Tin Mage TF is just ridiculous..

GG gets a point for making me laugh.

That guy needs to hang some tapestries on the walls and invest in some lamps so he doesn't have to be under that overhead light all the time. Easiest way for someone to mellow out is to mellow out their environment.

Does he look like a chubby Rodney Mckay to anyone else?

I have some fairly strong but not verifiable suspicion you are in a minority.

My sense of "strong" in this game is and always has been tied intimately with the meta-game. The "formally correct" thing for me to fight and be pretty successful is something that cons white, and something that cons orange should be at least a bit worrisome. But I can build my characters so that, broadly speaking, I am wildly successful against orange stuff, and purple stuff is at least a bit worrisome... assuming I actually face more of them than one character normally would.

For someone like me, I am crushing the stuff that I faced 1-50. In order to have it even begin to bother me in most cases, I have to crank it up in both strength and number. Suddenly, planet-shaping forces arrive and I'm on the front lines to face them? Right on, this is about what I've been waiting for. It's all level 54? Cool. I'm actually on par with that.

This gets back to the idea that the devs are not tuning this new content for the same base difficulty we've seen so far. They know there are people turning that up eight or nine notches, so they made this stuff turn it up to eleven. I know this gets back to that being intensely distasteful for you, and you (and Johnny) have made clear you're not cool with it. I can't say for sure they're tuning it correctly for this game's community, but I do know it's about right for me. What I would agree would be wrong for the devs to do is to carelessly crank up everything from now on, and I do think we need to be vigilant against the possibility they will unintentionally let end-game power creep seep into other designs, but I do not assume they will do that automatically, as Johnny seems to.

It's notable to me that my characters don't feel like that, except with the possible exception of uber PO'd Bobcat. She hits like a mac truck made out of neutron stars, and frankly she puts Web-empowered Lord Recluse from the STF to shame in raw power per blow. The rest of the TF, though, doesn't really leave me feeling like a gnat at all. It makes me feel fairly bad-***.

This is a very fundamental disagreement I've had with quite a few people, so I may well be in the minority, yes. But to me, flash and show has always, always taken precedence over raw numbers. Sure, I'm not the sort of person who believes numbers shouldn't matter and we should all just win everything. I have a degree in mathematics, after all. But what I'm saying is that numbers should always be slave to flash, and be designed to reinforce flash and back it up.

A friend of mine once joked "Never judge a man by the colour of his name." and I've been using this as a motto ever since. When my enemies are designed to be so difficult that I should be afraid of them, I don't want to be afraid of the colour of their name. I want to be afraid of THEM. A big flaming demon is scary, and I can see being afraid of that. A giant robot firing missiles at me is scary, and I can see being afraid of that. The all-powerful ruler behind a massive empire is scary, and I WANT the game to make me be afraid of him (not giving him Elvis hair and an admiral's uniform would help).

What I don't want to be afraid is a +8 purple Hellion. Because, really, take a basic Blood Brother Slugger, scale that up to, say, 60 and pit players against that. Because that would suddenly become hideously problematic. This goes for all high-level non-worthy enemies, like the Family. What business do these guys have showing up in the 40s when I'm fighting space aliens an mythical monsters? They're just thugs in ugly suits hitting me with black jacks and brass knuckles. They don't deserve to be as threatening as they are.

Ideally, what's numerically threatening should reflect what's canonically threatening. The War Works robots I can see, they make sense. We'll just say we're fighting stronger versions in that TF. But Malta? Yes, I know they're supposed to be strong enemies, but brawling me for close to my entire hit points bar with a punch is NOT one of the things they should be doing. Want to make Malta look more threatening post 50? Make all of their minions into Hercules Titans, make their lieutenants into Zeus Titans and come up with something more interesting for a boss. A Victoria-style super-efficient robot assassin, why not? Or, hell, say they learned how to clone Moment and put shapeshifters as their bosses. Or why not honest-to-god heroes they've brainwashed? THAT might convince me that they're a threat big enough to knock my socks off, but guys with guns should NOT be this strong. It's a stretch already, but scaling them up to 54 is just going too far.


