A treatise on Leading LoF leagues and why I won't be leading them anymore

[noket]

Hello,

 

For the last several weeks, I've spent a large amount of time in the LoF. I've tested the dynamics of how the minotaur hunts, respawn range, the best way to find malfos, and more. From that knowledge, and other knowledge gleaned by explorers on these forums, I put together a fairly comprehensive popmenu that covers everything you could run into. The menu is focused on running a league, but the project is being shelved for the below reasons:

1. The rewards are inferior to other events that can be done in-game.
2. Once the minotaur respawns, level shifts are reset and everybody is booted out of the LoF.
3. The motes/badges/gladiators are highly distracting to a league.
4. For pick-up leagues, there are simply too many moving parts to run a league.
5. The tools provided of actually organizing the Leagues are lackluster.

 

The rewards are inferior to other events that can be done in-game.

The rewards of beating the minotaur are severely lacking for the amount of effort and time that must be put into successfully beating the minotaur compared to other events such as a Hamidon raid, or other TFs/SFs that take more than an hour to complete. As a result, organizers can't use the rewards of defeating the minotaur to entice people to join. The only thing we can use to entice people are badges, and incarnate XP. When I tried to organize an XP only league the other night, hardly anybody joined until I advertised we'd be getting badges as well - a whole other can of worms that will be covered later.

 

Once the minotaur respawns, level shifts are reset and everybody is booted out of the LoF

This is honestly a poor decision. It effectively does 2 things. 1- It kills the league immediately after defeating the minotaur. 2- It ensures that people who don't have stealth can't get the badges on their own.

 

To the first point - the league must start over from scratch each hour if they want to try to farm the minotaur. I can't express how difficult it is to find enough people with a sufficient stealth radius to build up level shifts. Having to start from scratch is honestly a nightmare. I could live with losing 2 shifts when the minotaur respawns, but all of them? Hard pass, The result is that the league more or less dies after the minotaur is defeated. With no incentive to keep people around (ie: the opportunity of defeating the minotaur a second time, or the ability to continue hunting EBs), the only other incentive in staying lies with the badges, however ..

 

To the second point - again not many people have the 85 ft stealth radius needed to somewhat safely navigate the LoF. Even when given instructions on how to find various motes, people won't find them on their own. What you end up with is a league full of people who are depending on the organizers to get them the badges.

 

The motes/badges/gladiators are highly distracting to a league.

Yay! A costume change! That's .. useful? There's no major benefit to be gained from the gladiator costume change. The Mote of the Gladiator, on top of that, only applies while in the LoF - how is that useful to people? I mean even a small buff outside of the zone, like +5% global recharge, would make badge hunting more enticing as organizers. The only thing to really be gained from the hunting for badges are the badges themselves, and I guess bragging rights?

 

The result of this - you have lots of people showing up to get the costume piece, and as soon as they get it, they bounce. We've seen it week after week after week. We've tried getting badges out of the way early, hoping people would stick around (bad idea, people only want the badges in the zone), we've tried waiting until well after the minotaur is gone - which isn't fair to many since they often have to bounce after several hours have passed. There are other things I could say about this, but the main thing - even when you use incandescence to move the entire league directly to each mote, and make clear there's only going to be 1 teleport to each mote, you still have a good 5+ people saying "I still don't have jealousy", "I'm missing greed", "I'm missing despair and greed". Sorry but - I refuse the relive the night where I spent an additional hour and a half getting all the stragglers the motes they missed.

 

For pick-up leagues, there are simply too many moving parts to run a league.

The idea of having roles in teams to defeat the league is cool in theory, but in practice it doesn't work well at all for pick up leagues. Week after week, without fail - even with dedicated macros that distill and explain every facet of what needs to be done - organizers are bombarded with questions about whether x or y should be hunted, questions about the motes and badges, etc. The league almost needs a person dedicated to just sitting in the lobby and answering questions. This all leads into the next point:

 

The tools provided of actually organizing the leagues are lackluster.

Yesterday, I experienced the joy of trying to organize members of the league. When I moved Player 3 from Team 4 to Team 5 - Team 5 swaps with Team 2 and everybody else gets re-arranged. Hurray! What fun!

 

I really do expect that, when I say move Player A to Team 5, that Team 5 stays Team 5. None of this re-arranging teams based on seniority BS. I don't have the time or energy to write down the order in which people joined.

