Incarnates and Homogeneity

I'm going to paraphrase myself from the thread on delaying i20....

I'd vote for a delay, but this isn't really so much of an issue about pets or whatever, but it's the thrust of why the Incarnate System exists in the first place.

To me, pets that have powers are interchangeable things with animations that should be customisable.

Honestly, if the point of the Incarnate System is to achieve 'godly levels of power' or however the game or you as the player want to explain it, there's an expected level of customisation or signature ability display (and really, didn't this start with people saying 'hey, Statesman has that cool lightning power, how can we do that?') then why can't you as the player have some say in just how that manifests?

Currently as it stands, the way you spend your shards to get the Alpha power of your choice (and to be fair, you have a good range of choices) has a desired level of flexibility. You want Damage/Defense, you can specialise in that. Great.

It's fine that this continues into the Lore slot, but why tie a system that's obstensibly about customisation and mixing these Incarnate Abilities to something that is extremely visually specific? I don't want one of the biggest threats to Primal Earth's pets. That's like saying 'hey, well those Nazis over there? We need to stop them, so we'll use Nazis too.' If we're drawing on the power of the Well and that implies some degree of ability to use it, then let us have the choice of what we draw upon. I could care less about the mechanical/gameplay effects...they can be the same, and we know this from seeing the Mastermind pets.

Don't throw away customisation this late in the game to feed the beast that is the Praetorian storyline. There's stuff beyond Praetoria; let's have a stepping stone on that road not be so closely tied to it rather than be tied to the greater story, that of the road of the Incarnate.



S.

That's pretty much what I'm saying, Liquid - let's focus on the thread's topic and stop trying to decide who has the right to post what where.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Okay!

I would just like to point out that this thread keeps popping up as "newest posts" in my default forum display, and I keep misreading the title. The first time I clicked on it, I thought it was another "Statesline" thread.

EDIT: nevermind. I see that it's been cleared up.

I just want to point out that nobody has said that Incarnate powers won't be colorizable, in case this is fueling any of the customization concerns.

There's a sneak peak going on again tonight, and we may find out about it then. I heard Aeon was using a Judgement power in the EU sneak peak, but nobody commented on what color it was.

I have to agree that characters are becoming too generic.

The first strike against uniqueness were ones most people didn't even realize:

1) Veteran ability to take Travel power with 1st tier power. Freed up 1 power.

2) Ninja (and now Beast) run. Most people don't bother with a travel power now freeing up 1 power.

3) Fitness Power Pool Inherent. Yes I know most people had these 3 powers already but it freed up 3 more powers.

Individually these don't break the game but together they give you 5 powers you can assign to AT powers allowing you to take everything (or almost everything if you take any PP powers).

This makes every build pretty much the same as every other build the only difference being in the slotting.

Now you add top tier powers that are also generic and it only gets worse.

As has been stated the best part of CoH has always been how unique the characters are and the way they play. Originally people actually had to decide if they wanted to focus on AoEs or not, now you can take them all. The same goes for ATs like Fortunata's where you used to have to choose between ranged or melee attacks or more control. Now you can pretty much have it all.

The problem is that having to make hard choices and do without things isn't much fun but making a character you really like playing within the confines of the rules is exceptionally fun. At least to me. Also having a build that isn't like every other Fire Tank you meet is cool too.

On the flip side when Devs say "Free power picks!" everyone says "Yeah! I love you!" because it is fun at first when you get your short term reward. But later when find you are playing "Clone Wars" on the wrong side it isn't so sweet.

That said there will always be people who don't care about any of this. They just want to be "uber" then they will on move to another game, at least until the next release. They don't care what they get as long as it is big and if you want to keep their subscriptions you have to keep expanding upward quickly. Anyone else notice how much more crowded the servers have been since the Incarnates?

So pleasing 2 sets of very different fans is another problem. But as my sig says, I don't care about other people's problems, I want my concerns addressed. LOL

The devs know people love new costumes. They know people make tons of unique alts. They know people spend lots of time customizing characters. An endgame system that does not let people's characters 'own' the new powers seems to miss the biggest strength of the game- players' ability to make a character of their own style/theme.

I won't go overboard and say it's ruined anything, it really is pretty minor. They have dark, fire, electric and ice powers. They have a variety of buffs/debuffs. The Devs do have a variety. That's cool, as those fit into a good range of powers/origins. (I would've liked a psychic one in there, but I'm sure they excluded that because of power gaming.)

That people are latching onto the pets goes to show what seems to be a dev blind spot: the devs acknowledge players like options. But it isn't just options that players like, it's customizability. Not all to the same extent, of course, but any player coming to this game will eventually find what they like and do not like, and play toward their own preferences. The game is very good at accommodating this. But this is at its core about the player's freedom to make and play according to their own style.

Many of the of the incarnate abilities are broad enough to fit a variety of themes, allowing people to select something that fits their style best. The pets have a bunch of options, but have no customizability of theme. Guess which incarnate option people are not crazy about?

Surprise.

I'd go as far as to say that the more players can make the incarnate stuff fit their themes/styles, the more they will be accepted, used, and enjoyed. because it's not something tacked on, it's something owned.