MrCaptainMan
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Posts
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Quote:That IS cool.Originally Posted by Steele_Magnolia
An epic roleplaying and story arc moment.
My SG coleader and I were running the Rikti War Zone story arcs on American Champ (SS/WP tank) and Operation Arc Light (Energy/Energy blaster) #1 of the Nuclear 50 (read Fusionette's info if you want to know what this is). During the last mission we both leveled to 50. At the end my blaster used her [Self Destruct] power to destroy the portal, ending the threat to Paragon City and her life. She had realized that the reason Vanguard had chosen them instead of more veteran heroes or a full scale assault was that he had the ability to get her to the portal and she had the ability to destroy it for once and for all.
Well, it was cool to us.
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Can somebody tell me what a Super Pack is, exactly?
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I think it's ironic that a lot of the people who say they love the trials are the same people who have clamoured for shorter TF and trial content. I'm sure that one of the reasons why the UG is not as popular as the ABF is simply its length. It's a long slog through repeated Clear-Alls, and I dare anyone to try suggesting 'Shall we have a 5 minute break for a stretch and to put the kettle on?' in one.
The Shadow Shard TFs, on the other hand, are a relaxed take-your-time affair if you're not on a PuG. Getting too late? Baby crying? Landlord calls? '/t hang on guys, afk a minute'.
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Quote:That's a really cool story. I love the 'plodding through waves of goons' bit. NiceOriginally Posted by Ashcraft
First off, this thread is a great read. I'm smiling just from the good stories here.
My story was quite a few years ago when the Terra Volta respec was very, very difficult. I don't remember why, but the devs had changed the trial and it had a bad habit of spawning +6 or even +8 bad guys.
I did not know any of this when I signed up my stone tank for the trial.
Most of the trial went easily, I tanked, the team wiped out the hoards of freakshow that surrounded me. Once we got to the reactor room, things went downhill. We had waves and waves of purple tank bosses, every time we dropped one he rez'ed. There was one guy with rez who was doing nothing else, running to bodies, raising them up, running to heal a dying member, ect.
In the midst of this I am taunting everything I can see. (this is before the aggro cap)
Then the guy with rez faceplants. I look up a moment later to find the entire team was dead save me. Chat fills up with woes as inevitable failure looms. I check the reactor, see that it is at half health. I make my way over in granite armor, plodding slowly with a crowd of freak tanks in my way. I get close enough to the reactor to heal it and I stand my ground, taking the hits and healing the green blob whenever it hit half health.
Meanwhile the entire team had hit the hospital... in Independance Port.
It felt like forever for them to get back to the mission but it musta been only 10-15 minutes. I watched the counter on the reactor heal power go down, hoping I had enough. Chat became increasingly filled with curious texts as to why the trial hadn't failed yet.
I was running out of the heal power, 22 purple freak tanks around me, when I saw green on my team screen. I held out a little longer then they stormed through the doors, focused fire on one after another freak and then we saw 'Trial Complete.' That was better than any badge.
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Quote:That is EXACTLY the kind of experience that I play this game for. Awesome.Originally Posted by Dante
I've got a few but I'll share my favourite here and maybe pop back in for more later.
So I'm on my mid-20s Warshade and I'll be honest, feeling a little gimpy. He was my first Warshade so I wasn't quite sure what I was doing and so I gladly took the invite to an early 30s mission team when it was offered.
On the team was a small, quiet Force Field Defender who kept her bubbles up at all times but didn't blast too much. I got the impression that having an Energy Secondary and being on a team full of Scrappers, her blasting hadn't been appreciated. So she hung back, keeping bubbles up and using Aid Other on anyone who needed it.
Anyway, being Scrapper heavy, the team was roaring through a warehouse when they zoomed past a corridor and managed to aggro a mob without noticing it. While they were charging into the next mob, the poor FF Defender took the brunt of their assault. She tried to run but they surrounded her and the rest of the team were too busy with the room ahead of them to help. I was in Nova form so I turned around and flew back as fast as I could to where she was struggling.
I blasted a few of the mob into the wall and dropped out of Nova. The rest of them were still wailing on the Defender so I shifted to Dwarf and teleported into the fray, right next to her. I taunted them, hit them with my Mire and scrapped it out with them until there were none standing. And the Defender never fell. I felt so proud and she was very grateful.
