Giving the Players what they want: Solo Incarnate Content

Some time ago, NCsoft made the statement that a major goal of Paragon Studios was to give the players what they wanted, within reason.

Right now, there is a significant demand for solo Incarnate Content that can be completed on a schedule that at least gives a fraction of the progression offered by trials.

Right now, that is not in the game, despite the fact that it has been repeatedly requested by a wide array of players from before day one of the introduction of the incarnate system.

It's been six, nearly seven MONTHS since the live introduction of the Incarnate system. This request has not been fulfilled in any meaningful way despite the HUGE development timeframe. The only available solo path can leave a player grinding for literally years for what a trial player can achieve in days. Right now it serves mostly as an arguing point rather than being any kind of utility for the players.

Is NCSoft no longer in the business of giving the players what they want?

If not, why has there been such a huge delay on this? A number of fairly simple solutions requiring minimal development work have been suggested. Are any of these under consideration? Is there any consideration at all being given to this very common player want?

I would like to see a non-team incarnate progression path that takes under quadruple the total time team-based progress takes. I'm doing the trial currently but I rarely enjoy it. The current progression path is somewhere in the region of 50:1 solo time:team time ratio

Yeah I like the trials and don't really solo much. THis is an MMO so yeah...

Having said that, I am tired of these trials/raids and hope they come to their senses and give us iXP via Tin Mage and Apex TFs. I am sure they will be giving alternate paths to obtain incarnate powers. I think the trick is to make them multi-purposed; something a regular 50 and incarnate can play so it isn't as isolated.

It would also be nice if we could stop adding Praetorian stuff. It has been done to death.

The whole point of the incarnate content is to encourage TF's and Leagues.

People who avoid teams have incarnate progression options, but I would tend to agree those options are too limited.

Don't take this the wrong way, I am very much Anti-iTrial but isn't the problem of not getting a release time of any alternative Incarnate content from the Devs, and being pelted by Pro iTrialers with rotten fruit, simply because we are asking for solo content in the game when there has never been solo content made in it's history?

I know you can solo in the game a lot if you have a toon build that can, I do myself if I am not offering TF's on sals global channel. However I was under the belief that all content created was made with teaming in mind.

Is is possible that we might get a better response to our requests/frustrations if we did not use the phrase "Solo Content"? What will make me log back into the game after all this time offline and ensure I renew my subs when Freedom comes round is viable Incarnate progression without needing to take part in the iTrials. But might as well build content in the mind set that they did before, i.e. built with traditional teaming in mind and if we choose to solo it, then so be it, its possible to do so.

You might get a greater response if your argument was based in reality.

The "Players want solo content, not raids" mentality is proven false every single night in Pocket D and RWZ by the masses lining up to still do Lambda and BAFs as well as Keyes.

The "This game has become a raiding game" mentality is being proven false by issues including non-raiding content as well. Even the issue that gave us the first raids included Mortimer SFs and Sutter TFs. We already know with VIP membership we get a signature story arc every month... which is more solo-able content than we ever got with issues that may have included 2-3 of them after 8 months of development.

And finally, maybe this whole anti-raid outcry would look a little better if it were isolated to one place. Spreading it out amongst dozens of threads just makes it plainly obvious that the outcry is just being magnified through quantity of spammed rants by a handful of people.

you know moo, this could not have been in one of the other threads already on this topic? you are just too special to contain this particular comment to one of the several other threads already discussing this?

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

I agree with the premise that more options for Incarnate advancement is good for this game-- particularly smaller task forces and praetorian-like zone events. What I don't agree with is the degree to which people suggest increasing rewards for soloable content.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AmazingMOO Right now, there is a significant demand for solo Incarnate Content that can be completed on a schedule that at least gives a fraction of the progression offered by trials.

You're getting a little too preachy on this subject Moo. I would just like to point out that soloers are a sizable and very vocal portion of the forums, but a rather small percentage of the overall community and the market that MMOs appeal to.

Allow me to play Devil's Advocate for a moment... the pay is good and the benefits package is out of this world!

The Retirement plan sucks, tho'...

Any-who...

We must consider Players as a limited resource. Right now the only way to get Incarnate hoobie-joobs (remember I have never played Incarnate content so am unfamiliar with the jargon) is to play through the trials. So, we find a glut of people hanging around Pocket D and begging like a teen ager for weekend car priveleges.

The Devs are happy with this. "We have created a NEED!" they say and pat each other on the back. Then a slowly growing portion of the community starts screaming "We don't want to play (this) Trial(s)! We want (more Trials/solo content)!"

This is a problem.

Trials, by their nature, require a LOT of players to get through. The Devs have dug themselves a hole and may now begin to realize they didn't bring a ladder down into it with them to climb back out. By creating MORE avenues by which the player base can gain the means to earn credit towards Incarnate powers, they are... in effect... spreading the player base out among all the options, ending up with less players per option which is a problem when you need several full teams to accomplish a Trial.

If that wasn't bad enough... CoH Freedom will allow players to play for free which will certainly tempt a fair number of players over to the Dark Side. Free Players do NOT have access to Incarnate Powers and so there is the potential of a dip in Incarnate seeking player population. Likely this would only be temporary, since a good number of new Free players will likely want to go VIP.

The long and the short of my argument is that... eventually... the Devs will HAVE to create a system by which solo or "normal" sized teams can more quickly ascend the Incarnate ladder. The infusion of Trials into the game will practically guarantee it.

Yes, that's right folks... Entropy is at work for YOU!

I'd prefer small to regular team content that just might be soloable by really dedicated people. I may structure the rewards in such content so that stuff is rewarded as you play, so that even if you fail repeatedly, at least you can make some reasonable progress.

OTOH, a lot of people seem to have taken well to the trials. More than I expected or hoped (which at least makes forming the trials reasonably easy most of the time). It may not be in the best interest of the game to introduce much in the way of Incarnate rewards outside of the trials. I hope that is not true, as I prefer 6 to 8 man teams over 8 to 16 man teams over 16-48 man teams.