ElementalFury

I won't get into the story, I've already vented enough on how much of a crap story I think they have.

Mechanics wise I have one personal issue and a technical issue they should have thought of. My personal hate is how easy it is to fail, if you have a TPK you're probably either going to run out of time, return to find the boss healed and surrounded by 100 adds, or desdemona is going to end up dead before you even load into the hospital. Also every part of every trial except for the openings of lambda and BAF have fail conditions, sometimes multiple tacked on. I can see their reasoning with this...."Well if you fail you can just restart as soon as you exit." I have yet to see a trial team that doesn't instantly dissolve with a lot of cursing involved after a fail. Even worse if you failed right at the end, you just spent a lot of time and effort, almost finished, and still come out totally empty handed (yes yes astrals but those are friggin worthless unless you have like 200-300 of them when you're trying to make high tier stuff) Even the hardest console games usually have checkpoints and continues to at least let the players try new things right where they left off.

The technical issue is difficulty finding enough players, WoW solved this issue with cross server teaming. CoX could use a similar system and it would help to have a system for people to check what they were (tank, dps, buff, debuff, heals) and the LFG tab could actually put together a balanced team most of the time

My problem is the writing, ever since the praetoria story started it's been nothing but dark depressing plot hole ridden crud. I do not like new atlas because the final part of the story goes "Oh well arachnos is invading now because the heroes of paragon have stopped caring and are lazy." Every single one of my heroes is offended by that. Every plot since GR has always assumed the worst of people. Ignoring the atlas park invasion. Not doing anything about the hospital where Mayhem tears girls' souls out to make herself immortal. A single person being able to hide A GIANT METEOR SHOWER FROM THE ENTIRE WORLD! Most of my SG refuses to do FW because it outright forces you into being a grimdark "for the greater good" hero and doing terrible things and then assuming you ignore the place where the crimes against humanity are happening that you even see with your own eyes. By all logic as soon as the vengence crap was settled the next thing any hero would have done is tear that place apart after actually living through what happens in there but instead the writers assume that our characters don't care and completely ignore it for many many levels.

Our SG's heroes are http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph.../BigDamnHeroes
We don't sit on our butts until some blue jerk tells us were allowed to go. We don't ignore half of atlas park in flames. We don't care if 20 prisoners escaped we're finishing the damn job. We don't care if we haven't beaten Marauder in 15 minutes, we'll fight him for 15 hours or 15 days, we don't give up at the drop of a hat like the trials force us to.

Theres a reason the dark age of comics almost destroyed them, I just hope the devs realize that and slap the writers who are steering the game into being a depressing wreck. If you want super dark, gritty and depressing nightmare fuel, go watch Evangelion. I come here to be a hero, not Crazy Steve.

For me the problem is that for each zone remake or new zone since faultline they've only put a single storyline through the whole thing and rushed it horribly. Using faultline as an example, taking out the missions where we go to a contact for an exposition dump there are only 20 missions, and half of those are on tiny one room maps. What's the plot? We chase a plot device that is only connected to faultline because of some back story that gets dumped on us. Then we fix it by handing the plot device to a plot device in a baseball cap. Do we deal with the crazy lost and their prophecy about the earthquake on the moon? (a plot point I can only assume they've tossed in the trash with every other non well related plot) No. Do we do anything about the sewer monsters starting to find their way in? Nope. Do we do anything about the fort the freakshow have set up. Nope. Do we do anything about the crumbling dam and the clockwork hindering reconstruction? No. Do we do anything about the BASE AND AIRPORT that arachnos and the sky raiders respectivly set up right next to the dam? Not a bit. Did we even do anything that involves the dam, THE MAIN SETPIECE OF THE ZONE! A single mission where we let a villian in to find out where Arbiter Sands is hiding that has nothing to do with it other than location. ("Durr I wonder where an arbiter would hide? Definitly not da bases they have set up next door, nope nope nope.")

Flying over FW I noticed 4 main things I expected to deal with. The DUST base (nope), eltontown (extremely briefly), the giant swirling doom vortex (told what it is, don't actually fix it) and mother mayhem's evil hospital base (a single mission then completely forgotten). At the end of the story what have we accomplished? We destroyed half of the carnies, helped eltontown just a little bit, allowed DUST to move back in, reactivated the seer net and trapped one of our allies in that hell on purpose, left the swirling vortex of doom, left the DE and completely ignored Mother Mayhem's evil lair so that she can later enact her doomsday plan and cover it plot armor even though to stop that from beginning all it would have taken was a boot to the door and a liberal application of high explosives throughout the complex. So what did we spend most of our time doing? Running around trying to keep people from giving into anger ("give in to your anger...") and instantly turning evil.......and epically failing at that and needed to kill half the carnies in the process effectively taking them out of the fight for praetoria for good probably.

