Solo content.

I let my subscription expire this week for the first time in over 5 years.

Why?

I don't like grinding and farming. I know some people do and if so please enjoy your AE, Trial or farm mission. I also live in a very rural area and the only high speed connection available is via Aircard. Verizon is very good but I still get limited bandwidth out here.

Could I move to a new location? Absolutely however the joy of waking up and looking out my back deck at 100+ acres of meadows and woodlands and out my front door at another 100+ acres of primeval oak forest is a joy that broadband can't match.

It does limit my game play. I can't do a Mothership raid or a Hamidon raid. I can't usually join in the large events like Rikti attacks or Zombies unless it is early in the morning. To do such things I do wake up at 5:30 am so I have 90 minutes of gaming before I go to work or to spend time working on a book I want to finish.

I can't do a BAF trial or since reading of the Lambda lag that one either. I have a very fast system but my connection is so variable that at times I have organized and started TF's and had to quit since I refused to door sit or leech.

This game was perfect for me until our developers decided to force us to run the trials to advance past 50. I knew where it would head but hoped they would relent and allow a path for solo/small teams to progress slower but still to achieve the shiney in a reasonable 3-6 month range.

I cancelled this week when it became obvious MORE was going to be linked to these farming trials and that we were going to be herded to have fun the way they (Devs) wanted it not how we the players choose to. The population is static or slightly negative year to year now. With forced teaming and trial based content it is hard to find a small team on the lower level stuff or TFs.

My point is most players and the Devs must certainly know (and if they don't they have learned) it is impossible to create content fast enough to keep the players happy. So you grind 2 trials. Then 3 trials once its open and after a year lets be generous and say 6. Against those 6 lets compare the vast amount created over 7 years. There is no comparison.

Positron says he want us to experience the new stuff? I will tell you for a fact some can't, some won't and some will love it, some will hate it. In the past it did not matter. I could gain experience, not gain it, Ex, Sidekick or play the game in any combination I chose to advance. Now by not allowing me to continue with 7 years of tradition - you stopped me. I have to run dozens or in fact HUNDREDS of the same trials repeatedly to progress.

End game? To me it is the end of the game if it continues like this. I can't do the stuff most of the time and therefore I solo about 50% of the time. I do run TF's but usually DC 3-6 times each one. To watch the game I have played for so long, change to a forced style of play if I seek to advance is extremely disheartening. I am planning now to go month by month for a time and see if any solo or small team way is offered.

I do have hope that 4G may make its way here in the next 18 months or 2 years, until then I wait and hope.

Infernus, I thought you'd be gone for good after GDN and ED. Next to that, I doubt the Incarnate stuff would be enough to drive you off for long.

I must admit I've lost some interest in CoH due to the Incarnate focus. I still haven't constructed a single buff for my Alpha slot, and I don't expect to any time soon. I don't do trials or TFs. So the new content just isn't for me. Still, I don't have much else out there I'm interested in playing. My other MMO belongs to a development team that has recently been "divested" from its parent company. I also play Sims 3, but that's a sandbox game and I need plenty of regular plot in my gaming. There aren't any other decent superhero MMOs out there. I know, I've played the other ones quite a bit.

So I plan to stick around here and hope more solo friendly content comes out eventually.

Three days isn't so bad unless you've got the merits saved up already. Otherwise it takes longer to earn the merits than for the Gr'ai Matter to be available again. And if in that time you're lucky enough to earn 4 shards solo, you can just make the component directly. Sidegrades are a shortcut when you're being frugal with shards.

It's not an alternative equal to a good BAF run, but it's got more variety than farming the Cimeroran wall for a week.

well, best i can say is keep an eye on the foums every once and a while. i wouldn't expect solo incarnate stuff soon, but on the same token, in the long runi would be surprised if there weren't a tip/paper style option, they did note that in the ustream chat a while ago and , while noting it would be a long way off, that there could be solo/small team stuff as well, so maybe check back in 4-6 months, to see if there is any news. as black scorps points reinforced, they do try to address concerns of the community when they reasonably can. the key bolded term is reasonable, if i know anything about game design, and its not much, but they tend to lay out plans well in advance, so lean on 6 more than 3 months.

now the bugbear question is, will the solo content be difficult for weak soloers? possible, we saw some of the issues with trap/the honoree, dont know if they really have much they can do if they want it to offer any challenge at all to strong soloing at's, but we will see when we see, anything now is speculation.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

Some kind of slower solo path will very likely be added eventually - but the most important thing is to balance the content around team tasks - they need to do that first before they can offer a solo option - which will still be slower than the team option.

Any solo Incarnate content would be heavily time gated, so the same people would still complain about it.

Solo Incarnate content is fine - but people need to be prepared for it to be a lot less efficient at making progress than the core Incarnate content of the Trials - the system simply isn't designed or intended to have a solo option be anywhere near as fast as the normal Trials option.