The Impossible Mr. Trapdoor and Issue 19's New Theme

Again, it's simply not true. On one of my successful attempts Apex TFs, a person had disconnected so we were down to 7, and at all points in the fight, we had two people (generally speaking, different team members) dead. So at all points in the fight, we were fighting with an effective 5 people doing damage/debuffing. Sure it was slow, but it's to be expected if you're taking that fight with less than a full team. I've also done the Tin Mage TF with 7 people. Although that's not such a big deal because that TF is more of the same as the old stuff.

Some of my characters

I love you.

... idiot proof?

I've seen several teams experience wipes because of the anchored debuffs being left on runners, aggroing more spawns than the team could handle.

There's quite a bit a rad or dark player can do that will screw over a team, or simply fail to help a team.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.

I mean, seriously, can't we just stop?

LEARN. TO. PLAY.

It doesn't matter if you are Rad, FF, Emp, Super Strength, EA.... just L2GDP.

/drops mic

So? You know what? I'm not the greatest Tanker. If I try to tank, it might cause teamwipes. It might cause people to complain that their tank sucks. I might be used as an example in a thread about bad tanks. I KNOW I'm not the awesomest tanker, so I usually AVOID TANKING in situations where a good tank is desired. I don't feel that I'm entitled to be the team's tank just because I'm online. I don't feel that I'm entitled to successfully tank all the AVs in the LRSF just because I pay my $15 a month.

I also don't PvP, or RP, or play Kheldians, or hang out in Pocket D, or do all kinds of other stuff that has been added to the game over the last 6 years. Just because they added it, doesn't mean I'm automatically entitled to do it, and do it successfully. All of these activities would require me to adjust my chosen playstyle in order to be good at them, and since I don't want to adjust my playstyle to accomodate them, I just don't do them. New content is no different.

So, content that is not for the majority of the player base is probably not worth as much development time as content that is for the majority of the player base.

I'm not saying minority groups shouldn't get any development time at all, but if this content is supposed to be only for the best players, the most skilled, it should not be gobbling up as much resources as it currently is.

It's not for only the best players. Trapdoor doesn't require the best players. He requires any one of the following.

• A character that's got some strong DPS (which to me means a reasonably slotted Scrapper, Blaster, Brute, or Stalker). If you have one of these and it can't DPS him, you may not be one of the best players.
• A character that's got -regen or mezzes.
• The ability to find and obtain temp powers from one of at least three different sources we've frequently discussed.
• A team.

If you want to solo him with your Defender, you may need to be a better player. If you aren't that fancy, get team. Why are we blowing the requirements for this out of proportion?

Trying to keep the discussion focused on the OP's topic, are we really going to assume that there's an endemic situation where our players can't deal with info overload on TFs, based on a couple of reports of it? Should we assume that they can't figure out how to build a team for TF filled with level 54 critters? People who are "better players" are completing these TFs with the "better player" team composition equivalents of PuGs. Is it so inconceivable that the people who aren't "better players" could figure out "hey, we should grab a bubbler and a Rad" or something like that? If they can't figure that out, how low are we willing to take the bar, here?

There currently exists a lifetime of freely accessible content for the majority of players, and I'm not even counting the MA. The one place City has always been weakest is interesting stuff to do once you're 50. They're spending the current development cycles addressing that. Joy.

O you said the T word. You can't say the T word without people ranting and raving that for their 15 dollars a month they want to do what they bloody damn well please to alone, hell people probably want to solo Hami. People just don't seem to understand that there are things in this game that while not being raid like require an f-ing team!

I have no problem with that, as long as the devs remember to add in some non-Incarnate content every couple of Issues as well. From what I've seen the major focus for the next several years will be the Incarnate system, given that at it's current schedule, it will be at least ten Issues before we get around to Omega, much less whatever lies beyond.

I'm excited about the Incarnate stuff to come, and am aware they may spread it out over that many issues, but if that's all they release for 10 issues, it better rock everyone's socks into the 5th dimension or I think we all have something to be unhappy about.

What would be really nice is if they added some extra content to the early levels, like 1-20. Maybe allow people to make Praetorian alts or something.

In seriousness, concur with UG.

That's great, as far as it goes. How long do you honestly expect that to hold people who have no interest in the direction we've seen for Incarnates? Keep in mind, that Praetoria was the last major non-Incarnate content, and that was released aug 17.

Put it another way, think of the one thing in this game that entertains you the least, be it PvP, AE, or a specific AT, or whatever. Now, picture the devs saying that the only major work planned will be only on that aspect of the game. How long are you willing to sit around, just doing stuff you've already done, when there's no new content of a type that you'd enjoy anywhere on the horizon?

EDIT: Damn my memory. Had the wrong date up there. It's fixed now, and not near as bad as I expected, but again, don't expect folks to sit around for nine months to a year without any updates of a kind they can enjoy.