I fear CoX is starting to follow the path that comics took, it wants to be dark, gritty emotional and angsty. The exact reason I never read new superhero comics as a kid.

"Oh, Iron Man! I've always liked the idea of having my own flying suit of armor!"
*Opens book and goes through 34 pages of Tony drunk and screaming at people while having inner monolouges about hating himself.*
"Screw that."
*Tosses comic and leaves, never turning back.*

We're starting to slide into the dark age of comic books where it's less about heroes and villians and more about how the world is a dark and hopeless place and where more bad things happen than good. And lots of really bad writing.

Personally what got me started was the realization that the mission the shows you your "full incarnate" self is a damn bold faced lie. Since the level shifts mostly only happen in itrials I am -never-going to be able to fight any of the enemies they had in that mission one on one. My blaster is never going to be able to survive more that two hits from those bosses, the version of reactive they give you is almost laughably overpowered compared to the real version. -200 DoT 100% of the time? Hahahaha suuuuure, more like -10 whenever the power feels like working. And I incredibly doubt that they're going to give us a power that makes us immune to damage for any length of time without phasing us out of the fight.

They're the ones who set our expectations up so high so you can't ***** about people feeling cheated when things stay almost exactly the same halfway through after they started it all by telling you that you'd be able to walk up to the crystal titan and kick it's *** single handed no matter who you were.

I preferred it when the well seemed to be just some sort of quick and easy (yet diluted) connection to what was basically spiral power. It's wasn't some sentient vending machine that dispensed powers it had collected from dead gods, it was some kind of inner power that explained why we were getting stronger than the usual NPCs. The AVs hide behind their armies and never take the forefront, the signature heroes only fight things they think are "even" with them. Our heroes are the ones out there fighting everything no matter what, our villians are the ones tearing the bank vault open with their own hands. We pushed ourselves until the power responds in whatever way fit for our character. Martial skill that surpasses all known masters, the knowledge to boost our abilities and plow through armies of minions alone.

Instead we got what we have now, and pretty much any complaint I have has been said. Personally I think Preatoria's story should have been pretty low on the difficulty scale to show how damn powerful we had become. Let us have a moment where we have a slugging match with Tyrant, even with all his god well powers to show how far we've come. Of course the real trial will require us to beat him in 5 minutes with him only taking damage from a single random damage type that shifts every 20 seconds with all other damage healing him.

I'm sick of bells and whistles attached to every damn mission being made. For the finale of Praetoria just give us this http://youtu.be/sKT3RFCggKM and focus on writing a decent plot for the trial instead of sniffing paint to see what retarded gimmick you can think of and cram in next. And for god's sake let him die, I'm sick of all the praetorians limping away due to plot when they should be deader than dead. It's war, 99% of our characters would have gladly ripped Marauder's head clean off at the end or blown a hole straight through anti-matter. None of my characters, hero or villian want to let Cole live. NONE. OF. THEM.

I think the problem is the current writers are putting drama before actual plotting. In newer stories there just seem to be more and more gaping plot holes you can drive a bus through. SSA 3 is most glaring at the moment. "We need to keep this quiet and only involve a handful of people or else he'll launch missiles!" I'm sure there are various other ways heroes could do this but here's my general solution every hero could have access to.

*pulls out bomb*

*places bomb under launch rigging"

*brings rigging down, no way to launch missiles, ta daaaaaa....*

You could have done that in mission 1, after you clear out the room full of rogue arachnos and the plot tells you to run away because http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ButThouMust

The stories have become more and more dependent on "but thou must" crap. I know it's impossible to plan for everything but if your plot can be derailed in a tabletop setting -without- a convoluted plan in 4 seconds, you need to rework the plot.

"You defeated the ambush but now you must flee or else Blitz will begin to launch missiles at the city!"

"I fly over and tear down the launch pad with my super strength." "I use my laser blasts to help." "I set charges at the base of the pad and set them off." Hell even unpowered heroes could have borked everything by just taking a big rock to all the sensitive inner workings of the launch tube.

Sorry guys, you're working on a superhero game, you need to take that into account before you write plots that could easily be solved with the most mundane of powers.

