FUNdamental Design Problems (Longish)
By
AmazingMOO,
Posted on: 2011-10-21 09:11 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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agreed. I don't mind discovering a story as I play through it, but I don't get to appreciate it in the fast-paced world of most incarnate trials. I have to read about it elsewhere to make sense of what's being done and why.|
Originally Posted by AmazingMOO
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So what makes them unfun? This is pretty subjective, and it's going to be different for everyone. I'll list what makes them unfun for me. Confusing goals aren't fun. Keyes Facility is currently the worst about this. There are dozens of subgoals with frequently only slightly differing requirements and a not a lot of information to tell you how to meet them. My experience is that most people get through Keyes the first time and still don't really have much clue what was going on. |
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Being Insta-killed isn't Fun There's at least some of this in all the trials. In a lot of cases, players are defeated with no warning and through no fault of their own. In cases where they have warning and can evade death via skill or sheer toughness, it's great! In cases where you can't even see WHY you died, it's simply frustrating. |
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Zerging an Objective isn't fun. All the trials suffer from this to some degree by including so much unresistable damage and insta-kill effects. The single worst offender is the glowie hunt in Lambda. When a player is defeated and has to run back into the maze after going to the hospital, chances are the enemies left behind in the mad rush are going to zap him again before he catches back up to his team. |
There are things they could do:
- add an aura effect on the bad guys that buff the resistance of the crates, so it becomes better to NOT have lotsa baddies stand next to the box you're beating up.
OR
- Increase the hit points of the boxes, but add a small "incarnate buff" to you when you defeat a foe. You'd then take the crates down faster because of this buff.
Just doing that would encourage people to actually FIGHT the bad guys on their way to the crates and penalize the zerg mentality-- hopefully enough to kill the tactic dead.
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Sitting in the Hospital while other people finish the challenge isn't fun. All the trials have the frequently pointless 20 second lock on the hospital doors (as does Death From Below!). That's frustrating. However, the worst single example is when a team leader asks part of the group to sit in the hospital while another part finishes an objective. I've seen this happening pretty frequently on Keyes as players attempt to earn the badges. Players who have problematic hardware-- they can't see the green patch or lag too badly to avoid it-- are asked to stay in the hospital. Neither the team leader nor the rest of the team begrudges them the badge nor holds them responsible for their hardware issues. Still, I wouldn't even WANT a badge that I didn't help earn. |
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Grinding for Currency to Buy Rewards isn't Fun. (It's called 'Work' in the Real World.) What can I say? Some people really enjoy Skeeball. I like the rolling the balls part of it, but the collecting tickets bit comes off as just kinda dumb to me. In the same way, getting 1 or 2 Empyrean merits a day and then discovering that you need dozens of them to get the costume pieces you want is EXACTLY like getting 12 tickets from a Skeeball machine and then discovering that you need 5000 of them to buy the crappy black and white TV at the rewards counter. In the real world, you can say, 'Screw this. I'm not enjoying the game any more, so I'll just go to Best Buy and buy the TV I want.' In the game, however, there's no way to do that. By gating those rewards behind untradeable, uncraftable Empyrean merits, the designers can say, 'No! You cannot have that unless you do EXACTLY what we want you to!' |
Unfortunately, we have different ends of the spectrum here-
- those that will just do trials all day, earning grossly inflated amounts of merits, but hoard them anyway, as cosmetic elements that don't improve gameplay have little value to them.
- those that love the cosmetic elements but only casually play the incarnate trials, as their interests aren't in raids.
So the cosmetics-lovers feel forced to raid more to get what they want, while the raid-lovers just hoard what they have, hoping it can be spent to unlock something useful very quickly when the next stage is released.
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Downtime is no fun. Queuing for an incarnate trial could work if people used it, but most don't, perpetuating the problem. Instead they sit in Pocket D or RWZ shouting 'LFT for BAF!' over and over again. When I do run a trial with friends, I typically pull out something to read while I'm waiting for everyone to assemble. I'm not even PLAYING the game at that point, let alone enjoying it. |
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Trying to Corral 16 or 24 Strangers is not fun. When I'm trying to meet new people and play with others I haven't before, I feel like that if there are any more than about 5 or 6 others, I can't really keep track of what's going on, especially if I'm also providing any kind of leadership. Trying to do the same thing with 16 others is about as much fun as listening to a screaming baby in a restaurant. You can't immediately weed out the bad seeds or the abusers simply because there's too much going on to keep track of everything. Regardless of the Designers' desire to make the trials accessible, they DO need leadership. Someone has to make decisions, even if it's only flipping the coin to decide who pulls. When you're on a team of 16 and 24 and there are no leaders, or worse, there are several people on the team who refuse to listen to the leaders who do step forward, it's not just the crying baby in the restaurant any more. The screaming baby's 3 year old brother has just taken his pants off and is running around the tables, half-naked. He keeps running up to your table and trying to grab your dessert and his parents won't do a damn thing about it. I, and a lot of others have made suggestions to alleviate some of these problems in the past, but I think that the trial designers need to go further than simply tweaking numbers. They need to step back, take a hard, deep look at what they've built and ask themselves 'Why isn't this fun?' If you get it right, you won't HAVE to keep fiddling with the drop rates, cool-down timers, and introducing new currencies to keep people's interests. People will do the content because they WANT to do the content. Right now, a lot of people simply don't WANT to do the content and that's not something that putting a new stereo up on the counter and tagging '8000 Tickets' on it is going to fix. |
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Could not disagree more with this. Whenever I am in charge of one of the teams in lam, I always announce that we will clear the group around the objectives before moving on and clear any that are in our way. |
Originally Posted by Chase_Arcanum
This I put 80% the league's fault, 20% the devs. A team that stays together can easily clear the enemies as they get the glowies (and earn excellent iXP), making things easier for anyone coming behind. The problem is that the devs gave no incentive to do it (other than saving your teammates' already-questionable sanity).
