Wing_Leader

You are basically asking for what I call alternate/multiple "solution vectors". In other words, multiple ways of accomplishing a particular abstract goal. As it is, nearly every mission, TF, and trial in the game has fixed objectives in the specific, rather than larger objectives in general where the means of meeting those objectives are left to the creative strategic thinking of players. At best, the more epic "Boss Fights" are glorified tactical skirmishes where the goal is merely to figure out how to survive long enough to overcome the boss with overwhelming damage. Of course, since "end game" toons are frequently min-maxed within a % point of perfection, the only tool left to the devs to make these bosses any sort of challenge at all is to gift them with cheat powers: unresistable damage, autohit attacks, full DEF/Res debuffs, impenetrable defenses with a single Kryptonite-like defeat mechanism (Pacification Grenades, Void Storms, etc.).

I think the devs feel pushed into a corner because it takes extraordinary design talent to make missions that are challenging to the min-maxers without it being impossibly hard for the more casual players and their average toons (and while everyone's Incarnate abilities are created equal, not everyone knows how to reach softcaps with set IOs and Accolade powers). The gimmicks they are resorting to reveals a number of things, at least to me:

• They think that WoW-style raid mechanics "work" and are fun, even for the superhero genre. 12 million players can't all be wrong, right?
• They can't figure out how to make missions that work for teams with a wide disparity in functional power.
• They think leagues of 24 heroes fighting a single god-mode boss is consistent with superhero comic book storytelling. The Hamidon raid was the original manifestation of this thinking, but we could mostly dismiss that as a singular curiosity; the one truly aberrant bit of content in an otherwise very good superhero MMO.

I realize that they are trying to tell a large "story" with this Incarnate stuff, not unlike the Who Will Die signature story arc. Each piece of the puzzle will seem like an odd bird on its own, and may even feature "small" bits of storytelling, like the extraordinary efforts Incarnate-infused AVs are going to in order sway public opinion in Praetoria (it is what BAF is all about, it is what TPN is all about, and there will probably be more of this element in trials to come). I suspect that the devs feel we will come to appreciate the overall arc once it has all been released and we can see how each piece fits into the whole. But I think such a delayed payoff is a dangerous (in terms of risk of losing them as subscribers) way to toy with the VIP customer base.

I believe that there are other game-design options, it's just that they haven't been explored very deeply in CoX. In effect, CoX is trying to walk a weird line between the two you mention: we have repeatable trials and TFs, and we have these clunky "level shifts", a concession to a desire for something resembling level advancement even though the fragile code base clearly can not support first-order level cap increases. But I believe that the LGTF, and its consequent Rikti-themed zone incursions, point the way to exciting possibilities. It's too bad they haven't really done much else in that vein (the Banner "events" don't really count, IMO, since they aren't the result of other players' actions).

I did? Where? You do realize I'm not the OP, right?

I would also add:

• More big tech/robotic options. The number of strictly spandexy options already far outweigh everything else in CoH today, which feels okay to me when being compared to, say, barbarian fashions, but given how many heroes and villains in the comics sport at least some bit of bulky tech/robotic gear, I don't think it would hurt to expand on that stuff even more. More stuff like the Enforcer Heavy set, for instance (helmet options seem especially lacking).
  
• Jet/rocket packs as back options. I really like the Raptor Pack, but I'd like to see more of such things, turned into back costume options.
  
• Boots/shoes that go to (only) calf-height. As it stands now you either get shoes that cover the feet, leaving the rest of the lower leg exposed, or you get full-length boots that go all the way to the knee (and above). Even the two variants on socks are either ankle-high or knee-high. There's currently nothing in between.
  
• I will echo all the previous requests for masks and cowels that make the eye holes covered (and ideally colorable).

While that kind of alert text would certainly help, I think that is just masking the real problem; treating the symptom and not the disease, so to speak. Sure, the immediate problem is players not knowing exactly what to do, when, and most importantly, why. But the root cause of this is a poorly conceptualized trial system. Rather than make trials "idiot-proof", it is better I think for trials to cultivate non-idiot (i.e., informed) players in the first place. Moreover, a properly devised trial mission should be such that players should be capable of arriving at their own tactics for victory, and not utterly dependent on the Macguffin-like glowies and temp powers that are required in order to make the AVs damageable. There isn't a single success vector that allows players to take down AVs by means other than direct damage.

