To offer something to the OP discussion, and hopefully a dev will read, but when running RTQ on my main Barb dps one of the issues I have noticed with Tiamat is the lack of ability to gain a Gem to protect against dragon breath if you enter the dungeon as a reinforcement after the first phase. Would it be possible to add a vendor/chest to the initial area that would give you a dragon gem...maybe the Gem that was taken the least to that point. I can do enough damage to make the run successful if I start with everyone else, but if brought in as a reinforcement for this trial there is no point in staying due to lack of gems being available to protect.
To offer something to the OP discussion, and hopefully a dev will read, but when running RTQ on my main Barb dps one of the issues I have noticed with Tiamat is the lack of ability to gain a Gem to protect against dragon breath if you enter the dungeon as a reinforcement after the first phase. Would it be possible to add a vendor/chest to the initial area that would give you a dragon gem...maybe the Gem that was taken the least to that point. I can do enough damage to make the run successful if I start with everyone else, but if brought in as a reinforcement for this trial there is no point in staying due to lack of gems being available to protect.
even if you don't have a gem this trial is doable. it takes 3x as long as it should for a very very old trial with HAMSTER rewards.. but it's doable.
I don't know why you even extended your post so long. Let me make it clear and concise for you.
I extended it to try to hammer a point home. Sometimes you need to be verbose to get through thick skulls that are incapable of seeing a glaring hole in their thinking.
Unfortunately, the point was still lost. Here's a concise example.
2 players. Same gear. Same stats. One better because of skill. One worse because lack of skill. Item Level, stats, etc don't change that so any method you choose leads to the same pitfall.
You can walk a horse to water, but you can't make him drink (or think).
SMH.... So the fact that the dev's can't invent a code to test a player's skill, equates to, to not even bother with it? Actually, player skill can be measured if you keep a record of their dps but that is far too far fetched to even be practical. Ultimately, it is yoursevles that has missed the point here, as i endeavour to explain it to yourselves, one last time.
First, ILVL alone cannot measure your skill. However, if the focus was more on the primary stats and a mixture of Ilvl, it will make it easier to bring the gap between a skilled and bad player closer. So in lay man term's, imagine if the same person has 150k and in another situation, 100k power but with the same ilvl , he will obviously do more dps in the former situation, am i right or am i right? Now, please don't tell me that it is impossible to have less power but same Ilvl. Once you have acknowledged this fact, let us move forwards.
So if there is a skilled player with the same class, gear/ilvl and 100k power but he is able to compare your 150k power dps, the more power you have the easier it will be to mask your lack of skill. Yes? I used power because like i have explained previously, offence stats are easier to cap due to companion gear and power is generally neglected and also more harder/expensive to build.
So please smack me and explain it to me, where i might be going wrong?
taking a graph of someone's dps would not be a good measure of skill in this game. too much of it hinges on who got there first. lol. you might get a good measure of how try hard someone is though.
Yeah, well I just abandoned a Tiamat run too. Apologies to anyone in it, but if you can't get 2 heads in the first run through, it's not likely to end in success...
Why there are so many people still able to sign up for these queues when they are woefully prepared, I just don't understand.
There needs to be a bridge - some way to get AD for fresh, new level 80 characters to continue the upgrade process, without being forced into queues for which they are just not ready.
Sure - you can get random trials where a couple of strong dps can carry the group, but it doesn't happen that often, and as a healer, there's not a lot I can do to counter it, as healers and tanks are pretty much worthless in these trials.
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greywyndMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 7,153Arc User
If a person has IL high enough to get in, they are prepared. The game says so.
I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
If a person has IL high enough to get in, they are prepared. The game says so.
Well clearly, in practice, they aren't.
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greywyndMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 7,153Arc User
What it breaks down to is: people need experience doing. Those that already have experience don't want to be there when the newer players are getting that experience.
I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
What it breaks down to is: people need experience doing. Those that already have experience don't want to be there when the newer players are getting that experience.