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In every single instance of that, the other group has come to our aid and helped us finish - often being done before we hit 5. If they are running slow, I have no choice but to abandon my plan and let people run rampant. Better a few dead squishies than a lost astral for everyone and a chance at failing the trial.
In every instance I have tried it, 3 running maniacs who can solo a crate are far superior to a group sticking together and killing things. Maybe a group of +3s can kill everything effectively, but why would they bother?
And that problem falls squarely in the laps of those that designed the trial, not the players.
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I've always thought it was a bit silly to have the time bonus on the glowies rather than the enemies.|
There are things they could do: - add an aura effect on the bad guys that buff the resistance of the crates, so it becomes better to NOT have lotsa baddies stand next to the box you're beating up. OR - Increase the hit points of the boxes, but add a small "incarnate buff" to you when you defeat a foe. You'd then take the crates down faster because of this buff. |
If you removed the time bonus from the glowies, divided it a little more finely, and put it on the enemies, people would clear both mazes for the sake of clearing them. You wouldn't even have to change the way the 'Synchronized' badge works.
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I agree with you on most counts, I do not find the 50+ stuff fun at all, yes I like some of the shineys they provide (though I haven't gotten past tier 3 on alpha slot). Ive run in the first three and only the BAF trial i can say is reasonably fun. |
Originally Posted by AmazingMOO
FUNdamental Design Problems::snip::
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I love the DfB trial, I love the new haunted house, I even did a banner for the first time last night and it was fun.
I have no desire to go any further on the incarnate path as I find it to be not fun and frustrating.
and as my wife pointed out, some of the incarnate stuff is bleeding into regular 45-50 play and frustrating non incarnates. "just what am I here for?" is a common phrase I hear
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Welcome to last year, MOO. We missed you |
Originally Posted by AmazingMOO
The very basic root of the problem is that the Incarnate System, as it's working right now, is not very FUN.
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Incarnate Trials are not fun. They were never fun. Moreover, they were never designed to be fun. They were designed to be a player-conditioning Skinner box. They were designed to be addictive. They were designed to the most repugnant practices in game development, where the goal isn't to entertain players but rather to keep them locked on a constant treadmill by engineering the experience such that it constantly gives players cues to try harder and grind more and never gives them any stopping points.
Incarnates are farming for merits. The system isn't designed to keep you entertained, they're designed to keep you subscribed. There simply isn't time in the day or cash in the kitty to do anything other than a grind - a very long, very difficult, very repetitive bit of content that you're supposed to never be able to truly play through. For all the bad things we've said about Jack Emmert, at least the guy had the balls to admit that MMO raiding in the classical sense is garbage and that trying to put it into City of Heroes would be too expensive and not very fun.
Funny thing is that the exact arguments the development team in general made against "end game" back in 2004 and 2005 are the same reasons people get turned off the Incarnate system for. These same arguments are why I never felt that this was necessary, and will never agree it was a good idea until it finds a way to be more entertaining than it is psychologically addicting.
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Originally Posted by AmazingMOO
Confusing goals aren't fun.
Being Insta-killed isn't Fun Zerging an Objective isn't fun. Sitting in the Hospital while other people finish the challenge isn't fun. Grinding for Currency to Buy Rewards isn't Fun. (It's called 'Work' in the Real World.) Downtime is no fun. Trying to Corral 16 or 24 Strangers is not fun. |
I don't discount the merit of having cluster-hug tasks in the game. I just discount the view which sees them as "better" than small teams or even solo and sees them as the next, better step in the game's gameplay. What this does is create a wholly different type of game for a whole portion of it.
In my opinion, the "end game" should never have been just raids, and raids should not have been restricted to it. Raids should have existed all throughout the level range, and SOMETHING ELSE should have existed in addition to them in the end. City of Heroes is one of the few games where you get to tailor your own gaming experience, and it doesn't make sense to me that this only applies up to level 50.
However, I have to call you out on this:
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Originally Posted by AmazingMOO
I suppose a good way to look at it is to ask yourself, if City of Heroes were a sandbox game and the rewards were removed completely, would people still play simply for the sake of playing?
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If City of Heroes had no rewards, it would have no progression, and if it had no progression I wouldn't play it. There's nothing to be gained by making a level 50 character and just spinning your wheels at the level cap. The rise through the levels is most of the fun, and this requires a progression system built of tasks to perform and progression to earn from them. That's how these games are built. "If there were no rewards" is a trick question when directed at an RPG, because most RPGs' gameplay is centred around character progression, be that through levels, achievements or gear. You can't get that out of the game and have it be fun any more so than you can take the guns out of a shooter and still have it be fun. You can probably pill off a miracle and make one or two games that worked that way, but by and large, those are just part of the game.
