City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

FUNdamental Design Problems (Longish)

AmazingMOO

By AmazingMOO,
Posted on: 2011-10-21 09:11 in CoH and CoV General Discussions

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Golden Girl View Post
That's just one kind fo epic
The other kinds are extended narrative poems celebrating the feats of a deity or demigod or other legendary hero; or a narration of events appropriate to the first kind. If you are picky, then I am.

Being a faceless dispensable cog in a 24-man machine is not epic, by any definition.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Golden Girl View Post
Soon it'll be 5 with TPN, and then 6 when MoM is released - and there's no end to the Trails that they'll be creating for us -they like making them, and players like playing them.
Don't generalize. I'm happy for your sake that you enjoy them, but please don't project that on me. I do not enjoy them, and I certainly do not enjoy having to repeatedly grind them in order to progress past 50.

The almost 5 incarnate trials sums up to 2.5 hours of play time. In order to progress past 50, that 2.5 hours has to be repeated over and over to get somewhere. Each issue adds another 30 minutes of play time. Even if there's no end to the trials they are creating for us, there is an end to the available Incarnate trial content, and it's far too short to be viable. And the amount added is sadly inadequate to add the necessary variation to alleviate the grindy feeling of the little content there is.

And compared to the rest of the content, even spread out over the 7+ years worth of other added content, 2.5 hours is pitifully little.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Positron View Post
As much as you players love to play them, I know the designers love to design them. It’s one of the more enjoyable parts of our jobs, designing these Incarnate Trials to see just what our players are made of.
If the designers enjoy making trials as much as I like playing them, they must really hate their job.

Still @Shadow Kitty

"I became Archvillain before Statesman nerfed himself!"

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Golden Girl View Post
I'm just going by what Positron said the other day
Hmm...


Quote:
As much as you players love to play them, I know the designers love to design them.
He's equating his love to play trials with their love in creating them, but he doesn't say the MAGNITUDE of that love... just that they love developing ASM MUCH AS we love playing them.

Perhaps he sees the complaints and realizes the agony this is causing. He, then, is also complaining. He acknowledges our misery and is telling us he's equally miserable. Maybe this is a carefully encoded cry for help! He's telegraphing out to us, hoping we'll somehow liberate him from the pain.

Quote:
It’s one of the more enjoyable parts of our jobs,
It gets worse! Despite being as just as miserable as we Trial-players are, all the other parts of their jobs are even LESS ENJOYABLE. When they have to choose between "work on incarnate trials or sit in meetings staring at the mind-bendingly-Lovecraftian powerpoint that marketing cooked up" they choose Incarnate work just because its the lesser of two evils.

This is getting bad.... really bad.

Quote:
designing these Incarnate Trials to see just what our players are made of.
In the Stockholm Syndrome, the captives start empathizing with their captors. Eventually, this can get as bad as taking on the characteristics, beliefs, and behaviors of the captors. The tortured is being turned into the torturer, lashing out at us as they themselves are being lashed.

Its all so clear now...

We've got to act FAST if there's any chance of saving them!

Thank you for bringing this to our attention, GG. I just hope we're not too late....

 

Posted

If it helps, Ill tell you what Incarnate system improvements would make me come back as a VIP paid subscription:

1) Lower the cooldown time on powers. The more often I can use them, the better Ill feel about investing time to earn them.Right now, the enforced recharge time is way too long to make it worth my while to bother earning these abilities. Alpha slot + normal abilities are all I need.

2) Give me solo-friendly trial content. Id feel much more powerful with my newfound abilities if I didn't need 18+ other heroes to help me all the time. The trials make me feel weaker/dwarfed in comparison to being able to solo/run small teams for the last 50 levels. I mean I shouldn't feel "smaller" post 50 right?

3) I dont want even more salvage drops; I just want nicer, simpler crafting options! Scale down the required salvage needs for each tier. Why farm/craft for 30+ different untradeable ultra-rare salvage types?

4) Incarnates should have access to "offworld" content that we dont otherwise see in lvls 1-50. Get me off planet earth already and take me around the intergalactic cosmos I'm supposed to be defending!

Do that and my hubby and I will gladly resub and play Incarnates more often.