Take the acids and grenades, for instance. You aren't told until after you acquire them what purpose they serve, and so there is no logical reason to go after them. In fact, I contend that players wouldn't even bother to do so if Lambda's phase two wasn't entirely based on mindlessly acquiring them, giving you nothing to do but watch a timer expire otherwise. However, if a pre-trial "briefing" was available that explained the acids and grenades, then players would go in already knowing that acquiring them had benefits that they could fold into their attack strategies. But as it is, the whole thing is just a big set of rail tracks that the league rolls along without any room/opportunity for deviation. This is only fun if you like figuring out puzzles with but one solution, or you like seeing lots of DirectDraw visual fx fly around on screen. But it isn't particularly fun if you enjoy collaborative creative problem solving.

It makes me wonder if there is a perception at Paragon Studios that lots of CoX players are former WoW players who willingly spend 6 hours running a single raid instance in the hopes of getting that one piece of armor to drop, where one false mouse click and the whole team gets wiped in short order, goes off to spend hundreds in gold for gear repair, and then goes back in for another try. I mean, by the standards of WoW raids, 60-minute UGTs that fail, leaving no component rewards for anyone, are hardly worth even a squeak of protest.

I considered that, but then I remembered that not every league is composed of the necessary distribution of ATs for The One True Optimal Path to Victory. The benefit of having multiple success vectors is that it allows leagues to adjust their approach to match the abilities present (or absent), or to adjust to another approach if things aren't going according to Plan A. Having viable Plan Bs, Cs, and Ds is never a bad thing, IMO.

That notice is useless if it doesn't result in a visible effect that (a) I can discern the cause/source of, and (b) come up with a solution for. Maybe my game client was borked somehow, but I saw nothing else to attack, debuff, taunt, or otherwise attend to other than Trapdoor himself. I saw no visual indication that he had changed or was doing anything other than fighting as he was doing before. In short, I had no other usable indicators telling me what needed to be addressed, or that I needed to be doing anything other than simply continuing to pound on him, which was of course futile. When I saw I couldn't put a chip in his hit points, I looked around for another target to take out, a glowie to destroy, anything. I saw nothing in the room with me. Nothing. Consequently, when I went back to deal with him again after that, the only tactic at my disposal was to try even harder to take him down before that mysterious notice came up and I was again faced with an unkillable enemy.

What's worse is that they've blessed ordinary citizens with the ability to damage my level 50+3 Incarnated brute with rocks and crowbars. There are some seriously brain-damaged notions at work in these trials...

Well, I think there are many ways to approach the idea of "more difficult"; essentially we are talking about the very heart of game design itself. The devs have taken one particular approach, one consistent with the approach taken by devs of other MMOs, and it is proving to be fun for some and highly frustrating and unappealing by others. Where that split falls for COH players overall I don't know, but that seems besides the point to me. A better goal, I think, is to find a design that appeals to everyone.

Part of the problem, I think, is that the trials make you win only on its terms. So, the first part of the so-called challenge is figuring out what those terms are. Then the second part is arriving at a plan that, when executed more or less perfectly, manages to navigate the narrow path of success provided by all the constraints placed on the situation by the trial's gimmicks. It's not like there is a whole lot of room for thinking "outside the box" because the box itself is impenetrable from within.

You can't, for instance, prevent the Avatar of Hamidon from firing off its Confusion; you can only hope to protect yourself against it. You can't turn Mother Mayhem's Suffer In Silence against her. There's only one way to shut down each Keyes reactor, meaning there is no room for different approaches to solving that problem (in essence, shutting down the reactors isn't an obstacle to be dealt with, it is a fixed objective you are required to complete, and in a particular order, no matter what else your brilliant strategic mind may come up with). There are simply too few vectors for solutions--in fact there is usually only one.

The huge advantage that tabletop RPGs have in this regard is that the adaptability of the human GM means that there are potentially infinite solution vectors available. But rather than think of ways to make objectives have multiple approaches, and have more things be obstacles rather than requirements, these trials will always feel gimmicky and one-dimensional. We aren't really encouraged, or even allowed to do any creative problem solving, we are merely required to figure out the tricks to the solution and, like a computer program, simply execute each trick in sequence like so many CPU instructions.

