Issue 20 info is up!

After digging through this morass, and adding some of my own thoughts, I've yet to see anyone bring up the heart of the objection that some, perhaps most or all, of us have regarding the existing solo Incarnate advancement option currently being tested.

It's not that some people just don't want to team, it's that even the best efforts while solo will be so slow as to be indiscernible in regard to progress, and unless they're completely disabled outside of Incarnate content, Incarnate abilities are a form of progression, regardless of what the intention may have been. Progression is what drives games like this. Progression is what people strive to achieve. If progression weren't important, we wouldn't have levels, we wouldn't have slots for powers and we would have all of our powers available immediately upon creation. These things aren't the case, though, because games of this nature are designed with progression in mind.

Restricting that progression in such a manner that makes it seem impossible or so slow that it isn't worth attempting is the reason people find the solo option so objectionable that it's started a war on the forums.

One player can jump on a TF or Trial and make measurable, noticeable progress toward creating a Very Rare Judgement boost. That player can achieve that goal in one month.

Contrast that with what the solo player has to face. 1600 shards to create a Very Rare boost using the 10/6 conversion. In EvilGeko's thread discussing a proposed alternate method of progression for solo players, he suggests that 20 shards per day is a very high, perhaps unreasonable number to expect solo players to be capable of generating. But presuming that 20 per day is an attainable number, based on my own experiences, that still means it would take that player eleven weeks to create the same boost that the team player acquired in four weeks.

That's for a single boost. The solo player is looking at a rate of progression measured in increments so small that it's indiscernible to him/her without a microscope, whereas the team player not only ascends the ladder three times faster in that one subset of the Incarnate abilities, he/she is may also capable of ascending multiple ladders consecutively, unlocking slots and acquiring boosts even more quickly simply by running all available TFs and Trials. The team player can run the BAF, make progress toward unlocking a slot or accumulating salvage for a boost, then run Lambda and make similar progress on another slot or boost.

And the solo player has to shell out billions of inf* in addition to taking a minimum of three times as long to access the same abilities that the team player gets for "free".

Slower access, yes, that would be reasonable. Access at a pace three to six times slower, and with an attached requirement to generate billions of inf*, not reasonable, not equal, not acceptable. It has to be faster and cheaper. It doesn't have to be identical to the team option, but it has to be better than this. Expecting solo players to grind away with no reward in sight for 12-24 months to unlock all of the slots and gain all of the powers, when the teamed player can do the same in 2-4 months... that's the height of poor design and decision making.

In other words, we aren't complaining because we don't want to team with you. We aren't complaining because we don't want to put some work into advancing our characters. We're complaining because we don't want to grind for hours every day for the next one to two YEARS to achieve what some of you will be doing before summer begins, without grinding. The gap between solo and teamed options is just too big to be ignored or accepted. It needs to be brought closer to parity.

I20 look awesome, and fills me with yayfulness.

YAY! YAY! YAY!

Did I miss that list of wiriting sins we were were asked if we wanted?

All that will take significant development time though, because if it didn't, for whatever reason, it would probably be done with already. Not to mention that the "No FX" option is actually an FX option but only for PvP, so it's likely even more complicated since you have to make it tintable for PvP but flag it so it has no lasting visual FX in PVE. Just making the statement that they will get it done whenever they want to do it doesn't make it easy. And doing so may mean that we miss out on the other things the art department needs to do to push out the incarnate content/other stuff that they're getting done.
We know the devs want to do it, but they're currently deep in the development cycle of a whole new part of hte game and have been for the last year or so. PP customization might use some of the same human resources as the some of the new stuff, so focusing on that might mean a delay of all the new stuff.

I posted this elsewhere so I'll repeat it here.

Statesman is the Superman of the world, yes but he wasn't really the be all and end all, not everything focused around him and during Troy's run on the comics he was actually very well written (every other handling of him seemed like the REALLY hated Superman and took out frustrations on our resident Superman expy).

Statesman is never really in the limelight that often and when he's presented ingame he's actually a lot more of a pushover than even some of his colleges on the Freedom Phalanx (he's Invuln/SS, yes he has a crashless unstoppable but so does Back Alley Brawler...Statesman just has that big AoE as well).

He cropped up where it made sense for someone like Superman to make a stand, against very powerful villains who brutally beat his Granddaughter (you'd be pissed too). Yes ye olde Statesman did smash a Rikti Mothership but that's not ingame and he isn't as stupidly overpowered ingame as he is in backstory, if anything with the introduction of IOs the players have far surpassed him before even taking the first step onto the Incarnate ladder

However with the introduction of Cimmerorea all that begun to change.

First we are introduced to his ancient times version, then to his Nazi version to the now uber-Incarnate level Praetorian version. He crops up everywhere and he's always the best of the best, miles better than any player.

Over the last couple of years everything has begun to revolve around Marcus Cole and the Praetorian Invasion angle is just the pinnacle of that. All the buildup has been to show how awesome Marcus Cole is.