The backwards nature of "progression" in this game

batman has had some really horrible writers.

anyhow, longish post will be for after work, but the nutshell answer is, I say that the nature of progression is what you have in your toolbox. My ma/sr/dm/incarnate scrapper has a significant number more options for dealing with challenges than he did when he was just kicking skulls, more aoes, more crowd control, much more damage and better defenses, to say nothing of some ranged powers and team buffs. Its up to the narrative to establish why some threats are more powerful than others, and i feel if you commit enough to reading the stories, they do establish why rularuu and malta are more dangerous than hellions or warriors. Even the trials do, with the use of level shifts, establish growth of your character against a cosmically powered enemy.

No-one is denying that, far from it. But that doesn't need to be the ONLY form of content. I get that the Justice League come together to stop cosmic catastrophes. What do they do when a cosmic catastrophe ISN'T threatening Earth right now? Isn't there something smaller, yet still requiring an amazing super hero to do? Possibly something that would require a whole team of weaker heroes, but that a big hero could attempt alone?

Large challenges and cosmic dangers are a given. I may not appreciate them, but they're an inexorable part of the MMO framework. I get that. What I and people like me are looking for is options to have encounters that challenge our characters personally and force them to do their own legwork without getting help. And I put precisely ZERO faith of anything ever coming out as a solo Incarnate path that ISN'T officially recognised as a side dish to the main course of raiding.

I think this is where we disagree. I, personally, take no particular pride in accomplishing tasks in-game as so few of them really have that much room for me to show skill. Far too many of them require planning, but once you know what to do, there's little need to improvise.

Besides, I see myself less as a player and more as a storyteller, and I'm all too happy to see my characters as powerful or weak themselves, without having to butt in on their achievement with my own skill. If I won because my character is awesome... That's awesome

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'm currently playing Arkham City, and looking forward to 40-to-1 fights.

Batman doesn't need Nightwing.

But in any case, it's not Batman you should be referencing, it's Superman, or the Silver Surfer. And Maelstrom is no Silver Surfer, I don't care how much magic juice the devs want to give him.

Eco

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

I think you misunderstood, then again, I phrased it poorly. I did not mean "me, the player" I meant "me, the character, as opposed to other characters." That being the case, I'd venture to say that we agree here. Like you, I prefer my characters to be awesome in their own right, which is why I am not a huge fan of the current Incarnate Trials: the same bad guys that I was able to solo before Incarnate abilities (in Maria Jenkins' arc) are now requiring 8 to 24 people to defeat. And let's not even talk about Maelstrom in the TPN...

And no, I did not think you were contesting the MMO design model, more just stating the obvious for anyone else reading, for evidence purposes.

Ah, I definitely misunderstood you, then, and we do indeed agree.

The eponymous Samuel Tow is the perfect example. The way I wrote him is he has powers - speed, some degree of strength and an assortment of technological toys - but he's awesome because he's just that damn good at using all of those powers. That's as opposed to Sam's nemesis, Ezikiel Bane, who's awesome because he's a master manipulator and he just happens to have super powers in addition to that that I've very rarely written him as using.

Basically, I like to let my characters stand on their own, to the point where I've been known to play those "auto-fight" games like MyBrute provided I can make the character awesome enough (or actually have a say in character design). When Sam takes on a powerful foe, I want him to win. He's my Mary Sue that I simply don't use very often specifically for that reason. When Jun, my inexperienced teenage super hero, fights a tough foe, I can see her getting knocked down or knocked out. She's still learning. She'll be awesome one day, too, though

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.

Well why not just make everything die when I look at it as soon as I unlock my alpha then? I'm a super-awesome-god-thing-mans.... Pewpewpew.

Ahem: Apokolips, the homeworld of the villain Darkseid in DC Comics. I did misspell it, but so did you.

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

He knew he was misspelling it! It was intentional. That's why he said "misspelled Apocalypse"!

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

That's the trick, though, isn't it?

One benefit of the trial system is that the trial can require you to do *some* things differently each time you do it to address differences in team composition-- not much, mind you, but enough to make repeating the content not *as* monotonous as it could be.

There's no way they're going to create enough solo arcs to cover an equitable amount of time as earning your incarnate slots via trials, so you're going to have repetition there. The same stories... over and over... without the variation that comes from team composition...

To make something of any quality, you have to find some way to make it feel less monotonous without the content creation overhead draining resources from other parts of the game. Not an impossible task, but requiring more time and thought than waving a hand and saying "make it so."

