Discussion: City of Heroes Issue 20: Incarnates is now live!

Here's a list of issues that have been bugging me so far.

- A trial cannot start without the whole league on the same map. This might seem reasonable, but there aren't that many coop zones, so server populations are jam-packed into the few we have. Full instances of RWZ and Pocket D make forming up a nightmare in coordination on busy servers. Furthermore, these ultra-crowded instances become unstable and laggy.

I started hijacking Midnighter Club, and friends followed suit. Then two MCs spawned, forcing some of us into Cimerora. What's next, having to form outside the BAF physically for BAF?

- I cannot move league members who are not in my instance. I cannot make changes to a team whose leader is not in my instance. Annoying QoL-wise.

- Entering a league into a trial requires everyone to confirm a popup window. Those who don't click enter (afk, confused, etc) hold up the whole league and get left behind eventually. Why this design? Leaving behind someone who does not confirm within a brief time window is a poor default option. In addition, there's nothing a league leader can do (e.g. when someone disconnects) to interrupt the timer.

- League disbands upon entering a trial and reforms inside. The team leader who loads in first gets league leadership. Team order gets all jumbled up. None of that disruption should be necessary for a league starting a new trial.

- League chat is added to help tab by default and nowhere else. I don't see the logic.

- The helper/help-me system is a pest. Can't the popup show up only once per account? The new name colours also contravene existing colouring conventions. It's disorienting trying to tell apart players who supposedly want to be helped (many I've seen have chosen that as a joke) from purple-con NPCs at a glance.

- Another popup is the team UI one. This one is extra-persistent, rearing its head randomly on zoning multiple times on the same character.

- BAF has a higher minimum threshold than Lambda and is generally harder, but it gives much less Incarnate experience. A full Lambda yielded 20+% Interface progress, and a full BAF put me at 5% Judgement progress. Teams were balanced on both counts. Something is not right here.

- Both BAF and Lambda are lousy for defeat drops. Multiple teams create extra competition, each cutting into the other's rewards. Reward harmonization and reward pool bonuses should be considered.

Loving the new incarnate content - I'd like to see level shift affect maximum storage the way leveling does.

Well I'm ready to give a big finger to the new content, mainly because it looks like in order to force us to play the new content, the devs have nerfed the shard droprate to almost nothing so we can't hord them to convert to threads. That is just wrong on so many levels.

I doubt anyone is still reading this thread, but just in case. At least this way I can feel like I posted feedback/comments somewhere relevant.

It's a good thing I (mostly) enjoy the new trials, because like so many of us I've seen the grounds of BAF and Lambda several dozen times now. I say "mostly" because the warehouse phase of Lambda gives me conniptions, at least until level shifts are slotted. Anyway, in summary I love the new stuff; the toys are cool, the animations are great, and while the process of getting them is grindy, it could certainly be worse. The trials strike a pretty good balance on difficulty; not perfect, but not bad, with some of the tougher objectives associated with the badges, which makes good sense. I have exactly two concerns:

First, the recharge on the Judgement nukes is insane. It makes no sense. These powers are better in practically every way than a conventional nuke in area, number of targets, and secondary effects. They don't drain all your endurance. They're generally awesome, and any 50 can get one. Yet they recharge in what, 90 seconds? By contrast, the Lore pets are pretty good but recharge in 15 minutes. Seriously, my Dismantler is available for five of every fifteen minutes, but my room-clearing nuke is up every second or third group? That's not reasonable in a world where any Scrap or Tank or Brute can carry one as well as having access to their entire usual range of powers. I love everything else about the Judgement nukes, but I should be seeing them about once per mission at most.

Second, the mixing of Incarnate powers with older content is not a good thing. In general, the new powers are generally great in the context of BAF and Lambda. Probably also in Apex and Tin since those are also Incarnate-themed, but ... not so much in ITF. The ITF was obviously, simply not designed for those power levels, for a group where (again) every Brute and Scrap is carrying his own Judgement nuke, Destiny epiphany, and so on.

Specifically, the game needs to establish more of a boundary between Incarnate tasks and non-Incarnate tasks. At a minimum, the TF dialog needs an option to disable Incarnate powers, or Incarnate powers above Alpha, or whatever (in the same way that you can already disable temp powers). If the entire team is composed of Incarnate-powered characters then honestly, it can be seriously fun to bring massive ruin to the Cimerorans. However, when only one or two of the team are so powered, it can be very obnoxious when they utterly dominate the action, having most of the fun, leaving the rest of the team for miscellaneous clean-up duty and ambush-catching.

A mixed Incarnate and non-Incarnate group can absolutely destroy the balance of damage and support archetypes that addicted me to this game in the first place. In the BAF it isn't a huge deal (though it bothers me a little that there's so much less need for kin boosts, force fields, fortitude, etc), but for ITF, LGTF, etc., it's a problem.

Think of it in the same way as the exemplar system. If a level 50 could remain level 50 in a Manticore or Numina TF while everyone else was around 40, the results would be silly. Nothing could threaten the 50, and the rest of the group would struggle to contribute. Therefore, higher-level characters are necessarily exemplared to an appropriate level. It's not a flawless approach, but in general it makes things more even. With Incarnates, we have the same situation. Perhaps entering an ITF "exemplars" away Incarnate powers, or Incarnate powers above Alpha, or at least the team leader is given the option.

