Bitter but still paying...

Nope.

What you've got there is the VHS of superhero MMOs. Everyone wants it because everyone else has it, not because it's the best.

And, for the record, CoHs non-trial teaming/mission system kicks major rear with just about any other MMOs teaming/mission system I've ever seen. Yes, being able to have a team of 8, auto-scale the opposition to the team size, see everyone's missions, and select one as the active one that we will focus on right now, is so super-awesome that nobody else seems to dare to implement it! So they limit themselves to teams of 5, no scaling, no seeing other's tasks, and only a share button that can rarely be used.

Yeah, its a weird thing but people do seem to genuinely believe that grind equates to hard! When the truth is closer to grind equates to dull.

Incidentally I did the Weekly Strike Target Terra Volta Trial yesterday and in between the very slow waves of Rikti a discussion arose as to why people were doing the trial. No one suggested it was "fun". I was there for the badge. What's wrong with this picture?

Now I did enjoy myself, but I haven't done TV in years and certainly won't do it again for quite some time. A couple of people in the team were complaining they wouldn't get a "Notice of the Well".

The people?

That's what I said actually. He was complaining that a solo path described earlier would be too hard/repetitive. I mentioned that if he's going to get a solo path it's likely going to be at least as hard (which admittedly isn't much) as the trial path, and if it isn't as hard it's probably going to be twice as repetitive to compensate.

Okay, let's start with a few basics.

There are rewards. There's going to be a task required to do these rewards. Doesen't matter if it's just standard levels, incarnate rewards, IO's whatever. If you want "stuff" you're going to have to do something. Play the game. Meet the challenge.

Sure, they could give us a "get to level 50" button at the start of the game. They could just ignore the entire idea of game mechanics and progression and make it into a free-form diceless RPG.

But it's not very likely. The game is a "classic" RPG, that means that in order to get rewards you're going to have to meet challenges of some kind. Are we okay on this? Can you accept at least this much?

Now. Ideally there would be an infinite amount of content to run, and an infinite amount of rewards to get: You'd never have to repeat ANYTHING unless you wanted to and you'd always have something new to work for.

This is unrealistic. The devs do not have that kind of time or resources. They are working with finite resources.

A lot of people (not all, but many) only play as long as they can get new stuff. Improve their characters (they might roll a new one of course, but even that has a finite kind of permutations before it gets stale) if they stop getting to be able to do new stuff with their characters, they eventually stop playing them. Once they feel there's nothing new to get (at all) they stop playing the game.

Now, the easiest way for the devs to keep these players occupied (as in, the least amount of work for them) is to make them repeat content to get shinies. If you make them run the Gauntlet of Doom 10 times before they get the Sword of Sharpness they'll stay playing ten times as long as if you gave them the sword after one Gauntlet run, and you'll have to do 1/10th of the work as if you had made ten different dungeons they could run.

Hence "grinding". It's a rather efficient way of doing things. Most people don't mind repeating content *to a certain extent* if they get some new shinies from it. And the devs don't have to make infinite permutations of content.

That's why they make you repeat content: IE: Grind.

Now, of course the devs knows there's a balance to be struck here, make players repeat the same content TOO many times and they'll get bored and quit, regardless of the shinies. So they have to make some kind balance. Maybe you need to run the Gauntlet of Doom only five times rather than ten to get the Sword of Sharpness.

Now, the thing is that *players have different tolerance for these kinds of things*. COH is (and I can state this with confidence) on the VERY low end of the grind-scale. The trials are relatively non-grindy compared to a lot of other MMORPG's high-end stuff. (and just like everything else, it'll become less grindy as more alternative paths/content exists)

This doesen't neccessarily mean the devs have put the level of grind on the right level, but at least you should be able to understand why grinding is neccessary. It's because it's effectively recycling the dev's work.

So if you want to argue that the current system is too grindy (I think it's about right, personally, there's a few minor stuff that could be sorted out, and I'd certainly not mind some kind of solo-path, but the grindiness-level itself is pretty decent, you can get a fully kitted-out incarnate in a couple of days if you are at it, which is lightning-fast by MMORPG standards) you can. But that's a separate argument for arguing about the grindiness or lack thereof of a solo-path compared to the trial-path.

To a certain extent repetitiveness can be balanced by risk of failure: If a challenge is set so that people will fail it about half the time, then effectively you can cut the level of repetitions in half (since half the time they won't even get to the reward stage) so in that sense repetitiveness and challenge are conversible: The repetition/challenge values can be combined into one value, let's call it "effort", that can be used to determine how long a player "should" have to play before they get their reward.

