The brokenness of Ghost Widow and fears of the Incarnate

This post is partially refactored from a post I made some months ago at Massively, and some posts I made in a thread in the Tanker forum about tanking the Statesman Task Force. I expect that quite a few aren't going to like what I have to say; so be it.

THE SPECIFIC BROKENNESS OF THE STATESMAN TASK FORCE

I don't want this game to start adding content for which "adequate preparation" means farming the inf to purchase large inspirations at the auction house, because that's what you need to come prepared. I've experienced this kind of raid preparation in other games. It's one of the reasons why I no longer play them.

To the extent that best practice for the tanker includes stocking up on specific large inspirations in preparation for the Lord Recluse fight, and those inspirations aren't made available on the map itself, the task force is essentially telling you that you must farm first for preparation if you expect to run it in the way that your teammates will expect you to run it.

Any game content for which Shivans or nukes are very helpful also causes problems. I haven't farmed for Shivans or nukes much since i13 made all mezzes auto-hit regardless of magnitude in PvP zones. Retoggling your several toggles with a minor offensive output like RttC or AAO is a nuisance even if you aren't simply left waiting to be killed. I don't want any situations where I'm expected to bring them.

WE DON'T WANT ANY MORE OF YOUR KIND

All gimmicky and "challenging" content disadvantages certain ATs, certain powersets, and certain combinations to some extent.

Most scrappers can't fight Ghost Widow: bringing one just means that one of your DPS characters has to be sidelined on an archvillain fight, which explains why melee characters are not in strong demand for the task force regardless of how good they are elsewhere. Most controllers aren't allowed to use their pets on Ghost Widow, or for that matter on the first three rounds with Romulus. If masterminds are allowed to run hero TFs, they won't be wanted here either. This is already broken, broken, broken, and will become more obviously so come Going Rogue.

I don't like the idea of content when some characters or ATs are forced to not use their signature powers or sit on their hands. There's too much of that already here. This is what gimmick fights inevitably turn into. People will figure out what the optimal team is to meet them, and if you don't meet the profile, you don't get to run on the character that you want to run. This is already becoming a problem with the Statesman Task Force.

THE PROBLEM WITH ENDGAME

Endgame is what drives me away from other games and keeps me in CoX.

In other games, there are no powersets or character concepts. One max level warrior or priest is potentially the same as another. If there are chosen abilities, it's usually possible to choose an entirely different set for a relatively small fee. No point in rolling a new character of a different race, and not much of a different faction. Once you're out of the starting area it's the same content everywhere. You have to be deeply disappointed with your class to reroll another; otherwise time spent on alt is time you're wasting not developing your "main".

CoX obscures the distinction between mains and alts; your main is the character that you are most interested in developing this week. It instead allows you to experience the same content in different ways. There are significant differences between power sets of a same broad character class. A Fire Armor tanker plays very different than a Stone Armor tanker. The duties of a Radiation defender and a Kinetics defender are quite different as well. And you can't turn your Fire tanker into a Stone: you have to create a new character.

The player base of CoX is sweetness and light compared to the player base of other games. The relative lack of prominence of loot is significant, I believe. For a long time, there simply was no loot: all enhancement rewards were simply bought from vendors with the game's only currency. When they added loot of a sort, they did it right. Loot was personal, private, and the actual enhancement kinds were transferrable. No one had to boast about valuable drops, if you want to keep them a secret, no one can know to envy you. And there were none of the political hassles involving random rolls, team leaders assigning prizes, or "need vs. greed" mechanics.

Loot and raiding endgames in other games are another kind of PvP. They are in fact the worst kind of PvP. This kind of PvP pits you against your teammates - against the people you are nominally teamed up with to beat the content. Judgments will be made about the value of your service to the organization, about your commitment. Disagreements fester. Office politics invades the game world.

I can categorically say that I absolutely do not want any of this kind of crap in City of Heroes. My fear is that they will somehow break the game by adding "endgame", and that the same kind of politics and drama that drove me away from other games will be imported here.

Please tell me it ain't so.

<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison

You know I've run a lot of pug task forces, and never run into any of that.

oh me oh my, if you think large inspirations are hard to get well idk what to say. Go buy them off the market for tops 100K a pop and lvl 50s usually only do these tfs so not like a few mill in inspirations is all that much. Where does this must farm nonsense come from is beyond me.

