The_Hegemon

I asked myself this question a couple years ago, and came up with a few definite answers.

1) If I decided that the Going Rogue content was badly done or not to my taste.

2) If they switched over to a 'Free to Play' model and started moving toward a Pay to Win setup.

3) If they switched over to a 'Free to Play' model and started locking desirable items (costumes, special IOs, etc.) behind a variable-interval, slot machine style mechanic instead of selling them to us outright, just to wring a little more cash from the customers.

4) If the upcoming Incarnate System encouraged repetitive farming in order to advance in it.

5) If the upcoming Incarnate System revolved around player-swarm Raid Content similar to end-game content found in other MMOs.

The time since I18 has not been kind to me, as you can see - all of these changes have come to pass in some form or other. I did go on hiatus for a few months to play that new laser-swords-in-space MMO until the release of I22 and the Dark Astoria revamp, which I thought was particularly cool.

Though I'm not really pleased about the current direction of the game and don't predict that the development team will change course toward something more to my liking, this game still gets a lot right compared to others in its category. My time away certainly underscored that. I'll probably stick around until my SG finally dies or moves on to another game.

I have loads of alts, have played a bunch of characters to 50, and genuinely enjoy them all. One stands out above the rest, though - my Fire/Fire/Fire Dominator. I tend to shelve characters after I lose interest, but I just keep coming back to this one.

How 'uber' is it? It's completely over the top. This character is so powerful, it feels like I'm cheating. It started off strong when I got to 50 years ago, but then the development team just kept adding things to the game that made my setup more and more powerful - Purple IOs, new sets that boost recharge, the ancillary pools, inherent fitness, and now Incarnate slots. Now it's at the point where I honestly wonder if player characters this beastly are intended to exist.

I'd guess that the devs regret Bases, PvP, and Architect. This is pure speculation, I just think that these systems share the unfortunate characteristics of being promising, imperfect, underused, and abandoned as lost causes by the developers.

I'm still glad that these systems exist, though, even if I don't use them with enough frequency to justify the (probably massive) amount of work that went into creating them.

Well, this leaves me feeling guardedly optimistic. On the face of it, it seems to touch all the right bases. I hope they do a good job with it, and if they do, I hope they continue to add such content alongside iTrials in the future.

I don't think they wanted to add a solo path when they first released the Incarnate system. I think the only reason they're adding one is because players have been clamoring for it since the system debuted. So, I think the solo/small team path will seem somewhat tacked on - I seriously doubt it will be used as a vehicle to advance the plot in any meaningful way for this reason.

I also expect it will involve Praetoria and the Praetorian War for plot, because they're still plugging that storyline hard and I don't think we'll see any significant variation from that until Tyrant is toppled. They want players to be involved in that story because they still want players to shell out money for Going Rogue.

I think they will still want players to focus on Trials for incarnate advancement, so the system will either be grindy or time-limited - either you'll have to run a whole lot of missions to advance, or there will be a limit in place to prevent you from earning too much incarnate loot too quickly. I'd prefer the time limit on reward tables to grind, personally.

I like the idea that the system will resemble Tips. Well, I don't like it, but I think that's a pretty good guess.

So, that's what I expect.

What I'd like to see is an Incarnate zone with a few story contacts, along with a 4-8 man repeatable mini trial or two and a newspaper-type contact for repeatable missions. Possibly also a task force. It could even be a mini-zone, like Cimerora, accessed in the same way. But that probably won't happen.

Obviously, all of this is pure speculation.

I can't remember where I read this, but I think that in the very early (like, pre-release) days of the game, enemies on the street were originally a lot less common than they are now. Crime happened in alleys and the like, but the streets were, on the surface, safe. This was changed pretty quickly because it made it very difficult for players to actually find mobs to beat up so they could advance, and it was generally unfun even if it was more realistic.

(I think this might have been in a WarWitch interview from a while ago, but I'm really not sure. It's also possible that my memory has failed me entirely, and that this was never true.)

Basically, I don't think criminals are actually as brazen in everyday life as they are when the player runs into them. It's one of these those aspects of the game that I just don't interpret literally - otherwise, I, personally, across all my characters and for all the years I've been playing this game, have more arrests on record than the entire NYPD last year. And I'm just one player. Crime is as inflated as it appears to be because players need something to defeat in order to get XP.

