Trial-palooza

[Niteflier]

Well. I just want to say that this, right here, was a wonderful idea. I'm glad I got to be a part of it.

BAF was a fun, easy time. Lambda was the usual stealth/die-my-way-through-the-maze. Keyes... Well, we had heapings of bad luck for stage four. Still enjoyed it. UG, well, for my very first time through it, it was fun. Got turned around a bit sometimes, and the massed confusion was a bit annoying, but overall, quite a fun long challenge.

Then theres TPN. My review of TPN is in spoilers, cause, well, there's a lot of capslock:
RANT WARNING!

Spoiler

I'm still not sure if it was because I was tired from nearly four straight hours of Trials, or if I just didn't get what the instructions being relayed were. Don't hit the civvies, go for the terminals, just cycle through the buildings. Oh, and don't worry about the MINIONS that ONE-SHOT you. At all. Because that's what I remember most about this trial. the Minions. That deal more damage to me that my max health. Now, I know I'm not spec'd for a high health. As a controller, I don't really feel I have to be. However, once I start getting ONE-SHOT by MINIONS, I feel there' something slightly wrong. Yes, I understand that we were under a constant debuff from the 'pacification'. But what sense is there in that debuff could drop my res down that far? This is not even going into the mode for the trial, which, unlike the previous ones, has you doing the EXACT SAME THING six to ten or MORE times! We probably went through those buildings seven or eight times doing the exact same thing the exact same way. In Keyes, you do something three times, in NEARLY the same way. That's not so bad. But when you have to do it the EXACT SAME WAY more than two or three times? That's the hallmark of bad scripting. What determines the 'Public Opinion' score anyway? Is that ever explained? And Maelstrom. Don't really have a problem when he shows up. But what kind of craptastic power does he have when he can force half or more of a trial to break off and go into hiding for 15-30 seconds? One of the few times I wasn't tagged with Marked for Death, I noticed that everyone seemed to abandon Maelstrom for a good 15 seconds leaving just Demo (who I think was tanking him) and maybe one other to keep on him. I can't understand why anyone would find this Trial fun. At all. While yes, it does have a few interesting quirks to it, they are either not fully explained, or implemented in such a way that is annoying or frustrating. So much so that several times when in the 'raise public opinion stage', I died inside of a building, hospitaled, got notification to go to the next building, and died on its doorstep. I looked through my logs. I died more times on TPN than I had in the first four Trials combined.

I can't say that TPN is fun. At all. I hope I never have the requirement to do it again. I do want to say that Yes, I'm tired, and Yes, this is my first, fresh impression of it. I still don't think I'll ever do it again.

RANT OVER.

Anyway, Ops? This was a great idea, and I hope we can do it again sometime!