Gemini_2099

Originally Posted by Battler

I'm with Bill on this, might be post one for this one, couldn't somehow reactivate my forum account, it's liked to my NA account and I reactivated my EU account the other month.

But This games strength was its lack of needed gear to see content.

You can kiss goodbye to that now. All of you happy about this go ahead and cheer, but this puts me off recontinuing my sub. I have been more than happy to unlocck the alpha on 6 or 7 of my 50s so far, but I am not going to grind tfs with people for no good reason just because it unlocks a new shiney. In other games you only need 5 people to see a lot of the end game content and at the most 10 or 20. Their games don't teand to go laggy when you have a full team and spawns all over, unlike this one.

I thought the Hami was just one great big ball of dog mess when it ignored all the players abilities just to be hard. Now it looks like we have whole TF's that do it...and unlike the Hami, you need to do them to level.....great....well done devs, what a sucktastic idea. Makes me wish I hadn't come back

British Battler

Originally Posted by Winterminal

I agree, on both points. And most of what I would say has already been said. I had small hopes to begin with for this issue: I only wanted to get the Cryo Judgment power on my 50 ice blaster, and the Ion Judgment power on my 50 elec blaster. But considering I never cared to get any Alpha higher than a T1, those characters would be little more than passengers on these trials, even after a handful of people learn how to lead them well.

Issue 20: Incarnates certainly lives up to its name, in terms of what came in it. Really the only thing given to the level 1-49 players was a new TF/SF and a new team UI. And though yesterday I was feeling a bit like an angry Taz from Looney Tunes, today I am going to say: that's fine. The veteran players who were perhaps getting frustrated that their 50s had nothing new to do can now grind out their new powers and strategies to their heart's content.

"Veteran players getting bored and quitting" is not the only reason games lose population. You also have to offer things that may draw in new players, or draw back deactivated players, and i20 caters to neither. There's nothing to advertise to newbies and say, "You know that thing that you couldn't do and therefore kept you from trying this game? Now you CAN do it!" And let's be realistic: this new content is confusing and convoluted even for players who have been paying attention. The amount of new things a returning player would have to read and comprehend is daunting and probably a turn-off.

Issue 21 needs to change the pace. As I said, we have now released half the incarnate powers, so those players who want to take their 50s to the next level can do so. Let's temporarily switch our focus back to the 1-49 game. I'm talking about finishing power customization (priority 1 in my head), changing up some existing zones (i.e. mending Faultline/Boomtown, taking back Terra Volta/Crey's Folly, making a zone event around The Zig, etc.), and other things based in content that already exists. Strengthening the foundation of this game, before we put newer stuff on top.

In improvisational acting, there is something called "Shiny Penny Syndrome." The improv group continues to add outrageous characters/circumstances to a scene (moving from one 'shiny penny' to another), all of which get a laugh, but you end up with a scene that is SO outrageous that it makes no sense and just collapses on itself. Let's not let that happen to this game.

Originally Posted by White Hot Flash

I'm not browbeating about accessibility, I'm arguing that it doesn't need to be worked on because people are making an issue out of something that is entirely their own making, not the new feature.

Where would people put this on the grand scale of Important Things to Work On? I'm betting fairly low, even for the people wanting this.

To ask you a similar question, why are people going out of their way to nitpick about how a feature isn't exactly how they want it when it works just fine the way it is? Why are they calling out references to "the other games" to support their points when those same people are lamenting that CoH is slowly turning into "those other games" by focusing on endgame?

Originally Posted by Quasadu

Or you could actually try it rather than making a decision based on second hand information.

Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill

You know what they say about assuming, correct?

I'm the one who, for instance, LIKED having full strength Voids and Quantums. So don't ASSume that I'm complaining about difficulty. I *liked* taking Trapdoor - who had others complaining about difficulty - down on a g-damn GRAV KIN on SOs.

I DISLIKE the whole "raid for gear to raid for gear" crap. You can't grasp how this is different from "well, you get merits you can use for IOs for Khan, too!" Yeah, well, I can also run Khan perfectly fine on SOs. I don't NEED IOs for Khan. Khan isn't balanced with the idea that you'll end up with an IOd out build. Khan isn't designed with the idea that you'll rerun it over and over and over and over and over and over and over to unlock those IOs, then churn it some MORE to get merits to make it reasonable.

I can run Khan on pretty much any character with *anything* slotted and have an enjoyable time. I don't go into Khan "expecting to fail so I can get stuff to do better next time."

Just looking at my 50s - the only ones who can run this content - I have 24 of them. I have to have a decent (and full, if last night's runs had anything to say about it) team to have a chance at doing anything but failing. I have to run it four times (given the "incarnate XP") to unlock ONE slot, four more for the other, then hope I've managed to "win" at some point to not have to grind *even more* for components - and if I need a level shift, I either have to have more INF on *each* of them than most have for a single uncommon COMPONENT, or hope that maybe a team will succeed to save that. Four times each. Eight times for one tree, then eight times (with different salvage, of course) for the OTHER tree, then if I'm short "threads," grind some more.

