Getting tired of Incarnates
By
Aura_Familia,
Posted on: 2011-11-06 15:41 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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No there doesn't - the used to be a kind of end at 50, before the Incaranate storyline was added - but now, the meta-story is open-ended, so we're getting a rolling storyline dealing with cosmic threats to Primal Earth and the multiverse, so that once one threat is dealt with, another one will show up.|
Originally Posted by End Sinister
There has to be an end to the story line of the game. Period.
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That's one of the really exciting parts of the Incarante storyline - it's being told in episodes, so that we still don't know exactly how the Praetorian chapter will end - but even as we're getting near to the big climax, there are plenty of hints about the next chapter with the Battalion and the Coming Storm, which will also be told over several Issues with a rolling storyline.
The Incarnate content is like a massive version of the SSAs - major storylines delivered in several espisodes, rather than single Issue storylines.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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Do you mean pre-GR or post-GR? |
Originally Posted by King_Moloch
CoX has suffered from a dearth of creative direction for along time.
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Also, as Second Measure has said that they've already planned out parts of I29, which would mean they're already thinking about stuff as far ahead as 2014, it seems that they've got a pretty good handle on where they want to go witht he game and what they want to do with it.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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Previously, the reasons for it is there was no end game, thus no reason for anything to unlock JUST at 50, when it could unlock for the whole 45-50 range. While people were expected to spin their wheels at 50 somewhat, people were REALLY expected to make alts. There was also the notion that only a small percentage of people owned level 50 characters, thus more content was put in the earlier level ranges.|
Originally Posted by gec72
Now that I think about it (and I'm sure it's been brought up), why *did* the contacts stop at 45-50 anyway? Much of the time on my 50s, it took that range of contacts to get me there. Why never a new set of contacts that unlocks at 50, even outside of Incarnate content?
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That was then, this is now. Now, we have what may as well be a whole new level range that goes beyond 50. Sure, we're technically still level 50, but we continue making progress beyond that point, and we are technically getting stronger and facing tougher challenges. As we now have a figurative new level range, it makes sense for new contacts and new story arcs from old contacts to take place in the 50+++ range.
I'm not sure if that's what the people at Paragon Studios have in mind when they speak of a "solo Incarnate path," but I strongly believe that contacts and story arcs that deal with the Incarnate storyline and give us Incarnate progress are a good idea. Contacts and arcs, as a point of fact, very much like Mender Ramiel.
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Originally Posted by Leo_G
You've got players with damn near half their roster of characters with tier 4 incarnate abilities and quite a few 'casuals' who have at *least* 1-2 fully incarnated out. IOs are just a visit to the blackmarket away. It's too easy to simply farm your way into whatever you want (and however many you want) in as short amount of time as a week or two.
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Honestly, if I want a "hard" game where getting stuff is a "challenge," I'll pick up a Korean grindfest MMO. Heavens knows there are a ton of these out there, both free and not, and new ones keep coming out, some even made by our very own NCsoft. That's those games, not this one. This game is easy, and I couldn't be happier for it.
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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.
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Originally Posted by UberGuy
Why? I mean, that's fine and all that you would design a game that way, but what about it makes it better other than that you'd like it to work that way? |
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
As it should be. I didn't come to City of Heroes looking for a hard game that wastes my time. There's a reason I never cared for EQ or SWG or DAOC - because I don't believe in tough love. Getting things in City of Heroes is easy, and I'd like to see it made even easier.
Honestly, if I want a "hard" game where getting stuff is a "challenge," I'll pick up a Korean grindfest MMO. Heavens knows there are a ton of these out there, both free and not, and new ones keep coming out, some even made by our very own NCsoft. That's those games, not this one. This game is easy, and I couldn't be happier for it. |
You see, the customer *thinks* they know what they want but ultimately, on average, the customer is clueless. I bet you simply love to get all them shinies in your pocket as quickly as you can just as much as you'd love the inevitable wait required for more shines to be pumped out for you to grab. Right, that's the part you forget....that wait you had to do to finally get that lvl cap raise to 50...that wait to get *any* new content for that range...that wait for the incarnate stuff to debut and that wait for each part to be added to.
But then the direction of the game itself isn't particularly in line with my desires (but then that's to be expected). It's no surprise really. Things just get easier, requires less thinking/planning, requires fewer choices, more is simply handed to you and to get any sort of real challenge from the game I'm expected to either gimp myself or just increase the number of foes.
The game doesn't make me feel much more super, just the foes more incompetent as they are mowed down by steamroller teams...which is all right. It honestly started weening me off the game for its creative freedom...I love the character creator and the powers, but I can design my own characters in my head and on paper now and make even *better* powers for them. And since they are usually in conflict with each other (in stories I write) their foes will never feel incompetent.
