The pay-per-view effect

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

I was going to say this, too. Also, Keith Nance's and Jenni Adair's doppelganger arcs are awesome. Despite the bad rap she gets, I've always thoroughly enjoyed the Fusionette arc in Faultline. Both the Cooling and Doppelganger storylines are at least equal to a TF each.

As long as all the good stuff isn't gated behind TFs, this is completely acceptable to me. And with the cool soloable arcs in the game, it's clear there really isn't much of a "pay-per-view problem."

Is this even true? I mean, let's look at the original batch of TFs.

In the Positron TF, you didn't even get to fight an AV at first, instead you just get to fight a Vahzilok EB at the end. Vahzilok himself shows up at the end of a normal story-arc, however.

In the Sister Psyche TF you fight Clamor, a Freakshow TF who doesn't even get mentioned outside the TF. Meanwhile Drek, the leader of the Freakshow, shows up way later in a normal mission.

In the Citadel TF you end up fighting Vandal, one of the more forgettable Council AVs together with Maestro (honestly, I never even found him outside the Council AV marathon in Viridian's arc) while the two big-shot AVs of the Council, Requiem and Nosferatu, show up in standard missions.

In the Manticore TF you fight the single most forgettable AV in the game whereas the actual CEO of Crey has a story-arc dedicated to taking her down, complete with a fight against her.

And at the end of the Numina TF, you fight some semi-generic Devouring Earth Monster. True, you don't exactly fight Hamidon himself solo, but he's the exception to the norm in that it takes about 50 supers to take him down.

The only time an actual villain group leader shows up in the original TFs is the Clockwork King in the Synapse TF, and even then you later fight a souped-up version of him in a later mission.

I'm not gonna get quite as detailed about red-side, so I'll just point out that short of Statesman and Sister Psyche, all members of the Freedom Phalanx show up in normal missions, too. Statesman actually shows up at the end of the VEAT story-line, too, but I guess that would also fit into Sam's pay-per-view thingy.

And as a final note, am I the only one who feels that the LGTF is rather tacked on at the end of the Vanguard storyline? At the end of Dark Watcher's arc you thwart Hro'Dtohz for the second time as well as stop a plan by Nemesis to enslave the Rikti Homeworld and ruin both worlds. Then in the LGTF I guess you just kinda keep the Rikti from rounding up a couple of psychics and at the end Hero 1 shows up because? Dark Watcher more or less finished up the Vanguard/Rikti storyline and the LGTF, well, I would say ties up a loose end in the form of Hero 1 showing up, but that wasn't even a loose end until it was specifically brought up in the LGTF.

TL;DR I guess the moral of the story here is that the grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence.

Sin is not actually all that boring.

I was just about to say - if your sins are boring, you're doing them wrong.

Heh...kinda the whole point of sin

I don't know, I highly doubt sloth is all that exciting.

No...you're bored... the person making you do it gets the enjoyment of shcadenfreude out of your misery

You should try XTREME! sloth sometime.

did you check the full quote? it mentions arcs like maria jenkins arc and harvy naylor, but for lore, yeah a lot of it was hidden behind the tf's. furthermore, as sam mentioned, striga, cro, and the hollows did culminate either in a tf or trial. heroes also could only fight the 4 lieutenants and recluse only by the stf, a lucky dar doing safeguards or pvp. i get yoursentiment though, and agree that lgtf does feel kind of anticlimactic after you finished the solo arc(i had mentioned that as a case of a good solo storyline) you have pretty much blunted hro and foiled you know who.

Or have you?

no, you never really do, but you foiled that particular plan, as far as you know.

I did read the entire post, I just hate quoting entire posts. It just gets unsightly, especially when someone makes longish pastes like I did.

Anyway, I think I did misunderstand you a bit. When you said early game content, did you mean Issue0/1/2 content, or low-level content?

Anyway, it's true that Striga, the Hollows and Croatoa do end their storylines in TFs and that is a pain for soloers. I'd be all for a change to that. It's just that so far I consider those three exceptions to the rule.

Arachnos and their AVs are also a bit of a special case in that they were introduced in Issue 6. In some ways the STF was meant as a way to have all the big players of Arachnos blue-side in one single TF and pretend they were always around. Having the four lieutenants of Recluse in regular, soloable content would be great, though, that's true. Ghost Widow already started with that by showing up in Daedalus' storyarcs.

I'd also love to say something about lore being locked behind TFs, but the truth is I don't actually really remember the lore behind any original TFs. So, yeah.

You know, that's something I'd actually love to see changed. You could stick close to the original system and have it so that only original Task Force members get the badge and completion rewards, but it's possible for people to join inbetween and help out if you get unlucky and several people disappear. Like, say, a system of main members and support members where only the former get the completion rewards. It incentivises sticking together for a TF, but allows helpful souls to smooth things over if they go sour.

I imagine it would be a lot of coding effort so, so who knows if or when we would get something like that? I probably should make a thread in the suggestion forum later, anyway.

