Multi-group content is not the way.

My current major worry is that I honestly and genuinely have not enough faith left to hope, but that doesn't mean I won't be patient. As I've said earlier in the thread, I still have other things to do, and disappointing as it may be to find an end-game system almost entirely devoid of things that motivate me, I'll just busy myself rerolling more Blasters.

You have no idea how much legowork I created for myself with this. Three 50s, two in their 40s and I forget how many more... I won't have a chance to make genuine new characters for some time. But that's OK. The old characters were and are great. It'd be nice to play them again.

So, when's that Vanguard pack coming out?

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.

If you've played the game long enough, it's not a difficult thing to assess. Nor is it difficult to demonstrate, if there's any doubt about it. Just hang back for a couple of mobs and watch.

I've been playing this game consistently for almost seven years now. I know when my character is contributing in very important, specific ways (even if my teammates don't). I know when my character is pulling their weight, even if their contribution isn't particularly distinctive (I love themed teams, for example: all Defenders, or all Stalkers, or all Dual Blades, or all Stormies).

I also know when my character's participation is clearly superfluous.

Now, when that happens, it still might not bother me. I still might be contributing, just as a player, with organization and/or knowledge and experience. Or, if I'm teamed with friends, really, who cares? Sometimes I'm being carried, sometimes I'm the one doing the carrying. What ultimately matters is the company, so don't sweat it, right?

I do have a line, though. If I feel as if a particular character is being routinely marginalized, that does start to get on my nerves after a while. I doubt anyone likes feeling like their character is a fifth wheel. Some of us just have a greater tolerance for that sorta thing. But I do believe we all have a line about it, somewhere.

There was a point in the early days of the game when Invulnerability Scrappers were well and truly broken. They didn't need anyone, could rip through just about anything. As someone who strongly favors support characters, just seeing an Invulnerability Scrapper join the team was enough to make me cringe, as it generally meant my role had just become irrelevant. There was one memorably egregious situation where three of us (two Defenders and a Tank) got to lay around defeated in the reactor room while one of these Scrappers soloed the rest of the respec trial (yes, this is back when it was actually difficult). <sarcasm> Woo, what fun! </sarcasm>. That's an example of when my own line was crossed.

With this Incarnate content, the developers are risking a reemergence of these skewed dynamics. I'm starting to see them in the actual trials; the gap between the Haves and the Have Nots is becoming easier to detect. Not a concern, really, because the trials are entirely about closing that gap anyway.

On the other hand, outside the trials is potentially a very different story. While most of the people I know are doing these raids, some aren't. Outside the trials, those people are getting to hang back and spectate while the Incarnates on their teams giddily revel in their power and blow through everything. That's gonna get old, fast.

Well, they should just do the trials then, right? Sure. Except, maybe that's not so easy an answer. Maybe they have clunky systems and they crash in the raids. Maybe they don't like being surrounded by strangers. Maybe they're only playing during off hours. Or maybe they just don't like the style of the content, which, frankly, is entirely valid.

While I don't subscribe to the sentiment that launched this thread, I do understand it, and I recognize that a lot of people share it. Yah, they might be a minority, but I'm willing to bet they're a pretty significant minority. I'd rather not see them shut out.

Due to the scope and long-term impact of the end game system, I would like to see it be as broadly accessible as possible. While I don't agree that "multi-group content is not the way", I would agree that: multi-group content should not be the only way. Not for a system such as this. Its influence on the rest of the game is too great.

And for my own sake too. While I've enjoyed the raid stuff so far, the idea of now repeating that content with the other 50s in my roster isn't terribly attractive. I really hope some alternate paths are being planned. Not just for the sake of the different playstyle preferences that are out there, but also for the sake of variety and freshness.

It is only in the devs hands. I cannot make it more worthwhile, but they can. Currently it isn't even close. That's not a judgment call. It is a simple observable fact. To claim otherwise is delusional.

