Freedom Mag trails are broken (maybe)

That is MY conclusion.

Ok, maybe they arent, really, at all. But..

I have done 20+ runs of Freedom. With debuff teams, with badge teams full of people who play together, follow instructions fine. And they ALL failed, but one. Again, I cant spot were that run won, as opposed to the others.

Two runs on Virtue. First one, on day 2 after it came out. LESS organised than most of the runs of Free, and he went down a treat. Didnt even regen.
Second run, just now. Started with 24, lost 5 people in loading, so we ended up with only 17 for the final fight. I think we had only 3-6 Support toons, max! As a comparison, EVERY other fail run I have done had more support than this. And we won. Wtf. I just cant understand it. Oh AND we had about 4 people who didnt have +3 shifts too.

It was just SO stupidly easy, compared to all the runs I have done on freedom. I mean killing him was easy, not just cause the players were better (they werent) or we had less deaths (we didnt) or more -regen (not even close).

So either it is just broken on Freedom..or..

Is it easier with less people? Might his regen scale due to that? Or..does less people mean less lightning spikes, not as many in one spot, killing people?

And so much confusion about the level shifts. How do they work, are they working? Are they broken? Having a dev come out and confirm this would also be great.

That is also something I found perplexing about Freedom. It's like, over there they talk about builds and maxing and power choices and stuff all day and yet they are worse at the game at virtue.


I have a theory. The unofficial RP server has players who play through the stories and get levels slower, and thus learn how to play their toons more effectively through time. Freedom is a lot more prone to farms and power leveling, where a player really doesn't get a feel for their character at all. Because of this, people on virtue with their RP and erping and all that, are much more capable at combat because they are more aware of what their characters can do and the weaknesses in them.

Not meaning to call your theory rubbish Red...but it is. Of course, my theory about Freedom being broken is rubbish too but..

I started doing trails on Virtue after finishing all my Freedom ones, like 8 months back, and found that the trials were general WORSE on Virtue. Again, subjective, but thats what I saw. MORE people trying to join harder trials without level shifts, but let in just cause 'we are nice people on Virtue'. I have failed more (non mag) trials over there than on Freedom.

This is WHY I am saying the trail is broken on Free..because I cant spot ANY point were the runs on Virtue were 'better' than the ones one Free. It has nothing to do with 'better' players.

Oh thats a good point Ketch.

I was also reading in the other thread, someone saying his regen (or teh difficulty) scales with the team size? Sounds fair enough, but if it does, it sure seems to be scaling TOO much.

At least..for all my runs on freedom. I did notice the 17 man run (virt)..we had him under 30 quite a long time. I mean, with his hp swinging between 12-28ish, WITHOUT suddenly getting those huge regen spikes.

Still does not explain why my other 24 man on virtue..Tyrant went down sooooo easy, compared to failing runs (again, without a huge difference in play style, deaths, amount of debuffing).

Some people were saying that the +Level Shift ability has a cap of 16 targets and possibly affects pets, who essentially "steal" from a player who would have gotten the buff. Were there a lot of pets on the Freedom run?

As unhelpful as it is, I can not say for sure either way But even if there were 24 +9 lore pets (the bosses, they last longer) surely THAT would be enough extra dps to tip him over the edge, given that the league got him to 20% with no lores.

I also noticed on the winning Virtue runs, there seemed to be just as many lore pets around as for the failing ones.

I blame Squeeky wheel syndrome.

That was a theory I came up with a long time ago, long before trials were released. They may have changed a bit... But regardless that is my attempt to explain something that essentially makes no sense. I mean, that's how you'd do it: You find what else is different between the servers other than performance, and extrapolate if that is what may be the cause.

Of course, you also paint a very different picture of Virtue trials than the one I am familiar with. As far as my experience goes, failing a trial on virtue is quite rare, sans UG and to a lesser degree MoM. This was, however, before the Magi was released so that track record may have changed. Also, I still see recruits for trials asking people to have +3 with IO sets frequently.

Oh I know it makes no sense. I was not trying to insult virtue or freedom players..because there are obviously idiots and bad players and bad leagues on both servers..just as there are great players and leagues.
This is why my conclusion is that the trial is broken. Because I cant see any difference in performance between the failing and winning Mag trials, aside from the obvious ending.

The night i23 launched, I ran five full Mag trials on Virtue (also, at one point I zoned in to a Dark Astoria 5, which is INSANE) and they all succeeded. I moved on to Victory and Liberty and ran the trial five more times each and they all succeeded. By late Thursday evening, I was starting to see calls for Mag farms, which I at first thought was just the name given to runs of a relatively easy trial that could be run like clockwork. I hopped on one and realized that no one was moving on after the first phase of the trial. I thought that was lame and didn't do it again.

By Friday evening, people on Virtue were complaining that completing a Mag trial was unusual and by Saturday many of the people I was trialing with said that they had never seen a trial finish successfully AT ALL. I ran the Mag trial once on Saturday and we barely succeeded with under 30 seconds on the timer, and on Sunday I was 0 for 3 attempts. People didn't know what the Lights or the Portals did. It was pretty awful.

I suspect that the folks who were running the trial on Thursday were hardcore fans and people who had run the trial a zillion times in beta and as the weekend went along I was seeing more of the type who wanted zero effort power leveling and the like. The Thursday people unlocked their toons, crafted their T4s and went back to doing other stuff. The folks who were left just weren't/aren't enough of a core of knowledge to make the trial run smoothly.

I definitely saw a much higher level of play on Victory and (especially) Liberty than I did on Virtue.

I had 5 successful runs on liberty, then some people left (everyone that typically runs trials on lib) and other people joined. We failed hard. People would not stay out of the lightning, they were using regular attacks on the light pillars, wouldn't go to the hosp.. etc and I assume none of them knew how to open their chat window.
I don't want to feed into the idea that freedom sucks, because I have never played there, but on liberty I saw the magi as the easiest and the hardest trial ever in the same night based on who was playing it.

So far i've been on two Magi runs in the past two days on Virtue, and both times we failed to get the Black Swan badge, although we did complete it without difficulty. Tonight will be attempt the third. Never having run it on test, the two runs are my only experiences with the trial. Too small of a sample to draw any conclusions yet.

I was (at least at times) only getting level shifted if I stood in a light or very near it. I was going to suggest that when you run, run to a light so you ensure you get the buff. I don't know if this is working as intended.

I just want to say thank you to the fair forum goers who were able to point out a possible reason for the OPs experience other than "Freedumb sux..." I find it amusing yet silly that there is so much contempt for Freedom on these boards sometimes. It seems like some people forget that we all play the same game. Playing on one server doesn't make you superior or inferior to other players.

Yes, I play on Freedom. Yes, I have completed the trial multiple times with full leagues. Yes, there are good players. Yes, there are bad players. Yes, the same is true of other servers too.

I was just on a magi led by @Ukase with a 16 person league, and no pets during the Tyrant battle. Also 1 person dedicated to each light.
Tyrant dropped faster than a hot potato.

16-man, no pets on Tyrant worked perfectly. Thanks Rosy Dawn for some nice leadership, too!

What a stupid bug, to cap the lvl shift at 16 and have pets count. Shame on you devs!!