This is actually my biggest fear for this. For YEARS some people (not always the same people, to be clear) have been asking for everything to be made harder and erupt in revulsion when something is made easier, like the Terra Volta respc, yet break out into cheer when something is made harder, like Trapdoor. What I worry more than anything else is that the developers have decided to cater to that notion WITH THE INCARNATE SYSTEM. I've no problem with putting in greater challenges for those who want more. The RSF and STF were good examples of TFs I've never done and will never do, but that I feel are a good thing to have nevertheless. But from where I'm standing, it seems like the entirety of the Incarnate system is precisely that - just a higher challenge for the sake of having a higher challenge.

Normally, I'd live and let live, but the problem is that the Incarnate system monopolises what I'd define as the most interesting plotline in the entire game by several orders of magnitude. The Hollows, Striga and Croatoa notwithstanding, TFs have generally been "another complete story," adding lore and adventures to the game without taking anything away from the more mundane content. This does not appear to be the case with Incarnates, and I'm only growing more concerned by the announcements of new Trials in I20. What I really don't want to see happen is being told "This is where your game ends, and where a completely different game begins." Because I was never really looking for a completely different game. That's what's been pissing me off all these years - I was never looking for a different game. That's why I stuck with this one.

Sure, add a brand new experience, I'm all for that. But don't treat the old experience like it's obsolete.

*edit*
You know what I'd LOVE? A bunch of arcs, say five or six, all to do with Incarnates, all dreadfully simple. Go to instance, defeat everyone, defeat boss, click glowie, report back to me. As long as they have a decently written story behind them and they're drawn up as Incarnate-specific content, I'll be happy. Sure, elaborate, high-production-value story arcs like the one from Vincent Ross are cool, but right now, the Incarnate system needs a body of content it doesn't have. And I'm willing to sacrifice quality for quantity for some time if it means not running out of content. Because I'll still take Unai Kemen's To Save a Thousand Worlds over NOTHING AT ALL.

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.

^ This.

And as has been pointed out before, there's zero reason to believe that things along those lines aren't coming.

There is likewise zero reason to believe that things along those lines are coming. I can spout useless platitudes too, you see.

Actually, there is reason to believe things along those lines are coming, and that's not one of your useless platitudes. It's called looking at the history of the game's development and the stated intent of the Devs regarding the new content and inferring from there.

The devs stated intent is to release "Trials". What Trials already in the game are solo?

Not a platitude. A combination of trusting the devs and not assuming the worst possible outcome is somehow the only possible one, despite a lack of evidence either way.

Yeah. They're going to release trials. And when in the 19 issues of updates have they *ever* produced an fully itemized list of planned additions this far in advance of a new Issue?

What precedent are you referring to here?

I'm going off what I know about the Incarnate system, and the officially stated goal of the Incarnate system has been to provide large-scale "events" and more difficult encounters. This is the reason that myself and others met the announcement of Incarnates with "I hope they don't turn out to be Task Forces only" way back when this was first announced. Back then we were told we simply didn't know and that the developers hadn't announced anything. Two Issues later, we've seen what the system looks like, and we've heard the announcement for the next thing which will be coming, which is "trials."

Historically, the developers have held "end game" in special regard. It's never been much in terms of volume, consisting of essentially the Recluse Strike Force, Statesman Task Force, both versions of the Hamidon and potentially the Rikti mothership raid, but that has still always had its place in the game as the ultimate challenge. The problem is that now the entirety of the Incarnate system appears to have been designated an expansion to this kind of content.

I honestly do in fact see NO reason to expect that anything BUT more Trials and TFs. I seen no precedent for it, as the only content this is "like" has been TF-exclusive so far, and the fact that such content does not appear to be part of a THIRD Issue since Incarnates have been announced leaves me beyond cold. We had I18, and what Incarnate content was originally suggested for it had no "regular" content in it. We have I19, and the only thing which Incarnates got that was repeatable was two TFs. We have I20 next, and the only thing announced about it has been "Trials."

I could simply trust the developers and hope for the best, but I've learned that that simply doesn't work.

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.

That's what it boils down to. Do you trust the devs enough to continue paying your sub? Personally, I do. Every Issue thus far has had something I enjoy, so I continue to pay, even if there are times I don't log in for weeks at a time. I see no reason to believe that because they've said this early "Trials are coming" that that is *all* that is coming. That would be completely contrary to how they've handled every single update in the past.