Best of all, ten minutes later, she came to my rescue. I caught a blast from a Void Hunter and lay there stunned, unable to fight back while he prepared for another shot. Suddenly, from behind me, a Force Bolt blasted into him and sent him into the wall before he could get another shot off. The FF Defender flew in beside me, hit Force Bubble and kept me safe while I recovered, all the while blasting the hell out of the Void until he was no more.
Now that felt heroic and I think both of us left the mission feeling that we'd both saved each other's skin.
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Quote:I largely find all the trials a drag, tbh, but one thing I haven't had any difficulty with myself is Malestrom's Marked For Death mechanic. A dot appears above your head, and then you have about 5 seconds to break line of sight. The three times I've done the TPN, he's appeared outside on the steps, and whenever i get marked For Death there's been ample time for me to jump over the wall at the bottom of the steps and a few seconds later the dot disappears.Originally Posted by Ironblade
Actually, it doesn't seem that bad to me at all. At the current time, MoM is the ONLY trial for which I have not been on a failed run. It can be a little rough, depending on what nightmares Malaise summons, but it's not bad.
The one that really annoys me is TPN, specifically when Maelstrom starts one-shotting you as a 'special effect', rather than walking up to you and smacking you. The nightmares are a fight. The purple patches can be avoided and don't kill you instantly. Maelstrom one-shots you with no warning. And his attack was split into two parts specifically to NEGATE the one-shot code. Cheesy design.
It reminds of something from the April Fool's issue of a gaming magazine - might have been Dragon Magazine - the Wandering Damage Table. It bypassed the hassle of writing up wandering monsters - you just rolled the dice and the players took damage. One of the items on the table was "Roll every die you own and take that much damage." Yeah, that's Maelstrom.
The dot is easily visible if your camera is fairly close to your toon, less so if you're zoomed all the way back.
But I think it's one of the easier gimmicks to deal with.
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Quote:No they're not.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
They are.
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Quote:'attractive' is utterly subjective. You mean quantifiable numbers of merits, iXP, rewards. And even then, the attractiveness of those differs widely for players. They could double the rewards offered by the UG, but it wouldn't double my desire to do it.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
The devs won't make the solo path more attractive than the Trial path - they've already said that.
Plus, it's easy to add special unique rewards for the Trials, like costume part or temp powers tbhat wouldn't be available through the DA content.
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Quote:Every controller will nod in recognition of that momentOriginally Posted by dugfromthearth
sort of the opposite for me.
A team was gathering, I was waiting at the door with another guy. We went in, and a patrol walked up to the door inside and attacked us. Great mob of foes, 2 of us, lvl 20ish.
I said run, he said "why"
ice controller - he turned on arctic air, dropped an ice slick, not sure what else. And we stood there untouched while the rest of the team loaded in and we took out the spawn.
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Quote:This would be fantastic. I think it would add hugely to the sense of variety of looks that is already pretty humongous in CoH.Originally Posted by Captain-Electric
- Customizable "Mood" stances to replace default standing idle stances, more reflective of your character's personality (heroic, flirty, arrogant, relaxed, studious).
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Quote:Could you tell me where in game this information is given to us? I'm not being sarky or having a go at you here, I'm honestly interested. I personally think it's a bit weird that Maelstrom is so hard in the TPN, but if there is an in-game explanation, then I;ve got no problem accepting it.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Tyrant empowers his loyalist henchpeoeple with some of his power from the Well.
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Quote:Excellent post. One thing which saddens me about the trials is they are apparently story-based but it's nigh impossible to enjoy what little story they have at any stage of running them. GG is very fond of bigging up the fact that the game's Praetorian storyline is told through the trials, and Anti-Matter himself refers to the BAF and the LAM as though we've done them first, despite the fact that it's entirely possible to do Keyes first if you do Ramiels arc and then go to pocket D or the RWZ and get on a trial.Originally Posted by Wing_Leader
Fascinating thread!