There's all sorts of ways of making you "feel" progress between actual rewards of course, like giving you tokens that can be traded for stuff, etc. That gives you a feeling of progress, even though they can't be used for anything until you get 10 of them, say. But you know you only have to get 3 more of them before you have your Sword of Sharpness.

Now, if you have a solo-task that takes the same amount of time and has the same challenge-factor (let's say the average failure rate is 50%) as a team-task, a team-task *is going to require more effort*. This is counterintuitive but rather simple: It takes effort to assemble and coordinate a team. (a team can also make a task much easier, but that afects the failure rate, assuming the failure rate remains constant, it takes more effort to do it with a team)

Do you understand?

Now, the devs have set the effort-level required to get the Incarnate Powers. it might be too high, it might be too low. You think it is too high, but anyway. Assume the devs have figured that this is the optimal level of effort required and they're pretty happy with it.

That means that any solo path is going to require the same level of effort (time, repetition, challenge, what-have you) as the trial path. (Or, given that the devs are fallible human beings, they're at least going to take a stab at it)

Why that is, is well... obvious. They don't want the solo-path to be obviously superior (in the lack of effort required) because if so people will do it exclusively, then get bored, and quit the game.

Do you understand now? This is well... It's really basic game-design. If you don't want a challenge, if you just want to make up "the rules" as you go along, then the game really isn't for you. The devs are trying to keep the requirement of a challenge up becuase they know that most people will get bored running around with God Mode after a while. (this, incidentally, is also why they periodically nerf stuff that they consider overpowered)

Again, where the level of "too easy so it gets boring" is? that's going to vary from person to person, and the devs are going to try to hit a middle-ground that's acceptable to the largest number of people. (Whether or not they succeed is a different matter.

And that's why they have to make the solo-path equally grindy to the trial-path.* Now you have your answer, please never ask that question again.

Because people appreciate a challenge. They value stuff more after they've had to work for it. Again, there's a balance: Give people stuff too easily and they won't value it, make it too much work and they'll give up, thinking it's not worth it.

* Not neccessarily the current trial-path. It's possible the devs are going to figure "Eh, we made it too grindy, let's scale it back." But that's a different matter.

And cause me to rage-quit and never want anything to do with the game ever again. Any system which requires, as an intended course of progression, intends for me to fail at it more than I succeed is a horrible system, irrespective of how fast I can progress in it. That's my beef with random drops, as well - you bust your *** beating a very difficult encounter and you end up getting the consolation price you never wanted in the first place.

I'm fine with slow and grindy AS LONG AS IT'S RELIABLE. Very rare random drops are pretty much the polar opposite of reliable. I'm fine with something taking time, I'm fine with it taking days and weeks and months. My first 50 took me something like 800 hours to achieve and I never complained. But when you're giving me a choice between a task where my drops are a crapshot or my ability to complete it is a crapshot, you're not giving me options.

And please, let's not be disingenuous with terms like "challenge." The iTrials may be difficult, but they are distinctly possible. Putting an AV in my missions makes them functionally, practically and quite very literally IMPOSSIBLE to complete regardless of how much you choose to talk down to me about "challenge." I'm not Bill Z Bubba. I don't have characters who can solo AVs, or come anywhere even close. I don't have characters who can even survive eye contact with an AV on their own. And I don't regret that for a minute, because AVs are not and never have been - and never will be - solo content.

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.

I, personally, am more on the other side: I'd be allright with only have a 10% chance of success (that is on average, I don't want it to actually be random) if I only had to do it once. The sweet sense of accomplishment after beating a really tough challenge is... Well, sweet.

The best way of course is some kind of staged rewards that means you can get some level of slow/grindy progress even if you fail, while if you succeed (which is really hard) you don't have to repeat it at all. But that's pretty much impossible to balance.

Congratulations! The devs thinks so too! That's why you can convert Empyreal Merits to Very Rare components.*

Again, I don't neccessarily think putting AV's into the hypotethical solo incarnate path is neccessarily a good idea. But IF you don't (since remember, some characters CAN solo AV's easily, which means EB's is going to be a cakewalk for them) it's likely going to require more repetitions (IE: more actual grinding) than if you didn't.

