Eiko-chan

Oh, I don't know, sometimes I suspect it is at least a little bit about what Arcanaville wants it to be.

I play villains. We don't get access to anything Rularuu-related (well, a few tips; haven't had any real trouble with them that I don't have with other groups, such as Longbow and PPD).

I'm not really sure how much Vanguard and Cimerorans exist beyond standard difficulty, except inasmuch as Vanguard Wizards and their cheat power. I suppose Cimerorans might to the extent that not many other groups have as many debuffs as they do.

The way the system advances (at least if it continues the current trend throughout) is fine. That all content designed to be tackled by Incarnates seems to be team- (and challenge-, and "tactic"-) gated is not. I'd like to see Incarnate story arcs, not just Task Forces. Something for our Incarnates to tackle by themselves, some threat that would have outclassed regular heroes (but without the cheap mechanic designed to create this in Apex and Tin Mage) but that is right up the alley of Incarnate characters.

Victor Ross's story arc is actually a really good example of something that should have been an Incarnate arc (balanced, ideally, so that the final showdown mission doesn't require a "cheat" power to work). A new Incarnate contact, one who does not require a Task Force, would be the ideal.

Hints that such is coming, however, have thus far been non-existent. The hints we've been given for forthcoming Incarnate content has been "Trials", which by precedent in the game is teamed content. I see no reason to believe that they are planning on adding anything else (the "Incarnate Trials" have been the central hype in every communique,) and shall not act on an assumption that they are without evidence.

I've been "sucking it up and dealing with it" for twenty years (as a gamer) or forty years (personally), whichever way you meant this. I "suck it up and deal with" living in an extroverted world every single day. I've "sucked it up and dealt" with games becoming more and more focused on "challenge" (as well as "realism" and "shooting") for the past twenty years.

And frankly, I'm sick of having to bow to extroverts and challenge seekers. There's worlds and worlds of things out there for extroverts and challenge seekers already. One of the main points (not the main point, not the only main point, but one of a handful) that draws me to this game and keeps me with this game is the fact that it was unlike the rest, that it actually catered to ease and solo-play (solo play doesn't have to be easy, and easy doesn't have to be solo; these are separate things). I've seen franchises, companies, and genres I love morph, "evolve", and die many, many times, and of late the trend in the video game world has been towards conformity, towards making everything the same.

City of isn't there yet, but the steps they've taken in development of the Incarnate system have, thus far, seemed quite clearly to be steps towards that. I'm open to being pleasantly surprised by i20 content, and I'll be the first to praise Paragon if I'm wrong about it, but what I've heard and seen so far has not given me cause for hope.

I do not want to see this game's end-game be like every other game's end-game, where the idea is "tactics", "challenge", and "teams/raids". City of has, thus far, avoided that path, and I will not "suck it up and deal with" yet another game I love going down that same old path everyone else has trod before.

I've had quite enough of having to "suck it up and deal with it", thank you.

So fight for your desires. But don't expect me to lay down and accept them when they are contrary to mine.

For an introvert, there is no such thing as "casual teaming". Teaming is always going to be an extreme game play for me, and there is no design way around that. But I allow for the teaming experience for the extroverts out there, and even indulge in it now and then myself; so long as Director 11 and Battle Maiden remain anomalies, I can live with the team content as is (as I tried to be very clear with explaining before). But not with exclusively team content. Such development would be tantamount to trolling the introverts and other soloist this game has spent six years cultivating and catering to.

If the future content for my signature character shall henceforth be nothing but team content, then the devs will be literally giving me nothing. The design of this game thus far almost demands solo Incarnate content; having a largely-solo game suddenly become a required-teaming game at the level cap is simply an unacceptable direction; it's a nonsensical progression. As characters grow in power, they should require less help, not more.

Heretofore, I start with a character that runs solo at +0x1, and solo grow up to a power level where I can run at +2, or x8, or some other combination of greater power all alone. To suddenly hit Incarnate content and require a team of eight (or, worse, a team of eight equally capable) characters to tackle the new threats is simply not a logical progression of power.

As it exists now, the Task Forces are not regular content; they are "special events", things requiring a team of supers to tackle. If Incarnate content is nothing but Task Forces, they cease to be special events and become the main story - a team of heroes teaming up every week to tackle some enemy. That's fine for learning or oppressed groups like the Teen Titans or the X-Men, but it's really not suitable for the heavy hitters, like Superman, Green Lantern or Batman. When the Justice League bands together as one to tackle something, it's a big deal; if they start teaming up every other Saturday to tackle something, suddenly it's far more routine.

