My friend is quitting soon...

First of all, I DO like i20 issue. I think it brings something very different to the table. I know other big games like WoW have "raids" like this. I've never done a raid in WoW ('cause I quit that game at lvl 41) but I know it requires many people like 16 or 24.

However, some of my friends are quite annoyed with this issue because they feel that they are now "forced" to join a PUG team. Our normal team-size is about 4-6 every night and sometimes we get a full team.

He REALLY hates teaming with he doesn't know. I can't explain what happened because I met him through a PUG team two years ago. These friends have played this game for years and most of them have played this game since beta.


Now before you get angry and start trashing my friend, let me give you his side of view:

1. He has more than 20-30 level 50s. Some he doesn't like that much and some he REALLY likes them. He has two active accounts. He even hired artists to draw cartoon characters based on his toon and costume design. He is THAT into this game for 6-7 years.

2. He likes to team but only with people he knows. We all belong to the same chat that we use every night.


3. He likes challenges. He doesn't like the setting too low.

4. Since i20, he used 40 shards, 5 Wells conversion (this means he used 5 weeks), 3 ITF runs, 1 new Hero SF 20-40 and two Villain SF 20-40 runs to try to get his first Judgment and he is STILL 6 shards away from getting just the FIRST tier power. I haven't converted much from Shard to Thread because I've been teaming in Pocket D (since I don't mind PUGing most of the time) but this conversion looks very sucky. Let's just say he wants to avoid all trials, it will take him 2.5 years to unlock something that those that do trials can unlock in days/weeks. I understand you can let soloers gain threads too easily or else nobody wants to join trials but I think the conversion needs to be better than what we have now. Disagree?


5. We did a Lamba run with 4 other friends from the chat and we almost beat it with 8 people in Lamba. Only two people (including myself) have done Lamba before and know what is going on. I think we did REALLY well and I believe with some practice, we can beat Lamba with just 8 people. This is acceptable. But I am afraid BAF will be much harder with just 8 people especially during prison escapes. Now, are there any news that the future trials are going to have smaller-size trials? I actually prefer smaller-size and with added "Randomness" so each run doesn't feel exactly the same way. Random-ness can be some random events or random AVs that you need to beat.



6. He wants to advance with some of his favorite characters but he just doesn't want to join big trial teams.

Well, I just want to voice his opinions here because he may quit soon and I am going to be sad as he plays a lot and he is one of my long-term game friend in this game. I've been trying very hard to talk him out of it but he can be so stubborn!!! I understand i20 doesn't take away anything he has enjoyed so far but he does want new Incarnate abilities. He just doesn't want to feel like he is forced to PUG with less than 8-12 people.


What's your thoughts on this?

since you need 12 poeple min to even start BAF, i dont think he would like that much

i do highly support converting threads to xp to unlock the slots, since once you do that, then you can run either trial as much as you want

since hes willing to do lambda at least, i would just work with that and have him convert all his threads to xp to unlock the slots that normally unlock with the BAF, i think he will only need about 75 threads to unlock both judgement and lore, the rest he could save his money just getting threads from lambda trial and if you do get enough practice to win, he could get his uncommon/rare/very rares from the reward table as they pop up

the shard to thread conversions are alright but they should allow conversions of smaller numbers of shards since 10 is a good bit, the thread to xp conversion should not cost inf or cost significantly less inf, and hes not the only one complaining about it, its very possible they may be adjusted at some point in time if its deemed needed

I hate to be a jerk, but if your friend hates teaming with strangers like me then I probably wont miss him one bit

Ive done the baf about 6 or 7 times, and only won 3. Im at my tier2 judgment already. I only converted 20 shards and 4 astral merits. It really goes by quick, and the incarnate trials are more interesting than much of the regular content.

If your friend cant tolerate other humans for a few hours a week then CoX incarnates are not his biggest problem right now anyway.

Did your friend convert ALL 40 shards into threads at once?
If that's what he did then he really has himself to blame. Impatience is not a luxury a trial-averse player can afford.

I would suggest him to play WoW for a month or so, doing PUGs there.. you basicly begging to come back to CoX and do PUG's there.

This is what I think of when I read this

Just curious, but is it really a PuG, if he can get 4-6 of his friend on the team, and the rest filler to fill up for the league (whether it be the minimum or the maximum amount of players)?

It wouldn't seem that way to me. Yeah, there are PuG members, but he'd know a good chunk of the team.

I ran an ITF with 5 of my SG and two People broadcasting for an ITF today. I didn't really consider it a PuG.

I have every sympathy.

PUGs can be a horrid experience and while a team of 8 is bad enough, larger teams just give more opportunities for it to go wrong. Add that to the 'stand around for an hour to form' and I can absolutely understand why he doesn't want to bother.

I pay to play not stand around doing nothing.

Before he goes, ask him if I can have his stuff plz.
Because basically this -

"If your friend cant tolerate other humans for a few hours a week then CoX incarnates are not his biggest problem right now anyway."

and this -

"Maybe it's time to expand that circle of friends again."

oh yeah, and this -

"I would suggest him to play WoW for a month or so, doing PUGs there.. you basicly begging to come back to CoX and do PUG's there."

opps, almost forgot about this -

"Just curious, but is it really a PuG, if he can get 4-6 of his friend on the team"

I would tell your friend to look at themselves and ask "Is it healthy for me to shun individuals based purely on how close you know them?"

It's not like you have to befriend or hang out with any of these people, but it's a good skill, sociability. It opens lots of windows...windows I wish I had available to me T_T

Wrong Forum. Try City Life or Player Questions.