 

Plus - the league leader doesn't have a way to chat with each team individually, just the league as a whole. It would be game changing if there were dynamic chat channels where the league leader could send message directly with all of just Team 3, or just Team 4, without having people needing to join the channel. This would help cut down in the noise that each team sees, since in the LoF there's usually a stealth only team. The whole league doesn't need to see the wall of text regarding what stealthers need to do. This really ties my hands in the toon I can play - just stealth, more or less - because at least if the stealth team is on team 1, I can use Team chat to talk directly to them.

 

There's no way to audibly ping the Team to make sure they don't miss messages. There's no way to format text, make it bold, no way to have some important text repeated on loop every x minutes .. no way to really make sure the important bits aren't missed. It's 2024, surely we can support formatted and looped text?

 

League leaders should have an option to promote somebody on Team 3 to the leader of that team, but we don't.

 

There's just so many needed tools missing to effectively organize and communicate with a LoF league that the end result is an absolute cluster. 

 

In summary

There are too many moving parts in the LoF to run a pickup league, most people's motivation to be there is badges and nothing else, and the tools needed to organize and communicate with a league just aren't there. So, I won't be running these leagues anymore. It's an absolute nightmare. The real labyrinth is in organizing the league to run effectively. 

 

To fix some of these problems:

• Significantly improve the minotaur defeat rewards. People aren't turning up for the current rewards, they're too weak/undesirable.
• Add the ability to make sure people can't teleport through the fog to you. I can't tell you how many times this has gotten me killed as a stealther.
• When entering the zone, or a league in the zone, prompt the player whether they want to turn on Prompt Teleport. An incan, without fail, pulls somebody away who didn't want to be teleported (because they were exploring or doing whatever).
• Stop resetting the level shift completely when the minotaur respawns.
• Remove the mob spawns around each of the motes. Especially the Fury mote.
• Grant a 1 hour temporary stealth power toggle to all in zone after defeating the minotaur, so people can get the motes on their own if they miss the Incan.
• Add more tools and fix some current tools with the league organization system:
  • Ability to change Team 2, Team 3, etc leadership (Promote X to Team Leader).
  • Ensure that Team order is retained when a player is moved around.
  • Add the ability to have a custom message or 2 or 3 repeated every X Y or Z minutes.
  • Chat channels that the league leader can use to send a message directly to Team 2/3/4/5/6, without the people having to join those channels
  • Add the ability to change the Team Number - ie: move Team 4 to be Team 2.

[Glacier Peak]

Feedback is feedback. Since you added some suggestions to address your concern, I'll respond to these with my opinion.

 

2 minutes ago, noket said:

• Significantly improve the minotaur defeat rewards. People aren't turning up for the current rewards, they're too weak/undesirable.

 

The defat of the Minotaur is not the conclusion of the raid, it is not the end of the Labyrinth of Fog. The rewards for the Minotaur are balanced for how easy it currently is to defeat. At the same time - what are you comparing it to? Hamidon raids? Mothership raids?

 

Coming from the least populated server, we have on more than five occasions, defeated the Minotaur with less than 7 Level Shifts and fewer than half a league of players. Due to the ease of collecting Fog defeats to stack Level Shifts, the ability to instantly teleport anywhere in the zone where a leaguemate is located, and due to the 200 locations that the Fogs can spawn, and simply due to more players knowing how to run a Labyrinth of the Fog league, this portion of the raid is far easier than when it was released a few weeks ago. All that to say I don't agree the Minotaur defeat rewards should change. I will also add that each Fog defeat grants a Reward Merit itself and there are currently five Giant Monsters that spawn every 3-4 hours on the Violet floor which enables further Reward Merit collection.

 

7 minutes ago, noket said:

Add the ability to make sure people can't teleport through the fog to you. I can't tell you how many times this has gotten me killed as a stealther.

I can understand the reasoning behind this suggestion, however, this runs counter to the established design of the Labyrinth - being lost and not being able to defeat enemies with a player's league would result in less players participating in the raid. 

 

14 minutes ago, noket said:

When entering the zone, or a league in the zone, prompt the player whether they want to turn on Prompt Teleport. An incan, without fail, pulls somebody away who didn't want to be teleported (because they were exploring or doing whatever).

This suggestion can already be achieved by players selecting to prompt team teleport in their settings.

 

15 minutes ago, noket said:

Stop resetting the level shift completely when the minotaur respawns.

So players can maintain a +10 Level Shift and immediately defeat the Minotaur on respawn? No thanks.

 

16 minutes ago, noket said:

Remove the mob spawns around each of the motes. Especially the Fury mote.

I can support this somewhat. 