What you need to ask is when the game itself stops being the draw and becomes the obstacle.
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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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I'd give that a signed.|
Originally Posted by AmazingMOO
Confusing goals aren't fun.
Keyes Facility is currently the worst about this. There are dozens of subgoals with frequently only slightly differing requirements and a not a lot of information to tell you how to meet them. My experience is that most people get through Keyes the first time and still don't really have much clue what was going on. Being Insta-killed isn't Fun There's at least some of this in all the trials. In a lot of cases, players are defeated with no warning and through no fault of their own. In cases where they have warning and can evade death via skill or sheer toughness, it's great! In cases where you can't even see WHY you died, it's simply frustrating. Zerging an Objective isn't fun. All the trials suffer from this to some degree by including so much unresistable damage and insta-kill effects. The single worst offender is the glowie hunt in Lambda. When a player is defeated and has to run back into the maze after going to the hospital, chances are the enemies left behind in the mad rush are going to zap him again before he catches back up to his team. Sitting in the Hospital while other people finish the challenge isn't fun. All the trials have the frequently pointless 20 second lock on the hospital doors (as does Death From Below!). That's frustrating. However, the worst single example is when a team leader asks part of the group to sit in the hospital while another part finishes an objective. I've seen this happening pretty frequently on Keyes as players attempt to earn the badges. Players who have problematic hardware-- they can't see the green patch or lag too badly to avoid it-- are asked to stay in the hospital. Neither the team leader nor the rest of the team begrudges them the badge nor holds them responsible for their hardware issues. Still, I wouldn't even WANT a badge that I didn't help earn. Grinding for Currency to Buy Rewards isn't Fun. (It's called 'Work' in the Real World.) What can I say? Some people really enjoy Skeeball. I like the rolling the balls part of it, but the collecting tickets bit comes off as just kinda dumb to me. In the same way, getting 1 or 2 Empyrean merits a day and then discovering that you need dozens of them to get the costume pieces you want is EXACTLY like getting 12 tickets from a Skeeball machine and then discovering that you need 5000 of them to buy the crappy black and white TV at the rewards counter. In the real world, you can say, 'Screw this. I'm not enjoying the game any more, so I'll just go to Best Buy and buy the TV I want.' In the game, however, there's no way to do that. By gating those rewards behind untradeable, uncraftable Empyrean merits, the designers can say, 'No! You cannot have that unless you do EXACTLY what we want you to!' Downtime is no fun. Queuing for an incarnate trial could work if people used it, but most don't, perpetuating the problem. Instead they sit in Pocket D or RWZ shouting 'LFT for BAF!' over and over again. When I do run a trial with friends, I typically pull out something to read while I'm waiting for everyone to assemble. I'm not even PLAYING the game at that point, let alone enjoying it. Trying to Corral 16 or 24 Strangers is not fun. When I'm trying to meet new people and play with others I haven't before, I feel like that if there are any more than about 5 or 6 others, I can't really keep track of what's going on, especially if I'm also providing any kind of leadership. Trying to do the same thing with 16 others is about as much fun as listening to a screaming baby in a restaurant. You can't immediately weed out the bad seeds or the abusers simply because there's too much going on to keep track of everything. Regardless of the Designers' desire to make the trials accessible, they DO need leadership. Someone has to make decisions, even if it's only flipping the coin to decide who pulls. When you're on a team of 16 and 24 and there are no leaders, or worse, there are several people on the team who refuse to listen to the leaders who do step forward, it's not just the crying baby in the restaurant any more. The screaming baby's 3 year old brother has just taken his pants off and is running around the tables, half-naked. He keeps running up to your table and trying to grab your dessert and his parents won't do a damn thing about it. I, and a lot of others have made suggestions to alleviate some of these problems in the past, but I think that the trial designers need to go further than simply tweaking numbers. They need to step back, take a hard, deep look at what they've built and ask themselves 'Why isn't this fun?' If you get it right, you won't HAVE to keep fiddling with the drop rates, cool-down timers, and introducing new currencies to keep people's interests. People will do the content because they WANT to do the content. Right now, a lot of people simply don't WANT to do the content and that's not something that putting a new stereo up on the counter and tagging '8000 Tickets' on it is going to fix. |
But the big problem is the one you listed last, Trying to herd cats is not fun.
If the trials didn't need large numbers of people simply to run and didn't self terminate when people tried to do them with fewer the other problems they have would just not exist.
Confusing objectives would still be a problem but explaining to 8 people and having them understand is much less an impossibility.
Needing to focus the team and move as a group is immensely easier when you have a third of the people.
Downtime and waiting to form, just goes away if you are dealing with our regular team sizes.
Grinding would hardly be as bad because for the most part the trials would be considerably more fun and if you are doing something fun, its not really grinding.
The insta kills, the gimmicks, the insanely obvious cheating that the npcs are are doing would still be very bad, but if they dropped the group sizes to manageable numbers the trials would be something that people wanted to do not felt they were being compelled to do. Also with smaller groups people can see who is having trouble and help out.