I have only solo'ed this arc twice. Once with a scrapper and once with a brute. The first time I tried it, my DM/SR scrapper couldn't take down Trapdoor, and that was because I didn't know anything about the clones. I didn't see any clones anywhere, so how was I supposed to know they would be a factor? I tried again after reading a bit on the forums, learning of the clones (still have never seen one), and just took Trapdoor down before he could bifuricate; at least that's what I'm assuming I did because I was able to take him down. The same thing happened with my StJ/WP brute. Just took him down before he became unkillable.

But I can definitely see how this would be nearly impossible for a non-melee toon, or any toon lacking high dps and high defenses. My scrapper and brute needed nothing more than the SOs and regular inspirations they had on them at the time. My Rad/Rad defender, on the other hand, only got through it by recruiting the help of my friend's scrapper.

However, I feel this is really just how COH has always been in general. If you aren't playing a scrapper, a brute, or something like a Fire/Kin controller, you will probably have trouble soloing most of the content, especially when it gets to the level where every enemy group has some sort of nasty mez effect or three to hit you with. It has always been about generating high dps and having high enough defenses to survive attriting the mobs, especially the EBs and AVs. The devs may claim that this or that is soloable by any AT, but I feel that is just a big fat lie most of the time.

And I was on a LAM not long ago where the trial failed because there were simply too many adds. The dangers of not closing the doors and not having a league full of +3s I guess. Surely neither the devs nor league leaders can realistically expect everyone to be capable of (or willing to attempt) what amounts to an ad hoc MO Lambda.

It is interesting that "speed" Lambda seems to have different definitions. In every SLam I've been on, it meant skipping the mobs outside the facility and ignoring the turrets. It did not mean skipping the acids/nades and, as a consequence, leaving the doors open and Marauder enraged the whole time.

I like the idea of the league leader (or someone experienced with the trial) taking all the acids and closing the doors themselves. Lately I have tried getting everyone to count off their acids while we wait for 18:00, and in nearly every case I get a count of only 7 or 8. How is that possible when we got all 10 chambers destroyed during the previous phase? I almost always see the fight with Marauder happen with anywhere from 2 to 4 of the doors left undestroyed. How does that happen?

I can understand newbies not knowing what to do with the acids. I even understand newbies who haven't learned to leave two or three slots open in tray 1 for these temp powers. But does anyone not understand how to respond to: "Please check your trays and power lists for acids and give me your count." ??? If trials can fail because enough players don't have a grasp of the fundamentals of temp powers (just in general--how to find them, how to drag them to an accessible tray, how to use them), then something is wrong, either with the design and expectations of the trials (by the devs), or with the understanding of the game that players acquire by the time they reach L50.

Someone mentioned the problem with players who do 1-50 by doing nothing but DFB, and consequently know next to nothing about how their toon's power sets interact with situations other than the few presented by DFB, and even less about more "advanced" concepts like protecting NPCs, using temp powers, destroying objects, enemy mob control, etc. In effect, DFB has done nothing to help prepare players for the Incarnate game experience, and I suspect this problem is only going to get worse as time goes on.

This mechanic strikes me as a design cop-out. It is one thing to make high-risk dangers something a league has to consider in its tactics, but I'm not sure I see the value in making unavoidable trips to the hospital one of them.

Well, insofar as the level mechanic works at all, I'm not sure I see the problem. Making the enemies higher level is a time-honored way to make them more challenging. This has been true, I imagine, since the dawn of the modern MMO. If you are, perhaps unwittingly, pointing out the problem with a level-based system in general, then (a) I would agree with you whole-heartedly, and (b) suggest that it is a subject for a different thread, simply because of the vastness of its implications.

I knew this was coming long before I ever stepped into my first iTrial. Everyone on the forums talks about two set IOs more than any other: LotG +7.5% rech, and Karma -KB prot. It doesn't take long before one realizes that frankenslotting at least two of those Karma suckers is absolutely required for the iTrials. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing I leave to greater minds than mine to debate. I figure it is what it is. *shrug*

There will always be newbies who don't know what to do. There will always be veterans who know what the league thinks they should do, but do something else anyway because they feel they know better (and sometimes they do, but they don't get the necessary support to pull it off just right). And there will always be people who are just plain clueless and never figure out how to conduct themselves in the various trials, no matter how many times they do them. It is the nature of teaming in general, and large teams (leagues) in particular.

Sure, the trials could be designed with a little more wiggle room for mistakes and less-than-optimal play, but then these would fail to live up to the expectations of all the players accustomed to WoW raids (because clearly that is the raid model the devs think we all want from the trials).

