The endgame grind, perceived or reality?

Well when you say that level 50 is "the limbo after your adventure is over" it doesn't sound much like anything other than "when you hit 50 the game ends and that's all there is to it." Perhaps you should reword your sentiments?

I could, but all that would result in is people twisting my statements back into what they think is the easiest to argue against. Why bother typing up five paragraphs of explanation when all it would lead to is someone doing a monster-quote and responding with "So you're actually saying something completely different, then?"

To humour you, however: When you hit 50, all that you have to look forward to is a grind. That's by developer design. You have two trials which you are expected to run many, many times over. That we will get more trials is an empty promise, because with new trials will come new slots, and the need to repeat them many times will not change. This is my definition of a grind - repeating the same tasks over and over again with no alternative.\

I'm not arguing that this could have been done better, or accusing the developers of being incompetent. I'm well aware that this approach was the only reasonable one - this is why I used to argue against it as a concept.

We have what we have. But what we have is two trials gating rewards that require more than two trials to achieve. There really isn't much room for interpretation.

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.

You should ask yourself that a lot more often - it'd lessen the rambling incoherence

Hey, I wrote up a long post explaining why Trials may not be a grind to me, and you didn't even give me a glib summary that completely misses the point.

As far as I can tell, Sam, you make the following points:

1. There is nothing in the existing game that your 50s haven't already done.
2. Consequently, there is nothing in the game that you would enjoy doing on your 50s.
3. You are okay with this state of affairs.
4. You do not like what the Incarnate system represents, either mechanically or storywise.
5. The Incarnate system makes you a bit uncomfortable, because it represents something that your 50s *could* be doing, but that you don't enjoy doing.

These points are all a matter of subjective opinion. They represent how you, personally, feel about the game. They are not a matter of discussion. I would never dream of telling you any of those points is wrong, or that you are wrong for thinking that.

However.

You also seem to be making the following points:

1. The Incarnate System is unquestionably a grind, for any player who would participate in it.
2. Nobody could possibly enjoy running the Trials repeatedly. (See your first post, where you cautioned against "pretending to enjoy a grind" - assuming that anyone defending the Trials is only pretending to enjoy them.)
3. The Incarnate System is "not something for 50s to do" or "is technically something to do, but very little".
4. Having the Incarnate System is worse than not having it.

I disagree with you on all those points, and I believe I'm entitled to disagree. I think the Incarnate System add something to the game, even if it's not something you personally can enjoy, and that the game is better and richer for having it. I think there are players who will find running the Trials fun and engaging. I think the system is only a grind if a player lets it be one.

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.

It is unquestionably a "grind" as I define the term, and my definition is fairly simple - any game system which requires me to replay content I've already played on this specific character by virtue of giving me no other option. This was the case with the old 38-40 game where you would run out of unique missions and would be forced to either streethunt or, later, rerun newspaper/scanner missions.

"Grind" as a term doesn't have one uniform definition that transcends personal subjectivism, so I don't claim to define it for other people, but to me repeating content is a grind. I'd repeat it when I felt like repeating it, but repeating it out of necessity I would not like to, if possible.

Not necessarily. I class the content as a "grind," but time and again people have proven that they do, in fact, enjoy grinding. Well, some people, anyway. And that's not "enjoy something which I feel is grinding but they don't." No. I've seen and indeed know a fair few people who fully admit that what they do is grinding, and then they do it anyway, and end up having a jolly old time of the whole affair. I certainly don't want to take that away from them, nor do I have a problem with this approach to gaming, so long as I'm not roped into it, myself.

But at the same time, I'm a firm believer of splitting controversial issues into as many discernible parts as possible, so that when solutions to them are sought, they only "solve" the particular parts that proved to be offensive and don't ruin the parts which were not. When it comes to Incarnates, the issue is many-fold. Difficulty is one separate issue, the time commitment is another, teaming and socialisation is another still, and repetitive content is quite distinct from all of the above. Different people give each part a different weight. I just feel that the repetitiveness of content is one of the easier targets at the very least point to, even if it's one of the hardest ones to actually solve.

In this case I'm repeating an argument from years ago. Possibly from the time of Inventions, possibly from before. I don't remember exactly. It had to do with the clash between those who wanted more progress, with or without new content and those who wanted new content, with or without more progress. To avoid using long-winded explanation, I tend to divide those ideas between things to "do" - those being content that you can take part in, actions you can take, plots you can follow - and things to "earn" - those being the results of the content, actions and plots.