In my opinion, the way Incarnate Trials works needs a massive redesign, looking at design decisions done right in the game and in others.
Ideas include:
'Gear up' in 8 player teams, 16 player version for added rewards.
More players needed = more hassle and longer to get started. Problematic if on smaller servers. A 16 player version should be available, offering more rewards, and perhaps some bonus badges to account for the added difficulty/more players.
The more teams that can get into the system, the more people that can do it.
30 Minute Maximum run time per iTrial.
Time is a limiting factor for some people, especially if you take into account time to form team. With less members needed, it should be quicker to start one. Also, if a trial should fail, it isn't as much time wasted.
Minor Rewards for Failure to help progression.
Tying into the above, failure should provide something that can help a team gear up in order to win, and make it seem like less of a waste of time.
Narrow down what gimmick is needed for each trial.
Confusion gets a lot of first time trial runners, and FX/information overload can be problematic. Slim down things to what's really needed and remove the extraneous.
Slim down amounts of currency required.
Threads and Components and two types of merits plus shards and shard components and Favours and Notices of the Well plus Physical and Psychic iXP? Is all that -really- necessary?
Allow LFG queuing in instances.
This lets people do other things while waiting to start a trial. In addition, add overworld options for other things to do out of an instance while waiting.
My biggest problem with the incarnate trials is that it doesn't *feel* like we're "advancing our characters past 50." It feels like we're grinding for loot - which we are. But putting all the rewards at the very end, and having no visual indicator that we're advancing is taking all the psychological 'training' the game's given us for the last 50 levels and tossing it out the window.
I would really *like* to see an ixp bar for the relevant slots when I zone into a trial. I would really *like* to see the level-up (ding!) graphic when we unlock a slot. I would really like to see occasional drops of common/uncommon i-salvage while you kill things in a trial (which would have the bonus of helping to encourage actual clearing rather than just zerging the objective.)
I think those things would really help me feel like I'm actually advancing my character, even if it doesn't change all that much. Otherwise, I feel like I'm just at the market trying to slap together one last IO for my set and waiting for my bids to fill :P
Thankfully, none of the to-be-added Incarnate abilities interest me for any of my current 50s, so I have little reason to continue grinding the trials for the Empyrean Merits to unlock the trees, nor to craft the abilities.
I'd like to specify something: I actually like the trials as content. The story of a grand assault on Praetoria and opening the eyes of its citizens to the twisted nature of their emperor is great, and the grand scale of it makes it feel epic. It is the same reason I enjoy running Rikti Mothership Raids. The banding together of many supers, most of whom have little reason to work together otherwise, to take down an imposing and difficult target is straight out of the comic books from which we get our inspiration. But I don't need to go into the differences between the Mothership raid's rewards and the iTrials' rewards...
Basically, even though the success was due to a glitch, I had a challenging but fun experience when leading my one run of the Underground Trial, because I enjoyed the story. But once I've run the story, I don't want to grind any more because, as you say, grinding isn't fun. So until some other stuff changes, or they release some stuff that I really want (enough to justify the grind) I will run the new trials probably 1-2 times per character, for which ever character's story is appropriate, and that will be that, heh.
@Winter. Because I'm Winter. Period.
I am a blaster first, and an alt-oholic second.
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Those are the biggies for me, especially the last one. And I agree with pretty much everything Sam said. That said, I actually like many parts of both the Lambda and BAF. I just think they could be improved. The Keyes terrifies me just reading the instructions. I haven't even seen an Underground advertised yet.|
Originally Posted by AmazingMOO
FUNdamental Design Problems
Confusing goals aren't fun. Being Insta-killed isn't Fun Zerging an Objective isn't fun. Trying to Corral 16 or 24 Strangers is not fun. |
If there were iTrials for a single team with simple, creative, challenging goals my SG would be all over it. As it is we pretty much have to ignore them so that's 1-2 nights a week I can't run an iTrial because I'm busy having fun with my friends running other content. That really only leaves the weekend for me to run them and when it comes right down to it, I usually blow it off and do something else that's more fun.
I have 1 character that's +3 and one that's +2. The other 3 are at +1 with the Alpha (which was done right in my opinion) but lag way behind in the rest of the incarnate powers. I'm fairly sure the rest of my friends are in a similar situation.
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If they moved the Incarnate content to normal-sized-teams (or better yet, the scalable TF format of the SSAs) I would love the heck out of them. But I can't enjoy the content or relax and look around when I'm in a herd for 12 other people going GO GO GO GO GO!! DON'T SCREW IT UP FOR EVERYONE ELSE!!
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Originally Posted by Winterminal
I'd like to specify something: I actually like the trials as content. The story of a grand assault on Praetoria and opening the eyes of its citizens to the twisted nature of their emperor is great, and the grand scale of it makes it feel epic.
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Originally Posted by Zortel
In my opinion, the way Incarnate Trials works needs a massive redesign, looking at design decisions done right in the game and in others.
