Samuel_Tow

I still maintain that the "nipples" were nothing more than a UVW texturing quirk. I still wish I'd kept that old screenshot of a 5th Column boiler that had a "nipple" on it. Also, I made female characters before I1 and I've never seen nipples.

I don't know... I used to think I wanted that, but then I wondered: Would I really want to have a brand new powerset, one I've never played, seen or experienced, shot straight to 50? I mean, half the fun of playing a character is getting up through the levels, becoming stronger and paying old foes back for all the crap they've given you. I'm not sure I'd use a powerset respec even if I could.

And this is coming from a guy who's planning to delete a level 50 Sword/Inv Scrapper to remake her as a level 1 Titan/Inv Scrapper... Or Brute

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Last I heard, Disintegration was supposed to do several ticks of damage, the last one of which was 99%, meaning that the player had to be healed up to absolute full before the last tick. It's somewhat unpleasant, but not really what I'd call cheap, since it's well doable. If the last tick hits for more health than the player has, though... That's a problem, since it more or less requires that every player on the Trial be buffed to their HP cap, and I'm not sure that's even possible.

The way I see this situation, one of two things is happening. Either the player's health capped, but the beam counts the total health before the cap, or the player's health isn't capped but the power is hitting for 99% of the cap and not the current max HP. In both cases, it sounds like a bug.

If there's one good thing to say about Equalisers, it's that only one of them ever appears in a spawn. In Mayhem missions. In regular missions where the PPD or Rogue PPD show up, however, whatever spawning rules are in effect for Mayhems don't apply, so it's not uncommon to see two Ghosts, two Equalisers or even two Sergeants, and not just occasionally. Those spawns are a lot of fun.

Yeah... No. This isn't about a power that "pisses off melee." If it were, I'd be complaining about Sappers, anything Vanguard, Cimeroran Traitors, the Soldiers of Rularuu and the whole host of other enemies that piss off melee which people with an agenda always forget about when they choose to chastise melee-mostly players for being spoiled. And it's not even just melee characters that these powers bother. My Mastermind is seven times more angered by them, because not only is he slowed, but now all of his henchmen will lag behind for the next 30 seconds.

What this is about is a power with an incredibly bad design. You want to slap me with a 30-second AoE debuff? Fine. Make it a target AoE. You want it to be a patch? That's fine, too. Make the effect end when I walk out of the patch. You want it to be a target AoE AND a patch? Fine, make it both, but save the 30-second debuff just for the summoning of the patch. Because there's nothing dumber than defeating an Equaliser and his team, then turning around to head for the next spawn, slightly clipping the edge of the glue patch and being slapped with a 30-second speed debuff. To what end? So I take longer to get to the next fight? Balance by annoyance much?

I don't look for team-mates because I need warm bodies or extra power effects. I add team-mates because I want the company of another human being irrespective of what character that human being comes attached. When I'm not in the mood for company, I don't team. When I'm in the mood for company, I team with whoever's online at the time that I like. I refuse to treat people as objects just because it makes a single "mob" easier.

Pretty much.

Knockback, particularly in Energy Blast, is disruptive because it's uncontrollable. If every power did knockback every time like, say, Gale, then I can anticipate it and direct it. But I can't. In fact, if I shoot an Explosive Blast into a crowd of 10 people, I'm virtually guaranteed that some won't get knocked back. It doesn't matter how well I use knockback, it will always scatter enemies when it's AoE, simply because it will affect some, but not others.

Also, dealing lots of damage over a wide area is simply something Blasters "do." It's like chastising a Scrapper for going into melee. Yes, the Blaster can simply choose to not use his most potent attacks... But then why do you even need said Blaster on the team to begin with? What does an Energy Blaster bring to the team that, say, a Fire Blaster or an Assault Rifle Blaster won't bring, but with less of a hassle? Personally, I'd sooner have people not learn how to use their Knockback by not using it than have people not learn how to use their Knockback AND STILL USE IT.

I recall trying to explain to Zombra how to use Gale to knock enemies into walls or into corners and to generally push them together so they're easier to kill en masse. After a couple of missions of him using it willy-nilly and occasionally apologising, we simply agreed that he wouldn't use the power, and the missions became a lot easier. Knockback is a liability far more often than it is a help, and while you may choose to chastise people for not wanting to learn how to use it, I'd personally much rather not have systems in the game that are detrimental to the player and his team UNTIL he learns how to use them.

