Multi-group content is not the way.

I just have not honestly had much opportunity. Admittedly, if someone offers me a stop on a TF Id rather do them because I do find them more enjoyable, but Im not ruling out the fun factor of the Trials. Especially BAF because I can't really say at this point.

It's like saying I hate apples without ever eating one.

The other thing to keep in mind is that players who form leagues through turnstile (rather than joining pre-formed leagues) are, on average, more likely to be solo-oriented players. Solo-oriented players are more likely to play characters that are good at soloing.

The pre-formed leagues I've done have generally had a nice mix of support characters even given my "strategy" of inviting people on a first come, first served basis.

I usualy only play support. I don't know why, but they appeal to me a great deal so Im working on my support toons as well.

I think my main concern with Lambda is that while I know my shields work darn good and I can offer that type of support, the teaming window is really clunky to me. I am good with visual cues though so I can definately bubble people up quite nicely.

I think my issue with that particular trial is the running around aspect. I mean, people see the bright green arrows on their main team and follow theleader. It's instictive because of the game we have learned. Thus I fall into the trap of seeing someone in my team dropping and want to assist, especially in the large rooms in the second part. then I find myself alone in a room with people (Usually from my team) and a crapload of heavy hitting enemies.

Sure thats generally my fault, but I also and others also find the League screen to be extremely odd.

The League frame when displaying the entire league is made to benefit two types of players: the league leader (who can use it to identify ATs, switch people around and tell who is in trouble) and people with single target heals (who can use it to easily spot a dropping life bar).

For people with single target shield type powers the best option is to ditch the large screen and set up a focus tab where you can monitor buff status on those characters that really need it.

Just my $0.02.

Thats what I have been working on. Id like to see some changes though to the actual design of it.

I don't think it's such a wild supposition, given historical precedent, but in any case I lose nothing by being wrong. At my current pace, I won't have maxed out the existing advancement paths on even one character before I21. If at that time no more soloist-amenable advancement path seems to be forthcoming, I'll reconsider my options.

That said, there's considerably more room for solo monsters on Lambda than BAF, IMO. The temp power acquisition stage favors a team that can split up and take out multiple containers at a time.

Ah, fair enough .

I'm not looking for new friends, Taser. I like the friends I already have enough, and I don't buy into the social network society of tomorrow, where having 10 000 friends is a sign of great social status. Friends are not like underwear. I don't feel the need to change them every day. I don't feel the need to have loads of them. As a point of fact, one is enough for my tastes.

When I go out and run a TF, I'm not looking for friends, because I already have friends. That's not to say I haven't taken down people's names. Every so often someone will tell me what a great team-mate I was (no joke) and insist to put me on global friends. Being the softy that I am, I always agree. Only to never see this person log on again. Or, alternately, only to see this person log on again and never respond to my tells. Or, alternately alternately, only for that person to log on and constantly pester me to run the same TF over and over again.

You know how many times I've put people on my global friends list and had them contact me for something other than needing a warm body on their current team? Well, about a handful, I'd say. Last time I ran the Sewer Trial with Zamuel, a person chatted me up at Wentworth's, I forget what for, and we ended up trading globals. Unlike most other instances, said person actually WAS good for a casual conversation and did respond and did call, and I've ended up with an active global friend with whom I have not teamed a single time. In fact, I only saw his character for the span of 30 seconds in passing as I was doing other things. Everything else has been done over global chat.

I don't feel the need have dozens of friends. I have neither the time nor the mental capacity to deal with this many. If that makes me anti-social, then anti-social I will be. I far prefer that to bragging rights of people about how many friends they have that they can't stand.

This is a social game, yes, and I'm perfectly capable of being social and socialising. With a handful of people. I neither want nor indeed CAN socialise with the dozens of people I appear to be expected to in order to qualify for a non-outcast. But so be it.

You know what? You and people like you have spent so much time trying to disassemble and assassinate my character that I no longer care to defend it. Call it what you will. Go ahead, I can take it. Anti-social? Sure, I'll be anti-social. It's my own fault. OK, I can dig it, it's my own fault. I'm conservative and grump. That I am.

And none of that will stop me from stating my opinion and defending my right to hold that opinion, despite the efforts people go through to discredit that. As many times as I feel like in as many places as I like, because you cannot stop me.

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.

Well then, by all means, let's design this entire Massively Multiplayer game around your flawed definition of social.

