Samuel_Tow

This depends on your definition of "finished," though both definitions are fairly easy to answer for.

If we see "finished" as "gotten a very rare boost," then the answer is easy - I haven't. I don't think I ever will. There ain't enough content in the game for that, and I abhor repeating content with the same character.

If we see "finished" as "put anything in the Alpha slot," then the answer is easy - solo, running whatever content I had left over from the trip to 50. After having run Ramiel's arc, of course. A common is... I want to say "easy," but it's not. Let's go with "doable" solo. An uncommon... Possibly. Beyond that, though - no, thanks.

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More to point, I never agreed with "end game" TFs being locked at 8 people. I've never run a Statesman TF, and I don't intend to. I've always wanted to be able to run end-game TFs with smaller teams. Like I said - teams of three or at most four, with three being preferable. I don't need to the Apex and Tin Can TFs with three people, clearly, but I do believe we should have smaller-team content for the post-50 game just the same.

And allow me to specify - I don't count content left over from I1 as part of the POST-50 game.

Partially. Some of the older TFs - specifically Positron and Synapse - are startable with four people, and some of the newer ones have avoided the large team-mate requirements of the Shard TFs. Yet when it comes to level 50 content and I suggest TFs that can be run with as few as three people, I'm told that this can't be balanced for because it would make it far too easy for large teams.

I don't know what to say to that. Maybe it will, I don't really know, but my point lies elsewhere: If this is a problem, it should be solved. If there were three-man TFs at level 50, I would run those. I would run those and I would put my own teams together, because three people is easy to get even on a bad day.

No, I mean in terms of Incarnate progression.

I trust we can all agree that tying the entirety of the Incarnate system to Emperor Marcus Cole and nothing else ever would be a bad move. Sooner or later we'll have to grow past his threat, and so I ask what comes next.

My point was more pragmatic, however - as we progress down the Incarnate slots and tiers, we become stronger. Intelligent game design would have to anticipate this and make the encounters harder to compensate, but the question is by how much? As the gulf between top-tier powers plus level shifts and bottom-tier powers or, worst still, empty slots is vast, where would balance fall? Where should it fall?

I harken back to Inventions. Inventions, they said, would not change the existing game, meaning that the game would not be rebalanced to expect people to use them. No-one ever claimed that NEW content won't be made that assumed you had those, and Incarnate Trials strongly suggest that this time is coming, if it hasn't come already. Sooner or later we'll have to ask ourselves the question: Do we balance new content based on top-tier power? And considering what the overall point of the Incarnate system seems to be, I'm inclined to expect they'll tend towards a "yes," or at the very least "maybe."

I'd personally look at that as a technical challenge to solve, rather than an excuse not to bother. Way back in the day, one of the game's selling points was that encounters scaled to the team size, so that both small teams and large teams would feel properly challenged, as opposed to other games where static content could prove too hard for smaller teams and too easy for larger teams.

So what happened to that? Honest question here. What happened to content scaling with team size? Did we conclude that it wasn't working or that it was pointless or something? Because I've heard that same explanation practically since Incarnates began: "If you don't balance it for many people, then many people will trivialise it."

So let's come up with a system that scales better, if the old one is insufficient. If it's a problem, then let's address that problem, instead of working around it. This is very much at the heart of why there's such a gulf between quote-unquote "solo" content and massive multi-team raids - because the only place where enemy spawn scaling to team size is even considered these days is solo via the mission difficulty slider, or on small teams of two and three. And it shouldn't be like that.

I believe the point was that it's slow outside of the Trials, hence why they're not seen as an alternative.

When did I? I listed about five or six things with TF or SF appended, meaning they were all Task Forces, with "Strike Force" being a pointless renaming of the same basic system.

I'm not convinced that TFs can't or shouldn't be small team content, however, especially considering they kind of already are. The Posi TF only requires three people, and I ran it with three people about a week ago. It did not present too much of a problem (bastardised narrative timeline notwithstanding).

So why is it such a novel concept to have small-team TFs at the level cap?

