Samuel_Tow

This, really, is the saddest part. The Incarnate Oops is not an unexpected error, or the result of somehow unpredictable circumstances. Someone proposed that all player powers be explained by the same source and someone else thought it was a good idea, then approved it. At some point in development, there was at least one person convinced that players would enjoy having creative control taken away from them, and convinced enough to wrap an entire, extremely costly section of the whole game into it. One would think this sort of thing requires a tad more forward planning.

I get what they're trying to do - they're trying to craft a "cinematic experience," like what you'd get out of Mass Effect or Saints Row or Dragon Age, entirely forgetting that these games, despite having customization elements, have nowhere near the freedom that City of Heroes has. They have a plot, characters are beholden to this plot and the story drives them along this plot. This is not what City of Heroes is, and one look through the Role Playing forum would reveal that. Many, many people come here to tell their own stories.

Seeing City of Heroes as a story is a mistake, largely because that's not what we treat it as. City of Heroes is a setting. This is a city full of heroes and villains that our characters were either born in, or very commonly simply came to for various reasons. Much of our characters' stories take place outside the city and before the city. The history of our characters does not begin the moment we show up in Galaxy City and have the Statesman punched directly into our mouths. This is merely the point where we join our characters and start following their adventures, but it is not the point where their adventure starts.

Let's look at the 90s Fox Cartoon X-Men for a moment. Where does the story start? Granted, for Jubilee, it starts at the beginning, but for everyone else? Not so much. The X-Men already exist, they have a base, they have active membership, they have old friends and sworn enemies, they have been activists for a long time, they have trained, they have fought and they have amassed a long history of past experiences. The day we start the story is just that one day when big things start happening, but big things have happened for many years before, too. We'll just cover those as either flashbacks or character development.

City of Heroes is the setting that our characters' adventures take place in, and it defines the loose sequence of adventures we go through, but City of Heroes IS NOT the story of our characters. No, our characters are our own, because their story is our own to write, and our own to fit within the persistent world... Or fit the persistent world to it, if it comes to that *coughoriginofpowerscough* Sorry, I'm coming down with something.

The point is that the storytelling in this game needs to stop sticking its nose in my business and telling me how to write my characters. Let me handle that, you just focus on giving me stuff to do. I'll worry about WHY I'm doing it.

This is probably the best description of the super packs I've seen yet - the shiny, colourful machines in large stores designed to part gullible children and their cash. All the more reason to hate them.

I chalk this up to yet another outmoded MMO "thing" that simply should have been cast out when the developers noticed we were using it in a vastly different way than they'd originally envisioned it. Back in pre-Beta when a younger Jack Emmert was giving E3 presentations of the game, it had seven origins, and each came with different stats. Natural (i.e. "human") characters could specialise in a single field to a much higher degree than other origins, some could delve in a broader selection of fields but pick fewer powers from them and so forth. Origins were intended to work like classic MMO races, where your race defines your basic stats and the heights to which you can aspire.

For whatever reason, origins had to be cut from the final release of the game, or rather cut down to a simple aesthetic choice. I believe that's a direct result of going with an Archetype class system which made origins' previous effects inapplicable, hence why they were left in but robbed of any function. This bred in players a massive sense of disregard for the practicality of origins and instead taught us to view them as a tool for storytelling. My character's origin is "Technology," but what does that mean? Do I create technology, like a scientist? Am I made of technology, like a robot? Do I just sort of have superior technology, like an advanced alien? Did I find a piece of advanced technology, like the Guyver?

Time and again we'd have the argument about what origins meant. Does "Science" mean you're a scientist who uses science or a the result of experiment where science has been used on you? Does mutation mean you've mutated or that you were born different? Is a pureborn demon magic or natural? Arguments upon arguments were made, and every time someone made a suggestion to make Origins "mean something," no-one could ever agree on precisely what those origins should actually mean.

And now Origins mean nothing at all, which I suppose is the only possible solution at this point, but that doesn't make it a good one. Now, like in every other MMO, we are what the game tells us we are, and the freedom we enjoyed before level 50 is gone unless, like AzureSkyCiel, we close our eyes, plug our ears and yell "LALALALA! I CAN'T HEAR YOU! LALALALA!"

As far as I've seen, players' regard for origins has ranged from utter disregard to accepting them as a roleplaying tool. Whenever a system of advantages vs. disadvantages is proposed (say, you're a robot so psionics don't work on you, but you're weak against electrical damage) have taken the form of an entirely separate system not at all reliant on Origin to define it.