Whichever. But ask yourselves, developer guys ... can a TF team really maintain any kind of healthy balance or mix of ATs when some of the team are 50 and others are operating at a much higher level? The answer is no, there really is no healthy balance without some kind of mechanical restraint to make things at least a little more even, so a conventionally-powered team isn't so frustrated by that Brute they invited, the one who has all his personal defenses plus a nuke that's much better than the Blaster's, regen debuff in all his attacks, fast regeneration from Rebirth, etc. etc.

Thanks,
FCM

FlyingCodeMonkey, your points are very logical and consistent, which is a big thing with me, but I couldn’t disagree with you more, at least as far as what I enjoy personally.

I’ve played a few MMOs other than CoH, and there is one thing in common with almost all of them = When you level up / gear up / or otherwise power up, old content becomes grey, easy and obsolete. If you need a drop from what used to be a tough 72 person L60 EverQuest Velious Ring War (EQ players will know what I mean by that), if you still want that ring later, a team of 6 L75 players can do it.

There’s no scaling down of players. No powering down. You kill the crap out of grey mobs that have no hope of hitting you. The steps you had to take to avoid the AoEs or ambushes or whatever, are completely ignored, because, they are so scaled down by the +15 levels that you just can’t be bothered.

It becomes obsolete, easy, and there you go.

I honestly don’t see why CoH has kept to that mentality that everything has to stay par, and players scale down, and nothing goes grey in missions / TF. I really don’t. Outside of missions, if you want to hit Judgement on L1 Hellions in Atlas, you can. But you hit a mission flashback or Task force, and unlike pretty much every other MMO out there, CoH scales you down.

Personally, I thought it was about time that I could bring an Incarnate L50 to an ITF, blow the you-know-what out of it, and call it a day. In fact, I’m still not happy about the “level shift in incarnate trials” unlike a pure +1 level, that you get, almost everywhere else, MMO wise.

Now the conclusion I get from this way of doing things, isn’t very positive at all, but I hope it’s logical. See if you agree that it’s logical or not.

In another MMO, say, EverQuest, they release an expansion for, say, +5 levels. They also give you 5 levels worth of content, which includes solo, team and raid play. The devs there totally expect that 5 levels of old zones will become grey and easy. If you still want the old items, either because there’s a hole in your armor progression at that slot, or you like the click power, or you just feel nostalgic, you can. It’s easy. It’s trivial. It’s obsolete. But you’ve got 5 more levels of stuff to do with new zones, raids, etc…

Why do you suppose CoH is (my words) “terrified” of seeing a grey STF or LRSF? Why are they giving us +1 level “only in new content”? instead of the +1 level period, of most games?

For me, it’s because there isn’t that much content. Sure, you can add “yet”, and that’s fair, but most MMOs release levels, and content, in a fairly inclusive manner. Here? We get Alpha, and 2 TF. Then, we get 4 more slots, and 2 trials. They can’t afford to make the old stuff obsolete because they just don’t have enough things to DO as an Incarnate if STF, LRSF, and all that becomes grey.

Personally, though, that’s a huge problem. I’m not sure why CoH doesn’t have the capability that other MMOs have. EQ, WoW, lots of other games don’t go with the “+1-2 levels in this spot right here.” They give you 5-10 levels, 5-10 levels worth of content, and that’s that. I love CoH, don’t get me wrong, but it does seem a little nickel and dime operation in contrast, when you have to curtail levels, because there isn’t the content to match it.

So yes, I was looking forward to blowing through ITF with my incarnate stuff. I was hoping each incarnate slot was a “real” level shift i.e. that I’d be doing LRSF as a L55. And more importantly, I was hoping that with a L55 Incarnate, I’d be getting another tier of Solo, Team and Raid for “L51-55” that matched in quality and amount what we got when we went from 45 to 46, and got all the new 46-50 content.

Now, you can easily say, “We’re not EQ / WoW” and that’s fair. But I personally look at what’s out there, and it is fairly transparent to me, that there just isn’t the resource (at this moment) to give us L51-55 in content. I just don’t think that artificially stripping away incarnate powers for old content is the answer. For me, the answer is, instead of 2 trials, have 5-10 arcs (sounds about right, 1-2 arcs per origin for every 5 levels) of solo, 5 new TF and 5 new Trials per group of 5 levels added. And I’d put my money where my mouth is and shell out some nice cash to make that happen.

Because, otherwise, as it stands, it feels like in 3 years, I’ll be getting a bunch of new powers, incarnate and otherwise, sure, BUT they’ll only or mostly work in the new content, and I’ll STILL be struggling in a pickup group in LRSF instead of blowing away 5+ Year Old content, as I would in any other game. Especially if they implement things the way you've described. RIGHT NOW, I can use Judgement in ITF, but if I understand your post well, you think it shouldn't. Or did I misunderstand? And I'm afraid devs might go that route.

Now, I’m not at all saying you’re wrong. Your points are actually quite consistent and accurate in how to preserve old content. I’m just saying it’s time (for me, and I think others) to wave goodbye to it, like in most games and look forward to the new, and not artificially preserve the old. Because some negative feedback about "why isn't it a level shift instead of an incarnate shift" seems to support that.

Now, just because another game does it, doesn’t make it right. But it doesn’t make it wrong either. I’m looking forward to a ridiculously easy TO ME (emphasis mine) grey LRSF / STF. I just hope I’ll see it someday.