 

17 minutes ago, noket said:

Grant a 1 hour temporary stealth power toggle to all in zone after defeating the minotaur, so people can get the motes on their own if they miss the Incan.

There is a base temporary power crafting station in the Midnighter Club for players to use if they desire additional stealth. I've observed 85ft of Stealth is sufficient to move past all mobs, outside of those who ignore stealth (Eyeballs and Drones).

 

18 minutes ago, noket said:

Add more tools and fix some current tools with the league organization system:

• Ability to change Team 2, Team 3, etc leadership (Promote X to Team Leader).
• Ensure that Team order is retained when a player is moved around.
• Add the ability to have a custom message or 2 or 3 repeated every X Y or Z minutes.
• Chat channels that the league leader can use to send a message directly to Team 2/3/4/5/6, without the people having to join those channels
• Add the ability to change the Team Number - ie: move Team 4 to be Team 2.

I'm confused about this - this sounds like the League UI you're describing and not necessarily about the Labyrinth of the Fog zone. Players can already change around leaguemates, make players leaders, move players around, speak in League chat. 

[Ridiculous Girl]

it's fine, i like it, quite a bit truthfully. i run in a league frequently because they are fun and chaotic. it's choatic, but often that is because there are always new people coming in and it is not like any other event in-game.

 

the seed of hamidon is another zone event with a GM that requires a league and some coordination, and it awards 5 merits, 3 monstrous aethers, a badge, and a temp power. what are the rewards for this? they're not bad in comparison... plus there is +25% exp earned.

 

it makes sense that it resets to zero once the minotaur revives, that prevents people from prepping the zone in relative safety and then jumping him with a small crew and +10 level shift.

 

i am back and forth having a dedicated fog team since they earn less exp from kills. but i cannot think of any time that i have had someone TP to my own my stealth seeker, unles i have called out for fog help. the labyrinth is a dangerous place anyway, i expect to die either by my mistake or someone else's, often.

 

league organization has always been like herding cats. this is has how it has always been in COH, it's a mess, but i do not think that labyrinth of fog makes it any worse. it's the same as always, difficult and messy, it's part of the game.

 

people running motes during a mino league rather than after is bad form, but that is something that a league leader can manage though. either by telling the league or warning the player directly and booting them if necessary. that is event etiquette that needs to be learned though, players just need to be educated, either the easy way or the hard way.

 

if you do not want to run a league, don't. i hate doing it, running leagues is not my cup of tea. unless there is absolutely no one else willing. but if in someone else's league you have to run by their rules or lack there of. maybe that is part of the problem?

 

for what it's worth, it is a good event. i think it is definitely setting up for further, similar, future events, and i look forward to those too. 🙂

 

Edited August 17 by Ridiculous Girl
fixed a few typos... :)

[Ridiculous Girl]

29 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Coming from the least populated server, we have on more than five occasions, defeated the Minotaur with less than 7 Level Shifts and fewer than half a league of players.

i have been a team of 8 and defeated the minotaur, so it is possible. we weren't even trying to do that, it just sort of worked out that way. where we had enough level shifts and a full team that we said "why not?" when the mino showed up. 😄

[noket]

42 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Feedback is feedback. Since you added some suggestions to address your concern, I'll respond to these with my opinion.

 

 

The defat of the Minotaur is not the conclusion of the raid, it is not the end of the Labyrinth of Fog. The rewards for the Minotaur are balanced for how easy it currently is to defeat. At the same time - what are you comparing it to? Hamidon raids? Mothership raids?

 

Coming from the least populated server, we have on more than five occasions, defeated the Minotaur with less than 7 Level Shifts and fewer than half a league of players. Due to the ease of collecting Fog defeats to stack Level Shifts, the ability to instantly teleport anywhere in the zone where a leaguemate is located, and due to the 200 locations that the Fogs can spawn, and simply due to more players knowing how to run a Labyrinth of the Fog league, this portion of the raid is far easier than when it was released a few weeks ago. All that to say I don't agree the Minotaur defeat rewards should change. I will also add that each Fog defeat grants a Reward Merit itself and there are currently five Giant Monsters that spawn every 3-4 hours on the Violet floor which enables further Reward Merit collection.

 

I can understand the reasoning behind this suggestion, however, this runs counter to the established design of the Labyrinth - being lost and not being able to defeat enemies with a player's league would result in less players participating in the raid. 

 

This suggestion can already be achieved by players selecting to prompt team teleport in their settings.

 

So players can maintain a +10 Level Shift and immediately defeat the Minotaur on respawn? No thanks.