Ideas include: 'Gear up' in 8 player teams, 16 player version for added rewards. More players needed = more hassle and longer to get started. Problematic if on smaller servers. A 16 player version should be available, offering more rewards, and perhaps some bonus badges to account for the added difficulty/more players. The more teams that can get into the system, the more people that can do it. 30 Minute Maximum run time per iTrial. Time is a limiting factor for some people, especially if you take into account time to form team. With less members needed, it should be quicker to start one. Also, if a trial should fail, it isn't as much time wasted. Minor Rewards for Failure to help progression. Tying into the above, failure should provide something that can help a team gear up in order to win, and make it seem like less of a waste of time. Narrow down what gimmick is needed for each trial. Confusion gets a lot of first time trial runners, and FX/information overload can be problematic. Slim down things to what's really needed and remove the extraneous. Slim down amounts of currency required. Threads and Components and two types of merits plus shards and shard components and Favours and Notices of the Well plus Physical and Psychic iXP? Is all that -really- necessary? Allow LFG queuing in instances. This lets people do other things while waiting to start a trial. In addition, add overworld options for other things to do out of an instance while waiting. |
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Originally Posted by Feycat
My biggest problem with the incarnate trials is that it doesn't *feel* like we're "advancing our characters past 50." It feels like we're grinding for loot - which we are. But putting all the rewards at the very end, and having no visual indicator that we're advancing is taking all the psychological 'training' the game's given us for the last 50 levels and tossing it out the window.
I would really *like* to see an ixp bar for the relevant slots when I zone into a trial. I would really *like* to see the level-up (ding!) graphic when we unlock a slot. I would really like to see occasional drops of common/uncommon i-salvage while you kill things in a trial (which would have the bonus of helping to encourage actual clearing rather than just zerging the objective.) I think those things would really help me feel like I'm actually advancing my character, even if it doesn't change all that much. Otherwise, I feel like I'm just at the market trying to slap together one last IO for my set and waiting for my bids to fill :P |
Nothing in game so far has made me feel as UN-SUPER as the Incarnate Trials. What does that say about the supposed 'Going past 50' content? Sure, I get the need to design stuff that doesn't fall over instantly, given the power level of a fully IO'd and Incarnated team or at least key members in one.
But there is a limit. Insta-kill lasers and cheap shot 'tactics' are that limit. I mean Maelstrom, MAELSTROM, that two-bit pansy who has been beaten up more times than dough in a bakery, is suddenly able to Wesker-port and one-shot kill EVERYONE in a PbAoE?
That is not fun, or challenging. That is FAKE difficulty.
I just....yeah. I'm going to sound ranty, so I'll stop. But Incarnate content was already not fun before. Now? I'm just not going to touch it. It's that un-fun now.
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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I'm sorry you've had that experience. Maybe it is because I play on Pinnacle? I dunno. The few leagues on which I have been and had a similar experience, the problem was poor leadership (failure to explain to new people, failure to delegate who handles which objectives, etc.). When I lead trials, I make sure to explain the particular trial's steps to the new people, as well as delegate duties. In fact, I am often left behind the league a little because I am typing so much. |
Originally Posted by Feycat
If they moved the Incarnate content to normal-sized-teams (or better yet, the scalable TF format of the SSAs) I would love the heck out of them. But I can't enjoy the content or relax and look around when I'm in a herd for 12 other people going GO GO GO GO GO!! DON'T SCREW IT UP FOR EVERYONE ELSE!!
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Truth be told, I think the trials would be just as fun (more so in some cases) if they could be done with 8 person teams. However, they would all require a major redesign to accommodate such a change, and that is probably not in the cards at this point.
All that being said... I led/ran the UG trial exactly once. We only succeeded because the timer for the Avatar fight was bugged. Upon completion, I said, "I am glad I finished that, because I do not really want to run it again." Granted, that is because I abhor the ridiculous confuse gimmick (the trial is awesome otherwise). Unless the TPN and Mother Mayhem trials really stun me and are devoid of any Pulse-like or Confuse Aura-like gimmicks (unlikely...) I will run them once, with my main, to experience them, and then call it a day.
@Winter. Because I'm Winter. Period.
I am a blaster first, and an alt-oholic second.
I'm generally ok with the incarnate trials: I enjoy BAF & Lambda, find Keyes to be a bit of a hassle (I think it could use one or two fewer gimmicks in the final fight, and only one reactor console powerup stage - replace the other two with something, anything else), and find Underground to be ok but a bit too long - could use a little less padding/filler. I haven't found most of the points listed to be an issue, personally (though I can see why they'd bother others).
That said, I'd definitely have greatly preferred it if the trials were designed for an 8 man team (maybe one or two for 16). Once it ramps up to 16-24 I find that it's much harder to get everyone on the same page (a lot just plain don't read league chat) which on some trials can result in a fail even if everyone else is doing what they're meant to - and that's really frustrating both for the ones doing what they're meant to, and the ones that aren't sure what they're doing and may be failing it for the rest. Also it makes me feel less like I'm contributing, that I'm playing a hero, and more like I'm just a small, fairly redundant cog, in a large and messy machine. There's a mass of gfx, with a bag of hitpoints in there somewhere, and maybe I'm helping or maybe I could just roll my face across the keyboard and we'd still be just as successful.