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How much do you charge a month for the game you have in your head? Id love to give it a spin...
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Originally Posted by Leo_G
I love the character creator and the powers, but I can design my own characters in my head and on paper now and make even *better* powers for them. And since they are usually in conflict with each other (in stories I write) their foes will never feel incompetent.
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"when a stalker goes blue side, assassination strike should be renamed "bunny hugs", and a rainbow should fly out" -Harbinger-
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That's a bet you'd lose. Character progression is part of what makes the game fun, therefore granting all practical rewards up-front removes much of the fun. By contrast, however, the game design mentality you suggest is for the game to intentionally keep these rewards for me and string me along. While I want character progression as part of the game, I want that character progression to be snippy and move along at a good pace. I have no need to "prove" myself to the game.|
Originally Posted by Leo_G
I bet you simply love to get all them shinies in your pocket as quickly as you can just as much as you'd love the inevitable wait required for more shines to be pumped out for you to grab.
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Originally Posted by Leo_G
Right, that's the part you forget....that wait you had to do to finally get that lvl cap raise to 50...that wait to get *any* new content for that range...that wait for the incarnate stuff to debut and that wait for each part to be added to.
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Making me wait is wasting my time, because I have better things to do with my life than wait for things to happen.
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Originally Posted by Leo_G
I love the character creator and the powers, but I can design my own characters in my head and on paper now and make even *better* powers for them.
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When I was a kid, I used to play with action figures a lot. I had one of Skeletor, one of Batman and one of Robocop, and I spent a hell of a long time just playing with dollies. But here's the thing - they were kind of lame, and I could never get them to stand upright without propping them up on something. Besides, as much fun as playing with action figures is, much of that fun is lost when you have to do the voices and move their arms and legs with your fingers.
City of Heroes gives me action figures that I can design, but that the game can animate and operate for me. That's far, far, FAR better than anything I could represent visually. And while, yes, a single piece of artwork from a single decent artist will probably outstrip what the game has to offer... It's still a single piece of artwork. The game is an entire world with an entire host of characters, and all it costs me is $15 a month, less now since I moved to bi-yearly subscription.
I'm not interested in "challenge" or "achievement" or all the standard parlance that gets thrown around these forums, because I have nothing to prove to anyone, least of all to myself. I'm interested in making cool characters and watching them be cool on-screen. Nothing more, nothing less.
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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.
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Increased challenge/grind doesn't let me feel accomplished or keep goals/aspirations open to achieve, it leaves me feeling mired in tedium with goals that seem so hopelessly out of reach that I give up on them.
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Originally Posted by Leo_G
What about the thought makes it 'better'? Well, it might not be a QoL improvement to make the game 'better' or 'more desired' but the idea would make the game more 'game-like' and leave the player feeling accomplished or keeping goals/aspirations open to achieve vs what you get now.
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Goodbye may seem forever
Farewell is like the end
But in my heart's the memory
And there you'll always be
-- The Fox and the Hound
Oh well.. it seems I should run another TF again at +4/x8. I expect many of you who think incarnates are too powerful to join that then. It will definatly not be steam rolling...
What I find strange is that people are afraid of higher repps.. even with 2 or more incarnates on the team. And that while way before incarnates most tf's where already done on +2 or +3. So many players lost their will or nerve to do something challenging it seems. I actually still love a challenge so I do raise the repp often.
And if that is not enough.. I know some AE arcs that are even harder at a high repp then any TF the devs came up with. My own below in my sig I have nerved the hell out because people (incarnates included) kept dying. Showing that it actually is a lot harder then its seems to make a tf everyone will like and play.
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You'd be wrong on most counts where you're guessing what I want. I'm one of a few players that's been willing to play mostly the same 8-10 level 50 characters for the past several years, making what a lot of players here would consider very slow progress on building those characters out using the Inventions system. My goals have been very much on the horizon.|
Originally Posted by Leo_G
What about the thought makes it 'better'? Well, it might not be a QoL improvement to make the game 'better' or 'more desired' but the idea would make the game more 'game-like' and leave the player feeling accomplished or keeping goals/aspirations open to achieve vs what you get now.
You see, the customer *thinks* they know what they want but ultimately, on average, the customer is clueless. I bet you simply love to get all them shinies in your pocket as quickly as you can just as much as you'd love the inevitable wait required for more shines to be pumped out for you to grab. Right, that's the part you forget....that wait you had to do to finally get that lvl cap raise to 50...that wait to get *any* new content for that range...that wait for the incarnate stuff to debut and that wait for each part to be added to. But then the direction of the game itself isn't particularly in line with my desires (but then that's to be expected). It's no surprise really. Things just get easier, requires less thinking/planning, requires fewer choices, more is simply handed to you and to get any sort of real challenge from the game I'm expected to either gimp myself or just increase the number of foes. |
Here's the problem comparing that progress to the Incarnate system. I could do pretty much anything and make progress towards my Inventions goals. Doing pretty much anything will earn me inf, though some things earn me more than others. Any TF or story arc will earn me Reward Merits.
