We really need some non-participation penalties for Tiamat

[tdb]

I've been unable to win a campaign for several weeks now, because either people won't do their dailies or the campaign doesn't even start because the owner is afk for days on end. My current one is nearing the end of day 5, and only me and the campaign owner have done all dailies. The other players have done less than two dailies each. Tiamat's health is about halfway, and we'd need 24k DPS to win. We have 15.5k. I'm pretty sure this is a fail even if everyone did all the remaining dailies.

There should be a penalty for participating in a failing campaign and not providing the amount of assault DPS required to win. I'm thinking of some combination of greatly reduced rewards, increased cooldown for the next campaign, or being blocked from that and higher difficulties until you win a campaign. It should be relatively mild at first but ramp up if you repeatedly fail to contribute.

If the campaign victorious, then I don't really care if some players slack off. With a maxed champion bonus and Zariel perk two players can easily be carried, probably even three. In a highly boosted campaign it may even be impossible to tell if a player's contribution was sufficient for victory, because the campaign may be won before they have a chance to contribute enough.

[LostSoul]

There just needs to be a reward *FOR* participation beyond the binary 'success/fail' criteria of the group, a burden that can be dumped on the rest of the group. I've suggested allowing patrons for trial runs (with some limits and restrictions) for bonus weekly patron currency. Another 'change' could be rewarding some amount of scales based on the amount of DPS a daily trial challenge awards (a floating % based on the trial's difficulty), with 'unfinished' days after a trial is completed successfully being award as though they were finished too.

Now, that's not to say that they shouldn't also try the stick with the above-mentioned carrot. The best approach, in my mind, is a stacking 'reset' penalty for non-participation for more than one day in a row. The less you participate, the longer your reset timer should be, barring you from running trials as frequently as players who do participate. After two days of not participating, your trial reset time is increased by 2 days. For every day after that, it is increased by an increasing amount (3 days, then 4 days, and 5 days, so on). So a player who only comes in for the first day won't be able to run a trial again for nearly a month. This method works on two levels: it strongly discourages non-participation by radically reducing the amount of scales a player can earn over time, but it also reduces the frequency of getting non-participating players, because those players won't be able to run trials anywhere near as often. It's a win/win kind of change. It's helpful to players who do participate and punishes players who don't.

[Nero Chaos]

Originally posted by LostSoul:

Now, that's not to say that they shouldn't also try the stick with the above-mentioned carrot. The best approach, in my mind, is a stacking 'reset' penalty for non-participation for more than one day in a row. The less you participate, the longer your reset timer should be, barring you from running trials as frequently as players who do participate. After two days of not participating, your trial reset time is increased by 2 days. For every day after that, it is increased by an increasing amount (3 days, then 4 days, and 5 days, so on). So a player who only comes in for the first day won't be able to run a trial again for nearly a month. This method works on two levels: it strongly discourages non-participation by radically reducing the amount of scales a player can earn over time, but it also reduces the frequency of getting non-participating players, because those players won't be able to run trials anywhere near as often. It's a win/win kind of change. It's helpful to players who do participate and punishes players who don't.

that's smart, but it has to be sent to devs ("support" in main gamem enu), as posted here it does nothing.

as to current solution i'd advice to make some public blacklist.
you create the party, check the list and kick those who got into a list.

another solution: don't join poorly boosted random parties on high difficulties. Or control boost of a hosted party, turning off autostart

[tdb]

Originally posted by Nero Chaos:

another solution: don't join poorly boosted random parties on high difficulties. Or control boost of a hosted party, turning off autostart

The thing is, my own Jarlaxle only gives an 11% assault DPS boost, so it doesn't feel right for me to demand high boosts from others. But the encounters have been balanced so that they don't require high boosts, if everyone participates.

I ran the numbers for Grand Torment (tier 8), the difficulty I've been running lately. If everyone completes all dailies up to and including day 5, and deals e300 damage during their adventures (a rough ballpark amount required to beat the goal of day 5), then full scroll stacks and a single champion with a base 5% boost is enough for victory (8.76B damage dealt over the week, when Tiamat has 8.6B). With a 20% champion boost completing 4 days is enough, a 45% boost reduces that to 3, and with a 95% boost you can slack off after day 2. I assume it's similar for other difficulties, but I don't have a trustworthy source for the damage bonus numbers to verify.

I'm not looking for easy runs, though I won't complain if I get one. Just a successful run is enough. If no one can offer a high Jarlaxle (or Zorbu or Catti-Brie), then I'll put in the effort necessary to make the run succeed. I just wish everyone else did the same.

[kab_reg]

Exalted Legend runs aren't that bad if you check the party when you join. The only run that failed was ruined by me: I misclicked, and added Xerophon as the last champion instead of Jarlaxle into a party with autostart activated :(.

