Why so complicated?

I assume by "back in the day", you mean "still today".

There are 6 different recipes for tier 4 alphas, each using a different combination of the four tier 3 types that are available. It makes sense, as the tree clearly states that any combination of tier 3 leads to either tier 4, you just need to scroll down.

I don't think he means the actual crafting, dat stuff is ez, yo. But messing about with IO's and set bonuses is probably a little bit complicated, at least according to my casual player friends.

I get it, just seems easier to gp back up the tree the other way. But maybe it's because of what I am finding.

Still though...for the paragon it always requires you to have the radial, or thats what I think it means. Meaning I need the Core, and the Radial which sort of goes against how Im use to skill trees working.

This, this so much.
I like the flavours and that each of them has a tiny description (even if none of them make any sense what-so-ever to get from the trials); but when it's untradeable salvage and there's handfuls of options whenever a reward table pops, it's just grr-worthy. The rares and the uncommons, maybe, since those can actually drop (from getting badges), but with the commons, the many commons, it's just derpy.

Making decisions ahead of getting the reward tables and writing those decisions down to have 'em handy later is how I settled on dealing with it. :/

If 'plan' means 'check the Incarnate power create tab before clicking accept' then yes I guess you have to plan a bit more ...

Maybe, but then what does that have to do with the various types of salvage? All the set bonuses would still be there even if there was only 1 type of salvage per rank.

Just because something is complicated doesn't mean it has to be ill-understood or difficult. It could easily mean that it's unwieldy, often unnecessarily so.

Consider how one would get to the Test server for the first time using the old updater. You would need to:

1. Create a new shortcut to CohUpdater.exe on your desktop.
2. Edit said shortcut and add -test to the end.
3. Make sense of the *** backwards menu choices, pick a folder (that's always *\CohTest)
4. Reinstall the whole damb game.
5. Wait eight hours.

And if you don't want to wait, you instead have an extra step of copying the contents of your entire City of Heroes folder to your CohTest folder.

And then you have to reset AAALL of your graphics settings, options, windows settings and so forth. Even if you took the extra few steps to copy over your default settings file, graphics aren't saved to one of these.

This is complicated. Needlessly complicated. Unpleasantly complicated. ANNOYINGLY complicated. Compare this to how the NCsoft Launcher does it.

1. Select City of Heroes Test.
2. Click Install
3. Wait.

The end. Simple, easy, efficient.

"Complexity" is not a positive trait in any system, and should never be regarded as such. "Variety," "customizability" or "interactivity" may be the traits you guys are looking for. Any game system should always strive for as simplified and streamlined a design as possible, hiding its complexities under the hood and attempting to represent the greatest possible array of options and interactions with the simplest possible player interface.

And a giant lump of many-times-redundant recipes and a zillion components and three different currencies is not simple. It's a pain in the ***.

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.

Someone mentioned that it makes us invest more in the powers and characters.

I find that to be utter nonsense as none of the Incarnate ability names have linkage in name to any of the components used to make them.

Good thing the Incarnate system is not complex then.

Nope just filled with tediousness.

The Incarnate SYSTEM isn't. Incarnate LOGISTICS, on the other hand...

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 was bugging me as well. I kept having to go back and forth between the two screen to determine what was what. Other than that though the system was not hard to figure out at all. The explanations in the release notes made it sound overly complex, but it really isn't.

The color chart should be the standard one in use:

common = white
uncommon = yellow
rare = orange
very rare = purple

So at a glance you can know how many and what tier of component you need. Then when the reward table pops up you can quick glance at the components needed and pick the right one. Course by the time something like this happens we'll have all mastered the system...haha.

Codswallop and poppycock. It doesn't require thought, it requires drawing up a list of what components you're going to want in advance. For every character you plan on taking through the Incarnate process.

That's not complexity. It's tedium masquerading as complexity.

You're right, it isn't. It has a veneer of complexity that doesn't pan out.

It's the gaming equivalent of a webform where you get to page 6 and find out you clicked the wrong radio button on page 2, and the only way to fix it is to start over. Nevermind that the choices on page 2 are all exactly equivalent.

That's assuming I know going in what I actually want. It's not just checking the power, it's checking and comparing the eight tier-4s for a given slot, on the fly. Especially the first day this came out, I did not know what all of the tier-4s did (power or percentages), what the differences were in the lore pets were, etc. Heck, I still don't.*





* I will admit that I need to assimilate the info on the GR site for these better. It WOULD help a little though if I didn't think all 16 trees were Cardiac Alphas though.

I've always had an issue with this in general, both with the inventions and now the incarnate system. The names of the components that go into making things appear to be random and whatever the programmer or copywriter thought would be a cool name. There is no rhyme or reason to the components needed for stuff. I think the major reason for this was because focus for such things was placed on disbursing the salvage among the level ranges and ensuring certain ones would be more rare than others to create an economy, as well as preventing farming of salvage. The logical aspect of such things was never considered at all.

In any descent sword and sorcery RPG, whether it's an MMO or not and it has crafting, the crafting will typically make sense. For example to make arrows, you need wood for the flights, feathers for the fletching and metal, bone or stone for the tips and depending on the realism factor something to attach the components together. The proper tools are usually required as well.

It is entirely possible, however, that the devs felt that components didn't matter as much as the end result since a lot of what goes into our characters in this game is left up to player imagination.

Hang on, if you're making bombs you're an Engineer and Engineers did get a Northrend AH .

Haha, exactly. The system we have here is nothing compared to what exists in other games. I played Vanguard for a little bit and loved it, but couldn't get my wife into it. In that game in order to craft, and it sounds like it might be similar to WoW (never played Wow) you have to mine minerals or chop wood and then go through all the processes of smelting, leather working, black smithing and what not...lots of work.

So yeah, CoX is fairly simple.

Hush you I'm making a point!

Besides ONLY engineers could use that AH if I remember correctly and nobody else, it was great for engineering parts and bugger all else IIRC so I would still have to use a major city for the Arctic Leather, which was Leatherworkers only.

No, the AH was linked between cities, you could get anything there as normal. But yeah, I was mostly being contrary .

Oh yeah, well one time I played this other game, and its interface was really bad. You should be glad you never played it. I like to bring it up every time someone talks about a bad interface so I can, you know, put them in their place.

This is the part of it that bugs me the most.