Am I the only one? (incarnate/lore rant)

<rant>
I was _really psyched about i20 - just awaiting the kind of world changing missions we'll go on. Honestly, after the Rikti war and Lord Recluse's world-takeover attempts, there hasn't been much 'epic' stuff going on - I was so waiting for i20 to provide that.


..and then we got it. We got, TWO amazingly challenging, huge, trials. We would create these massive super-powered teams, fight incredible challenges, and..

.) Destroy an *entire* weapon's facility
.) ..prevent the tyrant from brainwashing his people and in some small way prevent him from being, um, a tyrant?

Really? That's the most important things the game designers could think of for us super-powered incarnates to do?


Hell after reading about this, a simple Lady Grey task force seems more important; at least we're stopping a Rikti invasion force, which if not done, could doom our planet.

Here, we basically are sadly misunderstood, wee bit violent and power hungry, good samaritans for Praetoria. A weapons facility, wow! Because an entire world full of super-powered heroes additionally fueled by the well of furious would really be so hard-pressed to rebuild a weapons facility? And yeah, I am sure the tyrant (or Neuron for that matter) never really 'thought' about keeping backups of all their research from the BAF, yeah?

It'll be hard, it'll be cool, uh, just don't worry about 'why' you're doing it too much. We'll address that in issue 37!


Oh, and while I am at it, figure might as well throw this out. Can we STOP with the 'of the incarnates, by the incarnates, for the incarnates' theme? We will do these amazing trials, and get these two level shifts, I mean really! Finally! and, to do them, we need to do incarnate trials.

Of course, after we get them, all they'll apply on are incarnate trials only (which we have established are really, really, so important to the existence of Primal Earth, yeah?). Come on, really?
</rant>

Um. Yes?

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

the lambda sector trial i could see as a possibly world threatening type thing since they have the better tech and all that

the BAF though does seem kind of pointless and not very fun

A couple of points:

First of all, when one of the most prominently touted features of a new addition is that it's not so bad if you don't think about it too much, something is fundamentally wrong with the basic design of it.

Secondly, this is a classic case of bad writing, in the sense of "boring." It's busywork. It's just one small, mundane part of one larger, ongoing war, and this makes it uninteresting from a plotline perspective. It's like all of those games that yank a person from Earth and drop him into an alternate dimension, and then proceed to FORGET the main plot, spend the whole game faffing about with a civil war, and pick up on the plot right at the very end.

In other words, Timeshift.

You know how Unai Kemen will send you on all of those "Your princess is in another castle!" missions where you explore Dimension #1, then Dimension #2 and then Dimension #3 for no reason that couldn't apply if it were just one Dimension? This is all of those missions all over again. You know how Angus McQueen sends you to a ChemicalX factory to stop the Rikti from taking it over, only it turns out they didn't plan to and there was a random unimportant Council base there, instead? This is that mission.

Small tactical objectives building up to a large advance is how one fights a real-world war. Small tactical objectives that build to a large advance is not how one writes an interesting story, because it is BORING. Games, movies and books have the option of skipping events that aren't central to the plot and then summing up their results, or even ascribing those events to people other than the protagonists. It gives the fictional world more breadth without making the story needlessly fat.

If we are to take on these super-super tasks, then is it too much to ask that these tasks be relevant to the plot, rather than just consistent with the setting? Can we at least HAVE a plot, please? Because the City of Heroes I remember was conceived and written up as an exciting fictional world with a game taking place in it, not a meta-game experience with fiction crowbarred in to excuse it. When did we stop caring about the game's writing?

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.

As long as i keep my Ion Attack [Firing Ion! Back the **** away quick!] i'll be happy for a good few years

lets look at the bigger picture.