[Nero Chaos]

Originally posted by tdb:

The thing is, my own Jarlaxle only gives an 11% assault DPS boost, so it doesn't feel right for me to demand high boosts from others.

true.
but that doesn't forbid to join parties where someone already have brought high-lvl Jarlaxle and makos - other 3 characters levels don't make sense, owners just have to make the runs properly - and that's what you can provide.
when I was going for the 1st time on grand-tiers, I catched the parties with top Jarlaxle and Makos to have max chances for win and max profit from 3x bonus.

Originally posted by tdb:

But the encounters have been balanced so that they don't require high boosts, if everyone participates.

also true.
but reality is not all always participate so it forces to have some reserve power - good party boost or lower tier of event.
I assume that day 4 and day 5 conditions can seriously cripple the formation, so the party must have enough DPS to the end of a day 3-4.

You've told you have several weeks of fails. On which tiers particularly?

Originally posted by tdb:

I ran the numbers for Grand Torment (tier 8), the difficulty I've been running lately. If everyone completes all dailies up to and including day 5, and deals e300 damage during their adventures (a rough ballpark amount required to beat the goal of day 5), then full scroll stacks and a single champion with a base 5% boost is enough for victory (8.76B damage dealt over the week, when Tiamat has 8.6B). With a 20% champion boost completing 4 days is enough, a 45% boost reduces that to 3, and with a 95% boost you can slack off after day 2. I assume it's similar for other difficulties, but I don't have a trustworthy source for the damage bonus numbers to verify.

I made some calculations about cumulative DPS over days and got that if some player make day 1 and 300 dps, it'll be about 30% of what he'd get if he made all 7 days.
If the event ends in 5 or 4 days, it'll be even 40 or 50%.
So the problem is bold "0" dps, that's rare, and "1-2 days and gone" that is most cases isn't really a problem.

Originally posted by tdb:

I'm not looking for easy runs

But I bet you don't want to make 7 runs just to gift scales to those who makes none. ;)
So, on tier 6 I only care for good scales boost, but on Tier 7 I choose more carefully.
I play Tiamat events for about 4 months and had never run on day 6. Usually 1-2 slackers with 1-2 days.

[tdb]

Originally posted by Nero Chaos:

but that doesn't forbid to join parties where someone already have brought high-lvl Jarlaxle and makos - other 3 characters levels don't make sense, owners just have to make the runs properly - and that's what you can provide.

Yeah, I could do that, though it reduces the chances of finding a suitable campaign, so I'll have to more actively check what's available. Once I was also kicked from a campaign lobby for a reason which is not known to me. But I should probably try looking for good boosts anyway, especially for the first runs of the last two tiers.

I've been holding off on tier 9 because I'm not certain how many days I can complete with the modifiers. If I get to use my Asharra formation I can push well past 1000 on. day 1. But day 4 gives another stat requirement, and if that blocks off some important champions I might not be able to reach 975 as required for tier 9.

Originally posted by Nero Chaos:

You've told you have several weeks of fails. On which tiers particularly?

I'm pretty sure all campaigns which actually started were tier 8. There's been two or three defeats - I don't think there's any kind of log where I could easily check. There was also at least two campaigns which didn't even start because the owner was AFK.

Originally posted by Nero Chaos:

I made some calculations about cumulative DPS over days and got that if some player make day 1 and 300 dps, it'll be about 30% of what he'd get if he made all 7 days.
If the event ends in 5 or 4 days, it'll be even 40 or 50%.
So the problem is bold "0" dps, that's rare, and "1-2 days and gone" that is most cases isn't really a problem.

Yeah, the first days are indeed the most significant. In my current campaign I saw on the first day that everyone started their respective advanturers, but only me and the campaign owner completed it on the first day. So we contributed a bit above 1000 DPS each, while the others were sitting on 300-ish DPS. Some of the players didn't complete their first adventure until day 3 or so. That's a singificant damage loss at the start. With the 20% champion boost we have (owner's Jarlaxle) everyone would have needed to complete the first three days, then me and the owner could have eked out a victory by completing up to day 6.

Originally posted by Nero Chaos:

But I bet you don't want to make 7 runs just to gift scales to those who makes none. ;)

If I could be sure that the first few players can provide enough DPS for victory, I wouldn't mind giving out the last spots as charity for less capable players. But as it is, it's impossible to know each player's contribution in advance. Even a maxed out assault DPS bonus isn't enough for one player alone to provide enough DPS at this tier, and I won't get an ilevel 9750 Jarlaxle any time soon (currently at 300, though I could probably get another 100 by opening all my chests and spending most of my gems on gold chests).

[Jimmy]

The secret i have found with Trials at the very beginning was "Discord".

Go to the discord find players and run with them through the tiers.

Ive done that since the 3rd week of the feature being live.
on discord there are no casuals from what ive seen because everybody who goes to the effort to look for a team on the game's discord server is serious about their game/runs.

[Nero Chaos]

Originally posted by tdb:

Yeah, I could do that, though it reduces the chances of finding a suitable campaign, so I'll have to more actively check what's available. Once I was also kicked from a campaign lobby for a reason which is not known to me. But I should probably try looking for good boosts anyway, especially for the first runs of the last two tiers.

