What are you expecting for a solo Incarnate path?

me being extremely optimistic:

2 months to have 4 tier 4s on a single character

If I were truly pessimistic I'd predict they would include Dominatrix, Diabolique, and the Praetorian version of Lt. Sefu Tendaji. All AVs, and they don't scale down.

I don't even know where to begin.

do want a solo path to incarnates.

Dont care if its a ton of kill all arcs.

I just want a solo path option, one that doesn't eat up years to get through.

One thats scalable in difficulty.

oh, and I am very grateful for the new base editing tools.

Given the current 'development' team's evident philosophies, I am forced to, based on their track record and behavior when questioned about their new 'direction' to draw certain conclusions.

1. The solo content is going to be so sub par it won't even be a viable consideration. The fact that this hamfisted raid garbage was shoehorned into a game whose selling point for SEVEN YEARS has been solo and team friendly content, and then to gate the ONLY MEANINGFUL PROGRESSION behind that poorly engineered concept tells me that my dev 'team' is utterly out of touch with their playerbase or has no plan or goal in mind for the direction of the game.

2.The dev 'team' must not be listening to their feedback during beta if they can be bothered to beta anything at all. The AE on it's own is an excellent example of this, and so far as I can tell, they've never improved this complete failure of basic communication.

3.Another currency. Having failed completely to organize the progress of the Incarnate abortion into a cohesive or sensible fashion, I expect the dev 'team' to produce still more failures of currency in order to force people back in their feeble raid loop. The 'soloable' content will have a separate currency that will have to be translated to the raid garbage at vast personal cost in order to be used as advertised.

4. The soloable path to Incarnation really won't be. I expect the soloable path to be so impossibly cumbersome, bugged, obviously slapped together at the last second, and to be of even less quality than Dr Graves villain arc for retarded rhesus monkeys. I expect it to be a brainless mish mash of meaningless and incoherent crap that forces, once again, players back into the raid garbage loop. Either the rewards will be so sub par they're negligible, the rewards will be locked out to a pathetic and worthless amount, say like the SSA (which is inexcusable), or both and more.

5. I expect to be told what a terrible human being I am, and how DARE I not love and embrace Praetoria as my personal savior and greatest gift to the game since ED. Praetoria is an interesting card to play, if done properly, and in small doses. It was not, on either count. Not only was Going Rogue a complete fiasco, but it was pointless, invalidated the game's pre extant canon, and was a bait and switch routine perpetrated against the playerbase in order to raise money for the Incarnate abortion, which was supposed to debut with it. It was a failure in every regard that matters. Continuing with that broken and pointless storyline only makes my dev 'team' seem even MORE out of touch and clueless about both the MMO industry and the players of their own game.

6. Useless distraction. I expect the Incarnate system, solo path or raidgarbage path to continue to distract from the real issues affecting the game. The outdated graphics, the unused and useless zones, the broken PvP, the worthless AE, and the ten miles of other backdated and backlogged 'fixes' we were told to expect that never materialized. Ever.

That's what I expect. I don't expect to get what we asked for. A viable alternative that has balanced and valid rewards for soloing the Incarnate path. Long history has forced me to this perspective and at this late stage, I consider the previous points to be optimistic at best.

trials are hardly "shoehorned," PvP on the other hand...

also, just because they don't listen to everybody's specific cries, doesn't mean they're not listening. Case in point, the changes to Keyes and UG and axing the proposed changes to LAMBA and BAF.

The only thing I am expecting, as is already in evidence, is a lot of raging gamers complaining.

Frankly, it sickens more by the day to call myself a gamer in light of the bile that is spewed on these and other gamer forums.

So, I guess I am expecting to continue to enjoy playing the game and being happy that it continues to grow and change, unlike many gamers that seem to enjoy hating the people who create the fun pastimes they profess to hate.

I expect it will do absolutely nothing to make me any further interested in bothering with the Incarnate system.

I am expecting it to be absolutely nothing worthwhile, perhaps even comical in how badly it's implemented. I wouldn't mind being wrong, but given what we've seen so far, that's what I'm expecting.

What I would like to see are a series of multiple story arcs with a base difficulty around the range of Ramiel's (possibly with level 54 enemies like the raids, or, better yet, that scale gradually upward, but allow for Incarnate shifts), which can, with a little bit of supplementing from the raids, be enough to get to Rares without any repetition of content, and possibly even VRs over the long term. But I know the Incarnate system well enough by now not to expect that.

People are going to complain regardless, because people want to have their cake and eat it too and not have to work for it.

Still, it's a good sub-question: what kind of reward output rate are you expecting in the solo path per 20 hours of gameplay in that path only?

Emerits: 0
Amerits: 1
VR Salvage: 0
R Salvage: 1
C Salvage: 2
U Salvage: 4
Threads: 50
Shards: 10
inf : 20 million

I also expect about 5 new Badges.

I also expect the content to initially consist of around 5 new unique missions, with more to be added in the future at about 1 per month.

Some (5 or so) existing missions will also be co-opted to help with content.

Anyone else want to make predictions?

I disagree that the solo path won't be able to earn any emp merits, at least I'm hoping it will be able to, even if it's 1 a week or every 48 hours or so. Without e-merits then I don't feel the path is all that 'viable' compared to just running trials ad nauseum.

At least in my opinion, if you're going to call it the solo/small team alternative then you need to be able to actually earn everything in the Trial path, albeit at a reduced pace. Less iXP, less threads, reduced merits (but still min. 1 of each) and maybe a completely random salvage drop, but with threads/merits earnable that's somewhat less of an issue.

But I don't believe the solo path should cap rewards at a lower level than trials, merely have to take longer for the same progression.

Expecting? Truthfully at this point my cynicism is starting to color my judgment.

Based on what I have seen from the Incarnate System so far...

I expect that the initial reward system will be designed far more to punish us for daring to do something other than the holy and all-important Trials rather that to reward us for what we actually just did, no matter how time-consuming or difficult.

I expect more and more Praetorians. Yes, we're sick of them but no one really seems to care.

I expect that the reward system will move toward something at least slightly sensible with appropriate screaming.

I would love to be proved wrong, to see that the devs have finally gotten over the obsessive trial fever and are taking CoH back toward the "play how you want" mindset that has kept me here so long.

I'm looking forward to more in-depth notes. My account comes up for renewal in January and this is the big issue that decides whether I'm going to stick it out or move on.

Yup, Dark Astoria as a new 50+ zone with revamped Banished Pantheon and Tsoo.

So that answers that question at least, with more info on the solo incarnate path to come. But still, that alone speaks volumes.

Nother new Praetorian trial though. >>

Incarnate level Banished Pantheon? Incredibly sensible, and quite interesting. Maybe they won't screw this up.

Maybe.

So far, the solo content includes:

An Incarnate zone, as requested by quite a few players - and the zone is a revamp of an older one, rather than a totally new one, and is one of the 2 most requested zones to be revamped.

Revamps for 2 of the older villain groups, including the popular and colorful Tsoo.

Non-Trial content in the revamped zone.

Lore that suggests the threat in Dark Astoria will revolve around a pantheon of evil gods - some players have requested similar enemies for Incarnate content, rather than fighintg giant war robots and clone armies.

Lore that suggests any influence from Praetoria on the revamped zone will be quite small, or quite possibly nonexistant.

Lore that suggests the threat will be magical, rather than the tech threat of Praetoria.

Thanks, GG. All good news, in my opinion.

Now, about that fog...