Samuel Tow hates Tin Mage and all he stands for

Captain Den'Rath 53* Merk/Traps MM, Rivona 50Energy Blast/Time Cor,Victoria Von Heilwig 53* Dual Pistols/Traps Cor, Crab Spider Webguard 53* SOA, Accela 53* Bot/FF MM,Valkyrie's Executor 53* Broadsword/Shield Def Scrap. On FREEDOM! @Knight Of Bronze

To be honest.... Two to three team members were, to put it politely; well intentioned but flaky. Really not paying attention to the team or any discussions of coordination. Director Jerk was a huge death sink. We were also a bit melee heavy and for a lot of the TF we were down by 1-2 people due to crashing/power outage issues.


Heh. I've snagged him on a number of task forces the past two weeks. By God, I'll force him to be social if he has to die 100 times for it! Which he may have.

It's just that I don't think he'll ever agree to another Tin Mage. :0

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Currently listening to Frank Black's Svn Fngrs

i got the MotTMTF badge on an alt before the latest Director 11 fix, so i'm not sure how many more alts will be getting this badge. The Apex TF is relatively easy to get the Mo badge.

This time around, we were having a HORRIBLE time keeping him locked down. He's go running around at random, people would chase him into a mine field and we kept having stacking casualties from the mines.

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Currently listening to Frank Black's the Cult of Ray

Actually he had an exceedingly long post written, then the forums logged him out.


<.<


>.>

Angel Red
"We're heroes. Fighting injustice is the thing we do." ~Rebel Scum

o.O But it's so easy!

Yes, and I immediately regrtted it

Nah, it's not the people, the slowness or the number of deaths that really bugged me, nor indeed was the apparent chaos and people yelling at each other from time to time. It's a TF. I know how those go. I've done four-hour ITFs and had a blast, I've done eight-hour Faating TFs and had a blast.

No, what ruined the Tin Mage TF for me was the Tin Mage TF itself and everything it represents. I believe bAss will tell you I sent him tells to the effect of "never again" and "any TF that scales to 54 while capping me to 50 can go to hell" and so forth, and this is the sum total of what ruined it. It's a long, boring slog through demoralisingly tough enemies and insultingly difficult situations that had no excuse to be nearly this difficult. And they were difficult in precisely the dumbest way: Just throw more stats at the players, that'll motivate them to try harder.

Director 11 could easily have been the dealbreaker for me and made me ragequit right on the spot if I didn't feel bad about abandoning teams on a tough TF. Why the triple F is a dude with a gun powerful enough to punch me for 1000+ points and to shoot me for 400+ in a four-five round burst? You take these freshly-baked Incarnates who just ran through an arc where we soloed Ruladak the Strong and became even better than regular enemies like Malta... And now you're putting me up against level 54 Malta who can punch me for half my health? Go to hell, Tin Mage. You and all you represent.

Maybe one day when I've acquired four level shifts so that the TF doesn't cheat, maybe. But PURPLE ENEMIES!!! Is not difficulty, and I have a purple patch to prove it. Purple enemies is just cheating, and I don't like TFs that cheat me out of a fun experience.

Hey, what happened to the "private" part in "private tell?" Just kidding, though. What bAss is the following:

The Tin Mage TF put me in easily the worst mood that any game has put me in for... Pretty much as far back as I could remember, and I know why. The TF turned me off pretty much the moment I set foot in the first instance and exclaimed "So, we're not running at -4, but the enemies are still capped at 54?" Normally, I'd have had the presence of mind to just walk away and play something I liked, but you don't really walk out on a TF just on a whim. I don't know how much I actually contributed (I'm thinking "not much") but I always feel responsible to stick a TF through to the end, as I know that we depend on each other in these, and I didn't want to let people down. But this was a horrible experience that I did not want to do right from the get go, and it just got worse with every passing hour.

The Tin Mage TF pissed me off worse than the first time I tried riding the Hamidon and had to spend the bulk of my time sitting on my hands listening to childish bickerings and unfunny jokes for about four hours straight. And after that, I swore I'd never do a Hamidon raid ever again. And I haven't, though seeing what the new one might be like from the Lady Grey TF, I might have to reconsider.

Also what I said was that "if this is what end game is like, then I want nothing at all to do with it," and would much prefer to play regular story arcs. Since Incarnate story arcs do not exist, that's one of the things I really want to see, and I mean more than just one arc to unlock the slot. The Tin Mage TF yanked me right out of my World Wide Red story arc, for instance. In addition to already beating up on Malta and doing so just fine solo, the arc itself is interesting, well-written and on a really grand scale. Something like that, but on an incarnate scale, would be very appreciated. I20 looks to be really big, but if I had to put money on it, I would bet dollars to doughnuts one of the things it WON'T include is much of any soloable content.

One primary reason I was so pissed off is because this does indeed appear to be what the future is about: a future where we gain ever more power and become ever weaker against our enemies. I could fight my own fights alone and come out victorious before I became an Incarnate, but once I became one, then all the new Incarnate content put me as a completely helpless chump who needs seven other people to do anything and even then die about a thousand time in the process, three of which being getting hit by Bobcat for 7300+, 4800+ and 3500+, all on a hit points bar of around ~1800. Of all the ways to make me feel that something is epic, grand and exciting, having an enemy hit me for many times my total hit points three times in a row ain't one of 'em. Especially not when I slapped Bobcat around in a mission the day before.