For the Incarnate system, we got two, then four pieces of Incarnate Trial content to run that could earn Incarnate progress. You need at least 7 other people, but usually 11 other people to join you - you can't just log in and make progress whenever you want. You can't trade or email Incarnate progress - no earning it on one character and passing it around. And the latter two pieces of content? Not very popular right now.
Even at 20 iTrials to chose, the other restrictions on Incarnate progress would limit it compared to what I did with Inventions, which I did much more slowly. I could make my Inventions progress at a pace I set, because I wasn't dependent on finding 10-20 other people. It is that requirement that makes it important that each iTrial be meaningfully rewarding. For many of us, getting on an iTrial is not a convenient process. We can't do it whenever we want, like we can earn XP or inf. If an inconvenient process is not tangibly rewarding, not as many people will do it. Since the whole thing is predicated on people doing it, that creates negative feedback, and the whole system can collapse.
Now, you could say that the devs could have taken a different design route entirely. They could have produced a slower pace of content more similar to what we already had in terms of TFs and story arcs, with a different system of attaining Incarnate powers more gradually, but with more control for the individual player over pace of earnings. A lot of players probably would have liked that, though I can't know if it was a majority. If it offered more personal control over pace, I probably would prefer it to iTrials.
But even I have to admit, that wouldn't have the same marketing edge the iTrials do. I can see the lure of something that got more of the Incarnate powers system out there in play with less dev-produced content. It's not as attractive to the modern MMO audience to introduce a new system that will take many months to progress even to the midway point in. So we got something based around leagues of up to 24 people that then moves at a pace more brisk than what you think it should. We'll get more content with more individual degree of progress control sometime in the future. We don't know what that content's target progress pacing will be, but it will have to exist in the shadow of the pacing set by the iTrials, which need to be non-trivial pacing to convince people to form multi-team leagues. What's "non-trivial" is highly subjective, but even you admit your idea of it doesn't mesh well with a lot of customer expectations. That's a problem, when you need to convince the customer to participate, or the whole thing breaks down.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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Understand though that the devs have said repeatedly that most Incarnate powers were for specific Incarnate Trials. Can you honestly tell me it isn't far easier to run an ITF with folks using Incarnate powers? If it isn't anywhere near the same risk or even time involved why the same reward? I don't see it as a bait and switch but I thought the same thing about ED when it was first introduced because the invention system wasn't available. The complete nerfing along with a we have a plan - someday 3 years later............|
Originally Posted by Aura_Familia
Not just no, but HELL FREAKING NO to number 1. Worst suggestion ever.
2-5 are good, but number 1 should NEVER be done. Using the Incarnate system as advertised should not be an automatic retroactive nerf to anyone running current non-incarnate content. that would be seen as the biggest bait and switch in a loooong time. terrible suggestion. |
Was annoying.
Now they don't apppear to have a grasp on how to use this Incarnate aspect and how to balance it. In Trials you are fighting +3 and +4 foes to balance - How about this change:
1. If members have no Incarnate powers (or none selected) normal level foes - foes in the trial will be +3 if 3 or less have Incarnate powers and +4 if 4 or more have these powers. Then it is far less trivial for the players and lends a degree of danger.
2. Allow a setting in TF's and Trial for No Incarnate powers - just like the no temp powers setting and this gives the full reward.
3. Have each Incarnate Trial unlock one aspect only and then run this same trial to get a slot filled automatically for that aspect of whatever reward you need in order.
4. Have other Trials give a reward roll for aspects not of that type to get a chance to fill for another aspect.
5. Have normal level 50 content give threads just like it currently gives shards and remove shards from the game. Credit all held shards as threads one for one.
Now you have a fast route to fill each type running that Trial and a slower route - even solo running normal content or other level 50 Trials.
This would seem to let you use the powers and HAVE to use them to defeat the higher difficulty foes.
That seem more fair?
Solo'ing at +4/8x should keep you busy.
Do I also remember a similar post appearing a few years ago, saying that heavily IOed characters made everyone else feel obsolete?
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Going back to the OP's topic, for those suggesting running at higher difficulties (especially +level) as a solution to having incarnates on a team - what about the *non* incarnates on the team?
