The Invasion Leadership Problem & Possible Solutions

[mechahamham]

The recent Nemesis invasion event and the current Rikti invasion event are highlighting a problem that's existed since the Paragon-server era: Invasion zones are full of folks requesting teams or leagues, but have very few people willing to lead. Usually there are a few, but unless they are 50, people invited to their teams are exemped down to the leaders' level.

 

While bomb hunting in Talos as a 24ish blaster, I had a teammate tell me 'Sorry, too low', quit the team, and immediately go back to asking for a team in broadcast before I could try the usual work-around of seeing if he had a mission I could set as active. It kinda ruined the vibe of the event for me-- it killed my imaginary sense of urgency.

 

Here are some suggestions for addressing this issue:

 

- Extending the 'select a mission as active' work-around, if a mission is not set as active when a player joins a team, the highest-level mission available is set as active. This is not terribly ideal since it could set a 30 mission as active if a level 30 joins a team and then a level 50 joins the same team later.

 

- Allow team and league leaders to use a command like /setactivelevel 50, or implement a UI that does the same thing. This has the benefit of allowing knowledgeable leaders to deal with the situation, but might cause problems for those who haven't read the patch notes or command listings. It'd also have to be very carefully tested to a) make sure it works with GM scaling and b) ensuring that players could not use it to horribly cheese their way through content. I can see it going awry if players were to use it to speed through badge farming or 'defeat x enemies in zone' missions.

 

- My personal favorite: During and only during an invasion event, characters in the zone all have their levels hidden and are given GM scaling so that they are effectively 'level-less'. Again, this would require a fair bit of testing. I'd love to see a message like 'This zone is under attack. You can safely ignore your security level to defend yourself and others from invaders.' A less-complex variation on this one is to temporarily disable team-based exemping if your team leader is in a zone with an invasion. This has the benefit of needing less testing and probably less coding, but runs awry of breaking 'player expectation' for the sake of providing a convenience.

[macskull]

Team level is based on the level of the team leader, not the level of the active mission (unless you're on a task force or flashback in which case you're not inviting people to your team). If you're level 24 and a level 50 joins, just pass the star to the 50.

[mechahamham]

2 hours ago, macskull said:

just pass the star to the 50.

That would be the ideal solution if it were to work consistently. I've had players drop team as soon as they got the star or refuse (or not know) to invite others. Some are intimidated by the league interface for big gatherings. In the situation I mentioned above, I didn't have time to so much as ask if the 50 wanted the star.

 

The other happens too. I've been on a team that filled, and the fifties on the team asked the 20ish team leader pass the star. He was either not reading chat for focusing on the event, or refusing to pass the star. Pretty much everyone on the team dropped and reformed without him. I feel that's punishing someone for trying to take the initiative when nobody else would.

 

When in zones with invasions where I'm not high level, I often say something like, "I'm willing to help organize, but don't want to exemp anyone down to my level". It *usually* works out eventually. I just feel that there is a code solution with relatively little effort for this problem.

[Apparition]

For the instanced Rikti mothership raid trial, everyone from levels 35 through 49 are automatically promoted to level 50.  Note, not lackeyed to level 49.  No.  Promoted to level 50.  It's probably impossible outside of an instance, but I wonder if it would be possible to automatically promote everyone to level 50 in a zone while an invasion occurs, and then demote them back to their regular level afterwards.  Very unlikely, but it would be nice.

[SwitchFade]

Honestly, this is a solution chasing a problem.

 

Even if it were entertained, the time investment to change things would be immense and alter so much of the game architecture.

 

Sorry, no vote.

[SurfD]

On 4/25/2020 at 9:49 PM, macskull said:

Team level is based on the level of the team leader, not the level of the active mission (unless you're on a task force or flashback in which case you're not inviting people to your team). If you're level 24 and a level 50 joins, just pass the star to the 50.

Actually, this doesn't seem to be entirely true.

 

I was just in a Nemesis invasion league that was started by a level 23ish player.  When I lamented about my inability to use my higher level powers (Level 50 Stalker), the leader passed me the Star.  The max level of the League didn't adjust automatically.  I had to manually select one of my own level 50 missions as the "active" mission before it changed the Sidekick/Exemplar settings for the league.