What are you expecting for a solo Incarnate path?

I would hope there is more than four hours' worth of content, to be honest. I'm really not interested in over-complex Incarnate content, but more just a large volume of it. A few story arcs on the calibre of World Wide Red (last I checked, that's around 14 missions) would be just fine. World Wide Red itself tend to take me two or three days to complete, so around 8-10 hours, with clearing every mission included. And that's just Crimson's arc. He also has seven "mini-arcs," each with around three instances, so around 21 missions on top of his 14 for World Wide Red. That's the LEAST I'd expect from solo Incarnate content, and that corresponds to just one existing character.

Again - I'm not expecting poetry and theatre mission after mission, and I have no problem being told to go into a huge instance and kill everything I can target. I'm perfectly fine with missions that have large maps and simple objectives. I rather enjoy "Defeat boss and crew" or "click 21 glowies" and indeed even love the "Save 21 mystics from Oranbega." Missions don't need to be complex or expensive, they just need to be numerous. Simple, straight-forward, laconic missions are much easier to replay when it comes to that.

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.

For me that all depends on the last mystic

Generally speaking the only missions I auto complete are "Talk to <insert zone> security office."

This. So much this.

I don't think you necessarily need to have any defeat alls, and you certainly don't need a million glowies, but for content that is used to earn iXP and threads, you certainly need to include the option to defeat lots and lots of enemies.

Again, this. Before they start adding talk-to missions and walls of text and conversations, they need to ask themselves: Is anyone going to care about this crap on their second play-through? The answer will inevitably be no. Then they need to ask themselves: Is anyone going to be annoyed by having to click through all this crap on their tenth play-through? The answer is yes.

And no to bosses that turn friendly and start talking to you once you beat them down to 1/4 health, so you get no reward for defeating them. An even bigger no to bosses that heal up to full health at every dialogue option so you can listen to them yak some more.

You want to give us a history lesson? Add a guy like Prometheus in a prominent location. Have the first contact mention him, but NOT send us on a fed-ex to talk to him. Players who want the backstory can choose to go talk to him on their own time, players who don't care or who have already read everything don't have to run halfway across the map just to impatiently click past ten pages of dialogue.

I like the idea of 'included options'.

Various npcs or objects ranging from right out in front to 'explore to find this guy', with lore, dialogue trees that change their 'attitude', maybe even variable minor rewards. Nothing that is forced on other players, but there for people who like the soloist playstyle to stroll around, find, and play with differently with different alts.

This can also include such things as 'gimmick fights' that are not necessary parts of the main storyline.

Those were just examples, really. What I meant to say is that there's nothing wrong with having a simple if big mission that has only a single objective. We don't need cutscenes in every mission, we don't need dialogues in every mission, we don't need gimmicks in every mission. In a lot of ways, I'm perfectly fine with the game telling me to go somewhere and do something and simply providing me with a reason to do so. That's more than enough. I don't need scripted events and complex mechanics. Tell me what I need to do, tell me where I need to go to do it and tell me why I'm doing it. That's enough.

I've always been of the opinion that story is best delivered through context rather than shoved into your face. What I mean by this is we can have side characters who provide exposition or background if we choose to explore that option, we can have extra, non-critical clues that hold extra information and, more than anything else, the narrative itself doesn't have to explain everything to the last detail. It can suggest, infer and allude, and that will be just enough.

Recently, I watched Aliens, and I recall a bit of "cheeky exposition" that really impressed me. We open a scene with Bishop giving a more or less three sentence explanation about Xenomorph biology, which he has been working on for the better part of the movie thus far. Rippley lets him finish, then confronts him with: "That's great, Bishop, but it doesn't help us get out of here." Yes, Bishop's exposition was pointless from the standpoint of the characters, but it made sense. He's an android fascinated with Xenomorph biology, it's natural that he'd feel it's important to talk about, plus the audience needed to know that, but the movie didn't have to devise a scene where this had to be the subject of conversation. A throwaway line is enough to explain it, and it fits with the theme just fine.

A lot of the narrative in City of Heroes can be pulled off the main briefings and out of the lengthy conversation and put away in clues, NPC comments, side characters and basic allusions. If the game's writers accepted that this game will never really be "cinematic" and worked with its design, the stories would flow much more smoothly.

