T_Immortalus

LOL

I guess your definition of "balance" doesn't match the English language, or any other language's word that means the same.


FYI, the developers do try to balance things. They are watching Power Boost for issues, as they have said.

That is why it belongs in the technical support forum rather than "player guides", which assumes "playing the game".

Something is different about the desktop, but it's still the game that is at fault.

They don't acknowledge it as a known issue yet though.
You would be best reporting the bug and telling them that /leaveteam worked as a solution.

Maybe they will start acknowledging the broken team status system then.

The crazy, but honest, answer is "both".
It will be that way so long as "grind" gets int he way of "content".


You know what the most popular and fun games are out there?
FPS and racing games

They don't have insane grinds before you can go fight an enemy the same way you were fighting them months ago. They do have progression, but it's in story and competition amongst players, not artificially tougher enemies just because of "higher numbers".



Everyone wants to see the content, play the content and have fun in the content, even if there is a "road block" in the way.
They all try to remove the "road block", the "grind", as fast as possible because it is a "road block" rather than fun.

The reason people will play hours and hours to get through an entire FPS game multiple times is because every part of that game is fun, even if it gets frustrating losing to enemies.
It is fun because the player does the work. Success or failure hinges on the player's effort and luck, not on the computer "rolling a die" to simulate effort and luck.


People want fun. They don't want to have to be bored unless they want to sit in Pocket D, /drink and chat.

Grind was never really a choice for MMOs before, but now it is not a choice when it could be due to "the same old design".

I'm fine with gating content based on logical things like "chronological order" and limiting it based on actual difficulty and skill, but when the limiter is "killing 5000 rats"(like 5000 minions in this game) then I get bored of it like everyone else.




We don't play World of Warcraft here. We don't play to "repeat the same raid over and over". We chose a game where "we can be super", which has nothing to do with loot or grind and everything to do with story and going out to kick butt.




Edit:
Texas Justice, you just prove my points.

You don't remember that they did that because the KHTF was the fastest and simplest route to merits for invention recipes and salvage?
Did they want to run the KHTF over and over before merits? No.

Seriously, start looking at what your fellow players and yourself do in game, and why you do it.


I've done the grind myself simply for more numbers "so I could have fun after" without even realizing it.
People just don't see what they do or why they do it. They just do it and justify it later or stop hen they realize they weren't doing what they really wanted.

Ok, that explains it.

One exception to the rule doesn't disprove the "most" part of the rule. You're an exception because you take your time intentionally instead of speeding through the incarnate tiers, maxing them out for "more numbers".
Now the disparity is even more since you are a subscriber when nobody is required to subscribe anymore. People can completely and obviously opt-out of the incarnate grind and even inventions.
I would love to see the numbers of unsubscribed accounts that pay versus subscribed, let alone unsubscribed that don't pay.

Do you consider yourself "representative of the entire playerbase" or do you recognize that everybody else "is in such a hurry"?
You "stop and smell the roses" while most don't, and the game is designed around "most" who supposedly "need to be slowed down to hold their interest" when their interest can't be held by that.



Edit:
After all, why did power leveling even become common int he first place?
Why did farmers start charging int he first place when they get INF and loot from the farms as much as anyone else?
Why did farmers prices go up from 1.5 million per run in January 2011 to 200+ million now?
Why do they now advertise "private runs" for 400 million when the amount of people on a team actually increases rewards(according to the loading screen tips) and certainly doesn't decrease rewards while also getting the farmer more paying customers?

Wake up and smell the grind and human nature already.
The ones getting power leveled are not just the impatient. They're now the ones who have been "patient enough" but were pushed past their limit.


FYI, it's not the introduction of inventions and new rewards that makes prices inflate. INF still drops at the same rates based on the enemy. Those farmers are getting more though through their increased power which means they need less, yet they charge more. It's just greed capitalizing on high demand.




Edit 2:
I'm an exception to the "most" part of the rule as well.
I intentionally take my time, even leveling the old fashioned solo way(because few others will bother leveling this way or taking time away from max level rewards to play with me), because I want to.
I chose to not subscribe for this reason.

I would love to run the incarnate content for the story, but I can't just buy the story and be done with it and it takes too many days and weeks to get the necessary incarnate slots(filled even) for me to get it done before I would need to subscribe for anther month.

The worst part?
EVERY SINGLE TEAM has to run through everything as fast as possible. Nobody takes their time to enjoy the story or the content.
This is a problem in every game I have tried.
"GOGOGOGOGOGOGOOOOOOOOOO!!! RARRGH"

I'm sick of the "fasterfasterfaster" way of playing that the later content is designed to try to slow down but only succeeds in making worse.

My point was "why did we repeat the ITF and LGTF etc....?".

People either very casually just grouped because they wanted to and got the rewards at their own pace, or they got the rewards as fast as they could and then grouped casually.

his game was plugging along just fine, making money off of "new and shiny" cool things. Those booster packs that are now in the paragon market are the main example.


