Dante

As a proud father of a two year old girl, this thread has always been an inspiration to me and I hope that one day I can team with my little un in the same way.

So far she's sat on my lap and made my characters jump up and down by hitting the space bar but I'm doing her best to train her out of her latest habit - pressing the big red ON/OFF button while I'm in the middle of TFs.

Glad to hear that everything is still going well.

I made a suggestion about three years ago for a costume expansion pack (this was shortly after the first booster pack IIRC). Here:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...hlight=costume

As part of it, I also suggested this:

As for the OP...



Threw these together over dinner.

All of these are meant to be level 50 TFs with foes set at level 54, the same as Apex and Tin Mage. They are locked as Incarnate TFs but the contact will tell non-incarnates that they’re too weedy rather than some daft mumbo jumbo, anti-non-incarnate invisible debuffing ray. They’ll also drop shards and maybe threads.


The Captain Apollo Task Force (Heroes only)

Mender Lazarus has contacted you. It is time. A meteorite has been spotted, headed towards Paragon and although it is likely to break up in the upper atmosphere, Lazarus is convinced that it is a portent of the Coming Storm. In order for the onslaught to be averted, heroes must travel into space and take out each meteorite before they enter the Earth’s atmosphere.

Heroes must first secure the weapons required to destroy the meteors from the warheads in Warburg which means going head to head with the Rogue Arachnos there and their commander, Marshal Blitz. After which they must secure the launch pad which has become besieged by Malta who appear to be following their own secret agenda.

Once in space, heroes are granted a temporary flight pack power that covers them in a force field space suit and allows them to fly between the meteors as they speed towards the Earth. On each one, the heroes will fight Shivan powered enemies each with a unique boss. With no human bodies to work with, the Shivans can be seen in their true form, showing their true powers. However, their commanders do seem to hold a human body in each of them and are a horror to behold. The Shiva Strike team has finally been found…


The Sergeant Slade Strike Force (Villains Only)

The Freakshow, tired of being put upon have decided to seek out new sources of power. Declaring war on the Council, they are determined to seek the power of the Nictus shards for themselves. The Council, of course, are repelling them as best they can but it has led to running battle across the Isles. Villains are contacted by one of Arachnos’ enforcers determined to clamp down on this uproar and offering sizeable rewards for anyone who can help.

However, once the villains encounter the Freaks, they discover that they are already too late and have created a new breed of Nictus empowered Freaks already thirsty for more. They have begun assaulting the Coralax, decimating them with their newfound power. It is discovered that the Coralax have been building an underwater coral city off of the coast of Sharkhead and the Nictus powered Freaks have followed them there. Villains must fight an epic battle in the Coralax city where they discover that the Coralax have their own secret weapon: a crashed Shivan meteorite which they have been using to empower themselves and reawaken the Leviathan.

The final fight will have villains facing down the Shivan empowered Coralax leader who is turning into something… else. They must then defeat Dreck who, both bonded with a Nictus and having absorbed Shivan energy will be a very tough fight. And that’s before they must descend into the depths to destroy the meteorite before it awakens the Leviathan. The fight against the meteorite, which constantly spawns Pure Shivans takes place underwater with villains receiving an underwater breathing buff (and temporary flight/float ability) while they try to destroy the crashed meteorite.


The Sigil Task Force (Co-op)

(Lifted shamelessly from a plot I ran with my SG last year )

Darrin Wade has completed his nefarious plan and is planning to align several dimensions with the Shadow Shard. When aligned, Rularuu will be able to use them as stepping stones from the Shadow Shard to arrive in our dimension. The power from each of the dimensions will be enough for Rularuu to unite his fractured mind and unify once more before descending on each dimension in turn and devouring them whole. By the time he arrives at ours, he will be fully recovered and ready to enact his revenge upon our world.