Finally, knockdown is actually superior to knockback in several ways. Some say enemies knocked back spend longer on the ground. Maybe. Maybe a little while longer. But enemies knocked down are also immune to knockback for a long time after they're initially affected. Pretty much until they get up and have time to attack you at least once. Enemies affected by knocdown, by contrast, are susceptible to more knockdown at all times, either mid-animation or as they're getting up. While knockback may keep enemies on the ground slightly longer, knockdown can keep enemies on the ground indefinitely.

It doesn't. I'm not sure if it ever did. However, people have been trying to justify "pure natural human" characters since the game came out, usually with requests for vehicles or swinging travel powers because the existing sets aren't "pure natural human" enough. Well, or suggestions like this. I can get the pure natural humans being somewhat justifiable in the first 10, 20 levels when you're fighting mostly thugs, street criminals and lower-key monsters, but by the time you're taking down armies of giant combat robots, hordes of demons, huge monsters and literal gods with your bare hands... That really doesn't work any more. Again - if people can explain it, then more power to them, but I don't want to see the game changed for the worse so as to accommodate it.

I have a problem with the suggestion to take the Alpha slot five times in that it makes power slotting just about pointless. What's to stop me from taking the accuracy Alpha once, the endurance Alpha once and the damage Alpha three times and never put another slot in my attacks, saving upwards of 20 slots to practically 6-slot everything else? It's simply bad balance, on the same level of "bad" as the old suggestion to skip a power pick and take slots, instead. It makes a mockery of the entire power and slot build structure and it turns Incarnates into a mess. And for what? So a "pure natural human" can exist where he or she has no place to exist? It's not worth breaking the game for something that character writing has the responsibility of explaining.

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Now, mind you, that's not to say I don't want less... Elemental-y character concepts for Incarnates. Far from it. For a character with a sword, I'd like to see some kind of large-scale sword attack as a judgement. For characters with Super Strength, I want to see a Mega Ground Punch of some sort. I want to see more custom Incarnate options that accommodate more concepts, possibly even up to and including pure natural humans. Again, I have nothing against them, and if the systems' visuals can be made to accommodate them, all the better. I want more Incarnate customization in general, just speaking overall. But note that such visual customization doesn't turn the entire game system on its head.

It's only possible for a select few powerset combos and very few specific builds, and it's never in the slightest any fun.

This is not a solo option any more than the Trials are, that's what I'm saying. The developers have spent years telling us and demonstrating to us that Archvillains are not solo content. Even if some select few can solo them, this is not solo content. Passing off what has been officially defined as group content as solo content is disingenuous at best.

And it shouldn't. I'm gaining more power, godlike power if the briefings are to be believed. I should not be getting weaker. Yes, my enemies do get stronger, but they shouldn't be getting strong faster than I am.

No, but I'd expect it to at least be theoretically soloable for everyone. Archvillains are not intended to be soloable for everyone, Incarnates included. Making a mission that I'm supposed to keep failing, as well, is a bad idea. This is not solo content. It's the straw man of solo content developers hand out when they want to claim they're introducing solo content but don't actually want to introduce a solo path.

This is no different from the current Shards path. We were given this as a reputed solo option and it's not, because it's not viable. I want to see solo Incarnate content that's solo in more than just name only. Why does everyone who like Trials have such a big problem with me having Incarnate content I can play solo AND enjoy?

In order to achieve what? Get a single common? Achieve the two level shifts? Get uncommons in all four slots?

That's really my biggest problem - fighting people who can get out of a fight instantly is just no fun.

They're the same between all players, and constitute a significant increase in ability for no investment from your actual build. There is no situation in the entire game where having veteran powers is worse than not having them. The very worst situation at all is when you just have no use for them, but even then you're still better off having them than not. Yet these powers are not customizable, they're inappropriate for many concepts and they are, to be quite honest, ugly. And at the same time, anyone not using them is gimping himself, because they are just that good.

I can give you an easy example: Controllers have a low damage mod and almost no direct damage attacks for quite a long time. This is how the AT is balanced. But this doesn't really matter, because from level 1, veteran Controllers have access to the Nemesis Staff, the Black Wand and the Sands of Mu for no cost whatsoever. This gives veteran Controllers a significant advantage over newbie Controllers, and creates a situation which I HATE. Character power should not be dictated by the amount of money spent or the length of time of veteran status. It should be dictated by the player's ability to manage a build and possibly by the player's ability to find the components needed to do so. Sure, veteran players will have an advantage in that regard, as well, but this advantage can be quickly closed up with enough effort and for no cost whatsoever.