The fact of the matter is that Origins have never been well defined, and this has played to their advantage. They gave us a framework which made us think creatively, but didn't give us almost any limitations to restrict the result of this creative thinking. That's why I have the aforementioned automatons from the beginning of time - because I could. The game constantly challenges me to be more creative with the massive field of opportunity it presents, and as time goes on, my ideas become more and more outlandish... Literally. I consider this to be a massive benefit that City of Heroes has over most other games, and it's just such a shame it's being disregarded in favour of a very railroading, character-redefining storyline, instead.

I don't think I can agree with this in the slightest. It is said that a good story needs a good villain, but I'm not sure a good story needs a good hero, at least when told from the perspective of a villain. Take something a simple as Bullfrog's Dungeon Keeper - it's a game with no antagonist. You play as the master of hellspawn and you go about defiling land after land, with only "the lord of the realm" trying to stop you, but it's always the same-looking knights who's never named. Even "the avatar" is just another faceless knight, just a lot more powerful.

To a large extent, I find a villain who's obsessed with defeating a hero to be more pathetic and sad than impressive, as this obsession serves as a character flaw more than anything else. A villain with the ambition to rule the world is impressive, because he has a productive goal. A villain with the ambition to defeat his heroic counterpart is quaint, in the sense that just teleporting them both away to a barren world to duke it out between themselves seems like the best solution.

To me, the Statesman is the ultimate representation of just this kind of damaging, embarrassing character flaw that sinks most good villains, and you need look no further than Lord Recluse, the man who comes off as the Statesman's spurned boyfriend than anything else. Hell, his moment of absolute triumph is defeating the Statesman, larger ambitions be damned. He's beaten the Statesman and destroyed the world, and he can now die a happy man. Which he does. At my hands. ... I can't respect that.

Mender Ramiel has one of the best lines in the game, at least in terms of lines of narrative, right at the start of his arc. When "the coming storm" destroys the Ouroboros citadel, it doesn't stick around to kill them all. Why? Because they're defeated and helpless. The greatest shame for the Menders is not to die, but to be rendered irrelevant. Because "the coming storm" isn't a petty villain only obsessed with killing its arch rival. It is a cosmic disaster that is too big to HAVE rivals in the first place. That, to me, is what makes a good villain truly good.

Yes, of course. And we take great pains to ignore it, too. Because it's crap, and it seeks to define, or re-define our characters, as it were. It also makes one wonder where the Oranbegans got the powers to have an advanced magical civilization 14 000 years ago, long before Pandora's Box was opened.

For me, it's a much simpler problem - I have a wide selection of characters whose age counts somewhere in the billions of years. There's the heir to the power of creation and the usurper of the power of destruction, there's the insectoid race brood queen who essentially made her own race, there are the couple of automatons from the beginning of time... I have a few, and I'll be damned before a piece of "lore" that's not even in the game to begin with stops me.

Enough with the TVtropes articles. We get it. We all go there from time to time. This is not a Yu-Gi-Oh card game where the best TVtropes articles used at the most opportune time wins. If you have an argument, make it. Stop relying on other people's articles to make it for you.

And that goes for everyone.

That's not entirely true. NPC and PC stats do not raise linearly, nor do they raise in unison. Moreover, AT mods all start the game at or around 1.0 and then slowly drift towards their final values at level 20, so a Blaster, a Tanker and a Defender have similar damage at level 1, but not by level 20. Moreover, our stats raise by proxy. Higher-level characters have more powers of a greater strength, raising both offensive and defensive stats. They also have a greater number of slots with more powerful enhancements in them, raising those stats further still. A level 1 Willpower Brute running an unslotted High Pain Tolerance has an irrelevant advantage of health over, say, a Fiery Aura brute, but a level 50 Willpower Brute with High Pain tolerance slotted well for extra hit points makes a significant difference.

As a character - say a Scrapper - rises through the levels, that character becomes more accurate, more survivable, more dangerous and moreversatile, to the point where "Level 50 Hellions" are no challenge at all to a proper level 50 character just because they haven't the tools to challenge our arsenal of powers. It's those like Malta, the IDF and the Soldiers of Rularuu - enemies with a wide selection of nasty powers - that provide the most challenge. City of Heroes is simply not a game of stats. It's a game of powers. It's those who have the most powers of the best kind that are the strongest.

