Issue 20 info is up!

What I'm replying to (or with it in mind) is more this statement by you before:
Which is a much stronger statement than my:
[quote]
I'm glad there's some small-team stuff, though. That's more likely to be run (and enjoyed) by me than any raid.
[/qutoe]

but which you shot at as being an example of being "dismissive." Where my statement is saying "I may not run that, but there's this over here I'm glad to see."

You're being far too antagonistic. Which, coming from me...

Plus, that *last* part of your quote? What I've seen from you has leaned *very* strongly toward "Solo/small team? Suck it," to be a bit crass about it. Even when there was a discussion with the people wanting that content saying they don't *mind* that it's harder - that without team support, it's going to be anyway - all you did was keep escalating.

That helps nothing.
And how much of that sort of statement has come *after* discussion turns into fighting?

The way the threads tended to go:
"I don't team/team much for whatever reason, I'd like an option for my playstyle, as well."
*insert multiple replies about how "stupid" it is to want to do anything solo in an MMO.*
"Solo's easymode, people need to be forced to team,t hey need incentives even though they do it anyway without them!"
Even if there's a reasonable reply ("We're getting this content now, we should see how this goes,") once that other set of replies started, is it any *wonder* that the positions get more extreme and set?


I'm going to lay out my positions here. Argue them if you want, I don't care, but this is my set of observations, concerns and whatnot.

1. The incarnate system has been presented as a way of increasing your character's power - leveling without leveling.
1a. I think it's completely fair to call them "levels" as we get slot-equivalents and power-equivalents.
1b. I think, *in a broad-brush way,* it's the right way to handle said "leveling" without breaking the current 1-50 structure and rewards.

2. The Incarnate system is heavily raid centric.
2a. Problem, to me: It seems to be circular, the raid for gear to raid for gear to raid.... treadmill. (This is something that I dislike in other games.)
2b. While the *absolute* point of entry we have now can be soloed or finished by a small team (the Mender's arc,) nothing else can. There's a wall put up unless you choose to raid. Some won't due to preference, some can't due to other reasons.
2c. The "alternate" put up is punitive for no good reason, from what we've seen.
2d. I'm not against raids. I just want more than "just" or "mostly" them.

3. There's no use for it elsewhere in the game.
3a. Prior request: Ruularu/Shadow Shard content, where the level of power would be appropriate - and it gets us away from the rather out-of-left-field "Cole Against The Multiverse" plotline. This would give a variety of Incarnate content that wouldn't have to be raid-centric, but encourage investment in the system.
3b. See "Circular raid-for-gear-to-raid treadmill." AE's tickets give me rewards to use elsewhere. PVP gives me INF, inspirations, etc. I can use elsewhere. I don't believe we have another system so encircled by itself.

4. I don't believe the game's population can really deal with raids like these, long term. Introducing them now is awfully late in the game's life.
4a. I don't believe the system itself will cause enough of a draw to make it worthwhile.
4b. See "Raid Schedules" from other games. Lower the frequency for our population. If someone misses a once-a-week raid, it's rather major for them - depending on actual time to run these - but the larger, and very specific, group requirements will make them harder to set up post-"new shiny" phase than a Mothership raid, which is far more inclusive.
4c. If said raiding-on-a-schedule discourages people, it could well hurt the game (and population) further, just compounding the problem. Yes, I hate how Doooooom-y that sounds. But even a population shift to Freedom/Virtue to deal with these could hurt.

5. As it sits right now, I have no reason to invest in the system past Alpha, which I can fill by doing what I do now - mix of solo, teaming and TF/SF as I see fit because I *want* to do the content, not because I'm being dragged there by the nose.
5a. I don't want to suddenly have to feel like I have to play "catch-up" later, either. The shards-while-exemped, at least, helps a little towards this. The INF cost, though, no.
5b. I'm also, on a related note, worried about a "have vs have not," either by perception of the playerbase or dev created penalties like the negative four level shift.

... and I feel like I'm forgetting something.

See my Guides and Tutorials

It'll make it unnecessary for Incarnates, but not entirely pointless. It'll still allow people who don't want to raid to get their very rare Alpha. It'll still hand out double merits. It'll still hand out a chunk of XP to people who aren't 50. It'll still make it easier to find a team for those task forces nobody ever wants to do (some of them for very good reason....and the WST will also make more people aware of how much these task forces, which help set up the foundation of the game world, are in desperate need of a touch-up.)