I think it'd be pretty cool if criminals stop spawning for players in areas that they've completely outleveled, as a symbolic show that you have made a real difference in the area's crime rate. Or if you only got spawns outside if you flagged yourself as 'On Patrol.' Then again, it's not really broken the way it is now, so there's no real reason to do a bunch of work to make it happen.

A few quick questions about the rewards for SSA, for those more in the loop than I am:

If I choose a Hero Merit for the first arc, then immediately run the second arc, can I choose a Hero Merit again? I'm guessing 'no' - that's been implied in the thread, but if someone could explicitly clarify this for me, I'd appreciate it.

If I choose a Hero Merit for the first arc, can I still choose regular merits for the second arc while the 7-day timer is still running? Or do I just not get a reward table at all if I run the next installment while the timer is still counting down?

I agree with pretty much all of the points in the OP. I have three characters who I've filled with T3 stuff by now, and have basically decided that the system isn't for me. The powers are really cool, but I just don't enjoy the Incarnate Trials. It's been a couple of months since I ran my last iTrial - I still haven't run the Underground yet, mostly because I haven't been able to find a league interested in braving that instead of yet another BAF or Lambda.

I agree with Smersh - there need to be some smaller trials. It's hard for me to really experience and care about the story when I can't actually run these things with my friends in character.

Also, the LFG tool needs to work. I haven't been able to use this to get on an Incarnate trial with any success since the week the system was first released. I don't know what the deal is, but that thing lies to me - it often claims to take less than five minutes to start an event, but I've sat in the queue for over an hour with no nibbles. I don't know how long it would actually take to get on an iTrial using just the LFG tool these days, because I tend to get frustrated and log off after 30-45 minutes. That said, the tool does work consistently for Death From Below and Dr. Kane's House of Horror. What's the difference? Is it a matter of seasonal popularity, or is it that these trials only take four people to run?

I'm quite excited about having a solo path. I would especially like to see more challenging content for regular-sized teams of level 50 characters - one of the worst things about the Incarnate system so far is that the rewards are so good, they pretty much trivialize the existing content if you have a few tricked out characters on your team. It's something of a problem in my supergroup. It would be great if the oft-suggested Incarnate Difficulty setting were a reality, or if there were a new zone designed for Incarnate-powered characters - anything to challenge such teams other than trials.

Going to drop my thoughts here, because the thread topic is relevant.

I haven't much enjoyed the new content added to this game since I18. I don't like Praetoria at all and couldn't care less about the Praetorian War global storyline, and I find the whole Incarnate Trial system impossible to enjoy.

First Ward is the first major content addition to the game that I've enjoyed without reservation since Going Rogue came out. I really dig this zone. It doesn't seem that great for teams because you have to do a lot of talking to NPCs, but for me, it's just fine. I like the look and feel a lot and am liking the storyline, as well.

So... kudos.

1) The lore does the job. It kept me interested in the game for the first couple years I played it, but that interest in the story did eventually fizzle out. I don't think that the world's lore is enough of a reason by itself to subscribe.

2) Yeah, it's messy and frequently vague. I'm almost grateful for that - I'm a roleplayer, and I'm more interested in playing through my own characters' arcs and experiencing my friends' plotlines than I am in the game's story. I feel like the fact that the lore is so vague in parts gives me a whole lot of options when it comes to origin stories. There has always been a ton of creative wiggle room in this game, and that's one of its strengths. The more rules of the universe that they set down in stone, the less is available to the player, so I think this lack of clarity on certain plot points is a deliberate choice.

Is it well-written? Depends. I think some story arcs make it somewhat obvious that the game's lore has had a number of different contributors. Compare Ghost Widow's dialogue in the Patron arcs with her dialogue in certain tips and morality missions - they sound like completely different characters. Some parts of the lore are good, some parts aren't. Some parts are serious, and some parts are campy. It tries to be all things to all players (until recently, at least).

I'm okay with that.

3) I don't like the current direction that the story is heading. I'm not really a fan of Praetoria in general because I feel that the writers dropped the ball on the whole 'shades of grey' theme they were going for. Cole is the villain of the story. Praetoria is an awful, dysfunctional society. In the late game, the plot doesn't even try to hide this. It's not terrible, it just wasn't at all what I thought we were going to get, and I haven't been able to get over my disappointment since it came out.

The thing is, though, many of the individual contacts and small plots of Praetoria are actually kind of neat. The missions themselves are slick and the stories are memorable, whereas many of the main game's contacts and arcs tend to blend together in my memory.

