Today's Dev Chat Highlights

Can I, with my friends that I normally team with, do the Incarnate Trials?

No.

Does that mean having to team with others that I don't know, and all the pitfalls of that?

Yes.

Do my characters work well in those trials and feel like they're contributing something?

No.

Do I find the chaotic nature of them fun, compared to the teaming I prefer to do with friends?

No.

Do I have to do them as the only way to get access to these new auras for characters?

Yes.

Does that mean I have an issue with them?

Hell yes.

Do I feel that locking costumes and such behind levels and content is not a good thing?

Yes.

Am I content with actual powers and abilities being locked behind that same content?

Yes.

Do I wish that there was a way for solo and small team progression of Incarnate abilities that didn't involve the insanely low drop rates of Incarnate Shards and the insanely high cost of conversion?

Yes.

Do I worry that if I do this content, I have to get it done quickly before people no longer run it as much, making it harder to get a team?

Yes.

Have I noticed that the content isn't being run as much as it was when it came out, resulting in difficulties getting teams at some times when I usually play?

Yes.

Do I suspect the same will happen with the Keyes trial until something new comes along?

Yes.

Do I worry that not having these abilities will lock me out or relegate me in terms of power out of later released content?

Yes.

Do I object to having to claim the new auras on characters at level 1, when I tend to select these things when making the costumes?

Yes.

If they continue with this, should City Hall and Freedom Court have a Costume Tailor in so there is no need to run to the RWZ (or other locations if you don't know about that?)

Yes.

Does having incarnate content reward non-incarnate rewards worry me?

Yes.

Do I feel the handling of the incarnate system, its inception and ways of progression were done poorly?

Yes.

Does this and the above worry me for the direction the game will take?

Sadly?

Yes.

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SUPPORT - IT'S NOT JUST A GROUPING OF ATs
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More Than a Game
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*twiddles thumbs*

Are we there yet?

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Seriously though, if they plan on doing it, they better come out and confirm what they're planning pretty soon. Otherwise I'm perfectly justified in assuming that no, they're not planning it.

This isn't content that needs to be kept secret. This is content we already know about and can experience. If they want to please people and repair morale damage then they'll announce how they'll do that - and roughly estimate when (though I totally accept the "when it's ready" answer, since I know how a development process works).

If they stay silent, it will speak volumes.

Like all social "sciences" the field is rife with shoddy workmanship and junk science.

No, I'm not. I'm pointing out A.G.A.I.N. that the thesis "instant gratification is bad" does not in any way, shape or form justify the design of the Incarnate system.

I don't care what you trust, it doesn't make it any less true. And I guess it's a good thing you're not in charge of City of Heroes, because I've always felt that the devs have a pretty good intuitive grasp of the principle.

Yes, that's exactly what I was saying. Just as much as you're saying that the Incarnate system should be scrapped because psychology is fake, that's what I was getting at.

To be honest I see it as a "participation based" vet reward. Not saying whether it is a good or bad design decision, but that's how I'm taking it. Also the reality is 7 years of piecemeal development (not meant pejoratively!) has produced a strange network of rewards throughout the game. Philosophically it becomes difficult to redesign any one part without adjusting another. Not making excuses just describing what I see as a level of calcification that binds gaming worlds that have been continuously developed post live for numerous years.

Shoddy workmanship? Like that entire website that hasn't been updated in 6 years? You're using THAT to support your argument? Really?

C'Mon Venture, you can do better than that. Also, facts don't stop being facts just because you don't believe in them.

C'Mon, EmperorSteele, you should know by now that, if anything, Venture's something of an expert on all things shoddy. Its kinda his thing.

o rly? studies like this: http://www.cracked.com/article_18461...-addicted.html ?

Dude, you're talkin' out of your hat at this point.