If you're not putting AV's in there (or some new game mechanics I can't even speculate on) characters like Bill's aren't going to be challenged at all... And since solo requires so much less effort than trials (essentially, in trials Bill's characters matter less becuase the rest o fthe teams are going to slow it down, unless he takes the time to find a team BillClones, and in that case the time he spends doing that is time he's not running trials, so it slows him donw anyway) which means that the "challenge" part isn't going to be particularly important in determining the time/reward ratio. So they're going to have to go for repetition instead. (Or at some other form of making sure you spend time doing it)

*Whether or not the conversion ratio is where it should be is beside the point. That's why it's there.

I, on the other hand, find it at best bitter-sweet and most commonly just bitter. Putting more effort into something doesn't make me more excited to see the result, it makes me feel I deserve greater compensation for my troubles. And when I fail the specific task yet again and get, to quite K: "precisely dick" in return, I am unhappy. And even when it's finally over and I have the damn thing, my reaction is not triumphant jubilation, but rather a mix of "It was about bloody time!" and "I just busted my butt for that stupid thing?"

The more effort your game requires me to put into playing it, the more it owes me in return.

You know... You keep saying solo play requires much less effort and I have to call you out on that. No, it does not. Solo play requires significantly MORE effort and a lot of the challenges it presents are significantly more difficult. I have, to this day, not played a team task that I have not seen at one time or another done for me by a team without me even lifting a finger. If you want to claim that somehow me contributing next to nothing to a task and still getting rewards is harder than me fighting three elite bosses at a time, as is the case with Mender Lazarus' solo TF, then we'll never see eye-to-eye.

Yeah, sure, putting a team together and leading takes effort. Joining a team and pressing buttons does not. And yet joining a team and pressing buttons is already far easier, much faster and many times more rewarding than going solo irrespective of task, yet you feel solo play is not quite penalised enough? I don't agree. I'm already taking three times as long to get through the levels as people who just hop onto whatever large team happens to be available at the time and doing a lot of not much. Is that not enough, but now my solo tasks have to be impossible while a team can sleep-walk through its tasks?

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.

*headdesks*

DO YOU EVEN READ!?

I've specifically determined what I mean by effort.

YES. Any particular challenge is going to be harder than teaming against that particular challenge.* So beating that hellion boss is harder solo than teaming. This is already baked into what I mean by "effort".

I said that given the same failure-chance and time spent on the actual task it takes more effort to team because you have to actually get a team first (the difficulty of this varies, but it's a factor).

So stop bringing up all sorts of stuff that's entirely besides the point. Take two identical tasks (let's say, sit for 30 minutes in a room and then a reward-box spawns, only one version of this task requires a team, and the other does not) the challenge is the same (100% chance of success assuming you don't get bored) the time is the same (just 30 minutes of waiting) given these parameters the team-task is going to require more effort because you have to actually get a team to do it, while the solo-character can just go in and start waiting immediately

DO. YOU. UNDERSTAND? Or do I have to say the same thing I've said two-dozen times AGAIN. Are you goint to keep up bringing up arguments that are completely irrelevant?

Any team-based vs. solo task has to take into account (in addition to the synergistic effects of teams, etc. etc.) the effort it takes to actually form a team. (or look one up)

The rest of your post just has absolutely NOTHING to do with what I'm talking about at all. I'm just saying that if there's going to be a solo path (WHICH I THINK THERE SHOULD BE, AND BY THE WAY, ADDING ONE WOULD NOT BE PENALIZING SOLOERS BECAUSE PRETTY MUCH ANY SOLO PATH WOULD BE BETTER THAN THE SISYPHEAN TASK THEY HAVE AHEAD OF THEM RIGHT NOW, SO IT WOULD BE MAKING IT EASIER AND NOT PENALIZING THEM) it's going to have to require an equal amount of effort as the trial path. However they choose to distribute that effort. (repetitiveness, challenge, etc. etc.)

Ideally the solo-path should require exactly as much time from the moment you decided to start collecting incarnate stuff as the trial path. Including the time it takes to form teams and such.

* the scaling system *somewhat* changes this, but it's still true for any given challenge.

Do you? I appreciate your insults, but typing in all caps and punctuating every word with a period doesn't make you any less wrong, especially when you accuse me of bringing up things that are "besides the point" when you keep using completely irrelevant examples. No team task will ever take the same amount of time or effort as a solo task, because teams accomplish everything faster and easier. This quickness and ease more than makes up for the time and difficulty of putting a team together many times over. Even if you give the exact same task to a team and to a single player, the team will still be done with it faster and easier even with the time it takes to put a team together taken into account.