Except this isn't a case of so be it. "So Be It" would be a person accepting that not every bit of content is for them and continuing on. "So Be It" is not launching a campaign on the forums to get a piece of content considered invalid or marked for removal because you personally don't like it.

A better term would be a pessimist. And the worst thing this game could ever do is cater entirely to a pessimist because they would never ever be happy.

So, Sam, whatever. You can't claim to not be antisocial in one breath and then openly confess to not needing friends and ranting about how having lots of friends is false or wrong in your mind the next. Because then I will no longer label you antisocial. I'll call you what you are: a pessimist trying to bring the ship down with him.

If you don't want to do raids, so be it. But look at reality, admit it's not for you, and actually go about your day. This campaign of "I don't like it so no one else should like it" is just dragging you down into the pits of unknowing self-parody.

I doubt you're stupid enough to believe what you're saying, so I must therefore conclude that you're making things up as you go along. I don't recall asking for an entire MMO to be designed around my desires, but of course, I'm stupid so it's likely I asked and simply forgot. It ain't easy being green, you know. But I'll tell you what - the moment I remember asking for what I clearly didn't ask for, I'll let you know so you can insult my intelligence without having to fabricate false stories.

So, "so be it" would be a person accepting the fact that he will be vilified by malicious posters like you and deciding to embrace it. You've gone out of your way to paint me as the bad guy, and - uncharacteristically for such a selfish, egoistical person as myself, I'm going to oblige and give you a bad guy. I know you feel unrepentant glee in smacking down dissenters with the game. After all, there was a reason you've been banned once already. It's a small miracle I haven't been banned yet, what with me being unlikable.

In fact, if you will allow me to appropriate a GLaDOS quote:

"All your other friends couldn't come either, because you don't have any other friends. Because of how unlikeable you are. It says so here in your personnel file: unlikeable. Liked by no one. A bitter, unlikeable loner whose passing shall not be mourned. "Shall not be mourned." That's exactly what it says. Very formal. Very official."

Ah, I feel right at home.

Yes, this one I have not heard in a while. "Catering to your wishes is bad for the game." This used to bug me so much, you know. I mean... Who are these people, so self-important that they would cast me out of MY game? But I'm starting to take a liking to it. I have consistently managed to be the guy whose every wish and desire is bad for the game. This has to be some sort of status symbol. After all, who else can claim to be the anti-Christ of game design like I can? You're probably the third person to say this to me, and now I'm sorry I didn't keep track.

Of course. I want to ruin everybody's fun. It's what I live for. Don't let my other posts fool you, I never play this game. I spend my entire time thinking up new ways to make the game worse. It's the little things that make me happy, really, like Evil Geko sending me a horrified PM way back when, appalled that I could dislike the Market.

Never you mind I didn't actually say either of the things you claim I said, but why ruin a good lie when it makes for a good story, right? After all, if you kept to the truth without fabricating your usual nonsense, you couldn't paint me as half the pariah that you do now, and who wants that? We don't come to the forums for entertainment... Well, no we, do. We come to humiliate each other in public, and in so doing entertain ourselves, don't we?

Ah, it's so refreshing for someone to finally read my mind and figure out what I was thinking. And I didn't even have to say it. In fact, I'm pretty sure I never said what you suggest I said, but that hasn't stopped you from putting words in my mouth before, so why stop now that you're on a roll?

I do appreciate the hypocritical "this is beneath you" comment, though, especially coming from someone who's scraping the bottom of the barrel of lies, personal insults and fabricated arguments, but that's what I like about you, Taser. No low is too low for you. You used to be the guy who'd make a complete *** of himslef to put down those trolls and I always wished I could be like you, but my good sense kept holding me back. Good thing I no longer have any good sense, though.

Because you and people like you have finally succeeded and turned the whole of the forums into one giant big joke. So, yeah, I figure why keep trying to save face when I'll just get insulted to my face anyway? Why keep trying to make reasonable arguments when people like you will skip them and put their own words in my mouth anyway? Why NOT have some fun of this big giant joke that you've cooked up? We come to the forums for entertainment, do we not? I might as well entertain myself.

Sure, once upon a time I might have entertained myself with intelligent discussion, but phht! Who cares about that when we can sling poo at each other, right? That's what you used to be good at. And, silly me, I honestly thought you'd changed, that you'd become a reasonable, level-headed person. I'm glad to see I was wrong. Now all we need is Excession and we can get the party started. I brought the gasoline!