"Give me your money or I shoot" is not two options and neither is the current incarnate system. Calling something an option does not make it one. Nor does crossing your fingers and pretending really hard.

I recall a similar instance - the bugged Smoke Grenade of old. Remember that one? This time it was me actually using the broken character, though. I had an AR/Dev Blaster who could basically floor enemy to-hit and act like a defence-capped Scrapper with a Blast set and Trip Mines.

On several occasions, a friend of mine asked me if I could please stop using Smoke Grenade, because he felt like the Scrapper he kept bringing to our teams was being rendered pointless when I could do more damage than him AND have better protection. I don't remember his exact words, as that was quite a while ago, but his displeasure surprised me at the time. It doesn't surprise me any more, however, as he did a good job of explaining his side of the problem.

I've seen this happen before with other people, as I've mentioned. Some are more tolerant, but a fair few will only last about a single mission being SKd up, say, 30 levels and feeling like they can't kill ****, if you'll pardon my language. The solution is usually for them to swap characters to something higher-level, or for us to do their mission with me exemplaring 30 levels down. I've been in such a situation, myself, and it's surprising how alluring the prospect of doing household chores becomes when you stop having fun in-game. Why, I could be doing the dishes, or washing my hair, or rearranging the bookmark in my browser like I've been meaning to for some time. Yeah "I think I'll take a break for now, guys. Take care!"

I'm not really making an argument here. More so I'm providing a bit of anecdote as supplement.

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.

The problem here is that if the game throws content at a team for which you personally are indispensable, the odds rise dramatically that substituting you for someone else would radically increase the probability of failure. In other words, it is an extremely fine line between making you noticably useful and making you necessary. Suppose you only played tanks. The only way for you to experience the sense that you were always a strong contributor would be for the content to require tanks. That means if that team had taken a blaster instead of you, it would have a much harder time. It would have a higher probability of failing.

Unless your game design has a level of design precision I've never seen before, not just in a game but anywhere, inclusivity and notoriety are mutually exclusive targets to aim for. The more noteworthy you make something, the more noteworthy you make its absence.

In engineering, this is known as the rule that resilience and efficiency tend to be similarly mutually exclusive. Resilience usually requires redundancy. Redundancy is inefficient. But it is more tolerant.

They are adding new ones. They showed a bit of one they'll be in the next issue. They also mentioned that it'll have an optional stealth component for stalkers and others with like abilities.

Basically you want to be the super man the single person saving the whole world. Right? Well this you shouldn't have come to the CITY OF HEROES. You should have gone to Smallville where there is less competition.
You want recognition proof of your worth thin you'll have to get it in the same way you would in the real world. And it's not hitting harder or saving the say it's by being better and proving your worth and Lead!
I never felt more important in this game than when my strategy earned my team the Baf Strong and Pretty Badge. It matched or exceeded the euphoria I felt when I first got my toon up to lvl 50.
I'm sorry if you lost the since of the game is all about "Super Bob" feeling you used to have. But even in comics things shift and change.
Once they were content on having "SUPER BOB" rush in exchange some witty banter with enemies and fly away.
Thin for a while things changed, expanded, and they focused on more of a group dynamic.
Thin after a while they split back into individuals with complex background and relevant individuals that expanded the caricatures beyond just the, "SUPER BOB SAVES THE DAY!!!", bit that previous existed making them into not just super beings but real people to.
The same kind of ebb and flow exists everywhere even in this game. The developers can't work on everything all the time. They more or less throw darts (ideas) at a board and see what sticks. Thin they try to group these ideas into a common them and call it an issue. So yes with this issue it is all about teams. But maybe next issue it'll be all about solo work. Maybe the next issue will be all about pizza or bacon.
There have bin a lot of other issues where there haven't bin any added solo or team content did you complain about all them?
Comments suggestions these are helpful things. But criticism and complaints? Well odds are they are taking that old artist advice and simply ignoring them which make your opinion roughly meaningless. You want to make the system better thin tell them how write a story give an idea. Don't just give a detailed explanation as to why YOU don't like it. Tell them how to make it better for everybody. Because the fact is, that since so many people are seeking out against and I have read nary a line of support means that you are only thinking of you and that is just next to nothing.

