The backwards nature of "progression" in this game

The Hero Corps Field Analyst from Twinshot's arc gives us a good example of this. He sends you to stop strangely powerful Hellions from summoning a demon, but then thinking you'd failed, he calls in the army. When you report back with a "mission complete," the Field Analyst has to sheepishly apologise to a COLONEL for calling in an entire army division as I understood it.

Why would a godlike being take down street gang? Because he could do it by himself in the span of an afternoon, whereas it would take contingents of police officers and junior heroes months to do it. I get the Tiered structure, but if I were godlike and my pursuit of the ultimate macguffin put me in the territory of a dangerous local gang... Yeah, I'll wipe them off the streets, sure. I have a few hours to spare. Just in the same way as I'll stop to save a lady from being mugged by level 1 Hellions even if I'm level 50.

More specifically, though, my example was merely about why a character can't do these things himself if he were strong enough.

Because we soloed them one at a time. In Task Forces and Trials, they show up all at the same time. As a villain, I have beaten up all of the Freedom Phalanx separately, including the Statesman. If all of them showed up at the same time, though, even as elite bosses, I couldn't beat them together. Facing the Surviving Eight at the same time would require eight of us so it's an even match. You actually ignore the meat of my posts in this thread. I don't want "me and my army against the overpowered foe," I want "them and their army against me." Lord Recluse has the right idea. At the end of Time After Time, he's a pushover. Those 20 boss-level Bane Spider Executioners he summons, not so much.

I get that there are singular "all heroes" level threats, but of those I can only ever see ONE existing at a time. Tyrant or the Hamidon or Rularuu, but only one at a time. The rest of the threats that require me to team up should require my enemies to team up, as well. If the Praetors are to be a raid-level threat, they THEY have to come prepared to raid us. Not 20 of us against one or two of them. That's 20 of us against Anti-Matter, Marauder, Neurron, Battle Maiden, Bobcat, Mother Mayhem, Malice, Infernal, Chimera, Black Swan, Siege and Nightstar all at the same time, with not-infrequent intervention from from the Olympians. THAT is a fight I could see being a big team event and I could never argue that I should be able to fight by myself. I can mop the floor with one of these guys by myself easy, but ALL of them? No chance in hell, I need help.

But, no. It's one overpowered boss against 20 player gnats.

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And the idea which keeps slipping through the cracks is I don't want to abolish large team content. I want alternatives to it. I have alternatives to Task Forces, but not to raids, because Raids start where story arcs end. Honestly, developers - you don't have to keep trying to make your story arc creation process more and more expensive. Give me a good story, wrap it around 20 defeat-all missions and I'll play it. That's essentially all World Wide Red is, and it's still my favourite story arc to play.

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.

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.

Arcana, you're arguing semantics. I want to feel more powerful fighting the enemies I'm naturally pitted against by the game as I level up. This works up until level 50, but if I want to go beyond that, the game starts pitting me against enemies I CANNOT win, because I'm expected to be one of 20 people. I don't care what "level up" means in a strict sense. All I care about is what happens to the threats the game keeps putting me up against, and post level 50, these threats skyrocket intentionally so I can't oppose them. I don't like this.

Here's the thing - once I gain godlike power, I move into fighting enemies who have ten times my godlike power. That's progress in only the most pedantic sense. This isn't the real world. My powers have no application other than to play the game and progress and gather more. THAT is what I have to measure up against, and if I gain more power yet am able to do less against my "current" enemies, then that's not progression. That's regression.

With your weight-lifting analogy, that's like me going from being bale to lift 100 pounds and being the champion of my strength class, then training to lift 200 pounds but being moved into a higher strength category where I have to live at least 300 pounds in order to not be laughed at. I've gone from champion to loser. I might be stronger and have other use of it in my real life, but it doesn't change the fact that I've become a loser. And since my characters' strength in City of Heroes has no use in their real lives because they DON'T have real lives. About the only non-progression-specific benefit levelling up gives me is making Steel Canyon fires easier.

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 don't actually mind this, within reason. Playing with weaker characters and seeing how you can handle the same stuff that would overwhelm several of them is a big part of feeling powerful, I think.