The Three Phases of Trials
I am of the general opinion that the iTrials are not always fun, but are necessary evils for anyone wanting to acquire Incarnate abilities during their natural lifetimes. For me, my personal relationship with any particular trial goes through the following phases:
- Phase 1: I don't know what I'm doing and the whole thing is a dizzying, stress-filled exercise in just doing what the team leader is doing (or tells me to do) in the hopes of not dying and not doing something that results in trial fail. This is not fun for me. I hate the Lamda acid/nade run, for instance, because everyone zips around like mad, leaving individuals or ad hoc teams of two or three to take down each chamber/container, leading to a lot of time coming back from the hospital.
- Phase 2: I have a good handle on what I should be doing and find the doing of it challenging, but not frustratingly impossible. Thanks to these trials being a large group effort, however, the presence of newbies still stuck in phase 1 themselves undermines the fun factor of this phase. If I am on a team of experienced players of the trial, and things go smoothly, then this is fun. But it only lasts for a couple of such runs because we then enter...
- Phase 3: The trial has become routine. Which for me means rather boring. The only reason to continue doing a trial after it has reached phase 3 is for the quick rewards. Not because it is fun anymore.
I'm Not a Superhero, I'm a Game Piece
I also have a problem with the "immersion factor" of these trials. Normally I only run each mission with a toon once; the narrative logic breaks down after the fourth time you've gone out to save FrostFire's butt. That's why I don't like grinding content, be it Tips or Trials. But the game requires you to do so since they are the only way to acquire the drops and rewards necessary to restore a sense of steady progression to a level 50 toon. But this doesn't feel like a comic book to me. It feels like a game just trying to copy what WOW does (repeatable content with gimmicks of questionable in-game logic that everyone grinds, not because it is fun to do so, but because that's the only reasonable way to obtain the rewards needed to maintain forward momentum on character development).
It's Not the Leader's Fault
The frustration with trial leadership is, I think, a direct outgrowth of the way the trials are designed. They aren't designed such that they make "sense"; they are designed as weird puzzles that you either figure out and intuit quickly or you just die a lot. This doesn't resemble any superhero comic book I've ever read. Trials shouldn't be designed such that you have to do them repeatedly before you figure out the trick(s) and are then able to succeed. That is just WOW-inspired puzzle-based get-it-right-or-die raid design mentality. It is disappointing to find that the devs couldn't think of any way to deliver "high-end" content without resorting to that. And I don't blame leaders for being forced into leading players through this kind of content with mixed results (and I don't find it the least bit surprising that few players want to try their hand at leading in such a situation).
Was That Maelstrom or Galactus I Just Fought?
Oh, and does anyone else find it bizarre that Maelstrom is a solo'able wimp in the Hero Tips mission, but a one-shot killing machine in the TPN Campus trial? Really? This is the same guy? What explains his sudden cosmic jump in power level? At least the other trials had an explanation: BAF makes you face two AVs simultaneously, Lambda makes you face a Marauder juiced up on super-formula, Keyes makes you face an Anti-Matter with "expanded powers" thanks to the reactors and killer satellites he taps into, and of course UG makes you face a mini-Hamidon (no explanation needed, really). But the incongruous leap in power for Maelstrom doesn't even have an explanation, does it?
During the first few days of a trial being live, leagues are IMO slightly slower to proceed, which gives some opportunity to read the story etc, but because of the general zerg mindset of trialers, it's easy even then to get left alone whilst trying to read the info or the captions. During subsequent runs, as the trials become more understood and running them turns into the 'do the single optimal sequence of activities as fast as possible', time spent doing this is liable to get you booted for leeching. Take the MoM, for example. Anyone doing it for the first time now is going to be very lucky to get away with reading Desdemona and Metronome's briefings whilst the rest of the league is rushing off to do the actual whack-a-mole meat of the trial.
I would bet there are players who've run the MoM a number of times already who are still unaware that Des and Metronome even have anything to say.
The devs are hamstrung, i think. They can't just say 'OK, most players are Only Here For Godzilla, so this next trial has no story at all.' because the game is still ostensibly a story-based one rather than Team Fortress. But by putting instructions and explanations for the game mechanics into briefings and captions means that lots of people won't know what to do or why they're doing it.
