What are you expecting for a solo Incarnate path?

current list...

BAF, Lambda, Keyes, UG, TPN, MoM and Dilemma Diabolique

Oh, my, is that a radical oversimplification.

Nothing was gated behind them, sure, but they were pretty much the fastest way to getting rewards as fast as possible. As far as the bulk of players seem to be concerned, at least as far as what they do (as opposed to what they say), that's little different than making it the only way to attain those rewards. The biggest difference is that the people who don't follow the crowd are the ones with the choice to do something else. The people who actually ran tons of quick Katies cancel right out.

Yes. I run one of everything daily on as many characters as I reasonably can, (usually 1-2) plus some stuff more if people keep running them (or I get the gumption to form them myself).

Plus, they've confirmed that we'll confront Tyrant, so that's at least 8 Trials that are live, in beta or known to be coming - and as DD doesn't seem to be directly connected to the Praetorian war storyline, I think that there might be at least one more in between MoM and the Tyrant Trial, especially as there have been quite a few in game hints about us having to face the Praetorian Hamidon to prove our superiority over Tyrant to the people of Praetoria.

I wonder because I think it might be something the Devs might want to try to reduce the 'grindiness' of grindy content. The numbers might need to be tweaked, but the idea is that running each trial in succession should be more or as rewarding as rerunning the fastest trial over and over.

The other solution to grindiness I see would be to use more random elements in trial design (like MoM's random foes in one part), but that of course makes things a bit more difficult to balance.

You are approaching the issue from the perspective of a speed-TF farmer. Of course to you and your crowd it's "the only way." To the people I frequently run with, it's not.

Nor is it the most efficient path to rewards. Playing the market is.

Heh. My answer to that is a hearty "whatever". Who cares if it's not most efficient if the alternative gets you much more than what you need to get what you want? I have literally 10s of billions of liquid inf, characters outfitted with rares, purples and PvPIOs, and I don't "play" the market. I get what I get, sell it and buy what I want, or (these days) earn merits, buy stuff that I can sell for maximal income to buy cheaper stuff.

Unless you mean "use" when you say "play", that's a non-response.

Edit: More to the point, you post suggests that "speed farmers" were some outlier in the community, this group of people not acting like most everyone else. I hate to tell you, but that's a far cry from the truth. So many people were "speed TF farmers" when Katie was the rage that folks were here on the forums complaining about it, and it showed up strongly enough in the data mining that the devs changed the game, introducing merits to try and normalize reward rates.

In case you haven't noticed, the bulk of people follow the path of least resistance. I can say with great certainty that most of this game's players do not consider "playing" the Auction House a path of least resistance for themselves. I think enough people use the market for it to be useful, but not many at all master it. But the point really was that if there is a significantly easier path to something, a large chunk if not a majority of players will treat it as the way forward, even if other paths exist. Case in point: people grinding the heck out of BAF when Keyes and the UGT existed. Keyes was made much easier, but the UGT was not, and it's now run several times a night on Justice. What changed? The reward.

I would really really like to see exactly what percentage of the population really actually farmed Katie, and later the ITF. I'm betting it really wasn't as high as it seemed, and it certainly wasn't "almost everyone." It was more likely the same people farming it over and over, which of course made the farming so visible. I'm not talking about the people who joined a speed Katie here and there, I'm talking about those people who ran Katie multiple times a day.

The point is, we do have players who get bored doing the same thing over and over again, no matter how good the reward is, to the point that they'll take a less efficient path to the reward if it means they get to do something different.

Well yeah, if you're forced to grind anyway, you might as well grind the activity that gives rewards the fastest, thereby minimizing the total amount of grinding you will have to do.

OK, sure. Back when speed Katies were going on, I'll concede that IOs were new, and they hadn't caught on to even whatever extent they have now (which I suspect still isn't with a majority of players). What matters isn't how much of the total playerbase ran quick Katies, but what percentage of those who were interested in IOs did. In the context of Incarnates, people who don't care about the incarnate powers, or even playing 50s clearly don't really factor into the question of who is going to farm iTrials, whether there are alternatives or not.

The simple point I'm making, and which I find your responses to inexplicable, is that grinding for whatever goals people have is nothing new, and became far more explicit with the advent of IOs. Before IOs, we all "ground" for the same reward, pretty much: XP. But IOs opened up a new category of grindy behavior - people who ran repeatable content (TFs and SFs) solely because they offered a new reward. Calls for TF formation in global channels before I9 was infinitesimal compared to calls for them after I9. Why do you think that changed?

Of course people who didn't care about IOs didn't grind for them, and neither will people who don't care about Incarnate powers grind for those. But Inventions showed the devs that part of their player base was willing to grind content for years to earn ongoing rewards. I'm not being cynical here, but are you really going to try and tell me folks who mostly play 50s and run several TFs a night aren't "grinding" content, just because it's varied? Trust me, I agree in a heartbeat that having variety makes it feel less "grindy" (and want more iTrials for that very reason), but it's still grinding at its core. Who do you think is supplying all that stuff that makes the market such an efficient way to obtain stuff? Why do you suppose the overwhelming majority of supply is at level 50, or other max levels?

Why are you raising this? I never once have claimed that what I'm talking about covers every player. But when it comes to people who want a given thing, there are always a chunk of hard-core people who make repetition mainstream. The rest is just the result of networking. Don't fall into the trap of a notion that most people hold the extreme views we see represented on the forums - most are far more laid back. Everything I have ever seen tells me most people do what is most convenient to earn progress, and what's usually convenient is to hook up with whatever "everyone else is doing".