To keep the team content special and feeling epic, it by necessity must remain a minority of the content - at all levels. Otherwise, our "god-like" Incarnates have suddenly been downgraded and now need help to do anything, when before they could (quite literally) take on armies single-handedly.

Believe me, Sam, I'm on your side. I'm the one championing your cause in the thread attached to that newsletter.

Would you be satisfied if all Incarnate content, from now until forever, was team content? Would you be satisfied with Apex and Tin Mage being the "easy" version of Incarnate content, and not examples of the apex (pun intended) of Incarnate content?

Just because this one step wasn't a step too far for you doesn't mean they're not still headed in a direction that won't be acceptable to you in the future. They've taken steps towards making this game's "end game" very much like the end game of other MMOs (in particular, the granddaddy of them all and the 800-pound gorilla); while they're not there yet, do you want to encourage the development of this game to ultimately end up there?

You completely and utterly missed the point. If the game spent the next two years adding nothing but 'high end raiding', it would spell a clear and decisive path for the future that was casual-unfriendly. It really doesn't matter what the game has done in the past; we're talking about the game's future.

Telling people that want casual stuff "You've had that for six years, now it's our turn" is completely missing the point. The point we casuals are making is "You have every other MMO in the world, leave ours alone."

Casuals are not the ones being selfish here. Folks wanting this MMO to be like all the others are, because apparently they're not satisfied with the hundreds of other choices they have and want to take away the one choice we have too.

I wish I could use the words that truly describe my feelings about this. It's hard to express such outrage I feel with polite and politic words.

GG, I know you think you're being helpful, but you're clearly an extrovert. Introverts can actually empathise with extroverts because the culture forces your point of view on us, so we have no choice but to do so. But you clearly simply do not understand what introversion is.

It's not a defect, it's not a deficiency. It's simply a difference. We are not inherently inept at dealing with people (many introverts that are are so largely due to lack of practice), we are not incapable of dealing with people (I work a help desk. I get paid to deal with people, and am surpassingly good at it, if my performance reviews of the past five years can be believed), we simply are drained by doing so.

Extroverts are recharged by going out and mingling with people; interacting with groups, friends and strangers all get an extrovert pumped and relaxed, making them able to continue on with whatever tasks they need to expend their mental energy on. Introverts are the reverse; dealing with people drains us, and we have to recharge by withdrawing. That difference doesn't cripple us - it's just a difference.

Just like some people train for marathons for fun, play sports for fun, or engage in any other tiring activity for fun, an introvert can interact with people for fun as well (I do it all the time). But just like no one can run a marathon constantly, an introvert cannot interact with others constantly.

With as much as modern American society enforces the idea that extroversion is the only norm and introverts are somehow broken, we are often forced into that interaction even when our reserves are already drained. Forcing us into that is a lot like forcing an exhausted marathon runner to run another mile - you're not helping any one, and are very likely to be doing active harm.

I know you mean well, but seriously: stop it. You're not helping.

I think they are. Even the monstrous/small claws lacks the dewclaw in the back, IIRC.

Primal Eiko just kills without reason or trial, but she's a psychopath.

Praetorian Eiko only kills those that threaten the peace. Never had to execute anyone (it's not "execution" if they're trying to shoot you back).

I knew you'd come around, GG. We all know why you really don't want dear Cole hurt.

An introvert myself, I can completely understand the raid mentality. I don't think there's any level of familiarity and comfort that can make a raid comfortable.

But just like people that run marathons for fun, we can learn to team up for fun, now and then. Not as a staple of our play time, assuredly, but if you get a consistent group together, teaming up can be quite enjoyable, at least for the duration of a single TF or a few missions. Familiarity helps; making sure you run with the same people each time is a large part of what makes it easy for us, because we're not constantly expending that "Getting to Know You" energy we do when meeting new people.

Like all sorts of exercise, it takes practice to really become easy, but it can be worth it if you feel up to it. Or not. The nice thing about CoX (at least so far) is that nothing requires a team to achieve (reward-wise; some content is obviously team-locked), so teaming is optional.

I have two Incarnates (and another two waiting for me to care to play them enough to get the shards to fill their unlocked slots) already, that I got through soloing and light TFing.