I wasn't referring to judgements, I was referring to the two badge powers he listed. (Demonic and force of nature) Those last 1 minute then take 25 to recharge.

Yes ranged damage is now more important in certain trials but overall out of incarnate abilities ranged attackers have gotten very little. Meleers got to solve their biggest weakness, no ranged damage. Ranged attackers have gained very little for themselves from incarnate powers outside of a slight 22% damage increase from musculature. And while it's easier to keep fighting in those trials as they're progressing in level shifts and higher HP and higher resistances ranged damage output is slowly falling off beginning to negate that tiny boost the alphas gave usin the first place.

I think another downside is that some ATs frankly get the shaft in the incarnate trials and powers. The only reason my blaster can still do decent numbers of damage is becuase I have judgement. By some miracle I managed to get my snipe off in stage 1 of MoM on malaise, my snipe, with buildup and a few stacks of assault might as well have just ricocheted off him for the sorry amount of damage it did to him. When they first introduced the incarnate idea I thought it was going to help us shore up our character's weak points so that when the tougher things came we wouldn't have such glaring downsides to some sets, thats obviously not what has happened. I may be off in some places but I'm going to try and list my opinion about how ATs are faring post 50.

Tankers/Brutes: Pretty much required for any trial, they've done okay. Most of the incarnate powers either give them extra utility or let them build on their strengths.

Scrappers/Stalkers: Some have fared better than others, since most of the main bosses have massive AoE damage and the cannon fodder has gotten a big upgrade they can end up dead pretty fast if a lucky shot gets through all their DEF or they take a few hits before they can get a heal.

Controllers/Dominators: Their primary strength is sadly wiped out on trials mostly because the level shifts make their holds and status effects give out much faster or decrease the effects. Trial stage bosses are all but immune to them, controller pets end up getting chewed up fairly easily as well.

MasterMinds: Which segways into this, they're dependent on the well being of their pets. MMs can keep themselves alive fairly well by staying far from the battle but if their pets are constantly dying they aren't able to contribute as they spend time resummoning all their pets and rebuffing them.

Defenders/Corrupters: Both again are almost essential for a trial but again because of the level shifts and the trial bosses getting higher and higher stats you often need multiple stacks of similar buffs/debuffs to notice any difference. I once used an empathy defender to allow a blaster to solo lvl 50 AV Nemesis, it felt more epic than any trial fight so far and that same emp would be next to worthless in a trial because they could only buff 3 people out of 24/32 every 2 minutes since the devs added such high recharge times to their best powers. Corrupters have the same problem but they have the advantage of after dropping their buffs/debuffs they can switch to dishing out higher amounts of damage than a defender could.

Blasters: I'm going to have a longer opinion here because my trialer has been a blaster. Short version, I feel damn useless in any trial. The level shifts and their habit of pumping more and more HP and resistance into bosses has lowered my damage output to the point that it might as well be animating my energy blasts just bouncing off them. That's if I'm even alive, if I don't have a huge stack of +def on me, a few minions will tear me apart. If I'm unlucky enough to have a trial boss glance at me I explode. Pre-incarnate I was still made of paper but if I did what I was supposed to and stayed at a distance I was fine, even then if I ran at infernal to total focus him and managed to catch whirling axe I was still left alive with enough HP to jump back and lick my wounds, and I could handle it just fine if I got a few minions or an LT on me. On trials like MoM I am actually more damaging to the team being there than if they had just left my spot empty. Even if I jump out of a pink patch as soon it spawns on me I'll be left with under 25% hp. Just the load time into the second part the storm will already have eaten away a sizeable chunk of my health. If bosses continue to get more and more resistance and HP and I have no way to counteract it doing trials will become pointless to me. I'll end up being a leech who can shoot pretty lights.

Both kheldians: Dwarfs can be pretty decent tanks, human and nova forms suffer from being fairly fragile against all the new hulked out enemies.

Widows/Soldiers: Not much experience but from the trials I've seen they tend to also be unluckily fragile if they don't have a large amount of buffs on them.

Personally unless the new incarnate powers allow me to increase my damage output even more and maybe raise my resistance to damage to around scrapper levels (which sadly looks like not the case) There will be little incentive for a team to take me on a trial in the future if this is what they consider "learning to walk".

The main problem is everything in the trials makes us feel weak, at no point do any of their plans fail because we're too strong. Marauder would have been invincible if there wasn't a glowing plot device we could poke to make him vulnerable and so on. The MoM would have been a great place to start bucking this trend, remove the timer and when we first enter the network we get a message from Tilman.