The reason I focus on level shifts specifically is because they make a very large difference, in part thanks to the purple patch and in part thanks to how large a role the level difference plays in creating challenge. Granted, level shifts aren't the only thing, but they are a major factor.

Moreover, the real reason I bring them up is because they make a difference. The gulf of performance between those with just Common Incarnate powers and those with Very Rare Incarnate powers is very wide, and this is by design - those are big rewards that should make a difference. You end up with a situation that balancing content for the Commons makes it trivial for the Very Rares, and balancing content for the Very Rares makes it untenable for the Commons.

The Incarnate system - whether it is "like" the raid grind of other games or not - seems mostly geared towards large time sinks with large rewards at the end, and said large rewards create a very steep power creep. I genuinely worry about what will become of these trials once the expectation is held that everyone will have at least a couple of level shifts. Sure, older Trials will not be made harder, but what of newer ones? What comes after Cole?

That's something which never fails to get my nethergoat - people feel that you ain't teaming unless you're on a full team. I've run quite a few TFs which are easily startable with as few as four people, yet the team leader will refuse to start unless we have a full complement of eight. I've run on PUGs where the leader insists on replacing anyone who drops team as close to instantly as possible so we're never below eight people. And I've even read team-leading guides that proclaim that a team isn't a team if it's less than five people.

To be perfectly honest, teaming is easy when it's with one or two other people. I can put teams like that together in my sleep and play with them to my heart's content. In fact, a lot of people are much more pleasant one-on-one than as a voice in the crowd. Even if we ignore solo content (yeah, yeah), we're still left with no small-team content post-50.

And I'm not just talking about Lambada and BARF. Look at the other level 50 TFs we can run:

*STF - 8 people
*RSF - 8 people
*Lady Grey - I don't know how many this requires to start, but I've never run one with less than 8 people
*ITF - 6 people minumum, most run with 7 or 8
*Tin Mage - 8 people
*Apex - 8 people

OK, credit where credit is due, the two Mender Silos TFs don't have a minimum team requirememnt, but look at everything else - six people and more. Feh!

Question: What happens when/if newer Incarnate Trials expect you to have level shifts?

That then skips over another topic entirely, in that all new post-50 content we've seen is in the form of large-team or multi-team encounters, but I don't want to get into that again.

Suffice it to say that I'll be collecting... Shards, Threads, whatever drops off level 50 enemies, up until I run out of content to do.

I don't mean you, specifically, but I put a fair few people on ignore over this specific issue. If I say I dislike their new favourite toy, then it MUST be because I'm doing something wrong, or because I was raised wrong or whatever. It's not just Incarnates, either. I talked about my refusal to get into Inventions Sets recently, and was called "idiotic" and "moronic" for it, and in those exact words.

What I despise is that there is a crowd of people who claim they've had it up to here, and will use that as an excuse to belittle those who are vocal in their dislikes. The "if you don't like what I like, then there's something wrong with you" is where the problem originates.

Hell, just look at people telling Moo how much he's wrong by re-interpreting things he never said, but were rather "evident" from reading between the lines.

That's not fun.

I have to agree with this... For the most part. For all the kvetching about how hard the Ramiel arc was when it first came out, it was and still is one of my favourites, Trapdoor or no Trapdoor. Sure, it's cheap in terms of difficulty, it's chock-full of gimmicks and actually a little short, but I still love it to bits.

Even if I'm not interested in Raids, I'll still do that arc every time, for the fun of it if nothing else. Plus, at least the Common Alpha should be reasonably easy to get without raiding.

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I do not like the first mission, however. It's blatant fanservice and that comes off more as patronising than anything else. "We can't show you boobies, but we can show you lots of cleavage and upskirt shots..." I mean: "We can't let you beat up all those signature characters, but we can let you beat up their reflections. That's cool, right?" It's a lot of spectacle with no substance. Beating up Lord Recluse or the Statesman in person is far more satisfying than defeating their astral projections or whatever those are while you cheat shamelessly.