That's not even remotely true. What you fight at level 1 are Longbow Guardians, essentially Hellions in Longbow uniforms. They have Brawl and one pistol shot attack. Nullifiers exist, yes, but they lack most of their powers. I forget when you start seeing the actual real Longbow soldiers, but I think it's level 10 or 15, and even then they lack most of their powers. Rifles have just one attack, Flametrhowers have just one attack, Miniguns have just one attack and Nullifiers are the same. Around level 25 or so, Flamethrowers develop the power to set down Burn patches and Nullifiers get grenades. Level 30 starts spawning SpecOps and Nullifiers get Beanbag. Level 40 gives Flamethrowers grenades that spawn Burn patches on top of the sweep that spawns Burn patches, miniguns get Grenades, Nullifiers get Sonic Grenade and SpecOps get their sapper grenades. All the while, Officers get more Leadership auras and powers and harder and harder Wardens start showing up.

The Longbow of level 1 and even the Longbow of level 10 have nothing in the slightest on the Longbow of level 50. And they're not the only group that looks like they don't increase in power yet do so. In fact, the only group I can think of that's consistently similar at level 1 to level 50 is the 5th Column, and that's the result limited development resources at the time. And even then they throw robots, vampires and werewolves in the mix, despite their human soldiers having the same powers. I guess you can count the Devouring Earth in there, since they have the same set of minions 25-50, but at least they change colours and start developing new, more dangerous lieutenants and bigger bosses as levels progress. Hell, Crey start out with security guards and scientists, but by the end you're fighting armies of power armour supersoldiers and manufactures superpowered beings.

I think this shows that City of Heroes enemy factions are more than capable of presenting the progression of threat in a graphic, visual manner, not to mention a mechanical one. I think that's the standard we should hold all enemy groups to, because it's not an exception.

Both the Tsoo and the Banished Pantheon are present in the Dark Astoria remake. The Tsoo are depicted as possessing a lot of new powers, as well as including new NPCs either with glowing tattoos or possessing forbidden/ancient techniques which make them massively more powerful. The Banished Pantheon Shamaen have become minions, Masks may or may not show up as lieutenants, there are new kinds of cultists and elders to serve as minions and I've yet to see their bosses. They are higher levels, but they are "higher level" in more than number only. These enemies are stronger, but fighting them makes it obvious why it is justified for them to be stronger.

So should have "my opinion can't be wrong" attitude. Not everything is subject to opinion. Facts are not subject to opinion. If you want to make an argument, feel free to do so, but don't expect people to regard your opinion as sacred and holy. If you can back it up with an argument, then do so, and we'll talk about it. But "opinion" itself has no weight whatsoever.

And then there's this. I feel this is entirely true. Certain things are subject to opinion, and these tend to do with appraisal of quality. What's "good," what's "enough," what's "immersive" and so forth. These are all emotionally-charged concepts that come in as many different levels as the people who offer them. Not all things are subject to opinion, however. It is not a subject of opinion whether Enrage inspirations are red. They are. If you are red-green colour-blind and can't see it the same way, then you are provably if unfortunately wrong.

What I discuss when I talk about consistency is somewhere in between. The game is either consistent with its narrative or it's not, there's nothing in-between, but whether it is or it isn't is subject to debate. I don't just say these things on their own merits, I present arguments for why I believe they are as I present them, and I did present an argument for why I fell that Incarnates are not terribly consistent between their gameplay and their storyline.

Even if we all agreed that gameplay and storyline are consistent - and they're not, but let's assume they were - then the imperative to consider consistency remains nevertheless. Every piece of new Incarnate content needs to be compared and contrasted to pre-Incarnate content to make sure it is consistent. If Incarnate content includes what looks like simple unpowered humans, then there either needs to be a storyline explanation for why they can fight on this level or they simply should not be included. The inclusion of level 54 Malta Operatives in Tin Mage II is a capital offence, in this regard. There is no reason given why unpowered men can punch an Incarnate hard enough to constitute a mortal danger. Because they can. And they're hard to hit and hard to damage and hard overall. Their Titans I can see. Their special weapons operatives like Sappers and Gunslingers, maybe. But the grunts? There's suspension of disbelief, and then there's nonsense.