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I said many of the same thing back in I19 Beta and, hell, even in I18 Beta, and aside from the questions of personal preference, the one argument that kept recurring was that this is a better way to condition players to keep playing at full motivation. Someone brought up a study suggesting that if players could track their own progress, their activity followed a pattern of highs and lows. When players were near their goal, they played more intensely in anticipation of that goal, but when they got it and observed the long road to the next goal, their intensity diminished as they knew that no matter what they did, the goal would still be very far away.|
Originally Posted by Feycat
My biggest problem with the incarnate trials is that it doesn't *feel* like we're "advancing our characters past 50." It feels like we're grinding for loot - which we are. But putting all the rewards at the very end, and having no visual indicator that we're advancing is taking all the psychological 'training' the game's given us for the last 50 levels and tossing it out the window.
I would really *like* to see an ixp bar for the relevant slots when I zone into a trial. I would really *like* to see the level-up (ding!) graphic when we unlock a slot. I would really like to see occasional drops of common/uncommon i-salvage while you kill things in a trial (which would have the bonus of helping to encourage actual clearing rather than just zerging the objective.) I think those things would really help me feel like I'm actually advancing my character, even if it doesn't change all that much. Otherwise, I feel like I'm just at the market trying to slap together one last IO for my set and waiting for my bids to fill :P |
The solution to this - that is to say, the way to make players play at a high capacity at all times - is to mask the proximity of the goal. When a player believes that THE VERY NEXT KILL could land him his goal, he will play more intensely. Of course, no-one expects to get the right drop right away, but we all hope that if we're looking at a 1 in 20 shot, we would still get it on something like the fifth time, as opposed to all the way on the 20th, or even on the 40th as isn't out of the question. Though player activity never reaches the fever pitch of "the last bar," it also never slows down like it does after the level is reached.
This, hiding player progression and trying to trick players into anticipating progression without actually giving it to them (because there's precious little to give) becomes the frankly exploitative approach to stretching little content over a long time.
Once upon a time, I suggested that Incarnate salvage drop rates be increased a hundredfold and costs increased a hundredfold to compensate, leading to roughly the same amount of effort and time commitment, but with a much greater feedback of progression and a much better understanding of where we stand on the path to the goal. This was turned down because, according to some, it just turned the whole system into a giant grind instead of what I presume was intended to a gambler's high game. Somehow, the system ended up being a giant grind despite this, it's just a grind that has zero motivation to move me along.
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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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Never did anything with Incarnate stuff...because every post I read about it scares the heck out of me...alpha what? Merits? Waaah? iXP? Incarnate posts have the same effect on me as people who post about inventions and the market...I want to understand but I simply do not get it...you could be speaking Latin to me and it probably would make more sense.
And reading what kind of requirements or strategies are involved in completing a trial I'll probably get kicked out before I even get Practiced Brawler on auto...
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I enjoy BAF, Lambda and Keyes. UG I can take or leave, mostly because the endless corridors make me a little motion sick after a while. If they trimmed some of the corridors, then I'd be happy with that, too.|
Originally Posted by AmazingMOO
Would people play through Incarnate Trials simply for the sake of doing them? There's some good design there, but if there were no rewards attached, even the most dedicated players would play through them exactly as long as it took to come out successful. Once. Many wouldn't bother with even that.
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My main character has stacks of unused salvage, threads and A-merits from 'unnecessary' runs (I blew all the E-merits on auras and CC emotes I'll probably never use). I think it's a pity that the Trials aren't fun for everyone, but, selfishly, I'm really happy that the Incarnate system as we have it now exists, because I get a lot of fun out of it. I hope that they'll chose to broaden the appeal by adding *extra* stuff for people who don't like the Trials, rather than take away or radically changing things I like to play.
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All of these reasons are why I've never even bothered trying one. I kinda want to, just to see the content, but they just don't sound like fun.
I've done DfB loads though, great little trial.
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I want to call out this little gem. This idea is crack that I think could really divide the player base.|
Originally Posted by AmazingMOO
At this point, I feel like I can take or leave the Incarnate system as a whole and never look back if I don't want to.
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Did I grind BAF and Lambda? Yes, because I wanted the costume bits. Did I stop once I'd earned enough Empyreans to buy them? Yes. I've run dozens and dozens. And in all that time, I have one +1 Alpha character, and my badger is +3 (Tier 3 enough for level shift).
Why might this divide the players? With the requirement for higher-tier iPowers in the higher-tier iTrials, and the requirement to grind incessantly to GET those iPowers, is it any wonder that many people like myself are throwing up their hands? Especially when we can just go run an ITF or Katie Hannon and have fun?
I won't try to justify the Incarnate Trials or process; to each there own, and I know lots of people love to trick out their characters. More power to you. But don't expect us all to follow you. And if the league requirements continue as they have, I don't envy you trying to get them together. You KNOW what a pain it is to get people now.
--NT
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I think Trial Zones would be a cool idea. You would need a full team of eight to enter, then you run around defeating enemies and performing mini-missions like Safeguard/Mayhem missions. Other teams may be in the zone as well, but thanks to the new phasing tech (and a lot of space), you shouldn't step on eachother's toes. Or you can work with the other teams, you might want the help against some of the tougher enemies.
I agree with the OP almost entirely. The only incarnate trial I enjoy is the BAF. I enjoy it despite having lots of losses there recently.