This is an argument as old as the game is, and people have already covered it in the past. The cost of putting together a team and the difficulty involved in finding team-mates is more than made up by the speed with which said team blows through content and the ease of said content on a team. I could fancy putting together an ITF right now, and even if it took me 45 minutes to put it together, I'd still end up with at least three times more experience and Inf, not to mention Shards than if I had just soloed my own content. And I'm not making that comparison up. I know this for a fact because I've run enough TFs and done enough solo play to know how they compare.

Team play does not need help. Team play is already many times more productive than solo play for many times the reward. Refusing to admit that is just petty, and suggesting that not only should solo play be slower and harder, but it should also be impossible is just adding insult to injury.

I hope all-caps word-punctuated sentences will be enough for you to respond to my audacity without resorting to bold, larger-size coloured text with links to lolcats embedded, but we'll see how that goes. I'd personally prefer it if you'd address the documented, obvious, unquestionable superiority in terms of speed of reward gain that team play enjoys even with set-up time and effort accounted before you start speaking about a team task taking as long as a solo task.

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.

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*.

Depending on the task, and the availibility of teammates. But the point is that this can't just be assumed: It's something that has to be taken into consideration by the devs.

No, that's just not true. It is true in some circumstances, but definitely not universally so. I run tip missions solo, mainly, because it's generally faster to do so than to run them in teams. (even discounting the time it takes to forming them).

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.

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.

EDIT. There are of course variables to this, eg. The larger the team the more time has to be spent forming it, the shorter the task the better incentive is there to solo it. (because as a proportion you're going to spend less time LFT) and so on and so forth.

Yeah.. time for you to step away from the keyboard, probably... Being condescending and deliberately obtuse on top of belittling and belligerent isn't going to accomplish anything. It's pretty obvious that your viewpoint is understood, just not agreed with. There are so many flaws in the thinking here that if you hadn't blown yourself out of the water with the CAPSLOCK in the first sentence of accusation flinging, the rest of the post would have taken care of it for you.

On to other things.

I have to agree with Sam and Co here. There is no rational or objective reason that there isn't a solo path to the Incarnate rewards aside from 'it just hasn't been implemented yet'. I could believe it will take a good deal of time and effort to design and field an entire arc for each reward, since you have to incorporate a different or differently scaling reward system for it. Doling out the merit rewards in the same shameful and miserly fashion that vanguard merits was mishandled isn't really an option either, since that just leads to forcing the player to participate in the raidlocked content all over again. We need to find a way to remind the existing playerbase as well as the developers that a great deal of their players are mostly casual soloers, and since that is the market they've been dealing with for seven years, it's probably not wise to alienate them at this late stage in the game's development.

It would also be worth reiterating that the people calling for a viable alternate path to this paid for content are not your enemy. They are not trying to take anything from you, they are not going to set fire to your house at night because you enjoy grinding and this new design philosophy the development team has embraced.

You'll need to back that up

?

Why?

No parking on the dance floor!

Because it's untrue

If there were any numbers presented from either side, we would probably be able to tell.

But as long as there aren't, I will take both sides' claims as good old rumours.

Oh, and while at it, please post a definition of "casual" as well.

I believe there is an actual formula for that, based on how long it takes you to purple your warshade.

Heck, I did that when I rolled him.

--CP
best use I've ever put a pharma-spam "from" name to

if she doesn't find out your real last name.

It's not obvious when there's no counterargument forthcoming, just a heap of irrelevant asides.

The devs aren't going to design a purposefully imbalanced system. That would just be stupid.

I don't think anyone has disagreed with that. There are some issues with a solo path, but these are in the realm of balancing problems that while thorny aren't exactly hard to fix or anything, with sufficient testing.

But the solo-path is (presumably) going to be in-line with any other way of getting stuff in this game (just like eg. the prices for E-merit purple recipes are in line with the prices for A-merits) They're not going to hand you a gravy train to incarnate-dom.*

* They might still adjust the overall time required to get rewards downwards. (by decreasing prices and increasing drops, eg.) and in that way change the matter, but the solo path is going to be in the ballpark of the trial-path. So if that (rather than the actual trial experience itself) is your problem you're probably going to be disappointed with whatever they cook up.

I gut instinct (which can be wrong, mind) is that they're going to make the solo content relatively achievable (IE: No soloing AV's) but in return it's going to be time-gated, unlike the trials. And that's going to be the balancing mechanic. I suspect Alignment-merits is going to be the model for any solo path.