Scarlet Shocker

It is none of those things. It is not a crisis, it is not manufactured and it's certainly not a revolt. If you'd have read most of the posts in this thread you'd have understood that.

It is simply a complaint and indictment of crap storytelling.

Had Batman's third issue been presented to a modern audience, there's a good bet it wouldn't have progressed, because audiences are more sophisticated and have higher expectations of the products they consume these days.

But congratulations on your successful defeat of a straw man

Well, perhaps it would be beneficial to get somebody in the story team responsible for this particular effort to share their thoughts. This doesn't seem like a "chance of being brought low by a rock" it definitely feels like that is what is designed to happen - we're supposed to get stoned to death in one of the singularly most improbable stories in the game.

And honestly, fighting Galactus would be a lot better than what is being served up right now, and as Sam said, how do you know til you try it?

there are no villains. There are just those who go redside to get extra choices for their 40+ Power Pools.

Hellions might celebrate it too! Maybe with a meal at Peri Peri

just make sure they're not French. Those get recalled

Thanks chaps.
I watched the Ustream twice and I must admit I didn't take what you saw from it Johnny.

What I did notice was that Zwillinger completely failed to address the principle issue here and reason for this thread, and I want to respond to some of his comments in the Ustream. The relevant bit is 18 mins into the stream for about 10 minutes and Zwill prefaces it by saying "We're going to address this issue head on" and asks Baryonix "What is your advice to deal with the rocks?"

They then tend to go into a mini-guide about what needs to be done to achieve victory in the trial - that it's designed to give a Live Breaking News feel to the events - fast pace lots of back and forth etc. And that the Telepathists need to be taken down to prevent the debuff and the conversion of civillians.

Citizens have been buffed a bit to essentially prevent griefing of the trials.

The point was made it's a tough trial and that there's a learning curve to the trial and once it's been run a few times it will become easier, rather like the Lambda and BAFs first appeared impossible but now mini-Mo runs are regularly being completed.

Zwill, I need you to understand that you completely failed to address the fundamental complaint I'm making here: Nobody is saying they don't want a challenge, nobody is claiming the trial is too tough. (And if they are, I definitely am not.) As regular readers of my posts will know, I love challenging content. It's something Sam and I have had a few spats about so I know he'll back me up. I'm the guy that's tried to get to 50 without ever being defeated and trying to trio everything - with a fair degree of success with the latter (not so much with the first.) I completely get that initially new content presents a challenge. People said that about the ITF and the LGTF and STF and and and... But nothing I've seen in the game is impossible. That is not my complaint.

My complaint is that the rocks and the debuffs are very bad content.I've done the TPN successfully, but when citizens can defeat you by throwing rocks, that is not awesome, it is not epic, it is not exciting and it is not a challenge. It is very poor story. We work hard on our characters, getting them through the first 50 levels then through Incarnates and the level shifts and then some tough trials.

We are following a story that from the moment we step into the Incarnate game tells us that we are going to become godlike beings, that we will inherit untold power. Our first experience of that is a taster where almost all the signature characters are powerless against us. Hero One, Statesman, the Crystal Titan... they can't touch us. We increase in power every step of the Incarnate journey and actually the mechanic works reasonably well, with the trees and the ability to craft threads and shafts into the powers we need.

Then we get to the TPN and because we are debuffed by some Telepathists, Civillians defeat us. That's bad in its own right but taken in the round, the fact we are under exactly the same bloody debuff inside the buildings and yet giant robots with big frellling guns don't do as much damage. The fact that from level one, civilians are portrayed as being in great need of our help - in both Primal Earth and Praetoria... and we are the thin blue line - and then this happens.

This is a stunt. It's not big, it's not clever and frankly it stinks... and that's the central point of my complaint, and the one that Zwillinger and Baryonix both failed to address. I could be charitable and say they misread my original post and the comments here but I suspect it's because if they did address it they'd realise it needs fixing.

Is there anywhere we can read/watch this?

I'd be interesting in seeing it myself. I find it interesting they've commented on the thread elsewhere, and not within this thread itself.

She's got Harry Redknapp in her eye

You can definitely purchase additional slots. I don't know if they are free. However you get a free transfer every month as a Premium player, so if you have an unused/redundant character you can move him away from your preferred server and create a new toon in that newly vacant slot

and three rocks and they're all gone! That's why it's so stupid