Or at least not when it's too many. For 25 people 4 people that don't know what they are doing was easy carry. Now I can imagine it's different, not that I have done tia in the last two months. If it's 10 people with 5 people not knowing what that thing is they can pick up... yeah.
How about a system that compares your character’s stats to the stat caps for that level of content. So, if you are in a dungeon that has a 60k stat cap, you get a rating from 1-100 that is an average of the percentage of each stat on your character compared to the stat cap (with no bonus for over cap so you can’t compensate for one low stat by overcapping another). Then there could be a +/- to that number based on how far over/under the recommended power level is for that content. Then you would need a certain stat rating to get into that content.
This would have to be somewhat class/role specific as there are some stat caps that can change (i.e., crit strike for healers), but this might be closer to accurate for seeing if a toon is ready for content. This won’t help someone’s skill level, but it could help encourage more stat balancing and maybe reduce glass cannon dps’s.
Here is the thing. Cryptic really doesn't want us to be capping or maxing out for content. They hate it that players are so obsessed over what is the caps for each zone and which gear is better to use for each zone because of down scaling. So asking them to work on a system that is more selective on stat capping is essentially doing what they don't want to do.
Let me put this another way. Lets say you work this job where you count objects and you come up with a new system to count objects that is faster than the way you were trained. Then your boss wonders how you are finishing your work so fast and asks you how you managed to make such fast progress. You tell your boss you came up with a new system of counting the objects that is faster than the old system. Then he tells you, stop doing that, count the way we trained you. You will wonder why, if the point is to work as fast as possible then doesn't logic dictate that your new system is superior? Not if the boss specifically wants you to only count how you were trained.
The point I am getting at is, by selectively picking out players who are geared for content goes against what cryptic actually wants. Sure its good for you as a player who values their time and doesn't want to get paired with a party of players who really aren't ready for the content but manage to have just enough item level to make it in. Cryptic doesn't want to be this selective of the player base and here is why.
A player who meets the requirement to get into a dungeon is then told their stats are not balanced correctly, please rearrange your equipment to better meet the stat caps. Well that player might not have any clue what that even means. They might not even know what the caps are suppose to be or how exactly to obtain those caps. Sure you can argue, they should go look up some guides or ask players in game what they should do. But if this is your argument you are placing an unnecessary demand on a player and this demand is what cryptic tries to get a way from. It causes players to quit playing. You might think that is fine that they quit but cryptic has more incentive to make the game more appealing, not less appealing.
Svardborg is much more pain in the a$$ with random teams because they rarely free you from permafrost.
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greywyndMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 7,153Arc User
Don't get frozen?
We tend to fill out as much as possible from our Alliance and only get pugs if we don't get the 10 we need.
I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
> @krumple01 said: > (Quote) > Here is the thing. Cryptic really doesn't want us to be capping or maxing out for content. They hate it that players are so obsessed over what is the caps for each zone and which gear is better to use for each zone because of down scaling. So asking them to work on a system that is more selective on stat capping is essentially doing what they don't want to do. > > Let me put this another way. Lets say you work this job where you count objects and you come up with a new system to count objects that is faster than the way you were trained. Then your boss wonders how you are finishing your work so fast and asks you how you managed to make such fast progress. You tell your boss you came up with a new system of counting the objects that is faster than the old system. Then he tells you, stop doing that, count the way we trained you. You will wonder why, if the point is to work as fast as possible then doesn't logic dictate that your new system is superior? Not if the boss specifically wants you to only count how you were trained. > > The point I am getting at is, by selectively picking out players who are geared for content goes against what cryptic actually wants. Sure its good for you as a player who values their time and doesn't want to get paired with a party of players who really aren't ready for the content but manage to have just enough item level to make it in. Cryptic doesn't want to be this selective of the player base and here is why. > > A player who meets the requirement to get into a dungeon is then told their stats are not balanced correctly, please rearrange your equipment to better meet the stat caps. Well that player might not have any clue what that even means. They might not even know what the caps are suppose to be or how exactly to obtain those caps. Sure you can argue, they should go look up some guides or ask players in game what they should do. But if this is your argument you are placing an unnecessary demand on a player and this demand is what cryptic tries to get a way from. It causes players to quit playing. You might think that is fine that they quit but cryptic has more incentive to make the game more appealing, not less appealing.
