What are you expecting for a solo Incarnate path?

There are a lot of things about the iTrials and incarnate system in general I think are flawed. The degree to which they are "grindy" is part of that. I have to wonder if the whole system wouldn't have been better received if we had gotten at least four trials plus a zone like DA up front.

But you seem to think that grinding for progress as its own sake is something new around here. It's not. While end-game raiding has not been a core of this game, grinding for loot has been a large subtext for a long time. Ever since Issue 9, and inventions. And frankly, a lot of people do enjoy that. I am quite certain that, without that long-term goal to chase, I would have wandered off a long time ago - not to some other MMO, but to spending more time on "real-life" hobbies and entertainment. Not all my friends and acquaintances in game share that with me, but most of them do pursue IOs, and most of them do consider it a mini game that provides its own end, not purely a means to other ends.

Chasing IOs isn't something you do for anything but its own sake. No character needs the benefits of IOs, but for a lot of us, they sure are fun. What do you do with the benefits? For me, its to keep chasing more IOs, of course.

I think the devs are not blindly chasing the orc and elf paradigm. I suspect they are, to some degree, making a logical (if extreme) extension of things they have found a significant chunk of their players did enjoy. Whether or how the iTrials achieve that is a topic with a lot of room for discussion, complaint and even some praise, but I really don't think it's something they bolted on completely out of the blue.

Lots of grinding.

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

Warning: Wall of Text. TLDR: Don't totally sacrifice the game's existing open-to-everyone feel to create end-game challenge, or its existing playerbase may avoid the end-game.

I personally think that's not such a smart thing to overdo in this game seven years down the road. As other posters have mentioned, this game has a charm of its own, and to my perceptions, one of the most oft-repeated features about this game that made it a haven for people who didn't play other MMOs was the avoidance of the so-called "holy trinity" of character classes. While it may not have been intentional, a team made of all DPS or all "support" or even all meat shields will all do fine at the vast majority of content.

This feeds into what I think is one of the most subtle and unique aspects of CoH - the investment we make in our characters. I don't (just) mean investment in time, money (real or virtual) or other "currencies" - I mean the degree to which we personally become attached to or "invested in" our characters. The vast number of unique combinations available via the game's costume editor and the free-form "background" text box are part of this, as are thing like power choices, slotting and even choice of IO builds, where appropriate. We have the ability to make our characters uniquely our own in a way almost no other MMOs allow, and that allows those of us prone to such things to become very attached to our characters as something we "created".

But how the game actually plays also serves to empower our attachment. It's likely that not all builds are equally prone to this, but the game's relaxed approach to meta-gaming of teams and so forth allows us to take our latest "creation" and go do lots of different things with them, pretty much no matter what it is they actually contribute to a team. If we happen to favor or enjoy a particular character and want to take them on some content, that's probably fine, because they aren't likely at all to be the "one to many" of whatever they happen to be.

All content does not need to be like this for the game to overwhelmingly support it overall. Some content can be such that a bit more care is required in team makeup without losing this nature. Still, the nature of introducing the "end game" creates two challenges I can think of for the devs with respect to preserving this "open" nature of most prior content.

The first challenge is that, almost by definition, harder content is going to constrain this nature of the game. If something is harder, it often takes more planning and care by the players. Planning and care is pretty much the opposite of "take whoever comes". Designing something that requires some attention to team composition without falling completely into the holy trinity approach takes some care.

The second challenge is that, by nature, the iTrials/endgame system are clumped together both in time-of-delivery and in overall concept. If you're taking your characters through end-game progress, it's likely the main thing that character is going to see is a string of end-game content. If this content is all more prone to make people care about what's on their team/league, that then makes the entire ongoing experience perhaps feel more exclusive overall, even though other, more inclusive content still exists.

Combining these two things and you can feel like the focus of the game is shifting away from something that I think ties closely with its open, "play what you like" nature. Taking a character through the end-game can potentially make you feel like you can't just bring whatever you currently happen to enjoy playing, because the challenges in the trial-du-jour might be a poor fit for what your character does. That can be hard to swallow after 50 levels of being fine bringing that character to whatever most of the time.

Now, personally, I don't think the iTrials completely throw the baby out with the bathwater on this. As Arcanaville I believe mentioned up-thread, the design expectation of the leagues is that, given 12-24 people, a league probably gets "enough" of the things that it really does need in a core of something like 6-8 of the people, and the other 6-12 of them can pretty much be anything, at least most of the time. The other thing they helps, in my opinion at least, is the AT-agnostic nature of the Incarnate powers themselves. While people have pointed out (not just in this thread) that this has the effect of homogenizing characters, it also helps make sure that they can, at least potentially, give the league some basic things it might need in the form of buffs, healing, damage, etc. even when the league's AT/powerset composition may not suggest it would be strong in these areas.