And as I've said elsewhere - I'd ignore this, but given the Dev comments ("Hmm, what could be COMING that would have the well worried?") it sounds like I'll need to grind through this nonsense to see the *future* content evolving the game lore.

You don't like me complaining, tough. I don't like where all this is pointing,and I don't like the design. We haven't HAD to grind with an "expect to fail until you get the stuff to do this" mentality before. We haven't had a "Well, once you have THESE IOs you can win" before.

People complained about trapdoor out of being tough - I didn't. I soloed him on SOs. I AM NOT COMPLAINING ABOUT DIFFICULTY. I *am* complaining about the formerly, thankfully missing grind for gear to raid for gear to raid for gear nonsense getting added to this game.

Edit:

Also in a non-Khan fashion - how about "Well, there's a part of the encounter you need to get temp powers you might, MAYBE, get during the mission?" Three acids on the entire team. Since we weren't a full 12 or whatever it was, we had zero stun grenades for Marauder. That's sucktastic game design. "Oh, and fight your way to MAYBE get new ones, too."

But, hey, I shouldn't complain, that's just *wonderful* design. Here, let me hoover up to a dev for it.

Originally Posted by CactusBrawler

It's actually the opposite to that.

It would be like if genre leader MMO let you run raids unsuccessfully a couple of dozen times, then took 'pity' on you and gave you the gear to accomplish the raid.

Now if the Judgment etc slots were needed to complete the new trials, and had to be earned from other things, then it would be gearing up for a raid.

Originally Posted by Scarlet Shocker

So why have Threads AND Shards? Why not one or the other but not both?

It's ridiculous and bloated and flies in the face of why they got rid of Base Salvage in the first place

Originally Posted by Dr_Mechano

Not doom...just people need to learn, as in the way with things.

Originally Posted by Dr_Mechano

well seemed I jinxed myself, my failure rate has skyrocketed now.

Mainly because people either chase Resistance or don't check the map to actually see where is least defended.

Originally Posted by RemusShepherd

The 'as designed' concept is for you to fail over and over and over again until you have enough experience to unlock and slot one of the new abilities, after which you may have the power to not fail.

It will take you about ten failed trials to unlock one slot. There are four slots. You may die about a dozen times on each failed trial. I figure that about 300 suicides for a fully empowered character is about what the devs intended.

Congratulations. After hundreds of worthless deaths, now you're a hero. What was that old saying, a brave man dies a thousand times, a coward...no, wait, something's off there...

Originally Posted by rsclark

Given that I have never done any TF 6 times on one character, it does sound a bit like grinding to me.

Originally Posted by Doc_Reverend

They've already announced at PAX East a trial where you take on Antimatter at the three big antimatter reactors in Praetoria and another where you journey deep into the Hamidon infested Praetorian Underground (one of the screenshots showed what looked like a DE infested War Walker).

Originally Posted by Eiko-chan

By players, yes. The incident I'm referring to, however, was the developers (well, the community managers) doing so.

Originally Posted by Finsplit

Yeah. They can't even get THAT right. I mean, when people want to go to northern Nerva, they're usually going either to use Operative Naylor's portal or to Thorn Isle. So why not put the helicopter on the Primeva beach? I expect better placed helicopters in issue 21!

Originally Posted by RemusShepherd

There's a new LFG tool that creates random PUGs specifically for these trials. Isn't that a strong suggestion that such teams should be able to handle them?

Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill

Really? We needed ITF rewards to really stand a chance at completing the ITF before? "Oh, just get a level shift!" Yeah... so it's no longer "Hey, let's be alt friendly." Bravo.

We have not "tread the same road before." This is more BS "Raid to get rewards to raid" that WoW and the like do - part of the reason I avoid those to begin with.

My experiences with this crap last night (and looking at the costs if you *don't* raid-to-get-crap-to-raid) has me thinking I should just ignore the system all together... oh, wait, it's hinted that this is because of the "Coming Storm." Hmmm. Wonder what we'll probably need to do *jack* against it, and/or actually see any of that content...

/me wonders if I'm supposed to be Alliance or Horde in this game.

Originally Posted by Finsplit

This is pretty much how I feel (except that I didn't give a crap about increasing my 50s' powers). As far as I'm concerned, this is Issue 20: New Helicopters in Nerva. I'm sure plenty of people will be along to tell you to l2p, though.

Originally Posted by je_saist

Unfortunately, you would be wrong here. No other MMO on the commercial market has the majority of it's gameplay content delivered inside of instanced missions. Most MMO's on the market use the queuing system to gate access / entry from Open-World content into instanced events.