I actually like the idea of the WST when it's not necessary to do it in order to earn anything. It removes the "hurry up, I have to do this 13 more times by Sunday" grind mentality and makes the WST more of a suggestion. "If you want good rewards, check out this task force you might not have done in a while." It becomes a carrot rather than a stick.

I still haven't played all of the TFs that exist now. By that, I don't mean "all of the TFs with a single character", I mean there are TFs that I've never had the opportunity to experience with any character. Same with Trials. I spent two weeks with my LFTF flag up on my main, logging in for at least two hours every night, and never got a single invitation to a WST.

So what the heck do I want? Content that I won't have to wait several months or years to play, or never get to play at all. Content that I can sit back and enjoy, read through, something that grabs me like A Twisted Reflection and Looking Through the Glass. Not more TFs that I may never get to play, and even if I do, won't be able to enjoy because my teammates are speeding through them, after having done them so many times that they're only interested in the reward, or Incarnate content from which I'm excluded because I don't happen to play on Freedom or Virtue, or play at prime time, or play popular powersets and FotM builds.

Yes, I understand that the new team assembly mechanics might help alleviate part of the problem, getting me into teams to run the new content sooner, but that new mechanic won't get me into a team which will let me take my time and read the clues and dialog, it won't get me into a team running older TFs like Quatermain... it won't even get me a team at all unless people are using it, and enough people are using it to actually get the TF/SF/Trial started, which is not guaranteed at 4 a.m.

I'd like some content, not someday content.

You need to be slightly more proactive - fewer people look at the flags now, so just go to the zone the WST starts in, and lurk by the contact - or even use a global channel to say you're looking to join WST, or start one.

"All right, they're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us...they can't get away this time"- Chesty Puller US Marine Corps

My Characters Deviont Art page Currently-reading Me Skydiving

*adjusts her monocle's monocle*
Indeed.

Ummm...you STILL CAN!

You log in, solo a few arcs, get some shards, logg off, repeat untill you get the items you need to convert to what you want.

The new blue side TF from Admiral Sutter needs 4 to start - I'd guess the new red side one would be similar.

I have to agree here.

To many times I've seen people with flags up, then sent them a tell first (not blind inviting) to have them say, no.

LF ANYTHING Flag up - but I really don't mean anything.

LF TF Flag up - but I really just mean 1 specific TF.

LF MISSIONS Flag up - but I really mean only certain missions.

It's just become easier to go to a few of my global channels/coalition channel and say "Forming whatever" and getting people that way, than by doing a search for random people.

I'm mentally ill. Social anxiety disorder. If I were dying of dehydration, I wouldn't be capable of asking for a sip of water, and if it were offered, I'd insist that I'm fine and struggle on without it until I dropped dead.

Flagging my character is as pro-active as I can be. It took everything in me just to do that, and my hands shook so violently that I might not have been able to accept an invitation if one had come my way that first night.

But you're ok with making several thousand posts on a fourm, and advertising your global chat handle and a global channel in your sig?

Sorry to hear that. I have similar problems which pharmaceuticals have helped tremendously with. I recommend trying to "mechanize" your interactions with others. I have most of the requests/responses necessary to play task forces ready to be copied and pasted at will. If you can speak on a message board, you shouldn't have any trouble copy/pasting in a video game.

One of many recent facepalm moments for me. I can't imagine what makes them think we all want Praetorian mobs for sidekicks. Praetoria really has become the latest in a long line of darlings that need to be killed.

/signed. Why the hell would any of my heroes want to use lobotomized psychic slaves or shock troops that plan on conquering my planet? They should either make these more suitably generic or provide us with more non-praetorian options.

So stop subscribing if you feel you must. But asking for your money back is just laughable.

Imagine an issue that has nothing but badges. All that's being added is new badges. No new content to go with the badges, just new badges, all obtainable with the old content. Stuff like 'kill 100 Banished Pantheon totems' or 'earn the Task Force Commander accolade 5 times', things like that.

Wouldn't you feel justified in posting that there's nothing for you in that issue and you hope the game doesn't continue in that way? If people told you to shut up and try badge hunting, you might like it, wouldn't you get a little defensive? Sure, you might tell yourself that it's just not your issue, but if it was part of a huge marketing push to really ramp up the badge hunting, you don't think you'd be concerned?

I think Sam's rhetoric is sometimes overblown and he tends to state his personal opinions as objective facts (saying "this is bad for the game" when you mean "the game is becoming something I don't like" has a high potential for ambiguity and misinterpretation, even if it is legitimate in a certain sense), but I have a hard time disagreeing with the content beneath the rhetoric. The game's gonna suck for him for the next...I don't know, year? And he's gotten defensive about being told to suck it up. I can sympathize, at least.

