Incarnate Strikes - A proposed solo/small team path

I heartily approve of this idea, even though I rather do like the more raid centric direction the game is taking. Yeah, the raids are (IMO) more fun, but the fact of the matter is even with the new league systems and LFG improvements and global channels and whatnot, there's just going to be times when I can't find anyone to play with me.

There's a selfish reason for this too. I'm going to be spending the next two and a half months in China and due to the time zone differences I probably wont be able to find a raid, much less participate in one what with the only available computer being my netbook.

I like this option. Not necessary to add in EB to this mission at all.

As EvilG already pointed out it will already be slower than the I20 options. By far.

/signed.

I like the idea.

What bothers me is that many posters seem to view soloable content as stuff for a 'niche market' and the team/trial/TF stuff as 'mainstream' content. Lest we forget, soloable content can be played by EVERYONE. The new Incarnate content will NOT be played by everyone, perhaps not even by the majority of paid subscribers. It's like the devs decided to build the penthouse before erecting the foundation. The more 50+ content that EVERYONE can do, the better the devs will be serving their whole loyal paid user base.

/signed

I would love to see this implemented. With any luck, the devs would like to see it as well.

I'd say the easiest way would be to flag certain arcs to give IXP and drop threads (but no reward roll at the end, obviously) That should enable people to get their stuff relatively painlessly.

I support this 110%.

/signed.

I only get about an hour to an hour and a half to play every 2-3 days. This would let me go Incarnate, if I'd like.

Great idea.

Oh please, please please. Seriously, PLEASE.

I pretty much only play in a duo or trio consisting of my husband and our best buddy. This would be absolutely PERFECT for us.

I approve of the idea of smaller scale incarnate challenges. Please do.

As someone who likes doing big teams, as well as solo and smaller ones..I think something like this would be a great idea. To add my own ideas..

If the system worked in a similar way to tips (and that would be good) then running the missions on an altered difficulty should give NO change to reward. That’s right..none. We can all do 5 tips per day, for two days, and get out A merit..regardless if we are running on +4 or -1. The time involved in the 'difficulty' not the level and toughness of the foes.

Before merits came along, a typical tf reward would give you the change to get rare recipes, like gamblers and numis, now we can earn them in FOUR days with A merits. That is four days of solo fun at whatever pace you like, about an hour each day. I regard that as a pretty good deal. I also view a rare/very rare Incarnate salvage drop as the rough equal of lucking out and getting a top tier recipe from a tf reward in the past. Judging by that, you SHOULD be able to get a rare/very rare salvage drop in 4 days of solo tip-like incarnate content. Remember, that would be a single bit...as opposed to the multiple rares possible by grinding the trials multiple times in that same period.

I would say..get whoever is responsible for writing the tips missions, especially the crossing over tips, in a room with cookies and milk and get them working on similar little stories for solo incarnate play. Better yet, make them all occur IN praetoria, since there is zero reason to go back, or even go there in the first place. Have people select a basic Loyalist or Resistance contact, and they dish out the missions like radios.

Also, this would be a chance to further the lore in Praetoria a bit, since we STILL haven’t got any post 20 content, and there is so many cool story lines going on. As well as a way to play against the prae earth factions and characters.

As far as mission rewards go..well. Doing them should give iXP, at a set value. This would function to stop a fire kin type running one mission at +4/8 and unlocking destiny in 15 minutes. Maybe even cap the total iXP per mission, with a small bonus for completion. Going on the rough rate of 10 bafs/4 lams to unlock the judge/int powers..something like those 10 missions, over the 2 days, would give around..33%? So each would take 6 days or solo play to unlock, an hour each day. Maybe longer for your destiny and lore.

Oh and another thing...make the 'final' type mission (in the vein of the morality tip missions) a Moral Choice. That is..make it count towards the 'complete moral choices to earn this badge' badge, since it’s rather hard to actually get 5 done going through Praetoria.

regarding rewards..perhaps every 2 days, you can pick a common Trial component, OR save it up for the second 'choice' mission, and pick a Random drop, including the 4 com/unc/rar/vr tables, but not thread. This would give people a chance to get the good stuff. Oh and forgot..have uncommons drop for special objectives during the normal missions themselves, a la the first time you do a bonus objective on the trials.

Any thoughts?

I think we can do away with shards for rewards. Seeing how they are only tied to the alpha slot (only loosely now, since threads can be used). Other than that, I like it.

Random thoughts...

I'd genuinely be surprised if the devs aren't (and haven't been for a while) thinking about solo options to get Incarnate stuff. However, it's clear to me that they want to make sure that nothing they do involves sacrificing the Incarnate trials. As much as it rubs people the wrong way, Positron is right. People generally don't team up to do stuff unless they're given significant incentive to do so. The kick in the pants, though, is that when people do team up, they tend to enjoy the game a lot more.

In order for this to work, the solo Incarnate path would have to:

• Take significantly longer to accomplish,
• Be harder not just on a per-mission basis, but on a total cumulative time/effort basis,
• Have the above be true no matter how willing one is to farm the hell out of this stuff, and
• Not overlap with Incarnate trials, effectively allowing players to "double-dip" for rewards.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Luminara It's a good beginning, but the rewards need to be more frequent... Options for solo players to progress at a rate at which they'll only see any results several months later, not good, because it's too slow to retain interest or feel rewarding.

