Bitter but still paying...
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2011-07-08 13:12 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
So much of my disappointment with the Incarnate System are the expectations set by the devs.
Hear me out: CoH is incredibly solo friendly from levels 1 -50. just about any player and any AT can solo their way to level 50+1 without ever need ing to join a team. Over the years, the devs went to great lengths to make virtually all regular content scalable for group szes 1 thru 8. They even implemented the difficulty slider to make it even easier. Crafted IO's and IO sets give additional strength and defense to weaker AT's. Almost every big thing they've done for the past 5 years has been to make it possible for any AT to be able to solo their way to max level.
By doing this, the many players who prefer to the solo (or small team) mode of play have come to view CoH as the most solo friendly MMO currently within the top 25. An expectation was set in these players minds that not only did the devs appreciate the value of solo play to many of its customers but that it would not stop providing such content. Nothing was put in wiritng, of course, but the history of and trends in the game's development reinforced those solo players expectations.
Then comes the Incarnate System and its decidedly solo un-friendly content. Suddenly and with very little warning, the solo players found their style of play totally abandoned by the devs and in fact had it "dissed" and insulted with the ridiculous shard conversion requirements for soloing up the Incarnate ladder. With the long established expectations smashed so severely and cold-heartedly, of course, many of the soloing crowd got really upset.
"After so many years of loyalty and committment to our style of play, how could you devs abandon us so completely in the post 50 levels of the game that we were looking forward to with just as great a sense of anticipation as the teaming/raiding crowd was?"
Of course we are upset and angry. Everyone else would be too if their expectations had been crushed in the same way. Just remember, it was the long history of the game that set our expectations. We did not pull them out of thin air or make them up after the fact. Due to how the game had been trending over the past 7 years, prior to I19, we had every right to expect that development of post-50 solo content would continue right along side of the team/multi-team content. We were conditioned by the game's structure to expect to have choices that included solo play and then post-50 that choice was removed.
The devs broke with the 7 year trend and abandoned our style of play and most of us perceive no good reason why they went that way by making the decisions they did. It is frustrating because it just doesn't make any good business sense for them to do what they have done. It is sad and disappointing if they continue to ignore the solo market in the post-50 content. They worked really hard to be the most solo friendly MMO and now they seem to be working equally hard to lose that title.
I'm still holding on to hope that the staff sees the error of their ways and restore the proud solo reputatioin of this game to its rightful place at the top of the heap.
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You missed out the "slap in the face" part |
Originally Posted by Fritzy
"dissed" and insulted
expectations smashed so severely and cold-heartedly devs abandon us upset and angry expectations had been crushed sad and disappointing |
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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Neither of those activities, though, is necessarily a form of post-50 progression. It's a parallel form of progression that goes on since level 10, and it's only "post 50" to the extent that most people tend to hit 50 before they buy all... 20? 30? 40? Before they get all the game's purples. It's fairly easy to shut down XP gain, perma-lock yourself at 49, finish an Inventions build and claim that the 49 to 50 game is post-inventions progress.|
Originally Posted by reiella
Farming out accolades.
Farming out IO components/recipes for your build. |
Incarnates are different, in the sense that they require you to have completed the entire 1-50 game before you can take part in it. They are not one of the many activities a level 50 character can do that just happen to be left over from the 1-49 game. They're an activity which only ever starts AFTER the 1-50 game ends.
Also, Incarnate slots offer very visual, very showy powers, something that neither Accolades nor Inventions offer. Being able to toss a hugeass fireball is much more a continuation of a fire-centric character concept than having 7.5% more defence to psychic attacks (pulling that number out of a hat, by the way).