 

I can support this somewhat. 

 

There is a base temporary power crafting station in the Midnighter Club for players to use if they desire additional stealth. I've observed 85ft of Stealth is sufficient to move past all mobs, outside of those who ignore stealth (Eyeballs and Drones).

 

I'm confused about this - this sounds like the League UI you're describing and not necessarily about the Labyrinth of the Fog zone. Players can already change around leaguemates, make players leaders, move players around, speak in League chat. 

 

Many of the things you're asking about were covered in the body of the post. The summary points at the bottom are just those - summary points. I'll respond to your points once you've read through my reasoning on why the LoF isn't an enticing thing for large leagues to do.

[Glacier Peak]

9 minutes ago, noket said:

Many of the things you're asking about were covered in the body of the post. The summary points at the bottom are just those - summary points. I'll respond to your points once you've read through my reasoning on why the LoF isn't an enticing thing for large leagues to do.

Thanks for the thumbs down. 

 

When Hamidon is defeated, it grants 80 Reward Merits (on first defeat). If you are comparing defeating the Hamidon and expect the same rewards for defeating the Minotaur, you are comparing apples to car batteries. The more apt comparison is another Giant Monster, such as when U'Kon Gr'ai is defeated, it grants 6 Reward Merits (comparable to other Giant Monsters like Deathsurge, Caleb, the Arachnos Flyers, Eochai, Jack in Irons, Paladin, Jurassik, Kraken, Kronos Class Titan, and Babbage). This comparison is strictly regarding defeating the Minotaur - however, the suggestion is completely missing the fact that the entire zone has an increase in both experience AND influence for all players, by 25%. Does any other content in the entire game increase influence granted to players zone wide? So take that in to account and come back to me with a response that can articulate a comparison that includes all of the rewards offered to players.

[lemming]

Couple notes:

Yes, having someone port to me while I'm being stealthy is annoying as heck.  Not sure what the best solution is to that.

 

I'm not sure about the getting booted from the Lab on respawn.  Made it annoying since we were prepping some fogs when we found out that started happening.

 

Losing the level shifts is needed.  Otherwise, you just grab your +10 and port into the arena just before respawn and whack the Mino immediately.

 

League management does suck and hopefully someone is looking into fixing it.

 

Motes and badges should happen after the Mino defeat because otherwise, that's all you're doing.    What I found best was people that already had done the Mote stuff, could hang by motes for people to refresh while the league forms, but once formed, go for level shifts, beat the Mino, then deal with everything else.

[arcane]

The rewards for minotaur seem 100% reasonable. 

[noket]

36 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Thanks for the thumbs down. 

 

When Hamidon is defeated, it grants 80 Reward Merits (on first defeat). If you are comparing defeating the Hamidon and expect the same rewards for defeating the Minotaur, you are comparing apples to car batteries. The more apt comparison is another Giant Monster, such as when U'Kon Gr'ai is defeated, it grants 6 Reward Merits (comparable to other Giant Monsters like Deathsurge, Caleb, the Arachnos Flyers, Eochai, Jack in Irons, Paladin, Jurassik, Kraken, Kronos Class Titan, and Babbage). This comparison is strictly regarding defeating the Minotaur - however, the suggestion is completely missing the fact that the entire zone has an increase in both experience AND influence for all players, by 25%. Does any other content in the entire game increase influence granted to players zone wide? So take that in to account and come back to me with a response that can articulate a comparison that includes all of the rewards offered to players.

I still don't think you read through things, even in this reply, which was why I gave the thumbs down. Why should I respond to someone who hasn't read through all of the arguments presented?

 

I mentioned several points, with regards to the XP. People aren't turning out for the XP. There's no interest in it. Thus, saying the zone has an XP boost is a moot point. The mino, unlike many other bosses, requires much longer to prepare for defeat, and is much more deadly than any of the GMs you listed. So yeah - the mino still needs better rewards.

[Glacier Peak]

1 minute ago, noket said:

I still don't think you read through things, even in this reply, which was why I gave the thumbs down. Why should I respond to someone who hasn't read through all of the arguments presented?

 

I mentioned several points, with regards to the XP. People aren't turning out for the XP. There's no interest in it. Thus, saying the zone has an XP boost is a moot point. The mino, unlike many other bosses, requires much longer to prepare for defeat, and is much more deadly than any of the GMs you listed. So yeah - the mino still needs better rewards.