Gameplay and story segregation is a problem of game design, not an intended side effect. No, of course a game's gameplay cannot be entirely consistent with its narrative, that's simply the limitation of current gaming technology. But that doesn't mean developers should be given a free pass to not even try. Gameplay and story segregation is a problem, not an excuse, and it should not be accepted as an excuse in any situation whatsoever. At best, it can be accepted as an acknowledgement of an unavoidable problem, but at no point is bringing that problem up "hogwash." It's a call for better quality.

Especially, I should add, since this problem did not need to exist in this particular case. If you had been arsed to actually read my hogwash argument and present a balderdash argument of your own instead of tossing down a link and expecting that to argue for it, we might have had a discussion instead of a "NO U!" contest. As a point of fact, formulating an argument of your own instead of just link-dropping a TVtropes article would have been a sign of better quality.

You're probably right to question this. It's just very unfortunate this is not an argument anyone has made, at least that I'm aware of, least of all me. The argument - and if you intend to address it, then please read this - is that gods should not need to seek help for everything they do. The key word here is "everything." No-one in the history of existence has complained against teaming as an abstract concept. When people complain, it is because they fell forced into teams they don't want to join. Giving then an alternative is one of the key requests, and while I'd like to comment on Dark Astroia in relation, that's not a good idea to do on an all-access forum.

I like to think this is a case of "get what you deserve." If the development team give the impression that they somewhat care about the quality of their work and the enjoyment people find in experiencing it like David Nakayama and the art team have done in the past, then players will be naturally inclined to want to return the favour with loyalty. It can be as simple as finding a good product with a good team in charge or as complex as feeling the need to show respect in return for good service and genuine respect, as well.

If, by contrast, a development team treats players like cattle who only exist to be milked for all they're worth and herded along the paths most convenient for the business, player convenience be damned if they'll still play... Well, let's just say that players' attitudes will easily become far less understanding and far less forgiving.

The Techbot speaks the truth. The Well is not a bad idea in general, but it's its execution which sinks it hard. I've said it before, but my own words have sunk off the forums, so I might as well reiterate:

The problem is that the Well is both sentient AND the source of all power. If it were just one or the other, then explaining around it would be fairly easy for those not religiously entrenched in their own way, but it's when you put both together that we have a problem. Let's examine:

If the Well IS sentient but IS NOT the source of all power, then we have an amoral entity that presents a balance between opportunity and danger. We need its power to enhance our own, but we must trick it into giving it to us without us giving up control in return. If the well is A source of power, then the door is open for players to argue that their own, personal powers can be and probably are greater, or at the very least enough to match the Well's own. In other words, the well is a mcguffin that we need to advance the plot, but not a character-defining concept that we need in order to explain our own characters. That works.

If the Well IS NOT sentient but IS the source of all power, then we're essentially facing a character power evolution. "The Well" is simply the physical manifestation of the abstract concept of "power," and is nothing more than the inspiration we used to develop or obtain our powers in the first place. If your power is science, the Well is discovery. If your power is training, then the Well represents the tenacity to train harder. If your power is magic, then the Well presents greater arcane understanding. The well is an abstract concept that means different things to different people, and ultimately represents nothing more than our character's will to progress.

Scarlet Shocker's idea and the subsequent story written about it are good examples of how the Well could have constituted great power without infringing on character concept. You can find it here. The Well's implementation tends to kill my enthusiasm to write, yet Scarlet's story inspired me to imagine. That's more than I can say for pretty much anything I've seen to do with Incarnates, lately, not counting Dark Astoria.

There's an euphemism in here somewhere, I just can't find it yet.

The strength of art is the suspension of disbelief. I call your outlook cynical not to insult your intelligence, but to criticise you insistence on disbelieving. No story can ever be good if you deconstruct it into its component parts. It's worse still when you disregard intent all but completely, and the author's intent matters. What story is this person trying to tell? What is the message behind it all, the emotion at the end of the tunnel? These things matter.

I recall the something the Spoony One once said: "At Wrestlemania, magic happens!" This is in relation to how events at a large, climax show don't always make sense even within the wrestling company's own continuity and storyline, but because it's such a strong performance and something the audience either really wants to see or is really afraid could happen that it comes off as exciting as it is. A cynic would say that it's all scripted, and it is. It's theatre. A cynic would also say that it doesn't make sense that the Undertaker could get up after being hit with a Pedigree four times when in a regular match, one would be enough to knock him out, this proving the storytelling contradicts itself, and it does. But that's where the magic comes into play - it's such a powerful climax that the emotion of it makes such details irrelevant.

