.

The trials are like that. GG is wrong.

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."

Anyone pulling Marauder out the door behind him is griefing the trial and should be dealt with appropriately. It's still two different events:
1: photo-bombing Maurader
2: pulling him out of lambda

1 does not mean 2 will happen. As stated, I've never seen a trial fail because of it, but I've also never done it because I find it stupid.

Failing Lambda because of cutscene bombing is mostly down to players not knowing the risk, rather than griefing.

I had someone once deliberately taunt Marauder through the gate because the trial wasn't going well. We only had two or three minutes left on the clock and probably would have failed anyway, but it was still kind of annoying. Much like failing TPN due to someone killing citizens or failing UG because UG has abysmal mechanics, much about winning the trials involves making sure no single individual undoes what 23 others are doing. That doesn't make the trials "hard" but it does, IMO, make them unideal for how they are being used. The fact that people rarely intentionally (or accidentally--the trials have no qualms about making sure your uninformed mistakes bring the rest of your league down with you) invoke these mechanics doesn't really address the fact that they are, for whatever reason, there.

The Confuse the UG boss uses is especially irritating, for a different reason. Leagues who prepare for it will never actually face it, so the question becomes why even have it, except to make us spend time standing outside the trial preparing for it? The end result of several of these kinds of mechanics, along with the rezz penalty in MOM, is that the best leagues sail through without even seeing what these trials can dish out, and the worst ones are Nintendo-hard meatgrinder screaming-match death trains that serve mainly to reinforce why you should stack the deck before starting instead of using the LFG queue all of this was supposed to be built to support.