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Originally Posted by reiella
It's a fair assessment. The only contention I'd make is the tone of the incarnate trials is more trying to compare against the massive franchise story arcs like the Secret Wars or the Infinity Wars. I'd tend to line it up more with the various Infinity-lines simply because of the Cosmic level Superpower aspect. Well I had thought it was interesting, I blame my lack of sleep on the lack of details
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This is already true in several places in the existing game. Tasks like the Mender Lazarus "Task Force" where you end up taking on Requiem, Vandal and Emperor Ming the Merciless essentially on your own (Nosferatu and Brukholder are idiots and die quick) is one, as are both Mender silos TFs, hero and villain, where you either take out the whole of the Freedom Phlanx, or otherwise Recluse and his lieutenants. There are the numerous signature AVs that show up in missions, like Vanessa DeVore, Clarissa Crey, the real Nemesis, Rikti Herodotus, Miss Liberty, Positron, Synapse, Marauder, Night Star, Bobcat... The list goes on. The point is, the game already gives us plenty of opportunities to outshine the signature NPC one-on-one or even when they tag-team against us.
If we had to speak of comic books, this reminds me of Spider-Man facing off against the Sinister Six. He's just one guy, and not all that super-powered, as well, facing off against... What was it? Rhino, Doc Ock, the Vulture, the Chamelion, the Shocker and... Who else? The Hobgoblin, maybe? Point is, Spider-Man is seen as such a threat that the Kingpin has to pull a whole bunch of villains together to oppose him and create drama and threat that way. Individually, Spidey has put all of these guys in jail several times already, but they're dangerous because they're together.
Wait, the sixth guy was Mysterio, wasn't he? Curse my eclectic memory!
All I'm saying is that as the Incarnate system expands, it will need to feature more personal stories that allow us to shine in our own adventures. All it features right now is instances where we're badly underpowered and have to essentially cheat to beat a single foe or a pair of foes. Sooner or later, it needs to feature the reverse - instances where my enemies are underpowered and are only a threat to me, personally, because they team up and cheat.
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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.
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Swap out Electro for the Shocker. They were both in "Sinister" line-ups, but Electro was in the original Six.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
If we had to speak of comic books, this reminds me of Spider-Man facing off against the Sinister Six. He's just one guy, and not all that super-powered, as well, facing off against... What was it? Rhino, Doc Ock, the Vulture, the Chamelion, the Shocker and... Who else? The Hobgoblin, maybe? Point is, Spider-Man is seen as such a threat that the Kingpin has to pull a whole bunch of villains together to oppose him and create drama and threat that way. Individually, Spidey has put all of these guys in jail several times already, but they're dangerous because they're together.
Wait, the sixth guy was Mysterio, wasn't he? Curse my eclectic memory! |
On Liberty:
Aardwolf - level 50 claws/invulnerability scrapper
Anchor - level 50 level gravity/forcefield controller
Dr. Dusk - level 50 mercenaries/dark miasma mastermind
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A fair point, what I am suggesting though is that Incarnate stuff is Cosmic-level.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
All I'm saying is that as the Incarnate system expands, it will need to feature more personal stories that allow us to shine in our own adventures. All it features right now is instances where we're badly underpowered and have to essentially cheat to beat a single foe or a pair of foes. Sooner or later, it needs to feature the reverse - instances where my enemies are underpowered and are only a threat to me, personally, because they team up and cheat.
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And while we did have a few solo instances going on with the various Infinity sagas, those were mostly for characters that were at the Cosmic range of power in the first place. The problem is while you can support some cosmic level actors/characters going solo in such a story, you can't have the vast majority of characters be cosmic without it getting silly.
Now there is a very good point to be made that as we, the characters, advance along that incarnate scale, we're really approaching the cosmic power level range. And it would be more justified to have some more solo cosmic level interaction. Then, you run into problems with the Massively Multiplayer nature [which admittedly already exist with the plot as is] and that's just posing the question of how interesting/significant the Infinity Wars would be if everyone were Adam Warlock or Thanatos, yes, even Toad wielding the powers of the Eternity.
That isn't to say there's no room for the 'non-cosmics' to have their own content with that story line, that certainly happened with the Infinity Wars/crossovers. I'd contend that it happens in CoX with some of the existing arcs and the new TFs. Could it use more? Certainly. Right now, it's awkward because the Incarnate Storyline and the Praetoria storyline are related but not necessarily the same, so there will be some intersection.