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There's a general difference of opinion over the trials in the game , it seems to me, and one aspect of that is how 'epic' they are. In terms of narrative, the way they are presented in game lore, they do sound reasonably epic. Anti-Matter's rant atop the reactor in the cut-scene at the start of the Keyes trial is quite cool as he ABSORBS THE POWER OF THE UNIVERSE or whatever, but in terms of my own personal hero's story, after that i just experience being lost in a crowd of AoEs, spamming my attacks and ignoring any narrative, really. YMMV, but to me the actual trials aren't very epic or cool, and I've given up trying to take cool screenies during them because the end resutls are frankly awful.
The 'epic' or 'cool' moments for me happen in the course of normal content or in TFs where i've been able to get padders for I and my two SG-mates to run (and here I must big up the members of TheMarket channel, who are often kind enough to give up a few minutes to pad for me). During fights, even against AVs, I'm able to do a bit of camera-rotation to take some screenshots showing my team doling out justice, and the actual fights themselves always seem much more epic and personally heroic than the trials.
I'm going to share one of these moments, and I'd like to hear about yours too.
Yesterday, I and my Sg-mates got some padders to start Sister Psyche's TF, as one of my SG-mates has yet to get many TF badges. We did a few missions, and then logged out for the night.
Today, I logged in to see that the SG-mate who needed the badge was already logged in (Both i and the other SG-mate already have the badge, so we don't mind the other member from carrying on with the TF on his own) and in a mission.
I sent him a tell but got no response, so i figured he was either fighting or had chat turned off. i thought i'd just go to the mission and find him, so i did. I entered, and used Reveal, and saw the first floor was clear and his HP bar was going down, down, down, and his end bar was getting some serious use. His badge-toon is a 50 PB (exemped down of course for the TF).
I'm using a lvl 25 Kin/DP defender. I ninja ran through the empty floor, used the elevators and found myself at the start of another floor, and right at the other end my teammate was rotating in a largish room, and his HP bar was still dropping. I zoomed through the map, finally turning a corner to find him almost dead with a Freak Boss (one of the noise ones) and a super stunner on him, a good few vanishing dead mobs around, and him caught in n electric field.
He'd obviously been fighting an only-just losing battle, as the stunner was nearly dead too. I healed him off the boss, ran past him, siphoned its power, and whipped out my pistols, offing the stunner with one shot. Then the hold on him dropped, and we finished off the boss. When we were safe, we got skype running, and he told me 'That was amazing. You appeared out of nowhere in literally the nick of time', laughing as he related what he'd experienced. He had indeed had chat turned off to let him see more of the screen, so my appearance was a total surprise.
Now, that was just a little lucky happening, really. If he'd been facing a different way, he'd not have seen it the way he did. if I'd been a little slower or had missed the stunner, or hadn't chosen to heal him first, maybe it would have required a rez or something, and the little mini-awesome moment wouldn't have happened. But I'm sure you've all had similar small moments of Cool.
Let's hear them!
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PS If you have screenshots, that would be even more awesome!
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The DA solo path stuff - I'm hoping that any fancy mechanics they put in are like the fight with Blitz in one of the Sig arcs. I've done that twice now, once in a duo and once in a trio, and I was extremely pleased by the fight. It had a lovely small set of interesting game mechanics, with the initial 'take down the towers' bit, then a straight fight to half health, then a fun glowie clicking section, and finall a fight with the Boss to take him down. The map wasn't too big, yet it was a recognisable place so cool to fight in, and importantly, unlike the trials, the place wasnt also swarming with hordes of annoying minions and lts and even more importantly, there was no massive swarm of other players all spamming auras and aoes and attacks, turning the screen into a mass of pixel-vomit.
This game is based on superhero comicbooks. Pull your camera back and use pageup to rotate it a tad and take a screenshot in one of your solo arcs during a fight. You'll easily come up with a cool-looking screenie that wouldn't look out of place in a MArvel or DC title. Now enter a BAF and take a screenshot during the final Seige/NS fight. Yeuch.
I've had an idea for another thread.
