I hate myself!

Once again - don't judge these on MSR's and Hami's. For one those are usually done with 30+ people, the maximum that can be on the largest so far is 24, and that one can be done with 12. Second of all, while it does require coordination you have time to establish, at the beginning, just who should be leading and who should be giving the orders. There isn't a time limit on the first section. Thirdly, even if you fail, that doesn't preclude you from earning threads or incarnate XP to unlock the slots, so even if you lose it won't totally be in vain.

Third of all, I would like smaller tasks as well. But you'd be more likely to be able to judge these trials on the current in game TF's than the raids. The trials are instanced, and don't require any specific AT anymore than any other content does, and like everything else, will get easier the more often everyone does it. You want a higher chance of a more successful run? Don't run it when it first hits live. Run it the week after. That's when you'll get people who are more able to lead and the majority of them will know more about what's going on.

You can at least make sure you end up in the same league. You may be split up among different teams but league chat > team chat for these things, so you'll still be playing with your friends. If your group is big enough you can do the trials with just your group, or with mostly your group with a few random additions.

Now if your group is small, then yeah, you'll be lost in a mess of people.

That's my point: Most people in this thread and several others aren't being any more (or less) hysterical than those who write interminably long posts that boil down to "give the rewards with no challenges and no need to team."

I am simply saying that based on the End Game content I have played already (ie up to and including I19) I am singularly unimpressed with what I have seen so far. I intensely dislike the concept of the Well of the Furies being this insane "thing" that is out of control. I don't much like the Apex or Tin Mage TFs, and I do not much care for the way the level shift has made the existing content (which incidentally I do like very much) considerably less challenging and therefore less interesting.

To me, End Game didn't need to give us a level shift or bork existing content it needed to give us new challenges and content that is exciting and interesting to do. I don't mind working for shards or collecting the goodies, but the point I feel strongest about is this: If I don't buy into the Incarnate story then my characters are excluded from the End Game. Thus I have to be Incarnate to do it.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

On my one level shifted character I noticed the same thing: My missions were a lot easier than they were before because I was fighting blues.

Solution: Increase your difficulty to +1 or +2 and it will be functionally exactly the same as it was before.

Of all the possible complaints about the Incarnate system, this one is by far the easiest to solve.

.....Just remember you have your difficulty set higher before you lead a TF. +2s in an ITF where the majority of the people are not level shifted gets pretty ugly.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

People on test are running 3-man ITFs with SOs and 7-man Mothership raids. I'm liking Incarnates less and less. The more you trivialize existing content the more it becomes a case of "do the trials or don't play." Or am I the only one who thinks a "I win" button isn't fun after the novelty wears off?

In this thread there are several people complaining about something they haven't tested. I wouldn't say that if I could name names, and I can. I can understand not liking the mechanics (although I do [and that being said if you feel that a levelshift trivializes current content, bump up your TF difficulty]), but at least everything you mentioned has been tested.

If you're able to put together a LGTF regularly with your coalition you'll be able to put together Lambda just as regularly, which only requires 8 to start.

Imagine that, someone whose playstyle isn't suited to the trials but who doesn't insist on soloing everything.

Only if you're leading, or can find someone with a similar mindset to lead.

I set all three ITFs I led last week to +1, and nobody said a word. I certainly didn't hear the sidekicks complaining about all the XP they got.

Nope. I'm totally with you.

Since Paragon Studios took over the game has been continually dumbed down until the challenge is miniscule. The "I want more rewards for less effort" has been an overarching philosophy I feel. The new content just makes the existing content even easier - but that said I used to enjoy doing three small team TFs - that was a challenge pre-incarnates.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

ITF set at +0 can be considered trivial. Set at +4 romans hit pretty hard even if if you have the level shift. Most people set their TF's at +0 and don't look back.

Then what's the point of getting it in the first place?

You're completely missing the point of progress. You get more powerful so existing challenges become easier and you can take on new challenges, not so that you have to do raids because everything else becomes trivial. If they were going to do that they could have just raised the level cap, it would have amounted to the same thing.

Then we have a complete and utter inability to progress beyond "I want to complain a lot." Seriously. If the complaint is "prior content has been trivialized" there are things you can do to mitigate that that has been there for quite some time. Set the difficulty higher so that it's still relatively as difficult. Otherwise, what precisely are we complaining about?