As I explained before, I don't necessarily believe that a game can do on just one or the other. Doing things is, ultimately, why we're here playing a game, but doing things gets old, and fairly fast. Earning things by doing helps provide milestones and helps rejuvenate the allure of the doing, but just earning things with little to use them on and little heart in the process of earning them turns a game into a hollow experience. My chief concern as regarding "the grind" is that the Incarnate system provides a great many things to earn, but provides us with almost nothing new to do to earn them. It's just about the same game, just with more rewards.

More specifically, though, my argument was that the Incarnate system doesn't constitute something NEW for people to do. I wouldn't dream of claiming that it doesn't constitute much doing, but not much of it is new. As it stands right now, I20 seems to be focused on doing said Trials more than anything else, which excludes existing content and needlessly narrows the scope of the gameplay. However, broadening said scope to include the existing 45-50 content doesn't change much, because that's still content I've likely already done.

And this isn't an argument about how long I've been here and how tired I am of the game. That's a separate issue. It's an argument that any specific character I take to 50 is likely to have already done this content, and even if not, will have done this content long before he can even sniff the Well of the Furies. I can stomach repeating content, and a lot, as long as I'm repeating it with new characters. "I wonder how THIS one will do against Baphomet?" I think to myself, and my enthusiasm is intrigued. By contrast, when the question I ask myself becomes "How do I make the event faster for THIS iteration?" my enthusiasm dies in a fire, to be replaced with pessimistic stoicism, and that's rarely a good thing.

Even if I believe this, it's not an argument I want to make. Outside of the trite argument that working on it means not working on other things (another argument I don't want to make), there really is no denying that it was good for the game. Just HOW good is a matter of opinion, but it is good either way.

However, good as it may have been, it represents a shift in game design philosophy - and this is one of the statements that's likely to incur me some Arcana wrath. It goes back to something Positron said recently in relation to the recurring "AT Respec" threads, and something many people have inferred over the years - that City of Heroes is intended to be played over and over again with different characters. One of Jack's original design goals was to introduce so much content into the game that a player could never see it all in one go, and would need multiple characters to do so.

Why is this important? Because it produced a game player philosophy here that is something of a conundrum in other games. When asked "Who is your main?" many will respond with "I don't know." or "I don't have one." Sure, some will have two or three, instead, but then there are those among us who genuinely don't have one or a few favourite characters, but instead treat them as our flock to which we are the shepherds, favouring no-one in particular, but enjoying our collection as a collection, itself.

Where end game enters into this is that it seems purpose-designed to be inviable for too many of a player's characters to engage in. As a point of fact, many players have stated this as a fact and taken great pleasure in doing so. I don't want to discuss issues of pride in exclusivity and feelings of achievement, so much as to paint what I see as the consequences of that - the Incarnate system encourages us to focus on our 50s, and not just focus, but do so to the exclusion of our non-50s.

This isn't just a case of wanting to have a zillion Incarnates, but the time and effort investment into the system creates a sort of backwards logic: The longer I spend playing my "alts," the longer I spend NOT playing my "main" and thus the more I miss out. Even absent of the desire to have too many Incarnates, the kind of focus this system breeds does go quite some ways to take away from the enthusiasm of making alts. For some, I'm sure this is welcome news, especially those who used to make alts for lack of anything better to do. For others like myself, however, who made alts because we genuinely enjoyed the creation process, this incentive comes off more like a chore than an opportunity.

So is the game worse of for having it? Of course not. Not because of development focus, not because of shifting game design ideologies. But the real question is "is it better?" That's not as easy to answer. It was good for the game, but what's good for the game isn't always a better game. I know it hasn't made the game better for me, and it has had the unpleasant consequence of turning my fellow players into intolerant jerks, though I don't know how much of that I can attribute to game changes.

What it is for the game is "different." I don't consider City of Heroes with the Incarnate system to be better or worse than City of Heroes without it. Oppinions on who likes which version will obviously vary, but I really don't think the options are comparable. It comes down to what each of us prefers. I, myself, prefer a replay-centric, alt-centric game, and to that effect the Incarnate system's shift towards focused gaming has been a detriment. Others prefer focused gaming and praise the system for it, dreading the times of replay-centric, alt-centric gaming.

---

I've said it in the past that I prefer a game I can replay ten times then one that's ten times as long, and this hasn't changed. Any game I play through and end up feeling like I never want to do that again, no matter how much fun I may have had along the way, I consider to have ultimately been a failure. There are games that I can pick up months, years, sometimes even decades after the fact and still have the desire to play them.

