The I20 Incarnates Grind: Am I Missing the Point of Resurrecting My 50?

But raid content requires large communities of players who can coordinate with each other. CoH is full of casual players. We live on PUGs. This new content is disaster for PUGs and thus inaccessible to casual players.

To make things worse, they helpfully gave us a queue to form PUGs for the trials, which is the same as helpfully building a chute to show cattle the route into the slaughterhouse. You'd think that if you were given a system to randomly group people together for content, the content would be the sort that random people could handle. But...no.

This is just stunningly bad design.

You are assuming that this content is designed for the majority of the player base in mind. Does it send a mixed message as to what kind of player the content is designed towards? Absolutely!

In my opinion, the feedback from people quitting, and filling out the survey coupled with the desire of a few existing players to have an endgame spurred the design direction for Incarnate content.

I brought this up in beta as to why was there so much resistance to teaming with PUG players for the trials from many of the beta testers? Many argued that they didn't want to fail the trials. If that is the case doesn't that mean the content may be too hard? The retort from many beta testers was it is easy once it is learned? So which is it? Confused yet?

This is pretty much how I feel (except that I didn't give a crap about increasing my 50s' powers). As far as I'm concerned, this is Issue 20: New Helicopters in Nerva. I'm sure plenty of people will be along to tell you to l2p, though.

Correction, new arachnos helos in Longbow bases. Longbow must be on a strike or something...

They so conveniently forget the raw power that is the incarnate abilities that they are soon to be getting..............

Yeah. They can't even get THAT right. I mean, when people want to go to northern Nerva, they're usually going either to use Operative Naylor's portal or to Thorn Isle. So why not put the helicopter on the Primeva beach? I expect better placed helicopters in issue 21!

In issue 21 helicopters will not exist unless we bow down the well to allow us to use them again.

Yesterday, I ran 10 Lambda and 1 BAF, all of them were successful. Reward Tables were Common x3, Uncommon x4, Rare x2, and Very Rare x2. I also got 2 extra Uncommons becasue I got the Synchronized badge in Lambda, and that otherone in BAF for not desactivating the towers. Got 2 Empyrean Merits, and around 60 Astral Merits. 9 of the Astral were from winning Lambda since you get an Astral instead of an Empyrean when you got one for the day for that trial. 2 other Astral Merits came from getting back again the Synchronized badge in subsequent runs. Also got around 70 Threads from defeats, well 10 of those were Shards converted at the 10:10 ratio.

10 Lambda runs unlocked Interface and Destiny, that could be easily slotted with Rares with the drops I had. Judgement slot is unlocked at 12% with just one run of the BAF. The only Inf I paid was 2.5 millions for converting 10 Shards to 10 Threads.

Now, this defender has the Interface Rare Reactive, and the Destiny Rare Clarion. In the trials, I am level 50 (+2), I do more damage, and I have perma-mez protection. And from there, it gets easier and faster, and as more people get Incarnate Shifts and powers, trials will be done faster. As people know more about them and what to expect it will go faster.

All of this don't have a time limit, with the exception of the Empyrean Merit on a 20 hrs timer for each trial.

/returns from snack bar with bucket of popcorn and sodas sits next to gemini and offers a drink

So has the flame war started yet? This should be fun to watch!

Now to the OP.. Seriously? So two new TRIALS that are designed to go no longer than 1 hour is GRINDY to you? But prior to this repeating the same TFs (STF, ITF, KTF, and LGTF.. LRSF and BSF if you are a villain or Rogue/Vigilante) wasn't? I pulled out my main yesterday and between converting shards to threads since she has close to 2 Billion in INF thanks to all those TFs she did managed to open and slot my Interface power and start working on Destiny. I did two successful Lambda Trials, one failed attempt, one that I Dc'd on and was over by the time I got back and another where we didn't have enough players to complete so we just quit after getting as far as we could safely. I earned enough threads that I already have what I need to slot Destiny as well. Now that's only Tier one of course but 1 DAY.. 1 new power and enough salvage to slot 2 powers? Doesn't feel like any more of a grind than anything else I have done recently.

I like the Lambda trial. It seems well thought out and is fun to do. You fight your way inside and then take out the security forces to gain access to the interior. Then scramble to complete your mission before the reinforcements, led by Maurader, arrive and finally battle the Praetor and his troops to complete your assignment. Its challenging, requires team work and while it has a one hour time limit can easily be completed in less than that amount of time.

Here's another tip for you.. While completing a trial, either of them, and accomplishing all the objective does add extra awards there is nothing stopping anyone from quitting early. The one trial I didn't complete was that way. We started with 9 players and quickly wound up with 7. We decided to go ahead and do what we could and managed to clear the outside of the compound and then wipe out the elite boss gun emplacements and the forces inside the walls. At that point we had a ton of trouble dealing with the EB Security team to get to phase 2 so we all just quit. We earned XP toward opening up out slots and threads just like the people on the successful ones do. The whole thing probably lasted like 10 minutes and I think I gained close to 20% of what I needed to open up Interface. So do just that part 5 time and you earned a new power without ever seeing Maurader!

Right. i20 (and the idea of incarnates as a whole) is an attempt to capture a kind of player the game has previously had trouble retaing- one who loves to repeat "challenging" content that requires a great deal of team coordination for randomized rewards and enjoys more complex crafting systems than what we had previously.

In my opinion, this is a horrible wrong turn in the design of the game, but that doesn't mean it isn't working as intended or isn't "done right." As Razoras notes, the real argument, if there is to be one at all, is whether it should have been done in the first place and whether it should continue to dominate development after i21 (which I imagine is too far along now to change), not whether it's "too hard" the first day after release.

