What are you expecting for a solo Incarnate path?

Saying that the Devs are involved in a illegal activity will get you mocked.

I think a lot of us are just kind of confused by your victim act.

The designers did something contrary to your and others' expectations, but that's hardly bait and switch or a 'scam'. The game didn't have endgame content, it does now, and it's going to have content that caters to everyone soon enough. Trying to paint the players as some beaten stepchildren finally being given some modicum of comfort after being thoroughly 'abused' by some wrongdoing on the designer's part is ludicrous.

Are the trials perfect? No. Are they in-line with the rest of the game's design? No. They're a new avenue the designers are exploring to match with other games end content. Just because it doesn't completely match your desires and wants in the game is no personal slight, much as you seem to imagine it to be, against you or the other players.

There are people that are happy with trials and there are people that aren't. There will be more trials, more incarnate content for solo/small team, and content for the rest of the game too, the designers are giving everyone something. Could they have put out the solo stuff sooner? Possibly, but they also want to put a focus on the trials, love them or hate them they're here to stay so you're better off offering constructive feedback instead of just stewing and breathing vitriol over past decisions and painting the designers as some abusive evil doers trying to trick us.

I mean what do you think any of it accomplishes? We don't have to bend over backwards and just take it, but just ******** pointlessly isn't going to make them stop and go "oh, you're right. We just wanted your money, we'll stop that now and give you everything your little heart desires". The devs have shown they *are* listening to us and while they can't meet every self entitled demand made, they are adding things and tweaking things that people are asking for and want, from features to powers to costumes to zones. Are the devs perfect? Good gods no. but you seem to be under some misapprehension that whining like a spoiled child and accusing the devs of some half baked idea that they're just jerking us all around for fun is going to change things.

You're not going to get everything you want, almost no single player is going to. They're going to keep making trials and the trials are going to remain the fastest way to progress along as an incarnate. This is a fact of their plan. What you can do is offer constructive feedback on the current systems and offerings in order for the devs to make what they do give you the best that they can offer. Even debating things can be constructive, but not just whining and crying wolf. And if that just doesn't fly you're welcome to vote with your dollars and cancel your subscription.

The changes to Dark Astoria are not precisely what I expected or wanted, but they do show that the Devs are listening and devoting time and effort to answering our requests.

Go Devs!

and

Go us!

Are we going to get what we want 100% of the time if we tell them what we want? No. But if we don't tell them what we want, we won't get what we want at all.

Just be mature, calm and constructive, that's all I ask. Being accusatory and hyperbolic does not help.

I don't mind the trials. Sure, they're repetitive, but what content isn't to some degree? Grinding the same one over and over, back to back, has a certain draw to many players, but it's not for me. I do them now and then, and try to get with a league planning to do several in sequence, even the ones I don't like, because it switches the experience up a bit. Some of the mechanics in the trials (okay, maybe a lot) are, IMO, kind of cheesy hacks, but again, they're tolerable, even if they don't fill me with glee.

What I hope the solo path is, is that it isn't necessarily solo -- it should support anything from solo to teams of eight without too much trouble. I hope that if there are specific solo-only missions that they're primarily character developmental, in a similar fashion to the solo-only faction missions in Praetoria.

I also hope that the difficulty scales with the character's incarnate progress; even if the difficulty on the whole is a notch up above standard even conning +0/x1 missions, say, in Peregrine Radios or Grandville Papers. If they're too hard, then the barrier to non-optimized builds will be kind of steep. Still, some will have some trouble due to generally not being well suited to soloing, then at least, like doing the Trapdoor mission, one should be able to get some help.

I think the level of rewards shouldn't be too far behind the trials; in fact, I think the rewards should be equal for every hour of active play, regardless of size of team or league. I suppose that's not going to happen, but at least be reasonable in this discriminant treatment. There's a certain crowd who feel the massive league/teaming system is preferred for these games just because, but that's simply not a law of nature, it's just a design choice that suits some players. The rest shouldn't be treated as tools because those players need more people on their league. If that's really what it's about, let's have a special button to fill the league up to the trial minimum from a pool of 50+1 NPCs.

His experience has obviously been very different from, Arcanaville's or Snow Globe's.

In any case, he is welcome to his perception: it doesn't address the point of this thread, IMHO.

Well, my beard is gone as of today. I'm not sure what that says about the solo Incarnate content, but I went to get my hair cut and the ladies at the shop were mocking my unruly goatee, so I had to get rid of it. Entirely, so as to save on the fuss. It'll be back, but I guess... You win?

Moreover, what I saw in the Coffee Talk recap and what I've been hearing in general has me optimistic for the first time in a long while. It'll come down to speed of progress, obviously, but I'm starting to hope that it might not actually be that bad. By all accounts, this is a legit source of solo progress, and that counts for a lot.

Who knows? I might actually play my 50s again. Sam's been sitting on his hands for six years now, with pretty much nothing new to do since back in I1, I had to more or less run all my missions just to get to 50.

Quote:

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 expect any solo Incarnate content to be:
- Grindy
- Frustrating
- Highly repetitive
- Very time consuming to make any noticeable progress

If it doesn't live up to these standards, it can't be considered true end game content!

(But I would be very happy if the solo Incarnate content somehow turned out to be enjoyable.)

Hey, if it didn't live up to those standards, it wouldn't be CoH content.