Forced teaming makes me sad

I believe posts in the "Issue 21 Special Update: Media Blitz VIP Beta" section said nothing had changed. No idea if that is true or not since I was on hiatus last year.

Why is it a bad argument to make? We all did just fine before it existed. None of the previously existing content has changed to the point where we won't still do just fine without it now. Just like with IOs, honestly.

Yes, it does matter. But, as I said, I'm not opposed to letting people try it with smaller groups. However, you can bet you'd see just as many complaints about it being too hard for smaller groups if they were allowed to try it as you do now about smaller groups not being allowed to try it.

Special events aren't really "existing" content. Even if it's an annual event, that sort of stuff does often get modified from year to year, so it can't really be pigeon-holed into the "existing content" category. "Existing content" would be the permanent content.

WLR was already a raid anyways...the only thing that's changed is the minimum requirement and they made it easier to access it.

Also, wasn't there a countdown timer on WLR before you even clicked on the giant present?

They just slapped a raid label on it. The Winter lord event is not any harder than last year. In which 8 players were VERY able to complete it.

The title and what's in the actual content of the op (and thread) is misleading.

I'd have no issue if it remained 8 to start.

MY OWN MAIN issue is that it's locked behind the atrociousTUT interface/system. Which is a terrible tool for multi team content. For various reasons I've stated before.

Except now the only way to access it is with the atrocious team up teleporter.

I'd rather they kept the old way/minimum and added the TUT way as another option.

Putting it on TUT is actually nonsensical as for most multi team events in this game folks make pre-formed leagues then queue.

There are so many problems with the queue it's not even funny. Players quickly discovered them and that is WHY they preform.

Sewers and haunted house work better with it, becuase GASP SHOCK OF ALL SHOCKS they only require ONE team, and teams below the traditional standard of 8.

Hmmmmm, I wonder what the bolded above tells us?

The fact that the time stated for wait time isn't the actual wait time.
The fact that you can't do anything else while waiting for it to launch.
The fact that it can often bug out by adding entire teams to a league for no apparent reason.
The fact that its faster to simply form a pre-made league. Which most incarnate trials are.
The fact that it does not take AT composition into account in anyway shape or form.
The fact that it's basically useless on smaller pop servers (yeah shocking that there are more than just exalted, freedom and virtue in this game I know.)

I could go on.

The bolded is why the winter event needs to be kept at 8 and the old method retained.

We did just fine without levels 41-50 and no-one would argue that those are "optional." Incarnates are not loot. They are level progression by another name.

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.

AT composition should be up to the person forming the league imo, we've been doing this for years before LFGQ existed. Or am I misunderstanding your intention?

You could easily make the same argument that "loot" is "level progression by another name". After all "loot" is no less "level progression" than Incarnates. Both are simply a means of further advancing a character's power. Myself, I'd say that the Incarnate system is more IOs by another name: Combining dropped "salvage" into power bonuses.

Loot is "progress by another name" but not "level progress by another name." The incarnate system is a hybrid of different things, but one component of it is a linear progression system with gating: you have to unlock a slot to fill it with a power, very analogous to how additional levels grant powers and slots in the normal conventional game. Level shifting adds an additional dimension to that sense of linear progress: higher level content contains NPCs that themselves possess level shifting and creates an additional sense of intrinsic level and level progress.

The invention system on its own doesn't really have any sense of linear progress or gating, so it doesn't have an aspect to it that is analogous to leveling progress. Whether that makes the incarnate system more or less "optional" is a completely different matter, but its not true from a game design perspective that anything that allows you to become more powerful is all just different versions of the same kind of progress. If that were true, then the whole concept of "leveled" vs "level-less" gaming would be a distinction without a difference, but that is actually an astronomical difference in gaming.

Totally agree. I'd even say that the invention system goes makes the whole enhancement system less linear because it removed one of the "level locking" elements i.e. You never out level IOs

To this, I want to add another aspect: Storyline progression. Most level-based games tie their storyline progression to their level progression, and City of Heroes does this to a very large extent. Early-level characters have access to only a fraction of the game's content, but are unable to see the results of having run this content. To advance the timeline and gain access to content which "happens later," the player must level up. Later level content, by and large, assumes that earlier level content happened, whether it was the player who did it or not, therefore later level content is follows from earlier level such. While content itself is not a form of level progression, it is tied to level progression nevertheless.

There is no content tied to either Inventions or Hamidon enhancements. They are a system of non-linear upgrades with no real story wrapped around them. You don't need to have at least five purples equipped in order to participate in a story arc, yet you DO need to have at least an Alpha Boost equipped in order to not be useless on a Tin Mage or Apex TF. And that's not just a case of needing to be strong enough. You are quite literally penalised by being delevelled four levels down if you don't have one.

Incarnate progress doesn't just have level-progression-like elements, it also gates the "continuation" of the 1-50 storyline. Praetoria has been built up as a major threat and an invasion from there as the de facto apocalypse. Many storylines build up to this direct clash with the Praetorians, yet its resolution only takes part deep into the Incarnate system.

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 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."

You both made my point and missed it. The LFG system fails because there is no way for a system to do the adquate AT composition that WE DO.

QUEUE up (and I mean queue without forming a pre-made league) for any trial, and when it eventually launches two years later , it will be a mish mosh of random ats that may or may not be well suited for the taask at hand.

The LFG system I've been talking and complaining about is the ORIGINAL intention of the system, which you queue up singularly and are thrown together in a random league. Pre-Made league forming is something I don't think the devs intended us to do the majority of.

I don't know about you but when I do pre-formed leagues I just invite whomever wants to come so I always end up with a random assortment of ATs and it seems to work out ok.

I used to do that . . . until the Underground Trial came into existence.

Even with Underground I find that player skill is much more important than AT.

And, for the UGT, whether they have Clarion.

Which for me flies in the face of "anyone who wants to come". WHEN I pre-form a league for that it's not going to be a league of random players OR ATs that I can't judge their skill from. I also want to know if they have clarion.

It's going to be from a group of seasoned players who've run it before . . . which is kind my point about why the TUT system fails.

It doesn't judge skill or AT composition. It just throws together a bunch of random players. . . which for some trials like UG is a disaster waiting to happen.

The tool works fine for simple tasks such as the haunted house or sewer run, it DOES NOT work well for Incarnate content . . . which non-surprisingly enough is why most folks, including you yourself, pre-form.

I find it hilarious that all the folks defending it as a great tool don't actually use it the way it's meant to be.

I never defended the tool because frankly I think it was poorly implemented from the start. I merely commented that I disagreed with you as to the nature of it's problems. I have a lot of issues with the queue but the fact that it gives a "mish mosh of random ats" has never been one of them. I pre-form leagues because I find that the LFG queue fails for social reasons, however when I do pre-form leagues I essentially act as an idealized queue would, bringing together people who want to accomplish the same task in an almost random manner.

Frankly the trials are easy enough that a random group of people do have a solid chance of completing them. UG is harder but even there I'm seeing PUGs be reasonably successful so I think as the knowledge propagates through the community it will get better. The main failing of the queue is that no one uses it and at this point I don't think that is going to change.

I find that with Underground other player skill is more important.