You want a better example? Damn near everyone wants XP. Where did you find vast swaths of players in I14? In the font of infinite XP called the AE, all running one of a tiny handful of missions that only changed when the devs stamped each exploit out (sometimes taking weeks). Was everyone in the AE? Of course not. But the behavior was so pervasive we created a name for people who knew nothing else: "AE babies". People were complaining on the forums about not being able to find non-AE teams. And you really don't believe that lots of people will grind repetitive content till their eyes bleed for reward, even if it's just because it's what everyone else is doing?

Is the whole essence of the game grinding, then? If not, what was what happened with the AE all about?

Just because some people are fine with endless grinding doesn't mean everyone is. Just because some people will follow the herd doesn't mean everyone wants to, if the herd is doing stuff they don't find fun. I don't know what it is that keeps you from understanding these concepts. Your playstyle isn't the default. It's just the one that screams the loudest.

Unfortunately it is the case Today. It will also be the case tomorrow.

The way I normally deal with content is to never repeat it with the same character. Thats not possible if I want to progress through the Incarnate powers and tiers.

And when are the other Incarnate slots coming?

Anyway, I am trying not to be negative because I am looking forward to Incarnate Astoria

Rough estimate? 2 every couple issues, so average 1 per issue.

I am not arguing the above points. I never claimed what you are arguing against.

Let me be clear. I don't claim that "my playstyle", as you call it* is somehow superior or "right". What I claimed, very specifically, is that it has existed all along. Our devs seem to be heavily data driven. I don't think I always agree with the conclusions they draw from their data, but they seem to look for trends in what the players do. I can't prove anything, but I think the "follow the easy path" herd mentality combined with that dev data mining suggest that grinding looked to the devs like something players do in CoH to a sufficient extent that they figured getting us to grind iTrials would work out.

I am not claiming therefore that it's going to make everyone happy. All I started with was the claim that this probably wasn't some completely radical idea on the part of the devs - past data on pre-existing player behaviors probably helped shape it.

* You seem to be making the leap that, because I know how to describe then, I subscribe to all these behaviors. I do not. I have never PL'ed any character in the AE (mine or anyone else's), for example. I am willing to grind for rewards in general, but long disliked having only Lambda and BAF to grind for Incarnate stuff, both because it was intensely repetitive and because I like to solo at least some of the time.

I'm not saying it hasn't existed. I'm just saying that not a large enough portion of the playerbase gladly participates in it to make it the basis of the whole endgame. Those players who do participate, do so heavily enough to give the impression that this is all anyone does.

I don't see how you can know that. Perhaps more importantly, how do we know who the endgame was aimed at? Maybe they targeted it specifically at people who play mostly at 50 running repeated content. Note that I am not going to claim that's the best strategy, but you have to admit, nearly any endgame was going to have limited appeal to some seemingly significant parts of our playerbase, such as those who regularly roll new alts.

I find it hard (though not impossible) to believe that the devs are that naive in their data mining. I give them the benefit of the doubt on looking at number of unique characters or accounts which do something repeatedly/consistently, as opposed raw totals of times something is done. Doing otherwise would be like counting total web hits versus unique visitors. I find it hard to believe that they would either make something only a tiny part of the player base was showing behavioral support for, or make such a grievous error in identifying patterns indicating such support existed.

I have zero proof, but I feel that what I have seen people doing in the game over the years lends credence to the idea that the statistical support probably existed. I am basing that off of more than just what my friends do. I live in a number of global channels, and of course read the forums. It's light years from perfect analysis of trends, but I at least think it doesn't clearly contradict my interpretations.

Yea, this is gonna be great.

No more waiting in Pocket D for 45 minutes with nothing to do while the league assembles.

ALL LEVEL BOOSTS FUNCTIONAL?! REALLY?! AWESOME!!



And you can actually SEE in the zone too??

Remember, I'm one of the players whois only really doing the trials for the badges and to get incarnated. The BAF is the fastest and simplest.

I haven't done a trial since I got my Incarnate toon (I only have one, and I'm happy with that) to where I'm happy with his build.

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."

Well, 5x rewards every 20 hours would be, yes, wouldn't it?

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."

Logically, the end game was aimed at players that wanted something substantively more and different than anything the standard game offered at that time. Because if it was aimed at anyone else, it would *be* more standard content.

*In what ways* it should be different from standard content is a matter of debate, but that it actually *is* different is not. That is the only reason it exists at all.


Edit: and logically, one should assume that the solo incarnate path, whatever it is, will likely retain that attribute of being substantively different from standard content in non-trivial ways.

AV teleport ambushes so you can't even see them coming?

I think there's lots of room for interesting (and theoretical) discussion about ways the devs can do that while retaining some of the things that (I think it can be argued) are unique attractions of CoH.

Now, I do think that any end-game is just plain incompatible with certain things that long held true here, such as the frequent alting. I don't think that's a bad thing or an error on the part of the devs, but rather just a simple observation that any progress "beyond" 50 is going to compete with time spend making new alts. But I think that sort of problem is a bit separate from asking what an end-game should "feel like" given that you've decided to add one.

And I'm very interested to see how this "feels". Creating new challenges for small teams or even solo players that is substantively different from prior content doesn't sound like a slam dunk to me. I am cautiously eager.

I think it will be a significant challenge actually for the devs.

Trapdoor and the honoree mission was the first foray into something that was a little bit more challenging than standard COH.

The reviews on that were very mixed.

Now with at least part of the solo and small teams audience having +3 abilities . . . it's going to be interesting how this is balanced.