feedback Feedback - Instanced MSR

[Laucianna]

Myself and a few others who lead MSRs have started to used the instanced version as of late, and I just wanted to give my personal feedback to the homecoming team about it, whilst also allowing others who both lead and join these events to give their opinion ❤️ 

Personally for me it is a huge upgrade over the open world one as I see a few major pros with it:

 - On average around 450 more vanguard merits earned (Around 3.4m more influence)

 - People pulling now get equal rewards for doing one of the most important jobs

 - A lot less lag on both the player and the server

 - Ability for the league leader to fill from (almost) anywhere if dropping numbers

 - Ability for the league leader to keep out any trolls who are disrupting the raid (Very rare but still a pro)
 - No need to arrive super early to your own event.

 

 

So far there is two slight downsides that have been brought up however, being:

 

 - No trainer in the zone for people who just hit 50 and want to unlock incarnate xp
 - LFG queue bugs in general (Bugged spots being unable to be filled etc)

 

 

So overall a huge props to Homecoming team for the work they spent on this and I for one am a very grateful squid ❤️ 

[Oklahoman]

I only ran a few instanced MSRs and prefer to run the one in zone. Mainly because:

• I don't get bent out of shape about some level 1s joining in and gaining a few levels. I'd rather they do it in an MSR and maybe be part of the community than in AE.
• I had too many times I queued an iMSR and you get the error that someone doesn't have the Member of Vanguard badge. Kick so they can fix it and rejoin later, re-queue, and have the same error with someone else. You don't get ALL the error messages like that at once, so it's a rinse and repeat thing. It's the same sort of problem we run into with Magisterium runs sometimes.

There's a lot about LFG I would love to see fixed, and have made peace with the fact that I never will, but if we had some way to define a set of "requirements" before forming a team/league and the game would give error messages if we tried to invite someone lacking those requirements, that would help. I know that's a really big ask, though.

 

Also, in general, I could always fill a zoned MSR but always ran iMSRs with less than a full league. I just found they weren't as popular, maybe because of the badge restriction reducing the number of possible participants available online at that moment. You don't need a full league to be successful, of course.

 

The pros you mentioned are all valid and true, though, and I love that our player base has options.

[Wispur]

1 hour ago, Oklahoman said:

I only ran a few instanced MSRs and prefer to run the one in zone. Mainly because:

• I don't get bent out of shape about some level 1s joining in and gaining a few levels. I'd rather they do it in an MSR and maybe be part of the community than in AE.
• I had too many times I queued an iMSR and you get the error that someone doesn't have the Member of Vanguard badge. Kick so they can fix it and rejoin later, re-queue, and have the same error with someone else. You don't get ALL the error messages like that at once, so it's a rinse and repeat thing. It's the same sort of problem we run into with Magisterium runs sometimes.

There's a lot about LFG I would love to see fixed, and have made peace with the fact that I never will, but if we had some way to define a set of "requirements" before forming a team/league and the game would give error messages if we tried to invite someone lacking those requirements, that would help. I know that's a really big ask, though.

 

Also, in general, I could always fill a zoned MSR but always ran iMSRs with less than a full league. I just found they weren't as popular, maybe because of the badge restriction reducing the number of possible participants available online at that moment. You don't need a full league to be successful, of course.

 

The pros you mentioned are all valid and true, though, and I love that our player base has options.

I could've sworn that I read that they removed the Vanguard Badge requirement for instanced MSR, no longer making it a thing.
Have you tried running an instanced MSR recently, or am I imagining things?

[Laucianna]

1 hour ago, Wispur said:

I could've sworn that I read that they removed the Vanguard Badge requirement for instanced MSR, no longer making it a thing.
Have you tried running an instanced MSR recently, or am I imagining things?