Human nature. Immaturity abounds. I just try to ignore it and hope that the next league will be better. *shrug*

Yes, indeed. This is where we get the wonderful concept of "grinding" from. It seems to be an inescapable fact of life in an MMO. No other design philosophy is possible, apparently. And we are unlikely to ever get anything different. I know that sounds hopelessly pessimistic, but in 15 years of MMOs, we have yet to break out of these tired old paradigms established by Ultima Online and EverQuest, and "perfected" by WoW. As long as the "grind" continues to draw subscription fees, why in the world would the game devs ever change it?

I absolutely agree with that last sentence.

I'm on the fence with regard to the second and third ones, though. I mean, this is in many ways the same challenge all superhero comic book artists face today. They are tasked with designing a new character (or a new costume for an existing character), and they have the fundamental "spandex aesthetic" to fit into, but must still come up with some degree of freshness or originality. I guess that is where real artistry/creativity comes in. To create something brilliant within a set of restrictions, usually genre-driven. Creativity without some imposed limitations is a little too easy, from an artist's perspective anyway.

So if comic book artists can do it, then surely COH players can too!

Indeed, maybe Ada didn't have that big an influence after all. In my estimation, it certainly can not be credited as having changed how an entire profession did/does its job.

Moreover, I still think it is odd to call it "ADA's big philosophy" since most of what Ada encapsulates conceptually is just the culmination of ideas already put into practice for years, whether formally or informally. It seems more honest to simply say that various "best practices" evolved over time, culminating in a language called Ada, which was then applied to one particular corner of the discipline, and then promptly ignored by the rest of the profession in favor of other great concepts du jour like Rapid Prototyping and Extreme Programming.

Well, I did say real-time. Never said life-critical. Our systems had to be real-time because no airport in the world wants their operations slowed down for a machine that looks for plastic explosives. Maybe if they looked for vibrators in flight attendants' luggage, but nothing short of another terrorist incident involving a bomb on a plane was going to make real-time performance--even at the cost of detection accuracy--anything but the very top priority.

We weren't involved in the aircraft industry. We were involved in the airport security industry.

I think this gives too much credit to Ada. Those concepts were well established within the discipline long before Ada became a ratified standard. Back when software design encompassed much smaller applications, fewer interacting modules, and much simpler hardware architectures, ideas like standardization, code re-use, and self-documeting code were easy to institute on a company-by-company basis. No governing body was required, nor was it available. By the time Ada came to the show, it had already started and was well under way, so to speak.

The product (line) was a series of X-ray machines that detected the presence of plastic explosives (and more comprehensive bomb-like devices). If the fact that they were coded in C and C++, by programmers of all skill levels from extraordinary to barely competent, keeps you up at night wondering if you really should fly anywhere ever again, I don't blame you.

And, no, the FAA did nothing of the sort to mandate production practices on anyone in that particular branch of the airline security industry. We were not government contractors to the FAA or the US Government. We were merely a vendor that the airlines bought product from. All the FAA did, and it took them almost a decade of constant harrassment from the very Congress that mandated them into action following Lockerbie, was institute a dubious process (defined mostly by politics, not quality performance criteria) for certifying systems purchaseable by airlines in the US.

You do realize, don't you, that you are merely arguing with yourself at this point because you are disputing things nobody here said. That is the definition of a straw man argument.

Well of course. Congratulations on winning your straw man argument. I happen to agree with your above statement, at least on the face of it. If that sounds strange it is because you've chosen the wrong target to aim your guns at.

I never said, or meant to imply, that the four-color superhero genre, which COH was always designed to represent, ONLY contains heroes in tights like Superman. Since I never said that or intend to argue that, you might as well stop trying to discredit it.

Agreed.

Now, if you read carefully, nowhere did anyone say that the game should exclusively represent the four-color spandex-wearing superhero. That is an imagined bit of hyperbole invented by those who merely want an easy argument to shoot down.

What I am actually saying is that all those "other" elements should not become more commonplace than in the source material if a proper sense of genre identity is to be preserved. If you believe that is the same as saying they should be eradicated from the game, then you have a reading comprehension problem. And if you think the Marvel or DC universes have an equal number of characters in main title roles that look like Skurge the Executioner as look like The Martian Manhunter, then I feel you are being disingenuous about the bulk of the content in those superhero universes.

I assume that in TPN you are never assigned to Telepathist duty, right?