MrCaptainMan

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

NPC helpers can help to an extent, but they aren't a panacea and its different in the end game. In the standard content, helper NPCs can be very powerful because they are used sparingly. They can practically solo the content themselves, and that's fine because in the standard content that's not a big deal. But in the incarnate solo path, if the player isn't doing most or all of the heavy lifting, its a meaningless trajectory.

The only way I can see making a meaningfully interesting (in terms of difficulty) solo path that is actually soloable is to make every mission have a quick and hard path, and a slow and easy path, and let the player decide how steeply uphill they wish to go. Sort of like farming for EoEs, you could make the incarnate solo path something where its extremely difficult, but there are ways to spend time gathering resources that will make it easier. If that gathering must be done by the soloer themselves and the work cannot in any way be transferred, everyone could solo at the pace they are capable of soloing at: more powerful characters quicker, less powerful characters slower. And separate from raw power, if a mission requires something you don't have, there should be ways to earn it with side tasks.

In effect, rather than scaling the critters with gimmicks, you leave them at full strength and let the players scale themselves upward with gimmicks instead. Temp powers, special buffs, ultimate inspirations, there are lots of ways to allow players to temporarily build up enough power to take on a specific task solo.

That takes a lot of load off of the game engine to try to scale content upward for teams. Instead it only has to scale content upward in simple ways, and the players scale themselves upward in more complex and optional ways, and the difficulty ramp meets in the middle.

Unlocking NPC helpers could be one way for solo players to scale themselves upward to face harder tasks, but it can't be the only way or even the primary way in most cases, because it detracts too much from the player actually accomplishing anything.

Originally Posted by Myddie

This is what worries me, to be honest. My scrapper is only partially IO'd out. I had left the game before I finished and now don't even remember where I was going with the build now and she feels a bit broken and taking more damage and missing more than I remember.

Honoree wiped the floor with her several times in the Ramiel arc until I just said Screw It and popped a bunch of purples and oranges and straight out dps'd him down. Even then, it was touch and go. And he was only EB level. =/

Originally Posted by Wavicle

No, the Avatar is a stats/awareness hybrid fight. You must have the stats, but even with the stats you can fail if people don't pay attention to the other indicators.

If they make missions with fights that are situational awareness ONLY, or with Very minor stat requirements (that can be made up with Inspirations, or even some kind of buff that you receive unless you have a certain number of +levels perhaps), it will solve this problem.

Originally Posted by Kitsune9tails

Is that different from now?

Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood

Personally that would drive me crazy, I find BAF the least interesting of the trials but to each their own.

Originally Posted by Kitsune9tails

On the subject of grindiness...

Isn't the entire point of the endgame system to give us stuff to do forever?

Mental Exercise:
What if each iTrial gave 5x the rewards they do now the first time you did them in a 20-hour period, and 1/5 the rewards the rest of the time. Would that make the Trials feel less grindy by encouraging you to cycle through them rather than rerun the same ones over and over?

Originally Posted by Kitsune9tails

That may be how it works, but I am reasonably certain that's not the intent.

Originally Posted by Kitsune9tails

It's not the point for every character on every Trial to have every ability. But each trial will be built around the idea that certain abilities will be available to the League, and that if nobody has those abilities on a particular run, the League fails, then reslots abilities based on why and how they failed and tries again.

"I guess we need Clarion for that. Who all has Clarion? Nobody? Well then, let's do this other trial so we can get it. Who is closest?"

Originally Posted by Kierthos

What if you were grinding it for the costume parts, the costume change emotes, etc? I mean, by the time you earn enough Empyrean Merits to get all of the costume parts, you've probably got tons of Incarnate components to make... well, damn near any Incarnate ability you'd want or need.

Hell, there are people who probably have all of that stuff and are just banking anything else for the remaining five Incarnate levels.

Originally Posted by Kitsune9tails

But when writing content for 24 Incarnates, you can assume they are at all of the buff caps, side step all that with irresistable abilities, and assume that they have access to all of the Incarnate Abilities of the appropriate tier.

Originally Posted by Snow Globe

As far as I know, the extended one doesn't crash. Lately I've been testing some massive popmenus, but a properly formed popmenu will not crash the game.

Originally Posted by Snow Globe

I recently downloaded the AccoladePowerCollector and it seems to be working fine.