There's 1999's Oni, there's 1993's Flashback, there's 1994's Loderunner: The Legend Returns. All of those are games I could still play, and would, in fact, still play, were they compatible with my system (I'm aware of DOSBox and Oni's XP patch), all because they were games I was inclined to replay even back then. Compare that to something as great as the original Mass Effect, which was a great game... But I will never, EVER play through that mess of bugged gameplay and inventory management nightmare ever again. Same with the Dragon Age games. They have replay value, yes, but they have a replay cost that I'm not willing to pay again. In fact, they have a first playthrough cost that I'm not sure I would have wanted to pay had I known what it was ahead of time.

To me, City of Heroes has always been the former - a game that I can pick up, get to the end, reflect on how awesome I was and look forward to starting it all over again. This... Will no longer be the case. I'll have to redefine my own artificial end somewhere along the line and decide that this is where the game ends FOR ME, and draw some closure from that. But in the spirit of rewards and a sense of accomplishment, getting to the unambiguously branded "end of the game" carried a much more satisfying sense of achievement than concluding that I don't want to play the game past a specific point.

---

I've made my piece with the Incarnate system and wish it the best of luck in the future. People like it, people flock to it, they deserve to get what they paid for. And I'm a patient man. I can wait for the current Incarnate craze to pass and see where the future takes us. To more reasons to make new characters, I would hope, but that's always on the list, I think. The recently-announced server list merger reminds me of another thing which could score high in my book - a single-server environment, so I don't have to be marooned from my friends on Pinnacle when I play one of my 30 or so character on Victory. But that's unlikely to happen, cool as it may be.

Incarnates are here to stay, and we should all do our best to help them grow, or at the very least keep out of the way. But I still feel that part of that process is pointing out and putting into words the areas left wanting. No more, no less.

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.

There are some things that can be correlated with that, at least to a point.

Raw Rockey Mountain Oysters are nasty. I've never had them, but I know they are.

There was one gameshow a few years back that featured people eating the nastiest things one could imagine, and they used that as one of the things to eat. Granted, they didn't use the goat version, they used them from a bull so they were larger and they made sure they were filled with the bull's little swimmers just to ensure Full On Nasty.

Because I don't want them to keep doing what they're doing. I'm happy that people apparently got what they wanted, but I'm not happy with the manner in which they got it. I've avoided many games for having what we now have, and this isn't going to change just because we have it. Arguing to remove or radically redesign a system which is already done is foolish, and I wouldn't want to do foolish things (too often).

However, there still ARE things the developers could do to satisfy me, they're just things that they WON'T do, at least not any time soon. And not because they're stubborn, mind you, but because they've chosen to go into a direction that is incompatible with what I'd have wanted. I can accept this, obviously, but it doesn't mean that I have to like it, or that I have to keep quiet about it, and it certainly doesn't mean that I will refrain from suggesting how things could be changed even if I know it's pointless.

Moreover, this is not a thread about the merit of Incarnates and how good the game is or isn't with or without them. It's a thread about grind, and grind Incarnates are. How much of a grind and how much you're willing to tolerate isn't really my place to speak about, but we're doing the game no favours by denying this.

The Incarnate system lacks content. This needs to be understood and accepted. What is done about it in the future is not relevant to the fact that this exists. I know this may turn me into a pariah (again), but I do not accept the arguments that the existing Incarnate content is not repetitive, when common sense demonstrates that it is. You need to repeat it if you want to progress through the system, and you have no alternatives. I also do not accept the arguments that any new TFs, Trials or Raids the developers may have planned to add with make the system any less repetitive, since they will certainly come with even more slots, and require even more repetition, not less.

I have no problem with discussing preferences and beliefs, but we need to discuss them within the context of facts, and that you cannot earn all Incarnate rewards without repeating Incarnate content is a fact that I don't think anyone can really argue with. And that's by design.

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.

Repetitive is an inherently subjective term in an MMO context. All MMOs, after all, arguably require repetitive tasks from the moment you log in. The strength (or weakness) of an MMO generally hinges on how well (or poorly) it disguises the grind for its core audience.

A player can reasonably find content both repetitive and fun. Take level 50 content, for instance. You seem to dislike playing at level 50, which is fine, but even before Incarnates were a glimmer in the Developers' eye, there were plenty of people who genuinely enjoyed playing at the level cap. Sure, playing at the cap will lead you to repeat content, but there are probably as many TFs at level 50 than there are in the rest of the game, combined -- and in any case, sometimes approaching the same challenge in a different way (with a different build, with different teammates, with a different strategy) is as much fun as facing a different challenge altogether.