They did remove it ❤️ @Oklahoman Any level can join now with or without the badge 🙂 

[Zaldra5]

As someone who went through a week of bad internet, the instanced version allowed me to get back in and not fight the zone line kept me sane during it, this spider gives it two thumbs up

[BjorJlen]

This be a great topic GL, the T approves... 😛

   That being said, I have done a lot of MSR's in my time, and recently have done two iMSR's, and here are my thoughts. Both are excellent, and GL is fairly spot on about the Pro's of a iMSR. In addition, I have never seen or even heard of anyone at 1st lvl being kicked from any MSR unless they were being a jerk. And that would apply with anyone really I would think. However, I did notice that in a iMSR, the pylon's on the map were not as marked clearly (in size?) then in a regular MSR. Be nice if this was fixed somehow, for those with poorer eyesight and all. Otherwise, a iMSR is totally working good and fine imo, though of course, time will tell with more experience if this holds out to be true in the long run. However, so far it looks good to me... 🙂

[Mayaedits]

Agreed to all of this! Since they yeeted the lvl requirements, it's much better. The trainer and lfg bugs are really the only downside

The trainer I imagine could just be added to the entry area when you first zone in.

LFG bugs are a bit more tricky as it is more a gen LFG problem then just MSR. Hopefully they can continue to work on it make it more stable

[Oklahoman]

1 hour ago, Laucianna said:

They did remove it ❤️ @Oklahoman Any level can join now with or without the badge 🙂 

 

I sit corrected.

[Shin Magmus]

6 hours ago, Laucianna said:

...So far there is two slight downsides that have been brought up however, being:

 

 - No trainer in the zone for people who just hit 50 and want to unlock incarnate xp
 - LFG queue bugs in general (Bugged spots being unable to be filled etc)...

I genuinely didn't even consider this.  I know it's possible to add Trainer NPCs to trials because they exist on DFB for that reason.  It's been so long since I've joined a MSR on a non-lv50, that I forgot how important that mid-raid training session was when you hit lv50 on them.  Great suggestion all-around: it should be simple enough to add one somewhere in that little vanguard base where we all spawn in.

[BjorJlen]

31 minutes ago, Shin Magmus said:

I genuinely didn't even consider this.  I know it's possible to add Trainer NPCs to trials because they exist on DFB for that reason.  It's been so long since I've joined a MSR on a non-lv50, that I forgot how important that mid-raid training session was when you hit lv50 on them.  Great suggestion all-around: it should be simple enough to add one somewhere in that little vanguard base where we all spawn in.

 

   I would suggest that one could be placed in our little RP room with the sofa's so as to build on the atmosphere in there some more; especially if he/she is serving drinks lol... 😛
  

   Also, to update... I just did my 3rd iMSR, and it was quite fun & rewarding as GL said it was, even though we were sorta down the number of Tanks we usually have (It IS Sunday after all 🙂). In addition though, I would be remiss if I didn't point out another plus or two for doing a iMSR instead of the normal one. No Drop Ship and No Rikti Event Invasion!!! From what I was told, the Drop Ship only spawns in after the shields on the mothership snap back on, which is a plus imo, because more than once I have seen the Drop Ship snipe people from the sky in passing (or even on the ground) while going from Pylon to Pylon. And I am positive that is annoying as heck to those sniped out of the sky like a clay pigeon. And not being harrassed by the added might of a Rikti Event Invasion might also be good as well. Figured I would mention these Pro's to doing a iMSR. 😁

[Laucianna]

1 hour ago, BjorJlen said:

 

   I would suggest that one could be placed in our little RP room with the sofa's so as to build on the atmosphere in there some more; especially if he/she is serving drinks lol... 😛
  

   Also, to update... I just did my 3rd iMSR, and it was quite fun & rewarding as GL said it was, even though we were sorta down the number of Tanks we usually have (It IS Sunday after all 🙂). In addition though, I would be remiss if I didn't point out another plus or two for doing a iMSR instead of the normal one. No Drop Ship and No Rikti Event Invasion!!! From what I was told, the Drop Ship only spawns in after the shields on the mothership snap back on, which is a plus imo, because more than once I have seen the Drop Ship snipe people from the sky in passing (or even on the ground) while going from Pylon to Pylon. And I am positive that is annoying as heck to those sniped out of the sky like a clay pigeon. And not being harrassed by the added might of a Rikti Event Invasion might also be good as well. Figured I would mention these Pro's to doing a iMSR. 😁

I believe the trainer is desired to be within the trial itself hun ❤️ so whilst the raid is going on, if someone hits 50 they can level and start getting incarnate xp whilst the raid is still going 🙂 But with the dropship in instanced it seems to be timed pretty well so we avoid eachother as we kill pylons which is a huge plus I forgot about so thanks! 😄 

[Oklahoman]

I just finished running back to back instanced MSRs. For the most part, it went smoothly.

