Mirai

...

So you can casually enter a tough raid and get crushed? I really don't think that counts.

I will be very interested to see anything that seems to be casual friendly.

My personal position is that offering an option is acceptable, because some players will want to take advantage of it, regardless of how much time and effort it costs.

The Incarnate system is meant as a typical MMO end-game, team-intensive gear grind that even takes a well-organized team a long time to fully complete. Trying to accommodate us casual soloers (or even the casual team-lite crowd) isn't going to work too well for that kind of end-game.

Of course the danger is that the casual playerbase is fairly large, and many of those players may lose interest in the game's direction. The devs are hoping to attract more of the achiever crowd in exchange. We'll see how well that works down the road, as those achievers will regularly need to put together effective level 50 teams.

I don't think so. This gives a path to the goodies for achiever soloers who enjoy an intensive, highly efficient grind.

For casual soloers like myself, it's a message that these items are not meant for me and I should abandon all hope of getting them. But I expected that.

Yes, that's pretty much true for me too. I've done a couple TFs with supergroups way back when, but one of those SGs went away, and the other (Forumites United) dwindled down to just me. The new end game approach is simply too much for my meager social abilities to handle in any case, since it's all teams and raids (after the intro).

I really need to stop peeking at her replies to me. This version is much better.

True, but GG was replying to me, and I'm not social. Raids and TFs are too painful for my introvertedness to deal with. If the end game stuff was all solo friendly, I'd be doing it, but it's not, so I'll stick to the fun leveling stuff.

Ew. My interest has dropped considerably, since I'm not an end game fan.

(Well, War Witch did imply that it would involve more end game stuff, so I shouldn't have become interested in 19.5 anyway.)

I would agree with you on the gameplay aspect, despite the notable lack of crafting, which is pretty much a staple in the fantasy games. The game focuses on weapons and armor, which is straight out of a fantasy RPG, and doesn't really resemble a superhero game. On the other hand, the writing is straight DC Comics style, and some of the top DC writers contributed to creating the stories. Plus the voice acting is great.

Now be sure to get that gear repaired regularly, because, you know, a broken costume will make any superhero weak.

That's certainly true. For example, super speeders who are used to being reduced to a jog in this game will get just the same kind of experience in that game. With no stealth. And enemies in the streets will continue to shoot at you to slow you down no matter how much higher in level you are. (But hey, you can run up the sides of buildings.)

City of Heroes did indeed have a serious content shortage at launch, at least for a good number of players (like me). It wasn't as noticeable if you teamed regularly, but there were content gaps in every five level range, and a huge content gap in the upper 30s. Most of those gaps were filled by a mission completion bonus boost in Issue 2, and of course the rest has been filled in over time.

BUT! CoH has always had an alternate leveling path. You can grind enemies for XP in this game. You can fill in the gaps by grinding, if you can put up with grinding. (Personally I can't stand aimless streetsweeping, but the game really was designed to accomodate that kind of leveling.) The other superhero MMOs don't really support that. You need to do missions to level. And CoH, even with those gaps, had many more missions at launch than those other games. (Granted those missions were very bland and repetitive by today's standards.)

The other superhero MMOs are fairly short games. The new one justifies that by concentrating on an "end game", and we'll have to see how well that works out. Personally, I don't like end games. If the content up to the end isn't going to keep me playing for a long time, I'm not that interested.

Yes, I was able to get used to that tactic and get through the fight with my level 50 MA/Regen/Dark scrapper. I don't have much in the way of temp powers with that character, so I was dodging in and out of melee range a lot, but I got through it with no deaths.

No, you can pull her around the map. I pulled her all the way to the Tuatha in one fight, and activated the Tuatha hoping most of them would fight her, but they didn't help out much. It wasn't worth the trouble for me.

Oh, I don't know. That seems to be the whole point of the Incarnate system. It's meant to provide something to do for the l33t endgame enthusiasts, not for players like you and me. It's a bit annoying that the devs are spending so much effort on content for a relatively small group of people, but since that achiever-oriented content was in short supply before, I can't really complain. I still have more than enough to do in the rest of the game.

I got all my level 50 characters through the arc (prior to the patch), and that's plenty for me. It wouldn't have bothered me if I hadn't been able to get through the Ramiel arc. I don't play my 50s much, so I don't plan to get much of anything out of the Incarnate system anyway.

It will be interesting to see if the Incarnate content can maintain some popularity, unlike, say, the PvP content (which both of us avoid like the plague).

I'm only concerned about the elite boss version. I was interested in hearing how players are doing solo against her.

Speaking of which...

Level 50 Dark/Dark/Dark Defender: It took a long time and most of my inspirations, but I finally beat her without being in much danger.

Level 50 Energy/Regen/Dark Stalker: I had some worries, dodging in and out of melee range, but I managed to beat her without getting killed. Fortunately I had several temp ranged attacks to use, and I used a number of inspirations to keep me going. After attacking her the first time, Lady Winter apparently can see through a stalker's concealment, which is not unusual for a downgraded AV. Still, a placate followed by a quick crit still works.

It was interesting to stand next to Lady Winter invisibly and watch the debuffs stack up on my character. That means it's not a good idea to hesitate near her before attacking.

Or better yet, have Washington beat them up.

I saw that on Protector this morning. I was wondering if that was going to cause problems for people. The devs should move that spawn point.

Oh, you know, the bad guys just scale up accordingly...

No, they have to be at least level 20, but they can con deep grey to you.

Well I would hope so. But just to check, did all your team members have the Alpha slot filled? Because otherwise it would be even more difficult than normal.

It's too difficult for me to even start, so I certainly won't be offering any tactics.

Although I agree the Winter Lord problem should be fixed, you can just head straight across the river to Nova without bothering with the station. You'll zone as you get most of the way across the river. If you already knew that, well, just a reminder for those who didn't.