I've always had a problem with the "just ignore the man behind the curtain" argument because it bothers me. I've ignored a fair few things myself, of course, such as the WRETCHED "origin of powers" hogwash, but I reserve fan discontinuity only for especially grievous crimes against good storytelling. Like the Dr. Khan TF. For me to get to the point where I think "Screw it! I just want to kill stuff and forget this story ever happened!" that means I'm already several times past my level of tolerance for bad storytelling. I don't do this as a regular thing, and I find it to be a mark of exceptionally bad storytelling when stories require me to do so.

There is no reason why these stories should not have been handled better. NO. REASON. They clearly hire capable writers, based on some of the new stuff I've seen, so what are these writers doing? What happened to the story bible? What happened to decency and good taste? I refuse to judge the game and its story like some kind of quaint antique that I should be glad even still exists and should even dream to have the temerity to expect good quality writing. We've SEEN the developers produce amazing, well-written stories. We've seen them tie new events into old canon like they were always there. They can do better than this, and I'll be damned before I let them off the hook over something that shouldn't be this hard to keep straight.

Yes, I know that means I'll probably meet a lot of things that piss me off in the narrative. Why do you think I have such a sunny disposition?

I think you misunderstood me. I'm not against hard content having a good story. Quite on the contrary - a good story that puts hard content within a context that makes me understand WHY it's hard is something I feel is NECESSARY, not just a good thing to have. However, what I was talking about was something else completely.

We can go round and round in circles, but the bottom line remains the same - the Incarnate system constitutes a level cap increase. They're careful not to call it that so they don't have to make content for it like they would for a level range, but the fact of the matter is that they do. And two arcs per Issue ain't gonna' cut it. Now, I know that quality work takes time and effort, so two arcs plus two TFs is about the most the developers can do. I appreciate that.

So what I'm saying is I would like to see a LARGE body of simpler content, just so that there is SOMETHING to do in those level ranges. Even something as simple as the Incarnate version of paper missions. I'm perfectly willing to sacrifice quality to provide SOMETHING to pad out the level range and hold me over until they can afford to add more content to those levels.

To put it more in perspective, it's nice to have a luxurious, stylish, expensive bathroom, but I want to still have a loo while I'm waiting for that to be built, because I can't hold it in for six weeks. Incarnates lack content in the worst possible way, and calling this "end game" to mask this fact so people will be content on regrinding the same handful of TFs over and over again is not a good way to solve it. And I would sooner have mediocre content enough to carry me through than have one piece of good content and 90% dead air.

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.

Trust the developers? No... Not really. Not any more. Do I mistrust them enough to drop my subscription? No, not by a longshot. Where am I gonna' go? The only thing that'll make me cancel my subscription is if they REALLY mess things up, which I don't think they'll do, or unless a better game comes along, which looking at the lineup of things to come, ain't happening.

But you know what bugs me the most? It didn't use to be that way. I didn't use to want another game... But I guess this one is turning into another game under my feet whether I like it or not.

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 Hollows.
Cimerora.
The RWZ. (Edit: Especially the RWZ.)
The arc changes and new arcs in i18.
The new arcs in i19.
While the Devs have explicitly stated that they are working on more large group content similar to the CoP, the Hamidon raid, and Mothership raid, they have in the past revised, expanded, and added content accessible to soloists in addition to content that is gated to require groups. The most recent and directly relevant are the high level hero and villain arcs added to Cimerora, and Cimerora isn't even directly part of the main game storyline. There are also the Praetorian related arcs added last issue. While i don't know if there will be explicitly Incarnate-gated soloable arcs added, i am pretty confident based on past content by the Devs that they will be adding more late game/50+ storyline content that does not require a team to experience.

Perhaps my confidence is misplaced, but i have some faith that it isn't. i'll have to wait until more about issues 20 and 21 are revealed before i know whether i was wrong. If it turns out i was i'll admit as much.

You should be happy - the mroe Trials they add, the bigger the chance that they'll give something for the loyalists to play

I don't know. But I can't accept that there's "no reason". There's a reason, and we don't know what it is. We can only speculate or guess, but there's no such thing as "no reason", because if there was really no reason, it wouldn't have happened. We may not like the reason, we may not think the reason is good enough, but this is the real world, and we're just not going to get what we think is a good product every time.

