The backwards nature of "progression" in this game

I have long disliked how the more you progress in this game the more you need to team up with others to accomplish your goals. The more powerful I'm told I am, the weaker I feel.

It has been this way ever since I first joined this game way back in i1 or i2 (i forget which). The low level TFs like Positron only required a handful of players. The higher you got in level, and the more you "progressed" the more people were needed for each TF. All of the high level TFs required 8 people if I recall correctly. When City of Villians came out it continued this trend.

Now that Incarnate stuff has come out it magnified this even more so. I am told that I have drawn uber power from the well of furies and I'm some kind of super super super hero now, and yet to accomplish anything important, like beating up that Maelstrom guy I beat already a number of times since level 20, I need the help of a bunch of other super heroes. And when I say a bunch, I just don't mean teaming up with a handful of others, I mean a whole lot of them.

The more I progress in level and power, and the more Powerful the game tells me I am, the weaker I feel. I wind up feeling like a useless cog in a giant machine, instead of somebody truly remarkable.

This is so backwards.

That's because the threats "level" with you. So at level 1, yeah you're just fighting Hellions and Skulls, but by level 50+ you're fighting insane demigods and archvillains who are drawing upon the same power source as you, only they're better at focusing it.

You see this in comic books too. You might have Spider-Man and Captain America team up to fight a group like HYDRA, but when Thanos has gotten his hand on the Infinity Gauntlet (again), you've got every hero in the Marvel Universe in the fight. Even the Silver Surfer with his Power Cosmic can't handle that alone (hell, even Galactus fell to the power of the Gauntlet).

Go back and fight the Council with your Incarnate powers. You are more powerful, you're just not the most powerful.

Seems more like the threats "outlevel" you.

Look, some threats make sense to need a team. I get needing a team to go against all of Recluse's minions/the Phalanx. I'd get needing one if we faced Ruularu. However, that shouldn't be the be-all, end-all of the game.

I, frankly, agree that it's silly we now get godlike powers... but have nothing to do with them on our own. We have two choices - be overpowered and run a 5 minute ITF, or be underpowered and need 20 others to run a trial.

Then again, I've been asking for solo and small team Incarnate missions since the system was announced. And we've been told... what... they'll consider having a discussion about possibly thinking about maybe talking over the water cooler about scheduling a meeting to discuss considering maybe having a focus group debate a possible option sometime in the hazy future.

See my Guides and Tutorials

I don't like the entirely raid-based focus of the endgame either, but one thing:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adelie It has been this way ever since I first joined this game way back in i1 or i2 (i forget which). The low level TFs like Positron only required a handful of players. The higher you got in level, and the more you "progressed" the more people were needed for each TF. All of the high level TFs required 8 people if I recall correctly. When City of Villians came out it continued this trend.

All the redside SFs except the RSF only require four people to start, and the RSF actually makes sense to require eight, since you go up against eight heroes at the end. Why the minimum team size requirements for the heroside TFs haven't also been lowered, I have no idea.

Lol, nope, not you Bill. I'm looking forward to it as well. It is crazy to me that my third most incarnated toon has done it using just shard conversions and has never stepped into a trial. All slots are unlocked, and have all the first tier's slotted, but it has been just about a year now.

It is not a viable solo incarnate path.

Welcome to MMO's in general. It's the nature of the beast.

I'm trying to give the story tellers in this game a break. Here's how I think they see it -

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

Speak for yourself. On my most recently-fiftied character, I was constantly having to turn up the difficulty as I leveled to stay challenged.

Agreed, it is silly.

What's even more immersion breaking to me is seeing *other* players, because, let's be honest, content that you run over and over solely for power is likely to attract bad apples, and this often gets worse in trials where anonymity finds strength in numbers... Looking at a teammate slowly walking to a mob, using one power, then waiting 5 seconds, slowly turning down to face a second mob, using another power, then standing still for a few seconds after the group is defeated... Looking at another teammate running forward in melee on a squishie obviously not build to withstand that, getting killed over and over and whining about it... Those are incarnates? Those are my peers? Does the Well chose pretty much anyone?

I'm using worst case scenarios as examples, of course, and there's plenty of people playing decently ; but here's the thing: in a 16-24 players activity, you're bound to end up with at least one person acting silly, and often, it's more than a single person.

I just treat the incarnate trials as some kind of fourth wall breaking part of the game, a dev approved farm, and it can be somewhat fun that way.

In the end, how I see things is that it's an MMORPG.

That's massively multi-player online role playing game. If you could solo your way through the entire thing, why not just play a console game?

Though I will agree, having less of a pure focus on huge multi-player interaction and more paths the soloer can take would be nice. (especially for those times when you can't for whatever reason find a party to do something worthwhile)

The following are all examples of times already in the game which can make you feel like the strongest in the world.

• Solo a giant monster. Nothing beats going head to head with a giant monster to save the day.
• Fight regular class monsters such as the zeus titan that spawns inside a mission [somewhere between 35 - 45 i think?].
• Solo Mender Silos arc. The final mission in this arc effectively makes you the leader of the rescued heroes as they follow you and you defeat all of Recluse men/women. Of course the jade spider battle is epic by itself.
• Run an 8man team incarnate mothership raid. It is easily possible with far less but try it out with 8 men first.
• The level 45 - 50 arcs. Some of them are pretty good and have you going head to head, one on one with some of the meanest bad guys around to show that you are indeed the strongest.
• Monster Island. Test your strength against these monsters and show that you deserve the title of incarnate!
• Statesman Taskforce. Not only does Recluse have to find ways to gain more powers to have a chance against you, but you now also have the chance to show that no amount of power increase will save him from the beating you'll give him.
• The signature story arcs. At first they show you as being nothing more than a random hero trying to save the day who happened to past through, as they are progressing we are shown more respect in that we are perhaps a greater threat than they first thought.
• The First Ward Arcs. We are no longer people who are out on random missions for the leaders of the zone, we are heroes/villains out there doing the missions that only we can be trusted to. Not even their most powerful subjects were handed the trust that we were given in the zone.