At the end of the day, we're not rats in skinner boxes. To some degree, many games have creative "sandbox-y" elements to them. For some people who play, this creative element is THE main reason they play. Witness the nearly INSTANT success of the genre-launching-voxel-based-indie-game-I-cannot-mention-here-because-it-will-get-my-post-edited-that-in-less-than-a-year-has-generated-potentially-as-many-sales-as-CoX-in-seven-years. Some people want games. Some people want digital toys. Some people want combinations of the two. Some people don't mind chocolate and peanut butter. Others hate it when their peas mix with their mashed potatoes.

At the end of the day, there are members of this (and probably ALL MMO's with any diversity in there player base) whose tastes are so varied that they will never see eye to eye on contested game design choices. And no misapplied behaviorist "psychological theory of everything" is going to make that evaporate.

Just as you're asking those that can't see your point to pretty much deal with the new rewards as proposed, you gotta deal with the reality that there are many players (can't say what percentage--whether it be a paltry 3% or significant 18%) whose reason for playing CoX is, first and foremost, creating new characters from costumes through powers and feeling the simple satisfaction of watching them interact in a semi-theme appropriate setting. Equally as valid a play preference and source of satisfaction as the long effort leading to structured rewards and measurable increases in character efficiencies.

I personally enjoy both just enough that I am on board for these rewards as presented for the most part. My bias leans towards the satisfactions the creative aspects of the game world and character systems can generate, but I see how both can be rewarding in different ways. And my personal preferences shift from night to night, depending upon how my day has gone and my appetites. But I get that there are those who favor one set of play preferences almost exclusively over the others. And as we can see throughout this (and other threads on this 20.5 issue release) both parties have a tough time accepting any additions or changes to the game mechanics that hinder their own preferences. Folks who want structured rewards are adamant about keeping all unlockables in place to the point of name-calling and folks who are all about creative freedom are threatening to quit over what they see as a trend of game mechanics that limit their access to any new creative elements.

Probably everything else this game offers. Tip missions, story arcs, the occasional TF with a few friends (which requires no where near as many as a Trial). The things that don't require 16-24 different people, but instead 1-8.

It's getting a little annoying this mentality of "Well, I like Trials and so should you!" Is everyone incapable of realizing that some people came to this game because they didn't want to grind out on 24-man raids in order to get all the good stuff?

At least with the Vanguard equipment you had two choices that came out at the same time; Run a raid, or run any sort of story arc with Rikti in them. They even gave us entire story arcs that could be solo'd and were plenty enjoyable.

Just wanna say... We are not alone!
Nice post.
It's usually the inflammatory and outrageous posts that get replied to ad nauseum and I wanted to make sure that I shared my enjoyment, agreement and approval of this post and the overall mindset that... Halloooo... Peoples preferences and such is differents and none are better nor worse, sheez!

Anyway, no point for me to ramble. Hiya, SilverAgeFan! Thanks for contributing to the side of reason!

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

Actually there is. For examples go to the badge window, pull down to the veteran reward section.

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

If you really think that the majority of people are in enormous, super-active SGs with a dozen actual friends or more on at all hours, that helps explain some of your otherwise baffling disconnect. It is certainly not the case for a lot of us that are adults with a wide variety of real-world responsibilities. Just to give you an example, the meta-SG I'm in has 2 nearly-full SGs and a VG on our primary server, plus at least 7 other SGs and VGs on other servers that get play with some degree of regularity. For special events, we have a peak simultaneous of maybe 16 people, but that's pretty rare and only for special events known well in advance. A typical Tuesday evening meetup, when we've been trying to do more structured group content lately, has 4-6 people available, what with timezones, kids, overtime, kids, sickness, kids, weather, computer problems, or whatever; sometimes as little as 3, sometimes 7 or 8. Some of them are long-term vets, some have been playing for a few years, some are new to CoH and only have a few lower-level characters. Sure, with rather more effort and less fun one can gather together with a bunch of loose acquaintances and some total strangers for big special events, but it's certainly not the norm.

As far as I'm concerned, *primary* content, CoH's core strength and what most of us are here for, is content that has the following qualities:

* Minimal entrance barriers, and preferably only for the leader; high-level and low-level characters can enjoy playing together without forcing unpleasant choices of the "do I earn rewards that help my character progress or do I have fun with more friends" variety.