Which is why Cryptic is guilty of the penultimate cardinal sin in gaming: "Play the way we want you to, not the way you want to!"
That mentality/approach rarely-if-ever turns out well for the developer, and it makes the gaming experience miserable for the player base which leads to abandoning said game.
Svardborg is much more pain in the a$$ with random teams because they rarely free you from permafrost.
I usually abandon the instant I get sarvdborg, as it is way too much effort to grind for the keys to open the chests.
I don't quit right away, you do get a flat 8k rAD from it if you finish. With a good team it is quicker than both mDemo and Tiamat. That said, if it fails once and/or the team lets players freeze in ice then I abandon. I usually queue up as a cleric and the ice generally targets the healers first so a bad run kicks me out early enough to quit without remorse. The grind for the chests, although an obstacle and yet another excuse to lock any "good" loot behind a barrier, isn't enough of a reason to make me quit initially though.
Svardborg is much more pain in the a$$ with random teams because they rarely free you from permafrost.
I usually abandon the instant I get sarvdborg, as it is way too much effort to grind for the keys to open the chests.
I don't quit right away, you do get a flat 8k rAD from it if you finish. With a good team it is quicker than both mDemo and Tiamat. That said, if it fails once and/or the team lets players freeze in ice then I abandon. I usually queue up as a cleric and the ice generally targets the healers first so a bad run kicks me out early enough to quit without remorse. The grind for the chests, although an obstacle and yet another excuse to lock any "good" loot behind a barrier, isn't enough of a reason to make me quit initially though.
On a succesfl Savrdborg I can get nearly 80k rAD - is that what you meant?
Svardborg is much more pain in the a$$ with random teams because they rarely free you from permafrost.
I usually abandon the instant I get sarvdborg, as it is way too much effort to grind for the keys to open the chests.
I don't quit right away, you do get a flat 8k rAD from it if you finish. With a good team it is quicker than both mDemo and Tiamat. That said, if it fails once and/or the team lets players freeze in ice then I abandon. I usually queue up as a cleric and the ice generally targets the healers first so a bad run kicks me out early enough to quit without remorse. The grind for the chests, although an obstacle and yet another excuse to lock any "good" loot behind a barrier, isn't enough of a reason to make me quit initially though.
On a succesfl Savrdborg I can get nearly 80k rAD - is that what you meant?
If it my daily then yes. But even if not it gives a flat 8k on completion and 7.5k for class and 4.6k for a trial. So even if I have done my daily trial i can still get 20.1k rAD (with the bonus class) so no too bad for 15 minutes. Hence i don't quit unless I don't think it will succeed.
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dread4moorMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,154Arc User
edited January 2020
Took hasn't tracked the tiamat patches since the OP posted this thread. But seems to be playing pretty smooth and fair lately. Took runs 1-2 per day in RTQ on various Took toons... usually PuG, a few premade in LFG or friends. ~8/10 last runs were wins with few quitters or campers.
So, Tiamat seems to be quite winnable. Quitters don't seem like much of a problem anymore ITHO.
Edit: LFG premade quits happen, but they are not frequent. PuGs are anonymous (in formation). There is no prior communication, social agreement or commitment to each other. PuG is every player for themselves. So the moral hazard of quitting is low.
As others have said, If Tiamat quitters really bother you, do not PuG.
Doing RTQ premade with friends or guildies is best.
No one quits or camps on their friends or guildies.
I am Took.