But let's circle back. We got to talking about the Malta at all because we were discussing whether it's OK for the game to start telling us we're proto gods and then start throwing massively harder foes at us. An objection was raised because Malta don't make sense there - where have the proto-god-grade Malta have been hiding? But that's mixing two things - we're mixing story and game balance. I was talking about having fun with the Tin Mage and Apex content because its game balance is harder, and from my perspective you moved the goal posts and started us down a discussion about whether it makes any sense for the actual stuff in it to be harder from a story perspective.

I know that all comes together to make a whole, but you and I have different levels of tolerance for the composition.

Don't get me wrong. I would actually prefer what you I think you want in that regard. I really, honestly do want the game to have a credible story - as credible as a story about people who can fly and shoot lasers from their eyes can be, at least. But perhaps unlike you, the mechanics are actually more important to me. As long as they bother to paint at least a thin veneer of lore over it (and a few times they have not), I'm going to be pretty happy. As long as *I* find the challenges fun, I'll forgive them some continuity fail. Sadly, as long as enough people are like me, they will continue to pump out some continuity fail, because they'll have learned they can get away with it. But I'm OK with that.

But the problem with the new story is the difficulty of enjoying it when it' locked behind a TF. You need number of players, and you have to focus your attention on fighting with detracts from being able to enjoy the story. And teammates don't appreciate player wanting to read the mission dialogs. (but that's another debate entirely).

What I wish Paragon Studios would do it to take a hit from what Cryptic is wanting to do with Star Trek Online end game raids. They are going to strip out the difficulty and raid mechanics and make it into a simpler normal mission arc.

Make version of the Task Forces that are just normal story arcs with normal missions and normal mission rewards. That would ensure that solo player or more casual teams can enjoy the missions and story line at a leisurely pace. And I think that player like Samuel_Tow (and I) would greatly appreciate them.

It's more content for all players to enjoy. It's low hanging fruit because they'd require no new game assets to be created. It's just tweaking to remove any required raid mechanics, hard coded spawns, mission scripting, etc.

Sounds like a win-win. With the rewards reduced, I can't see what the issue would be.

But it's not low-hanging fruit at all. It is terribly easy to say "just do that", but a non-TF version of, say, Tin Mage's TF would have to be significantly different. Do you really think most players could solo sixteen War Walker EBs or whatever are in the Apex? Could they solo Bobcat + Neuron + two War Walkers, even EB-downgraded and reduced to level 50? TFs have a minimum team size, and so the devs can design an encounter based on the assumption that at least that many players will be there. They don't have a system that can dynamically adjust to correct for when someone on a (potentially much) smaller team attends.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea, or that they can't do it now and so never should. But I do object to the claim that, hey, it's easy to describe so it should be easy to do. They need to build in a new system to do that.

All that said, I'm not sure what I think of the idea. I don't dislike the notion that TFs are meant to be harder and meant to require a team. I know people who want to be able to solo a TF like the ITF or whatever without the gyrations of getting a team to form it and then log out, but they actually want to solo an 8-man TF - they don't want it to be easier to "win", they just want it to let them start it solo.

I think I'll use the "I'm not a native speaker of English" excuse here When I say there's "no reason," what I actually mean to say is that there is no GOOD reason, which is to say no reason I'm prepared to respect, for these things to have happened. Obviously, I didn't word this correctly, and for that I apologise, but that's what I meant. I can kind of infer that the reason was conservation of labour in some manner, but the result is not good. Not as good as it could have been, at any rate.

I "moved the goal posts" because the interplay between story and gameplay is what sinks the Incarnate system for me. I have no problem with TFs, hard TFs or hard end-game TFs. None at all. I simply choose not to do them. However, these TFs gate an entire storyline that I want to be involved in. My central problem is that the very framework of the TF system works against the core of the Incarnate system, which is more or less an ego stroke, the way it's written. In some cases, TFs can indeed work to that theme, if they were properly built up and presented, and my sincere apologies to the developers, but the ones we got in I19 ARE NOT.