For a lot of those people, simply having new options to progress their level 50s is a big deal, even if those new options are tied almost exclusively to two specific Trials. Adding an extra one or two 30ish-minute tasks to their already repetitive level-50-TF schedule is at worst an incidental inconvenience. Others would prefer to have all of the existing level 50 content contribute meaningfully to the new progression. Still others (apparently, like you) think of level 50 as the end of the journey, and thus wouldn't be satisfied with an end-game system with anything less than a full game's worth of content at that level.

To the extent that there are any pertinent facts in this discussion, about the best I can come up with is the old truism: "You can't please everyone." Personally, I think the conversion options for post-Alpha Incarnate components need to be rethought and reworked, but I fail to see how or even if the devs could satisfy you, even in theory.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

A couple of points:

First of all, I don't disagree with you. I never wanted to claim that repetitive content was inherently evil, more than that it was, well... Repetitive. As per the topic. I equate repetitive with grind, but again - some genuinely like that, and that is A-OK.

Secondly, it's only partly about how well a game tries to hide repetition and how much it CARES to hide repetition. Games like Lineage II are evil. They know they're evil, you know they're evil, I know they're evil, yet we've tried them anyway. They don't even pretend to be interesting or novel. They beat you over the head with the boring, monotonous grind punctuated only by instances of backsliding and losing progress.

City of Heroes I can respect, because the game makes more than a token effort to pretend we're doing more than just fulfilling a kill count. The game's writers want (or wanted, once upon a time) to convince us that "No, no! You're not just killing Skuls! There's a story behind all this! It has meaning!" I'm not simple enough to be blind to the truth, but I appreciate the effort more than I can express.

This, to me, is where the Incarnate system and TFs in general falter. Regular missions get to pretend they're not repetitive simply because there are so many of them. TFs do not have that luxury. If the game made at least a token effort to make the different cycles of the same event different in words, at least, I would appreciate it much more.

For all my hatred of paper/scanner missions and how thinly veiled of a grind they represent, they are nonetheless at least veiled at all. The game isn't out-and-out rubbing your nose in the pathos of running the same ONE TF over and over and over again. It at least pretends that each mission is something new, even if we can see it's just a form letter with the names swapped out.

I would honestly have had a lot more respect for the Incarnate system if at least the superficial storyline made some attempt to either explain why this needs to be done multiple times (and it NEEDS to be done multiple times), or otherwise included superficial variations to where I could pretend I wasn't doing the exact same thing as I was the last time times that will somehow never take.

I'm not sure if the tech for this exists, and to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure what I'd make swap out. I do know, however, that in the regular game, the game's structure doesn't expect us to grind the same content. We CAN, and it won't stop us, but we have options. If the Incarnate system expects us to grind the same two bits of content, was it too much to ask that it at least pretend like repeating them made sense? Even minor dialogue changes would be appreciated.

It's just... This kind of enforced repetition takes me - me personally - out of the experience because it reminds me that this is a game. I can shut my brain down and pretend that thousands of people haven't already captured FrostFire before me, because I don't have to see them, but I HAVE to see what I've done before. And if I HAVE to do it again, I want the game to pretend it makes sense.

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.

Good to know. And once they've created a bucket load of solo content for the endgame then and only then will I get interested in participating in it beyond alpha.

Don't worry - there'll still be plenty of non-Incanrate stuff to keep you occupied

You can easily expand that to any story arc that has a set beginning and ending. I don't mean the 'Arrest the Skull leaders' (which mission isn't as epic as it should be for taking down the brothers), I mean the ones that have an ending that's pretty much exclusive to repeat. Like the Council arc with the time traveling Nazi; he comes to the future, you stop him from learning about how to change WWII, and you get a letter from Requiem thanking you. The ending text says the time traveler has Time Cancer and will die in a month or two.

It's well beyond the Willing Suspension of Disbelief to say that each and every character has arrested him, and that there is a whole conga line of Time Traveled soldiers waiting to die from their Time Cancers, especially since the arc is written in a way that makes it impossible for him to do it again; the contact has no information on the soldier time traveling and your actions stop him permanently.

Yeah two whole tfs in Issue 20. Have fun finishing that up in a week.


EDIT: Oh you mean the stuff that's been there for 7+ years, some of which is showing its age and has been done to death (coh), stuff that's just borked (pvp) and stuff that has been ignored (bases).

Gotcha. I love issue 20, but I'm not going to pretend that folks that are disappointed don't have a right to be.

Is the endgame a grind? emphatic yes, just because there isn't enough of it yet. Is it a bad grind? NO, I find MOST of it fun and can wait as they expand it. For those that don't like trials ... oh well, there are still the tfs and older content.