"Challenge" is the issue here; my VG still fails the occasional ITF/LRSF/BSF. Not everyone I play with can solo x8 content or AVs (like I can). "Challenges" that require not only a team, but a team of Incarnates each capable to tackling challenges above and beyond the standard +0x1 difficulty themselves are going to be content I cannot access.

Thus far, the only such content in the game is the Hamidon raid (thus only because I have no desire to ever be in the same place and working with 50 people simultaneously; as an introvert, that level of interaction would simply be far too tiring and stressful to be something I'm going to do in my spare time) which was added so long ago as to belong to a different era altogether (the Mothership raid requires less coordination and less interaction. Being a large scale war, you actually can just charge in and bash things (once the shield is down) enough to still rank as "participating".)

Nothing else in this game requires a team of highly skilled and coordinated players - nothing requiring even a fraction of such needed by the monster MMO that I quit playing because its endgame required such five years ago - to complete (though some of the content already exists at a level that it is by no small means a surety that it will be completed by any team that tackles it, as the highly casual players I team with can attest.)

The addition of such content is not something I welcome, relish, or desire. If nothing in the game ever existed beyond the "difficulty" of the Barracuda Strike Force (or the Lord Recluse Strike Force, or the Imperious Task Force, whichever you wish to view as the capstone content), I would be overjoyed.

The direction shown in i19 for end game content - something I'm not just going to ignore, because there is no reason I should have to ignore any content in this game; I haven't had to for six years, why should I have to start now? - is not one I welcome.

Tin Mage is ... okay, if you take out Director 11, who is just patently ridiculous. Apex is ... meh. The hydra pylons require specific builds or strategies, something mostly unprecedented and greatly unwelcome, and Battle Maiden is just a gimmicky "phased" fight of the sort that drove me away from other MMOs. Neither is an ideal direction I would like to see the game travel in.

More content along the lines of the ITF/LRSF (Barracuda would be okay if Reichsman had about a third the health he does; the ambushes and the temp powers to deal with them are actually pretty interesting, but beating down Reichsman is less so) would be welcome. More content along the lines of the Apex or Tin Mage Task Forces, however, would not.

Also, the justification used by Silent Blade in one tip mission: "This is my home and I'd rather not see it destroyed."

Those two are mutually exclusive. In all content design ever created, off- and on-line, multi- and single-player, "challenge" and "inclusive" have always been mutually exclusive. If you're the first dev team to pull it off, I will be surprised; so far, Apex and Tin Mage do not seem to suggest you have.

I pay to play this game because it doesn't feel the need to push the envelope of "challenge" and put out more and more content accessible to less and less of the player base. I want to make that perfectly clear: I play this game because it is "easy", because there is no content I cannot tackle (and even some of the existing "easy" challenges I still fail, because I don't run with an elite group). Changes away from this will affect my enjoyment of the game, and potentially my subscription to that. Please keep in mind that I am not the only player like this - just one of the few that vocally speaks about it on the forums.

I can appreciate the desire to deliver some of the "challenge" so oft clamoured for by others, but I'm not going to sacrifice my enjoyment of the only MMO I've ever loved for their sake, and I hope you decide you won't either.

My Bots/Traps' Aid Other heals for over 400 - that's more than a "top off", that's life-saving levels of heal for any of her bots. It works quite well to keep them alive most of the time.

I used to have Repair, but I dropped it because it recharged too slowly, took too long to activate (it's not interruptible, but the animation has to reach the bot before the heal hits, which often leads to the bot dying before getting healed) and really never paid off. Aid Other, on the other hand, makes her useful to teams as something other than "the other team teaming with you guys", gives me something to do between traps, and overall works better at keeping bots alive. It's also nice for keeping the Protectors concentrated on healing Battle Drones and not each other.

I have a crush on Jonathan Frakes, and that translates to Eiko having a crush on Jimmy Temblor. Being a villain, she thinks the solution is to kill Fusionette, then Jimmy will be hers.

I deleted my Merc/FF around level 22. It was just doing nowhere. I have yet to roll another Merc/ or /FF, and have no plans on doing so. I'd rather play a Kin than an FFer (and I'm one of the rabid anti-SBers on the forums.)

You stop that. Jimmy's mine (just as soon as I manage to actually permanently get rid of that Fusionette chick.)