In this dire hour of need, the Midnighters call on the strongest of heroes and villains to unite once more and take the fight back to the Ravager and his evil accomplice. Heroes and villains must travel to each of the dimensions and destroy the dimensional anchors that Wade has put in place there before defeating the villain himself. However, with the power of five dimensions flowing through the chain, every powered individual within the dimensions is empowered beyond their wildest dreams and have become mightier than the gods themselves. Characters will have to fight through Axis America, Praetoria, the Clockwork dimension and the world ruled by the Devoured Earth before finally taking the battle to Rularuu himself in the Shadow Shard before he can absorb enough energy to unify himself.

On each world, the foes have gained incredible strength and the only way to defeat them is to unify with the heroes of those realms to defeat the threat to their dimension. On reaching the Shadow Shard, heroes and villains will have absorbed much dimensional power through their exposure and will temporarily reach new heights of power that will enable them to fracture Rularuu’s identity once more.

The OP asks a good question so I’ll do my best to answer. Given my dissatisfaction with what we’re seeing of the endgame system so far, I’ll try to keep positive. For designing the endgame, I would try to stick to a few simple principles.


Fight in Epic Locations

Just another warehouse isn’t going to cut it. If this is endgame stuff, we should be taking the fight to strange, new locations we’ve always wanted to go. We should be fighting on the Moon, in jungles, on the Rikti Homeworld, the Shadow Shard, the heart of Oranbega. Places we’ve never done before. How about a fight in outer space where we all get temp spacesuits and have to fight while floating in the void? Or have the scenery be destructable as in mayhem missions? What if the scenery had strategic value? Or areas where the mobs gained in defence and regen and had to be taunted/knocked/scared out of the area?


Fight Epic Foes

Who we fight as Incarnates should be worthy of the battle, not some old rehashed boss with the new Well-powerered Turbo-Boost stuffed up their ying-yang. Let us fight Rularuu. Not an aspect, actually Rularuu. He would be worthy of a 48 man team, not some forgettable AV we already punched up before level 50. Have Nemesis unleash a massive, steam powered machine or bring forth new Devoured Earth monsters. Get Malta to send a tank against us. Not a robot, a tank that drives around the map and mows down anyone stupid enough to stand in its way. Have the Rikti call down a mothership or Baron Zoria call up some demi-god from the demon world.

And make them huge! Giant Monsters serve no purpose in the game at the moment, let’s make them a serious threat. Let’s see Malta use the Zeus Titan so we can cheer when it crashes to the ground. Or have the Rikti send up space ships and flyers so that we can have epic air battles!

Give the mobs interesting new abilities. I like Sky Raiders for example where targeting the Engineers and Porters is a priority. Or Nemesis where Lieutenants and Bosses are best left till last. Something that stretches players’ tactics. The IDF I’m afraid are not really that interesting, there’s nothing about them that is different from fighting any other robot army.


Make Morality Count

I like being a hero. But I like being a villain too. And the theme of heroes and villains banding together to take on a larger threat has been used far too often for level 50 content. If I chose to be a villain and chose to use my power to squash Recluse into the ground and tell him to stick his Destiny Project, I don’t want to have to become a sub-hero in order to progress. Some team up, fine. But don’t make everything co-op, that’s just lazy. Do something different for a change. Make the Shadow Shard accessible to Villains but give them different objectives. Not a PvP zone, but just one where heroes have one set of goals and the villains have others.

If things have to be co-op, let villains get slightly different objectives within a mission. Or have missions where the villains’ tactics mesh with the heroes’ long term goals, even if they don’t like the villains’ methods.


Unlink the Advancement Mechanic from the Storyline

Yes, I know, people asked for a story way to unlock the Alpha slot and maybe this is a lesson in being careful about what you wish for. But the whole system? It flies in the face of customisation and individuality. When levelling, I can choose to run tips, AE missions, Task Forces, story arcs… I have many, many options on how I want to play the game, not just solo but team based too. Linking the whole system to just one sub-par storyline crushes choice and accessibility and panders to only one part of the playerbase. If the devs want this to be an accessible system, give us choice in how we tackle it and don’t penalise us if that choice does not mean playing with the latest shiny mechanic.