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Quote:We don't know that: See my earlier comment about seeing into the future. If the players decamp to DA en masse in sufficient numbers because they find they can have more fun in 8-man groups steamrolling the 'solo' content for incarnate progression in the same manner they've been able to optimise trial runs to the silly casual zerg-states that the BAF and sLAM have become, then wether or not the trials are 'core' content becomes irrelevant. Call the UG core all you like, I see '+3 [AT] lf any trial but UG' and 'lf BAF, sLAM, Keyes' in Pocket D far more than i see 'team forming to repeat UG ad nauseum' type calls.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
It won't change the Trials being the core content for the Incarnate system.
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Quote:No, but I might shortly into watching Fight Club.Originally Posted by Ultimus
If that was the case, if I was a new player I'd look at what I just wrote and be like "I have no idea what he is talking about" and forget about it.
It would be like if I told you the narrator is Tyler Durden. Are you going to remember that?
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Quote:Well in the alternate dimension where you can accuratley see into the future maybe, but here in the real world we don't know that for sure, and the playerbases reaction to the DA content and any new trials will surely affect future content development.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Also, this is a very important point about expectations for the solo Incarnate content - it's an add-on to the main Trial content, so people shouldn't expect to get the same amount of regular new solo content as regular new Trials.
For example, a new Trial in I22.5 or I23 isn't a guarantee that there'll also be new solo Incarante content in those Issues too - the Trials are the core Incarnate content, so the main development focus is on them - Dark Astoria is more like a detour from that route to fill a content gap, rather than the start of a new route with an equal amount of focus on it as the Trials route has.
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Quote:Oh, I know it's not uber-hard. I just meant that for solo players, the trapdoor bit and the hero-1 section can be difficult initially, whereas the BAF is doable in sleepy-mode, much of the time.Originally Posted by Stormbird
Ramiel's not easy?
Since when?
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Quote:Here's my advice to leaders of the BAF: When you get to the prisoner phase, don't just say 'Cover the choke points.' and then when someone says 'need some more north pls' respond with 'more north please', because unless you've got a team of telepaths playing, nobody knows who you're talking to, so either everyone goes north or nobody does.Originally Posted by shaggy5
Something has really struck me hard that I want to share about all the iTrials (with the exception of probably BAF and Lambda). All 4 iTrials that are newer seem to have a similar problem--There are those that know how to do it and those that don't. It seems every team I am on, I hear a lot of things like, "If you don't know how to such and such, let someone who knows how". The problem is, some of the newer things in iTrials are hard to explain, but the newer players are not learning how to do it. For example, in Keyes, newer players (to the trials) are supposed to stay and fight Walkers. They never get to go up and experience because they don't know.
I know, I know, people are just trying to get through and not fail. All I am suggesting/asking is that those of us who lead many trials, we give more instructions so that over time more players are clear on what to do, and trials are that much easier.
"Team 1 and 2 south, team 3 north' is all it takes, for the most part.
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Quote:If this was actually true after a few trial runs I'd agree with it. The BAF is by anyone's standards 'easy', surely, whereas solo-possible content like Mender Ramiel's arc or Requiem/Striga/Sog arcs is arguably not.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
The solo path rewards will be lower and slower, as the enemies in the solo content aren't as challenging as the enemies on the Trials.
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Quote:Well, I'd say everything, pretty much, including what was already in the game when you left.Originally Posted by Deszron
hey guys long time no see
idk if yall remember me i was xazrealx couple years ago - (i was the blaster that started playing coh and withing 24 hours got to lvl 50 with those bubble farming things, but i didnt know a single thing about char progression, i thought sockets were points for skills lol!!!)
but yeh gonna try coh again, i see its free now...wats the benefit of paying VIP?
is the villans side more active now?
wat all i MISS???
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That's a good idea, he does use Paypal.
Shame there's not an easy way via the NCSoft Store, using his account name.
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Quote:I really fail to see how anyone can get caught out by those things after a run or two at the most. Even if I trigger a longish animation when one starts, I've still got plenty of time to get away before I die.Originally Posted by Energizing_Ion
Barrier (helps with the +res to not die from the pink death patches for those slower peeps
)
Maybe people are playing in first-person mode, or they've got their mouselook pointing up at the GMs faces or something?
I mean, they're giant bright pink flashy circular patches. How hard is it to notice them, and then, like, just stand somewhere else?
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Sadly, I can't buy timecards in my country.
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pff. OP is being too pernickety.
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