"Full plate and packing steel" in NW since 2013.
the problem with "random" trials in general is that up to 80% of the players joining trials are not strong enough to complete the trial without using perfect team strategies. The reason most trials dont fail is because of the top 20% of players that join them. They aren't strong enough to solo it... but do 80% of the work. When a trial team executes in chaos and lacks strong anchoring characters... a wave of abandonment often results. Some players are hot-headed, impatient, or just unwise... and will abandon at the first sign of trouble, even if the trouble is imagined. This in turn... can initiate a domino effect.
My current main has been top DPS in close to 100% of random missions for months and I usually run randoms. Once, in Tiamat, the right side all abandoned. Seeing this, three abandoned on my side. Me and one tank took on the trial. In the last seven minutes we got a fresh wave of incoming players. At the end... the last dragon was down to 1% or so HP and the time ran out. You win some, you lose some. To me... that battle was a win. Players should stick with their missions unless they run out of time in real life.
Oh i'll stir up this conversation a bit, here's some of the mod 18 patch notes:
Cradle of the Death God has returned to the Random Trial Queue. Castle Ravenloft has returned to the Random Dungeon Queue. Lair of the Mad Mage is now in the Random Dungeon Queue.
I usually stay in my pugged random queue to the very end, unless its almost certain that the run fails. Even a narrow failure can be fun, if people are decent and give some advice to improve the experience (for the next run).
Having said that: 1.) Tiamat: - If the Cleric phase takes more than 5 min (instead of 3 min for a decent run) and one cleric is trailing far behind the other, its time to quit - If only two heads are down at the end of phase one, its time to quit, unless the group was doing very well in the cleric phase
2.) SVA: - if healer gets killed because people fail to free her from permafrost, chances are not good (<50%) for the run to succeed - usually SVA fails during the Manticore phase (people attacking both Mantis, big red AoEs not carried away, healers cannot heal through the massive damage). Unless it was a short call, not worthwhile to try for a second time
3.) Demo: - almost always fails due to lack of dps (tanks are a convenience, one capable healer suffices) - you can already guess that there is a chance of failure (~30%), from slow dps in phase 1 (bronze, far away from silver)
The most enjoyable runs (good group spirit) are - from best to worst:
1. SVA - nice - generally nice atmosphere, even on fails, probably because its difficult to identify a single player responsible for the failure - it helps to remind people before the fight starts to free people (healers particularly) from permfrost as first priority and only attack a single mantis at a time
2. Tiamat - neutral - neutral atmosphere, even on failure. Players probably don't complain much on failure, because potential failure is quite predictable from the very beginning, namely how fast Severin and the 5 guys guarding the gems go down. - most people seem to have a decent grasp of the basic mechanics - often fails at white dragon head, because not enough white gems or the person with aggro does not attempt to move the breath AoE far off-center (so that melee dps can attack from one side)
3. Demogorgon - often heated emotions - most bad mouthing happens in Demo - complete failures seldom happen, but plenty of opportunity to point out some "bad players", such as - tanks not tanking Demo in phase 1 (always the other group's tank's fault) - tank tanking Demo in phase 1 getting no heals (always the tank's fault who tries EDIT: AND DIES, never the healer's or the other tank's fault) - noobs or troublemakers opening all portals in phase 1 - sending Goristo into a black portal in phase 2 - chaotic fight in phase 3, because tank / healer need to run to blue circles to be able to use encounters
Generally Demo fails because of lack of dps. Mostly Demo fails at the end (phase 3), when it takes too long to kill Demo. I guess this is the reason why there is so much emotion: People have worked through the entire trial to see it fail at the very end
Comments
taking a graph of someone's dps would not be a good measure of skill in this game. too much of it hinges on who got there first. lol. you might get a good measure of how try hard someone is though.
Why there are so many people still able to sign up for these queues when they are woefully prepared, I just don't understand.
There needs to be a bridge - some way to get AD for fresh, new level 80 characters to continue the upgrade process, without being forced into queues for which they are just not ready.