So, following this winding road back to the part of your post I quoted, I do not want to see a greater shift towards a need for "strategic" composition of teams or leagues. I believe that could undercut one of these game's greatest niche attractions - that you can play whatever you want most of the time. I'm OK with the iTrials being harder, and therefore almost certainly requiring some attention to league composition. But I believe the devs have a fine line to walk if they want to avoid the "end game" and the rest of the game having two radically divergent philosophies about being able to bring your favorite characters on "anything". I believe that, as much as possible, the end game should try to preserve the things that kept so many people involved in it for so long to date. Doing so will help make the end-game environment richer in players and more healthy as a result.

But with every single Incarnate power open to all the ATs, that just means you can target unlocking the powers you think would work best.
If there's an AT that you like that doesn't seem to perform so well on a Trial that you run a lot, just target power unlocks to suit that Trial.

I've seen plenty of people talking about various "useless" non-Incanrate powers that "no one" ever takes, even though they must fit with plenty of themes - so building for effectiveness ahead of theme isn't really something that's only started with the Incarnate system.

You seem to have ignored the word "if" in that post you responded to. It is an important word and should never be ignored. Looking at what you are saying, it seems the person you actually disagree with is Kitsune9tails.

Nor did I claim it was. What I claimed was that I believe that it's important that the devs continue to support that in ways similar to (but not necessarily exactly like) they have done to date. The need for Clarion in the UGT is an example of them not being terribly supportive of it, as was the need for Rebirth in Keyes, until they significantly reduced the damage pulses. (Rebirth is still very useful in the AV fight, since it helps prevent AM from being healed, but I think the "need" to equip it is less compelling.)

This.

I doubt it. There is a benefit to having a few alternate Destiny's but that's about it. Alpha is very build specific and few builds benefit from having multiple Alphas (there are a handful of support builds that might benefit from having a Musculature for solo and something else for teams but that's about it). Judgement and Lore are both basically damage powers and in general there isn't enough need for variation to make it useful having multiple versions (there is some value to having Seers for doing MoLambda but it's not a huge bonus). In theory Interface benefits from switching to avoid stacking limits but in practice the debuffs aren't powerful enough to make it worth it so everyone just takes the DoT of their choice and runs with it.

Destiny is the one slot that benefits from having multiple abilities but even there it's not critical. The thing to keep in mind is that most situations where you want a specific Destiny a T3 destiny will be fine and T3 powers are easy to make. I wouldn't be aiming for having all T4 Destiny's but I can definitely see making a few extra T3s (especially Clarion for UGT and Incandescence for a few special cases).

My Blaster made a common Incandescence for Mission TP purposes in Sara Moore and Faathim the Kind, to go with his T4Radial Clarion and Rebirth (he's going to work on Barrier as well).

Originally Posted by Shubbie Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.

And heck if you're just using it for travel purposes T1 works just fine.

No, I'd just do the BAF once every day until I had what abilities I wanted, and do the rest once or twice for the badges.

Eco

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."

I actually find myself enjoying Lambda a bit more - mostly because I'm playing characters who are better at surviving on their own now.

Originally Posted by Shubbie Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.

Personally that would drive me crazy, I find BAF the least interesting of the trials but to each their own.

It definitely would have.

Not nearly to this extent. The people running quick Katies or speed ITFs do it because they choose to. Nothing is gated behind these activities.

And again, not nearly to this extent. Loot drops from everything. You can run all the content to get your loot. You can go weeks before you have to repeat anything. Or you can just play the market and pay someone else to do the grinding for you. I made my first 2 billion playing AE arcs and selling bronze rolls. I didn't have to repeat a single scrap of content.

Yeah, but you don't have to think. BAF is something that goes on in the background while you watch Mythbusters.

Is that different from now?

Except the trials are the only way to get certain rewards which means people are doing them again and again and again AND it seems like that is the Devs intent. Which is the key difference I think.

For a mission BAF is actually quite good I think, in that it has a range of tasks suited to different ATs. Nice work Devs! But I've done it about 6-10 times and I am sick to death of it. Some of you in this thread have done it a whole magnitude of times more. I couldn't face that to be honest.

ps: spent 45 minutes in Pocket D tonight, looking for UG or Keyes, then gave up. On the plus side I helped some people in the Help channel while I waited.

Thats the theory I was working on. As soon as I realised you could "unslot" without losing anything I decided to get one of everything. I don't have that yet, but run one trial and you have enough junk to build a t1 alpha.

People keep repeating this and I think if you look at the emerging pattern it is clearly not the case.

In a couple of months a new level 50 will have at least 6 trials to play plus a whole zone of arcs, critters, and repeatable content. With that much stuff to do the amount of repetition will drop precipitously. And they will keep adding more.

Look at the big picture, not just what things have been like since the introduction of Incarnates.

Seven

what'd I miss?

I think the devs have realized, as many posters have said, that content is going to be farmed no matter what they do. It only makes sense for them to design content that is intended to be farmed.

It frees up resources (including time) for the story content to be worked on in detail.

The only problem is players choosing to burn themselves out with the grind before more content can be added, but the AE is the only potential solution to outracing player desire for content that I have seen.

The AE and potentially, PvP.