* Adjusts semi-automatically to the number of people who show up, over the range 3-8 or so, without prior knowledge; i.e. you can plan to run X and not have to change those plans based on having too few or too many people tonight due to RL issues.

* Have at least some ability to further adjust difficulty based on how people are feeling; if everyone has had a bad day at work or whatever and just want to relieve some stress it can be turned down, if people are sharp and wanting a challenge it can be turned up.

* Accommodates the real world; if someone's kid wakes up crying or needs a bit of help with their homework, if someone needs to go put laundry in the dryer or isn't feeling well and needs an extended bio break, or whatever... we can easily accommodate them and take a quick break because hey, we're all friends and RL takes precedence over our entertainment.

* Allows people to join in and drop out during progress. We've got friends on the East coast who need to get to sleep because they have to be up before 5am to get into work by 7am; we've got friends on the West coast who work for megacorps notorious for long hours to meet project deadlines. On worknights they don't overlap much if any. Plus more sustained interruptions of any of the above sorts can lead to people needing to join or leave an hour or few different than what they planned.

* Have an actual plot / story of some sort that is relatively fresh, something that we haven't done so many times it has gone stale. Doing things with different characters helps considerably with keeping things fresh; separation in time helps keep things fresh; the worst possible case is repeating the same content on the same character more than a few times in fairly short succession.

* Offers some sort of progression, advancement, or reward for everyone involved except in the worst failure cases; partial success should yield at least something.

The majority of content in CoH does a pretty good job of meeting the above criteria; in fact, it's industry-leading in many of the above qualities, which is *why we are here* rather than playing one of the many other MMORPG. There are a multitude of other MMORPGs that have practically Skinner-box endgame grinds for those that find that attractive; I don't get it, but unlike some people I acknowledge that there are plenty of types of people in the world.

One of the many objections I have had all along with this Incarnate / endgame system is that it goes *directly* against CoH's strengths and the reasons we play CoH. It forcibly separates Incarnate play from ordinary gameplay, so you have to choose between playing with your friends and advancing your characters. The nature of the reward structure forces a focus on just a few of your characters, yielding less and less fun as they are overplayed, rather than playing whoever you feel would be fun tonight. And worst of all it forces a literally order of magnitude more repetitive content than before.

How many ways are there to get from 49 to 50? How about 50 to 51? 51 to 52? To the best of my recollection, prior to the Incarnate trials I had never run any single piece of content more than 5-6 times on the same character, and that would be the widely-despised Baby New Year and Snaptooth grinds for the costume unlocks (and one character that might have done that many ship raids over the years). Most characters don't even see all the content, and few repeat anything more than a few times and it's usually months in between. The incarnate system expects you to run ten times that many repetitions, on the same character, in short order.

Let's say you are part of a regular weekly gaming group, who enjoy getting together to roleplay and advance their characters. The GM has been hinting for months that they're working on an epic new system for taking your favorite characters further. Finally, you show up for the "preview" session, and it's oddly unappealing; it requires minifigure manipulation on the map that makes it much harder for the out-of-town friends who usually are only there via chat to participate, it has all sorts of seemingly arbitrary restrictions on power use that limit some characters far more than others, and the rewards are underwhelming. You slog through but start to have doubts.

Some weeks later, you get the first actual taste of the new system. The rewards are decent, but incremental; you cast a bit faster, hit a bit harder, or whatever. There are still some weird limitations on what they affect, and you can only earn them playing a limited selection of high-end modules. Annoying and not what you were hoping for, but tolerable, and there's the promise that there's far more to come.

