So now CoH is a "raiding" game.

After seven years, the entire level 50 progression system has been moved to raiding. Scalable small group and solo play, always the games biggest strength, has now become the after thought. With Positron's latest letter the dev team is revealing a design where raids are the primary progression and small group and solo play come months later as an after thought. I am unhappy with this design paradigm.

Worse, from what I can tell to make meaningful progression on my 10 level 50s will take hundreds of hours grinding out the same two raids.

Actually "the same two raids" is off topic. There could be 8 more raids and it still wouldn't make me happy. The problem isn't that there's only two raids, the problem is that after 7 years the devs are moving the game to a raiding system. Endgame progression? Yes please. Turning the game into a raiding system? No thanks.

The strength of the game has always been its robust, scaling group mission system. When friends ask why I still play the game I've always said it's because I can log into the game and being doing a meaningful mission within two minutes.

That's all changed.

By making end game progression all about raiding the game has pulled a 7 year bait and switch where it's abandoned it strengths and adopted the same old tired idiom that the other MMOs (that I don't like) use.

Why am I unhappy? It's not that I hate raiding. I don't mind occasionally jumping into a league and grouping. The problems arise when this becomes the preferred play style.

First, the time to form a raid group varies from 15 minutes if I am lucky and things are hopping to 45 minutes if things are slow. I usually play in two hour increments. That means to progress I am basically usually wasting 25%+ of my playtime hopping in place waiting for a group to form. Also, for every successful TF or raid I run there is one where the raid half forms, I wait around for 30 minutes, and the whole thing is abandoned due to lack of players.

The LFG league system isn't working for some reason. Each time I have entered that automatic queue I am still sitting there 30 minutes later with no feedback.

Even if these systems were working, the "sweet spot" of the game is the 2-4 range. This is where I've always had the most fun, and where CoH shines. This is where I don't mind grouping with a Mastermind because in this group size the pets don't crowd the screen. Even in 8 man groups everything tends to blur into a zerg. No other MMO I've tried supports this sweet spot of 2-4 players like CoH, and the game has moved completely away from this strength.

(This is at the same time when the competition is finally releasing mission arcs that are high quality and scale for 1-5 players. Basically they are hitting this experience just as CoH is abandoning it.)

I supposed there are people that like hopping in the RWZ until groups form and power run league missions over and over and over getting endgame loot. I am happy for them, and I am glad that the dev team is supporting that playstyle. Doing so, however, at the expense of solo and small group play and then throwing on that progression months later as an afterthought is not cool and not something I want to see from the game in the future.

I know in Positron's letter he said they are working on solo and small group ways of obtaining Incarnate rewards. To be honest, the fact that this is added as an afterthought months after the system goes into place doesn't bolster my confidence. This type of play shouldn't be an afterthought of a departure from the core gaming into a raiding end game.

TLDR version. The core strength of the game for seven years has been scaling small group and solo play. Changing the entire game to rely only on raiding for end game progression is bad. While having a raiding element to the game is fine, please make solo and small group play a primary focus for progression, not as an afterthought to raiding.

You still have all the non-Incarnate content available. The developers have taken nothing away from you. And even then, only the Alpha slot level shift can be used outside of the Incarnate trials.

Really, all this crying about not being able to get Incarnate abilities outside of running the Incarnate trials is sounding like, "I want to have my cake and eat it too." Most of the Incarnate abilities are for the Incarnate trials. You can still run level 50 missions or a Lady Grey Task Force without having a Tier 4 Destiny or Lore just fine.

There have been A LOT of topics on this subject already, and the devs have acknowledged that they have read and heard how many players are upset by the fact that the trials are the only efficient way to acquire the Incarnate slots/powers. They have also said (I believe via the Anniversary Address, if I recall correctly) that they will be looking into some more small-group-friendly options for Incarnate progression.

For now, remember this: Development of balanced content takes time. I bet their intent since day 1 has been to give us a small scale option for progression, but it better suited them to get the large-scale progression option out sooner, given the fact that currently there are a surplus of 50s waiting to go Incarnate. Once that level evens out, small-scale progression will probably become more common-place as the number of non-incarnate 50s decreases.

I disagree that the game has been built around this "sweet spot" of 2-4. Missions set at standard don't spawn enough enemies for my AoEs to feel truly useful. Granted, there's a slider to virtually pad a teams numbers, but that's not the standard the game was designed around.

And calling what the Trials bring to the game "raiding" is akin to mistaking "The Cat in the Hat" for "War and Peace"

I believe last month's Producer's Letter contained vague language along the lines of "we've heard you about wanting solo options for Incarnate content and we're looking into it." So there's hope.

I do wish we knew which Dev went "You know our soloable, alt friendly MMO that we've had up and running for six years? Let's have an end game system that is nothing like that. I know lets call the issue City of Warcraft just to make things clear where our focus is now." because he or she deserves a smack.

Aw jeez, not this again.

When I hear of players getting demoted and bounced from SGs for lack of 'progression' or how I have to do 'homework' on how to dance about to succeed in a raid or having to grind for mats to participate in a raid or having an acceptable 'gearscore' to participate in a raid, then any arguments related to a certain other MMORPG have merit.

But I don't, so they don't. The closest is knowing what powers to use in Lambda, and you can pick up on that after your first run. CoH endgame raiding is exactly the kind of casual raiding I want to embrace.