Oklahoman

Last night we were successful in getting Triple Threat on the third try. First try failed due to itchy trigger finger syndrome. I think it was a MM who wasn't controlling their pets. Second and third try used the same plan, which was to get all the AVs down to 2% and hold, then turn the NEGA team loose and ask the other 2 AV teams to take their cue from the NEGA team. On the second try we were off by maybe half a second - it was really close. On the third try all the AVs dropped at pretty much exactly the same time. No doubt luck and overall league skill factors into it heavily. My goal is just to get us in a position to succeed as often as possible. I'm gonna run with this plan and try to standardize it into my popmenu. Again, still love to hear new ideas, so keep 'em coming.

Is it possible an invite was sent WHILE you were zoning? I run into that a lot with my iTrials, where I don't mind getting tells for invites, but since I am recruiting fewer people it's easier to notice if I sent 3 invites but only 2 joined for some reason. I should have included that as yet another reason I ask people to broadcast for invites for MSRs - your invite could get lost while zoning, and I can't always keep track of it as well. Since others have listed their pet peeves in this thread, I'll list mine in hopes of completely derailing the conversation. I posted a suggestion once that you shouldn't be able to hog LFG by posting there more than once every 30 seconds (or minute, I forgot what I suggested). The people who post "DFB 2/8", "DFB 3/8", "DFB 4/8"... - all just a few seconds apart? I'm not that invested in your recruiting efforts. But, yeah, if you're posting every 30-60 seconds and include a count, as I am sure you do, that can be helpful.

I get what you are saying here, but you need to understand that after you say option 2, the conversation is almost never over. That's not a satisfactory response for someone who feels entitled to have it thoroughly explained to them in a manner with which they can agree. Your response here would probably elicit a response from the player of "Why? You just took all that time to type that and you could have just invited me instead." And on it goes while you are trying to form a league. Worse, even if you have decided to stop responding to the tells, they keep going. "What? Couldn't face you were wrong!?!?" Then it moves from tells to the LFG channel - "He won't invite me because I won't follow his silly rules!" Then come the nasty emails. So, now I am back to the point that if I have said "NO TELLS" and I still get tells, I just don't respond at all. And if they get nasty I gignore them, at least for a few months. Maybe, just maybe, if you tell someone to go search the forums (or provide a shortened URL) they get the info and never, ever do that again, becoming a better community member in the process. Maybe that's a better way to handle it than what I do. I can certainly appreciate someone trying to help someone else.

I like this concept of a safety valve, because as a league leader trying to guide everyone at the end there is SO MUCH to try to keep track of. Having someone else keeping an eye on a couple of those things would help. May play around with this idea, thanks!

We made 3 attempts at it yesterday. First attempt was my regular approach, and again someone got an itchy trigger finger and dropped an AV before I said go. The next 2 runs we did like I mentioned above, where starting at 5% I asked only tanks and brutes to fight. Again, the first result failed because an AV dropped before I said go. The last run failed because one of the AVs regenned a bunch right after I said go. On that last run, the tanks and brutes had trouble keeping the AVs around 2%, and we had to keep jumping in and helping. Someone mentioned Damage over Time as a likely culprit, as well, rather than an itchy trigger finger. Could well be given selection of interface. Also, someone mentioned dragging all 3 AVs together, but since Chimera jumps around that doesn't seem like it would work. Still looking for a solid way to do this with in-game chat only, so I am open to ideas. It's a tough badge to get, but I refuse to believe you need either Discord, luck, or both to get it.

Fight me. I'm looking at you SBB and DD!

An interesting idea, and I like the idea of adding some benefit for hitting vet level 200 or whatever. I'm about to hit vet level 400 on Oklahoman, and I've been joking that I hope then I will be strong enough to knock over barrels in a Lambda trial. I wish we did a better job of communicating in-game about enhancement diversification, so when I think about this suggestion I think we then need to do a better job of communicating the rule of 5, etc. I'm not sure this is a thing. 🙂

Has anyone tried maybe asking the league to back away from the AVs at, say, 5% and letting 3 defined players finish it? Are +3 decently built characters strong enough to keep making a dent on the AVs by themselves at that point? I feel like time isn't usually the issue, and with a general retreat order it becomes really apparent who's not participating - they stick out like a sore thumb. We can always have people buff/heal the 3 attacking the AVs. I just can't go with a solution that relies on Discord, so at the end of all this if that just leaves luck, then so be it.

You and I think a lot alike. You and I think a lot alike. 🙂 So, there isn't a "team rez" inspiration, I believe. Just wondering if there is an opportunity to create one and combine one of these ideas. Sounds cool.

Completely agree. The advantage of Discord in this case is that you are also selecting from a pool of players who WILL listen to instruction. If I can duplicate that for players who are willing to READ instead of just listen, then you just leave that luck element you mentioned.

