Bill Z Bubba

EDIT: Not worth the mod smack.

Yes, you're absolutely correct. There are several areas of the game that having T4 in all 5 incarnate slots became very helpful. Before incarnate powers, fighting Arachnos at +4/x8 was very difficult. Now, not so much.

"I want some rewards locked behind team content" = "I do not want a soloable path to everything" = someone asking for a game to not include something, as you define it.

Here's where I get completely lost. I want the same thing! Have I not said all along, "hey, now, I want access to the same huge power buffs and level shifts they get!"

Granted, I've also stated "I want to ensure I don't get screwed out of those huge power buffs and level shifts because I have zero desire to run around in game with eleven other players."

The way you've been coming across in this thread, I'm in the wrong for demanding fair treatment.

You speak of fairly representing a group of people that you think I don't care about right after I explicitly stated that I have never requested anything that would block the teaming population from advancement or the ability to team. You do this while apparently maintaining the position that preferential treatment (access to power buffs/level shifts/purple ponies/whatever) for one group (raiders) over another (non-raiders) is an acceptable position to hold for no other reason but that it would definitely be part of your game's design and that you believe such a system will always be superior financially.

On the first, what you do with your game is up to you and I truly hope you get to it someday. I'd check it out based on curiosity alone. On the second, there may very well be something in human nature that proves the second belief true, be it based in addiction processes or whatever else. I'm not going to attempt to dig up hard numbers one way or the other. I certainly can't agree that manipulation of humanity's baser processes for financial gain is a good thing but I would also never disagree that it works.

In the same universe that giving those that want team-only-progression-content precisely what they want while waiting months before giving anything to the rest of the group is considered either a fair idea and a good plan for the financial well-being of the game or a compromise of any kind.

There's a reason that I've never asked for solo-only-progression-content: it's a bad idea. It would be unfair to those that play this game to team and hate soloing. I've also never asked for a maximum team size of one for the same reason. I have never, to my knowledge sitting here on my couch at the moment, asked for anything that would actually interfere with the teaming community in this game and their ability to team as they wish.

Paragon Studios/NCSoft stopped getting my money because of their bad decisions. When they corrected the primary issue, my money flowed their way again. This is not the act of some spoiled brat that always gets his way. It's nothing more than the act of a consumer when the product he's been paying for becomes inferior/broken/sub-par or the company behind the product behaves poorly. I don't eat at Chick-fil-a because I disagree with their corporate sponsorship of religion. I don't eat at McDonalds because I want my body to rot properly after I die. Should I behave differently as a consumer of video games?

So again, I ask you, Arcanaville, ye of the +5 in math, the lady I've looked to for insight and knowledge for years, explain it to me since I still don't get it either through ignorance or stubborness:

What's the point of losing income/subscriptions/players when you can easily avoid doing so by making decisions that don't ostracize a sizable percentage of your population?

I fail to see how I've worked against this goal. Everyone that wants incarnate powers wants the same thing: the incarnate powers. The devs offered incarnate powers with only one viable way to gain them: teaming in trials. What the devs did here does not have correlation with what you just described.

Again, there is a goal: incarnate powers. I want them. I do not want trials eliminated. I want them in the game for the people that want to do them. Apparently I am the type of person you want in your playerbase as per the first paragraph. Or are you instead stating that you want a playerbase that is perfectly happy with the concept of "team for this reward because it is the only way I'm going to offer it to you."

Again, I want offline SG invites to my own account. I don't expect to get it but that won't stop me from wanting it. You'd rather I cease paying a subscription to your game simply because I want something you'll refuse to supply?

You're correct: I don't find "my way" at all unreasonable. Why should I? I reasoned myself into this opinion. It's beginning to sound like you honestly expect humans to react positively to the statement: "We're going to give you X benefit/reward/progression but only if you toe the line, play as we tell you to, and do it with a smile on your face." That's not going to happen. Game developers aren't paying me to play their games.

That's a false equivalency that I'm honestly surprised to see you make. The compromise between those that want team-based content-coupled rewards and those that don't would be to have solo-based content-coupled rewards. So where are those? Why aren't those being offered? Where's the 5 incarnate powers that can ONLY be unlocked by a handful of solo-only trials?

A compromise is what we're getting with I-22. Everyone can get the rewards either quickly through team-based trials or slowly through other content. Which has been the case for everything (insert practically/include workarounds/etc) else in this game.

Yes, I think that people who believe that locking rewards/character progression behind team-only content, particularly in a historically solo-friendly setting, have an opinion that is detrimental to the financial success of a game.

I ran the last arc after the last patch. At no time was I pushed into the trial or left with a trial in my mission list that I noticed. Finished DD's arc and that was that.

True that they could have said no but they like money and mine is as green as everyone else's.

As for your design philosophy, I fail to see the point of it. Why piss off X% of your paying population with a "we'll throw yall a bone later" content plan? What's the goal, the purpose, of team-locked content/rewards? How is that compromise?

The majority of the people playing this game are doing so because they like the social aspect of it. Most of these people are going to team most of the time. So what's the *real* reason for the apparent need of developers to push/poke/prod their players into content instead of simply providing it and allowing them to choose the content most appealing to them?

Gratz, man!

It's wrong to request the ability to reach the same level of power/performance as one's teaming counterparts in a reasonable amount of time if the game in question is an MMO? You really believe this? You believe that those of us that requested/demanded/begged for the solo incarnate path were wrong to do so because this is an MMO?

Or am I reading your post incorrectly? I mean... by requesting a reasonable solo path I was, indeed, requesting of this MMO what you've described... and we got it. (Mostly.) Were they wrong to deliver it?

That's probably the nicest thing anyone has ever said about me. Thanks!

My dark/dark blaster is waiting...

May need to... Houtex has a brawl only brute that's almost level 30.

Nerf power pools!

But when has that ever stopped us?


... or them?

This is what I'm betting on. That'll give me about two weeks to determine if the DA path is worth sticking around for.

I believe, and I have no doubt that she'll correct me if I'm wrong (which is why I like her,) that A is stating that by making everything easily soloable others will have an even harder time getting a team together for that Positron because people like you and me will *only* solo it. So while you didn't start it because you couldn't find the pads (something you could have gotten around by utilizing free accounts and the log off trick) someone else won't be able to because they're on a support character and they want actual teammates to run it with but since more are spending their time soloing there's even less population to team with.

If that is what she's stating, I agree. And I've been asking for minimum team size requirements to be kicked to the curb for years. The devs truly are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

That smaller population cuts both ways, it seems. So use the workarounds in place. Positron has what, a minimum 3 players to start? Crank up two free accounts, get all three on a team, start the TF. Have one quit outright, have the other log off. Solo Positron's TF at your leisure. (If you already know about this, cool, but it seemed some in this thread didn't know how this functioned.) Edit: Yes, not everyone can run multiple copies of CoH easily, yes, free accounts can't start trials, and yes, you'll also have to deal with minimum level requirements.

The same thing that happens to the ones that run away but at least those that die facing me get to do so while seeing me smile.

And they really don't like it when those same claws and swords set them on fire for no apparent reason.