Why you should stop inviting people to DFB...

Now that I have your attention...

This is not about DFB in general. It's a great way to knock out the first few levels.

It's not about people grinding it up to some arbitrary level. What you do with your characters is none of anybody's business.

It is, in fact, about how to make sewer trials easier.

What most people know, but not quite register, is that Death From Below trial is that DFB is a turnstile trial. That means that, while most who start DFB runs do so by pre-assembling a team and then queueing, whereas those looking for a trial ask or wait for announcements to be made, at which point they contact the leader.

Now consider the role of the leader once the trial is underway. It becomes, to all intents and purposes, superfluous. Certainly, there is always room for leadership, but it ceases to be enforceable and so far I haven't seen a situation where enforcement is needed. As with all trials, the team composition is locked, and mission is fixed - all the team leader can do is kick a teammate should the need arise, and that too can be done via kick voting.

Consider the team composition. Whereas most task forces do require a certain versatility {leading to turnstile's rather... anemic reception following incarnate trials}, low levels are an almost universal equalizer - with nearly no powers at their disposal, there is very little difference between most archetypes at the outset.

Now, in turn, consider the turnstile mechanics. All it requires of its participants is to queue themselves for the trial. All it requires of the trial is a critical mass of queued participants. Once these two requirements are fulfilled, all the participants are whisked away into the trial and can merrily go on their way.

It bypasses the need to organize a team - the game does that for you. It bypasses the need to assemble everyone into the same zone, or for that matter, the same instance - it works anywhere, even inside a mission. In short, it provides a degree of convenience with no cost involved.

So the next time you're forming a DFB - or looking for one - don't tell people to send you a tell {if they can}. Instead, tell them to queue up. I have little doubt this will not be an overnight change to the DFB teaming mechanics, but as more and more people begin using the queue to join the trial, the quicker and more convenient it will become to the point where forming DFB teams will become as quaint and outdated as the old sewers themselves.

An open letter to NCsoft

I get where your coming from..but..

Joining the Q and waiting is not really viable. As you say, if MORE people did it, the wait time would be much less, meaning that then even more Q up. It just does not work well enough. The speed of which a person can go to AP, broacast, 'DFB, pst plz!' and invite 7 people (assuming the zone is failing full..even use lfg chat too) is just so fast. Just cause the event does not need any set team make up, does not make Qing any better.

As you point out, everyone needs to be in the same zone though, and yes, that can take longer, especially in some newbies are somehow lost. But again..the speed in which you could just kick the hold up, get a new member..and Q away..

Also, a HUGE advantage of actually forming the team via invites, is that you can TELL everyone to come to you at Mis Lib (or whatever) so that when you Q, there will be NO one afk, hopefully. From teh amount of times I did the summer event..I can totally say that the amount of teams held up (even disbanded to due not enough people, I guess that could happen) due to someone not click Yes, were huge. That is even more likely if someone Qs up, gets a bit impatient and perhaps goes afk, alt tabs, spaces out etc.

I have had time when I q'd for an hour, for the summer event and it didnt start. Then a simple 'anyone what to join the event' in LFG and bam..starts. I know that IS with people Qing, as you say we should..but it ONLY actually started after my message, which kinda defeats the purpose in 'just' Qing up.

Problematically, the turnstile will start an event with as few as four people, but for DFB you want at least six, so that you'll get AVs instead of EBs. And the AVs are a huge chunk of the trial's XP. There's a delay (I think 90 seconds) between when the turnstile has enough people to start and the trial actually launches, so if another two people queue up in those 90 seconds, you'll be fine.

...but, to be able to expect two additional people to queue in 90 seconds, would mean you average at least 1 person queuing up every 45 seconds. That's enough people to launch a full team every 6 minutes. DFB is popular, but even on Freedom during the busiest hours I don't see a full DFB leaving every six minutes.

So, having everybody queue up individually rather than form a team and then queue is very, very likely to result in an awful lot of small teams that are significantly less productive.