You are focusing on one very minor aspect of my issue. If you actually read what I've said it's the fundamental Incarnate story I have the biggest problem with. Letting this amoral, seemingly crazy thing affect my characters is not how I want to develop them - but I have no choice if I'm to take part in the new content. It's Hobson's choice.

The fact I'd need to unslot the Alpha or increase difficulty is indeed a workaround and I'm very aware of it and I regularly do. However that doesn't counter the fact that the game is going through a continual process of being dumbed down and made easier

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

There is a second choice. Slot it and ignore the lore. Can't really back the train up at this point. Might as well enjoy the ride. There are many things in this game I ignore for concept reasons....

Yeah, what's the point of spending time and thought working on an awesome Blaster build, earning billions of inf to make it happen, rethinking your playstyle and adjusting so you don't die on higher difficulties, when you then go team with people who ran a few trials and can kill everything before you even get to it?

Remember teaming with a bunch of Elec/Shield characters back in i17? Yeah, it's like that.

Part of me agrees, but I don't think this precludes the ability to protest. There are things about the incarnate system that I don't like, and I'm trying to sit down and really codify it before I come and say my peace. "I don't like this..." is usually not helpful criticism because writers tell the story that would hold their interest, otherwise they wouldn't write it. Said another way: A writer cannot predict with 100% accuracy what someone else will like, so the writer can only write what he or she would like with 100% accuracy (and hell, as a writer myself even that bit is false....)

I think there are a lot of factions in the coaltion of not liking i20. There's Venture who apparently doesn't like anything about it (or possibly the game, I'm not entirely sure); there's the "casual/solo" players that represent a broad coalition who maintain that the new direction isn't one that welcomes them (Eikio-Chan appears to be the extremist of this group); there's the people who's main complaint appears to be the storyline (Sam Tow seems to fall into this camp, but also the formerly mentioned one of casual friendly options); there's the group that doesn't like the mechanics of tying trials into incarnate progression, and other who simply don't like the Lore power.

The problem that I have with the majority of these arguments settle down into three basic problems:

1) There are some (BUT NOT ALL) who simplify the arguments. For instance: those arguing that they don't like the current way the stories are being written hold up the earlier arcs as well written arcs while dismissing anything that's bad about them. This simplification leads to a mentality of "If someone's disagreeing with me, I'm being attacked and must attack in return!!!!!". This, of course, is exacerbated by some people actually attacking them. Everyone is taking their position to be the complex and well thought out one and the other side simply hasn't thought about it enough to come to their side. For instance: I like the lore. How many times have you read that the current writing of the game is just "bad writing"? When I have pointed things out about it that I like, and that I feel it succeeded in accomplishing, my arguments are swept under the rug. In fact it wouldn't surprise me to find that some people put me into this "Dev Defense Force" which I wouldn't classify myself as being.

2) The various positions take the other, mostly unrelated arguments, as evidence of their own mostly unrelated opinions. There are a lot - a lot - of threads right now in this forum and others that are slamming i20. Considering the fairly broad coalition of those who don't like it, one would think that each thread would be about one thing and one thing only. This is sadly not the case. Instead every thread starts out focused, and then becomes an argument about the muck and mire of the various arms of the coalition. Every thread should not be an opportunity to come in and shout about what your problem is, because if it does it makes it absolutely impossible to sift through and find anything of use. Not liking the story should have nothing at all with not liking the mechanics from a feedback/discussion perspective. Yet in this single thread alone I swear I can't nail down some people's positions because there's too much noise. It makes the argument absolutely usless


And worse than all that there are those that are complaining about the current state of i20 when they haven't even tested the majority of it. Venture stated at one point that he logged on, read what Prometheus said, and then stopped testing. There are those who are complaining about how hard it's going to be to start the trials and some of them haven't actually tested it. There are others who have complained about the lag that it must engender because "If they're anything like MSR or Hami....", and THAT ALONE tells me that they haven't tested it.