Actually would love it to be a default setting that team leaders and league leaders chat messages are highlighted, but I also LOVE the idea of league leaders getting to have a big message on the screen like you recommend.

I went through an extremely brief period (like, 2 hours) where I literally had a Google quiz people had to pass before joining my Lambda badge runs! 🙂 Through time, effort, and tinkering with how I run it, I now only have groups fail it occasionally rather than routinely - without a pre-game test.

Part Guide, Part Plea For Ideas I love leading Magisteriums, but for me the Triple Threat badge is very tough to get a league to cooperate. I've been researching for awhile and trying some different things, but nothing is consistently working. So I thought I would come to the forums where everyone is always so helpful and non-judgemental. I understand that using Discord makes this easier. I personally hate Discord, with the white hot passion of a thousand suns. I refuse to use it. Besides, having been in a league myself that used it to get the Triple Threat badge, I would argue its value is that everyone in the league is focused on the voice channel for direction. So, why doesn't the league (text) channel work just as well? I digress. What I am running into is that I successfully get the league to 10% on the AVs and hold, go to 5% and hold, and even go to 2% and hold. At that point we are waiting for Nega's shield and Chimera to sit still for half a second. Inevitably, someone gets an itchy trigger finger and down goes an AV, leaving the rest of to race to finish off the other AVs at non-optimal times. I've tried several different ways of coaching the league down that last stretch, but 9 times out of 10 that's what happens. It's like no one learned anything from BAF - Gotta Keep Em Separated runs. 🙂 Any constructive ideas would be great. I try to join in other runs to see what they do, but usually they are using discord. I even require everyone to be +3 - more for the game knowledge I hope they have at that point than the actual level shifts. It seems we fairly consistently get Hard Way with little to no direction, so I don't stress about it. We might miss it on one run, but we usually get it on the next. One suggestion I might try myself is asking people to pass me their quills if they know they are not going to use them, because I can zip around with those to extinguish the lights. We're real consistent with Ready to Rumble. I stress it's a race to drop Black Swan, and during the run I try to give the league a target time (##:15 on your clock, for instance) so everyone can be tied into that. I usually wait and call for Lore pets until we are waiting for "your doom" to show up, just so they are still up when we go see Tyrant. I don't assign people to take out the portals, I just ask for RANGED folks to handle that. I haven't lead a successful Really Hard Way run yet, but I've seen it done - just can't seem to duplicate it with a league yet. Any thoughts or suggestions there are welcome, too.

Thanks for this. I had this exchange just the other day with someone who had a different reaction to my LFG posts: So, your recognition was well timed. 🙂 I appreciate you and everyone who takes a second in game to say "thanks for hosting." It helps to drown out people like the person above and keeps me wanting to log back in.

I just think if you are going to play at the highest levels of the game, you should understand how to do some of the most basic things in the game. I did wonder, though, about a token like this being granted for every character you take from 0-50 with no P2W XP boosters and no AE activity. Or, as has been mentioned, maybe a cost in Transcendent's. I don't know, though, feels like a non-starter.

