TheDeepBlue

If that's what your team is doing, then most of them would really rather be doing something else but feel that they're forced to go through whatever particular task they're doing at that moment. That's really all it comes down to, regardless of whether they actually like everything in between the start of the task and the end reward or not.

Well, that's your version of fun, and I'm sure you're not alone. I usually try to clear every indoor map when I'm soloing, but that's more for drops and strategy refinement. However, if folks really aren't interested in grinding through every map on a TF, they may tend to entertain themselves by trying to be as efficient as possible. That's how they have fun. I've found it fun, too.

Some folks on Justice finished an ITF in less than ten minutes some months back. Stellar stuff.

Aside from badging, it was never really given a reason to exist in the first place. Furthermore, I've never been under the impression that it was important in CoH at all, aside from the aforementioned badging. Thirdly, I'm still not sure why it should be, on its own. The developers haven't focused very hard on getting anyone attached to much of the city at all.

"Oh look, Battle Maiden knocked over M1. I guess that's a drag."
"Ah, the mixmaster over in Skyway done got collapsed. That's gonna be a bummer for someone to clean up."
"Galaxy City, hit by meteors? What's Galaxy City?"

Rather, it seems that players have to form the attachments themselves, which has unintended consequences. Anyone remember the dissonance when the AE buildings or Wentworths' were put up?

There is, but they have to be believable, fun, and rewarding in some way.

Nobody likes loose ends. People like clearly defined goals, and not everyone likes the sandbox genre where they have to spend time coming up with goals themselves. That's human nature. Furthermore, people like have more control over what they end up doing with their time, and will often try to minimize time investment while maximizing the rewards for that investment.

I reiterate that there would have to be a lot of cool things to do along to the way to keep people from getting bored, and none of them could be tedious or else people would be thinking about those particular tasks the entire time they were heading there.

Even then, I'm not sure that people would want to run it more than once unless it was executed very well...or, unless if gave good rewards...or unless they were RPing or something.

Okay, so the closest things we have to this right now are:

Prisoners of Eden, which has been around for a very long time. It's relatively easy these days, people still try and speed it, somehow. Most teams try to clear out the crystal critters in the last room and as far as I'm aware most of them find that to be the most boring part. Despite the two Walls, required Ambrosia farming, no rez support, and fairly standard rewards, you don't hear a lot of complaints regarding 'gimmickiness' or disproportionate time investment regarding the trial, as opposed to:

The Underground Trial, which has added an escort in the form of Desdemona, has rez support, and has more difficult obstacles and more of them, which many people consider 'gimmicky' and unnecessary time sinks even after the trial rewards were increased.

Both trials send you down the proverbial rabbit hole, but incite very different reactions. However, I'm not convinced that this is what attracts people to these trials. I'm not even sure if its an attractive feature for the player base at all.

However, I'm fairly certain that ease of completion is.

Ah, there's an interesting comparison. I believe the heart of the matter lies in the story that's being sold.

Gordon Freeman, even before he put on the hazmat suit back in Black Mesa, was presented as the underdog. Even when he's got the suit, and has a machine gun, homing bug gauntlet thing, or a tractor beam in his arsenal, his identifying weapon is a crowbar. In the race to get to Nova Prospect, he was lucky to have a good enough rep to get a go-cart so he wouldn't have to hoof it, and that might've only been because everyone else wanted to save Eli, too. He's still only lucky enough to find supplies on the way for when (if!) he eventually does get to Nova Prospect, and hopefully he doesn't blow it all before then. There's a lot of suspense involved; everyone cheers for the underdog because they can sometimes empathize with him, so they're willing to go the distance to help him out.

Our characters are archetypal super-powered beings; we aren't presumed to be the underdogs...at least, for not very long. This is the first problem the developers would have to deal with when making a dungeon-crawling scenario. We have very fast methods of travel, most of the time. We have all the supplies we need, most of the time. If there's any reason, any reason at all, why we should be slowed down in spite of our presumed and often collective might, it absolutely must make sense. I'm sure you've heard arguments that Incarnates etc. etc. shouldn't be destroyed by security lasers etc. etc. by now.

The story being sold has to be believable within the context of the character whose eyes we're reading it through.

On another point, consider my comparison between Eden and UGT above. Both have elements that you've given in your description of dungeon crawling, but many people are indifferent towards even while many dislike UGT. I suspect that this is because UGT is not easy. Many folks don't like saving 21 hostages or grinding through Atta's lair because they may consider it tedious and boring. If a task must be tedious and boring I imagine they would really rather have it be relatively easy and quick as well so they can go about doing the things they really want to do, which is usually along the lines of getting to the heart of a problem and quickly turning it concave.