Are all your toons that broke that they can't spend a few million in inspiration? <.< come on give me a break

edit: you've been playing this game since 2004 and you can't do this? maybe learn your toons better and stop trying to ruin stuff for the rest of us

I've never ever done the STF with nukes, Shivans (other than incidentally, never specifically required) or demanding the tank have a million insps. If it was true that you needed shivans and nukes, then nobody would ever get the MoSTF badge, and I see that badge all over the place.

Every single run I have been on has been "bring what you got and let's rock it out," and I have never failed one yet. Hell, I've been on more than one run where a blaster tanked Lord Recluse while we beat on the towers. I can't imagine telling scrappers or trollers how to run their character in the STF. Scrappers just position themselves right and beat on her. The fact that I have never been on or run a failed STF, and that I often bring my BS/SD scrapper, tells me that things work out fine in the end. And controllers, holy hell I don't know what planet you are from but I don't think I have ever seen an STF that went as smoothly as the all-troller one I had the pleasure of doing.

If Ghost Widow was broken, then everyone would fail the TF when they had to encounter her. I've never been on an STF where GW was a tougher challenge than Recluse. Ghost Widow is challenging and requires more thought than "everyone hump her leg and beat on her," which is not the same thing as broken. The TF is hard! What's the problem with that? People still succeed all the time. The STF isn't broken. It sounds to me like you have been on some bad teams run by people who have had bad experiences, and this has made them think that you must have X,Y and Z or the TF will fail. Either that, or you are doing too much thinking about the subject and not enough TFing, because the problems you are talking about don't really exist outside the forum.

Would also like to point out that only one MM primary is meleecentric, that being Ninjas. All the rest a ranged damaged dealers apart from the Brute in Thugs which you can quite easily tell to stay passive out of the way on Ghost widow.

Strangely on most runs I've done we've had more problems with sircocoo (or however it's spelt) due to his massive endurance draining huge range AoE.

Never seen Controllers or MMs told to 'put their pets away' with regard Romulous though, if you're 'brute forcing' (as in not seperating him from the nictus at all and just pouring on the damage which is enough to overpower any healing) Romulous down then the more DPS the merrier. Ghost Widow is fine with one or two scrappers in range of her heal, the damage healed back isn't enough to overcome DPS from ranged damage dealers.

I severly doubt that the endgame and incarnate levels will be in the same style as WoW, the devs aren't stupid enough to completely change the reason people play City Of in the first place. If Zone events are anything like previous examples, like say the new halloween apocalypse, then they're not exactly open world raid bosses level of tough.

Cannot say i've experienced any of that.

Sure Ghost Widow is tough, but she's by no means hard.
I've never used shivans (i don't go to pvp zones), i don't farm for large inspirations prior.
I've pretty much only fought her as a scrapper or blaster, never had any issues on either. Sure i get hold once or twice and my toggle drops, one click and it's back.
I've done STF with some wierd team mockups and it works... sure they've not been master of. But c'mon...
The failed master of attempts i've seen have been in 99% due to player stupidity. Like stone tanker turning off granite to move recluse some and got two shotted quick for example.


Romulus is also not a hard fight either, and i never ever cared about team make up for ITF, it's a very easy TF. I've failed it once i think, when we forgot to change diff and fought rom at +3 level and lost three people after first wipe. I've even soloed it on my scrapper O.o took about three days and alot of tries, but doable.


I hold firm in my belief anything (aside a master of) can be done by any team mockup as long as the players know how to play their character. I've yet seen nothing that proves otherwise to this belief.

The biggest problem witht he end game raids and such is onfortunatly the network lag... anyone who done a zone capped mothership raid knows this.

The only time we had to go grab Shivans was on a LRSF. We all got them with ease, vengeanced them...and STILL got our backsides kicked. General accord seems to be that Numina went spam-happy with the buffs while we all went to hospital the first time or so. So, needless to sya, we failed that run.

Aisde from that...I've not run into any of that stuff yet. I've not once had anyone tell me to de-summon my pets, and, if they did, I would laugh in their face. The only time it felt like a waste was on said LRSF, when Synapse and Positron both ganked me every time I so much as opened fire, despite having SC defences to everything...Damn lvl 53 Heroes...