Sure, upping the level brings the incarnates back on a bit more of an even footing with the foes, but it degrades the effectiveness of the non-incarnates at the same time. If you up the level enough that the incarnates can't trivialize things, the non-incarnates will still barely be contributing - it's just now that instead of not contributing because the incarnates are killing everything too fast, they're not contributing because they're fighting +4s (or even +5s, if they're sidekicked) with no level shifts or incarnate powers. For most characters (the ones not focused primarily on buffing) it's hard to do anything useful against such foes.
If someone considers an appropriate level of challenge for their character to be fighting +1s in groups of whatever size, upping the level doesn't change the fact that they're still contributing very little compared to the incarnate characters.
As a side note, I agree with merging shards and threads, but I'd credit existing shards as better than a 1:1 conversion. A common alpha component requires 4 shards; a common trial component needs 20 threads. For uncommons it's 16 shards to 60 threads. For this one-time trade, shards would need to be converted to threads at better than a 1:3 rate (and the thread drop rate would also need to be improved over the shard drop rate by the same factor).
I'd also allow alpha slot components to be side-graded to trial components at the same thread costs as trial components currently can be side-graded for. At least for commons and uncommons, anyway - notices are probably a bit too easy to get to be sidegradable to rares, so I'd probably say favors could be sidegraded to rares and very rares you'd still need to upgrade from rares. Between this and the ability to earn threads (and thus buy incarnate XP) in normal content, it would give a reasonably viable non-trial incarnate progression path. It still wouldn't be a *solo* path, and it'd be a lot slower, but it'd be better than nothing.
@MuonNeutrino
Student, Gamer, Altaholic, and future Astronomer.
This is what it means to be a tank!
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This is essentially why I find forced teaming as the sole source of progress in a system to be a bad idea: It's herding cats. And I don't mean that the people organising or participating in these events are herding cats, I mean the development team is. Because each piece of content needs people to want to do it so people can do it at all, they have to worry about balancing the time, threat and reward of all tasks. Then things like MARTy come in, then things like Merit penalties come in, and so on and so on. Forced teaming is a self-sustaining phenomenon - when people want to do it, people can do it. When people don't want to do it, NO-ONE can. This places an imperative on design that really isn't present anywhere else.|
Originally Posted by UberGuy
Even at 20 iTrials to chose, the other restrictions on Incarnate progress would limit it compared to what I did with Inventions, which I did much more slowly.
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I can, for instance, quote World Wide Red as an arc few people do because it's a mile long, it involves Malta and it's not terribly rewarding. I like it, but it's not popular. And? So what? I don't NEED it to be popular in order to run it, because I can choose to do it by myself. At the very least, I can rope one of my friends into playing it, because finding at least one other person isn't all that hard.
Now suppose I wanted to run the Underground Trial. Well, people don't seem to like it very much, so suppose for the sake of argument that no-one wanted to run it. Well, then I CAN'T run it, because I need quite a significant number of other people that I can't up and find when it's convenient for me. Because this content is now wasted, the development team is essentially forced to make it more rewarding or kill the reward on other content. Or both, as they tried to do. In essence, it becomes required for the developers to commit the cardinal sin of game design - to tell me what and how to play. Generally, this is a bad thing, but when they NEED people to play certain bits of content in order for those bits to be playable in the first place, it's a necessary evil. Hence the problem.
This has been true since time began. I like (some of) the Shard TFs and would like to run them, but getting a team for one is like pulling teeth, especially during US work hours on a work day, which just so happens to be when I want to play. The developers did what they could to encourage players to play more diverse TFs (than just Katie Hannon over and over again), but it still didn't make many willing to run Sara Moore or Dr. Quaterfield. But it was fine - if I wanted to do something in the Shard, I could still work with General Hammond or Dr. Boyd. Or, if I just wanted to get to 50, I could leave the shard and run Peregrine Island content. I was still making progress. No-one really needed to coerce people to play one piece of content over another if people didn't want to.
When your only source of progress is team-only content, then the development team faces the imperative to FORCE people to play all of it, and that's just depressing for all involved. In simple fact, people will develop their favourites and keep rerunning them instead of seeking new challenges.
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Originally Posted by Muon_Neutrino
Going back to the OP's topic, for those suggesting running at higher difficulties (especially +level) as a solution to having incarnates on a team - what about the *non* incarnates on the team?
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Now, I have nothing against Incarnates being much more powerful than non-Incarnates. That was kind of the point, and if it WEREN'T the case, I'd be crying foul. But BECAUSE they are more powerful is why I feel they should have been given enough content of their own such that they wouldn't feel compelled to replay pre-Incarnate content. Granted, Incarnates could still choose to do so if they really wanted, but at no point would players feel like they HAD to, or else grind the same four tasks to infinity and beyond.