Finally, consider for a moment that you can save your progress in Half-Life. You can't do that in CoH in the middle of a trial. Some people just don't want to sit around that long and do stuff. That's why they speed through things.

It's exactly the same map except for the plaque for Scholar and the Hydra trial entrance.

Without a massive amount of cool things to do on the way, this is just a really boring hike requiring a lot of hope and patience to put up with NPC escort pathing.

Y'know, I heard GG mention one time that there's one blue mailbox in RWZ somewhere that's supposed to be a War Witch-planted easter egg. I went looking for myself and didn't find any mailboxes in sight throughout the entire zone. There's rubble and crud everywhere, so it might be really well-hidden.

Whenever I get into a new zone, I usually do slow down to take a look at something that might catch my eye. I did that a lot when I was running a couple characters through Praetoria, and I still do it sometimes when I'm going through First Ward or the new Atlas Park. However, this is only because those environments are a bit more detailed and varied than older zones.

As I keep going through those zones, though, I expect that the time I take to look around is going to shorten considerably. I'll have seen what's to be seen before and I won't expect it to change. This right here is key to the subject you're discussing: I don't expect anything to change or be different from the last time I was there.

This is why people speed content, even new content: They believe they've seen it all before. Even if they actually haven't, they believe that it's going to be very similar to what they've seen previously. Me? Whether I'm vaulting over the fence behind the Ice Palace in St. Martial to land on a huge pile of bodies, or touching down on the sidewalk near Praetor White's PPD recruitment poles in First Ward to see they've been replaced by 'Missing' boards, I only encounter such things by luck, and that's how I expect things will be for a while.

In the absence of being awestruck by a pretty but relatively non-dynamic environment, people are just going to want to get their business done and leave to do other things they want to do...I mean, unless they're RPing or something. I think this holds for MMOs in general.

It sounds like the only reason you care about any 'gimmicky-ness' is because your league/cat herd won't read the instructions. That's not the devs' fault.

I know some league leaders on Justice who know how to get people to pull their heads out of their rear ends with some well-delivered criticism. Seems like a useful skill to pick up.

Because he might not be standing around in his usual spot when folks go looking for him?

Eleventeen.

So you haven't run any of the WWD arcs redside beyond the first one then, eh?

Record scratch, full stop, double take. What?

Is this another one of those things like that article regarding the other avatars of Rulaaru, that somehow appeared on ParagonWiki one day, but was never seen anywhere before somehow?

Regretably, I think most folks' experience with the genre is from a Buffalo Bill-type source.

Well, some people take those sorts of things seriously, in their own way.

Looks like it could be a handle for Golden Roller's character model regarding which way he's supposed to face. I guess it was accidentally made visible somehow. I've seen handles for light sources in sewer maps before, too, so it's not the first time this has happened.

Rikti society is largely hegemonical; distinguishment for personal gain or just for distinguishment's sake is almost literally incomprehensible, and the closest thing they've got are ranks for the Lineages of Science and War...and its one of the reasons why the Rikti have trouble profiling Hro'Dtohz.

Basically, Hro'Dtohz is the closest thing the Rikti have to their own 'super'.

The 'gods' of CoH have been concatated with the Incarnates for many years now. Any choice made by the developers as to whether the BP gods will have some tie to the Well has nothing to do with succumbing to some new temptation.

EDIT: Sorry, I know you might think I'm ignoring your opinion here that the whole concept of the Well of the Furies is kind of bad in general, but I think that argument isn't the same as the one discussed here specifically.

Acknowledging that a conflicting canon exists would require the devs to add another tangle to the current canonical knot or to cut some existing part of it altogether. If you want them to acknowledge things like that, something's gotta give.

I'll mention that we don't actually know what the story is yet for what's coming up.

Probably for the same reason that WotC thinks its acceptable to sell booster packs.

Though, again, you can sell the stuff you don't want...or do alternative things with booster packs...

Initial thoughts.

This sort of thing works best when people have the option to sell off the stuff they don't like to try and mitigate the cost of purchasing things they didn't want.

Locking it to an account, not great. 'specially since it'll be bought with real cash.

You want to even try to whip Steve Ditko?

So what would heroes get?

Cartons of milk can't make moral choices. They can't make any choices.

At least, not any of the ones I know.