1) these are the *first* trials in what we assume is a series of trials (i'm thinking maybe 8-12?, released two at a time?). if we completely save the world from the praetorian threat in the first two trials, what else are we going to do? so instead we take incremental steps in preventing cole from taking over primal earth. and even at the end, when we 'beat' cole, it's not like praetoria will change... we just know story wise we've won. the praetorian arcs will remain, cole will still brainwash his citizens, the resistance is still fighting the loyalists, etc. it'd be too much work to completely change the brand new zones, and either eliminate or drastically change all of the work they put into the new content.

2) any more than 1 global level shift will seriously undermine and trivialize all lvl 50 content. but the incarnate shifts are only one small part of the incarnate buffs. so what if we can only get 50+1 in the normal game. that in itself is a huge buff. its not like we'll lose the judgment blast, the destiny buffs, the interface debuffs or the lore pets, or the alpha slot when doing the regular content (lvl 45+ anyway). being +1 already means that the former +4s in zones (say, RWZ), are already tuned down to +3 - making them much easier to handle. any more and why even try, it'd be boring. i've already become much more powerful with tier 3 and 4 alphas (even a tier 1 cardiac makes a HUGE difference in play speed for me), and i like at least the chance of death.

if you think about the following 3 statements, then you realize why we can't have more than one global level shift.
(challenge = fun, too challenging = frustrating, too easy = boring)
even without the other level shifts, players are already worried about how easy the 'hard' content will become. in any case, i will welcome all incarnate powers with open arms , regardless of gates and restrictions.

Maybe I'm missing something with these new trials, but I never saw them as a tactical maneuver intended to criple Cole's regime. To me, this is more of a psychlogical attack that if completed successfully, shows that Cole and The Praerorian Guard are vulnerable and can be defeated, which will undermine his absolute authority over the people of Praetoria. If the people see that Cole's regime can't even protect it's minor targets, they might start to question his ability to protect them, and that leads them to questioning whether sacrificing their freedoms for that protection is worth it.

If the Primals can expose Cole for what he is, the people of Praetoria will welcome us as liberators when we finally do make that big tactical attack, rather than fearing us as invaders.

I recommend they should create the Solve Everything Task ForceTrial Strike Target.

Feature include:

- A 100 hour Trails Task Force that is for Heroes, Villains, Other Unreleased Superawseome Cake AT, but primarily for villains wich allows them to respec immediatly out of Patron Powers into Total Rocking Powers AT.

- Complete Worldwide PVP with character deletion upon loss or win.

- Access to all powers.

- Complete customization of characters, powers and pets including Lore Pets, which allows you or your pets to be frikkin buildings for godsakes if you want.

- A brand new engine with graphics that surpass real life.

- World travel that allows you to play all of your current characters simultaneously in any game every created, including future games not yet created.

- A completely soloable path which allows solo players to earn SOLO MERITS which can only be spent on solo only powers and Enhancements, and a full 'solo only' instanced version of the game that is way more awesome than the real game and has stuff no one else can get.

- Customizable settings that let you decide spawn size, location, difficulty of all mobs, and has a secret super setting which allows you to fight Devs in real life.

- Hamburger coupons with substitute Ultra Vegan mode which shoots Tofu from your D drive.

- A pony crossed with a pitbull that hands out Million Dollar Auto Win lottery tickets that are actually worth 5 million dollars.

Did I miss anything?

I agree mostly.

Lambda sector does feel like a small step toward making Primal earth safe. You could take every bit of "incarnate" out of it and it would make a great lv50 co-op T/SF but there is nothing there that feels in any way "god-like"

The BAF is even worse, this should be lv40 content max, an a great story for returning Praetorians.

Both are mechanically ok, in fact they're pretty good, but they are massively off-message as far as "incarnate" content goes IMHO.

Hell I'd be happier if there was a "buffed by an incarnate" visual aura at least then there would be _some_ visual difference between lv 1-10 and the lv54 clockwork rather than some kind of "we paint them the same colour but the civilian clockwork are made out of Paper-Mache and fit them with flashlights rather than lasers".

Actually can we just keep the clockwork out of the incarnate content, why can't there be warworks-looking dedicated menders (A BCU without the gun)