Spin it as we might, content is the problem, and content is the solution. Give Incarnates enough content of their own, and you'll reduce their numbers in ITF reruns significantly. As far as I'm concerned, everybody wins.
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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.
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You can't win the content battle.
The 800 pound Gorilla of the MMO world can release a new content module and 2 weeks later it has been completed - likely in the first week.
That's with hundreds of programmers.
Let's get back to our trusty team of 15-20 folks, they can never win the content battle and never should have tried. You have 7 years worth that you completely trivialized leaving you with 4 trials.
The elegant way to do Incarnate aspects was to let players know that they only had these powers while out of the Paragon plane of existance or you could have Cole/Rikti or whoever filter those powers out of our dimension. Now once you build the neccessary content amount you could do a trial that - destroyed the filter!
Having Shards drop in normal content was the way to go and how they came to decide the way we have Incarnate progression now is viable is beyond me. They only way they can control it is by more currencies every release.
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I agree with you in general, but I feel there's something more at work here than just how much content can be produced. Over the last few years, as Paragon Studios sold the game to PlayNC, they founded NC NorCal, and that then became Paragon Studios, the development priorities seem to have switched up, and these days we're seeing an EXTREME case of quality over quantity. And while I won't go as far as to say that new content is BAD (it isn't), I'll go as far as to say it's nowhere near enough, nor anywhere near what it used to be once upon a time, and that's Incarnate content and regular missions. What do I mean? Well...|
Originally Posted by Infernus_Hades
Let's get back to our trusty team of 15-20 folks, they can never win the content battle and never should have tried. You have 7 years worth that you completely trivialized leaving you with 4 trials.
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Back in 2004, the original Paragon Studios ended Beta in a mad rush to release, hence why there was comparatively less do in the 35-40 range and what was there wasn't very well tested. However, in their scramble to produce an entire game, they made a LOT of very simple, very straightforward, largely average to pretty good content. At no point in the game's life time since, with the possible exception of I1, has this density of new content repeated. Even City of Villains fell far short, with the game having fewer contacts and each contact having fewer missions, with fewer new enemies being introduced and many of those fading very quickly. CoV was the first time, I think, when the studio shot for making smaller zones with less content in them, relying on said content to be better to compensate, and it's been getting more and more extreme since.
I think the ultimate expression of that "quality over quantity" mentality was the revamped low level missions, especially hero-side. Sure, most people will describe the new starting content as good, perhaps even better, but almost no-one will ever describe it as being "more." Because it isn't more. It's significantly less, as a point of fact, and the reason for this is it simply takes more time, more money and more people to make great content, thus if that's what you're shooting for, you can't make as much of it.
Flash back to I19 - we got two Trials. They were huge Trials with unique mechanics, special cutscenes, eccentric powers, complex scripts... They clearly took many people much time to create, and it shows. These are great pieces of content. But they're still two Trials, each less than an hour long (unless I misremember). It reminds me of Matt Miller rebuffing suggestions of revamping old zones because it would take as much work as making new zones, with the idea that the old zones would be changed so much that they may as well have been made from scratch. It reminds me, as well, of Roy Cooling, the arc of a thousand gimmicks. Every mission is over-booked, every mission has a gimmick, every mission is special, every mission is complex. And yet for all their complexity and the time it took to make them, they're still, what? Four missions? Five missions? Not many, in either case.
Where all the different arguments merge together is right back into Incarnates. By committing to only ever make these horribly expensive, overly complex Trials for Incarnates, the developers shot themselves in the foot. I have no reason to believe that they couldn't have created fifteen arcs, each a dozen missions long, each lasting for days on end, if they'd simply resisted the urge to make them so expensive and instead stuck to simpler designs like what makes up much of the Legacy content. Sure, it's not always very good, but "not very good" is still better than nothing or worse, horrible stories told through invasive gimmicks like, again, Roy Cooling.
As far as I'm concerned, Incarnates should have been treated as a brand new release and had a great body of simple content made for them just to provide a base on which to build the speciality raids thereafter. The simple truth is that content doesn't have to be complex or expensive. It can be basic, as long as there is enough of it. And only when there's enough content should more elaborate content be made to refine what's already there.
To be honest, the Incarnate system is the purest representation of a problem I've had for a very long time: Quality over quantity only actually works when you have sufficient quantity to work with. Playing this game is becoming like going to dinner and being served only orderves with caviare. It may be an expensive, fancy delicacy, but I'm still going home hungry.
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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.