That's more a failure in the design of the TF than a commentary on the utility of a specific powerset. Just because a specific team configuration can beat a broken encounter doesn't make it any less broken. Some people got MoLGTF when the green mitos were broken, after all.

In the dynamic I'm starting to see hints of, it's not going to matter what AT you have. The only thing that will matter is whether or not you have all the Incarnate goodies.

For all these years, my main has been a Defender, her survival forever chained to a dependence on those little purple chicklets, no matter how powerful she'd otherwise become.

Now, at long last, that chain has been broken. It's glorious. It's liberating. I'm giddy. I taunt Carnie lllusionists and Chief Mesmerists just to revel in the freedom of it. There are all sorts of traditionally vexing mobs that I really can't wait to smack around now.

At the same time, though, I recognize that this new level of independence means no one else need protect me anymore. It diminishes someone else's potential contribution. And not only that, I can make that same contribution myself.

Rad? Yah, I've enjoyed the glory that is Rad. My Illusion/Rad has often hobbled opponents who were otherwise seemingly insurmountable. My Rad/Rad is still, to this day, the most disgustingly broken early game experience I've ever had (soloing red Igneous bosses at lvl 14? No problem!).

But, of my regular play group, at least--at least--four of us have gone down the Diamagnetic path with our mains. Rad? We won't need no steenkin' Rad! We gotchyer Rad right here in our attack chains! Ghost Widow, arguably the biggest threat in the STF (and consequently the biggest attraction for my debuffers) will be completely screwed just with the Incarnate stuff being thrown at her. Those debuffers need not come along for the ride any longer.

And I'm not sure if that's a bad thing or not. Sure, damage dealers are going to be doing stuff that they used to want me around for, but on the same token, I don't need their damage so much anymore either.

What worries me, however, are the Have Nots. What worries me is playing, say, an SKed character--level 35-40 or so--with a team full of people who all have these goodies. I used to be able to make some sort of meaningful contribution with such a character, but in these new dynamics? I might be lucky to get an attack off. Not too thrilled with the prospect of that. And what about my 50s who're not yet goodies-laden? Do I just make 'em exempsluts? I dunno.

Anywho, this is why I think the end game stuff needs to be very accessible, with multiple path options available to unlock these things. They don't have to be easy. They don't have to be as expedient as the trial path (though I do think they should be in the same general ballpark), but I think they should be out there. And sooner rather than later.

Two things, and both of them actually not new observations. The first one: if the problem is the team is killing so fast you don't even have *time* to act, then the team itself is just so much more powerful than the content that even if you were a full fledged incarnate it would make no difference. So this is not an issue of the haves and have-nots. Its an issue of power. And it existed pre-Incarnate. Invention-powered steamroll teams were and are doing basically the same thing: throwing so much firepower at the critters that any three of them were probably redundant. And even before inventions, there were steamroll teams. To make a visible contribution on these kinds of teams then and now, you had to be creative. People who are on these kinds of teams know what I'm talking about: "leapfrogging" is one way, where the team splits in two and each half starts engaging the spawn beyond the other half of the team, rather than everyone engaging the same spawn. This has a major advantage over splitting up: if there is a miscalculation, your backup is right behind you: if you have problems and aren't wiping out your spawn, reinforcements will be coming past you momentarily.