Some weeks later yet, the full-bore unveiling of the new epic system! The requirements for getting the adventure started are unusually strict, it has all sorts of bizarre arbitrary fail conditions, and what you have to do to win is poorly documented. Even more annoyingly, the GM sets a timer and says that if you don't succeed before it goes off, you fail no matter how well you were doing up to that point, with no option to continue next week like you usually would. The first week doesn't go well, but you learn some of how it goes. Next week, you try again, and muddle through at great cost; at the end, your epic reward is... a strangely-enchanted gem? "If you collect dozens of these, you can turn them in for cool stuff!" says your GM. Dark looks are exchanged. "If you do things to purposely make it harder in direct opposition to common sense or any sort of tactical reasoning, you might get another gem! The gods love bull-headed stupidity far more than clever tactics!" The muttering gets much louder...

When it is announced the following week that there are two colors of gems which unlock different things, and that you are going to be playing the same two adventures, with no changes, every week for the better part of a year until you've accumulated enough gems, this is the point at which most groups would threaten to microwave the GM's dice and/or get a new GM. Even the most tolerant of groups is going to snap after a half-dozen repetitions of exactly the same night of gaming with no changes in plot, setting, foes, or anything, and being told they're only a fraction of the way to the cool stuff, plus it turns out that most of the coolest stuff can't be used in normal play, only to get more gems. Offering to come up with a third adventure in a few months that can earn both colors of gems is not going to really mollify the players.

So let me get this straight: You are using the gleemail system to send vouchers and certificates which means that if I unlock a voucher, the email notification will be an annoying red until I claim it on a character, and it will be permanently red if I get something account wide?

All I have to say is who wasn't thinking when they approved this?

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

I'll handle point 2 first:

Things I find fun:
Making character costumes and concepts (Which is why I'd love more character slots, an increase from 36 to 48 would be great.)

Cool story arcs I can play through and enjoy the story (As in, one not slap-dash like the VEAT story arcs, or the majority of old ones bugged down with filler)

The occasional brawl in PVP with friends characters (often for RP purposes, like a sparring session or something)

A nice AE arc once in a while (found with the cool threads in the MA section, or something that one of my friends has made for an IC story line)

Roleplaying characters and their story lines (without which I'd not have been here for as long as I have, and is another reason why costume is so important to me. I have a character who has glowing eyes, but it irritated me immensely that it wasn't until level 30 back then that I could actually -have- glowing eyes that weren't the old, shoddy Supernatural face.)

The odd TF with friends every so often (I love Hess and Katie Hannon, and cannot stand the Statesman or Khan TF's)

Gathering exploration badges and enjoying the areas of the game that aren't copy paste clones (Love Stirga, and the i18 Praetorian zones are examples of zone design done right)

Tip missions (Though I'd love more, and more morality missions all around) and the fun of rolling A-Merits of 5 random recipes to see what falls out

The occasional RWZ teams to get characters up to the fun level (As in, level 22, where you have another costume slot, access to SO's, and enough powers to get an idea of the characters powers.)

Chatting with people on global chat channels.

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For the first question, getting a team of people together is like herding cats. The more people you have, the more difficult it becomes. Some of the people I play with, and this is including myself, don't have the kind of builds to 8-man a Lambda. Then, with more people, the action gets more chaotic. My Radeon 5770 starts to struggle on some of the Incarnate Trial maps, and things go to a slideshow even with the particle count turned down.

And friends have their own lives to get on with. I have friends with children, friends with babies, friends with obligations and the works. On an ITF, we can wait if someone's kid needs feeding or they need baths or to be put to bed. It's much harder to do that on a timed trial. Or even if someone needs the phone or gets called away.

The things I would love to have access to (the auras) are behind the thing I hate doing. I don't enjoy myself when doing trials. For me, it's either boring or frustrating. And that's not conductive to fun. It's not like when I'm playing [tough platforming game/fun pure racing/driving/stunt game, so on] where I can pick up later on after taking a de-stress break. There mere fact that the things I care about are behind the things I can't stand cause me to rankle. Then it just builds and builds when doing it, as I have no easy way to vent or remove myself from the stress, and I just end up loathing the game.

I played [big mmo that has raiding and the like] and I liked their dungeon thing back in the last expansion, where just five people could do something, and earn progression towards gear without it being insanely stressy. When the group I was playing with there moved onto 10/20 man raids, that's when I started to burn out from the stress. I didn't like doing them, but I didn't want to let the people I was playing with down.