Still missing the message it seems. No point in continuing to respond if you are not willing to read through the response. It is clear that the rewards for the Labyrinth are well-balanced and offer players far more than just XP, including Reward Merits, influence, badges, and more for those who are willing to seek them out. Good luck with this suggestion.

[Lunar Ronin]

The real issue is that the rewards for Hamidon raids should have been cut in half years ago.  Trying to compare anything else to them is folly.

[Cobalt Arachne]

I'm reading all the feedback, and will be making a plethora of potential adjustments, many aimed at helping larger leagues.

 

- There's a new area being added that's more tailored to infinitely grinding EBs after the Minotaur is defeated; This wider open space is aimed at bigger league sizes (3+ teams).

 

- An Incarnate salvage roll being added to the Minotaur reward table, for those with no interest in Aether.

 

- A method to track which Minotaur weapon defeats you have.

 

- Balance wise, some adjustments towards making it easier to acquire shifts from fighting enemies.

 

There were several elements we had limited test data for in beta when it came to large league performance and rewards, simply due to the larger effort of organizing them on the test servers, and thus they went out undertuned.

 

Otherwise, I've been in lots of live Minotaur clears myself, and have been hard at work making changes aimed at improving things based on what I've experienced.

 

Additionally, I'm intending to do a Dev Diary regarding the Labyrinth's design and creation and that should help clear up a lot of the reasoning behind XYZ.

 

Lastly, I've prototyped an LFG version of the Labyrinth that's aimed for Issue 28, Page 2 that should give raid leaders more tools, including advantages such as zone-wide defeat rewards that instanced content receives.

This instanced version will work a little differently from the zone version, but should improve the content's availability.

 

I'm intending to continue supporting this feature, so expect on-going improvements! 🙂 

[arcane]

22 minutes ago, noket said:

I still don't think you read through things, even in this reply, which was why I gave the thumbs down. Why should I respond to someone who hasn't read through all of the arguments presented?

 

I mentioned several points, with regards to the XP. People aren't turning out for the XP. There's no interest in it. Thus, saying the zone has an XP boost is a moot point. The mino, unlike many other bosses, requires much longer to prepare for defeat, and is much more deadly than any of the GMs you listed. So yeah - the mino still needs better rewards.

It already has way better rewards than the average GM…

[noket]

I directly addressed the core point of your agument, not exactly sure how you perceive that as not reading through your response but sure .. you do you

1 hour ago, Glacier Peak said:

This comparison is strictly regarding defeating the Minotaur - however, the suggestion is completely missing the fact that the entire zone has an increase in both experience AND influence for all players, by 25%. Does any other content in the entire game increase influence granted to players zone wide? So take that in to account and come back to me with a response that can articulate a comparison that includes all of the rewards offered to players.

I also addressed the point about comparing the rewards to hamidon and other GMs - namely, the amount of time it takes to prep for beating the mino is often equal to or greater than that of similar bosses.

[ThatGuyCDude]

A toggle power the player could activate on the pop-up bar: "Shrouded in the Fog" that makes them an ineligible target for "Follow through Fog" would help with the stealth aspect of the league.  Being a toggle, it would get deactivated when the stealther dies and could be popped on or off at any point as needed.

The League window's team order is indeed frustrating and needs some work; mainly the ability to anchor team numbers as described.  If it's possible to add something like this, as well as dedicated 'Team1/Team2/.../Team6' channels, it would be a welcome change.  I think in order for that to work, the membership of the individual team chats would need to include at least the League leader (but preferably all six team leaders) as well as the members of the team in question.  I'm not sure in the UI where the buttons to quick-access those channels would go; maybe to the right of each team in the League window?

I'm on the fence about the league leader being able to promote team leaders in other teams, though.  On the one hand, it helps with the bewilderment of pick-up players who don't know how to pass the star.  On the other hand, it lets the League leader specify the exemplar level of every team, potentially to that team's detriment.  Can't make league changes that only apply to max-level areas, so it unfortunately opens a door to griefing that is difficult to close... unless there's some sort of pop-up vote timer "League leader wants to make your team's captain <Username>, do you agree?  (Approve) (Deny) <10.00 seconds remaining>" with it requiring unanimous approval or no response (a denial preventing the change and locking out the option from the League leader for say 2 minutes).

I totally get your frustration.  I wasn't even league lead and I was running into the same problems: people kept popping in needing "Blue" or "Purple" or "White" motes and I'd have to stealth back to each spot to fill them in, only to make a last call and then hear somebody else say "Hey, I need <color> mote".  It was especially annoying with Purple because I'd specify that they need to activate flight before coming to me, they wouldn't, they'd plummet into the mob of enemies below that I wasn't able to clear alone, and then perish.  A wider range of enemy-proofing around the motes would be greatly appreciated, especially the Orange one which is always a hot teleport.