I had planned to do this as a separate post, but it fits in nicely here, so... I feel your pain, @Nightwatch So, I’m recruiting for an MSR the other night, and I have this exchange via tell with someone, who shall remain anonymous: OK, so I was a bit of a jerk in my reply, but I’m also going to defend that here in a bit. Normally, I don’t reply to tells at all when recruiting for an MSR, but I had this short lived fantasy that maybe I was helping people understand the game better to respond with “broadcast in zone when you get here.” I get A LOT of tells for this event, despite specifically asking for NO TELLS. The overall problem here is that in-game I can’t give you a detailed enough reason why I am not inviting you until you broadcast in zone. Now, you could just say, “I don’t need a reason, that’s a reasonable enough request so I will accommodate it.” That’d be cool. But maybe you are a bit like the person above and feel entitled to a more detailed explanation while I am trying to form my league. So, here goes... BROADCASTING CONFIRMS YOU ARE IN THE ZONE You have to be in the zone to broadcast in that zone. You can’t broadcast to RWZ from, say, Atlas Park. So, broadcasting in a zone confirms you are currently in that zone. Rikti Warzone is limited to 50 players right now. At one point it was, for the most part, completely open and running 2 full MSRs at the same time in the same zone happened a lot. Now, a full league of 48 doesn’t leave a lot of extra space in the zone. While we can ask people who are not in the MSR to change zones, nothing requires them to do so - they could be AFK, obstinate, or just not looking at chat. Whatever the case, it is possible for the zone to be full before the league is full. When you broadcast for an invite, I know you are in the zone right now, ready to go. If I give a spot to a player who sent a tell and is out of zone, they may never be able to get into the zone - thus depriving someone who IS in the zone of getting to participate. It is easy to THINK you are in Rikti Warzone 1, when you are in fact in Rikti Warzone 2. Broadcasting helps confirm you are in the same place as the league. BROADCASTING ALLOWS OTHER TEAM LEADERS TO INVITE YOU Putting together a league of 48 people can keep you pretty busy. You are probably advertising every minute or so, inviting people in, placing them in different teams, making sure you have a couple of level 50s on each team, trying to keep a mix of classes on each time, joining in the pre-game banter, etc. When you broadcast in zone, team leaders can help by inviting you to their team. There is a bug that has to do with alignment, and is not likely to get fixed anytime soon. If the league leader has someone on their team out of zone, the league leader may not be able to invite you. That’s another instance where it becomes important for a team leader to be able to help out. You may be on the league leaders gignore list. And, maybe in this case you shouldn’t be in the league anyway. But, if you broadcast and get an invite from a team leader who is NOT ignoring you, you get to participate in the raid so long as you can manage to be cool. Might even be able to get yourself off the league leaders gignore list, if that matters to you. There is a BlockingAccept bug where sometimes, even when everything else looks normal, you invite someone and get an error message like: “Could not Invite (player), BlockingAccept” and they have to be invited again. Here again, having the ability for Team Leaders to redundantly invite folks from broadcast is helpful. Much like the BlockingAccept bug, which you have to look for on your system tab, a league leader is also having to deal with players who are still on a team, or still in an AE session. BROADCASTING KEEPS THE TELL CHANNEL OPEN FOR THE LEAGUE LEADER Another fun little bug in the game is that newly invited players may not get sidekicked up to level 49. Leaving the tell channel open allows the league leader to get important notifications like “I’m not showing on a team” or “I’m still showing as level 1” or “can I be on the same team as X” or any number of other matters that often come up pre-raid. FOLLOWING INVITE DIRECTIONS PROVES YOU READ An MSR doesn’t require a whole lot of direction, but there are some differences in how each league leader runs it so it’s helpful to know you do, in fact, read instructions. Especially when you get into iTrial badge runs, reading chat is very important. If you aren’t following instructions in the LFG ad, how do we know you will follow instructions in the trial itself? AND LASTLY, WHY THE HECK NOT? If you don’t know how to get to the RWZ, most leaders will put directions in their actual LFG ad. You can also use the HELP channel. Also, I’m sure a league leader would forgive a direct tell if you were just asking how to get to the RWZ, so long as you are not asking for an advance invitation. It’s not unreasonable for a team or league leader, regardless of event, to ask for tells - or ask for no tells at all - to get invited. It’s not unreasonable for a team or league leader, regardless of event, to ask you to broadcast for an invite. It’s not like I am saying solve this math problem and show your answer in the request channel. Though, that does give me an idea… Look, there’s a reason why there are not a ton of people running leagues, much less 48 person leagues. You get a lot of hate, and it’s a fair bit of work. There are times I am recruiting for an hour, and other times it fills up on the first ad. You have to deal with interpersonal stuff sometimes, people who go AFK in the bowl, etc. Anything you can do to make my job easier makes me want to run these things more, so I appreciate that.

It occurred to me, too, that perhaps this is easier done through a web page. I understand the LFG code is a bit scary to touch. If you could go to the Server Status page and click on the number in the "Map Instances" column to get some kind of readable breakout there, that would work, too.

I agree with this. I get the idea behind a token and can see the advantages there to cutting junk out of LFG, but getting into an AE farm (at least on Excelsior) is incredibly easy, it seems. What I am concerned with is the number of folks who will show up for an iTrial saying "I have 63 other level 50s, so just let me know what class you need" and then those same people do not know how to pass the league star back to the leader, or to pass a Pacification Grenade to the leader. Maybe the act of leveling from 49->50 should come with a required ingame test of some kind. 🙂

As far as I can tell, the "Avg Wait" column is meaningless. Personally, I would love to see this replaced with "# Running" - if that's at all possible. Basically just a count of how many instances we have running out there already of any particular trial. As a frequent league leader, if I could see there are already 2 BAFs running out there but no LAMs, for instance, that would help me determine what I could run that people may be interested in.

As part of Lambda badge runs, I always have the league pass me their temp power (Pacification Grenade or Molecular Acid). In between runs, it is helpful to delete all those before the next run. Right now, I go into Powers, then right click the temp power, choose delete, then confirm for each of the 10 temp powers I was passed. Is there an easier way to do this? I don't see a slash command for this sort of thing.

FYI: A costume contest moved their time to accommodate the daily MSR, which ended up not happening today, the end result being the costume contest is now scheduled to start at the same time as this event. Anyway, we're gonna roll with it. Do the costume contest if you like, then come join us for the MSR.

This calendar link should adjust to your time zone, but just to put it here - the planned start time is 5pm Central TOMORROW. This will be an open zoned version in RWZ1. I generally accept any levels for events like these, though I will need at least 5 additional level 50s to help lead. For those who cannot attend, I will stream the event live on Twitch at OklahomanCOH: (I didn't know it did that if you post a Twitch link. Interesting.)