Hydrofoil_Zero

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

I think I misspoke and you read my post as saying something else. I'm not looking for recognition from other people, I'm looking for recognition from the system. Whether other people notice my absence or not is just a symptom of power balance. When I say "and nobody notices," I don't mean to say "I regret that my contribution was not appreciated" so much so that "the team was strong enough to run with fewer people than are actually on it." When team strength is such that my contribution is irrelevant, I feel like a freeloader, even in instances when people try their darnest to reassure me that "No, really, it's OK, you're helping."

It probably seems self-centric of me to say this. It probably is. But the fact of the matter is that praise and reassurance is irrelevant. I know most people in-game are kind souls whose tolerance for team-mates is rather much more benevolent than the forums would suggest, so I know they really have no problem with me being on the team. But what I look for is the game system facts, and the game system facts are that the team performs well adequately with or without my intervention. Whether or not my presence is appreciated, I am factually useless to the team at this point, because I am not improving anything. If I left, the team would not be worse off, lack of idle chit-chat notwithstanding.

But here's the thing - I don't need to be on a team to engage in banter and chit-chat and hang out with friends. I'm more than capable of doing that over personal tells and over global channels, and have been doing so or years. So when team dynamics are such that my character ends up being superfluous to events happening on-screen, I feel smaller and useless. It doesn't mean I get depressed, but it's not how I prefer to spend my leisure time.

About the only time I make an exception to that rule is the instances where my character may not be very useful, but either my knowledge of the game or my organisational skills do play a part, which isn't very often. The last I can recall is running an Admiral Stutter TF with Zamuel and a few others, where we were doing VERY badly against double Durays, to the point where people were saying "We can't do this!" These are the times when someone needs to step up and say "Yes, we can! Back up, regroup and let's try this another way." Since Zamuel was lagging to hell and back, it fell to me and the team leader to organise, simply because we were the two loudest guys on the team. But that really only plays a part when things go back, which is generally not something I prefer to come to.

The problem comes with difficulty scaling and character power. As teams get larger, any specific player's contribution becomes less visible, even to the contributing player. It's twice as bad for me since I don't build for power, but rather for concept, ease and comfort, which leaves me behind the curve in even more ways, for lack of set bonuses if nothing else. The simple fact is that teaming with other people simply demonstrates to me that they are better players (and they are) and ruins my ability to live in my own little fantasy world of awesomeness. Rather than motivate me to try harder, it ends up demotivating me to not bother, for the simple fact that I'm not a competitive person, or even a very driven person. I come here for fun and leisure, not for achievement.

I'm not saying I won't do large-scale events ever for any reason. I probably will when opportunity falls into my lap. I AM saying that I'd like to do other things most of my time, since "other things" is what I enjoy, whereas large-scale events feel more like work or a chore. I know for a fact I'd almost never do them if it weren't for the rewards tied to them, which ought to say something.

Originally Posted by FloatingFatMan

My only REAL problem with the multi-group content for the Incarnate stuff (apart from the WoWism of it all), is that really, TWO trials? That you have to repeat again and again and again to get your shineys?

It makes absolutely NO sense, story wise, whatsoever, to repeat the same mission again and again, ad nauseum. It's the continual ignoring of making the game story make any sense that grinds my gears more than anything else.

They need to either give us way more trials to run for our incarnate progression, or they need to expand the areas where incarnate rewards are granted (ie, ALL level 50 content should give drops for all types of incarnate slots.)

Oh, and as for the "IT'S WAR!" comments earlier. Until we actually SEE this "war" in the general zones, I can't consider it as actually happening in Primal Earth. Kings and Steel aren't heavily damaged from Praetorian invaders, so those missions must be on some other Earth that we're helping out.

Originally Posted by AmazingMOO

For me, CoH has always been a game about single groups. It's been accessible to soloers, duoers, and single teams.

With a few exceptions, the vast majority of the content for City of Heroes fits this rule. Every issue before issue 20 has made a point of NOT tying progression or character customization to raid content.

Even with the most difficult, trial-like content, the point of the game has been to work well together in small squads rather than huge armies. This is even written into the game lore in various places. (Alpha and Omega teams, anyone? Marcus and Stefan ditched their small team and DUOED their way to the Well of the Furies.)