The second thing: when people say "I felt I made a contribution here, but I don't there" there is a lot of psychology to that statement not necessarily always reflected in reality. I recall a thread years ago where someone said they felt they were still making a significant contribution to their team even when they were -5. When I did the math based on their character (a scrapper) between degraded damage and degraded tohit I estimated they were doing about 1.5% of the total damage of the team. They insisted, however, that was a major contribution (and tossed in a "numbers aren't always correct" comment). Conversely, there are people now saying that if the team is level shifted and you're not, you're effectively worthless. That's a huge span on perspectives no game could possibly accommodate. The real question is what contribution were you really making in the first place with a level 35 Sked up to 50 before, and in what way do Incarnate powers dilute that contribution. I believe this is more a matter of degree than distinction. The difference between the team wiping out the entire spawn in the time it takes you to get off three attacks and the team now wiping out the entire spawn in the time it takes you to get off one attack is really minimal. The net result is the same: the target you were attacking would have been just as dead if you just stood there throwing snowballs at it. It just might have taken the team an extra second.

That has always been the case for teams with massive firepower. And if that is a problem, its not a problem that even more firepower solves. If a team doesn't need anything, there's nothing you can do to make yourself needed. Because they don't need anything. No matter how powerful a team is, if they need something that's a need that anyone with that thing can fill, no matter how much more powerful the team members are than they are. If they don't need anything, nothing you do can make them need you.


Incidentally, the best way to neutralize Ghost Widow has always been to buff the team's defense, not debuff her. Once she can't hit you effectively, her game is over. I've been on many runs where the only thing standing near her is my SR scrapper and the phantom army. She can't hit me, and she can't get a heal return off the PA. With her best trick neutralized, all you have to make sure about is she doesn't hold everyone else (not standing in her line of fire helps) and take her down like any other AV.

I agree wholeheartedly.

And this I completely disagree with. While obviously only the developers can change the game, whether it is "worthwhile" is entirely subjective, as this thread aptly demonstrates. Some love the new content, some hate it, some tolerate it.

To compare playing the game in anyway to a literal gun to your head is beyond absurd.

No, what I'm talking about is an issue of Haves and Have Nots. When a character's particular contribution to the team is suddenly covered by everyone else's new Incarnate goodies, that character is no longer required.

Of course, the character can then get outfitted with the same goodies, putting them back in the game, so to speak... but then you have this homogenization going on (not sure how I feel about that), as well as the power issue you've mentioned. And while, yes, that power issue has been around forever, it's looking like it might now become very wide-spread... much more prevalent than it's ever been before. That's one development I'm genuinely worried about.

I'm not talking about people's feelings. I'm talking about real dynamics and developments I'm seeing taking shape in the game right now, only one week after the introduction of the Incarnate trials. Characters who would've been contributing to the success of a team two weeks ago are now redundant. The Tanker who needed a Blaster to speed things up doesn't really need that Blaster anymore. The Blaster doesn't really need the Defender, and so on. My own Incarnated character's solo speed and efficiency has increased dramatically, and she's not even maxed out yet. Obviously, this is also going to impact her contribution on a team, and for every other Incarnate on the team that effect is multiplied.

In short, post-Incarnate play is shaping up to be very different from pre-Incarnate play, and I'm not convinced the two can comfortably coexist together. Which is why I'd like to see multiple paths available for making the transition.

The best way to neutralize Ghost Widow depends on who's joining the team and what characters they want to play. For me, debuffing Widow's brains out usually ends up being part of the strategy. Regardless, if she's dropped in a timely manner without anyone being smished in the process, it's sufficient enough for me. However, whether it's debuffs or buffs, the point is, with all the things Incarnate powers bring to the table, characters who traditionally provided such buffs and debuffs won't be necessary anymore.

Isn't that more of a spectator sport?

Wrong. Stop paraphrasing me. You're not good at it.

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.

