What are you expecting for a solo Incarnate path?

The difference between the solo Praetorian missions and any solo Incarnate mission is that the solo Praetorian ones weren't always meant to be challenging - they were solo-only because of the moral choice element in them - while Incarnate content is designed around the idea of being challenging, which can cause problems for soloing when the game is this big and complex.
Mender Ramiel's arc is a good example - Trapdoor and Hero 1 are both quite challenging encounters for a lot of players, quite easy for some, but also impossible for some - becasue the game is just too varied to be able to make a challenging boss for every single AT and power combination - so even if it's only a small miority who can't handle a boss solo, they're still going to end up with the feeling that the game is telling them their AT and power set choices are wrong - so any solo missions in DA would need to be designed like the Praetorian ones, with the emphasis on a moral choice rather than a challenging boss fight, even if that goes against the basic Incarnate idea of being designed around challenging content.

I'd be totally fine if the solo-possible content is hard enough to require an Alpha. My personal upper limit on mob difficulty is anything that can't be soloed with the help of a shivan or 3 lol. The news that we're getting a whole zone to potentially solo our way thru the Incarnate stuff is very welcome to me. It's more than I expected. It seems like the devs can still find ways to pleasantly surprise me. Yay for CoH!

Eco

Quote:

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."

This makes me so happy, the thought of being able to solo the incarnate stuff! So many times, I can't be on when other do ITs, or my old puter can't handle more than an 8-man team withput becomming a slideshow. Hats off to the devs for giving the solo players a vote.

I solo like 99.9% of the time. I have done 4 Trials so far this year. I have done 3 task forces (for Notices) since August. I didn't enjoy them, though I think I did fairly well in them. They were, at best, tolerable for a limited time.

I very much look forward to a solo-able path through the Incarnate system.

However, having that content be solo-only is irrelevant to me. If it can be teamed, too, and others want to team through it, I don't care one tiny little bit. More power to 'em. I might even help someone once in a while who has trouble with some bit of it (I helped someone with Trapdoor the other day).

Solo-able content is all that I would/could ever ask for. Solo-only content means nothing extra to me at all.

Aw guys, please agree to disagree and move on.

and one more update from Arbiter Hawk

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arbiter Hawk Hi again, all. I'm stopping in to clarify my post from before. Please note that these are the current plans for Dark Astoria rewards, but they are subject to change once we start receiving data from Beta testing. Defeating critters in Dark Astoria, whether street sweeping or the critters inside DA missions, will give you both Physical and Psychic Incarnate XP, and chances to get threads on each defeat. Completing the one-off Repeatable Missions available in the zone will allow you to gain Threads. Completing the Incarnate Story arcs will allow you to obtain Incarnate Components, Incarnate Merits, or Threads, with some amount of time-gating per reward per arc. Incarnate Story arcs can also be flashbacked via Ouroboros, allowing you to repeat them at your own pace (and allowing you to re-earn rewards after your cooldown on that choice has elapsed). I hope that this helps shed some light on the great extent to which solo and small team progress through the Incarnate system will be possible in Death Incarnate.

So there you have it. You can street sweep to just unlock slots and earn threads for components, the 'radio' (IE repeatable) missions grant threads, and the story arc grants salvage and merits and gets to be repeatable via Flashback system.

Pretty snazzy. Pretty much what a lot of people were asking for, nice reasonable pace. And you can still just hit the trial queue for a combined bigger rewards.

Looks great. Only a shame it's probably 4-6 months away.

Titan Weapons will hold me over till then only two weeks to go!

I seem to be in the minority of people in this thread, but City of Heroes is after all an MMO. IMHO one of the main reasons to play an MMO game is so that you can get together with other people, interact with them and play the game together; or against one another if PvP is your thing. I’m a big fan of teaming and think the dev’s have given us a great SSK and league system to help encourage this. I play solo some times, but find this boring after a while and much prefer getting together with global friends and SG mates to run through the game content.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not a huge fan of i-Trials, but I do take part in them when I have a spare 30 - 60 mins to kill. With the exception of the Underground Trial, the i-Trials have been designed to be completed relatively quickly so running them occasionally is not a big deal. Taking part in i-Trials is also a good way to meet other players who you may not otherwise team with and helps build the community on a server.

If you don’t want to team, then the solo incarnate path should be more lengthy and time consuming. If not then what incentive is there for people to play i-Trials other than to get badges?

True, but the tactic isn't aimed at you. It's aimed at a hypothetical several thousand people upon whom it works.

Now there are different tactics to get and keep players like you, but well, you're here, so...