Multi-group content is not the way.

I'd personally look at that as a technical challenge to solve, rather than an excuse not to bother. Way back in the day, one of the game's selling points was that encounters scaled to the team size, so that both small teams and large teams would feel properly challenged, as opposed to other games where static content could prove too hard for smaller teams and too easy for larger teams.

So what happened to that? Honest question here. What happened to content scaling with team size? Did we conclude that it wasn't working or that it was pointless or something? Because I've heard that same explanation practically since Incarnates began: "If you don't balance it for many people, then many people will trivialise it."

So let's come up with a system that scales better, if the old one is insufficient. If it's a problem, then let's address that problem, instead of working around it. This is very much at the heart of why there's such a gulf between quote-unquote "solo" content and massive multi-team raids - because the only place where enemy spawn scaling to team size is even considered these days is solo via the mission difficulty slider, or on small teams of two and three. And it shouldn't be like that.

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.

AFAIK, the trials scale with based on the number of participants.

Is that what you mean?

I'd appreciate less snark. Thanks.

First question, as I'm not sure if you've answered this or not: Have you RUN the trials? I'm finding a lot of people who complain about them, and haven't done them yet.

If you have, then I can't offer you any advice or any help that differs from the posts already given to you.

Partially. Some of the older TFs - specifically Positron and Synapse - are startable with four people, and some of the newer ones have avoided the large team-mate requirements of the Shard TFs. Yet when it comes to level 50 content and I suggest TFs that can be run with as few as three people, I'm told that this can't be balanced for because it would make it far too easy for large teams.

I don't know what to say to that. Maybe it will, I don't really know, but my point lies elsewhere: If this is a problem, it should be solved. If there were three-man TFs at level 50, I would run those. I would run those and I would put my own teams together, because three people is easy to get even on a bad day.

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.

Mob sizes still scale with team size, but AV strength doesn't. And its hard to scale that in. What exactly would you scale? HP? resistances? powers? damage? Remember you don't want to create a holy trinity situation, so you can't scale things too far back, or it becomes easy mode for most ATs. This game is still balanced around SOs, you can can't include IOs into your balance equation.

The trails are balanced around the incarnate powers. Once you get those, things become much much easier to handle, IOs and even the alpha boost may not actually help you tackle the massive group around marauder, but 3 - 4 judgement blasts will.

At one point a team of six would increase the enemy level by one, and a team of eight would increase the enemy level by two. So a full team on Invincible would be fighting +4s. They did away with that in i5 or i6, and since then large teams have trivialized content. I would love for them to bring that back. It would totally do away with full teams annihilating spawns of even-cons in seconds. It might encourage people who don't want to fight +cons to not insist on filling the team. It would actually provide a bit of a challenge, or at least a speed bump, to people who do want to run with a full team.

It would also lead to a ****-storm the likes of which hasn't been seen since ED, and cries of "if you want it harder turn up your difficulty," which ignore the very simple fact that there is no incentive to do so for an increasingly reward-oriented playerbase and those of us who do turn it up get funny looks for being "inefficient," so they'll never do it. But one day I will find at least five people to do a +4 ITF with me, and there will be faceplanting, and there will be moments of awesome, and it will take way more than half an hour and it will be glorious.

If you run it on Virtue or Test, count me in.

I can respect that. What confuses me though is that people want the trials to be able to be done with 5 people when even the end game TFs we've had for a while now require at least 8 to start. If you're not fine with 8, then how are you even finished with your Alpha slot?

And if you are fine with 8, why not just do the Lambda Sector every now and then? Surely you do an STF, ITF, LGTF every now and then? Disregard anyone who says it's impossible with only that many and work at it, I've come close in only two days and with complete randoms. Was the first time for about half the team when we did, too.

On a slightly unrelated note, I'm finding my advancement through the powers to be pretty quick. I have all the rare and uncommon components I need for interface and judgement, and had enough threads to get to the rare immediately after unlocking lore. All the uncommon/rare components were from completing the BAF, and I only need threads now. I'm actually satisfied with getting the rest of my threads at the rate of incarnate shards (then converting them) since I already have the costier components out of the way. And that's after two days. Two days.

Are you honestly trying to make us believe that +4 ITFs don't happen? At least half of all the ITFs I've ever done were +4 and they were all on PUGs. And they all had faceplanting, and each had moments of awesome and they all took more than half an hour and they were glorious.




Let me ask something to the anti-multi-group crowd. Have you done any of the new trials? And spare me the 'I don't need to jump off the roof to know I won't like it!' BS, grow a pair and answer the question.