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I agree with all of your points.|
Originally Posted by AmazingMOO
So what makes them unfun?
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For me, the chief offender it's the whole raid mentality. Standing around with an army other people, wailing away at something lost in special effects is not fun. Feeling like "hey, if I went out for coffee right now, the outcome of this fight would be exactly the same" is not fun.
Had it been a really hard eight-man trial, they might have been a lot more approachable. I don't know. As it is, I have no idea what I'm fighting, or why I should care. Or why I just died.
PS. I think it's worth noting that Mayhem missions are fun due to a fluke. Imagine if the environment scaled with your level as originally intended. Imagine if it took the same 30 seconds to destroy a car at level 50, as it did at level 5. How'd that be for shattering any sense of "how awesome am I!?" Mayhem is awesome due to a bug that made it fantastic fun, not because it was designed to be fun! I don't know if there's anything to learn from that story, but there it is!
Thought for the day:
"Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment."
=][=
I remember when I first read about the new Lambda and BAF trials. I also remember the developers letter stating that such trials would be through the LFG button and would be done in a very reasonable amount of time, and since the reward is on a timer these trials SEEMED to me nothing more than a mission, go in kill stuff and get out.
Then the s hitstrom of Keyes and UG was released. I hope that the money they are now getting from this F2P allows new developers b/c who ever designed Lambda/BAF nailed it, Keyes and UG = NO, that developer needs to be fired.
Sadly I dont forsee the 2 new trials to be short and sweet like BAF. In fact I bet that it will be just as bad as UG, stupid long tiresome trial with lame objectives, tons of mobs, and all for 2 empyreans. DEVS, listen! the goal of an incarnate trial is to progress our INCARNATE POWERS ok? BUT b/c we have a random reward table on the end of the trial we are not assured to recieve that rare or very rare we need in order to finish progressing our incarnate power of choice. SO GUESS WHAT? we run that trial again and again and again and again until we do get that rare or very rare that we do need. And lo and behold BAF/LAM serves that purpose just fine because they are short and sweet. No one wants to earn 30 emp merits for a very rare when they can and should spend those merits on purple recipes/pvp recipes instead.
maybe instead of working on costumes/powersets and trying to release something new every freaking week on the market for $$, take a step back and release something new every other week. lol
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You got a lot of nerve being all reasonable and level-headed! This is an internet forum, n00b!|
Originally Posted by Grouchybeast
I enjoy BAF, Lambda and Keyes. UG I can take or leave, mostly because the endless corridors make me a little motion sick after a while. If they trimmed some of the corridors, then I'd be happy with that, too.
My main character has stacks of unused salvage, threads and A-merits from 'unnecessary' runs (I blew all the E-merits on auras and CC emotes I'll probably never use). I think it's a pity that the Trials aren't fun for everyone, but, selfishly, I'm really happy that the Incarnate system as we have it now exists, because I get a lot of fun out of it. I hope that they'll chose to broaden the appeal by adding *extra* stuff for people who don't like the Trials, rather than take away or radically changing things I like to play. |
"Grouchybeast" indeed!
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FUNdamental Design Problems
The new patch notes for the next round of Incarnate content have put lots of ants in peoples' pants. My thought when I heard about them the first time was 'Wow. Why would they do that? They're just going to upset a bunch of people for no good reason.'
I feel a bit detached from the Incarnate content at the moment. I've been doing it only in very small amounts... basically when friends ask me to come along. I'm interested in spending time with friends rather than the content itself. Even at that rate, I've gotten the rewards I care about... the costume pieces locked behind the vendors in Oroborous. (I'd like to think that the developers looked at the wailing and gnashing of teeth that accompanied locking costume parts behind Empyrean Merits and have decided that it'd be a bad idea to do that again in the future. Hah! Good luck on that!) At this point, I feel like I can take or leave the Incarnate system as a whole and never look back if I don't want to.
At least to me, this points at a pretty serious design flaw. Why are there so many rewards attached to the Incarnate System? Why does it have to be 'incentivized' in a way that's completely different than the rest of the game? Why are the designers now 'de-incentivizing' certain parts of the content over others? What's the problem here? Why is there so much 'incentivation' going on anyway?
The very basic root of the problem is that the Incarnate System, as it's working right now, is not very FUN.
There's not a lot of joy in it, the way there is in, say, a Mayhem mission. Nobody has to be asked to destroy part of Paragon City. They go out of their way to find the opportunity to do so!
There's other fun stuff in the game right now that's built using EXACTLY the same building blocks and design tools that the Incarnate System is.
"Death from Below" is fun. Beat up progressively more and more weird enemies under the city and get some shinies and some exp! Fantastic stuff. I've been running about 3-4 a week since it came out.
The brand-spanking new Halloween Trial, "Dr. Kane's House of Horror" is fun. Go into a haunted house, find the secret of the crazed dermatologist who's been spree killing partiers and turning them into zombies. Fight a couple NASTY AVs, get some shinies, a little exp, and a Halloween-themed costume bit at the end. I LOVE everything about this mission, and plan to do it a LOT while it's available, mostly because I love haunted houses.
And despite being built from the very same legos, the Incarnate Trials lack that fun.