[Laucianna]

I can only give my experience in running these events, they may not be true for you and your experience but I want to give my feedback on this:

The rewards are inferior to other events that can be done in-game.

It's rewards for running it once a day is greater then a Hamidon raid, running it more then once a day lowers that profit to being just above a MSR, which to me is a perfect position ❤️

Once the minotaur respawns, level shifts are reset and everybody is booted out of the LoF.

I agree this is annoying but for me it doesn't ruin the event just adds a bit of annoyance to it 🙂

The motes/badges/gladiators are highly distracting to a league.

A good way to go about it from my PoV is to assure the league that you will have time once the Minotaur is defeated to collect the motes for the badge, for the Gladiators Mino fights are the best way to get them so remind them that getting to mino quicker means more Gladiators per min for them.

For pick-up leagues, there are simply too many moving parts to run a league.

Is there? Even for kill leagues you have two roles, murder and scouting, same as MSR has murder and pulling, or Hami has murder and tanking (A lot of them want that murder part don't they 😄 )

The tools provided of actually organizing the Leagues are lackluster.

I think that is more of a general game issue then a LoF, as leagues are messy to deal with

[Vanden]

11 hours ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

- An Incarnate salvage roll being added to the Minotaur reward table, for those with no interest in Aether.

 

Might want to replace the 3 Draught of Fog insp reward with a 3 Super insps reward, too.

[DarkRevelation]

13 hours ago, Glacier Peak said:

When Hamidon is defeated, it grants 80 Reward Merits (on first defeat). If you are comparing defeating the Hamidon and expect the same rewards for defeating the Minotaur, you are comparing apples to car batteries. The more apt comparison is another Giant Monster, such as when U'Kon Gr'ai is defeated, it grants 6 Reward Merits (comparable to other Giant Monsters like Deathsurge, Caleb, the Arachnos Flyers, Eochai, Jack in Irons, Paladin, Jurassik, Kraken, Kronos Class Titan, and Babbage). This comparison is strictly regarding defeating the Minotaur - however, the suggestion is completely missing the fact that the entire zone has an increase in both experience AND influence for all players, by 25%. Does any other content in the entire game increase influence granted to players zone wide? So take that in to account and come back to me with a response that can articulate a comparison that includes all of the rewards offered to players.

 

Your comparison is strictly reward based, which does not take into account other factors. What is the time investment and manpower required for defeating those GMs compared to the Minotaur? It is nowhere near the same. I don't know how many PUGs you have lead in the lab so far, but the time investment for someone who does is currently very steep. You don't just get to toss out a few things in league chat and take off. Granted, a lot of this is because it is new and a good bit of people have not invested any time in learning the Lab (at all), but the cost vs reward ratio is not adequate as it stands right now in my opinion, and unfortunately others as well. It takes a good bit of time to explain what needs done, why it needs done, how to do it, and when to do it. I love the zone and am very thankful for it, but it is not a simple tank and spank like your aforementioned GMs. It is going to take time to explain this to people, organize the run, do the run, and then all of the administrative tasks afterwards, which I will cover later on. 

 

I helped run one last week and I don't know how many times I was asked if this was really worth it. When I asked why didn't they think it was worth it, I was told the same answer by everyone. 'Yes we are getting more XP/INF but it is slower, and the rewards suck'. These were all lvl 50s who don't care as much about XP/INF past a certain point. A lvl 45 in there is all but carried. You can do that with a few 45s, but not too many. People want things to make their characters bigger/faster/stronger/different, and not just for that zone. Something needs to be boosted if you want people to use it and I'll explain. 

 