I believe the intention was to call a stop to the hostilities. What the "I like raids" people are guilt of, if anything, is presenting me and people like me as social pariahs who are wrong for not liking raids no matter the reasons presented.

Ah, it's great to get the old Friggin Taser back. How I have missed you.

No, no, I agree with you completely. Trials and heavy action are not the place for banter. I do, however, remember that argument being tossed around with the OOOLD Hamidon encounter. I would complain that I spent four hours on the clock sitting on my hands, and people would cut me off saying how great of a community mingling spot that was, and how they didn't really care for the Hamidon and just went there for the banter... Banter which consisted of childish ad-hominem insults, intentional idiocy and people acting like complete jerks, but that's besides the point.

What I'm mostly saying is that I don't see raids or TFs or even Pocket D as great socialisation opportunities. Then again, I'm also not the kind of guy who goes to bars and chats up strangers. I prefer my socialising to be done in private with just a couple of other people, both in-game and out.

I have to stand with Moo here. This reading between the lines is... Wait a minute... What is that?



Can you see it? There's something there, I'm sure of it. Let's look a little closer.



There is! There is something there! What is that? It looks like text. Let's see...



Is that? No... You can't mean that... It's too small to read.



Oh, man, yes, it is. I can't believe this. That can't be right. It must be...



Oh, come on, now! Moo! I'm ashamed of you, man. I'm ashamed of you. I never thought to read between the lines of your posts, but who would have thought THAT was there?

Well, I am sickened and disgusted!

Otherwise known as the law of conservation of ninjutsu Something like that, yes. The more the characters in any given story, the less face time they get and the less memorable and awesome they are in the end. To wax anime for a moment:

Take Naruto, for example. That show has loads and loads of characters. I haven't counted, but there are probably over 50 named ones. They almost never show up together at the same time for anything other than epilogue greetings. Most of the time it's a team of four (standard for the show's canon laws) or several teams of four scattered across several different events. And even then loads of those characters spend months with no screen time at all.

In fact, the show had a couple of jokes about that. One was when Garra and his friends were shown in the script that they wouldn't be appearing in the next few story arcs, much to their disappointment. And indeed, we didn't see them for around a year. The other was a few characters joking about renaming the show into "Shikamaru Shippuuden" or "Asuma Shippuuden" because the titular protagonist was about to spend two full story arcs training and having not much of any plot to him. You know, like the last 200 episodes, but I digress.

Another good example is Shaman King. This show has a main cast of over a dozen, plus quite a fat supporting cast, plus a whole cadre of villains and a whole host of cameo characters. However, it manages to make all characters personable by leading them through each character's personal story arc one by one, highlighting that particular character as the story's main protagonist, with the rest acting like supporting cast and combat team-mates. I don't recall a single encounter in 64 episodes that wasn't focused on one specific character, up to and including the final battle that highlighted the show's de-facto protagonist.

What I'm saying is that, at least for some people, what feels "epic" isn't the number of warm bodies tossed at a problem like one might dispense bird seed for the pigeons in a public park, but rather a story which highlights a specific character or two or three and focuses on them. In fact, I just got done writing an essay on why stories should make us care and what stories should make us care about, and "characters" was and is central to that, in my eyes. And you really can't design any sort of gameplay which lets everyone shine in his own way when you're dealing with more people than you can fit on a bus.

That's not to say there isn't a kind of "epic" feel to a large-scale war where everyone in the show thus far goes all out. But it's a specific kind of "epic" that doesn't work for everybody.

I'm not so sure about that, myself. One of the reasons I've stuck with this game for so long can be summed up in the old 2001 trailer tagline: "City of Heroes, where YOU are the hero!" For the most part, this game does a great job of making me feel like THE hero. Not always on a team, no, but I'm careful about who I team with and what I team for. For the most part, I try to be on a team that specifically needs what I bring, and that goes some way towards fulfilling that specification. But when the team just needs "more" of what I have, it starts feeling faceless. I'm not a named hero, I'm "a Scrapper" or, more commonly, I'm just "DPS."