This I can agree with. While I'm not a fan of feeling like a fifth wheel, there are few things more frustrating in a game than getting to the end of a TF and suddenly realising you didn't have the AT you needed to complete it to begin with, for the simple fact that few things are as frustrating as a situation where you CANNOT win after you've already committed. The new-style Hamidon is pretty much the prime example of this, especially as seen in the Lady Grey TF. Easy if you have the right ATs, kind of impossible if you don't. In fact, the Honoree's immunity to physical damage that he can sustain with great uptime kind of sort of screws teams that are heavy on physical damage and not very on other types, such as if you bring lots of gun and sword users. So, to this effect, I agree - the more "necessary" any one piece of the puzzle you make, the more people who don't have it feel screwed out of their game, and the more ye olde "holy trinity" of tank, healer, damage dealer rears its ugly head.

On the flip side, there are more ways for someone to be "needed" than the simple mechanical requirement that you have X number of Ys on your team or you needn't apply. I'm speaking from the standpoint of all-Blaster teams, just as an esoteric example, where no one Blaster really brings anything relevant to the table that the other Blasters can't duplicate or at least replicate. However, you need a certain critical mass of them in order for the team to function well, where enemies go down too fast to be a credible threat even to an AT with no defences to speak of. It has always been my experience that one Blaster alone is seriously screwed, whereas even so much as two Blasters playing together make the AT as close to easy mode as I've seen in quite a while. You can't exactly play like an idiot, but having the extra help really turns things around in ways that I can't quite explain with numbers.

What I'm saying is a person can contribute even absent of "you-restricted plot continuation button" mechanic that makes your presence mandatory, as opposed to desirable. The easiest example of doing it wrong that I can think of is simu-click missions. Yes, a second player on a mission with two simultaneous glowies is indispensable, but not quite for the right reason.

However...

This is the meat of the problem - content balance. It's been true for some time in this game that a team of eight is several times more powerful than content scaled for eight people. However, this is not universally true for smaller-team content. Absent of min-maxed builds, solo content is actually pretty well balanced for a solo player, and it scales well for two, three and even four people. I'm not saying it isn't "easy," but I am saying it at least feels like it requires everyone's participation. Maybe it's just anecdotal bias on my part because I generally tend to play with people who don't spend much time optimising, but in a duo or trio, you can usually tell when a person has gone AFK because things get noticeably harder. Not impossible, no, but harder.

On the flip side, I actually do enjoy a team comprised of subsections that can handle themselves even without help. Take a team of two Scrappers, for instance. Even a casual built Scrapper can usually handle the workload of "1.5 people" without much difficulty, so a team of two Scrappers fighting content scaled for two people can usually afford to split up, put their backs into it and still be relatively fine. My friends and I do this all the time, usually unintentionally when either I or my team-mate fall behind or grow impatient. So there's definitely merit to that. Or would be, were standard content not designed around the expectation that an entire team would focus on one objective.

I remember suggesting using a fight against a group of EBs instead of an AV encounter in large-team settings, and was promptly told that people would just gang up on the EBs one at a time and gank them while the enemy AI would spread its efforts and lose like a chump. And that may well be true. But it doesn't diminish the merit of, as you said, splitting the team. In fact, I actually do enjoy tasks that require the team to split into smaller groups and coordinate between themselves. That way, one only has to account for one or two other people, in addition to his overall objectives, as opposed to an entire full team. I'd actually like to see more game objectives emphasise splitting the team, such as the generator phase of the Sewers Trial.

However, at the end of the day, I'm still biassed. Few things turn me off the game more than the phenomenon I like to call "a soup of effects." When you get a large team fighting a large group of enemies, your screen turns into what resembles a multicoloured soup swirling around in a bowl. It displays shapes and motions, but they have no meaning that I can distinguish, and the only way for me to get through it is to employ tunnel vision by auto-targeting whatever is close and cycling attacks. Not a very fun experience. As such, I'm always in favour of objectives that lower the scale of the skirmish I'm immediately involved in without necessarily lowering the scale of the overall campaign. Call it information overload if you must.

It's pretty obvious that Trials aren't for me, and that's fine. I'll sit this whole thing out and wait for content that's more for me, instead.