I've run a lot of it over and over again, is all

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I want to clear up something here that I seem to have left ambiguous in the original post. I plead no contest that new story arcs are being introduced in lower-level content. This much is true, and even if it weren't true, there are probably hundreds of story arcs already in the game. Outside of the Hollows, Striga and Croatoa examples, I have no qualms with that.

What I feel is suffering the "pay-per-view effect" is the Incarnates system. As it stands right now with our half an Incarnate slots, we're not that much more powerful than a standard 50 (I've tried it already). However, with the level shift in the other half and the rest of the slots coming down the line, there will come a point where regular content simply won't be up to our level.

And then what?

Right now, the simple answer to that is Tin Mage and Apex. But those are TFs. What ELSE? This is my question, and my fear is that the answer will be "more TFs." Yes, the Mender Ramiel arc is good. Great, even. But it can't be repeated, and it's not content FOR Incarnates, it's content to MAKE you an Incarnate. In essence, it's akin to Talshak the Mystic's arc where the plot is set up, and you are then directed to Karsis to actually take part in said plot. Which you can't do, because Karsis requires eight people to start you on the Caverns of Transcendence Trial.

In a way, what I fear will happen to the Incarnate system is it will turn into a newer version of the Shadow Shard - you have no meaningful way to engage in it outside of large-scale, difficult (as opposed to long) Task Forces. And I have a real problem with growing in power, and yet becoming less and less able to do the things designed for my power level by myself. In my opinion, the stronger a character becomes, the more independent that character should feel, outside those special instances when events conspire to put him in a very unfavourable situation.

To carry on the wrestling metaphor, good wrestling has faces and heels. Faces are the people who the audience likes, who play fair and who are always stronger. Players are the faces in a game. Heels are the people the audience boos, who win by cheating, by weaseling out of losses, by ganging up on their opponents and who are always weaker in a fair fight. A strong Incarnate SHOULD be strong enough to be a match for his enemies, unless those enemies cheat.

The Time After Time arc vs. the Statesman TF is a good example of this. One on one, a player character can defeat Lord Recluse even at the pinnacle of his power. However, Recluse is not one to play fair, so in the STF, he cheats by drawing power from his towers, thus requiring a whole team to beat. The story is good enough to show that Recluse ISN'T stronger than us intrinsically, but he still remains a challenge because he's a heel and he cheats.

I have no problem with the Tin Mage TF in principle. I missed most of the story the one time I did it, because... Well, you know how TFs go. But I understood that we're under some kind of curse or debuff or what have you, so we're not as strong as we could be, and our enemies are somehow super-charge. OK, I can live with that. Even Bobcat's stupid 7000+ damage hits I can live with. She's powered-up and angry.

But it would be nice if there were regular Incarnate arcs to contrast this hideous level of challenge, as well. I just got done playing The Force Unleased 2 yesterday, spending a full day in the shoes of Starkiller, the universe's most overpowered jedi who can't go a game without taking out a Star Destroyer with his bare hands. THAT is the sort of backdrop of super powers that gives gravity to the special TFs where everything is so difficult it's almost unfair. You can think to yourself "Holy ****! I was able to take a tank shell to the face without flinching and that guy just backhanded me through three buildings! His power level must be over 9000!!!"

Basically, team-only events with the difficulty cranked up to 11 need a context of more "regular" content to highlight their difficulty and their exclusivity. When everything is an end-game raid, nothing stands out, and all you do is shift the bottom line bar up to 11, instead of having that be exclusive and exciting.

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I want to reiterate: I have no problem with the TF-to-regular-content balance in the 1-50 game. There's more than enough content to go around, and more is constantly being added. What concerns me is the Incarnate system, because it comes with NO CONTENT AT ALL as a de-facto level cap usually does, and we'll only get what they add after the fact. So far what they've added for it has been two TFs. I HOPE they'll add more story arcs. Believe me, there's nothing that will satisfy me more than if I20 came out with a whole bunch of Incarnate arcs and made me eat crow. I prefer to be wrong about this.

With how secretive they're being about I20, you could argue that they're probably designing just that. But I can counter-argue that they could just be designing another raid proper, a counterpoint to the Hamidon and Rikti Shuttle raids. We'll see when that comes about, but if I20 comes out with no "regular" Incarnate content, I'll start panicking for real.

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.

Poor writing for the sequal to a brilliant story. Was very dissapointed by TFU2 and it's brevity.

However, on your other points, I agree. I want to say this is just the start, I'm sure they'll put some in... but I'm not. I hope they will. It would be a bit disapointed if all we got to do was TF's at this power level.

That, in a nutshell, is my concern. And it's not a question of teaming vs. solo, it's a question of what my character is able to to by himself, or by herself, as is the case with both my Incarnates. Essentially, I want to be able to win my fair fights on my own devices, but have to look for help for when the enemy cheats above and beyond what is normal.

I still hope that we'll see Incarnate arcs proper sooner or later. Sooner, rather than later, as it were.

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.

When I did Dean MacArthur's, and Leaonard's, respective arcs I was blown away, as I had no knowledge of what to expect heading into both of them.