I want a game that's fair to all players regardless of standing, wealth or property. The build system is ALMOST fair in this way, City Traveller notwithstanding, because even if we veterans know what to take from it, for everything we take, there are a whole bunch of things we DON'T take. Now, if you needed to give up a power pick to get and use the Nemesis Staff, then fine. I wouldn't complain. Or, alternately, if EVERYONE had a "misc" power pool that they were forced to pick something from and the Nemesis Staff was one item out of a list, then that's fine, too. But the Nemesis Staff is a benefit with absolutely no downsides to the players that have it, yet completely unavailable to the players that don't. This is very much not fine.

I agree with this, and I want to say something which may be of dubious factuality: I firmly believe that character build choices should come in packs containing both the things they want and a bunch of things they don't. If you simply dump all of the options of the entire game in front of a player, then that player will just pick and choose all the stuff he wants, avoid all the stuff he doesn't and essentially only ever make a single, "perfect" character. That's really bad for replayability.

This actually gets into the territory of the Mary Sue and has some of the same problems. The primary problem with a Mary Sue is she's one single character who can do what all the other charters can do, and better. What point, then, is there to having those other characters at all? Why would play as them? I recall playing a WWE game on the PC back in the day, and when making a custom wrestler, I made his move list be just a combination of all the existing wrestler's finishers. And he was a strong wrestler. He was. But then when I played some of the existing ones, I was very disappointed because they were so much weaker and they couldn't perform a finisher out of most situations, since they only had one. Why the hell would I ever want to play them at all?

If you don't force people's characters to inherit some kind of weakness, then players themselves will almost never intentionally choose to have one. Players don't play games to lose, and almost no-one would ever pick a clearly inferior power over a clearly superior one. The only time people accept having weaknesses is when they're given a package of powers that has both strengths and weaknesses to it. In other words, they'll only ever accept taking a weakness when the game mandates that they have one and are simply allowed to choose which one that is. In fact, speaking purely for myself, if I'm given the choice between being much stronger in one aspect but much weaker in another and being strong in all aspects, I will pick the latter every time.

Choice is good to the extent it allows you to build the exact character that's in your head. Choice isn't good when you try to extend it to allow you choose not to have any weaknesses.

If they sell XP, I stop playing. Simple as that. This is the kind of desperate crap games pull when there's no other way for them to stay afloat, not when they're supposedly expanding. Paying for in-game advantages should never happen, and no matter to what extent it might already be happening, I intend to fight it tooth and nail wherever it rears its ugly head. "Pay to win" is easily the worst, most damaging aspect of "free to play" models, and it has the capacity to ruin games.

Why not Infernal's helmet and/or axe that's on fire?

No argument there, that was a horrible system. Luckily, we got... Or I got the Vanguard Pack, and I no longer have to put up with that nonsense. One only hopes that a pack will show up in the Paragon Store to unlock the faux-Incarnate auras and emotes at character creation in return for paragon points as opposed to blood, sweat and tears.

An Archvillain is not solo content and you know it. Please don't try to pass off team tasks that can be done solo off as solo tasks. That's like saying that a Trial can be started by a single player and that's your solo path. It's not. Team tasks are as difficult as they are because you're expected to tackle them with a team. Simply letting people approach a team task alone is not a solution. Claiming that task is as difficult as a team task is false on its face. Because you're doing it alone, possibly with a not very solo-capable AT, it is monumentally harder.

You don't have to admit it, that's my point. The entire game is built on this premise. This is a city teeming with supers, any one of which could be amazingly powerful. But when the Envoy of Shadows shows up or the Banished Pantheon forge a ritual to trap a goddess, *I* am the only one who can stop them. Why? Where are the other 200 thousand heroes? What are they doing? Don't know, don't care, because - as Tidus would say - "This is MY story!" This is already an accepted part of the game. The owner of a particular mission is treated as the only hero available to do a particular task, and if that heroes refuses or fails, then the world is doomed, irrespective of the fact that there's a conga line of other heroes lining up to do the same thing.