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.

What?

How the hell can someone else decide if something is worth it to YOU?

And you're calling it an observable fact that it is someone else's responsibility to decide that for you?

That is, to be perfectly blunt, the dumbest thing anyone has said in this thread.

I'll give you an example.

I have a collectible coffee mug, but I don't collect coffee mugs. To ME, that collectible mug is worth no more than any other coffee mug I would drink coffee out of. However, to someone who collects coffee mugs, that mug may be worth much more than that, especially if it is the last mug they need to complete a set. I wouldn't pay very much for that mug, because it isn't worth much to me, but that mug collector may pay many times the price I would to get it.

Now, using your logic, that mug collector would get to decide what that mug is worth to me, and dictate the price that I would be willing pay for it.

Different things are worth different amounts to different people. No one can decide what something is worth to someone else.

All the devs can do is give us the content, they can't decide what that content is worth to us. And the only "observable fact" happening here is that different people have different ideas of what this content is worth. If your "theory" were true, it would be worth exactly the same to all of us, because the devs would have decided it is. This thread itself is pretty convincing evidence of that not being the case.

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.

Now, I can't say for sure because I don't have characters with a lot of KB powers, but are the minions in the escaping prisoner phase of the BAF affected by Force Bubble?

If so, you can go to the set of 5 doors to the north and be extremely useful, because your Force Bubble will keep them from ever leaving that alcove while they're being killed. Your Force Bubble should be wide enough top cover that entire set of doors, and they are set back in the wall, so there is no way they can get around it.

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.

No, what you said, and I always quote what I reply to including this time, was this:

As I said the first time, if you are in such a team where you'd be lucky to get a single attack off before the team killed everything, even if I were to hand you the entire Incarnate tree plus all the purple inventions you can slot, you'd still be lucky to get an attack off.


Yes, you are, because you're not talking about objective team contributions. You're talking about relative perceptions:

That's a perception. You're actually saying there's a certain rate of speed that tankers needed to hit, and they needed blasters to reach that mark and now they don't. And more than that doesn't matter. That's a purely subjective observation, itself about a personal feeling.

To the extent that the Incarnate system makes players redundant in general, they were already mostly redundant. The only sense in which it makes the players further redundant on teams is that it makes players more powerful. *All* systems that make us more powerful will make other players redundant on teams that were not redundant before. That is mathematically impossible to avoid. Once a team goes from "not enough" to "more than enough" they stop needing anything. Everything else becomes redundant. And you can't buff everyone's performance and not create that circumstance. Inventions make people redundant. SOs make people redundant.


The difference between an SO'ed character and a high end invention build is still higher than that between a high end invention build and an Incarnate powered one. If post-Incarnate play was going to create a schism, inventions would have done so long ago.


My point was that long before I20, one force field defender could already make you redundant in the Ghost Widow fight. A bunch of lucks could also do that. You specifically mentioned your specific character properties in dealing with Ghost Widow as being a specific case where the Incarnate system directly challenges your ability to contribute meaningfully to a team. However, I'm pointing out that the Incarnate system has to get in line for that.

Incidentally, what radiation debuffs do you believe are making the largest contribution to Ghost Widow? And what Incarnate powers make that contribution redundant?

I'm actually finding the trials better in this regard than something like the ITF. The ITF throws numbers at you: you're often in a tunnel with seven other densely packed team mates surrounded by what looks to be fifty targets. That doesn't really happen on the trials, unless they spiral out of control. Each individual thing in the trials is a genuine threat of at least some amount, and it doesn't take many to pose a serious threat. So while clearing the outside of Lambda is often an AoE fest, even there its usually generally coming down to a few one on one or a few on one fights with the bosses. I don't find myself overloaded with targets most of the time. In fact, I'm finding my MA/SR scrapper, a primarily single target melee ranged attacker, to still find lots of one on one fights to get into that are meaningful.