I'd appreciate if you actually read the posts you're responding to. Thanks.

Yes, I have. You can't offer me any advice or help to make me like doing them over and over and over again....because I don't like doing things over and over and over again. You also can't offer me any advice or help to make me like 24-man events, because I don't like them. If you can offer me some advice on how to put together a 12-man BAF other than "go form a pre-made" when it seems like everybody else wants to run full leagues, then please, I'd love to hear it.

There are still people who are literally saying that. My favorite is the anti-strategy crowd. Have a look:

It's a masochistic way of working through a problem.

Yes. Heaven forbid people enjoy thinking for themselves rather than allowing someone else to solve all the puzzles for them. The insanity.

You don't have to agree with anybody who likes what you don't and they don't have to agree with you. People that hate the incarnates, the endgame content and/or the raids keep pussyfooting around trying to do logical somersaults to avoid the harsh, simple but obvious answer: If you don't like it, don't do it. There's your advice.

Yeah sure, Mr. Individuality, what a bunch of sheep.

if you have someone on liberty, im in.

This depends on your definition of "finished," though both definitions are fairly easy to answer for.

If we see "finished" as "gotten a very rare boost," then the answer is easy - I haven't. I don't think I ever will. There ain't enough content in the game for that, and I abhor repeating content with the same character.

If we see "finished" as "put anything in the Alpha slot," then the answer is easy - solo, running whatever content I had left over from the trip to 50. After having run Ramiel's arc, of course. A common is... I want to say "easy," but it's not. Let's go with "doable" solo. An uncommon... Possibly. Beyond that, though - no, thanks.

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More to point, I never agreed with "end game" TFs being locked at 8 people. I've never run a Statesman TF, and I don't intend to. I've always wanted to be able to run end-game TFs with smaller teams. Like I said - teams of three or at most four, with three being preferable. I don't need to the Apex and Tin Can TFs with three people, clearly, but I do believe we should have smaller-team content for the post-50 game just the same.

And allow me to specify - I don't count content left over from I1 as part of the POST-50 game.

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.

Do me a favor and go solo the BAF.

Do me a bigger favor and close all 10 portals in Lambda with a full League of people who've never done it and haven't read up on it or asked anyone about it. See where that gets you.

Apparently, a little knowledge never hurt anyone but you.

Since we're dealing with gameplay that has a max of 24 people, I take it you rode the short bus?

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I feel better now.

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.

Damn, I must be playing with the wrong people then. I see way more "the tank quit, we're screwed" or "do you really think we can do this without a [blank]?" than "let's try this with all Blasters! YEAH!"

Yep. Both the full BAFs I tried failed miserably at the prisoner stage (well, one crashed, but quite a few had already escaped and there was tons of time left, so it probably would have failed) while the not-so-full ones made it to the last phase. Oh, and my system is kind of old, and on the not-full ones I could actually, you know, use my powers properly. Plus the smaller teams seemed more interested in actually explaining what to do to new people than waiting half an hour for the team to fill because MOAR IS BETTER while other people spammed "can we start now?" and other inane garbage in League chat, then spending about ten minutes actually doing the trial before failing. Less set-up, less laggy, more fighty >>>>>> stand around forever, watch slideshow, then it's over. "Sure, if your friend wants to come we can take one more" >>>>>> "8 spots on BAF, PST."

If you wait until Mortimer and Sutter are WST, you could get your rare without repeating anything. A technicality? Probably. But you can do it.

At one elementary school I went to some of the kids in the gifted classes also took the short bus.

I'd say the level shift, personally. The very rare is the extra mile, to me.

It's easy to get, even without a full group. Just run the WST every now and then, get some volunteers to help start the group then leave until you have your group of 5 friends or whatever.

If you've already run the TF but don't want to do it ever again, then that is really your own problem. It's there and easily accessable, you just don't want to do it.

Of course solo is a lot slower than with a team. The same has been true for the trip from 1 to 50 for the last few years.

This argument would be more compelling if not for the fact that virtually all of these are complete garbage. I think Crisis on Infinite Earths was the only one actually worth reading, which is probably because it was the only one written for a reason other than "sell comic books".

There's also the fact that games are not comics, meaning things that work in comics aren't necessarily going to work in games.

I don't have anything against raid-level encounters per se, but these arguments in their favor aren't very compelling, and the particular ones we just got appear to have been designed in a ham-handed fashion that makes my preferred character into dead weight. That last is bleeding out into the non-raid portions of the game.

And that argument would have some weight if it wasn't completely a matter of your opinion.

However, in this case, in both games and comics you see multiple heroes taking on major encounters. So what's the point?