Bitter but still paying...

Preface: I apologise for having been condescending to you. I felt your previous post merited it, but your following response I can definitely respect and work with. Thank you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arilou Not everything (stealthing through a mission, ex. is usually easier when solo) but yes, that was rather my point: Solo tasks and team-tasks operate under differend conditions and therefore when balancing them they can't be treated the same way. They're both going to have to be balanced against each other *and the net effect is going to be, or at least *should* be, that they take roughly the same amount of time to accomplish*.

I do agree with this, but only up to a point. There's a certain critical time required for team building that you can rarely go under, and solo missions that can be "stealthed" in a couple of minutes will always, always be much faster and easier solo than on a team, even if the team chose to stealth the mission, too. Incidentally, having a team stealth a mission doesn't really take all that much longer, it just tacks on another, say, 30 seconds of ally teleportation, either via Assemble the Team or Recall Friend.

That's why I'm being generous and putting that critical time at half an hour solo. Anything which takes half an hour or more to do solo will always be doable in less time and with less effort on a team. The larger the team is, the slower it's built but the faster it tends to go through content. And, as you mention, teams already have a bonus to experience. I wouldn't be averse to see them getting bonuses in other aspects, as well. Aspects relating to the Incarnate system, more specifically.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arilou No, I'm suggesting it should not be easier. Any possible solo-task should be at least as time-consuming as running the trials. That's what I've been saying.

Granted, no contest there. However, iTrials are designed to be run with three teams at a time, I think, so their inherent difficulty is SEVERE specifically because they're intended to be tackled by large groups. They're the most difficult content in the game, most probably, but we shouldn't see this "super difficulty" as the base for actual effort and challenge faced, because they're also the content in the game that's doable with the largest mass of people, and that diminishes difficulty quite a bit.

What this means is that if we give a solo or small team option to do with Incarnates, we need to scale this down to something that's appropriate to solo and small teams. More than anything, we need to make sure the thing is even doable by solo players and small teams, because when you plain can't finish the mission, your difficulty and time to completion are infinite. Remember - Trials are hard, but they can be tackled by up to 24 people, sometimes. Solo Incarnate stuff should be SIGNIFICANTLY less difficult than that.

Obviously, I don't want an easier or faster option to Incarnate progress than the teamed one. But I still want one that's a HELL of a lot more realistic than the Shards-to-Threads option which exists right now and, above all else, and above all else an option which revolves around Incarnate-specific storylines.

Going back on my word slightly, I can deal having to grind, say, a bunch of "alignment-mission-like" Incarnate Missions for days or weeks, provided I can get a reliable source of progress for them. Grind within reasonable amounts isn't that much of a gate, since I can always keep coming back to it and chipping away. What I DO want, however, is a path to progression which doesn't have the overhead of team-building, politics and a chain of command.

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I'll be perfectly honest here - I love big huge mission instances on which I can kill everything what moves (and NPC allies bug me because I can't kill them). Huge Oranbegan maps are my favourites simply because they're huge and jam-packed with enemies, as is that one "Moth Cemetery" old-ish instance. I like them because they constitute fairly simple tasks that I can get into a groove with, because I can go at my own pace, methodically clearing them out block by block or sector by sector or in whatever way I choose to subdivide the instance in my head, and I can essentially keep on making visible, obvious progress. Every time I'm done with a block on an outdoor urban map, I look at the map and there's one more piece filled in, and my brain goes "Yes! We are making a difference!"

All I'm saying is that if you give me at least a relatively large selection of big instances to clear out of everything and everyone and reward enemy kills rather than speeding through to the end, I honestly wouldn't complain all that much, even if it took a long time to do. I mean, it's not rare for me to grab any of the older I2 outdoor instances and spend an hour and a half just clearing it. Make a mission like this, give rewards per enemy kill and you have the perfect environment. A solo player will take a pretty long time to take out relatively few enemies while a large team of eight will steam-roll through the mission and take out about four times as many enemies in at most a quarter of the time. Teams still benefit more, solo players still have an option.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arilou It's there precisely because teams take effort to form. Remember back before the team XP bonus? Because I do. They specifically added this because they noted that normally it wasn't worth the hassle to form a team because the simplicity (not ease, soloing can very well be harder than teaming) of running the maps solo outweighed the speed bump you got from teaming.

I don't actually remember a time before team experience bonuses, (I may have simply forgotten) but I remember a time before the purple patch. Back then, large teams would roam zones, fighting enemies +10 to them, getting massive, massive rewards, to the point where teams like "deep purple enemies" were developed and people considered fighting anything that wasn't at least +6 to you to be a waste of time and an embarrassment. Of course, single players couldn't do it, hence why large teams kept forming. The Purple Patch pretty much killed that. Literally.

Quote:

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.

Oh so this thread has moved on to a different subject, that's cool.

Personally I would welcome a solo option. I'd still do the trials as usual, given that they still grant the same 2-4 astral merits, drop table and possibly couple empyrean merits per run. However if people want to solo, that's fine by me. I'd probably use the solo option as well when I'm sick of the downtime between trials or none of my friends are online.

I play for 168 hours every week, is that too much?

In answer to the original question....

But I am not playing the game.

I have not logged in since the second week of I20's release. My subs are paid up until, ironically enough, October when Freedom is due to launch. I have been a constant subscriber for 5 years, i.e. never cancelled my auto renewal subs. Not that I have never taken breaks from the game, I have. However in previous times I took a break not because of something I found wrong with the game, it was just to prevent burnout and because there were other things I wanted time to check out.

I let my subs continue because I knew at some point I would return to the game. On this occasion however I stop playing due to my disdain for the iTrials and the fact they were the only viable way of progressing any of my characters. With this time away from the game I am also considering allowing my subscription to lapse and not auto renew, stopping any more spending I would do on this product.