Have they said that?

You forgot Inspirations. I honestly have a hard time believing any moderately well build character (i.e. one who has attacks and has slotted them for damage) cannot solo him with intelligent inspiration usage. I solo'd him on a TA/A Defender with minimal IOs (I had a kismet to hit IO and a -kb IO) without using my primary at all just to see if it could be done.

They never said it was for the most skilled players. It's supposed to be a challenge for a level 50. Having a level 50 or three on your roster assumes that you've played them enough to, you know, understand the ins and outs of the powersets and are competent.

The majority of the playerbase has at least one 50, and everyone is planning on having one at some point if they don't already, so yes, this content is designed with everyone in mind.

Time to step off your high horse and admit that you're not as good as you think you are. Perhaps you'll gain more sympathy (which is what you're shooting for) that way. "Learn to play" applies. If the hundreds of instances of random PUGs, themed teams (all Blaster, all control, all melee) that have not only completed, but stormed through the content you're complaining about doesn't convince you, nothing will. Instead of dismissing them, perhaps you'd be better served learning from them. They wouldn't offer their experience if they didn't want to help you, if only because one day they might have to team with you.

And then what do we do at 60?

Fair enough. I tend to assume that people will use inspirations before reporting that something is too hard. We've had several people in these various threads reporting that they did use inspirations and still couldn't defeat him.

Which introduces vast balancing problems. How many new powers do you get? How many new slots? I can already 6-slot every power I want to. What effect does this have on the game? Do they add more epic pools? Do they add more powers to the primary and secondary powersets? That plain old bump is a bigger can of worms than you think.

And, yes, then what do we do at 60?

The only thing I've seen them say they are working on is the Incarnate System. Granted, I may have missed something somewhere, but I've not seen anything to indicate otherwise.

I really do hope I'm wrong about all of this. Honestly. There really may be a slew of non-Incarnate stuff that comes out as early as I20. I've just not been given any reason to expect it, is all.

However, there is very little variation in getting to level 30 and getting the Midnighter badge as compared to the rest of the basic CoH gameplay. If there were a slew of complaints on the forums on how it is "impossible to reach 30" or "impossible to get the Midnighter badge," I would indeed think twice about having that as a gate.

I'd point to the level 50 epic archetype unlocks as another example. Omg, it's so EASY to get multiple level 50s in this game, go the people who have multiple level 50s. But there's really no need to have that as an artificial gate to epic ATs, is it? Folks have complained on the forums about that previously. There's data in various MMOs to suggest that quite a lot of the playerbase never hit a max level character. Hence, the requirement for unlock has dropped to level 20, if I'm not mistaken.

Now the gate to the Alpha slot is first, the "Impossible Mr Trapdoor" that has produced a ferocious divisive debate over whether it can be achieved (and a patch that has apparently ramped up the level of difficulty too), and then repeated running of various Task Forces (or very dogged soloing, for which, I am thankful that option has been included.)

I'm not saying we can't have artificial barriers. But I'm pointing out that one should look very hard at the exact details of the barrier, and in turn, how that prompts the general community to react.

Let's take a wild hypothetical example of designing a really tall artificial barrier of progression. What if participating in Invention sets required you to get the Field Crafter badge and unlock the crafting station by crafting all those normal IOs first? Or you get a certain number of normal sets to drop on one character (and a shiny badge!) before you graduate to unlocking "purple" set drops.

You think those won't divide the community? I suspect the grumpiness between those-who-can and those-who-can't will get even more hysterical. :P

And I'm so not in favor of community divisions.

There is a -reason- why every character in CoH can get an individually rolled loot drop off the same mob, rather than play the need before greed competitive dice roll game of other MMOs. I'm saying not to lose sight of that kind of rationale for inclusiveness in the upcoming Incarnate System additions.

I don't have major issues with the Alpha slot content as a whole. The two things that I do have specific beef with are making the initial unlock too difficult for folks to achieve (aka Trapdoor) and a dramatic -4 level shift that pretty much encourages the community as a whole to even dismiss the idea of taking a non-Alpha slotted character into the Apex and Tin Mage task forces.

You know another example of how you can sway the community with a very simple tweak in game design? Offer a shiny 'uber-challenge' badge for successful Apex or Tin Mage task force completion with the team containing at least one level-shifted individual. I virtually guarantee folks will at least consider taking one on, if not looking for them outright when they want the shiny.

Ah, but would you TAKE a person without the Alpha Slot when you begin those TFs? Would you shrug and not bother in the same way that most people would not bother if a character was IO'ed or SO'ed in a TF? (Though we all know a few annoying people that have started bothering about that.)

Or would you automatically go "Ok, does everyone have the Alpha Slot here?" and start scrutinizing everyone's buffs?

If the latter, why? Why did the game design encourage you to react in that way?