 

On the first run, for some strange reason, after we got into the instance I could no longer invite to LEAGUE, even though I had a lot of open spots. I emptied Team 1 to the other teams and then invited to TEAM and everything went well. Some told me they couldn't join via LFG, though.

 

The second run was worse. After we zoned in, I was suddenly the Team 4 leader and we had a heck of a time getting the star back to me. Once I had it, same sort of issues as before. Then, even though I had 1 spot open (and it was on Team 1) there was no way I could invite anyone, and they couldn't join with LFG.

 

In both cases, invites would go out normally and with no error messages, but when they accepted they said they were immediately kicked. We know LFG is still messed up, but it seemed moreso with this. Still, it was a smoother run overall and I'll probably change to doing instanced, even with the bugs I ran into.

[Laucianna]

2 hours ago, Oklahoman said:

I just finished running back to back instanced MSRs. For the most part, it went smoothly.

 

On the first run, for some strange reason, after we got into the instance I could no longer invite to LEAGUE, even though I had a lot of open spots. I emptied Team 1 to the other teams and then invited to TEAM and everything went well. Some told me they couldn't join via LFG, though.

 

The second run was worse. After we zoned in, I was suddenly the Team 4 leader and we had a heck of a time getting the star back to me. Once I had it, same sort of issues as before. Then, even though I had 1 spot open (and it was on Team 1) there was no way I could invite anyone, and they couldn't join with LFG.

 

In both cases, invites would go out normally and with no error messages, but when they accepted they said they were immediately kicked. We know LFG is still messed up, but it seemed moreso with this. Still, it was a smoother run overall and I'll probably change to doing instanced, even with the bugs I ran into.

Yeah I think MSR is the only trial you really invite into after it starts hence why they probably don't care to fix it 😄 First run yeah inviting to team works better and moving them to fill the other teams, for the second one it sounds like the game decided whoever zoned in first was the "Invite team" so there needed to be clear spots on their team to invite to league (A major annoyance that thankfully hasn't happened much to me)

[Hyperstrike]

On 5/12/2024 at 8:21 AM, Laucianna said:

Myself and a few others who lead MSRs have started to used the instanced version as of late, and I just wanted to give my personal feedback to the homecoming team about it, whilst also allowing others who both lead and join these events to give their opinion ❤️ 

Personally for me it is a huge upgrade over the open world one as I see a few major pros with it:

 - On average around 450 more vanguard merits earned (Around 3.4m more influence)

 - People pulling now get equal rewards for doing one of the most important jobs

 - A lot less lag on both the player and the server

 - Ability for the league leader to fill from (almost) anywhere if dropping numbers

 - Ability for the league leader to keep out any trolls who are disrupting the raid (Very rare but still a pro)
 - No need to arrive super early to your own event.

 

 

So far there is two slight downsides that have been brought up however, being:

 

 - No trainer in the zone for people who just hit 50 and want to unlock incarnate xp
 - LFG queue bugs in general (Bugged spots being unable to be filled etc)

 

 

So overall a huge props to Homecoming team for the work they spent on this and I for one am a very grateful squid ❤️ 

Been running MSR for around 13 years.  For people having to deal with truly noxious player types, I can see the attraction.

I'm going to say, I HAVE had such people in the past.

To the point where individuals have screwed with a raid by dragging U'kon and DELIBERATELY not listening to the raid leader;'s direction.
I'm still here, have a relatively thick ...skin...and most of those people got tired and left.

As for 3-500 more VMs.   Not going to say I don't believe it.  Just going to say that if I'm pulling down 1500-2000 VMs, I'm good.  The differential earnings are vanishingly small.

