February Producer's Letter: Incarnates

After all of the comments and wild, wrong, speculation doom crying from you and others, you have a lot of chutzpah to post this.

What?

Incarnage is the correct term for a very successful Trial.

My chutzpah is a 6!

Why not? There's no mechanical reason that they couldn't design something balanced like, say, Dr. Kahn (built for 4-8), with the expectation that instead of 45-50, folks were 50 to 50(+1). We've got several existing examples of TFs where the PCs take on Incarnate foes with less than a team of 8, and they are some of the most popular.

To look at it another way, they've already said that the early content will eventually become easier with increasing Incarnate-ness (as it would nearly have to). If the content is intended to be playable with 8 level 50(+0) characters, with only Commons in their Alpha, why wouldn't you be able to go through it with say 6 level 50(+2) characters Incarnated out the wazoo? In the existing game, you're free to show up to Dr. Kahn with 4 level 45 characters with SOs, or 8 level 50(+1) characters full of purples; the first group will have a significantly harder time than the baseline and the second significantly easier, but it is *left up to the players*, not some arbitrary limit; and there is no fundamental mechanical reason that Incarnate content could not be designed in the same fashion.

On yet another angle, a significant fraction of the setting basis for the game is focused around soloers and small teams. What fraction of the most iconic and popular comics usually feature less than 8 protagonists? Superman. Batman and Robin. Birds of Prey. Fantastic Four. The X-Men... particularly relevant because when they threatened to get too large, they split into sub-teams. Are there really that many popular and long-lasting comics that have 12-24 protagonists regularly participating on the same mission?

Of course, no one is forced to do anything. But we've got a wide variety of folks; some have been around since beta, have hundreds of characters and dozens of 50s; others have only had an account for about a year and a CoH-capable computer to allow them to play regularly for less than a month. The old-timers are understandably mostly interested in new stuff, and even the mid-range players want their signature characters to advance the plotline. If we can bring a level 35 character along to fight Romulus, and a level 45 character along to fight Statesman, Lord Recluse, or Reichsman, why can't we bring even a level 50 character to fight Neuron if they're not Incarnated... especially one that's already taken him down at level 40 and again at level 45?

The devs are certainly capable of crafting new stories with new mechanics and interesting twists that are approachable by a wide range of levels, builds, and playstyles; and even have user-adjustable difficulty on top of the usual team size auto-scaling; the Leonard "Army of Me" arc is a great example, and once some of the bugs got shaken out the Dr. Kahn TF is a welcome addition to the TF lineup. But every person-hour spent developing content for an increasingly exclusionary sliver of top players is a person-hour not spent developing content everyone can enjoy together.

Hence my wanting to make it clear that it's not a good thing. Arbitrary timers benefit few or no people, and significantly hinder gameplay for adults with real lives. There are plenty of things out there more important than computer games, and one of the great things about CoH up to now is that in the vast majority of the content, the game was perfectly capable of accommodating RL concerns.

Some people may find it interesting and exciting; probably on average younger folks without physical handicaps, and with good computers and network connections. That's certainly nowhere near everyone who plays and enjoys CoH. Personally, I've got adequate reflexes and a decent computer and network, and merely found it annoying; others were quite blunt in saying it was a nightmare of un-fun and they have no intention of doing that again if at all possible. A MMORPG should be about the *character's* stats, not the *player's*. (And remember, everyone gets old and slow eventually, unless you plan on dying young

Show, don't tell. Shouldn't that be up to the players? I've got several low-level characters that simply cannot destroy a Bomb on their own, but the game doesn't keep me from trying. I've also got characters *lower* than that that can destroy a Bomb without difficulty; the difference between characters is greater than the difference between levels. Are you seriously suggesting that some random person's 50(+0) character, with a mix of Common IOs and a few cheap sets and a Common in their Alpha is that much better than a multi-billion-inf build optimized by one of the leaders of the Scrapper challenges, before they Incarnate? There are people out there that solo Lusca, for crying out loud... it's going to be a long time before Incarnate content has gotten so hard that a team of that grade of character wouldn't have a chance if they were allowed to take it. Isn't one of the most classic superhero moments of all when the bystanders gasp and say "No one could have survived that!", and yet somehow the hero pulls through? Aren't some of the more memorable moments in comic (and CoH) history when heroes know they are outclassed, but step up to the challenge anyway, because that's the difference between merely being superpowered, and being a hero? ("We're sorry, the Omega Team isn't large or powerful enough to have a reasonable chance of surviving, you're not allowed to click on the portal" would have led to a very different world...)