My problem is actually akin to the divorce between costume items and stats. I want the storyline, but not the TFs. The easy solution to this is story arcs, but I'll believe that when I see it. The slightly less unbelievable solution is to make the TFs make sense, which they currently don't, especially within the context of the 45-50 game.

It seems like I keep changing the subject, but that's only because all of these subjects are intertwined, and I'm prepared to give on one to gain on another, so the point keeps shifting depending on where a particular poster pushes. Difficult content is not a problem for me, because I simply avoid it... When I have an option. When I do choose to engage in it, I prefer that to be within a context which makes me agree that this content should be as difficult as presented. Take the Statesman TF, for instance. I don't like the fact that Recluse is this strong as a general thing, but the TF explains that he's overpowered at the moment, so it makes sense he'd be as strong as he was. To that, I can only nod my head and say "OK, I can roll with that." Hell, it wouldn't make sense for him NOT to be extremely powerful, because him not requiring a full team would make the story and premise lame.

In two short sentences: I want Incarnate content to feature story arcs as well as TFs, and not just one token arc here and there. I want Incarnate TFs and Trials to respect the players who take part in them and give DAMN GOOD REASON why they're as hard as they are.

And this is where we differ. In every game I've ever played, the "mechanics" as a general term have been pretty much the last thing on my mind, and I have always seen them as a necessary evil. You can make a movie or write a story to do with super heroes and super villains and just wing it when it comes to fights. I know that's how I write. But when you make a game, it has to have rules, but the less these rules show and get in my way, the more I can enjoy the game. I got into this game for the cool suits, the flashy powers, the contemporary city and the ability to make a character that's truly MINE. I staid because, unlike all other MMOs I had and have tried, this one was the one that burdened me the least.

They called it the casual player's MMO, they called it MMO-lite, they called it the MMO for people who don't like MMOs (which is probably where I fall) and that's why I liked it. Not for the challenge, not for the numbers, not for the the minigames and metagames, not for the optimization, but simply because I could decide "Today I want a blue alien girl from space who can shoot energy out of her hands!" and just go out and do it without having to worry too much about HOW I should do that, or indeed IF I should do that. The more complex the game becomes, the more "the mechanics" get in my way.

Again, I'm not saying I want an I Win button or that I expect a game can work without any rules. Far from it. I've done my homework. But there comes a point where catering to optimization begins to cut into my actual enjoyment of the game the same way as how playing games professionaly isn't really something I'd call "playing." When I'm told to get Shivans, it bothers me, because this doesn't suit my character. Yes, I CAN explain it if I really wanted to... But I don't want to. Because this isn't the character I wanted to make. Again, I feel that the mechanics of a game should be there to make the game work, but should not be regarded as the POINT of the game. To me, the point of City of Heroes is and always has been to be the coolest MMO out there. But I don't find orange numbers, purple numbers, DPS averages, set lists and things like that to be fun. That's just how it goes.

*edit*
On the one hand, I agree with you, and I've said as much before. Letting something like the ITF just scale down will not make it soloable for very many people. However, I don't really think that's the entire point of it. Because you know what we're missing? Small-team content. The game seems to regard 8-man teams as the holy grail of what people want and anything below that means they failed to achieve that holy grail. But EBs in general weren't intended to be soloed, not strictly, so much as they were intended to let smaller teams have a shot where they may not have against an AV.

As a point of fact, a friend of mine and I tried soloing Terra before AVs scaled down, and we quickly realised we couldn't. Simply could not. But a Terra scaled down as an Elite Boss is much more doable. Granted, she's also soloable, but that's besides the point.

Yes, scaling down the ITF to spawn elite bosses would not make it possible for too many single players to do. But would it make it relatively doable for teams of two or three? I suspect it might. Letting TFs scale down would not necessarily make them soloable, but it would make them much smaller-scale, which will actually be far, FAR more doable for a great many who complain now. Take, for instance, the Ouro TFs. One day I decided... Hey, I want to run the Smoke and Mirrors TF. So I chatted up a global friend, and he said "Sure, why not?" So we headed off to do a TF. It took some time, I think around an hour, because we were dragging our feet, but it was easily doable.

I don't have a lot of friends, not many who are still with the game, anyway, but very often I can scrounge up at least ONE other person if I feel like doing something more adventurous. Having the ability to do so with TFs would actually be very welcome.

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.