Most of the queue bugs in gen-pop are fairly shallow.  And the fix is for the raid leader to manage.
Drag them to another team, then drag them back where you want them.
Also I specifically organize  to try to avoid catastrophic de-levels.  A minimum of 2 50's at the head of each team usually is an easily doable safety margin.

Again, don't begrudge you preference.

[Shin Magmus]

11 minutes ago, Hyperstrike said:

Been running MSR for around 13 years.  For people having to deal with truly noxious player types, I can see the attraction.

I'm going to say, I HAVE had such people in the past...

     This was mentioned in a different thread, bringing up Instanced Hami Raids as well as Instanced MSRs: but the simple barrier to entry of having to communicate to the Leader and the threat of getting "booted" out of the instance: simply causes such noxious players to not join in the first place.  Those tiny extra inplicit steps in Instanced content weed out the trolls who show up in open zone content.  It's like magic, but if you understand sociology it's really just human nature. 

 

     The rest of your points were good too; I love Instanced MSRs.  I play in an awkward time zone but I try to join the nightly Instanced right before bed every weekday.

[BjorJlen]

   Yeah, while I myself have never run a MSR (nor ever will lol, but I will help if/when I can), the only real "bug" (if it is that) I have experienced is when upon zoning into the instance, I find myself suddenly shifted to another team. However, two point about this...
   First, both GL & Maya, who usually run the MSR's I join in on (because they are both friends and are so good at being fearless leaders, as well as Psy too of course), seemingly manage to shuffle people back to the teams that either they were on, and/or place them where they will be of the most use fairly easily and with to many issues as they are very experienced and great leaders in this, even though I can only assume it can be annoying at times. They all do this without complaint, and things continue to run smoothly, and fun is had by all. Heck, some probably don't even notice this team switching issue, which can be both good and bad. 🙂

   And second, on a more personal note, the last MSR I was on with GL when this shifting of players on teams happened, for a little bit I myself was moved around to no less than 3 teams as GL fixed the team dynamics, which DID happen. 🙂 However, as I keep track of all teams (usually), and I saw this was happening, I actually found this to be quite enjoyable as I was in the process of "visiting" all the teams as she was fixing things. At the end I was like, "Hey, keep this up please! I wanna make the rounds to every team if possible!" 😁 It actually became a fun little side game to me, trying to guess which team I would end up on lol.

   So this was absolutely not an issue for me at all, personally speaking. In fact, if you read this GL/Maya/Psy, I volunteer to do this every single time if needed/wanted lol! That was, you can spread the T-Love all around for everyone to either enjoy, or... throw stones at (or Rikti too, cause you, that's just ok by me as well lol). 🙃 So yeah, I do hope this little bug could be fixed, as I am sure some would find this annoying, but for me... so long as I don't DC, I'm good with it for now... 🙂
   Now go out, kill Rikti... 😁
 

[Oklahoman]

7 hours ago, Laucianna said:

second one it sounds like the game decided whoever zoned in first was the "Invite team"

 

One thing about the second run is that I still had people in the league from the first run. It may not have happened if I had completely dumped and reformed the league between runs. Next time I do a back-to-back run I will try that and see what happens.

[Hyperstrike]

On 5/12/2024 at 9:28 AM, Oklahoman said:

I only ran a few instanced MSRs and prefer to run the one in zone. Mainly because:

• I don't get bent out of shape about some level 1s joining in and gaining a few levels. I'd rather they do it in an MSR and maybe be part of the community than in AE.
• I had too many times I queued an iMSR and you get the error that someone doesn't have the Member of Vanguard badge. Kick so they can fix it and rejoin later, re-queue, and have the same error with someone else. You don't get ALL the error messages like that at once, so it's a rinse and repeat thing. It's the same sort of problem we run into with Magisterium runs sometimes.

There's a lot about LFG I would love to see fixed, and have made peace with the fact that I never will, but if we had some way to define a set of "requirements" before forming a team/league and the game would give error messages if we tried to invite someone lacking those requirements, that would help. I know that's a really big ask, though.

 

Also, in general, I could always fill a zoned MSR but always ran iMSRs with less than a full league. I just found they weren't as popular, maybe because of the badge restriction reducing the number of possible participants available online at that moment. You don't need a full league to be successful, of course.

