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Given that everyone gets super mad that things get tome gated in anyway it isn’t surprising that instead they build out quests to take time with expected bottlenecks.

I noticed this as well when we were doing the Hush quest. You and I using Le Monarque often killed invaders before they got any of our team, and it was usually just the two of us actively hunting the invader.

I feel like too many people still see the invader as too intimidating and just want to run and hide. That’s fine if you have a bunch of motes and the rest of the team backs you up, but when the whole team scatters and hides, you’re just allowing the Invader to set the terms and pick you off one by one.

My favorite thing to do when Gambit Prime first came out was bum rush the invader with Acrius because if you got close enough it easily one shot them. So I totally agree with you, most of the time the invader doesn't see it coming when you go on the offensive.

If I had to boil it down to 1 specific trait that makes or breaks a team's chances in Gambit, I'd say its all about Foresight.

Players and teams that understand the structure and flow of the match will usually win over teams made up of players who are more single-minded and operating through tunnel vision. I almost made a video last week called "How to lose a Gambit match in the first 2 minutes". I started the match by grabbing a quick 10 motes, rushed to the bank, immediately went to the next wave of ads who were just spawning, grabbed another 5, ran back to the bank and deposited, then grabbed the heavy ammo which had just spawned. I looked up and saw my teammate, carrying 10 motes, heading towards me. I thought "Perfect timing... he'll bank, I'll invade with the heavy ammo and catch the enemy team holding a whole bunch of motes.". It was like clockwork. But my teammate didn't bank. He ran straight past the bank, towards the enemy spawn. My other teammates were picking up motes as well, but none of them banked. They cleared up that wave, then went straight to the next enemy spawn point, oblivious to the fact that the other team was now banking their motes, leaving me to struggle with 2 large and 1 medium blocker by myself. My teammates carried on until the other team sent over an invader, who managed to score 2 kills, costing us almost 30 motes. We never recovered.

More on topic, being specifically aware of when the enemy team is going to invade, and where the invader is likely to come from, makes a huge difference. There aren't that many invader spawn points on any of the gambit maps... so getting in place to cover those angles is usually quite manageable. You just need those few seconds to get into position and cover your sight lines.

Something struck me about this portion of the quest. At face value, killing an invader before they score any invasion kills sounds intimidating, and a lot of players are less than thrilled about it. But I think its actually a great little training exercise for Gambit players.

I completed the majority of the Lumina quest with an LFG group yesterday. By the time we reached the Invader Kill requirement, there were only 3 of us left in the group. So we jumped into Gambit to see if we could coordinate and get it done quickly. The thing that jumped out at me right away is that shutting down an invader is actually quite easy when all or even just most of your team prioritizes it. Our Blueberry was often running around doing his own thing, but between the 3 of us, we were all able to get our shutdowns in a single match, with a couple of us dong it multiple times before the end of the game. We weren't going up against a weak team, either. They put up a good fight, and managed to get 1 or 2 invasion kills on a couple occasions. But overall, they couldn't overcome the 3 of us prioritizing our loadouts, positioning and sight lines so as to be ready for an invader the instant they came through.

I didn't read the requirement carefully yesterday; for some reason, I thought it was tougher than it was. When I realized that to finish the quest step, all you needed to do was kill a single invader one time before he did any damage to your team (well, and do it fast)... it became a LOT easier, psychologically.

I jumped on for a single game this morning, playing with randoms, and finished it. (For what it's worth, I prioritized my loadout for invader kills, but ended up finishing the quest step with a nova bomb.) Killing invaders quickly isn't particularly hard, and you only have to do it once.

Side note: looks like the last step (Xol strike, destroy all crystals) is bugged. I decided to give that a shot after the gambit match, and my first game spawned me in to a game in progress... in fact, a game that was over. I spawned behind the last locked door (which was locked) while the dialogue made it clear that as I was spawning, my teammates were collecting loot from the ending chest. I didn't even get to go into the final space. I requeued, started a new strike, killed the crystals in the first outside area, headed inside, shot one crystal, and the gun dropped. I have no clue how the math was done, just that I didn't come CLOSE to destroying all the crystals, and as far as I can tell, neither did my teammates.

As far as I know, it isn't particularly broken... just very easy. You only need to break 11 crystals, total, as a team. There are something like 40 crystals throughout the mission. In your case, maybe something funny happened due to the join-in-progress, and it counted the 2 conditions out of order (you finished the strike, then broke your 11th crystal on the next run?).

Yeah, that is specifically prohibited in the description of the quest step (on the quest itself). You're told that you have to do all of the steps in a single run.

::shrug:: I'm okay with the outcome. :)