There is a very, VERY real difference between a character handled with dignity and respect and written to expand this character's personality... And a character used as a plot device, re-written to fill in plot holes and bastardised into something completely different just to serve a narrative purpose. You can call it what you choose, but that difference will always be there, and that's the difference which decides whether people care about a character or dismiss him as a plot device. Maybe you simply don't care either way, and that's just fine, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to care about characters as a general thing.

To each his own. I'm not a fan of Faultline, personally, but I really enjoyed:

World Wide Red for the complexity of events and the grandeur of the plan.

Division: Line for its subversion of the classic "evil aliens" trope. Granted, it had a greater impact when the Rikti never talked.

The Eternal Nemesis for the way it manages to put Nemesis over Strong, having him lose but nevertheless still win. To this day, he's the only character that does this, and as such deserves a miracle excuse.

Corporate Culture for depicting both Crey and the Freakshow in a much less cartoony light, showing us that both these groups are ruthless killers.

The Library of Souls because it's mired in ancient lore, divine legend and fantastic history that spans nearly the whole width of the game.

Time After Time for putting our player characters over incredibly strongly. A world laid to waste by the action of a single player villain, a confrontation with Recluse and the service of a previous Patron. Amazing!

The Horrors of War for being the massive, impressive climax of an entire storyline and for having a very satisfying, very solid conclusion.

Oh Wretched Man for its amazing writing and introspective character development. It makes both Pia Marino and Ghost Widow appear sympathetic and Wretch appear tragic when all could have been two-dimensional.

I could go on, but I realise that's not the point. My point here, however, is that I appreciate good writing where it shows up, and I want to care about the characters I share a story with, be they my allies or my enemies. These stories are much of what inspired me to write in the first place.

It's how the storyline is budgeted that really gets to me, though. I'm perfectly happy to separate my gameplay from my storytelling. If I can leave story for when I leave the mission and go speak with people and then leave fighting for while I'm in the mission without interruptions, I'll be the happiest. But it's not just context, it's presentation, as I keep saying. There's something fundamentally wrong about a common person hitting a level 50 hero with a tyre iron and causing lots and lots of damage. There's something wrong with a revolver not too dissimilar from those used by the Hellions shooting a level 50 hero for massive damage.

A lot of the time, enemies don't even need that much story to show that they're a credible threat. Look at the bug things from the new Dark Astoria screenshots in that news article. These guys look DEADLY and I don't know anything about their backstory or motivation. They just look the part. Civilians with rocks just don't.

I do play red-side, but I've never run the Recluse SF. It's a bit too hard for my tastes. However, what you describe does actually sound much more compelling than Director 11. A super-science cyborg is a great idea for a Malta enforcer. Hell, if it turned out all of their soldiers had cybernetic enhancements, that might actually make them seem that much more badass and that much more of a credible threat in the 40s and 50s. Actually, why not involve Moment, too? That guy had powers, too. He could shapeshift into other creatures and use their inherent abilities. That's a goldmine for signature villain. Protean isn't even close.

That's kind of what I mean - when the missions use enemy groups' ***** properly, they can be compelling even before anything is written about them. It's when mission writers mishandle which group has what strengths and is a credible threat for which reason that problems start occurring.

How do you expect me to react, realistically speaking? When I don't feel like socialising with other people but want to run content that forces me to team with other people, how am I supposed to approach it? Change my mood and suddenly start feeling like a social butterfly? That won't happen. Just not do the task? Well, sure, it's how I've been handling it for years.

Or how about hopping on a team along with 7 other people who aren't in it for the socialisation and are just looking to kill some stuff, get some rewards and progress their characters? What's wrong with that? I mean, yeah, it's not the ideal social climate that MMO designers shoot for, but again - you can force people to spend time together, but you can't force them to socialise. We'll just find ways to cooperate on a disconnected level thought game mechanics as opposed to natural language.