Usually I look for a good party for 2-3 hours, then host one myself.
But, anyways, tier 8 isn't simple-scale-farm tier - risk of fail is much higher then +~10% scales . So you choose a party thoroughly, either go to lower tiers with low risk.
A balance of income and risk.

[tdb]

Originally posted by Nero Chaos:

But, anyways, tier 8 isn't simple-scale-farm tier - risk of fail is much higher then +~10% scales . So you choose a party thoroughly, either go to lower tiers with low risk

Apparently so. I was hoping the higher difficulty would have weeded out the more casual players, but I guess it's easy enough to progress in a game like this even without spending a lot of time on it.

[Hecate]

An issue for those casual players to happen at that range is the natural wall tends to be around 650-700 nowaday (no much effort and you can copy pasta a formation you read anywhere, and manage 600+ even with Rosie). So they manage to do 600-700 and T6-T7 difficulty, but T7/T8 level starts to ask some more planning and dedication with modron core, legendaries, formation understanding, as goal, 700-800, is over that natural wall. And so public T7/T8 is probably the hard zone where it happens, where very casual and dedicated player are naturally filtered. I've yet to see a fall in public T10 (but I don't do trials every week, if I know I'll be busy or out the weekend), because T10 is beyond that filter.

[muljostpho]

I had zero interest in this feature when it was first announced. Didn't have it unlocked so checking it out wasn't an option, but it just didn't sound any good. Recently (well, month or two ago I suppose) happened to finally unlock it though... And I still have zero interest in giving it a try.

Personally I would've preferred something without any sort of "multiplayer" attached to it. Solo only, freedom to do whatever at my own pace.

The closest to multiplayer that would've been an acceptable compromise for me would be some sort of fake multiplayer system that generates some sort of abstract avatars of the other players based in some way on things in their save files and then these avatars could help you with buffs of some sort. Nothing in the interaction would actually communicate anything back to the other players. Your progress with the "help" should only affect your own game. Just my two cents on the subject.

[Nero Chaos]

Originally posted by Hecate:

An issue for those casual players to happen at that range is the natural wall tends to be around 650-700 nowaday (no much effort and you can copy pasta a formation you read anywhere, and manage 600+ even with Rosie). So they manage to do 600-700 and T6-T7 difficulty, but T7/T8 level starts to ask some more planning and dedication with modron core, legendaries, formation understanding, as goal, 700-800, is over that natural wall. And so public T7/T8 is probably the hard zone where it happens, where very casual and dedicated player are naturally filtered. I've yet to see a fall in public T10 (but I don't do trials every week, if I know I'll be busy or out the weekend), because T10 is beyond that filter.

also it's heavily depends on day 1 and 4 "filters": a player can think "it's easy - I made it last time just fine" (because he was lucky) and on second run he gets some key champions disabled in day 1.

[Hecate]

I find too the multiplayer aspect of it should be optional, maybe like 1/4 of current Tiamat health, with +75% Tiamat health for extra player up to 5 (so no change for 5 players), so "easier" together but not mandatory. Also with the ability to assign up to 5 champions freely among participant (making those champions mandatory and locking them are two bad design decisions anyway).

[Hecate]

Originally posted by Nero Chaos:

also it's heavily depends on day 1 and 4 "filters": a player can think "it's easy - I made it last time just fine" (because he was lucky) and on second run he gets some key champions disabled in day 1.

That's true because a lot of player copy paste and feel some champions as mandatory and are sure they can't do anything without them and have no back up plan. But honestly, they are no real key champion when you know all of them well, every one can be replaced, the difference are a few tens area at worst, and they offer more and more feats to overdue that (Avren is now eligible to every d1 restriction, Zorbu too, if you use him, etc).

Back in old trials time, I've seen some far well better geared than me having troubles just because they can't use their A-team in a trial restiction (or variant) when I'd no trouble to do it, just because I knew some alternative way. It's like Delina or Jamilah* they are not joke nor terrible DPS, they are suboptimal, not top tier, but they can do the job quite well anyway, especially since the trials rework: I'd Delina as main DPS on a T10 run for every day and she managed the 5 daily goals needed up to Tiamat death.

*Her real weakness as DPS is being seat 11, frankly, meaning no Nova, Avren or even Imoen or Dragonbait. But she was still my DPS to make Zariel's Might Makes Right back then when it was the hardest variant in game.
edit: restriction, not patron ^^

[kab_reg]

Originally posted by muljostpho:

Personally I would've preferred something without any sort of "multiplayer" attached to it. Solo only, freedom to do whatever at my own pace.

You can easily solo the lower levels of difficulty. If you have a friend or two, you can go up to T6 or T7.

Originally posted by Hecate:

It's like Delina or Jamilah.

I usually use Kent as my main DPS if I cannot field Ashara in the Trials.

https://i.postimg.cc/50WLw6Lc/20230217213336-1.jpg