Downside to DoubleXP

Well I'm glad the server I play on is so totally newb-free, I guess, that's the one remaining difference I can think of.

On the subject of the OP, it's certainly true that TFs this past week have been both heavily weighted toward the mid-level and less trivial than normal to roll through. For the most part I'd call that a good thing. I had no idea there were so many people who still had never run a STF or RSF, for example. Nice to be able to give "tours," if you will, rather than just blitzing to the end at maximum speed. There may well be a few complications along the way but it would be a shame if it were impossible for newer players to get any of the authentic old-timey experience. Not that struggling a little bit with Recluse's lieutenants is directly comparable to the good ol' four hour failed STFs of yore.

Actually I was trying to be sarcastic rather than condescending. Surely we can agree that there is a difference between having half a league of +0s and having any +0s at all? Surely we can agree that not all characters on a trial are to be valued purely for their DPS? By the way, if you want to easily beat Diabolique with the badge condition and no deaths, put two or three essence hunters on their own team and mix the squishies evenly among two other teams. Maybe half the league's worth of rebirths and barriers at that point will easily carry even lower level characters through if they huddle up tight and everyone uses all their buffs.

I wasn't talking to you. But regardless I'll respond:

Something I have noticed while playing around with Bane Surveilance is that different enemies have vastly different resist attributes. For example: the War Walkers in the UG trial have zero resistance to everything, letting players maximize their damage against them. Compare this to Siege/Nightstar, who have 50% resistance to lethal, 75% resistance to psionic, 30% resistance to energy/NE (though I think nightstar has 50% resistance to NE). There are other assorted differences between the two, but this general trend of resistances of 0 to 30% to 50% to 75% persists in the BAF, Keyes, TPN, and against the Avatar of Hamidon at the end of the fight. Now, I have yet to test this on MoM and DD, since my spider is a new incarnate and I have just barely leveled him up high enough to handle those.

What this means is that, despite having all of the relevant levels, a player can hit a wall against these AVs which you aren't requiring shifts for if they happen to do a specific type of damage. The 50% damage resistance is equivalent to roughly 4 levels down. The 75% mark is between 5 and 6 levels down. Because of this, native AV resistance in trials very quickly outdoes any level shifts you'll require, meaning that your team could be doing even damage as a level 50 with the right attack type. Resists are arguably playing a much bigger role in the AV fights than level shifts are. If you are concerned about success, then what you should be doing is building a team with a particular damage type instead of a team with a particular level limit.

Another interesting thing about these AVs in trials is that none of them have defense. Every single one I scanned has had 0% defense to all attack types.

Now, a second problem that is being overlooked is that the purple patch has absolutely no effect on buffs and heals on your side. Things like assault, accelerated metabolism, vengeance, and Healing Aura are just as effective regardless of the level shift.

Each of these AVs has themselves an 87% resistance to debuff effects (except for recharge reduction which is 100% so never invite an Ice player to a trial again), and when the difference between debuffs is from 1% to 4%, that isn't much by any standard. The advantage being, of course, that you run these trials with 16 other players who not only have debuffs of their own, but have multiple debuffs, many of them unresisted because they are grant-self powers like interface procs. These small numbers add up very quickly to a relevant amount, and with their sheer amount the difference in level shifts is at best trivial. The only players who aren't contributing much to the fight are the players who do nothing but damage, and that itself isn't too common since most offensive sets have some kind of debuff to them. Except for ice players, who are fully resisted by AVs.


This continually lends to the idea that these trials are designed assuming that players won't always be fighting them at +3. I've been on many of the elitist trials that require +3s. and those don't win by a small margin. A math operation I used to come up with my new standard is how a team of 53's can beat Tilman at the end of the trial in 45 seconds. But... you are given 3 minutes to defeat her. Mathematically, you can be a little more than 1/4th as effective and still beat her. Going by the purple patch, a team that is +3 is only doing 65% of their regular damage, and 1/4th of that is 16.25%. This is... a little more than what a +0 would contribute to the trial. A +1 does 30% damage, which is half as effective as a +3. A team of +1s, therefore, could beat Tilman and have a minute and twenty seconds to spare. The actual strength varies between the level shifts a little more than the purple patch, but thankfully there is an 85% margin of error to cushion the difference.




Now, there is a very big problem with the "don't like it, don't join" mentality. The issue is that trials are a once a day thing, and players usually don't have the time to always run it for everyone else. Because of this, there is a limited player resource available to the community. By requiring higher levels to join your trials, you are effectively taking away those higher levels from those who would run trials without those stringent requirements. With a mix of 50's to 53's it is quite possible to succeed in UG, MoM, and DD. I've done it and hosted it numerous times. It is a lot harder to win after someone has gobbled up all of the 53s, though, since now they are no longer going to join that trial, causing you to settle on lower level players, and this makes things harder. Even when you host with a +1 only requirement, you'll still get plenty of +2 and +3 players EXCEPT when they have already done the trial hosted by someone else.

This creates a form of discrimination more severe than just exclusion. It is saying "If you don't like it, don't join my trial, but I'm going to make it so you can't make another trial by taking up all of the better players". This is a noticeable problem on virtue, let alone a smaller server where you might not be able to host the trial after another one has launched.

I just want to start off by saying, if you run a trial or TF or, really, anything; it's a "Your house your rules situation". If that means Level shifts required, I don't have to join if I disagree. No need to Villify, just a difference of oppinion.

That being said, How do you fail a MoM? Seriously, I have yet to see one that I've been on fail. That includes one with a team of 50s. I've seen UG trials fail, TPN trials fail, but never a MoM. I guess if I had to guess, it'd be teams not keeping Aurora alive, but I've usually been one of the three people for that part, so

I was on over ten failed ITFs over DXP weekend on the same character. I got so mad I damn near deleted him.