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The more I think about it, the more it seems that Going Rogue was a waste of time and resources. Twenty levels of fun missions in a beautifully designed city that go nowhere. Two alignments that get dropped the moment a character gets to Primal Earth and a storyline that meshes with the current game about as well as icebergs did with the Titanic. Given how poorly the murky, 1-20 content of Praetoria relates to the Evil Goatee Paragon seen in the Incarnate content, I can't for the life of me see why the time was spent on developing that end of the game while the Incarnate System was launched with so little content. Especially as Freedom has now stolen the ability to roll up as any AT on either side.
I wonder how much better the Incarnate System would have been received if it had been launched with zones only Incarnates could enter with mission arcs, trials and task forces available for soloists, teams and leagues. The revamped Maria Jenkins arc and Ramiel's arc would have been able to establish all that was needed for the Praetorian threat if they really insisted on telling that particular story.
I can only hope that the solo and small team Incarnate content that's coming will address some of these concerns but to be honest, I'm amazed that it wasn't even considered for the launch of the system given how solo and casual friendly CoX is compared to other MMOs. Sometimes I wonder if the Devs know their own game.
@Dante EU - Union Roleplayer and Altisis Victim
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From Dante-I wonder how much better the Incarnate System would have been received if it had been launched with zones only Incarnates could enter with mission arcs, trials and task forces available for soloists, teams and leagues. The revamped Maria Jenkins arc and Ramiel's arc would have been able to establish all that was needed for the Praetorian threat if they really insisted on telling that particular story.
Your idea sounds better than grinding BAF and Lambda not to mention Keyes. And solo incarnate things - why you could feel uber powerful without needing a team of 23 other heroes.
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Originally Posted by The_Larker
This is the reason why me and the wife will be going the premium route. This whole incarnate debacle has really turned me off to the game, I do not want to grind, I do not want judgement, I do not want pets, or w/e else it is you get.
I do not have time to grind,grind,grind to get how many ever shards/merits/points to get powers that I do not want in the first place. Casual players do not have a place in this game with this kind of content. The focus seems to be get to 50 on a toon and grind the **** out of the tf's...BORING....if I wanted a farmer I would make a ss/fire broot. I do realize some people might like this but really the "end game" the devs have came up with is just a joke. There is little imagination to farming the same tf's over and over to get lackluster abilities. While others might like to be spoon fed this drivel I do not, I am so very disappointed in the direction this game has taken. |
This sums it up for me as well.
The game has changed dramatically - and not in a good way.
I've cut right back on my play time as a direct result of the Incarnate mess.
I always said I'd be here until the servers are switched off, but the fixation on ruining the game with Incarnates has sadly now made that highly unlikely.
Proud member of FOXBASE ALPHA and coalition associates.
Hero 50's - 25
Villain 50's - 1
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I have a sneaking suspicion that the Praetorian content was actually originally designed to be Incarnate content, or at least high level content for Incarnates to play through, back when Incarnates equalled Praetoria. It would certainly explain the enemy difficulty and level balancing, as well as the relatively small collection of content. It would also explain why we start off fighting super-powered monsters, professional soldiers highly-advanced robots, as opposed to street thugs, beggard and snakes.|
Originally Posted by Dante
The more I think about it, the more it seems that Going Rogue was a waste of time and resources. Twenty levels of fun missions in a beautifully designed city that go nowhere. Two alignments that get dropped the moment a character gets to Primal Earth and a storyline that meshes with the current game about as well as icebergs did with the Titanic. Given how poorly the murky, 1-20 content of Praetoria relates to the Evil Goatee Paragon seen in the Incarnate content, I can't for the life of me see why the time was spent on developing that end of the game while the Incarnate System was launched with so little content. Especially as Freedom has now stolen the ability to roll up as any AT on either side.
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Frankly... If 1-20 Praetoria were actually Incarnate content... I might have really gotten into Incarnates.
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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.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
That's a bet you'd lose. Character progression is part of what makes the game fun, therefore granting all practical rewards up-front removes much of the fun. By contrast, however, the game design mentality you suggest is for the game to intentionally keep these rewards for me and string me along. While I want character progression as part of the game, I want that character progression to be snippy and move along at a good pace. I have no need to "prove" myself to the game.