I mean that, once there are 4 people queued up for DFB, the system waits 90 seconds, then takes everyone in the queue and gives them the window with the green and the red button. That window will itself expire after 60 seconds, so you can't necessarily wait until a satisfactory number of players have joined.

Meh, this won't stop people from spamming the LFG channel for DFB (oddly enough, I rarely see anyone run a DIB nowadays....)

Why you should stop inviting people to DFB...

* Because you don't know these people and it's a SEWER... on a comparison of First Dates this is the equivalent of taking her to Burger King and an Adam Sandler movie...

* Anything that involves sewers and/or toilets and is called "Death From BELOW" isn't something any normal person would want to be associated with...

* Besides the fact that you'd be face planting in raw sewage if you're defeated... you are ported to a hospital that is... wait for it... in a sewer too... but don't worry... the nursing staff assures me it's entirely sterile... even the cockroaches have to scrub before entering...

* The very concept of a Hellions Arch-Villain must violate SOME universal laws... on the other hand maybe he's the one who finally got the purse...

I rather doubt that I'm gaining some monumental time advantage from randomly queuing up than I am simply inviting people, and I would rather not risk making a 4 person team which would either take much longer than the preferred 8 person team, or result in everyone quitting because we aren't able to handle the trial.

I also prefer to have the option to kick people who can't, for instance, understand what "don't attack the minions, focus on the boss, don't use AOE's" means.

EDIT: People talking in LFG doesn't bother me either as I have it on a separate tab that I ignore until I need it. I suggest doing that as opposed to reinventing the way our society does things.

When the LFG feature was first added, I was so excited! I thought finally! I could run TFs and Trials without having to go through the hassle of team-forming and broadcasting. It would be like most conventional multiplayer games where I just ask the computer to do it, and it puts me on a "server" that's right for me. All I had to do when I wanted to run one was queue and wait. And now I can even do it from instances! Woo-hoo!

Except no-one ever uses it. I'm not "waiting" when I queue, I'm still running missions, but in a five-hour session of gaming, the queue never once kicked in, yet I saw numerous Trials form over global channels. I've tried this intermittently since, but it never happens. I have, thus far, never, ever, EVER been able to join anything by queueing up for it alone. The system that could have gotten even me to team frequently simply sees no use at all.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I think it's a great idea, Quinch. Sure, a few teams might possibly fizzle out because of low numbers or something, but if everyone who wants a DFB used the Q, it wouldn't happen. At least not on the high population servers.

The queue worked really well for the summer event. I ran a lot of those, and very, very few of those lost the 4th, or were otherwise unplayable. And any other disadvantages of the queue for the summer event are not applicable to DFB.

Would dearly love to see a lot less DFB spam in the LFG channel. I don't know why team leaders feel that they need to spam every 20 seconds or whenever they get another teammate, which ever comes first. It gets really difficult to see anything else that's going on, since only DFB and DIB feel the compulsion to spam like that. I always feel badly for those occasional 23 stalkers and etc. posting that they're LFG - their messages are just drowned out completely.

I am actually seriously considering leveling a character 1-50 in DFB. I have been experimenting with Tankers recently. I am a traditional Brute player, and Tanks frustrate me. Not only is my attack payer severely restricted, the power choices are in the wrong orders. I have a toothless Dark?dark Tanker sitting at 29 right now. Great build, great I/Os (so far) and yet does not have the Blue bar to get through a single fight and has zero attack capability. You can hit him with 3 simultaneous Alphas and he glows pretty however. If this was my only Tanker I was experimenting with I might be content to grind him the rest of the way, but I tend to explore organically, and am building multiple Tankers with different sets. For Playtesting I jump out into the Task Force Commander series, generally preferring to hit any TF once I have outleveled it 3+ levels, so I get an honest look at how the character performs there. But I am looking at just leveling one up from 1-50 in DFB, letting me ignore all the unbalanced problems of tankers from 10-40 when they have such tremendous growing pains.

Personally, I've always thought that you shouldn't be able to use the LFG feature when you're not, in fact, LFG (if you already have a full team, that's a Group and you're no longer Looking For one).