By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2010-12-21 17:42 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Originally Posted by White Hot Flash
The majority of the playerbase has at least one 50
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Originally Posted by Eiko-chan
Last time we heard from the devs on this, it was actually the opposite: the majority of the player base doesn't have a 50.
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Originally Posted by M_I_Abrahms
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.
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
And then what do we do at 60?
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Originally Posted by Flarstux
I suppose pretty much the same thing we'll do when we have all the Incarnate enhancements equipped.
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Originally Posted by Bosstone
maybe there was some fanfare over the tip missions (which are awesome, by the way) or Positron's TF being restructured, or new story arcs and additions to the MA being added here and there.
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
The Incarnate system is open ended
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Originally Posted by Lycaeus
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.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.
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Originally Posted by Void_Huntress
Specialty drops (vanguard merits, incarnate shards, reward merits for GMs) can be produced for each player, but a mob will produce at most one IO recipe, at most one invention salvage, and then it's assigned to a random player of those eligible for rewards.
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Originally Posted by Lycaeus
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.
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| 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. |
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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. |
| 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.) |
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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? |
I'm personally aware of three incarnate TF runs that included people who didn't have anything in their alpha slot. Two of them succeeded. The third failed due to team members dropping, not difficulties with the level shifted characters.
Someone who doesn't have an alpha boost slotted can still provide team buffs and healing, assist with dealing with the weaker enemies (if only to a lesser extent), and ... you know, hold a slot down, for team size.
Going into Apex/Tin Mage without mostly alpha-slotted characters is a bad plan, yes, but the ability to include folks who don't have their slot yet is not automatically stupid, plus someone could get enough Incarnate Shards during the arc to COMPLETE their boost mid-run.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.
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Not that anecdotes are any help, but the very first TF I did on coming back to the game was Tin Mage with a non-Alpha-slotted char.
I tried to stop them from inviting me, but they insisted! I even wasn't completely useless, since I ran around clearing mines during the D11 fight. 
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Originally Posted by UberGuy
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.
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Originally Posted by Venture
While I haven't played the encounter in question yet, the game is designed so that you fight by "standing still and clicking your power buttons over and over". If they want people to fight on the move they should first make it possible to actually do so.
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Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
The thing is Inspirations in this game are actually pretty overpowered when it comes down to it, people put a lot of money into softcapping builds but a few inspirations will have the same effect for the duration of a boss fight.
Assume a character with no defensive abilities at all. A level 50 character has 20 inspiration slots so lets say you carry 4 small reds, 12 small purples and 4 small greens. That gives you 3 minutes of combat with softcapped defenses and a 25% damage (50% for the first minute) plus you can heal 100% of your hitpoints in that period. Assuming you have a basic 3 damage, 1 accuracy slotting in your attacks that should be more than adequate to take him down. If that isn't sufficient you could even go to Tier 2 of 3 inspirations. Pack 8 Tier 2 purples, 8 tier 3 reds and 4 tier 3 greens. That gives you four minutes of combat with softcapped defense and +100% damage plus the ability to heal 200% of your base HP. |
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Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
The only difference is that now the divide is made clearer, and those who can't or won't suddenly find themselves shut out not by their own actions (or inaction, as the case may be) but by developer decree.
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Originally Posted by Flarstux
I'd much rather have had a plain old level bump with plenty of plain old 51-60 content.
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QR: That is assuming that every Incarnate slot will offer a level shift at some point.
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Originally Posted by Charcoal_EU
With the level shifts, incarnate system is* level 51-60 content. Just without new zones. And:
-it will break supersidekicking -it will break interval-leveled missions (that is, a mission from a contact in normal content will scale to your characters level so long as the character is within the contacts level range) -it will break expanded difficulty settings And those are the selling points of this game. * a level 50 character with an Alpha slot level shift is effectively 51. And I strongly suspect this is why the I19 TFs are locked at 54 - so the players do not outlevel them on gaining their rare Alphas. But this means I20 incarnate content will need to be 55 to provide just as much "challenge" to characters that already have a level shift as the I19 did for fresh incarnates. And so on for the following slots. Of course, I can not know with certainty that this is the path the devs are planning to take. But I have and will speak out against it, because by the time it is confirmed (open beta) it will be too late to change. |
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Originally Posted by Charcoal_EU
With the level shifts, incarnate system is* level 51-60 content. Just without new zones. And:
-it will break supersidekicking -it will break interval-leveled missions (that is, a mission from a contact in normal content will scale to your characters level so long as the character is within the contacts level range) -it will break expanded difficulty settings And those are the selling points of this game. |
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Originally Posted by UberGuy
a signed-NDA closed beta for I20
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Incarnate stuff is time-consuming, apparently by design.
I would wager a guess that it is because the developers weren't intending for EVERY level 50 character in existence to become an Incarnate. I personally have 6 level 50s over 5+ years of playing, with a few more in the 40s that I could concievably get to 50 in a reasonable time frame. I'm only planning on fully Incarnate slotting a couple of them, and the rest will mostly be stopping at the Alpha slot.
I don't know about you guys, but I'm really good at playing my main couple characters, and there isn't much content I haven't gotten through just fine with them. Which makes me wonder: How many of these reports of Trapdoor being too hard are coming from people dusting off a level 50 character they haven't played in months? Stands to reason that if you haven't played thath character in a while, jumping into something more difficult would be frustrating. Hell, if I log my Claws/Regen in after not playing him for a few weeks I faceplant repeatedly until I get back into a rhythm with his click heals.
Why the obsession with Incarnate slotting all 35 of your level 50s? (making up a number, I know there are people with that many 50s) You don't really expect to actually PLAY all of them regularly enough to make it worth the time spent, do you?
Just run through the stuff with 2 or 3 of your favorites and call it good. That's what I'm doing, my main scrapper, brute, and defender are going all the way through it, the rest probably won't be, because I don't play them as often, so I see no point in doing all that with them if they are just going to sit there.
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
I guess it's sort of akin to asking, if they did raise the level cap to 60, would folks level all their existing 50s to 60? What if it wasn't as easy as popping them into some farm and grinding them there? (Note I'm not implying that everyone with a lot of 50s does that, but it would be a factor for some folks.)
Viewing Incarnate stuff loosely as leveling progress, the structure of the Incarnate system's component puts some limits on how fast you can progress that really don't have any equivalent in the XP world. The same people who can get to 50 fast are not necessarily going to be able to get all super-Incarnated really fast.
I don't have a huge stable of 50s, but I do plan to get all of them all the Incarnate powers that make sense, because I do play them all. I don't retire my 50s. If I have a level 50, it's because I enjoy playing them. I do have enough of them now, though, that I have to leave some of them idle for a while here and there, because I tend to focus on playing one or two of them in stretches, and then switch.
I'm not sure if that means I'll try to progress all of them in tandem as new Incarnate stuff comes out, or if I'll end up doing them a few at a time, and thus finishing some much later than others. But I do intend to progress them all.
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Originally Posted by Flarstux
I'm thinking NOW would be a good time to start revealing some of those oh so secret I20 features that are not part of the Incarnate System. If there are any.
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Woa, dudes - call me Mr Late to the Party, but I just found out that Castle has left CoH. 