We didn't need "more leveling"(especially since it just made us want to go through the old leveling, and the new, even faster) when we really needed "more content that was fun".

Why do we group?
Do we group because we have to for rewards or do we have people we want to do content with?

Does "fun with friends" require reward incentives? No.


Just trying to clear up misconceptions here. I shouldn't derail this thread anymore.

Because you need the incarnate powers to make the more recent, and designed to be tougher, incarnate content easier, which is the content you want to do.

I'm not the one who said the "grind is a gating mechanism" above, but it sure is.


And, I'm not trying to change anybody's mind about how they want things to be done.
I just want you to stop saying "it is necessary" or "it is the best way" and denying that you find it "too much".

It's like an addict to anything that will ignore or deny every fact just to not acknowledge that what they choose to do is not the best option.
And people wonder why the media gets hung up on gaming addiction. It's not the "fun" those extreme cases are addicted to. They're addicted to the competition and the loot and the "one more tick up on the numbers" that fills the void of progress in their lives.


If it were fun to just push numbers higher then we would all be playing "Accountants Online: Add Up the Numbers", or we would not need visuals in the games at all because "numerical rewards are what matter".

Why do you think we want better visuals in games?
Do we like visuals or do we like numbers?




I'm stopping this though. You can just keep asking for more tedious grind as it gets exponentially slower.
Just look at what happened when they went from shards to threads and it took exponentially more items to get the same level int he new slots. Look at the solo incarnate path that takes exponentially longer than the already slow group path(which si completely stupid as the solo path should be slow but worthwhile while the group path is considered "fast", not slower and slow).

Have fun with that while I won't pay for a subscription just to make things more grind and less fun. I get the visuals and fun through the store.




Edit:
Do you think people power level to "go slow"? Everything is done faster by people. The slower you make it the harder they work to make it faster just to make it "normal".
If they just designed things to be "normal speed" in the first place, rather than super slow so that players would make it faster, then players wouldn't be trying to speed it up so much.
Everybody would have more fun because there will always be the few who want everything immediately, who will attain their goal faster and either become like everybody else who likes "the game" and not just "the numbers" and stay with the game longer or move on instead of coming back 1/10th of the time, and there will always be many more of those who play because they want "the world" or "the visual effects" or "the experience of being a hero/villain" or anything other than numbers.

No wonder games get boring and devolve into "making more numbers and making them take longer to get" with level cap raises and new systems for alternative leveling.
It's the "gotta eat eat eat until we're obese" American way of life.(I'm American FYI)
No wonder much of the world thinks we're rude and wasteful. We don't recognize the important things as a society. We just "want more more more".

1) You paid for it, so I bet you at least "want" to "get what you paid for".

2) True, you're not obligated to play it, but you are obligated to run it multiple times if you want the rewards, killing any enjoyment you did get from the content from doing it "when you feel like doing it" because you now feel obligated to not miss the "daily reward timer".

Seriously, World of Warcraft is killing their own design of their game with this "daily quest" thing. Every game that does it is just making its customers sick of it.

People do not want to do things repeatedly unless they really really want to.



And no, making rewards optional does not remove the obligation to run the content you get those rewards from. It just means you are not obligated to get the rewards. If you want the rewards you are still obligated to run the content multiple times.

It's like buying fast food. You're not obligated to buy fast food, but you are obligated to pay for it if you want it.


That's why the "farm and grind for reward" design is so popular with developers. Enough people will put up with it.
The problem is they don't realize how huge the group that hates "farm and grind for reward" is compared to the ones who will put up with it and even enjoy the boredom and aggravation.
That is my point.


This game was so much better before we had a really really really long endgame grind. It was so much better before inventions for the same reason.
The only problem is that everything before those 2 systems was far more difficult due to "lower numbers".

So, they added new systems that just "increase numbers" with a tacked on story that the systems continually break the immersion of by requiring farming content repeatedly.


Where did the game go and why are we now accountants?




Edit:
In the case of the grind in this game, you actually pay at least twice.
You have to pay just for access to incarnates and inventions and pay in way too much time to actually get those rewards.

That isn't even counting the fact that those rewards will be taken away from you if you ever unsubscribe after that, so they obligate you to continue subscribing forever, at least for incarnates.

Honestly, there is no reason to make the grind for the rewards so harsh, especially when it just makes people think "it's not worth it because it isn't fun to make the game a job".

If you want crappy graphics, yes.
Also, maybe we're suggesting they buy something that will last a little longer than 1 year before support is gone.

Edit:
City of Heroes is also a lot more inefficient on resources than even more graphically awesome games of the same age or older. They did not code it well to start with and every patch since has just been "making the once mostly round tire lumpy with patches and leaky".


In regards to Hyperstrike's recommendations....

I recommend a PNY made Nvidia graphics card. I have nothing but praise for PNY's prices and reliability, though the MSI one listed on his linked page is interesting. I have an awesome MSI motherboard that works wonderful since bought a year and a half ago. If I had known they made Nvidia graphics cards then I would have seriously considered them.

Why didn't I think of that?
/selffacepalm