Agreed.

I think the thing that grates most is it being Praetorians.
If we were butting heads with Rularuu Rising, now....that would be a whole different kettle ofOH god the EYEBALLS!!

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.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Because, just reading it as you have written it, that doesn't make much sense. Why would someone who has the scope of power to take on cosmic threats (but who is not, presumably, all-seeing and omnipresent) be out hunting down the local drugs gang? If the setting dictated that our characters were one of only a handful of metahuman beings, that might be explainable, barely, but the CoH setting is very much predicated on there being a large number of lower-level heroes coming up in power. There's a pyramid-like structure of power, with a few very powerful metas at the top, and lots of weaker ones at the bottom. That means there are lots of people closer to the power level of drugs gangs whose time is going to be better spent chasing those gangs.

First and foremost, this is a video game, and "massively multiplayer online" game at that. MMOs are generally centered around the idea of their players teaming up. They often allow soloing to varying degrees, and I think the more successful MMOs allow soloing to be a successful way to advance one's character, but I think it's safe to say that they are designed primarily around teaming.

If our characters can run off and solo god-like foes in combat (as opposed to defeating them through superior problem solving, or really anything non-combat, which is about all CoH really supports), there's no good explanation for why anything less than god-like would be able to defeat us. That would naturally lead to us needing missions full of just-less-than-god-like minions with god-like bosses at the end, and at that point, our characters get even harder to explain than supermen and wonder women living in a human city. Looked at another way, if we're off soloing these god-like foes in our missions, why can't we solo them in Task Forces and Trials? Are they constantly finding a MacGuffin that elevates them to trans-god-like stature just for the TF/Trial? If so, how come we can't ever find those?

Now, there's a lot of what I call "Enterprise Syndrome" going on in the Incarnate Trials. It's my name for what used to happen in Star Trek: TNG, where the offensive and defensive might of the USS Enterprise "D" would fluctuate wildly from episode to episode as served the plot. While the fickle Well of Furies serves as a vague hand wave towards explaining why the iTrial opponents are suddenly radically powerful when we were off soloing them last month, I'll agree it's not very gratifying.

I think the new Praetorea could have unfolded in a less annoying manner. Personally, I would have found the existing Praetorean storyline more convincing if Tyrant had found a way to control the Well, rather than it inexplicably blessing him with added power. That the Well chose Tyrant as its champion practically enshrines the deus ex machina in the game lore. If instead Cole had found a way to bend the Well to his will, while still technically the same kind of plot device, it would have simultaneously made Cole seem more powerful/dangerous for being able to achieve it in the first place, and rather literally seemed less like the hand of god making pre-existing foes more powerful.

Maelstrom being the AV in an Incarnate trial is like Stilt-Man getting the Power Cosmic.

....who then started another forum thread about how all the good names are taken.

Yeah I mentioned this very thing earlier in this thread

It seems like, so far, they're designing them to have the 'big bad boss' but they're not choosing or implementing them wisely. If say, Maelstrom is leading teams of D.U.S.T soldiers or something, and we have to take them down before we can affect Maelstrom, or he's getting a visually stunning feed into his Maelstrom Device (a-la Lord Recluse) that might work. As it is, it sounds like his can one-shot groups of players if they're not careful, and he's just tough now because... well... because.

Honestly, Cole gets favored by the well, that's great. There's no reason every lackey of his should become a powerhouse that can only be taken down by large groups. The power creep there would have to be enormous by the time we get to face Tyrant. What? Four full teams against a gold plated Reichsman that will one shot you with every attack, and AoE's constantly and has perma-Unstoppable so you only do 1-3 hp of damage to him and he has over 25k hp? Oh, and Dull Pain. (I did a Khan the other day, can you tell? )

The point is, Reichsman is really tough. Can take almost as long to fight him (and the 4 other AV's) as it takes to do the rest of the TF (and don't get me started on Barracuda's version). So based on what we've seen of Cole's 'uber' lackeys, and Reichsman is just another version of Statesman/Tyrant... How powerful is the big Tyrant fight going to be in comparison?

I'd rather see that energy put toward making something that should justify us feeling as weak, or 'coglike', just by sheer comparison of its magnitue, like that Ruularu fight.

I do not have a single level 2 that can run at +4/X8, but many level 50s who can. Other than a slight dip in the teens for some characters, you consistently fight not only harder, but larger numbers of enemies the further you go in this game.