Of course, badges are a bad example. They may be the one aspect of the game where the subcommunity who focuses on them also despises new ones being added, because then their collection is never complete.

Folks want something more to do than stand around waiting in line for a chance to speed run <insert * of the month content here>.

Folks want functional, more easily manipulated, less expensive bases so they can spend time personalizing something other than a costume, or engaging in combat with something other than AI so bad that it's becoming an Internet meme.

Folks want PvP that works and is fun, rather than PvP that exists merely for the sake of saying that the game includes PvP.

Folks want an MA that doesn't break things in their story arcs every week so they aren't forced to spend all of their gaming time fixing broken goals, replacing disallowed entities and rewriting missions, rather than playing or writing more arcs.

Folks want badges that aren't so easy to get that all they need is a pulse and $15, but not so tedious and pointless as the Ouroboros inanity. Something to give them a goal, something to invest some time in, something to work toward and feel a real sense of accomplishment when they get it.

Folks want ATs to actually be different enough to be noticeable, so there's a reason to play a defender instead of a corruptor, or a controller instead of a defender, or a corruptor instead of a controller, without having to dig through fifty pages of stats to see that there's a percentage difference which is all but unnoticeable for anything less than AV fights.

Folks want something to do other than farm, grind and slog through the same stuff day after day. What you call paradise, we call purgatory. There's nothing to do today but what we did yesterday, and what we did yesterday was the same thing we did a year ago, and the year before that, and what we'll do tomorrow, and every day in the foreseeable future.

Despite your portrayal of solo players as misanthropes, fanatics and rabid anti-social rabble rousers, we aren't. Some might be, but most of us just want something to do. Those of us who can't team, for whatever reason, are just as entitled to add our voices to the discussion as those of you who eat, sleep and breathe in teams. Demonizing us because we ask that the limited content we have be expanded, or that the limited Incarnate progression option we have be less harsh and unrewarding, or that the alternative content (bases, PvP, MA) be improved is neither fair nor warranted, nor very smart when you consider that even if you are the prom queen, the day will inevitably come when you log in and find yourself alone and bored, and wishing you had some new solo-friendly content to play.

You, the team player, have always had access to more content and options than we, solo players, have had because you can do all of the things we can plus all of the things we can't, and frankly, it's hypocritical for you to stand on that soap box and tell us to shut up and accept that we aren't getting much, if anything, in this Issue. I expect better than this from you.

I'd expect someone to accept water if they were drowning. Maybe everyone should just lower their expectations of others around here.

The biggest flaw in this post, is stating the obvious. Of course the one who are willing to team are going to have more to do than the one who are only willing to solo.

That's always going to be the case.

that said, I've yet to meet a solo player who has run every contact available in the entire game on one character. Hell, I doubt I've met one who's run every contact in game on multiple characters.

Not every team speed runs new content. Just as, not every soloist actually spends the time to read the new content, rather than just enter mission complete objectives and exit mission.

Today, running Apex the longest one took 68mins, and that was because people were going AFK left and right.

The rest, including the kill everything in your path ones, less than 40 minutes (some less than 20 minutes).

Have to say, personally, not a badger, but I like going after them sometimes, I was loving it, as this was a TF that I can do quickly, get teams for, and get points towards Helping others do the WST.

The fact that they were all Master of Apex except for one was awesome. The one that wasn't was specifically said to be a Speed Apex, so we grabbed the glowies (the others were more of...enter mission, then everyone deciding not to use the temps).

This leads me to wonder how anyone an't just enter RWZ and find a team looking to be formed for Apex.

And if you just want to solo only, not team at all, I fail to see how there isn't content out there, that you havent done? Some of those contacts out there are just mindless mission contacts, have they been done? Or when looking for things to do, do soloist mean "must be story arcs?"

I'd wait on that thought. Before it was mentioned they'd release an enemy costume piece set with every issue. It may not have been listed on the overview page (as the lack of info ont he 4 new incarnate slots were left off).

Judging from the screenshots downloaded from the Sneak Peak today by Master Zaprobo, the answer is that they are "the essence of defeated enemies drawn forth from the Well of the Furies"; since at present Incarnate content means fighting Praetorians, it makes a certain sense that they are Praetorian critters.

IIRC someone mentioned elsewhere that some of the older costume pieces seem to have been given a new high-resolution look, like the medieval armor.