---

I want to give an example, since a friend of mine got me to give League of Legends another shot. I spend most of my time there playing by myself, since said friend works weird shifts and isn't always around. When I do this, I let the system drop me into a team of complete strangers, whereupon I choose a role for myself (push on upper lane, usually) and go from there. If too many people come to overpopulate my lane and leave another exposed, I switch lanes. If I see someone fighting near to where I am, I pitch in to help however I can, but if that someone is being an idiot and getting himself shot to **** by turrets for no reason, I'll back up and let him. If someone wants to say something, there's a ping tool where you can "ping" a location on the map and the others have to try and figure out what you mean. It's usually fairly self-explanatory.

On one place on the map, there is a very tough monster, defeating which takes multiple people, but also grants very useful buffs. Occasionally, someone will ping its location repeatedly and then stand in front of the monster's enclosure like a dog standing in at the front door with its leash in its mouth. If I the person is patient, I'll join them and see if others will join us, as well. If they do, we fight the monster. If they don't, we'll either try it with just two people or leave to do something else. I've nary said a word to another human being in that game, yet we seem able to get along just fine. Maybe it's just that I'm playing PvE, but I've not been called names yet.

How very rude of you. There's a reason personal opinions exist - because we all have our own. This isn't the first time you've heedlessly dismissed mine, and I'm frankly tired of putting up with that sort of arrogant disregard. If that's what your argument is going to be, then I'm no longer interested in participating.

They're related, but you're right in that they're not the same thing. David seemed pretty dead-set on the "distaf counterpart" side of the argument to start with, but I know we made an impression. The new Chinese costume set concept art has "Note: Females also get male costume options" in fine print and at least one community rep has noted in no unambiguous terms that future costume sets will be designed with a collection of unisex pieces and an additional selection of female-specific ones. I dare say we've made the art team look over their shoulder

You do have a point, however, that while the art team is more or less indebted to us in terms of what costumes to make for us to use, there's a chasm of disconnect between player costumes and NPCs. Our costumes are our own, and if we don't get what we want, we raise hell, but NPCs are still seen as the art team's own babies, which they make however they see fit. I wouldn't want to cross that boundary and intrude on ALL of the creative process, but perhaps it's worth addressing the larger problem more openly. I feel that time will come, eventually.

For the moment, though, I suggest we sit and wait. I'm more than positive Diabolique's current look has been planned for months and months before the fallout from the Gunslinger set came about, so if we'll see anything happen, it'll be much later this year, at best with I23, if not even past that. Again - David Nakayama has proven to be an open-minded person who's willing to discuss artwork and facilitate reasoned arguments, so I'm hopeful.

To be honest, I started asking this because I thought we were talking about a small screenshot, something like an 800x600 crop. It wasn't until I checked its settings that I realised that's an actual 16x10 HD resolution. I run mine at 1920x1080 (16x9) which makes decent resolution screenshots appear smaller than they are.

I thought you were exaggerating, when in fact you had a pretty dang good idea going there. I apologise for assuming.

Personally, I found him cringe-worthy, unfunny and borderline offensive, but then I find parody to be unfunny as a general thing.

A 1680×1050 pic is your desktop? I take it you're using a 16x10 monitor around the 19-20'' size range?

I don't think you're seeing the right thing here. When I said I'll do a lot more TFs with a working queue, that's not because I'm looking for a social experience. If I wanted a social experience, I have global channels, global friends and the forums. I'd queue up to join TFs specifically because they're tasks I'd like to do from time to time and the only way to do them is with a team. If the computer can put this team together for me and that team is relatively independent (can play their chosen characters), then that's ideal. I'm not looking to make life-long friends, I'm not looking to add people to my lists, I'm not looking for idle chit-chat. I want to kill stuff, it's mandatory that I team with other people, so I'd like to do the least socialising possible in order to get through the task.

This is really the same way I play games like the Battlefield series, League of Legends and Vindictus. Or, hell, most of the deathmatch games of the 90s. I'm not looking for friends, I'm looking to play a game, and it just happens to be a game I can't play by myself. So long as I don't have to compete against other people (because people are cheap and mean), then social interaction is secondary. If I could play by myself, I would, but game design mandates I play with others, and so I will.

---

I know I've said that when I team, it's for the social aspect, but that's when I have to socialise to team to begin with. With a system as impersonal as random game joining, my team-mites might as well indeed be bots. That's how the developers designed their game, that's how I intend to play it. If you force me to play with other people, then you force me to see other people as a necessary evil rather than an asset. Previously, I might have teamed for the socialisation, but once this change goes Live, that will be just one mode to my playstyle - team for the company. Another mode will be "team because I have to" and that's not going to involve any unwanted socialisation.