I did think of another wrinkle with regards to non-cosmics in the cosmic arcs, it's very rare for any of the non-cosmics to actually get to keep the power they gained (more akin to the Blood Coral line I'd say). And that would hardly work for a 'progression' based end game. That said, I dunno
. Not good answers there.The problem I see with incarnate-explicit content that isn't in the Trials is I see a real problem with solo content requiring someone be an incarnate. For instance, I really dislike the Alpha slot requirement with Apex and Tin Mage, it's really really annoying. It's more tolerable since 8man is pretty much a small raid for other vendors, but it's still really annoying. And then you have to face the issue that the game is pretty unbalanced in terms of relative power to make it seem reasonable that the content 'requires you to be an incarnate' versus 'this content is too difficult for me to complete on my own even when I am an incarnate'. And well, I dislike the Alpha slot 'method' that was used in Apex/Tin Mage.
[ edit / add ]
A thought, I'd really like to see AE get some additional functionality with Incarnate abilities and the like. That way, folks could have their own crafted stories that meaningfully utilize their incarnate abilities. However, it'd unfortunately need to have no 'additional' rewards. So it'd just be self-story fest, but :/
Let's Dance!
There could be solo challenges once we have all 10 slots opened 
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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To who?
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Originally Posted by Fritzy
They worked really hard to be the most solo friendly MMO and now they seem to be working equally hard to lose that title.
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Wasn't Incarnate suppossed to be more about end game, raid style content that players wanted?|
Originally Posted by Fritzy
So much of my disappointment with the Incarnate System are the expectations set by the devs.
Hear me out: CoH is incredibly solo friendly from levels 1 -50. just about any player and any AT can solo their way to level 50+1 without ever need ing to join a team. Over the years, the devs went to great lengths to make virtually all regular content scalable for group szes 1 thru 8. They even implemented the difficulty slider to make it even easier. Crafted IO's and IO sets give additional strength and defense to weaker AT's. Almost every big thing they've done for the past 5 years has been to make it possible for any AT to be able to solo their way to max level. By doing this, the many players who prefer to the solo (or small team) mode of play have come to view CoH as the most solo friendly MMO currently within the top 25. An expectation was set in these players minds that not only did the devs appreciate the value of solo play to many of its customers but that it would not stop providing such content. Nothing was put in wiritng, of course, but the history of and trends in the game's development reinforced those solo players expectations. Then comes the Incarnate System and its decidedly solo un-friendly content. Suddenly and with very little warning, the solo players found their style of play totally abandoned by the devs and in fact had it "dissed" and insulted with the ridiculous shard conversion requirements for soloing up the Incarnate ladder. With the long established expectations smashed so severely and cold-heartedly, of course, many of the soloing crowd got really upset. "After so many years of loyalty and committment to our style of play, how could you devs abandon us so completely in the post 50 levels of the game that we were looking forward to with just as great a sense of anticipation as the teaming/raiding crowd was?" Of course we are upset and angry. Everyone else would be too if their expectations had been crushed in the same way. Just remember, it was the long history of the game that set our expectations. We did not pull them out of thin air or make them up after the fact. Due to how the game had been trending over the past 7 years, prior to I19, we had every right to expect that development of post-50 solo content would continue right along side of the team/multi-team content. We were conditioned by the game's structure to expect to have choices that included solo play and then post-50 that choice was removed. The devs broke with the 7 year trend and abandoned our style of play and most of us perceive no good reason why they went that way by making the decisions they did. It is frustrating because it just doesn't make any good business sense for them to do what they have done. It is sad and disappointing if they continue to ignore the solo market in the post-50 content. They worked really hard to be the most solo friendly MMO and now they seem to be working equally hard to lose that title. I'm still holding on to hope that the staff sees the error of their ways and restore the proud solo reputatioin of this game to its rightful place at the top of the heap. |
Note when I say players, I don't mean 100% of the player base.
The one's who were happy to solo, are still able to do it.
And broke from our style of play? Still feels like the CoH I've been playing for the last 6 1/2 years.
Trials are like TFs, or Hami/Mothership Raid. No one ever soloed the Hami or Mothership Raids did they? TFs have always required a team to form.
And once your character hits level 50 from all that soloing, they can still go about soloing missions!
Want that TF Commander Accolade? Need to team!