Also:

City of Heroes is a game which promotes replayability. As such, you HAVE to expect that your players will run your content more than just once or twice. They will run it five times, ten times, fifteen times and more. You cannot afford to create content that's GRRRATE! for a first time playthrough, but then becomes unbearable to replay because of how it's assembled. Dialogue trees are fun once but a chore thereafter, an as such need to be kept to a minimum and only ever used when there's an actual decision to make. Conversing with people inside missions takes a lot of time and is very fiddly, and as such needs to be used sparingly. Scripted events, empty missions, runaround deliveries and "plot twists" lose their lustre once you know they're coming, and they too need to be handled with care.

Don't work for first impressions, at least not past level 10. Work for third impressions, instead. In fact, once upon a time, it was said that the game was deliberately made such that you could never experience it all on a single character. So why not weave stories such that we can't appreciate them fully in one playthrough. Mysteries that you can only really get after a few playthroughs, hidden connections, obscure references, interconnectedness between stories, that sort of thing. Don't blow your load on first impressions, because it's replayability substance that rules most of the time anyway.

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 completely agree with you on this, you just happened to pick examples that, to many players, are just as bad or worse than all the new gimmick-overloaded missions.
It would be nice, wouldn't it? However, the current trend seems to be toward walls of text that explain everything down to the last detail, from three different viewpoints. If they won't let go of their beloved walls of text, they should at least shove them out of the way somewhere where we can read them once and then never have to click past them again.
They would need to significantly cut the noise to do that. Again, I think the writing team loves its walls of text and "cute" characterization too much. This is why I think they should be forced to mock-up all missions using the AE before they're even allowed to think about dialogue trees and fancy gimmicks. AE severely limits your text space. There's not much room for noise in there.

Heh, I've still been able to put walls of text in my Architect arcs

More to the point, though, this game can't be treated like a movie. You can't explain too much, you can't show too much, you can't explore characters too much. That's not because I don't want it, the genre simply isn't right for it. When you DO try to do too much over text and a limited interaction engine, you end up boring your audience as that sort of characterisation and exposition just takes up so much space.

A movie can tell a lot with very simple visuals. A character can appear sad just by how his or her actor behaves, but over text, you have to spend paragraphs describing very simple things, like the way he sighed or the way she looked around. A novel can afford to do this. A game can't. For the most part, it's smartest to just avoid exposition wherever possible and rely on first hand accounts, then cut those first hand accounts down to conversation length pieces.

A random example would be how to introduce the existence of a mind control device of some sort. You can either have someone pause the game and dump exposition on you, Matrix Revolutions style, or you can have two NPCs in the mission talk to each other. One goes "Can we really control peoples minds? I mean, really?" and the other responds "Well, they said they tested it and it works, so I guess so." If you need to ensure that the player has seen this, include a two-sentence clue to that particular spawn which says "You heard two soldiers talk about a mind control device. They seemed to believe it actually works." It's not ideal, of course, but it's a way to put the information in there without having to extend your contact's briefing or introducing dialogue trees.

Long-winded, elaborate, intricate exposition and character exploration is still a good idea, but done as separate, non-central art pieces. Akharist's writings on the Oranbegan war are a great example. Every other mission in the Envoy of Shadows arc, you get an Akharist excerpt written in his pretentious style. It tells of the story of the ancient Oranbegans, but that's all flavour text and backstory. If you simply didn't read it, you'd still be able to follow the central plot without much problem. You'd miss out on some great writing and not be as immersed into the living world, but that's up to the player to decide. And if you've already read those texts and know what they say, you don't have to waste time re-reading them.

The game's main storyline doesn't need to be that complex. Any complexities necessary need to be moved to external, non-mandatory sources. That way, completionists and story junkies will go out of their way to seek them out on their first playthrough and those who just want to kill stuff or have run the content a dozen times already can move on without much trouble.

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.

Well said.

Actually, the Envoy of Shadows arc seems to suffer from the problem of being being written by a different person than the Library of Souls arc. Akarist's writings in that arc are more simplistic and concise than in the Library of Souls arc. They are basically an info dump.

The notes in the Library of Souls arc on the other hand, are a great example of a way to establish a character while providing plot-relevant information. That is what I'm talking about when I say that the signal:noise ratio is skewed. If the writer has a good sense of the character, I don't need to listen to their life story to get a sense of them. I don't need to eavesdrop on their lunch-table talk to get a sense of their relationship. It can all be done while furthering the plot.