 

The pros you mentioned are all valid and true, though, and I love that our player base has options.

Sometimes dragging a full league of lowbies (Hi!  Just showed up with two teams full of Level 1's) is a recipe for pain.

But when you have sufficiently numbers of 50's to cover the team captains, it doesn't APPRECIABLY slow kill seed, and are able to mix in some higher

[Hyperstrike]

30 minutes ago, Oklahoman said:

 

One thing about the second run is that I still had people in the league from the first run. It may not have happened if I had completely dumped and reformed the league between runs. Next time I do a back-to-back run I will try that and see what happens.

This is the primary reason why I avoid the instanced  vesion.
Coming in with no league control and being team-scrambled is ALMOST as fun as being traditionally impaled by Vlad Tepes...

[Lunar Ronin]

1 minute ago, Hyperstrike said:

This is the primary reason why I avoid the instanced  vesion.
Coming in with no league control and being team-scrambled is ALMOST as fun as being traditionally impaled by Vlad Tepes...

 

That is why you queue for it as a closed league by yourself, and then invite everyone in from inside the instance.

[Laucianna]

1 hour ago, Lunar Ronin said:

 

That is why you queue for it as a closed league by yourself, and then invite everyone in from inside the instance.

 

Doing that requires you to constantly keep team 1 clear to invite more, waiting for people to actually join before moving them, which sadly its great if you have 50 tells asking for an invite 😞

[Oklahoman]

3 hours ago, Lunar Ronin said:

That is why you queue for it as a closed league by yourself, and then invite everyone in from inside the instance.

 

That sounds like a lot of work, especially when there is a non-zero chance you won't be able to get enough people to form a successful raid at all. It's rarely happened to me, but I have had to call off a couple raids in the past due to lack of interest.

[Oklahoman]

3 hours ago, Hyperstrike said:

Coming in with no league control and being team-scrambled is ALMOST as fun as being traditionally impaled by Vlad Tepes...

 

True, and especially when that happens with trials where you have carefully constructed the makeup of each team before going in it can be extremely chaotic. With an instanced MSR it doesn't have to be that way - you just have a delay before you get the star back and add any new people into the league. Last time we sorted this out while we were working on pylons.

[Oklahoman]

3 hours ago, Hyperstrike said:

Sometimes dragging a full league of lowbies (Hi!  Just showed up with two teams full of Level 1's) is a recipe for pain.

But when you have sufficiently numbers of 50's to cover the team captains, it doesn't APPRECIABLY slow kill seed, and are able to mix in some higher

 

That's been what I've seen, too. It's been a good long while since I've had an MSR fail in any way, shape, or form. It probably has some small effect on rewards, but if you are doing an MSR for rewards you probably aren't getting the biggest return on your time, anyway.

[Oklahoman]

27 minutes ago, Krimson said:

I'll bite. What are these non-reward incentives for doing an MSR?

 

By that, I mean that an MSR is great for XP, but for 40-45 minutes worth of playtime you could almost certainly get more in terms of reward merits, etc. doing other things.

 

A quick example I've mentioned before - we tend to do 4 (or more) Hami raids at a time these days, which could net you 200 reward merits if you just selected that from the table, and a set of Hami runs will take about 30 minutes. You'll get a little XP and other drops from the GMs as you are gathering EoEs, but not a ton. A single MSR will probably net you in the neighborhood of, let's say, 50 reward merits if you choose that conversion, and will require a little more of your time. You do get influence, salvage, and recipe drops during an MSR, but it's not going to make up the value of the 150 additional reward merits you would have got in a Hami.

 

Others can point out even quicker ways to earn reward merits, influence, etc. than in an MSR, I am sure. Outside of AE, though, I don't think you can beat an MSR in terms of XP.

 

In my mind, the non-reward incentives to participating in an MSR versus, say, a Hami is the interactions that happen especially in the bowl. This is an example of where our community gets to hang out and just have fun while playing the game. Hamis have that, but in my experience it is much different than just hanging out and blasting away at bad guys leisurely.