I'd say IOs were a bigger game changer than running trials. And I still unconvinced that the majority of the players feel they should beable to solo everything.
In game, I get the impression most people want to team.
BrandX Future Staff Fighter
The BrandX Collection
Since you all continually CHOOSE to ignore it I will keep it in front of you:
THEY TIED COSTUMES, AURAS AND OTHER THINGS TO TRIALS.
Those are not trial only powers.
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They tied Hami-Os to Hamidon raids, they tied the Task Force Commander accolade to the Task Forces. Both of those had non-team-related gameplay impact. In practice, the "solo path" to the Vanguard costumes wasn't much easier than the solo incarnate path - an hour's mothership raid would give 400+ Vanguard merits, as opposed to the one or two you'd get from the occasional rikti defeat, and some of the Roman costumes are gated by the ITF.|
Originally Posted by Infernus_Hades
Since you all continually CHOOSE to ignore it I will keep it in front of you:
THEY TIED COSTUMES, AURAS AND OTHER THINGS TO TRIALS. Those are not trial only powers. |
That team play gives rewards that alter the rest of the game is not new - that you may care more about what they've gated behind the trials, or dislike the trials more than the previous gates may be, but that's not a design issue with the game, that's a preference issue on your part.
If I were king of the forest I wouldn't have put some of the things in the astral/empyrian merit store that they did - but they're the designers, not I - so they got to pick.
If you want to express a desire to have an alternate means to obtain those things, then by all means do so - but to claim that having a non-trial-related reward available for the trials that both isn't available anywhere else, and that some people who don't team will want equates to a game-breaking change to the design philosophy? Well, that just doesn't match with reality.
Synchrotron, level 50 Radiation/Radiation Defender
Fighting crime on Champion since 2004
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They did!|
Originally Posted by Infernus_Hades
Since you all continually CHOOSE to ignore it I will keep it in front of you:
THEY TIED COSTUMES, AURAS AND OTHER THINGS TO TRIALS. Those are not trial only powers. |
Synchrotron gave a good post on this. However, I'd like to add, that while yes it is locked behind content only a level 50 can do, it only takes you doing that content with one level 50, to have it unlocked for every other character.
Once you've unlocked those trail auras, auras, chest emblems, they're usual by any character you make from levels below 50! And no teaming required.
With of course the exception of Ascension Armor. While unlocked for every character, they're level locked untill 50.
BrandX Future Staff Fighter
The BrandX Collection
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The rewards from both has a lot more to do with the content than unlocks them than a Binary or Pixel aura has to being an Incarnate. Or being able to swoon.|
Originally Posted by _Synchrotron_
They tied Hami-Os to Hamidon raids, they tied the Task Force Commander accolade to the Task Forces. Both of those had non-team-related gameplay impact.
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Also, with the exception for Hami-Os, that you get one random from each run, and the roman cossie unlocks that requires two runs, all of these had to be done once. They do not have to be grinded again and again and again ad nauseam.
Still @Shadow Kitty
"I became Archvillain before Statesman nerfed himself!"
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There is a good reason and it does make good business sense. Plenty of people felt that the lack of high-end raid content was a serious flaw with the game. By introducing that type of content, they widen the appeal of the game. Please note, they did not REMOVE any solo content in the process.
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Originally Posted by Fritzy
The devs broke with the 7 year trend and abandoned our style of play and most of us perceive no good reason why they went that way by making the decisions they did. It is frustrating because it just doesn't make any good business sense for them to do what they have done.
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Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
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And we pay them to play, so we get to complain about the choices we do not agree with.
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Originally Posted by _Synchrotron_
If I were king of the forest I wouldn't have put some of the things in the astral/empyrian merit store that they did - but they're the designers, not I - so they got to pick.
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Better a Player be bitter and complaining on this board and still paying the monthly subscription then the more popular alternative of quietly canceling their account and filling out that survey NCsoft has you fill out when your subscription is canceled.