Personally, I'd like to see the game treat my character of choice as a godlike entity and trust him to shine in his own missions. I'm not taking anything away from anyone, all secluded in my own, private instance and no-one is taking anything away from me since they can't enter my own, private instance. If I'm told to go defeat Hequat, I can take pride in having taken down a literal god, even though everyone and his grandma has taken down a literal god. But if I wasn't there to see it, I can pretend it didn't happen. The game can pretend I'm the most important person if the writing says I am, and I will not complain about it even if I know the writing says that to everyone.

I don't play City of Heroes to compete with other players, or to compare-and-contrast my character against theirs. In fact, that's a big reason as to why I rarely team - it's much easier to pretend my character is an unbeatable badass when I play by myself at +0x2 with no bosses or AVs than it is when I team with a bunch of power-built characters wiping the floor with +1x8 spawns with bosses by themselves, putting me to shame. It's incredibly very easy to make a character feel powerful and amazing in his own story if you don't involve other people, much less so in team-only stories. Removing context by not explicitly featuring other players is the key, in my opinion.

Personally, I don't really mind an explicit gate of Incarnate ability on Incarnate-only content. In fact, I prefer it. Let me speak of "another game" the name of which I shall not mention so soon after being modsmacked for mentioning "other games." In this other game, gear quality is denoted by stars, and being given access to a higher-level dungeon requires that you have a full set of, say, two-star gear. This doesn't guarantee you'll be strong enough to survive, but it does guarantee you'll at least have a shot. As such, I have no problem with solo Incarnate content requiring either a specific Incarnate level shift, a specific Incarnate ability and even a specific Incarnate ability Tier.

For instance, say Hequat is back and stronger than ever. To take on her, I would need to have at least a Common ability slotted in all five existing Incarnate slots. If I don't, I can't even take the mission. The contact says I'm not strong enough. By contrast, say Giovanna Scaldi is back and in the physical world. She's much stronger now, but she's still basically a psychic ghost, so all I need to be allowed to fight her is a single Common ability sloted in any of my slots. Or, for instance, an army of the undead has appeared out of... Somewhere. What is needed for someone to handle them is a Judgement power, so the only way to be allowed to take on this mission is to have at least an Uncommon Judgement.

I'm really not that bothered by requirements. So long as content exists that's Incarnate in nature but I can do by myself, I'll be happy.

That's not a safe assertion in the slightest. City of Heroes is hardly the only F2P MMO with PvP in it.

It wouldn't make it more fun for me. Every time I've done PvP in the past, easily the biggest problem that outright ruined my experience has been travel powers as used by myself and other players. Nothing sucks more than getting the upper hand on a difficult opponent, only for him to fire up Super Jump and disappear over the hill.

That's because Malta also add resistances and ridiculous damage and accuracy to the mix. Titans and Gunslingers are DEADLY even if they don't hold you while Sappers are just cheating. There's a reason people single them out for hatred

I don't find Malta missions impossible to complete with Blasters. After all, I took three of them through Crimson's World Wide Red. I just find them horribly irritating to solo with Blasters, and I don't play games to be irritated. My solution was to simply not play Blasters, and it's not one I've regretted even once.

Again, the problem isn't the debuff on these, or even the duration. It's that the power creates a patch which THEN slaps you with a 30-second debuff. The debuff itself is auto-hit - anyone who walks in the patch gets snagged with it, irrespective of your defence numbers. The only thing which has a to-hit check is the summon of the patch itself - if the Equaliser misses the player he's aiming at, no patch forms and everyone is fine. But if he opts to shoot for the resist-based Tanker on the team instead of the defence-based Scrapper, then the defence-based Scrapper will get hit by the auto-hit debuff anyway.

The Glue Grenade needs to either apply its debuff as a target AoE only once and run a to-hit check against all targets, or otherwise the debuff needs to disappear when you walk out of the patch. BOTH of these together is just cheating. It's like being slowed for 30 seconds every time you touch Caltrops, even after they expire.

That's a hideous debuff, yes. It's strength is simply enormous, and means that for its duration, you can't hit squat. I find it annoying on the same level as Tsoo Sorcerer Hurricane.

What do the Germans have to do with it? And since when is dising Batman "pessimistic?"

How my post is germane to your thread is you are asking for a "human potential incarnate" nonsense which does not and cannot exist within this game system. Even if you wanted to make Mr. Mary Sue defeat a living god, you'd write that story as Batman outsmarting said god and using some kind of odd magitech to beat him. You would not depict Batman punching him in the eye until the god ran out of hit points.