And Sam, I really don't think you'd be able to get anywhere near the ratio of talk:fight that you see in the first First Ward arc in AE, not without resorting to some convoluted mechanical tricks and without having nearly everyone who plays your arc giving you a comment to the effect of "tl;dr." I know I've been accused of being overly wordy (justified, I'm just procrastinating on the edits) even though I don't think I approach nearly the level of yakking seen in the newer dev-created content.

What I meant is that if you don't like Akharist's infodumps, you don't have to read them and your understanding of the plot on a factual level won't suffer. The Envoy of Shadows wants to bring about the end of the world, the Circle of Thorns want to help him, but one sole traitor is helping you stop it. The "why" of it and the "behind the scenes" stuff is put away in Akharist's writings (which I rather like), meaning you can have your walls of text and infodump AND still keep the core story concise for those who don't want or already know the side details.

Mine are still pretty talky. If you ever want a sample, give "The PDA That Knew" or "The Greater Evil" a shot and let me know. I ran against the text field limits a lot there and had to improvise to fit in more exposition in unorthodox ways

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.

The progress you make in four hours of I-Trials greatly depends on which trials you do. Assuming you're talking about a newly Alpha Unlocked player, 4 hours of work would approx. get you:

Enough ixp to unlock all slots (Assuming you did a mix of trials or Keyes/UGT);
15-30 threads;
10-20 Astral Merits;
1-6 Empyrean Merits;
4-6 components of random tiers (guaranteed rare if you did an UGT).

I personally expect that a solo path would give a strong soloer:

Enough ixp to unlock Judgment and/or Interface;
5-8 Astral Merits;
1 Empyrean Merit.
1-2 components of random tiers.

And my point is that the clues in the Envoy arc are only infodumps, while the clues in the Library of Souls arc serve as both infodumps and to establish the character of Akarist. Two birds, one stone, half the text. This is what they should aim for. Try to get as much information across in as little text as possible, not have three different contacts give you their perspective on the same thing because whoever wrote the arc thinks they're all "interesting characters" that we should get to know.

Uh, this is old school where you just have to beat their captors, NOT lead them out, right?

Right?

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

Yes, the old hostages. I HAAAAAAAAATE escorting hostages out of maps. It's pointless, aimless busywork that forces my Stalkers to turn off their Hide and just wastes my time and patience. If I'm going to escort someone, then have that someone pitch in. And don't fail my mission of he dies after you spawn three ambushes on top of me at the same time (thank you, Sister Airlia; I'm sure Ghost Widow's just fine).

Since the beginning of time, the team's attempts to make mission structure "more interesting" have done little more than piss me off to no end. Protection objectives, escaping bosses, simu-click missions and worse. As far as I'm concerned, the simpler the gameplay is, the more fun I can have with it.

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.

Both quoted for emphasis. Good writing is always a plus, but if push comes to shove, I'd rather keep the story aspect confined to the Contact's briefing/debriefing text, and for the game to keep me doing something. I will take 3 simple story arcs over 1 cut-scene filled, new-fangled complicated story arc any day of the week.

That was you? Sorry about that, but you should have fired from longer range.

Cut-scenes and in-mission conversations between NPCs are even worse than wordy contacts, because you have to sit through them every single time. Furthermore, they reduce they player to the status of a spectator. Sometimes they hijack your character while they're at it.

Hardly. It was either I3 or I4 that introduced many of the more maligned types of missions like hostage escort, object defence, running bosses and simu-clicks. I took one look at the list and my reaction was "No! No! Take it back!" Having played them, my reaction was to blow my top and post many angry things. Some time later, I tried to stop Agent Crimson from escaping and I don't think I ever wanted to see an "interesting" mission ever again.

I was never silent about my desire for a simpler game that's easier to play in a zone. I recall as far back as I1 or I2 saying these exact words multiple times: "All I want out of this game is more 5th Column to kill." this statement holds true to this day, though I'll appreciate any non-gimmick enemy ground in the place of the 5th Column, who actually got replaced shortly after I started saying this.

As far as I'm concerned, the simpler a mission or arc is, the better it will be in the long run. There's nothing I hate more than to sit through conversations when I already know how they will end. Sure, from time to time, those are interesting to have, but that's one or two per story arc, not one or two per mission.