So I've spent the time since I18 ignoring Praetoria and pretending that it just isn't there, playing the game as I always have. It doesn't really work, and I've been losing interest in the game as a whole over time. I continue to hold out hope that once Praetoria is defeated and the game moves on to the Coming Storm, I'll begin to enjoy the new additions to City of Heroes again.

4) Unsure. The current story does what it's supposed to, and I'm not at all sure that tampering with it would make me enjoy the game more. Especially if they retcon a bunch of things. I do think they should spend some time revisiting the old story arcs and bringing them up to date with the tools they now have access to, like cutscenes, branching dialogue and the like.

My girlfriend cancelled her sub a while ago, and will be coming back as a Premium player.

I haven't decided either way yet. To be honest, I've been considering dropping my sub since I18, and had more or less resolved to do so if I21 continued the trend of bringing nothing to the game that I cared to experience.

Then, they announced Freedom. This injected a whole lot of confusion into my decision-making process. I would never escape!

At first, it sounded like going Premium would be the best possible solution to me, but there's really a lot more to the choice than that. A lot depends on what the perks of being a VIP member are and what's in the store after Freedom launches. Also, many of my global friends and supergroup members are making noise about moving to the VIP server, and even though I don't play as much as I used to, I would still want to play with them. Otherwise, there's really no point in my keeping the game installed at all.

I'm going to keep my sub for a while and reevaluate in a few months, after I've accumulated a bunch of paragon points and have experienced life as a VIP player for a while. If the benefits of VIP membership don't impress me much, or if I can buy access to the content I want for less, then I'll drop my sub.

Stalkers/Corruptors: Weirdly enough, these ATs occupy the same little niche in my mind. These are my go-to classes for 'Natural' style characters. These guys don't have the raw power to win through overwhelming force. They can't overcome their direct competitors that way - they have to use guile to win. Their style is about controlling their opponents, creating the perfect circumstances to set up the victory. They fight smarter, not harder. I use these ATs most often for cunning fighters that have no superpowers, or for characters whose powers aren't enough by themselves to win.

I realize that these ATs aren't conceptually limited to this, but it's how I most often use them in my own stable.

Brutes: Demigods. If I want to make a character whose power level is over the top, the sort that can go toe-to-toe with the most badass enemies the game can throw at me, a Brute is my first stop. They can be both immortal and dangerous at the same time. Other ATs can reach this point, too, but Brutes are the easiest to build with this goal in mind. So, if I want to make a character who I see as being powerful enough to go blow-for-blow with Marauder, Statesman and the like, I'll pick Brute at creation.

Dominators: I use these for characters that might be able to pass as Blasters, except they have much greater control over the element they're manipulating and can use their fire, ice, energy, etc. to do much more than blast things. Blasters have intensity, but these guys have variety.

First character ever was a Claws/SR Scrapper, made just after the first or second issue. At the time, both of these powersets were at the lower tier in terms of performance, and there were no respecs. I didn't really care, though. I just wanted to make Natural-style Ninja-type character.

The character had jump kick, because I thought it sounded really cool on paper. In practice... not so much. The character also lacked both Focus and Quickness, because they didn't sound all that cool. It was terrible.

I stalled at around level 33. Kept the character for years, even though the sets were still bad and I was having a lot more fun with other ATs. Eventually, I decided that they would always underperform and I needed the slot, so I deleted him. A week later, they announced buffs to both SR and Claws.

I was so mad.

Regarding this topic...

I try and get on one trial a day after work. I'm grinding for my third Incarnate's slots, trying to be a bit more relaxed about things with this one.

I haven't been able to get on an event as a solo character using the LFG tool since the opening days of I20. It's quite frustrating. Typically, I will log in, queue up, and wait around for an 'event join' prompt to come up while I draw pictures or something. Average wait is always around five minutes or so according to the tool, yet I will often sit there for 30-40 minutes without a nibble until I give up and go do something else.

I always choose 'first available,' and I usually click 'willing to join In Progress events' when I remember. I just want to get on one and am not picky about which.

One of two things happens. Either all that time will pass, nothing will happen, and I'll eventually either give up or find a group organizing to run the things without using the LFG tool, or I'll get prompted to join an 8-man Lambda, one person will decline or time out, and we'll all be dumped back in line. Again, I have not been able to join an event this way since the opening days of the issue.

Am I using it wrong or something? Is the 'Average Wait' estimation bugged? Is the tool itself not working properly?