I quit over a year ago and never looked back.

Seeing that creep into the game I've played for 6 years worries me. Hiding cosmetic rewards behind that worries me even more. I know some people won't understand that. Does that mean I should do nothing, or voice my displeasure and reasons on the appropriate topics?

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SUPPORT - IT'S NOT JUST A GROUPING OF ATs
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More Than a Game
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That is actually a good point that I think the Devs have lost touch with a little.

Not everyone has a top-of-the-line computer or graphics card. Not to mention, neither should be required for a 7 year old MMO.

Now, I just ran an Invasion with a mass of people and special effects going off, at max graphics, with no lag. But you know what? The computer is only 3 months old, and for the 4 years before that I could not afford to upgrade much. I am lucky in that I own my own company that publishes RPGs and is doing well-- and did well throughout the economic downturn.

Others-- many others-- are not so lucky. Just from an economic standpoint, now is not the time to start inserting content that requires a massive amount of people, and is going to cause lagfests for much of the player base. The average person is not going to run out and upgrade like they could even 3-4 years ago. Money is not what it was, the job market is not what it was. Times have changed, and things are far from "recovered".

Look at other games out there. Even WoW, DCUO, CO, and others have anywhere from 5-10 man teams that are required for anything. Paragon Studios trying to insert content that is going to use upwards of 40 people is . . . absolutely . . . stupid design at this stage.

If I was on my old computer still, I would not be playing now. There's just no excuse for that kind of backwards design when even other games have clearly moved away from the (previously) 20-40 man content.

It taxes less than new computers, and alienates the average player from participating. Plus, the only reason content is designed for that many people is due to Dev choice. A bad choice, nonetheless.

Nevermind just the general play hassles when you have that many people together. I just don't feel that kind of team-design content has any place in current MMOs.

I won't even get started in the "forced raiding" they are trying to implement for early unlock of capes, auras, and et cetera.

Guess what, Paragon, the game that has those "forced raiding" features is a different demographic than CoH has been built upon. And has SOE has found out, if this is even on your mind, you are not going to pull players from that game by trying to mimic it.

Wouldn't you just delete the mail after you'd claimed the stuff in it?

I'm currently saving for a new system, but I'm still a good four months off my goal, and even then it won't be a top of the line system, just a lot more current than my current rig. (WinXPSP3 32-biit, 2gig ram, 2.6ghz Core 2 Duo, SATA 2 HDDs, Radeon 5770 to Win7 64 bit, 8 gig ram, 3.30ghz i5-2500k, SSD and SATA 3 HDDS, Radeon 6780)

Even some 8-man content gives my rig trouble. I don't like running the LGTF due to what the final room does to my graphics, and the huge auras and power effects of 8 characters can tax it, let alone more than that. Rikti raids have always been an example for me that CoH's power effects en mass are a painful mess.

And in a time when the competitors have realised that huge raids can be problematic, no matter the size, going upwards in numbers just seems a little counter to logic to me.

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SUPPORT - IT'S NOT JUST A GROUPING OF ATs
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More Than a Game
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That won't work:
Every character will have the annoying Email telling me there is something available. What if I want to claim it on a new character in a couple days? With this as described, I now have to see that on every character until I use it.

It gets worse though:
Now every single character (and I've got around 80 alts), will have this warning. If I choose to buy the Incarnate costume pieces that means for my 70+ characters that aren't level 50 and all future created characters will have the "email present" warning for however long it takes to GET to level 50 so that I can get it out of that character's email box.

I deal with enough spam OUTSIDE of the game, using the ingame email system in this fashion isn't user-friendly at all.

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

Particle, World Detail, Character detail goes down. Shadows are on low anyway due to producing an oft-annoying flicker in some zones, environmental reflections are on low, no advanced occlusion.

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SUPPORT - IT'S NOT JUST A GROUPING OF ATs
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More Than a Game
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