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.

So we've gotten a little bit off topic.

I don't think anyone is claiming that there shouldn't be a more friendly small team/solo incarnate path. I think there should, I haven't read anyone saying that there shouldn't so I feel pretty comfortable saying that. I think I understand why people are pissed that the issue didn't have anything for them (even though I think it's a little bit of an over reaction). I think that people seriously just need to step back and realize that:

The devs will either add a more friendly small team content path of making your character an incarnate or they won't. In the mean time you can do one of two things: You can quit the game, and hope they add something to grab your interest in the future.

Or you can keep playing the same game that hasn't changed with the addition of i20.

This has created a storm of crap that is disproportionate with what has been added.

That, in point of fact, is all I've ever claimed to say - an alternate path to Incarnate... Err... Incarnatitits without having to go through huge raids, and simultaneously one which doesn't take multiple years to achieve on one character.

I can play the game AND post on the forums. Sometimes simultaneously.

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.

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.

I'm with you on this... don't get me wrong. I'll run an occasional trial, but when the missus and I play, we duo (second PC can't handle large groups).

So,
1) What do you consider a REASONABLE time to get the first tier of an incarnate unlock for solo play? How many hours of play? Should getting to the "level shift" tier be AT LEAST equivalent to what you'd expect if there was a "level 51"? Is it wrong for devs to add incentives to team play by making that progression faster?

2) What do you consider to be a reasonable amount of repeated content? Would you be satisfied with JUST a better reward drop rate and no new content for 50's? Should the devs make so much content for the solo-able path that they never have to repeat anything? Should they bother with at least one solo quest for each Trial, but you could run it dozens of times? Should you have a chance to fail, like the trials, and if so, how would you balance that against the varied soloing capabilities of the archetypes?

Ah, Mothership raids.

....Not only can you chat in between attacks, you can strike, queue up the next power, post lengthy debates on the boards, then repeat without ever interrupting your attack chain...

Gotta love them.

Tough question. Let's see if I can split those down to expectations:

Unlock: Easy, for whatever definition of "easy" you want to use. I use "Mender Ramiel," personally.

T1: Couple of days, if I put my mind to it. If I have to break it down to hours, "when I put my mind to it" means about a full work day, so give or take 15-20 hours.

T2: About as much as T1, plus a few hours on top for good measure.

T3: About a week on the outside, 'bout five days on the inside. Give or take.

T4: Out of my reach, and I can live with it.

Level Shift: I'd put that on the T2 power, myself. T1 is sort of "I have SOMETHING slotted in there," but T2 should definitely be "I have something GOOD slotted in there." T3 is already the "Sweet! Look what I got slotted!" and T4 should be the "I can't believe it's not yoghurt!" power. Gating the level shift behind the T3 power is... Not something I appreciate, as it shifts it from "expected" to "elite" content.

"Level shift tier," no, because the level shift tier is T3, and that I consider to be above and beyond. Getting the level shift itself, however, IS something I consider at least the equivalent of gaining another level. Swapping that to the T2 power would fix that and shut me up right fast.

As a general concept? No, not in the slightest. This has been true since time began. I typically take a day, sometimes two on a level from 35 up, yet a single 90-minute ITF can give me two levels and then some. And I have no problem with that. When I want to play at my own pace, I solo. When I want the fast road, I hitch a ride with a team forming up.

It's a question of how much this incentive is, and how much it's incentive for one approach vs. disincentive for another approach. I don't want to get into specifics here since I'll get crucified again, but suffice it to say that I feel there's room for improvement.

My interpretation of repeated content is, sadly, unrealistic given the realities of game design. Not needing to repeat the same task more than once isn't going to happen for Incarnates any time soon, unfortunately. Not if the developers keep investing so much in overly-intricate content at the expense of volume.

What would I consider reasonable, though? I don't know. A bunch of story arcs, I'd say. Say, something on the order of the Faultline storyline, and I mean cumulatively between Jim, Penny, the Doc and Agent Six. That's a total of, what? 20 missions? More like 15, actually. Or replaying something on the order of World Wide Red. Just a body of content that's long enough for me to not distinctly remember the beginning by the time I reach the end.