Options, Options, Options

Consider an Incarnate character with all five current slots filled. They will have an AoE attack, a team buff, an attack debuff and pets. All of them. Where’s the individuality? The creativity? As annoying as PPPs and APPs might be, they do a good job of rounding out a character. Squishies get some defence, melee ATs get some range. It allows us to further define our characters in ways that the AT system does not. My Fire Blaster doesn’t need another AoE to be awesome just as my D3 Defender doesn’t need more buffs to rock a team. I’d love to see more power pools open for different ATs, giving them a better chance to be how their creators envisaged them. Would this potentially turn into City of Tankmages? Maybe. Would I trust the Dev team to be clever enough to prevent this? Absolutely.


And that’s just off the top of my head.

Ignoring for the moment all the (IMHO quite silly) legal discussion, I do have one more thing to ask should Zwillinger still have the endurance to read this thread. Namely, as someone who is more than likely to lose their global (even if Trials are excluded) will we be able to request a forum rename as well?

People know me through my global and my forum name so if I have to change one and create a new global identity, it'd be good if I could change the other for consistency.

I do sympathise with the OP. Right now, all the Incarnate content makes me want to do is go and play something different. And that’s a first for me. To me, what I’m seeing from the Incarnate system is a huge disappointment. I am glad that people are enjoying it and good for them I say, play the hell out of it. But for my part, the whole system just screams ‘Not For Your Kind’ at me.

CoX has always been about options, it’s one of its greatest strengths. But the content that’s coming has too many imperatives to it: You WILL grind trials, you WILL fight Praetorians, you WILL have to be a hero, you WILL have lore related powers, you WILL bow before your new god, the Well. There’s no choice there and after five and a half years of playing in a number of styles of my choosing, the Incarnate system demands that I obey. Now it’s not like there aren’t similar requirements such as unlocking contacts or costume pieces but they last a few hours at best and then they’re done. I can fight Nemesis or Carnies or Malta or Rularuu and I can do it through TFs, story arcs, tips, AE or just street hunting. This system only caters for those who like trials. If you don’t, tough, you have a long grind ahead of you and a huge inf penalty for daring to play a different way.

I’ve already said I couldn’t care less for the story either. But in all my time here, I’ve seen players clamouring for something to be done with the Shadow Shard, or for us to fight Mot or go to the Moon, or the Rikti homeworld. Battles with interesting, bizarre mobs in epic locations. Instead we get yet another lunatic with his robot army. (And if you don’t think that idea’s overused, go fight some Council, Fifth Column, Nemesis, Arachnos or Malta and then come back to me.) Not once do I remember anyone saying, ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be awesome if we did more Praetorian content?’ However, the players don’t dictate content or story, the Devs do. But to turn their noses up at those ideas people have been hanging out for and concentrate solely on one area for so long is a waste of potential and a massive disappointment for me.

I get that the Devs want to cap off the story that was started with Going Rogue. Fine. But give us other options. Allow different playstyles and don’t penalise us for wanting to do something other than grind the new shiny until it’s no longer shiny anymore. I’ve maintained an unbroken subscription since 2005 but if all that’s coming in issues 21 and 22 is yet more Praetoria and Incarnate system grinding, the time may be nigh for the hanging up of my cape.

By the way, this is solely my opinion. Feel free to disagree with me. I’m not here to try and convince anyone that I’m right and so far, no-one’s responses have convinced me otherwise. I’m simply stating my feelings on the matter as I believe that I am in the same boat as the OP. Thank you.



(That said, there’ll probably be a snarky reply from GG in 3..2..1…)

I agree with all the good advice above. One word of warning though, if you choose to rp a hardline loyalist that supports Cole despite all the game throws at you, you will struggle when you get towards the final arcs.

I know, for I was that soldier.