No, I don't forget. I never "waited" for anything in this game, because waiting would imply that I disliked doing what I was doing and waited for something more. And I simply did not. I did not "wait" to get to 50. I played the game I enjoy and 50 came along on its own. I never waited for new content at level 50, because I had number 50 other characters waiting to be played. I never waited for Incarnate content to début because I never WANTED raid grind. I did make a fuss about it when I had some illusions that the system could be anything more than a boring grind, but that ship has sailed. If they add solo Incarnate progression of a meaningful kind (and they won't), well... I'm no longer waiting for it. Making me wait is wasting my time, because I have better things to do with my life than wait for things to happen. I'm glad you're able to create your characters in a visual medium. I, however, cannot. I can't draw, I can't model, I can't animate, I can't sculpt and I don't have enough spare cash to have artwork commissioned. To me, City of Heroes is a means of expression for those who are talented in expressing themselves, but not talented in any practical way of realising that idea of expression. When I was a kid, I used to play with action figures a lot. I had one of Skeletor, one of Batman and one of Robocop, and I spent a hell of a long time just playing with dollies. But here's the thing - they were kind of lame, and I could never get them to stand upright without propping them up on something. Besides, as much fun as playing with action figures is, much of that fun is lost when you have to do the voices and move their arms and legs with your fingers. City of Heroes gives me action figures that I can design, but that the game can animate and operate for me. That's far, far, FAR better than anything I could represent visually. And while, yes, a single piece of artwork from a single decent artist will probably outstrip what the game has to offer... It's still a single piece of artwork. The game is an entire world with an entire host of characters, and all it costs me is $15 a month, less now since I moved to bi-yearly subscription. I'm not interested in "challenge" or "achievement" or all the standard parlance that gets thrown around these forums, because I have nothing to prove to anyone, least of all to myself. I'm interested in making cool characters and watching them be cool on-screen. Nothing more, nothing less. |
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Originally Posted by Tenzhi
Increased challenge/grind doesn't let me feel accomplished or keep goals/aspirations open to achieve, it leaves me feeling mired in tedium with goals that seem so hopelessly out of reach that I give up on them.
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Originally Posted by UberGuy
You'd be wrong on most counts where you're guessing what I want. I'm one of a few players that's been willing to play mostly the same 8-10 level 50 characters for the past several years, making what a lot of players here would consider very slow progress on building those characters out using the Inventions system. My goals have been very much on the horizon.
Here's the problem comparing that progress to the Incarnate system. I could do pretty much anything and make progress towards my Inventions goals. Doing pretty much anything will earn me inf, though some things earn me more than others. Any TF or story arc will earn me Reward Merits. For the Incarnate system, we got two, then four pieces of Incarnate Trial content to run that could earn Incarnate progress. You need at least 7 other people, but usually 11 other people to join you - you can't just log in and make progress whenever you want. You can't trade or email Incarnate progress - no earning it on one character and passing it around. And the latter two pieces of content? Not very popular right now. Even at 20 iTrials to chose, the other restrictions on Incarnate progress would limit it compared to what I did with Inventions, which I did much more slowly. I could make my Inventions progress at a pace I set, because I wasn't dependent on finding 10-20 other people. It is that requirement that makes it important that each iTrial be meaningfully rewarding. For many of us, getting on an iTrial is not a convenient process. We can't do it whenever we want, like we can earn XP or inf. If an inconvenient process is not tangibly rewarding, not as many people will do it. Since the whole thing is predicated on people doing it, that creates negative feedback, and the whole system can collapse. Now, you could say that the devs could have taken a different design route entirely. They could have produced a slower pace of content more similar to what we already had in terms of TFs and story arcs, with a different system of attaining Incarnate powers more gradually, but with more control for the individual player over pace of earnings. A lot of players probably would have liked that, though I can't know if it was a majority. If it offered more personal control over pace, I probably would prefer it to iTrials. But even I have to admit, that wouldn't have the same marketing edge the iTrials do. I can see the lure of something that got more of the Incarnate powers system out there in play with less dev-produced content. It's not as attractive to the modern MMO audience to introduce a new system that will take many months to progress even to the midway point in. So we got something based around leagues of up to 24 people that then moves at a pace more brisk than what you think it should. We'll get more content with more individual degree of progress control sometime in the future. We don't know what that content's target progress pacing will be, but it will have to exist in the shadow of the pacing set by the iTrials, which need to be non-trivial pacing to convince people to form multi-team leagues. What's "non-trivial" is highly subjective, but even you admit your idea of it doesn't mesh well with a lot of customer expectations. That's a problem, when you need to convince the customer to participate, or the whole thing breaks down. |
Are the trials not fun enough that it has to be viewed as 'work'? What does one do these trials for anyway? To get power by blasting hoards of foes to kingdom come? Then what do you do with that power? Blast more hoards to kingdom come? Am I missing something or is this circular logic contradicting someone?
Even if it took 10,000 iTrial runs to unlock max tiers with a character, how is it any different from playing any other part of the game, with or without the shiny new powers?...I guess I'm just failing to see how one could consider it grinding for these powers when all the powers do is let you grind more. Grind is grind, no matter what flavor you sprinkle on it. One just trivializes more content faster than the other. *shrugs*
But I think UberGuy gets what I'm saying even if he doesn't agree with it. The way I see it: Incarnates trivialize content (to what extent depends on who you ask) and it is because Incarnates are so common. It doesn't take a genius to figure out why they are common and a sought after tactic. All I'm saying is if the devs took measures in the first place to moderate incarnate progression (and limit choices) then the problem of trivialized content wouldn't be so common or at least had the time to bleed through the game like IOs and slowly alter the player standards.