You normally can't repeat the same mission and the same story arc on any particular character, that's what I'm saying. Samuel Tow never has to worry about why the Director 17 he arrested in 2005 is still leading the same Operation World Wide Red while being opposed by Crash McGuire, because both characters belong to me, and they will never run the same arc together.

So why does this happen when I team with other people? well, because I... Generally don't, and when I do, we run my story arcs anyway. There are ways to see past it, because the game itself doesn't allow me to run a mission twice unless I go out of my way to do so. Not so for "repeatable" content, which is so designed as to be repeated.

Here's my proposition: If content is intended to be repeated, why can it not be designed so as to make sense that it is repeated? This isn't exclusive to the Incarnate system. Any of the game's TFs and Trials can suffer from it, especially those that rely on specific unique events or the presence of people whom the TF's resolution makes "absent." I can kind of see that the Freakshow or the Rikti might make a habit of attacking the Terra Volta reactor every few days. It's not a unique event. I'm rather less convinced that I can defeat Archus day after day and yet it never seems to take with him.

I want to point out an instance of repeatable content done well (even if the content itself is bad): The Shadow Shard. Why is there always a patrol to save for General Hammond? He has many patrols, the Shard is a dangerous place, so his men keep getting in trouble. Why does Dr. Boyd have an endless supply of obelisks he needs examined? He's conducting research and needs a very large sample size. Especially if he's trying to translate a language. Why does Dr. IForgotHerName always need more Kora Fruit? I don't remember exactly, but I recall her saying "I can always use more Kora Fruit" at one point, and I'll take her word for it.

Or take paper and scanner missions - they all come down to about one of four different missions with instance, enemy faction and flavour text swapped around, but they're designed to make sense regardless. They're random unrelated occurrences, not the same one occurrence. Well, they make sense up to a point, until the game runs out of McGuffin and Boss names, but those are pools that should be easy to expand.

Tip missions, on the other hand... Aren't as easily repeatable. Every time you pick up a smooth metal cylinder or see a Scrapyarder sobbing in a corner, it's the same mission. It doesn't even pretend it's different. It's the same exact mission. Again.

So how could the lessons learned from previous repeatable content help us for the future? What could be done to, say, the Tin Mage TF that wouldn't take massive developer resources to institute? Not much, really. Have Tin Mage explain that attacks on Primal Earth have become common, but THIS ONE is especially big. This leaves the door open for people to repeat the TF and say not "Didn't we do this yesterday?" and instead ask "They're doing this again?" Neither is really all that much better, but at least the latter pretends to make sense.

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The less of the game's setting and plot I have to ignore, the better, in my eyes. And I firmly believe there is more the developers can and should do give storyline grounding for trials.

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.

I intend to reserve judgement until... You know what, here's what I can offer. I'll reserve judgement until December 21st, 2012. After that, we'll see. This should fit into my "another couple of years" ballpark estimate from before.

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.

Oh, I'm not in the least worried about stuff to do. I have 7 50's (2 Incarnate) and 6 other lovely characters in various stages of development I play daily.

I play solo 99.9% of the time (1 team since August 2010 for a Notice of the Well). As to why I do not team more? I am an old person who is slow and on a slow computer thus not blend well into the group/team scene. The fast paced action of trials and TF's are well beyond my ability to comprehend and comfortably handle them now.

I would love to be able to take several of my characters deeper into the Incarnate experience but, alas, it just isn't being developed with someone like me in mind. No bad words only sad words that the Incarnate development direction is what it is.

So, I'll just plod along doing my thing until they give me some Incarnate stuff to do that I can do on my own and at my own pace.

Should I:

A - Offer to team with you on a slower paced TF?

B - Get off your lawn?

No, we haven't all arrested him. This is actually a good argument for not making story arc souvenirs visible to anyone but you. As far as my character is concerned, I'm the first person to ever beat up Ubelmann, and I will be the last. I don't know what all those other level 20-somethings are doing, but it isn't beating up Ubelmann.

Story arcs aren't really designed for teams. If you want to experience an arc as a team you have to make an effort to do so, making sure everyone does their missions at the same time (which was impossible before CoV), and now allowing everyone to read the in-mission contacts' dialogue before clicking anything.

Because we keep eating the fruit she sends us to collect instead of bringing it back to her.

Thank you, sweetie, for the offer but I am quite content with my existence in my isolated little hero world. If my last TF is a guide, even a slower paced TF would probably freeze my 'puter if not my brain.

Feel free to camp out on the lawn just don't crush the Bluebonnets when you do.