There's so much noise that absolutely anything of interest and any useful discussion is simply getting shouted down by everyone who, apparently all they want to do, is use every opportunity to shout about it. They're not even interested in any kind of feedback - and that is something that you, Scarlet, actually just did. You made a complaint that some content is getting trivialized. Yes it was a sub argument, and yes it might not have been important in the grand scheme of your complaints - but you still made the complaint and someone still corrected you and told you that "There are options that make it none trivial again". Did you respond by saying "Oh, you know what, you're right, I was wrong on this one part."

You instead responded by saying 'Oh, I use those all the time, but content is still getting trivialized when I don't make it harder." That is an non-useful position, and one that I fear is a product of the noise of this system.

I am assuming that writers for CoH write for CoH because they are interested in CoH. No, a writer cannot predict what someone else will like. But a writer who can hold a back-and-forth dialogue with an audience that is certainly not shy about expressing their opinions can somewhat accurately predict what at least a decent portion of them will like. If you write only for yourself there's no reason to put your work out for public consumption, unless your tastes happen to exactly match those of your target audience.

I don't dismiss anything that's bad about them. They're longer than they need to be, too many defeat alls and "your princess is in another castle" and "go slog through this warehouse to find this blinky then go to this one to kill this boss," because no boss ever sticks around a warehouse after he drops off his blinky. On the other hand, too many people are confusing the shiny and unique mechanics of the new arcs with "good writing." I'm not talking about people who actually like the story behind the arcs, I'm talking about people who claim it's a better story because it has unique maps and in-mission dialogue

I don't recall Venture complaining about any aspect of i20 that wasn't "testable" by reading the overview and Prometheus's dialogue. If there's any huge deep storyline buried somewhere in the new raids, which I'm assuming there isn't or someone would have said something by now, it's a bad place to put it, what with trying to coordinate up to 24 people and the timers and all.
You can't test that. People go to test specifically to test the new trials, and most people read up on how to start them before they try. People on live have other things they might rather be doing and most of them don't read the forums.

Honestly, my solution is probably going to be more and more "don't team." Then I can run around fighting Arachnos and Malta on +4/x8 to my heart's content without worrying about trying to bring people who couldn't resist the easy button the devs gave them around to my point of view. And every time a boss tries to trash-talk me, I will fire Judgement at them and laugh maniacally.

Jack left ages ago

Well maybe the cost of inventions will drop a lot once everyone's an Incarnate?


But that's actually a serious point that I'd overlooked. The hours and inf I've spent on Scarlet to make her as good as I can could be undone within a few months by the Incarnate system.

I had fun doing it, because in many ways, until now, slotting IOs and improving your build was the end game, but I might feel a bit gypped if my IOs become redundant.

I guess it depends on how the Incarnate system works with IOs, so I'm not going to pre-judge that but it's a concern.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

Not to mention that everyone who embraces the system will trivialize content for you even if you reject it. And if you raise the difficulty to their level the people who haven't spent hours and inf bringing themselves up to your level but can still handle it with your help will be in way over their heads.

To me, it's a much better end game that allows for far more character and playstyle diversity than running the same raid a bunch of times to get the same new powers as everyone else.

There is another category of folks (based on anecdotal rumor and vague of facts of indeterminate nature) of those that have been testing for some time and are bound to refrain from stating their opinions fully...

I very much don't see that as a problem. Not for how I play my own characters, at least. If the incarnate abilities make teams so overpowering that everyone is fundamentally redundant no matter what they bring to the table, that's a problem that goes rather beyond consideration of the value of having IOs.

So long as you're fighting something you cannot trivialize simply by having incarnate powers, a character with rich investment in a strong IO build is still far better than its SO'd peers - the benefits of high recharge, high defense, higher regen rate, and so forth, tend to either multiply the benefits of Incarnate powers or stack with them directly (with the frequently non-linear improvements that stacking in this game provides).

My problem isn't with them. It's with people who are giving feedback on what they don't like coming in I20 who obviously haven't tested it. Like if you make any reference to a Hami or MSR while referencing the BAF and Lambda whatsoever. The two have nothing in common. Yet in this thread and in at least 2 - 3 others people reference that as if they were anything like the raids that have come before.

The only thing in game that is like these is the Cathedral of Pain. And having played both CoP and Lamba (and for a brief period a BAF, but the server shut down on me) I can say that CoP is much harder than Lambda or BAF. It's that kind of noise that's really annoying and even worse it's the kind of falsehood, among others, that just gets repeated again and again and again.