But that's all in the past. What could be done to fix the issue know I don't know nor do I care.
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Except now it's 30 levels, with First Ward.|
Originally Posted by Dante
The more I think about it, the more it seems that Going Rogue was a waste of time and resources. Twenty levels of fun missions in a beautifully designed city that go nowhere.
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I actually quite like the way that the lower level Praetoria content is being developed and released in tandem with the incarnate trials. It would be cool if both strands could move along faster, but I've not going to demand miracles of development. The problem is being mid-development, when both the trials and Praetoria feel half finished. In a couple of years I think it's all going to look very spiffy.
The biggest shame is that Praetorian characters have to make the hero/villain choice when they leave Praetoria, and are then cut off from their old contacts etc. I can only thing that it was something forced on the devs by the existing alignment structure of the game, because otherwise it seems rather odd.
Arc#314490: Zombie Ninja Pirates!
Defiant @Grouchybeast
Death is part of my attack chain.
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As much as I like First Ward, it doesn't feel like a continuation of Going Rogue to me. It abandons any pretence of factions and lumps everyone into the same 'vaguely heroic' category. Though I do take your point, it does mean you can stay in Praetoria until level 30 now but I still remain confused as to why all the time and resources were spent developing Praetoria when the Incarnate system is desperately begging for content.
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Originally Posted by Grouchybeast
Except now it's 30 levels, with First Ward.
I actually quite like the way that the lower level Praetoria content is being developed and released in tandem with the incarnate trials. It would be cool if both strands could move along faster, but I've not going to demand miracles of development. The problem is being mid-development, when both the trials and Praetoria feel half finished. In a couple of years I think it's all going to look very spiffy. The biggest shame is that Praetorian characters have to make the hero/villain choice when they leave Praetoria, and are then cut off from their old contacts etc. I can only thing that it was something forced on the devs by the existing alignment structure of the game, because otherwise it seems rather odd. |
@Dante EU - Union Roleplayer and Altisis Victim
The Militia: Union RP Supergroup - www.themilitia.org.uk
It's also not quite the same standard. It runs out of steam towards the end where it becomes a rush to finish the arc and ends up missing a lot of resolution. I'm still a big fan of the beautiful zone and engaging first and second part, though, and those definitely do match Praetoria.
End Sinister said
"One last item before I go. There has to be an end to the story line of the game. Period. It's taken 7 years to tell the story of the Rikti, Rularuu, Nemesis, and Arachnos. All of the stories have to come to an end at this point in order to start afresh. W.O.W. seemed to do it with their expansions so I see no reason why the developers don't take the opportunity to finally wrap up every fricking story line in the game. I have a feeling The Coming Storm will address some of this, but that storm should have came and went so long ago. Right now it seems so far off in the horizon. End the legacy content and end the Praetorian arc. Praetoria in particular is played out. I'm tire of Praetoria and I think many other players are on the same page with me."
I may not agree with the rest of your post, but this, yes, yes, a thousand times yes. I imagine one would have to be a pretty fanatically dedicated apologists to continue pretending we have any kind of direction of developmental leadership of any kind at all at this point. The incarnate system and it's successors with their content destroying canon crushing typo riddled inconsistent selves is pretty much proof of that. Not to mention how very, very generally bad they are. I don't even really MEAN to be critical about the new arcs, but damn. I have a small nephew who read through Dr Graves arc with me and thought it was the stupidest most inconsistent thing ever.
This from a nine year old boy.
CoX has suffered from a dearth of creative direction for along time. Really suffered. It's time to either get some new blood in there or just stop cranking out such sub par content and spend some real time fixing the broken/invalidated/stupid previously existing content. If you're not going to add new content to standard, then just don't add it. Fix the damned AE, fix the PvP system, fix redside. Seriously, all of it. Fix it. PLEASE. I'd much rather have the development team fixing the endless list of issues we had BEFORE they introduced this Incarnate abortion. Resolve the Longbow thing, resolve the Vanguard arcs, resolve this catch all bag of pathetic, the "coming storm". DO something actually useful with Uro, and for God's sake. give redside access to the damned shadow shard, hell just do something with it at all.
I would much, much rather have a focus on fixing the already existing issues with CoX than have more of this terrible game breaking raid oriented uncontent added to it. Please stop shoveling out bad content.
Stand UP.
FIGHT BACK!