You just described every other MMO I have played, but not this one at all.

Blasphemer! You have spoken against THE KING himself!

*strikes pose with feet a full yard apart and one hand reaching forward, fingers spread*

For this affrontery, you shall be cast into the FIRE-PITS!

That's like commenting on the variety ina pig's diet, because when you slopped him today, there were more corncobs in the bucket.

The team composition of trials doesn't provide variety, it provides a colorless mush.

A 2-3 man group might provide variety, but not 20 people. Any variation gets eaten by the chaos.

It isn't much variety, granted, but the concept is there.

For example, in Lambda while gathering up all the temp powers, if you're on a team with a lot of AT's with defensive-sets (tanks, scrappers, brutes, stalkers) you steamroll through, ignoring all foes, getting all the glowies. If you're on a team with a lot of squishies, you spend your time coming up with creative new cusswords- either as a squishie cussing out the ^%*@$@ tank that ran ahead, or the tank swearing that nobody stayed with him since his DPS is too low to quickly take down a crate.

See.... variety.

I cut him slack since he's still new and actually likes the game, the seething sarcasm doesn't help.

But that's not what happens. Your enemies do not "level with you." When you are level one fighting level ones, those level ones don't become level two when you do. Those level twos were always there, and always willing to fight you if you chose to. You can walk into PI and pick a fight with a level 50 as a level eight if you like. You're going to lose, though, which is why most people pick fights with the enemies that happen to be about their level.

Nothing really levels with you except giant monster class critters, and even they don't really level with you: they remain at even level for the purposes of combat modifiers (the purple patch) but their stats remain the same as you level. You can, in fact, "outlevel" giant monsters, just not in the same way that allows you to apply purple patch leverage. But that's why the Paladin ain't no thing at level 50.

That level 50 warhulk is in PI, waiting for you. Every level you gain brings you closer to being able to take him out. The same thing is true for the Lord Recluse, or the Avatar of the Hamidon.

The problem of course is rewards. At level 40, you can obliterate everything in Steel Canyon: you could take on the entire zone at once if it was possible. But you won't get XP for that. But that has nothing to do with whether you character really is getting more powerful or not. That's a question of how much threat you need to face to become even more powerful. I assume when you start out weight lifting that you start off with very small weights. Five pounds, perhaps. But as you get stronger, you move up to ten pounds, twenty pounds, fifty pounds, a hundred pounds. I'm not a weight lifter, but I'm guessing that someone who does that doesn't feel they aren't getting any stronger, because they just keep moving to higher weights that feel just as heavy if not heavier than when they first started. And I'm guessing they also don't ask themselves why they can't just keep using the five pound weights forever and eventually become Arnold Schwarzenegger. The more powerful you get, the more you have to challenge yourself even more in order to improve. Or you can be mighty and take on stuff that proves you're mighty by completely obliterating it. But that won't ever make you better. But you can do it. And you can in City of Heroes also.

The weight lifting analogy seems to hold for a wide swath of human endeavors. Even professionally, I don't get better by doing the same thing I can do in my sleep. I get better by tackling successively harder things. I've tackled so many harder things, I'm almost out of harder things. Literally. It seems so automatic to me I've never had this problem of feeling like I'm getting weaker as I level. I know I'm stronger by the only standard that matters: if I attack the same thing today as I did yesterday, I'm obviously better than before. But that's separate, to me, from what I have to attack to self-improve. What I have to do to self-improve will always be basically just as hard - perhaps even harder - the better I get at something. Real life self-improvement has the exact same treadmill, so I guess I don't see anything special about the MMO one, because it makes perfect sense to me. That's not to say that MMOs *have* to mirror real life in this respect, but to the degree that City of Heroes does, it seems perfectly intuitive to me. I'm getting more powerful, but what I have to do to improve is always going to be just as hard, or harder than when I start. Those two things are separate, and I can appreciate them separately.

At level one you fight demon summoners and people connected to the netherworld. As you progress the first five levels or so, you fight magical cultists and hordes of Hulks.

At level 50 you fight dudes with guns who kick you. And more guys with more guns. And guys with steam-powered popguns. And chicks with swords. And people with no superpowers who have swords.

What.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

DC's use of Apokolips as the name of Darkseid's world predates Marvel's villain Apocalypse by about 15 years. I don't know for certain why Kirby chose the deliberate misspelling, but I assume that it just looked cooler to him.