It depends on what you mean by "see any results." If you literally mean that you will have exactly zero change in your character for several months, I'm inclined to agree with you. However, there are a LOT of people posting that are defining "see any results" as "kitting out my character to the gills with all the top-tier stuff." In that case, with all due respect, I cannot disagree more strongly. As an end-game system, this Incarnate stuff is specifically intended to take several months, even doing it the running-trials way. For a solo player, the rewards need to be few and far between, because I guaran-damn-tee you that whatever the max level of progression that is possible, people are going to be farming it at that rate.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nihilii ...Now that I see what you're actually proposing... I doubt anyone would do an Incarnate trial past the novelty of the first two weeks.

And this is a compelling reason for the devs not to implement a solo path to Incarnate stuff. They are absolutely committed to Incarnate trials not becoming like Hamidon raids. Part of the fun in them is the fact that everyone is doing them; you are part of a massive team working on Really Big Things™. If Incarnate trials get to be eight or nine people once or twice a week working on them, they will lose their appeal even to those of us who like doing them today. I am absolutely certain that whenever the topic of solo Incarnate stuff comes up in meetings and hallway conversations between the devs, this is the elephant in the room, the prospect that it might destroy the appeal of the system they have worked so hard to design and that, contrary to popular belief in threads like these, most people actually like.

I'm not against the ideas presented in this thread. However, it's not just a simple matter of putting it together and throwing it in. A lot of thought would have to be put into making sure everything is balanced well, that it's not exploitable, and that it doesn't inadvertently affect the existing and future plans for Incarnate trials.

Tony makes a good point here. Any solo Incarnate content will be designed in such a way that it will not take away from the Trials, unless the devs want to have busted their butts for the past year only to have no one ever play the stuff they were busting their butts on.

It will take significantly longer, and will probably be more or less mutually exclusive. Probably having the same timer on Empyrean Merits to stop people from running whatever solo content and then a trial in order to progress twice as fast.

The devs would have to be idiots to spend this much time on something only to turn around and make it completely redundant by adding easily farmable solo content.

So, in essence, yes, we will almost definitely be getting SOME kind of solo Incarnate content. But it's not going to be as easy as people are wanting it to be. Remember how hard Trapdoor was before people figured out how to beat him easily? Yeah, imagine stuff like that, but geared toward characters who are already Incarnates.

Except that logic already fails.

You can unlock the Alpha slot one of two ways; ITrials or Ramiels arc.

You can solo Ramiels arc. You cannot solo ITrials.
Ramiels arc is much, MUCH faster than the trials.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I appreciate the concept, but this suggestion does not solve the flaw of the incarnate system.

The incarnate system is a developer INTENDED grind....do this trial........now this one.......now repeat......do it again........and again.......and repeat........again.......over.....over......

The way the system of progressing a level 50 hero/villain is constructed you have to repeat a very small set of content, you have to repeat it, you have to GRIND it, you have to do it over and over, and then repeat it more!

Granted, you don't HAVE to participate in the grind, but you can't progress your beloved level 50 any other way either.

Issue 20.5 will add one more small piece of grindable content....whoopie!

Your idea while laudable, again adds a tiny, although thankfully solable, piece of content.
It would only result in a solo grind verses a team grind....but still a grind.

How about Incarnate rewards, beyond the hopelessly inadequate shard drops, are built into ALL CoH content and are available to any qualifying level 50 toon? Why not let the individual player/subscriber decide what is fun to play, and reward their efforts whether teamed or solo at a reasonable and challenging pace!

This whole....repeat......repeat......again........agai n......repeat.......again........design path being aggressively pursued by the current Dev team is a MAJOR bummer! A solo grind is not much of an upgrade I'm afraid.

EvilGecko,

I like the backstory, but I hate the solo path being punished by only being able to gain once per day. I don't see any reason for players to gain rewards at a dramatically reduced pace just for opting into a different play style. Least ways when even if you don't mind or even like running the trials, you can't because you play during the day or at odd hours, and the 20 only other people on your ghost town of a server aren't running an Itrial.

For me that is the biggest reason I would want another path to do this stuff, because the low pop servers in a low pop game make it hard to find teams/leagues with regularity and if all my play time becomes waiting in a queue, then its time to move on (actually that is the reason I came here from WoW, got tired of sitting in queues for the entirety of my free time in order to make any meaningful progress on my characters).

Counterproposal: Because your Vanguard's Hammer idea is good and shouldn't be gated to just once a day, why not let it be "gated" to this: The incarnate trials can drop very rare incarnate mats, make it so these missions can only offer up to rare quality mats, and at a comparable drop rate as very rares from the itrials now. Design the Vanguard's Hammer missions as arcs, which offer a reward at the end of each mission (maybe 5 incarnate threads or maybe a common if you are lucky), and the finale offers a chance at a loot table with either; 10 incarnate threads, a common, an uncommon, or a rare. Have that as the base line with a small chance to improve the odds of getting better loot table based on the mission difficulty and the size of your team. There you go, solo/small team content with a slower but not ridiculously so advancement option, and heaven forbid the chance to actually have alot of fun and play through some interesting story arcs (the Vanguard's hammer thing really has some hot potential, especially if EB's/AV's are used). Oh and have level/incarnate shifts apply during these missions, so incarnate characters can get more bang for their buck out of those as well. This would also preserve the itrials as not only a means to gaining incarnate power faster, but as the best/only means of taking slots to T4, while giving a fun and imo balanced alternative.

My thoughts on the matter.