"What?! You're in my wonderful network but I can't control you?! T-This is impossible....."

The well obviously sees our charcters as having as much if not more willpower and potential than Recluse and Statesman. At this point it should feel like we have praetoria on the run, we're an unstoppable force now charging at at Cole even with his power to completely fill someone's incarnate tree to Omega as easily as one would pass gas. I know others might think differently but I'm getting really sick of every trial feeling like we're clawing uphill against insurmountable odds, the story full of despair, dread and "oh woe is us" and at any second the boss could yawn and destroy us all unless we have a plot device to disable/protect us from the yawn. I really want the final battle with Tyrant to just be a straight up one, no gimmicks, just us vs. him, two unstoppable forces crashing together, after of course we get a chance to give a speech.

"We heroes are sustained by willpower, even when mocked as wreckless and crazy. If there's a wall in our way then we smash it down, if there isn't a path then we carve one ourselves. The magma of our souls burns with a mighty flame! JUST WHO IN THE HELL DO YOU THINK WE ARE?!" *cue volcano eruption*

Using trials for everything was a mistake too, it has ended up cheapening them and damaged the overall story of praetoria because 90% of the time you either have no idea when theres story happening or you can't read text because the other 24 people on your team want to "GO NOW!". The only things by this point that should have been trials are Keyes and MoM. Lambda, BAF, TPN and UG should all have been made iTFs and would have overall improved the story. Lambda would have felt more like you were attacking the biggest military instalation in their world because you would see many more levels instead of just the courtyard and 2 warehouse sized maps. Likewise with the BAF, you see more of it in the praetorian story arcs then you do when you're actually fully assaulting it. The entire time you're fighting its usually a battle to take......THE TENNIS COURTS! Dun dun duuuuuuun. The keyes could actually qualify as a trial because he's plugged into 3 nuclear reactors, made himself a walking chernobyl and has an ion cannon pointed at you. That sounds mildly epic compared to conquering the lambda's parking lot and the BAF's tennis courts.

Yes the trials have all been challenging but when you actually pull back the stories in them feel bland because theres no time between the instant kill/instant fail mechanics and your 32 man team of ADHD afflicted murderous woodchippers to tell a decent story. At this moment the only reason I know about Cole's secret, the battalion, and what the battalion does with other species' wells is because one of my teammates who's actually gotten through everything told me. Maybe I just have really ****** luck getting good trial teams but I still haven't been on a successful UG, TPN or MoM. Hiding massive chunks of story behind trials isn't good storytelling. If you're going to attatch an important story to something that should come first. A DM who writes out half a novel of plot and settings for his players to explore would be shooting himself in the foot if from the word go he kept trying to pull a rocks fall everyone dies. Trials should be mostly optional challenges that are there if you want to do them, like unlocking super hard/insanity mode in a game after you beat it. Not the main course and the main way the story will move forward.

I'd like to learn more about gadzul oil myself, in the story Martin Henri was investigating the evils of the black blood but then they managed to curse his journal and plant the suggestion that he should go after the french cultists in the isles instead. After praetoria is done with I think the next several issues should be devoted to exploring all these hanging plot points before we go plowing into another swarm of poorly designed trials around the battalion.

I got mapservered in a mission during the launch week and stood outside the door screaming at the team in broadcast, local and request to let me back in. (I didn't know what an instance was.)

I think what also compounds the problem is that we've had so long since a mission that really made us feel powerful, especially for heroes. Villians get their blood coral fueled rampage against 400 enemies, praetorians get their 100 depowered destroyers, heroes only get that single mission in the alpha arc where you club a few AVs in a couple of minutes. The next time we get a large invasion event I want to see something like this. (from 3:50 to 5:50)

http://youtu.be/ikzwSn71ums
(My personal favorite is Question's method of fighting)

That should be the battalion invasion, all the normal spawns erased and tons of level 1 enemies spread out over -all- the zones. It would solve so many issues I've had with previous invasions. People won't have to form a giant mosh pit to survive it, we won't have to worry about full zones and everyone could spread out and have their own adventures in being a hero or villian. The last event we had was a trainwreck (at least on virtue) it got to the point where people were so sick of zoning and moshing with 30 billion seeds that when zwill was going "Ooooo I'm attacking atlas park!" everyone was ignoring him and not paying a bit of attention to any of his spawns. The next invasion shouldn't be about giant mobs of heroes fighting mobs of god level purple spawns, it should be about every character getting their own moment to feel like a badass even if it's only for a few hours.