Take the Mapserver event a few months back. I swear some people would have kicked their grandmother down a flight of steps to get a spot in some of those raids. Why? Obviously the boosted XP from 1-50. We run Hamidon raids on Torch twice a day, 3-4 runs per raid, and most are close to capacity seven days a week. Why? The amount of reward merits has people there two hours a day every single day of the week. The cost of their time versus the reward of that amount of RMs spread out over alts drives that level of attendance. Love it or hate it, some people use AE to level/farm, even after multiple nerfs to XP/inf in those missions. I'm not going to go into why I think it is used so much, as it is a hot button topic and not for this thread. Regardless It is used extensively, and all day every day. We do iTrial runs twice a week, and they fill up. Again, the (chance) of getting something meaningful to improve their characters via incarnate materials. Not just a single chance at getting a shitty 'Enchanted Sand' either; multiple runs so the odds of not getting screwed by a having a 'Detailed Reports run' even out somewhat. Incarnate rolls are nice, but getting a common multiple runs in a row is like getting socks for Christmas. No one wants that shit. I mean its better than Aether/Primals to me, but not by a lot. I don't care one bit for aethers/primals; some do though. Adding a single incarnate roll is better than nothing for the Lab, but I can hit those other iTrial runs and have a much better chance at getting better incarnate items by sheer volume alone, and in less time than it takes to do the Lab in almost all cases, save for UG, and that currently would still be faster than the Lab. It isn't going to be enough to entice people to come in. I don't think it will even be close. The only thing in the game that I know of that has pretty good rewards but most people stay the Hell away from are the Shadow Shard TFs when they are the WST. It ain't worth it, no matter the reward in that case, i.e. time investment and aggravation.

 

What I have seen so far is that people come in wanting the badges, and they cut out shortly after a few minutes of fighting mobs. The loss of shifts/levels means that they start taking damage at a higher rate. Even if you kept on going grinding mobs in the Lab after a Minotaur kill, the degradation of the level shifts from fighting mobs alone means you still need to hunt MalFogs to stay ahead of the curve. It looks like that is being addressed hopefully. The issue is that grinding mobs right after the Minotaur kill is not how things are being done, especially in a PUG. You have to factor in the amount of time it takes after a Minotaur kill right now to explain where XYZ is, and these badges are here/there/everywhere, motes, etc. Hopefully that will ease over time, but it will not if people don't use the zone. Right now people want the badges more than anything that I have seen, by far. That will eventually dry up and isn't sustainable for the zone to keep people coming back. We managed to retain enough people afterwards on the last run where we were able to grind mobs for 30 minutes, but that left only 30 minutes for the badges/motes, which is cutting it close shuttling people around, especially with most not core attuned. Unfortunately these were also the people who asked if this was really worth it, and they are the ones who stayed. The others just ducked out when things got tougher. 

 

If I had any asks for this zone I would ask that the XP/rewards/merits/something be boosted to make it notably worthwhile where people want to come in, and not just for the badges. I would also ask that the time be extended between the Minotaur death and its re-spawn, say two hours instead of one? It would allow more people who are unfamiliar with the zone to come in and look around and see that it is an awesome place without our buddy hunting them down in 3-5 minutes. It would give a raid more time to do all of the administrative things post-Minotaur kill, like badges/motes/etc. and still allow for time to run through the zone grinding out mobs. I am very thankful that I explored on the test server when I could kill the Minotaur with the test server tools, so I could get a better feel for the place. I don't know how much I would be doing in the zone had I not been able to see what all that I saw there. I love the zone. I go in there on my lunch break and stealth around and play keep-a-way with the Minotaur. It is its own mini-game for me. I hope that more people will come in and see how awesome it is. We need some help though to get people in, and keep them there beyond the badges. 

 

[DarkRevelation]

10 hours ago, ThatGuyCDude said:

A toggle power the player could activate on the pop-up bar: "Shrouded in the Fog" that makes them an ineligible target for "Follow through Fog" would help with the stealth aspect of the league.  Being a toggle, it would get deactivated when the stealther dies and could be popped on or off at any point as needed.
 

 

 

That is a really, really good idea. 

[Glacier Peak]

6 hours ago, DarkRevelation said:

Your comparison is strictly reward based, which does not take into account other factors. What is the time investment and manpower required for defeating those GMs compared to the Minotaur?

It took years to get that Hamidon strategy down to a simple, anyone can do it series of commands. It still took years of time to perfect so that players can run it in 30 minutes to an hour. Giant Monsters were actually designed for multiple 8 person teams when they were originally released in to Hazard Zones before they could be soloed in minutes. The strategies for the Minotaur are in their impetus and will continue to be refined as the community finds more efficient ways to defeat it and take advantage of the rewards in the zone. As I said in my first reply to this thread, the Minotaur is not the conclusion of this zone, it's just one of enemies that provide a reward to players while they're in the zone. Fogs drop Reward Merits too! 

 

Having been on a Minotaur defeat yesterday where 3 players knew what they were doing and the other 6 were new, and being even Level Shifted with the Minotaur, I'd say that's pretty indicative of where the strategy is headed since it's already so easy to do. These were pick up teammates, not a coordinated effort in advance. It took 30 minutes to explain how the zone worked and what needed done. Then we did it. Now those new to the zone players will understand next time and it will go even faster. Do you understand now?