That's your forced teaming at work, folks.

That's a good point. By having the "main" storyline branch off into "unwinnable" dead ends, you open up the path for a nearly infinite number of repeatable tasks. Let me take a hypothetical turn for a moment.

Say we defeat Dr. Vahzilok as part of the main story. He's gone, we've moved on. However, his Reapers and Mortificators aren't going anywhere any time soon. In fact, one of them is desperate enough to release a monster so terrible that even the Good Doctor never wanted to release it. A team of 8 heroes is needed to defeat this monster, but upon completion, it is revealed that the Doctor made a large, undisclosed number of these and there's every chance another desperate Reaper will release another one into the city. The story has moved on, but artefacts of it remain and serve as repeatable content.

The general point is that you have one storyline, or a few storylines that run the length of the game, each of which occasionally branches off into a TF or Trial with a plot that both explains why that task is still relevant despite the storyline having moved on AND explains why victory over it can never be permanent.

Long arcs aren't necessarily good arcs, but longer arcs provide more content than shorter ones just by the nature of what they are. Moreover, I've always wanted to see simpler arcs with less scripting and fewer time sink "interesting" mechanics that allow me to focus on the action while in-mission and then focus on the story once I'm out of it. The over-complex design that the current mission designers ascribe to means they spend so much time per mission they can only make arcs of three or four missions, each of which is so crammed with gimmicks it takes away from the game. I'd much rather have the simpler, more straightforward arcs of the past that gave me a lot of playtime for the content they offered.

Far be it from me to ask that Trials involve even more time sitting on your hands, staring at your screen. That's not the point, specifically because Trials are content you can't really stagger and content that requires organisation to run. But actual story arcs themselves are - in my opinion at least - always better off being longer. Again, a longer arc isn't guaranteed to be better, but it has a better chance of being good, as well as a better chance of pacing its narrative.

Quality over quantity really only works in level ranges where content already exists to begin with, so you don't need to dump a massive amount there. But for Incarnates, who more or less constitute a level range of their own, there is no content whatsoever. In this case, quantity over quality should be the order of the day. Dump a HUGE amount of very simple content in there so people have something to keep them occupied, and only then, once you've populated the field, can you go in and add the small, focused, "high-quality" arcs. Trying to inject short, snippy arcs in a level range with no content is a very major mistake.

Back at Launch, Nukes used to stun you when you fired them off. The result was you'd fire a nuke, kill about 3/4 of the spawn and die to the survivors while staggering away slowly. And while Nukes are an interesting idea as finishers, the fact of the matter is unless you're using said nuke with Aim and Build Up, it's not that strong. The thing deals 3.0 scale damage guaranteed, another 1.5 at a 75% chance and another 1.5 at a 50% chance. Even at their full capacity, that's still not enough to kill an even con lieutenant, especially a resistant one like Crey Tanks, and that doesn't even kill all minions. If you're unlucky enough to miss both additional damage components, you simply lack the damage to one-shot minions, and that's not counting actual complete misses, which at a final to-hit cap of 95% are not terribly uncommon.

If you're just about to die and decide to drop off a nuke as a last resort, you'll usually die. If you're unlucky, you'll die during the very lengthy animation, and if you're lucky, you'll die to the things that you missed or didn't have enough punch to outright kill. And yes, I'm sure Dreadful Wail and Psychic Wail have nice debuffs. Neither Nova nor Inferno have that. Nova has about mid-range knockback on it and Inferno has extra damage ticks.

And I'm not just talking out of my ***. I've tried to use both Inferno and Nova as last resort "Save me!" powers and nine out of ten times, I failed. Either I couldn't deal enough damage to kill all enemies or I'd miss a few or because they're scattered, a few would be out of range, then my Epic shield would drop because I ran out of endurance and what's left would finish off the last sliver of health I had. And mind you, nukes are powers I took, slotted and made a point to use as often as I can. I made a concerted effort to use these powers, and I died more often when trying to use them than under all other circumstances combined.

A PBAoE power with a long animation, complete endurance drain and crapshoot damage which can fluctuate up to double its base... Or not just serves to kill me more often than not. It's impressive when it works, but the simple fact is if I'm about to die, then using a Nuke is about as effective as using Self Destruct. When I am about to die, I leg it and rest. Sure, it's not as impressive, but it doesn't get me dead.