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Some people believe the lack of forced grouping was a strong point of the game and by changing that they narrow the appeal. The question is which change involves the larger number of people. Also, and I think more important than straight numbers, is the question of competition. If you try to appeal to the non-raiding crowd, then you're pretty much unchallenged. If you are just another raid game, then you have an elephant in the room to contend with. |
Originally Posted by Ironblade
There is a good reason and it does make good business sense. Plenty of people felt that the lack of high-end raid content was a serious flaw with the game. By introducing that type of content, they widen the appeal of the game. Please note, they did not REMOVE any solo content in the process.
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Lastly, the fact that there is more raid content is a separate question to whether or not the raid content they do have is made the only path to advancement. Unless there is a huge contingent of people who not only want raid content, but also want other people forced into that raid content, then having other options doesn't exclude those people at all. And if they do feel that way, they are jerks.
Wow.
The Incarnate haters really cannot help themselves it would seem.
Does every thread really need to turn into an Incarnate system flame war? Really?
And I am the oddball for talking about people who keep on posting all this angst.
Gotta love the Internet.
"The side that is unhappy is not the side that the game was intended to make happy, or promised to make happy, or focused on making happy. The side that is unhappy is the side that is unhappy. That's all." - Arcanaville
"Surprised your guys' arteries haven't clogged with all that hatred yet." - Xzero45
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Originally Posted by MajorPrankster
Wow.
The Incarnate haters really cannot help themselves it would seem. |
Seems to me they have plenty of help getting the topic started and sustained.
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On the contrary, I don't hate incarnates. In fact, I'm an Incarnate lover!|
Originally Posted by MajorPrankster
The Incarnate haters really cannot help themselves it would seem.
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I also happens to be a Raid hater and even more a Grind hater.
So now you know.
Still @Shadow Kitty
"I became Archvillain before Statesman nerfed himself!"
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You are correct that no one, at least to my knowledge, has ever solo'd a Hami or Mothership raid. I have never participated in a Hami raid either. I participated in a mothership raid only to get the badge that was stupidly locked behind the force field so I could acquire the teleport beacon for the RWZ for a villain base.|
Originally Posted by BrandX
Trials are like TFs, or Hami/Mothership Raid. No one ever soloed the Hami or Mothership Raids did they? TFs have always required a team to form.
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Originally Posted by MajorPrankster
The Incarnate haters really cannot help themselves it would seem.
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Most other people would see that those with complaints about the current method of Incarnate progression don't hate Incarnates, just the method of progression. Or, more accurately, the lack of viable options in progressing Incarnates.
I haven't heard anyone that has complained about the current state of the end game state that the Devs should remove all the raids and create solo only missions for Incarnate content. I have seen a lot of suggestions for adding small team/solo-able incarnate missions alongside the Incarnate raids to give people the option to either do raids, or do the small team/solo-able content. Or both if they so desired.
Yes, I know. I fed a troll.
There I was between a rock and a hard place. Then I thought, "What am I doing on this side of the rock?"
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Just to point out that some people focus on the negative because the positive does not need addressing. Part of it is simple pragmatism, and partly it's a result of a defensive mechanism - anyone who's ever worked in a corporate environment know that if something works well, you do not, ever, draw attention to it. Thus we focus our comments on things that do not work, or could work better, but it would also be plausible to assume that we approve of everything we don't complain about.
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Originally Posted by bjooks
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Indeed. But they did not ADD a soloable parallel path in the Incarnate space as they did in the Regular space. Everyone could have had their cake and eaten it, too, if the devs had planned this thing correctly.
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Originally Posted by Ironblade
There is a good reason and it does make good business sense. Plenty of people felt that the lack of high-end raid content was a serious flaw with the game. By introducing that type of content, they widen the appeal of the game. Please note, they did not REMOVE any solo content in the process.
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I was thinking about this, and I thought of a fun way to do this solo...
Solo Player mission, like they did with Morality missions, that has +4 enemies that drop shards, and you have to face off against an AV (no downgrading to EB) and if you beat it, you get an EMP Merit, and if you clear the objectives, Astral Merits.
Make it repeatable, but can only get 1 EMP Merit once every 20 hours, just like the trials.
Keeps it equally difficult to the trials, while allow people to repeat it to earn threads.
BrandX Future Staff Fighter
The BrandX Collection
He addressed exactly what you said in this post, but you ignored it.