With Issue 20, Paragon has embraced warcraft-style raid instances. I didn't have a lot of time to try to beta i20, so I got to experience this at launch with the majority of other players. What surprised me most is how tied the new advancement is to the raid content. You *can* very slowly and expensively convert solo progress into new progression and customization, but the issue has made quite clear that the PREFERRED method is to raid for it.

This sucks. I burned out on raiding before I ever came to CoH. The feeling of being part of an army is not really fun for me. Even with very fun people I like, the feeling of being in a raid leaves me cold. I'm a faceless minion that could be replaced by anyone rather than an important member of the Five Man Band. I'm either a cat to be herded or an inhuman general to be kvetched at because I don't know how to lead well.

It's not 'Super' at all. I19 captured 'Super' so well, having you fly into Praetoria while all the other heroes of Paragon City were holding the line. It felt really awesome to defend the PPD against a legion of warwalkers.

I20 has you two-shotted by Marauder and his band of Warwalkers again and again. Not so super. 'Oh, here's a little progress on your bar. Surely if you keep at it, you and 15 other random heroes will eventually be able to put him down.' No, that's not very super at all.

The difference between the two is requiring multiple groups to succeed at the content.

Worse, to progress in anything LIKE a timely fashion through the new abilities, you MUST raid. The alternative is at least a 5x timesink grinding shards.


After COMPLETING both raids with talented parties composed of people I like, I'm starting to see that there's not a lot in i20 for me.

I'm pretty disappointed.

Originally Posted by Neuronia

Ran Cutter on a PuG on Victory the other day.

Was pretty fun but the last mission is a bit of a grind

*SPOILERS*

You go into Skyway City, eventually facing off against Duray and a clone Duray. The real Duray teleports to and fro, meanwhile you face off against Sky Raiders and, iirc, IDFs too. We got kinda confused after using the hopsital, trying to jetpack through the cracks in the highway instead of taking the sewer entrance...to the highway.

*SPOILERS*

Very visceral in the first part though, I'd certainly do it again, probably tonight with one my supergroups.



For Kal, you need to do a tip mission redside. The tip will say something about wizards (?) and send you on a few missions.

For Cutter, he's in Independence Port nearish the hospital area on a cruiser.

Originally Posted by Ardrea

Zone Tetris.

This is when people struggle to get all their league members into the same zone at the same time to start their trials. It gets really bad when more than one large league is trying this at the same time.

Broadcast in the RWZs can get almost silly, with people begging anyone to leave the zone so their last members can get in.

Tonight, a BAF league I was on went through two RWZs, the Midnighter Club, Cimerora, Pocket-D, and finally to Pocket-D-2 before we could get started. It took a while, with some members not being able to find these zones, not have access to Midnight or Cimerora unlocked, and so on. Players were getting impatient and dropping, and we continually recruited to get back up.

Short of being able to start the trial with a pre-made league from mixed zones, just like the individual queue allows; does anyone have any ideas on how to work with or around Zone Tetris?

Originally Posted by Arbiter Hawk

Hi NT,

If you edit one of your chat tabs and include the "Cutscene Captions" chat channel, the caption text from those dialogue lines should appear there for you to read after-the-fact. I know I had to manually add it on my launch-day character's chat settings, though it is included in Global by default for new characters.

There had previously been a bug where the channel for these dialogue lines did not have a visible name, but we fixed that in i20, so it should now be easy to add so all of your characters can enjoy the story of TFs and Trials at their leisure.

Originally Posted by gameboy1234

This is actually a bit of a good point. UI design and documentation are important and go hand in hand. I haven't played the Lambda sector map yet, but if there aren't clear clues to what the powers do then some should be added.

1. There should be a special Icon design on the power that indicates it is tradable.

2. There should be a note on the description that the power is tradable. We already have yellow, orange, blue and red text in mission descriptions. I vote for some bright green text on the description that says "This power is tradable."

3. A note on the pop-up help too. "Acid Molecule [Tradable]" is how I would do it.

Make it as obvious as possible. Folks need several hints how game mechanics work to ensure that they'll notice a new mechanic (we have had no tradable powers, that I can recall). An even better design is to have a short intro mission where players are introduced to the idea of a tradable temp power, so they'll recognize the concept when it comes up in the TF.

Originally Posted by Zombie Man

Originally Posted by BackFire

I, for one, am hoping for Freakshow Pirates.