Downside to DoubleXP

Yeah, that's what is the most frustrating - people not listening.

I encountered a whole lot more incompetence through DXP weekend than just on trials. Trials are where it sticks out the most, though, since this is where things get complicated and one idiot can ruin it for everyone. Now, as far as I can diagnose, this is the problem:


#1: People used DXP to get AT's they've never played up to 50 as quickly as possible. This is a horrible idea, since it means you have the levels while having no clue as to how to actually play the AT. An example of this is an ITF I hosted with my +3 Ice/Storm Troller. I did it for charity, but now I regret it. On that team there were 2 other trollers and a dominator, and yet the enemy spawns were rarely mezzed outside of my direct action. Maybe no one told these 3 players that AoE immobilizes are good on Cimerorans, or that the AoE Hold/Stun is a power you should take as soon as you can. As a sadistic experiment, I ran off on my own to fight groups where no one would follow me, and I could kill them off at the same rate the rest of my team was! It was one of the slowest non-walled-by-AV ITF runs I had ever done, taking nearly three hours.

#2: People leveled up too quickly to properly enhance. I, myself, spent around 4 hours just building the sets for the toons that I leveled up. It takes forever, I know, but I did not suffer from performance lag while playing through DXP. Other players... not so much. I saw many people surpass their SO threshold and suddenly act as if they weren't enhanced, and then never stop to get more enhancements in the middle of a TF/SF. When that happened to 2 toons I was with on a Reunault SF, our team performance plummeted.

#3: A ton of new players/players from several years ago were going to the game to take advantage of the DXP weekend. This may be good for profit, but it is also one hell of a n00b rush for experienced players who were used to such novel concepts as following directions or researching things before hand before rushing headlong into a trial, or the worst yet; moving league chat from general to another window where you can read it clearly. I hosted a lambda trial at the very end of DXP weekend after a series of three failed trials in a row. I gave instructions before the trial, and during the trial. After we barely scraped past the sabotage phase, I gave the order that I was continuously giving prior: "Use molecular acids on doors immediately. Do not wait for enemies to build up." You would think that the doors would be closed immediately, but it took over 2 minutes to get all of the doors closed. As I stood there, yelling in league chat what Acids where, how to use them, where to use them, for two minutes, the league just wasn't using them. It was a hard run and we managed to beat it, but it certainly wasn't the fact that all of the players were level 50 that made it so hard.


In the end you have a player who doesn't really know how to play, how to make a character, how to follow directions, and they lack the wit to figure these things out beforehand because getting the knowledge takes time and that time cuts into their DXP plans.

The two times I PUGGED during 2xp weekend were horrible disasters.

Both teams had the same problem. People running at with the diff slider too high vs tough stuff and people who had no clue how to use their character or powers. I even saw one of the worst Emp defenders in a long time. This guy (or gal) had Aid other and Aid self! I think that comes close to beating the Worst Emp defender I saw who had Healing aura and rez at level 50. No other emp powers, but had all of the dark blasts and ran into spawns like a tank and died everytime.

Edit: After those disasters, teams were purely from my friends list and no PUGs.

Hyper please resize your sig mate.

What do level shifts have to do with trial success? How did you people accomplish anything back when the trials just came out?

Frankly, I think itrials powers should be nerfed, or people with level shifts should have diminishing returns on the easier trials, so players have to actually play the game rather than rely on gimmicky crutches to power through it.

The hardest parts about the Incarnate trials is herding the cats before hand and during. The rest is trivial. Including Underground, TPN, and MoM.

The point, I think, is that demanding a full +3 league for DD, to say nothing of MoM or UG, is fairly bizarre. Brand new unshifted incarnates may be marginalized somewhat on DD and MoM, but two thoughts spring to mind. One is that UG is incredibly easy if you have the handful of in-the-know people required to make the lichen infested war walker fight go smoothly, regardless of anyone's level. The other is that there's quite a broad spectrum between no shift at all and +3. Anyone who can't lead a successful MoM with some 50-52s on the league may want to reconsider their approach.

I have never heard the term Slambda before... is that the lame approach where you leap the wall and kill as little as possible?

But only some have cool names: Speeden, Slambda, Bloody Mary.

Skis!

Though Splamda might be more informative.

Why do you require +3s when you acknowledge that +2s could easily be qualified for these trials even in this weird world of mostly first-timer pick up teams? I ask because I don't join trials where the recruiter stipulates a level or AT requirement (beyond +1 on DD, which is reasonable). The reason I mention that is that if you somehow only ever get total novices when you recruit, perhaps you're turning off some veterans who would be more able to help you with the hard parts in the first place.

The people I trial with don't stress about any of this and it works just fine for us. On my mere level 52-at-the-time fort, I was on an eight person league that completed MoM, a fourteen person league that completed MoDD, several UGs that were filled on public channels with no regard for composition beyond the initial few people, and so on and so forth. The last trial I've actually failed was a pick up DD on the first day of I22, which I joined with no expectation to win. If you can beat these trials with empty seats, you can beat them with 50s. I find it hard to believe that Triumph has such numerous yet inattentive pick up trialers that giving them the slightest amount of leeway guarantees a loss.

Clearly, experiences in the iTrials vary enough that no one person's perspective represents a "norm". My experience, for instance, after running all the trials dozens of times on Virtue, is that the purple patch is a severe enough penalty that level shifts become absolutely necessary to success in the later trials. If someone has figured out a way to overcome the purple patch, then please let us all in on the secret (and no, "run with skilled players" is neither a secret nor a reliable strategy on all servers).

If most of these failed iTrials during the x2XP weekend were the fault of experienced players trying out new ATs/powersets that they were a little unfamiliar with (I say "a little" because after 50 levels spent with an AT/powerset, there is no such thing as "woefully unfamiliar"), then this dramatically demonstrates the potent effect of level shifts on success rates (because these players already knew exactly what to do in the trials, but still failed). However, if the high failure rate was the result of a rash of newbies with newly minted first-time 50s trying the iTrials for the first time, then it goes to show just how inadequately the standard 1-50 game prepares players for the structure, pacing, and cheap gimmicks of the iTrials.

In any event, this just proves what I think we already know: success in the iTrials go up dramatically according to two things: level shifts and familiarity with the peculiar mechanics of any given trial. General playing skill or experience seems to have minimal impact on success chances, at least compared to level shifts and trial-specific experience.