A poster recently said "Screw concept." in those exact words. This, to my eyes, is what these Trials are leading us to. I don't question whether the gameplay is fun or not. I'm sure it is for those that like that sort of thing. But it comes at the cost of fracturing my suspension of disbelief like a mirror by rubbing my face in the fact that I really am just another brick in the wall, just another face in the crowd, just another hero in a city that already has far too many. I know that to be true, but I try to ignore it as much as I can, and indeed pretend that the game is, in fact, all about me. I can do that solo just fine. I can do that on a small team. I can... Sort of do that on a large team. I can't do that in a league. Just can't.

So, no, I don't intend to work the Trials, and I don't intend to try and stop people from working them. To each their own. I just want to do what I can to cull the misconception that people like me are somehow callous or deficient or wrong in their preferences. No more, no less.

That's really not true.

For one, part of my job is teaching university classes, and being that I teach "computers," this requires rather a lot more personal interaction with students than just reading off a powerpoint presentation. I have yet to remember a single student's name.

For another, I team with a lot of people in-game, when I feel like it. I ran an Admiral Stutter TF the other day, and I couldn't tell you the name of a single person on that, or what characters they were playing. I remember... I think one was a giant robot, though I forget the inspiration, and another was I think a zombie lady, whom I remember because she had the same Bolero my own character used. That's from an hour-and-a-half TF in which over half the chat was mine. There were just too many people to keep track of, and the only person who stood out was one who kept getting lost, whose name and costume I don't remember.

I'm perfectly capable of chatting with complete strangers, and have developed a speech pattern where I never have to address any person by name, or address any person directly almost ever. I can interact with people just fine without knowing who they are, what they're called, where they're from or what they do for a living. And most of the time, I have to deal with so many strangers I don't pay much attention anyway. The only way I remember people well enough for them to stick with me between play sessions is if I get to interact with them one-on-one or in small groups, or at the very least be with another talkative person on an otherwise silent team. But all that does is let me remember ONE person and forget the other six.

This is a common misconception, in that it mixes up two distinct concepts: 1) likes socialising with other people and 2) likes crowds. I am the former and am not the latter.

Personally, I like socialising. With one other person, two at most. A third other person is already a crowd, eight is unpleasant and 24 is a chicken coop. Just because I like hanging out with a couple people, this doesn't always translate into liking to hang out with a couple dozen people.

If given the choice, I will always pick a duo over solo. If given the choice, I will always pick solo over a full team. You can't "chat" with a large group of people. The most you can do is perform in front of the them as on a stage, and take turns with others who do the same. Pay attention to that when you're in a party, in a club or out with a large group of friends sometimes - whenever someone "talks," he's talking to the whole group, and attitudes and personalities change under those circumstances.

I've been on large teams. I've been to Hamidon raids. I'm a member of several very large global channels. I occasionally get suckered onto voice chat. Every time it's the same thing - once you get more than two or three other people on board, communication is no longer personal and instead becomes a public broadcast to the whole group. This isn't impossible to manage, it's just a chore and rarely if ever fun.

Please, don't try to paint people who don't like to join forces with 23 others and "banter" with them as reclusive. We're not. We just prefer smaller groups, and there's nothing wrong with that.

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More to point, I find any story, game or movie which requires multiples of anything ends up turning said thing faceless. If you need and have, say, one person with a gun, that person is memorable, because he's "the guy with the gun." If you have two, they may be memorable, say "the guy with the gun" and "the girl with the gun." If you have 12, they're just people with guns and no longer memorable.

I don't play games to be another brick in the wall, and I don't appreciate gameplay which requires me to be that.

Typically when my response is "I don't feel super," it's not because I can't juggle planets, but rather because I get lost in the crowd. I could say a lot on the subject, but I feel Z says it best.

Personally, I find an individual's achievement against the odds in situations where there is no-one left to help and nothing to rely on but yourself. Large mash pit wars don't feel "epic" to me. They just feel messy, impersonal and uninteresting.