Sure - you can get random trials where a couple of strong dps can carry the group, but it doesn't happen that often, and as a healer, there's not a lot I can do to counter it, as healers and tanks are pretty much worthless in these trials.
For 25 people 4 people that don't know what they are doing was easy carry.
Now I can imagine it's different, not that I have done tia in the last two months.
If it's 10 people with 5 people not knowing what that thing is they can pick up... yeah.
Let me put this another way. Lets say you work this job where you count objects and you come up with a new system to count objects that is faster than the way you were trained. Then your boss wonders how you are finishing your work so fast and asks you how you managed to make such fast progress. You tell your boss you came up with a new system of counting the objects that is faster than the old system. Then he tells you, stop doing that, count the way we trained you. You will wonder why, if the point is to work as fast as possible then doesn't logic dictate that your new system is superior? Not if the boss specifically wants you to only count how you were trained.
The point I am getting at is, by selectively picking out players who are geared for content goes against what cryptic actually wants. Sure its good for you as a player who values their time and doesn't want to get paired with a party of players who really aren't ready for the content but manage to have just enough item level to make it in. Cryptic doesn't want to be this selective of the player base and here is why.
A player who meets the requirement to get into a dungeon is then told their stats are not balanced correctly, please rearrange your equipment to better meet the stat caps. Well that player might not have any clue what that even means. They might not even know what the caps are suppose to be or how exactly to obtain those caps. Sure you can argue, they should go look up some guides or ask players in game what they should do. But if this is your argument you are placing an unnecessary demand on a player and this demand is what cryptic tries to get a way from. It causes players to quit playing. You might think that is fine that they quit but cryptic has more incentive to make the game more appealing, not less appealing.
We tend to fill out as much as possible from our Alliance and only get pugs if we don't get the 10 we need.
Now I explain some of the mechanics at the start, and the last three or four Svardborgs have all gone really well.
Edemo isn't a problem mostly.
And even Tiamat is succeeding maybe 9 times out of 10.
> (Quote)
> Here is the thing. Cryptic really doesn't want us to be capping or maxing out for content. They hate it that players are so obsessed over what is the caps for each zone and which gear is better to use for each zone because of down scaling. So asking them to work on a system that is more selective on stat capping is essentially doing what they don't want to do.
>
> Let me put this another way. Lets say you work this job where you count objects and you come up with a new system to count objects that is faster than the way you were trained. Then your boss wonders how you are finishing your work so fast and asks you how you managed to make such fast progress. You tell your boss you came up with a new system of counting the objects that is faster than the old system. Then he tells you, stop doing that, count the way we trained you. You will wonder why, if the point is to work as fast as possible then doesn't logic dictate that your new system is superior? Not if the boss specifically wants you to only count how you were trained.
>
> The point I am getting at is, by selectively picking out players who are geared for content goes against what cryptic actually wants. Sure its good for you as a player who values their time and doesn't want to get paired with a party of players who really aren't ready for the content but manage to have just enough item level to make it in. Cryptic doesn't want to be this selective of the player base and here is why.
>
> A player who meets the requirement to get into a dungeon is then told their stats are not balanced correctly, please rearrange your equipment to better meet the stat caps. Well that player might not have any clue what that even means. They might not even know what the caps are suppose to be or how exactly to obtain those caps. Sure you can argue, they should go look up some guides or ask players in game what they should do. But if this is your argument you are placing an unnecessary demand on a player and this demand is what cryptic tries to get a way from. It causes players to quit playing. You might think that is fine that they quit but cryptic has more incentive to make the game more appealing, not less appealing.
Which is why Cryptic is guilty of the penultimate cardinal sin in gaming: "Play the way we want you to, not the way you want to!"
That mentality/approach rarely-if-ever turns out well for the developer, and it makes the gaming experience miserable for the player base which leads to abandoning said game.