That's why I've been campaigning for Incarnate story arcs, and why I haven't made too much of a huff about how high-quality they are. It's been my impression that the less the developers try to wow us, the more interesting the stories they end up with. Faultline is a good example, as is the Rikti War Zone storyline. Sure, all of those are replete with gimmicks, but at their core, they're basic missions with a fairly simple, yet solid structure. I don't feel a pressing need for surprise timers that turn into secondary objectives which spawn waves of ambushes which turn into a cutscene which leads to a set-piece battle. These are good as keystones atop more normal stories against which to shine. We don't need story arcs entirely made up of gimmicks.

As such, my ideal would be for simpler missions to capped with a gimmick mission to form a wider selection of Incarnate story arcs, even if they take me days upon days to complete. As a point of fact, I would even accept something on the intellectual level of To Save a Thousand Worlds, if it meant a larger volume of content.

I'm not sure if "satisfied" is the right word, but it will shut me up, that much I can promise you. I dislike a great many things about a great many things, but I only ever bring up the ones that piss me off. While just better drop tables and faster progress would be enough to actually get me moving along, it's not what I'd ideally want.

Ideally, I'd like the former, but I'm not quite as deluded as I may seem, so I know this is not doable without a serious change in strategy, which at this point seems unlikely. Put it this way - I would like for there to be enough content to do with Incarnates so as to get at least one character to at least his Common powers without repeating any of it. Pie in the sky scenario.

More realistically, yes, I do believe the developers should bother with at least one story arc, but I'd want that to be one story arc per slot, not just per Issue. One arc to unlock one slot, just like we have one arc to unlock the Alpha slot. Between four different arcs, if they are of sufficient length or with sufficient padding, I could see myself tolerating the grind enough to not complain about it for quite some time.

I generally don't like missions that can be failed, but if the only option is between failable and "You cannot progress so you will NEVER finish!" then I pick failable, with progress on fail. This should still be balanced in some way to make people want to succeed, not just fail, reset, farm.

However, I do not know how to balance such content. I've always been notoriously bad at anticipating different AT's strengths and weaknesses, especially since I haven't played a fair few of them in years. This is one question I cannot answer.

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.

Having used it with Suzume, my FF defender, on a recent MSR... I 'd say it's very useful for anyone throwing individually-targeted buffs around for more than just their own team.

Being able to simply go down the list and toss bubbles on everyone as I came to them was absolutely ace. A BIG improvement over just pulling my camera view back and trying to catch people "on the move".

Then again, I tend to bubble-up EVERYONE (and everything- I even get the pets. XD), not just the squishies. Given that, I probably get more use out of it than people who are more specific.

If that is your concept of leadership you're doing it wrong.

Being a good raid leader is the ability to make your teammates feel super for contributing.

Thanks for the feedback. Nothing there that's too unreasonable, really- at least you KNOW when your ideal solution isn't feasible, and you have more realistic expectations when they aren't. Your proposed structure really would allow me & Cinder to get more out of the Incarnate system, actually.

Yes, people have indeed said pretty much that. Or am I missing the point of all the "you don't need the powers if you don't do the trials" and "then don't play, go roll another alt" or "leave then" posts? I don't understand the rationale behind it either, unless they're either afraid that if a reasonable solo option was available nobody would want to play with them, or they're the kind of people who just like to gloat.

Who's being anti-social for wanting a better solo-option for Incarnate progression? I see some ridiculous character assassination of Samuel Tow earlier in this thread, but it's obvious to me that he seems actually quite sociable.

I have nothing against the new i20 raids and I will join one when I feel like it. However, it's not something I want to do all the time. Personally, yeah... I have a couple social disorders; manic-depression and agoraphobia. Both of these make it very easy for me to grow tired of people and I just want to slink off and do my own thing for a while. This doesn't stop me from teaming or raiding, I just don't want to have to do that all the time. There needs to be an alternative to Incarnate progression other than that hilariously prohibitive shard and thread conversion.

If this was on Virtue, I may have been there. (Vector Alpha, KM/SR.)

I have been on that team multiple times on virtue this past weekend.

I think "that team" is happening on every server, to some degree or other.

I've only been on a couple of Lambdas where we got all of the acids and all of the doors were taken care of immediately. Most of the time, we get all of the acids, but at least 1 or 2 doors remain. Last night it was one. After explaining where to find the power on League chat, it still took us 2 extra chambers destroyed outside before someone who was paying attention got the acid and used it. Either the powers aren't granting consistently, or people just aren't paying attention to League chat. I'm betting on the latter.