 

Paraphrasing from Cobalt here, but the Minotaur's HP scales to size of 12 players at minimum, even if you have less players on the team. That scaling reduces his regeneration by an amount to offset the increased HP total (to keep his regen the same). Without the level shifts, the Minotaur is just a Level 54 AV, which is easy enough for a team of 8 to handle (or less).

 

Edit: Screenshot

Edited August 18 by Glacier Peak

[Seed22]

20 hours ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

I'm reading all the feedback, and will be making a plethora of potential adjustments, many aimed at helping larger leagues.

 

- There's a new area being added that's more tailored to infinitely grinding EBs after the Minotaur is defeated; This wider open space is aimed at bigger league sizes (3+ teams).

 

- An Incarnate salvage roll being added to the Minotaur reward table, for those with no interest in Aether.

 

- A method to track which Minotaur weapon defeats you have.

 

- Balance wise, some adjustments towards making it easier to acquire shifts from fighting enemies.

 

There were several elements we had limited test data for in beta when it came to large league performance and rewards, simply due to the larger effort of organizing them on the test servers, and thus they went out undertuned.

 

Otherwise, I've been in lots of live Minotaur clears myself, and have been hard at work making changes aimed at improving things based on what I've experienced.

 

Additionally, I'm intending to do a Dev Diary regarding the Labyrinth's design and creation and that should help clear up a lot of the reasoning behind XYZ.

 

Lastly, I've prototyped an LFG version of the Labyrinth that's aimed for Issue 28, Page 2 that should give raid leaders more tools, including advantages such as zone-wide defeat rewards that instanced content receives.

This instanced version will work a little differently from the zone version, but should improve the content's availability.

 

I'm intending to continue supporting this feature, so expect on-going improvements! 🙂 

Neat, I didn’t expect an instanced Laby so soon but I suppose the tech was there with instanced MSR. Maybe one day it could mean instanced Hami? Who knows!

 

But yeah for a first launch lab’s alright. Kind of a shame mobs are almost entirely ignored though. Was honestly expecting it to take the place of radios for mindless beatdown time but I guess not. Also I think the XP buff may be borked? 

[Cobalt Arachne]

20 minutes ago, Seed22 said:

I didn’t expect an instanced Laby so soon

Neither did I honestly!

But it turns out with how flexible Lua is compared to SZE / hard coded scripts, that converting the existing Labyrinth script to run on LFG was actually a lot simpler than expected.

 

That being said, the LFG version required numerous elements be pruned in order to function / load at all, as instances have less system resources than dedicated zones, and the Labyrinth of Fog pushes the CoH engine to it's upper limits.

 

I will fully detail the LFG Labyrinth when it goes to test, but many of the non-raid / exploration elements (motes, secrets, gladiators, orange floors) had to be removed from the zone to get performance up so it could run on LFG, something that raid leaders might argue makes the instanced version "superior" specifically for raids, as all those non-raid-related distractions will be gone, and all Influence/Experience earned will be zone-wide. Reward Merits will instead drop as a lump sum from the Minotaur, with Malevolent Fogs serving solely as level shift points in LFG.

 

The goal was to provide the raid experience in LFG, and I'm feeling optimistic it should deliver.

[Cobalt Arachne]

35 minutes ago, Seed22 said:

Also I think the XP buff may be borked? 

I'll check on this... That bonus was working at one point, but last time I verified that was before it went to test.

[lemming]

2 hours ago, Seed22 said:

But yeah for a first launch lab’s alright. Kind of a shame mobs are almost entirely ignored though. Was honestly expecting it to take the place of radios for mindless beatdown time but I guess not. Also I think the XP buff may be borked? 

I think part of the issue is that the groups in the Lab are tougher than the groups in radio missions so it takes a more mindful approach.  And you can't power level a new character in the Labyrinth.    I don't think that's a bad thing, just probable why.

[Mezmera]

Honestly I think it's the non unique rewards holding it back after the initial shine has worn off.  You would hardly see anyone run a 4star Aeon until they added all those PAPs and adjusted the rewards.  Which if I wanted those kinds of rewards atm I'd rather run one of those or a Apex/Tin Mage.  

 

Not everyone cares much for badges or costume overlays.  I still think there should have been a new event enhancement set some kind of universal damage or a universal armor set that you could only get through redeeming labyrinth merits for kills to a vendor there.

 

It was neat the one time I went, there's better things to do with my time in game.