I use that term on purpose as my feelings and decisions over the situation is coming more as a consumer rather than the gamer and that is a different kettle of fish.

In my case, I have used up my available slots on my chosen server and I have nothing but level 50's. They are not all IO'd out but at this stage, it does not take me very long to IO out an individual character. So the advent of end game progression for my characters with the Incarnate system was exciting. When the Alpha slot was released, I embraced it with many of my toons. Was prepared to do specific TF's for the Notices in WST's because all other parts I could build by doing any content I chose to do ether solo or in traditional 8 person teams in TF's.

With the trials and the next four incarnate slots open I first sent my main tanker into the furore. Admittedly the idea of getting involved in mass teaming for the trials was a little daunting. Mothership raids were fine as all that was needed was numbers to hit things and that was it. However after a few Hamidon raids I was put off the stress and madness needed to keep a successful run together, even as just one of the foot soldiers, never mind someone in the position to to lead. This was more so with the Rularuu trial which I just do not do at all.

Not one to never give something a go at least once though, I tried out the trials on I20's release. The unnecessary stress and carry on was there and only did them causally between other things going on. On that week I did not have a chance to have any full days of gaming ether because of usual work or the fact that real life took over the weekend. Still though after a week of the trials release my Tanker was Tier 4 everything. I figured “Hmm, not too bad really”. Spend a week casually doing the trials with a toon then do the old content with the toon to finish the IO build out and then move onto the next character.

But with the next character I started the trials with, it soon became clear that I would have to grind the trials more than just casually in order to get a sniff of anything. The stress of mass teaming with headless chickens and the arguments between know it all's was too much after getting little in return in rewards, so I logged out the during the second weekend after the trial's release and have not been back since.

End game content that I would find enjoyable and accessible is a main factor in keeping me subbed and playing the game as that is all I have left. Fixing the issues still in the trials or offering more trials to try and stave off repetitiveness will not be enough as I just do not want to be involved in mass teaming. It is not worth the stress, and stress should never be involved in playing a game. I get enough stress from my day job. I would rather play CoH to unwind, not get more stressed.

The new powersets won't be enough as I do not have the server space to create any more toons, and do not want to move to another server as my friends and close community are based on Union. If I were to come up with a concept to take or re-roll and try out Titan Weapons and Staff Melee that is only going to guarantee 2 months of game time at most to get them to 50. After that I am back to the problem I have again and therefore going to feel I have wasted a good chunk of my subs.

I have tried to be a bit more reasonable and diplomatic than some screaming for solo content by liking the suggestions in some areas of making existing TF's in the game, of all levels and allowing players to set them on Incarnate difficulty (Level 54) and get the rewards that way if they choose to rather than trials.

The lack of response from the Devs though is another factor. I had made an equally long post in response to one of the many threads made on the subject of alternative ways to progress in the Incarnate system and the post was deleted for genuine reasons of some posters getting out of control. I stated in a PM to one of the Moderators that I understood if that was the reason that the thread was removed but if I could get assurance that my post that did not get involved in the flame war going on was acknowledged and refereed to Dev feedback. I did not get any response.

I took part in the first Facebook Q&A and posed the question if the team acknowledged that not all players liked the trials but wanted to still carry on in the Incarnate system and therefore was alternative content going to be coming shortly after the release of CoH:Freedom? Still no response.

With my consumer head on, forgetting any previous attachment I had for the game and everyone I played with it, if I am not getting much of a response from those selling me this product that I have concerns with then it is no wonder that I have to consider keeping my money and spend it elsewhere.

The other thing has driven me away is the often lauded community. True enough, the other super hero themed MMO's (They are the only kinds of MMO's I am interested in playing) just do not have the community that CoH has. Unfortunately the subject of alternative Incarnate progression has caused a sour divide here. Just as another poster here has felt necessary to do, I have used the ignore feature quite a bit lately on the forums which is something I have very rarely used before.

Its been the case that those of us that want to see an alternative to iTrials are not just been disagreed with, it has felt like we are being attacked for just even suggesting it. In the responses I have ether seen and had been given to me, it felt like they might as well have said “We do not want your kind playing our game then!”. That is no longer a community that can be celebrated in the game's promotion again and another good reason as any, to me asking myself do I wish to continue paying for that.

But hey, I am just one person so what does that matter? True enough except I could point to close to 10 others I am on Skype with every night that started because we all played CoH together but currently are not playing for pretty much the same reasons. Will be funny in September as most of us are also going to the CoH meet up in Birmingham as we are already paid up to go there but have since stopped playing CoH.

Other thing is there are many other friends that know I have been playing CoH for so long and have been interested in playing based on what I tell them about the game or what I previously showed them but did not because they could not afford subs or were not keen on the idea behind MMO payments in general even if the game looked good. News quickly got round about CoH going Free to Play and most have come back to me asking questions and looking forward to finally playing the game with me. Ironically though I am now telling them I am not playing right now and questioning if I should carry on playing subs for the game and ever returning. After explaining my reasons they have gone “Oh, right. Might not bother then”.

My subs and continue playing of the game will be ensured if Paragon Studios announce that they understand that iTrials are not for everyone's taste and therefore alternatives will be available in Issue 22 (I'll admit that realistically its not likely with Issue 21 with everything else being developed for that at this time) and offer details as to how the alternative progression works. I'm serious. If they simply just say something like that, I'll keep the auto sub going and return to the game and keep myself occupied with other things knowing that an alternative is on its way, because yes, I do love this game.

If not, then I am just wasting money on something I am not playing and simply take my money and business elsewhere.