And I highly doubt the end-game will be 'loot' based. The Devs have mentioned incarnate 'levels', most likely something to be built up individually for each character and alt. I see no real way of making 'loot' happen in this game, even if it was wanted.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Yeah...after 6 years here, It seems to me the devs have a pretty good handle on what kind of players their game has....I'd doubt they'd go all "endgame=second job" at this point.

Okay I'm conflicted here... On one hand I agree that recently GW has become more of a pain to battle than Recluse himself and I am not sure why. I have a Plant/Rad Controller that has tried 3 times to complete the thing and the same thing happens. We get to GW and no matter what we do simply can not damage fast enough, stay far enough away, etc to actually take her down and defeat her. I've seen several posts here expressing that same thing so I agree something is amiss.

As far as farming for Inspirations or whatever? hey I have a ton of characters on Virtue all in 2 Sgs that I run and are they are in a coalition with each other. Each base has 8 inspiration collectors and from running TFs, Trials and Story Arc both have 800 Tier 3 inspirations on hand for just such occasions. Did I do those TFs JUST to farm? No.. I did them to level characters, earn XP, collect Salvage and recipes, add prestige to the base and to earn the merits I used to purchase the inspirations along with other items. But with them there my lower levels can get through those awkward levels before Stamina easier and when I do a particularly tough TF I have the tools on hand to excell. Shivan? I don't run to get those every five minutes but I do enjoy GM battles so at some point I WILL make the trip to get them and add to my available tools. I tried for Nukes once but Warburg is a little tougher to crack and frankly I don't feel like going through the bother of fighting everything just to get them. I don't see that as an imposition just another tool COH provides (IF I WANT IT) to make the game easier. I have done ITFs, LGTFs, and even STFs without using them.

On States I have held off on using my Carrion Creepers against GW since she will heal off of those but I have done a lot of ITFs with my Thugs/DM Mastermind and about the only thing I got rid of was my Bruiser (Brute) .. the rest, excpet the Arsonist, tend to stay back and attack at range anyway. With Dm i ma busy debuffing Romulus like mad anyway so I certainly don't feel useless and only once have I ever been excluded for that TF .. Team leaders loss since I turned around and formed one of my own which breezed through it.

Frankly "Masters of".. in my opinion is over rated and I tend to avoid them. I tried a Master of Statesman with a friend once and thanks to one team member that seemed unable to understand simply instructions we managed to have one death on the first mission. We managed this three times because the leader was determined to get "Master of". By 1AM we were finally on the last mission, and the "Master of" was gone due to a death during the Thorn Tree mission, when the entire team gave up because we all had to work the next day. After that five hour long nightmare I swore off them completely. Its just another badge and there are hundreds of others out there so I am not going to go through the frustration to get one that one.

I do agree that States TF needs some work... I am not even sure if they did anything to make Recluse nastier because the last 3 times I have tried it the team couldn't get past Ghost Widow. As for "Master of" ..Anything if you don't want the hastle simply don't join those teams. Its what i do and I spend much more time enjoying the game and less pulling my hair out wondering "When will this ever end?'

Raids, in and of themselves, don't bother me. I don't do Hami raids. Hated the old design, hate the new one. If I need a HO I'll get one on the market.

If I'm bored or in zone and notice one has started, I will hop into a RWZ raid. I've already purchased everything I need to with vanguard merits.

It's only the tying of incarnate levels to said raids that I'll get ticked at. And then, only if there isn't SOME alternative path allowed.

In the case of HOs, I have the market. In the case of vanguard merits, I can do missions or street hunt in RWZ. Alternate paths to the same goal.

Considering how many alternate paths exist now, I have *faith* that the devs won't screw that philosophy up.

I've seen more than my fair share of STF's fail at ghost widow. Teams that you would swear were the perfect make up to get the job done too.

I'm sorry to say, but by level 45-50 characters have plenty of inspiration slots...for encounters like this, the players do not need to be softcapped or carrying huge inspirations. They just need to bring a couple rows of lucks if they plan to be in leeching/danger range. These are available for 50 inf. at your local AE, or in ouroboros.

Dark Armor on AVs is just borked in general. Especially custom ones.

But I've been on a team with a Thugs MM, and we did fine.

...After I told him to stop using Gang War. For the love of God do not use Gang War (Or any Similar Power) on Ghost Widow! D:

The CoH endgame system is optional - just like all the systems in the game - if it's not something you want to do, or have any interest in, then you can skip it.