I suppose a good way to look at it is to ask yourself, if City of Heroes were a sandbox game and the rewards were removed completely, would people still play simply for the sake of playing?
Like I mentioned, mayhem missions would be on the upper end of the 'Oh hell yes!' scale. Not only would people still play, they'd compete to see who could do the most destruction in the shortest amount of time.
Regular Arcs, repeatable missions, non-incarnate Trials, and Taskforces... There's a lot of fun, engaging story in there, and a few unique challenges, but a lot of that stuff is pretty repetitive. Those who would play it with no rewards would find a few favorites, but for the most part play through the content once and go, 'Time to go beat up another bunch of fascists in YET ANOTHER office designed by LSD-Man. Okay, this is getting played out.'
Incarnate Trials... ah, here we go. Would people play through Incarnate Trials simply for the sake of doing them? There's some good design there, but if there were no rewards attached, even the most dedicated players would play through them exactly as long as it took to come out successful. Once. Many wouldn't bother with even that.
So what makes them unfun?
This is pretty subjective, and it's going to be different for everyone. I'll list what makes them unfun for me.
Confusing goals aren't fun.
Keyes Facility is currently the worst about this. There are dozens of subgoals with frequently only slightly differing requirements and a not a lot of information to tell you how to meet them. My experience is that most people get through Keyes the first time and still don't really have much clue what was going on.
Being Insta-killed isn't Fun
There's at least some of this in all the trials. In a lot of cases, players are defeated with no warning and through no fault of their own. In cases where they have warning and can evade death via skill or sheer toughness, it's great! In cases where you can't even see WHY you died, it's simply frustrating.
Zerging an Objective isn't fun.
All the trials suffer from this to some degree by including so much unresistable damage and insta-kill effects. The single worst offender is the glowie hunt in Lambda. When a player is defeated and has to run back into the maze after going to the hospital, chances are the enemies left behind in the mad rush are going to zap him again before he catches back up to his team.
Sitting in the Hospital while other people finish the challenge isn't fun.
All the trials have the frequently pointless 20 second lock on the hospital doors (as does Death From Below!). That's frustrating. However, the worst single example is when a team leader asks part of the group to sit in the hospital while another part finishes an objective. I've seen this happening pretty frequently on Keyes as players attempt to earn the badges. Players who have problematic hardware-- they can't see the green patch or lag too badly to avoid it-- are asked to stay in the hospital. Neither the team leader nor the rest of the team begrudges them the badge nor holds them responsible for their hardware issues. Still, I wouldn't even WANT a badge that I didn't help earn.
Grinding for Currency to Buy Rewards isn't Fun. (It's called 'Work' in the Real World.)
What can I say? Some people really enjoy Skeeball. I like the rolling the balls part of it, but the collecting tickets bit comes off as just kinda dumb to me.
In the same way, getting 1 or 2 Empyrean merits a day and then discovering that you need dozens of them to get the costume pieces you want is EXACTLY like getting 12 tickets from a Skeeball machine and then discovering that you need 5000 of them to buy the crappy black and white TV at the rewards counter.
In the real world, you can say, 'Screw this. I'm not enjoying the game any more, so I'll just go to Best Buy and buy the TV I want.'
In the game, however, there's no way to do that. By gating those rewards behind untradeable, uncraftable Empyrean merits, the designers can say, 'No! You cannot have that unless you do EXACTLY what we want you to!'
Downtime is no fun.
Queuing for an incarnate trial could work if people used it, but most don't, perpetuating the problem. Instead they sit in Pocket D or RWZ shouting 'LFT for BAF!' over and over again.
When I do run a trial with friends, I typically pull out something to read while I'm waiting for everyone to assemble. I'm not even PLAYING the game at that point, let alone enjoying it.
Trying to Corral 16 or 24 Strangers is not fun.
When I'm trying to meet new people and play with others I haven't before, I feel like that if there are any more than about 5 or 6 others, I can't really keep track of what's going on, especially if I'm also providing any kind of leadership.
Trying to do the same thing with 16 others is about as much fun as listening to a screaming baby in a restaurant.
You can't immediately weed out the bad seeds or the abusers simply because there's too much going on to keep track of everything.
Regardless of the Designers' desire to make the trials accessible, they DO need leadership. Someone has to make decisions, even if it's only flipping the coin to decide who pulls.
When you're on a team of 16 and 24 and there are no leaders, or worse, there are several people on the team who refuse to listen to the leaders who do step forward, it's not just the crying baby in the restaurant any more. The screaming baby's 3 year old brother has just taken his pants off and is running around the tables, half-naked. He keeps running up to your table and trying to grab your dessert and his parents won't do a damn thing about it.
I, and a lot of others have made suggestions to alleviate some of these problems in the past, but I think that the trial designers need to go further than simply tweaking numbers. They need to step back, take a hard, deep look at what they've built and ask themselves 'Why isn't this fun?'
If you get it right, you won't HAVE to keep fiddling with the drop rates, cool-down timers, and introducing new currencies to keep people's interests. People will do the content because they WANT to do the content. Right now, a lot of people simply don't WANT to do the content and that's not something that putting a new stereo up on the counter and tagging '8000 Tickets' on it is going to fix.