"Epic" may be a lot of things, but Epic ain't this. Epic ain't an indistinguishable soup of colours like I'm having kaleidoscope dreams. Epic ain't a cacophony of colours like I were listening to music remixed by Neuron humself. Epic ain't a two ficking hour slog though resistant high-level enemies that take ages to kill where I spent half the time one hand on the keyboard and my head resting on my other hand. This is not Epic. This is BORING. It makes me feel like one of the grunts in that Stalingrad level in Call of Duty. It makes me feel like one more Marine in a StarCraft unit. It makes me feel like an insignificant gnat and the fights aren't even any fun because I don't know what the hell is going on.

Thank you, but if that's what Incarnate Content is going to be like, then I'll sit this one out and wait for something that makes me feel stronger, rather than making me feel like a wimp.

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There's your long post. Happy now?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Well, the fact of the matter is, I feel weaker than I did before. Before, I could almost take down Battle Maiden on my own. I could at least hold my own against her. Same with Bobcat and Neuron.

So what did the devs do? They give Bobcat uber Vengeance that can two shot my Tanker and give Battle Maiden a rapid fire unresistible nuke that will put any of the Judgment attacks to shame even when they unlock.

But I get a minor boost to recharge.
Whee.


These two TFs are intended for the Alpha slot. They should have been tailored to demonstrate how the Alpha has improved us. Instead, IMO it backslides me back to level 25. I'm fighting the same enemies as before, the same NPCs, but they're amped way up and we only get a minor improvement. How is that supposed to make you feel powerful? In fact, if you removed the artificial -8 debuff, having the Alpha would help you very little on these TFs. It surely wouldn't make the difference on its own.

And don't say "wait for the rest of the Alpha". Even level shifted, the sword bombs are still going to slaughter anyone. I highly doubt the modest resistance and defense you'd get from the Very Rares are going to do much against Bobcat.

And don't say "wait for the other Incarnate slots after the Alpha". I know what four of other slots do. So far I am not impressed. Even with the Judgment, Interface and Destiny slots, I would be hard-pressed to call any player character a peer to these NPCs as they are now.

They made us 5% better and made the enemies 300% better. There's nothing to suggest that the two curves will be any different moving forward.



.

It's this part that gets me.

You realize, that you are infact, not an incarnate right now right? Your working towards it.

That arc you soloed Ruladak the Strong, was a memory of a future self, not your actual character.

All your character is right now, is a hero/villain who's strong enough to become an incarnate, and on the path to doing so.

Could just help that mentality of yours.

Yes, I realise that. I'm not saying I should suddenly become this unstoppable juggernaut of destruction. But since when are MALTA tough enough to one-shot punch me? Like I said - I'm doing World Wide Red now, and I'm kicking their *****, yet all of a sudden I can't even beat up an Operations Engineer? Why? Why are THEY so strong all of a sudden? Why am I so much weaker? Even in Reichsman's TF, that Grim Falcon guy isn't THAT insane, and he's supposed to be the made-up leader of the Malta Group, and all of a sudden this guy is god damn Super Man?

The War Walkers I can get. Bobcat I can sort of get. But Malta? Since when are their Minions so damn strong? The game can scale a Hellion up to level 54 and stick me with a -4 level debuff and that Hellion will indeed be very difficult to fight, but it won't make the thing feel more epic. All it would do is make me feel more like a loser, like the rest of the TF didn't do a good enough job already.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

The TFs are newest content.

From a story perspective, when you last faced the Malta (and not likely at +4 difficulty), they were at a certain power level and you were at a certain power level.

Time has since passed, what makes you think your enemies aren't gaining powers and getting tougher, just as you do?

I think he's got the right mentality.



I also think he's going to love the new Winter Event mission. Because I know I loved having my entire Primary power set negated and getting to see the devs start to use GM code for 'level-less' EBs and AVs to negate Incarnate Level Shifts as part of the 'Incarnate arms race' they're starting with players (guess who's gonna win).


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Holy crap 144 deaths!?

i've been on a few TFs, mostly the longer Shard TFs, where we had about that number of deaths. Admittedly that was because we were pretty much aiming to do that through difficulty settings and deliberately employing Self Destruction, Vengeance, RotP, et al as a tactic to speed up fights. That and general showboating and silliness. When a good portion of the fights start with "Hey, watch this!" you know there's going to be a pretty big number for the team deaths.

This being a TF, I had no idea what was going on since I didn't have time to read the briefings, what with all the kaleidoscope fights I had to try and figure out. Plus, the TF is still not up on ParagonWiki. So, who knows? I mean, I can accept the War Works being much stronger than they were in, say, a Hero's Epic, since they ARE billed as a major threat.

But Malta? What in the world could make them this much stronger? I can maybe see Director 11 if he was really special and all, but why were HIS MINIONS level 54? Why is an Operations Engineer this strong? With his PUNCHES?

It just really cheeses me off when the "epicness" of a task comes not from the epic storyline, but rather from the "epic" enemy starts.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.