Surprise! We have an instance in the game where our characters are asked to fight a literal god. Hequat, to be precise. Do you know how we defeat her? We keep punching her in the mouth until she falls over. Job done!

You're operating under the false premise that superior stats are somehow less "meta-human" than the ability to shoot lighting. Well, they're not. I don't care how tough Batman is, he does not survive a shotgun blast up the nose, he does not survive dropping 50 storeys and landing on his feet, he does not survive getting shot in the chest with an anti-tank rocket, he does not survive being disintegrated. No matter whether you achieve this with stats or glowing auras, this is still very much super-human, if not above and beyond even that.

From the very first time you set foot in Paragon City at level 1, you are capable of surviving a dozen shotgun blast, probably a hundred knife wounds, dozens of pistol bullet wounds, a drop of any height onto pavement, being set on fire, being electrocuted, multiple bursts from an assault rife, and all of that damage combined you can heal from if you just sit down for four minutes. That is not "human potential incarnate" unless you view immunity to bullets and blades to be part of the human potential. Though, I suppose if you view the fighters in Dragon Ball Z as simply having realised their human potential to break planets in half with the flat of their hand, then I could see THAT interpretation of the dreaded "pure natural" character.

I've never sat down and tried to tell someone they shouldn't play pure natural characters. By all means, make all the MA/SR Scrappers you want, travel around with Swift, Hurdle and Combat Jumping and spin your RP as you like. But when you start asking for the game to be changed and power balance trampled so that you can have what is contradicted by a dozen different in-game systems, I step up and make the same old "pessimistic" post I've made on the subject every time "pure natural human" characters come up. If you want one, it's your responsibility to stick to concept.

Tell me about it. And I had the sad misfortune of playing an MMO once which did not allow you to strafe at all. What the hell?

Neither of those activities, though, is necessarily a form of post-50 progression. It's a parallel form of progression that goes on since level 10, and it's only "post 50" to the extent that most people tend to hit 50 before they buy all... 20? 30? 40? Before they get all the game's purples. It's fairly easy to shut down XP gain, perma-lock yourself at 49, finish an Inventions build and claim that the 49 to 50 game is post-inventions progress.

Incarnates are different, in the sense that they require you to have completed the entire 1-50 game before you can take part in it. They are not one of the many activities a level 50 character can do that just happen to be left over from the 1-49 game. They're an activity which only ever starts AFTER the 1-50 game ends.

Also, Incarnate slots offer very visual, very showy powers, something that neither Accolades nor Inventions offer. Being able to toss a hugeass fireball is much more a continuation of a fire-centric character concept than having 7.5% more defence to psychic attacks (pulling that number out of a hat, by the way).

I don't really have a problem with multi-team tasks as a general concept. They're a legitimate part of the game. Sometimes a clusterhug is the only way to beat a particularly nasty foe who's so bad he outclasses everyone. What I have a problem with is that this is the ENTIRE Incarnate system. The raid framework in itself requires that we form a large team of red shirts and fight one or several very powerful enemies who outclass us in every way, shape or form. That's good for one type of story, but it fails in the polar opposite type of story, where my character outclasses everyone else and difficulty arises from villains pooling their forces to attack him.

This is already true in several places in the existing game. Tasks like the Mender Lazarus "Task Force" where you end up taking on Requiem, Vandal and Emperor Ming the Merciless essentially on your own (Nosferatu and Brukholder are idiots and die quick) is one, as are both Mender silos TFs, hero and villain, where you either take out the whole of the Freedom Phlanx, or otherwise Recluse and his lieutenants. There are the numerous signature AVs that show up in missions, like Vanessa DeVore, Clarissa Crey, the real Nemesis, Rikti Herodotus, Miss Liberty, Positron, Synapse, Marauder, Night Star, Bobcat... The list goes on. The point is, the game already gives us plenty of opportunities to outshine the signature NPC one-on-one or even when they tag-team against us.

If we had to speak of comic books, this reminds me of Spider-Man facing off against the Sinister Six. He's just one guy, and not all that super-powered, as well, facing off against... What was it? Rhino, Doc Ock, the Vulture, the Chamelion, the Shocker and... Who else? The Hobgoblin, maybe? Point is, Spider-Man is seen as such a threat that the Kingpin has to pull a whole bunch of villains together to oppose him and create drama and threat that way. Individually, Spidey has put all of these guys in jail several times already, but they're dangerous because they're together.