And if you still have to do them ten times, that's too much repetition for me. I'll be giving these a try this weekend, but unless I love them, I can't see myself doing ten (or even eight) runs of the same thing in any reasonable time frame without getting astoundingly bored. The list of things I've done ten times within the past two years is probably the LGTF and the ITF. And I don't tend to love anything that can be vaguely described as raid content. I'm fine with difficulty, but a boredom tax isn't my thing.

I fully expect the doomcrying to calm quite a bit in a few weeks as people work out tactics for these encounters and get geared up.

Right now the trials are being run mostly by folks with only Alpha slots unlocked. But a couple of months from now, I'd expect teams to include a healthy dose of players that have other slots unlocked and equipped, which will make the whole encounter much smoother for everyone.

This too will improve over time. We have only the first 2 trials so they're unavoidably grindy. But they're going to be adding additional trials over the next several issues. I'd expect that next year players will have many more options which will reduce the grind. You'll still need to put in a lot of hours but you'll be able to choose from a wider variety of content.

I'm going to agree and disagree. I agree people might be overreacting about the difficulty in most instances. I disagree it will be a couple of months...more like a few weeks, and then people will be rolling through these without much issue.

I agree, on both points. And most of what I would say has already been said. I had small hopes to begin with for this issue: I only wanted to get the Cryo Judgment power on my 50 ice blaster, and the Ion Judgment power on my 50 elec blaster. But considering I never cared to get any Alpha higher than a T1, those characters would be little more than passengers on these trials, even after a handful of people learn how to lead them well.

Issue 20: Incarnates certainly lives up to its name, in terms of what came in it. Really the only thing given to the level 1-49 players was a new TF/SF and a new team UI. And though yesterday I was feeling a bit like an angry Taz from Looney Tunes, today I am going to say: that's fine. The veteran players who were perhaps getting frustrated that their 50s had nothing new to do can now grind out their new powers and strategies to their heart's content.

"Veteran players getting bored and quitting" is not the only reason games lose population. You also have to offer things that may draw in new players, or draw back deactivated players, and i20 caters to neither. There's nothing to advertise to newbies and say, "You know that thing that you couldn't do and therefore kept you from trying this game? Now you CAN do it!" And let's be realistic: this new content is confusing and convoluted even for players who have been paying attention. The amount of new things a returning player would have to read and comprehend is daunting and probably a turn-off.

Issue 21 needs to change the pace. As I said, we have now released half the incarnate powers, so those players who want to take their 50s to the next level can do so. Let's temporarily switch our focus back to the 1-49 game. I'm talking about finishing power customization (priority 1 in my head), changing up some existing zones (i.e. mending Faultline/Boomtown, taking back Terra Volta/Crey's Folly, making a zone event around The Zig, etc.), and other things based in content that already exists. Strengthening the foundation of this game, before we put newer stuff on top.

In improvisational acting, there is something called "Shiny Penny Syndrome." The improv group continues to add outrageous characters/circumstances to a scene (moving from one 'shiny penny' to another), all of which get a laugh, but you end up with a scene that is SO outrageous that it makes no sense and just collapses on itself. Let's not let that happen to this game.

Too late in the development cycle for Issue 21 to be a change of pace. Incarnate content has been, and will be more than likely the focus as it was hinted recently with two new trials.

Want to highlight this.

When I run the ITF (for instance) for the third or fourth time, it's because I felt like "Hey, I'd like to do so." Yes, I get some people like grinding it over and over for badges or whatnot, but there's nothing about the ITF that, in and of itself, is designed around that grind. There's no "You must repeat the ITF (and have a good chance at failing) to be able to deal with the ITF with a chance of success." And there's no hint that "Finish the ITF successfully and build up your power, because future content will need you to be a successful, built-up ITF Runner!"

Repeat because it's fun, repeating on an "as I feel like it" basis? Great.

Repeat to get gear to repeat and do better to get required gear to repeat to do better? Not fun.

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Joy...

I don't care if they release more incarnate content, as long as there is also an effort to cater to more casual players and toons pre-50.

On the plus side, this whole incarnate push has been a great motivator for me to discover the vast amount of story arcs in the 1-50 game.

I am inclined to agree that ironically it is pushing me to make more alts, and do as many of the story arcs 1-50 as I can. But this may be a start of a stark divide that is being forged, but too early to tell for sure.

2 new raids and 2 new 8 mans... The 2 new 8 mans are gonna get one shotted by most groups. How many times can you redo the same thing over and over if you always win and never get much more rewards out of it. Look at how quick most people blow through the first "god" mission of the alpha unlock. No fail, + no rewards = no point in doing it more than a few times.

The ITF was fun for me until it became so easy that it can be facerolled by almost any team of 8. Now the apex and tin mage are more fun to me because they require a bit more than run in and win. But you know what the great thing is? If you want run in and win its all there still!

We got 3-5 months before new content comes out. What else ya gonna do? Want more content more often, everybody needs to find 10 friends that dont give money to COH and get them to give money to COH.

This is how MMOs work people, its not a hard concept is it?

I didn't say anything about difficulty. I said that I dislike the necessary repetition.

It's a limitation of the genre. Making content takes exponentially more time than consuming it. I'd wager that if they could have possibly done so, the devs would have had the whole shebang, Alpha to Omega, with oodles of trials and an entire new set of 1-50 content, in the updater yesterday.

So ... assume the BAF is just as fun as the ITF. You are saying that because the BAF has accumulating rewards that net you a big new juicy power its a grind. But because the ITF didnt have a nifty power after you ran it 10 times its not a grind?

I think ITF rewards (merits) lead to more toons with IOs which made the ITF easier, which means the ITF is a grind no matter how fun it is either right? Becuase when the ITF first came out we had much crying about how it was too hard to kill the AV at the end.