When Lambda first came out, I would lead tanks and brutes around the warehouse on my defenders and controllers, and watch other characters who'd neglected to build for defense get picked off helplessly. It was quite awesome to be the only squishie left unscathed out of a team of 8. On one memorable instance, both teams went into the labs, leaving my scrapper to solo the warehouse. Alone, I killed 5 crates in the time it took 15 other people to kill 10 containment chambers and blew up a 6th just as they were coming into the warehouse. I don't mind forced grouping if it gives me great moments like this.

Ah, I did not know that. Except for Batman, I've never been that big a fan of DC.

This answer may be easy, but I don't think it was very effective. That outcome doesn't establish parity between the character and an army division. The army division was likely a response to the escalation that would have occurred had the hero failed. It doesn't imply that the character could have achieved the same thing the army could have.

Even if we assume the character could have matched the sheer output of an army division, that further serves to reinforce the point. This is a fairly low-level hero running that arc - someone with only a fraction of the in-game power of an Incarnate-infused level 50, and they were the right power level for the job. If they were on par with an army division, what's that imply about a level 50 Incarnate?

You're assuming that there's downtime. That level 50 heroes get time between epic contests for the safety of the multiverse to go stop the local Hellions with Pyronic Justice applied in passing. A realistic plot isn't going to be stopped by blowing up some guys stealing a purse on a street corner. If the level 50 isn't functionally omnicient, they have to find out where to go to light the right Hellions on fire, or it won't be effective. They don't just pop in, they need to effectively run a mission and click glowies to find clues. Do they have time to do that while the Rikti, Nemesis, Praetorean Earth, and a litany of other things that actually specifically need level 40+ characters to tackle them are going on? I wonder.

I don't ignore the meat of your posts. I recognize it as not accepting that the game doesn't actually, mechanically work that way. If you take 8 player characters who can solo any given, say, 10 AVs one at a time, and build a sensibly composed team of those player characters, they will crush the 10 AVs even if they are faced all at once. Well-assembled player character teams are significantly stronger than their constituent parts alone, and every part of the team we're talking about can take down these AVs by themselves. There's a reason why the RSF AVs are over-level. That was their limited gimmick at the time, and player characters were also less powerful. But we grew past that gimmick - the RSF is a breeze these days for teams of people who can solo AVs, and so the devs escalated the tricks they give AVs today.

Sure, now I said 10 AVs, and 10 is a very specific number, and we don't have to stop there. Eventually, if you pour enough level 54 AVs on our heads, yes, that is a problem a team won't steamroll. The devs could possibly build trials around that. Would it "work"? I don't know. I would probably enjoy it if it did, and it would definitely add variety. I am not sure I specifically consider it superior to 1-2 "big scare foes", just as my own opinion.

I'm not arguing semantics, I'm arguing perspective. If you judge progress based on what *new* things the game throws at you, rather than you getting more powerful than a *fixed* target, you won't feel progress in this or any other MMO. If you judge progress based on getting more powerful than the same thing in an apples to apples comparison, you will.

I do the latter, so I experience progress just fine. Others don't, and they don't. But the game isn't ever going to address that alternate perspective, so insofar as I'm arguing semantics, I'm arguing semantics that dictate reality. The devs are never going to hand you easier and easier things to defeat as you level higher. They will always throw *at least* as difficult things commensurate with your level. You yourself will have to go out of your way to find the old things that used to give you trouble and demonstrate to yourself that you are indeed more powerful.

If it was only a question of semantics, the only difference between you and me would be the way we describe the situation. Clearly that's not true, because I'm not experiencing the same problem as you are.

All MMOs at their heart have treadmills for progressional systems. That's totally unavoidable. You have a choice. You can judge progress by looking at the odometer of the treadmill. Or you can judge progress by the fact you yourself can run faster and stronger. Or you can judge progress by noting you're still in your living room. Its entirely your choice. And that choice is independent of the words I choose to describe that choice.

You're just not likely to get a different choice in the foreseeable future, because there isn't one that would universally be *considered* a different choice. For each individual person, I'm sure there's a way to change the game so that person specifically would perceive progress better. But only at the expense of taking it away from at least an equal number of people.

Yon Kirby-esque spelling can not vex thee!

I agree with this on small to mid sized teams, but not on the really big ones. If you are playing on a team of 4 then losing a blaster and gaining a defender really changes the feel of the fight and you really do need to adapt. On a team of 20+ losing that same blaster and gaining that same defender really won't much be noticed.

I enjoy teaming, but at a certain point of people on the team it goes from a good social and team work experience to standing in a crowd and the bore of mashing buttons.