Wait, the sixth guy was Mysterio, wasn't he? Curse my eclectic memory!

All I'm saying is that as the Incarnate system expands, it will need to feature more personal stories that allow us to shine in our own adventures. All it features right now is instances where we're badly underpowered and have to essentially cheat to beat a single foe or a pair of foes. Sooner or later, it needs to feature the reverse - instances where my enemies are underpowered and are only a threat to me, personally, because they team up and cheat.

OK, so I pick Build Up seven times and then something else on top. Absurd example, but it highlights a couple of problems:

1. Powers within powersets are not balanced against each other. Healing Flames has an equal heal strength to Reconstruction, but it recharges 20 seconds faster, just as an example. And there are others besides. Most powersets are balanced as a whole, relying on the interaction and stacking of all nine powers, even if individual powers within the set may be overpowered or underpowered.

2. Some powers only work within the context of the set they appear in. Soul Extraction only works on Necromancy henchmen, Swap Ammo only affects Dual Pistols powers, Power Syphon builds up buff from Kinetic Melee attacks only, etc.

3. Power order is all over the place. If we go by Blaster primaries, I can take one Tier of power from each set and still end up with a set of almost entirely Snipes. And if you don't make powers comparable by Tier, any other kind of comparison is largely subjective.

4. Power balance dictates that powersets have certain weaknesses and certain strengths. Invulnerability has no psionic Protection, but has high smashing/lethal resistance while Fiery Aura has overall less survivability but more utility. Mixing and matching powers as you please simply means the community as a whole will end up with one meta-powerset with all strengths and no weaknesses.

This system existed once before, in CoH pre-Beta, and it was abandoned. There was a good reason for this.

The ability to purchase every costume piece, aura, custom weapon or custom power earnable in-game with real money and the ability to earn in-game any costume piece, aura, custom weapon or custom power buyable with real cash.

No, we may not. I HATE what veteran reward attacks have done to the game and what Booster Pack powers are doing to it. The last thing I want is to make things worse. Just because things are bad doesn't mean I want to make them ten times worse. The next thing you know, we'll be buying experience, Inf and Incarnate XP. Do not want. Ever.

Trials also have a lot more momentum than TFs because of the larger amount of people in it. I recall I think it was last year when I ran I... Some TF, I don't remember which, but we ran it with the minimum of four people that it allowed. In that TF, at one point we took a lunch break of about 20 minutes, any time someone wanted to go to the loo or stop to read text, we waited, every time someone wanted to defeat all or hit a specific objective first, we did so.

Basically, on a small TF or other single-team task where organisation isn't necessary, it isn't necessary to play the task in the one single most efficient manner possible. You play it however you like, and finding a compromise between four people isn't all that hard most of the time. Compare that to swaying 23 other people and doing something that's not very efficient - not gonna' happen. Ain't a person alive who has enough charisma to convince 23 people to give him a 10 minute potty break in a 45 minute Trial. Not gonna' happen, especially when no one specific person is vital to success.

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Here's some more food for thought: No MMO in history can ever hope to entertain people solely on novelty. Every bit of content becomes old hat within the same month in which it is released. Trying to outpace players with content additions does not work. Therefore, designing content that's supposed to work on its novelty, its mystery or the difficulty in figuring it out is throwing money off a bridge. Your content will be novel, difficult and unknown for all of a week, if it isn't figured out the day it releases. And then what?

As far as I'm concerned, all content in an MMO should be designed with either a strong emphasis on replayability, or at the very least with the awareness that it WILL be replayed over and over again, so annoying time sinks and fiddly mechanics just get in the way. Counter-intuitively, the more complex, longer and fiddly a task is, the less its replayability value becomes. Sure, it's fun to do once, maybe twice, but over and over again? Gimme a break! That's why I spend so much of my solo time on old Launch story arcs - it's because they give me simple, clear, straightforward missions that I can enjoy without irritation even when I can quite contact dialogue with my eyes closed.

I'll tell you a basic truth, at least as I see it. If I only intend to run a piece of content once, then I want the experience to be damn memorable, exhausting and exciting. If I want to run a piece of content several times, then I don't want chance involved with it so I can repeat my old results. If I'm planning on running a piece of content over ten times, and possibly dozens and dozens, then I want it to be as simple as possible, as straight-forward as possible and require me to jump through as few "I am still awake!" attention tests as is absolutely necessary.

A slap in the face... Why did I not think of that pun before?