So even if I have done my daily trial i can still get 20.1k rAD (with the bonus class) so no too bad for 15 minutes. Hence i don't quit unless I don't think it will succeed.
But seems to be playing pretty smooth and fair lately.
Took runs 1-2 per day in RTQ on various Took toons... usually PuG, a few premade in LFG or friends.
~8/10 last runs were wins with few quitters or campers.
So, Tiamat seems to be quite winnable. Quitters don't seem like much of a problem anymore ITHO.
Edit:
LFG premade quits happen, but they are not frequent.
PuGs are anonymous (in formation). There is no prior communication, social agreement or commitment to each other.
PuG is every player for themselves. So the moral hazard of quitting is low.
As others have said, If Tiamat quitters really bother you, do not PuG.
Doing RTQ premade with friends or guildies is best.
No one quits or camps on their friends or guildies.
I am Took.
"Full plate and packing steel" in NW since 2013.
My current main has been top DPS in close to 100% of random missions for months and I usually run randoms. Once, in Tiamat, the right side all abandoned. Seeing this, three abandoned on my side. Me and one tank took on the trial. In the last seven minutes we got a fresh wave of incoming players. At the end... the last dragon was down to 1% or so HP and the time ran out. You win some, you lose some. To me... that battle was a win. Players should stick with their missions unless they run out of time in real life.
Cradle of the Death God has returned to the Random Trial Queue.
Castle Ravenloft has returned to the Random Dungeon Queue.
Lair of the Mad Mage is now in the Random Dungeon Queue.
Get your carry pants on people !
Even a narrow failure can be fun, if people are decent and give some advice to improve the experience (for the next run).
Having said that:
1.) Tiamat:
- If the Cleric phase takes more than 5 min (instead of 3 min for a decent run) and one cleric is trailing far behind the other, its time to quit
- If only two heads are down at the end of phase one, its time to quit, unless the group was doing very well in the cleric phase
2.) SVA:
- if healer gets killed because people fail to free her from permafrost, chances are not good (<50%) for the run to succeed
- usually SVA fails during the Manticore phase (people attacking both Mantis, big red AoEs not carried away, healers cannot heal through the massive damage). Unless it was a short call, not worthwhile to try for a second time
3.) Demo:
- almost always fails due to lack of dps (tanks are a convenience, one capable healer suffices)
- you can already guess that there is a chance of failure (~30%), from slow dps in phase 1 (bronze, far away from silver)
The most enjoyable runs (good group spirit) are - from best to worst:
1. SVA - nice
- generally nice atmosphere, even on fails, probably because its difficult to identify a single player responsible for the failure
- it helps to remind people before the fight starts to free people (healers particularly) from permfrost as first priority and only attack a single mantis at a time
2. Tiamat - neutral
- neutral atmosphere, even on failure. Players probably don't complain much on failure, because potential failure is quite predictable from the very beginning, namely how fast Severin and the 5 guys guarding the gems go down.
- most people seem to have a decent grasp of the basic mechanics
- often fails at white dragon head, because not enough white gems or the person with aggro does not attempt to move the breath AoE far off-center (so that melee dps can attack from one side)
3. Demogorgon - often heated emotions
- most bad mouthing happens in Demo
- complete failures seldom happen, but plenty of opportunity to point out some "bad players", such as
- tanks not tanking Demo in phase 1 (always the other group's tank's fault)
- tank tanking Demo in phase 1 getting no heals (always the tank's fault who tries EDIT: AND DIES, never the healer's or the other tank's fault)
- noobs or troublemakers opening all portals in phase 1
- sending Goristo into a black portal in phase 2
- chaotic fight in phase 3, because tank / healer need to run to blue circles to be able to use encounters
Generally Demo fails because of lack of dps.
Mostly Demo fails at the end (phase 3), when it takes too long to kill Demo.
I guess this is the reason why there is so much emotion: People have worked through the entire trial to see it fail at the very end
EDIT: small clarification in 3. (Demogorgon)