I sympathize with your friend. Many people have posted here on the forums who like to either solo or run small teams.

Instead of talking about strategies to let your friend unlock his Incarnate slots, I'm going to take it a different direction and suggest he completely ignore the Incarnate part of the game. If he likes running teams of 5 or so people, Incarnate powers will just trivialize the regular mission content and eventually make it un-fun.

I only have 1 character that I've done i20 content on, a Dom. I unlocked all four new I-slots and I have tier 3 powers in all of them. I decided to help out a scanner mission team running in PI last night. I had fun showing off for about 3 minutes. Honestly I could've easily solo'd the entire mission. After a couple of missions I quit the team because there wasn't any challenge at all.

Not every new shiny in the game is going to appeal to everyone. I know it's probably going to be bitter medicine for your friend, but in my opinion the only reason to invest the time to unlock & equip Incarnate slots is to participate in the new endgame. But if he can't stand teaming with large numbers of people who aren't close friends, I'd urge him to realize that the endgame is just not going to be his cup of tea. Sure, I can think of contrived circumstances where having Incarnate powers would be cool outside of the endgame content. It'd be a fun challenge having a team of 4 heavily Incarnate-slotted characters solo the ITF or LGTF, for example. But normal mission content will be trivialized to the point of rapid boredom.

There has been sufficient grumbling about players being required to run the two trials, and them alone, for new shinies that I expect there will be some sort of remedy in the not too distant future. Whether the remedy will be sufficient, who knows. I expect we will hear something about future plans around the time of the anniversary.

Also, as others have suggested, try building the teams yourselves. Put you and your friends in the same team, do your best as a unit, communicating and coordinated with eachother. A pocket of capable players working together would be a great advantage on a Lambda. Think of it like a rikti raid, where you are playing with a large amount of players, but only working with a select few of them.

Finally, don't get hung up on a successful completion. You get rewards during the trial, so just focus on your threads, astral merits, and ixp. Also, mix it up with the WST and tip missions. That can be a great way to make your new power feel worthwhile.

I am fairly close to having 4 rares in the new slots on my main already (I will get it once I have lore unlocked). Once I get there, I will start rotating in and out a few of my favorite alts. I know I may not get around to getting the newest incarnate slots on all of my alts, which is somewhat sad. Still, I will soon be rotating in a couple of my favorites. Hopefully, the devs will focus on filling out the experience for incarnates soon with new trials and new ways to improve themselves, rather than rushing ahead with new slots and new currencies.

I don’t see what the big deal is, and I can’t understand his and a few others problem with I20 trials. Besides the random drop and confusing reward system for some that’s about it.
I have been playing for 5 years on Freedom (the so called bad server) and team up with random PUG’s all the time. Yes I have ran into a few bad apples but that’s what the notes are for to stay away from them. Most of the bad players just need to learn, it’s only the random jerks or a few bad leaders who lead my way or highway. The funny thing is I have played on other servers and that’s who I run into on them Mr. Elitist.

This is a player based game based on comic books who have superhero team ups all the time. It’s not hard to form your own team for the I20 trials, especially if you already have a few friends on the team, just recruit more and give out simple instructions and its pretty easy going. I lead a few random PUG’s so far with the new trials and haven’t had any issues.

I have only failed about 4-5 trials so far all the first 1-2 days. After that it’s been easy, I even joined a random qued up Pug the first day none us had any clue, but we almost made it and had fun and still got rewards.

There are a bunch of great SG’s out there that you can partner up with. You will also find a bunch of leaders who form teams join up with them and stay with them if you like there style. If you do land on a team with a leader or teammates that you don’t enjoy, who cares knock it out get your rewards and move on.

The only problem I have is for those that can’t play when enough people are on or have some other reason they play solo and not because they are antisocial.

We have a game that has a STATIC subscriber base of about 100,000 give or take each month.

We have a game which has NEVER in 7 years had this style of grind for a reward.

I will NOT become a farmer for a shiney. I understand his friend - the one who has been here since the beginning and he sees the game he loved take a turn into a style of play he loathes.

I am completely ignoring this "content" however do you think there will be MORE such "content"? I do indeed and it causes me great irritation when the so called "best community" in the world attacks a player who finds a completely new style of play after 7 years - not desirable.

If you wanted to do a Hamidon raid you could and get a shiney little boost - but it was small. If I wanted to do a sewer trial I got a similar reward. Small but useful. Now if you wish to ignore the farming lifestyle it is NOT a small boost - it is 3 levels in boost and potentially a gated content block. It is Permanent pets, permanent AoE attack powers and more coming. We have TF's now that if you do not have an Alpha slot reduces you to -8. What happens in the future if you don't climb on the hamster wheel?

This is the most foolish ill advised change to this game since before ED. The loss of customers this will cause cannot just be absorbed. The players love the game they have played for all this time and now the Devs are making it into WoW or some other game that was NOT played the way City of Heroes was.

I sympathize with your friend. I've felt that way myself since I18 first came out, and that feeling intensified somewhat after I completed my first trial in I20.

Remind him that the developers have a generally decent track record and are usually pretty good at taking the community's temperature with these things. I think they will eventually compromise and make the Incarnate Rewards a bit more accessible to players who aren't interested in farming the trials, though it may not happen for another issue or two.

Ultimately, I've found that a break is the best cure for burnout. Sometimes, you just need to take some time off. Keep in touch and he just might return, and sooner than you expect.