From another viewpoint... the Incarnate system is "what we're getting instead of levels 51-60". If we actually *had* gotten level 51-55 and an appropriate set of Arcs in Issue 19, there's no reason that the super-sidekick system would have stopped working; and presumably characters of a range of levels would be able to enjoy playing together the new content. What we're getting seems to be *by design* more exclusionary, and that's pretty much by definition intending to keep people from having fun together.

I hope that this uses a different participation system than the one that's currently in place for Praetoria's events, since that system seems to discriminate against Masterminds because kills that pets make aren't attributed to their owner (though this might have changed since I last did them). Considering my main character is a Mastermind and I've been robbed of the Praetorian participation badges numerous times despite being an active participant, I don't want something even more important, like Incarnate progress, to be taken away because my pets provide most of my damage while I utilize my traps (Which may also count as pets) to assist them.

Other than that concern, the future for Incarnates looks great! I'm looking forward to what's to come!

Oh Lordy, iShard farms.

Still intrigued by this. Still clueless.

I think i have a slight idea. The powers which at the top of my head that dont get used as often are slows, sleeps, fears, stuns and knockbacks.

What im thinking is a mass escape [like the stop 30 fir blog escaping] and up to you to stop them.

Yada, yada, yada. Still requires an excessive amount of people and coordination to work together for a long time.

Choice, of course, has nothing to do with it.

In other words, you need a big group - or a huge group.

Rewards based on how much you participated rather than on *if* you participated? Even worse for the more casual player who doesn't have the pimped out build to put up enough numbers. Or who, gods forbid, might need to go off at a moment's notice for 10 minutes to take care of their kid or some other real world issue.

So the Incarnate content is entirely based around you being just another body in the horde rushing through the Trial, making you feel weak and insignificant because you're not accomplishing anything on your own. Yay for contradiction.

In other words, you will need a specific team composition working with specific strategies to beat the Trials, contrary to earlier in the post.

And likely no way to suppress them so that your mid-range computer doesn't slow to a crawl and to prevent griefing at the various spots that people tend to gather. Awesome.

Why should it take longer for those who solo or prefer small teams (for whatever reason)? They are already penalized too heavily with lesser rewards (Inf, XP, and drops) for more work as it is.

In other words, focusing on those who love large teams and hordes. :/

But only for large teams, of course.

If they use the Turnstile mechanic for Hami raids I would probably do a Hami raid. Same for the Mother Ship raid in RWZ. That really could use the Turnstile.

I don't think I've ever had a problem getting in on a Mothership raid.

This is 'end game / raid content'. In that context, 8 is most definitely a small group.

I agree with this concept completely. Starting a Task Force, Trial, Ouro arc, or an AE arc should boot you from a queue. Joining a team or running an instanced regular mission (normal contacts, newsies/scanners, or tips) should not boot you from the queue.

Once the queue is full and the system determines you can start, you should also not be INSTANTLY TPd to the location and teamed. Instead a pop-up with a countdown should come up. The countdown should likely be somewhere from 30 and 180 seconds.

And before someone goes "This is not Particular Other Game", it's important to point out they've given us the ability to put together FORTY EIGHT PERSON groupings.

48. You don't set a limit that high unless you're prepared for people to hit it.

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

1. Someone announes a ship raid in a global channel.
2. You go to the RWZ.
3. You ask for an invite to the raid in said global channel or in Broadcast.
4. You get an invite.

It's really not that hard.

Also, I didn't see any mention of the Incarnate Trials providing the same rewards as the Weekly Strike Target or that the Judgement abilities would be craftable from only doing Trials, and Second Measure only promised that anything that could be earned in the Trials would be craftable from Shards. I wouldn't say it's been conclusively stated that you can get the purple Incarnate abilities solo.

Though if I'm right and Notices are not craftable in I20, I still think they should put one of the Ouroboros TFs as the WST - they have no minimum team size, so it's an option for soloists. Then again, craftable Notices would be a better one.

If they're using the same reward system that the Praetorian events are using, there's not a chance it will be exploited. You can only exploit a reward system if you can figure out how it works.

Yeah. That seems to be a case of those needing the better rewards not getting them due to being under powered.

Yeah, I'm surprised that the "path to true power" is to become a cog in the machine.

Where, exactly, have you read that the queue was going to be cross server? The last word I've read from a Red Name on the subject was that it wasn't possible. Nowhere in the letter did Second Measure say the LFG system was cross-server.

Yay for mandatory PUGs on small servers?

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

Black Scorpion covered this:
Since we can build abilities from stuff that come from Trials, and can get everything in Trials from shards, we can get Notices from shards.

I've never attended one of these events where this reward system is implemented but one thing comes to mind right off the bat. Damage and heal farm inside one of these for rewards.

That's just one idea.

Well, you know Eiko-Chan, I hope you don't take offense, cause...shucks that would be awful, but


You never said anything about saying "I told you so," but being nice and apologetic about it.