Gimmick missions and gimmicks in general have always bothered me. Since my very first time going through the Rikti War Zone, I've resented having NPC "helpers" because they're idiots and damn near impossible to control. And it seems like all but one or two missions in all five story arcs in that zone have at least one person tagging along with you. A lot of the old "revamped" content from when the horrible new mission types came out seems to have concentrated in the upper 20s and lower 30s, so there's a very large amount of "special" missions in there that just grate on my nerves. I honestly want to punch whoever thought giving me a 90-minute timed mission with four objectives to click simultaneously was anything but a horrible idea.

And with Going Rogue and Praetoria, it's worse than ever. Missions that ask me to spend no more than two missions inside an instance and fight nothing, missions that consist of nothing but conversations inside an empty instance, missions that start, have me walk five feet in, throw eleventy billion missions at me then end within spitting distance of the front door... And now it's even worse with the Ongoing Tutorial Missions which are over half padding. I'm sick and tired of speaking with people inside my missions and I haven't had to do that in over a month. It's that bad.

Any kind of mission is doable on a first playthrough when I don't know what it's about. But am I seriously expected to jump through the same hoops time after time after time, to watch the same cutscene that contradicted itself the first time (Frostfire addresses the player in his cutscene, then proceeds to be surprised when he meets the player in the game) and read the same volumes of text when I already know what they say? Because that's just busywork. It was fun once, but I've already done it. Just let me get back to the game.

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 know I wasn't silent. Remember when someone asked "how do you make an airborne mission for people that don't have flight" and I suggested a mission where you board an aircraft and stand on the wings to shoot down villains trying to bring it down? I had some pretty wacky ideas back then.

Yeah, that's about my expectation. Though you forgot threads, which I'd guess would be in the 5-10 range or so. Depends how generous they feel like being, we know the 'repeatable' missions will offer thread drops.

These can be done at the same time. See again, Library of Souls. The writers just aren't bothering to do it.

Nobody is going to take the time to make a cutscene that nobody is going to watch. Until they're fully skippable at the press of a button (I still sit through Anti-Matter's monologue and Mommy's boob job showcase more often than not) figure out how to tell the story without one.

We do that all the time. It used to be that the people we rescued were smart enough to make their own way out. Now half of them are dumb and make you turn your stealth off, or want to "help out" and get killed and fail the mission.

Doesn't scale well to team sizes or high difficulty settings. We had a defend objective mission in Terra Volta. People complained that it was too hard. They made it easier. People complained that it's boring. We have two in Croatoa. People complain that the Stop 30 Firbolg mission is too hard. I'm not sure if anyone complains about the "Defend the Henges" mission.

Whoever decided to make an AV with Quickness one of those fleeing villains should never be allowed to write a mission again. I'm not sure if it's the mechanic itself that gets all the hate or the fact that in most cases it was used badly. I don't remember nearly the hate for the fleeing enemies before i7, which is when we got Crimson and that Arachnoid EB, and then that lovely bug where the mission would automatically fail if you used a Knockback power. I managed to fail one by using Havoc punch on a Brute, still not sure how that happened.

Defend the Henges isn't too bad, in fact it's completely solo-able but it's just *long*, i think it's 5 minutes? could be shaved down a minute or two.

The Stop 30 Firbolg mission is just a godsdamn pain, I attempted it with a friend and... it just takes too long and it's too easy to fail because there are just. so. many. You either need to do it with a team or ATs with power sets that do a lot of AoE, or a tanker, to get them to aggro on you. A couple ST heavy ATs cannot do it reasonably. :P It's probably one of the few missions that should it come up I will simply hit auto-complete. Doing it once was more than enough.

Defend the Henges is 15 minutes. The only reason its not bad is the enemies come in evenly spaced waves and always enter the fenced in area at the same point - so setting up to ambush them is fairly easy. Its just long and boring.

The stop 30 firbolg is easy enough if you run it solo at base settings and instead of waiting for the firbolg to come running to the exit, you just start killing them all in a circle radiating out from the portal in the far corner. Some will escape but if you can kill them fast enough you will generally clear the map before you fail (thats why you don't want to run it at anything higher than +0/x1 - the more mobs on the map, the longer it will take you to clear). Mind you, that just means its an obnoxiously large kill all and is one of the few missions I auto-complete on all my characters, where I am willing to do the defend the hedge.