Thoughts on Trials after i12.5 - Mob Rule
By
Agent White,
Posted on: 2011-12-09 23:00 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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The devs have said the the enemies in DA will be harder than normal content, but not as hard as the Trial enemies - it'd be silly for them to all give the same level of rewards.
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Originally Posted by Jagged
You keep repeating this teaming-hard/solo-easy mantra and its simply not true.
The team stuff gets more rewards to encourage play with other people, not because its in any way harder. Its not. |
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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Which means it will likely be like the difference in leveling up by fighting +2/x8 vs +4/x8 for incarnate XP... you get less reward per enemy but kill them so much faster and more than make up the difference (because you're not waiting around for trials to start). Of course the drop rate will be the real issue - if you can get incarnate salvage faster on trials even accounting for the dead time, that's probably going to be the way people go. Fortunately, you can get incarnate salvage on any of the trials, including the easy ones - which is why they're run so often.
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
The devs have said the the enemies in DA will be harder than normal content, but not as hard as the Trial enemies - it'd be silly for them to all give the same level of rewards.
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Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.
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Originally Posted by Brillig
It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.
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Originally Posted by Siolfir
Which means it will likely be like the difference in leveling up by fighting +2/x8 vs +4/x8 for incarnate XP... you get less reward per enemy but kill them so much faster and more than make up the difference (because you're not waiting around for trials to start). Of course the drop rate will be the real issue - if you can get incarnate salvage faster on trials even accounting for the dead time, that's probably going to be the way people go. Fortunately, you can get incarnate salvage on any of the trials, including the easy ones - which is why they're run so often.
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What I think is likely is many people will take both routes at the same time. That's assuming the solo-ish path drops the same components that the trials do. Run around and do the solo-ish missions, treat the trials more or less like Task Forces to be done every so often.
I just hope that the implementation of "solo path" isn't literal. What I want is something that is solo-possible but still team-friendly. Basically, something along the lines of Peregrine Isle pre-incarnate content.
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The intent of the whole Incarnate system was to be something new and indeed harder than the rest of the game. It was supposed to be something only people willing to deal with raid mechanics would try. |
Originally Posted by AkuTenshiiZero
My issue is that levels 1-50 hold your hand and basically give you levels. iTrials, by comparison, are sorta difficult. So after the game has finished carrying Little Timmy through 50 levels, he has learned that all he has to do is mash buttons until happy fanfare plays. Then he goes into an iTrial and mashes buttons. When the League leader tells Little Timmy to stop mashing buttons and click his temps of the War Walker, Little Timmy is puzzled and responds by mashing buttons. When the League leader spends 15 minutes explaining to Little Timmy that using his Ion Judgement while confused will, in fact, kill the raid, and all he need do is keep himself Break-Free'd the whole fight, Little Timmy responds by mashing buttons (and murdering the raid).
Paragon, if you didn't baby-coddle your players for 50 levels, maybe I wouldn't have so many braindead toddlers on my Leagues. Either dumb-down the iTrials to be as EZ-Mode as the rest of the game, or implement some way to make it more exclusive to people who know how to do more than mash buttons. Let Little Timmy play in his sandbox instead of letting him wander aimlessly into the demolition derby. |
Ramius's introduction arc is supposed to be an idiot check: if you can't figure out how to beat that arc, you don't need to be playing at the Incarnate level. Sometimes I think the worst thing they did for the Incarnate system was to make Ramius teamable, because it allows you to ignore tactics and just smash through Trapdoor and Honoree.
But that represents a fundamental issue. They wanted to make the Incarnate system exclusionary, but at the same time you really can't do that. It's simply not good business for an MMO. So they relaxed the restrictions and made it possible for players to get into the trials without thinking too hard, while still wanting to make it more of a thinking game. Thus Little Timmy.
The best solution, then, is to design the trials such that the players can self-select to be officers or grunts; the officers do the fiddly things and think about where to go and what to do when, while the grunts follow along and mash buttons. BAF does that well. At any given time the only targetable things are those things you're supposed to hit, so grunts aren't penalized for attacking them, while the officers can lead the groups to the right areas for the prisoner escape and pull the AVs to the killing ground. Badges take a little more effort, but still aren't too hard as long as players know which team they're in.
De minimis non curat Lex Luthor.
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Well my Scrapper isn't able to. |
Originally Posted by Energizing_Ion
You can't taunt the AV out of the pink patches? I saw someone do that in my last MOM trial run...worked beautifully...
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Someone else could theoretically, I haven't seen it done successfully on the malaise fight.
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Originally Posted by Energizing_Ion
Or you don't have any ranged attacks by chance? Yes less chance of this but...*shrugs*
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Unfortunately 1 or 2 ranged attacks doesn't come close to the 200-300 DPS my melee characters are specifically built to do.
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Just don't take the safety off your torpedoes and Ramius goes down like a chump.|
Originally Posted by Bosstone
The intent of the whole Incarnate system was to be something new and indeed harder than the rest of the game. It was supposed to be something only people willing to deal with raid mechanics would try.
Ramius's introduction arc is supposed to be an idiot check: if you can't figure out how to beat that arc, you don't need to be playing at the Incarnate level. Sometimes I think the worst thing they did for the Incarnate system was to make Ramius teamable, because it allows you to ignore tactics and just smash through Trapdoor and Honoree. |
Alpha slot predates that horrible trial system. If putting up with raid mechanics was the point of the incarnate system they should've waited for the iTrials to be ready so it wasn't a bait and switch.
What's funny is that CoH was my refuge from that 800 pound gorilla game's raids and now incarnate stuff has driven me back to a game that now has functional 5 man turnstiles *AND* current raid turnstiles (and doesn't melt my graphics card).
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...Deerrrrp. Ramiel. |
Originally Posted by Ogi
Just don't take the safety off your torpedoes and Ramius goes down like a chump.
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| Alpha slot predates that horrible trial system. If putting up with raid mechanics was the point of the incarnate system they should've waited for the iTrials to be ready so it wasn't a bait and switch. |
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| What's funny is that CoH was my refuge from that 800 pound gorilla game's raids and now incarnate stuff has driven me back to a game that now has functional 5 man turnstiles *AND* current raid turnstiles (and doesn't melt my graphics card). |
De minimis non curat Lex Luthor.
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Hero Merits, Empyrean Merits, Reward Merits are all time gated. How are Astral Merits time gated?|
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Most of the end rewards in the game are time-gated, including the Trials - so time-gating will also be used on the solo path, as it's a nice and simple way of making sure the progress is slower than the Trials without needing to add any new currencies.
Empyreand and Astral merits are time-gated on the Trials, so they'll be time-gated on the solo path too, with either a longer cool-down or less frequent reward points during the content, as the solo stuff isn't as challenging, so the rewards won't be a high or as frequent as the Trials. |
The fact that AM's are not time gated has been one of the few reasons I keep running Itrials....
I think I'll wait for the official word vs some decently founded speculations.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
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Originally Posted by Bosstone
...Deerrrrp. Ramiel.
It wasn't a bait and switch. They had the Incarnate system planned out, but the Alpha was the introduction. Ramiel's arc isn't just for Alpha, it unlocks the entire Incarnate system for you. It's supposed to be a warning sign that the game will change past that point. Alpha was, yes, kind of a stopgap while they got the rest of the system prepped, but the trials are delivering what Ramiel promised. You realize you don't have to play the Incarnate stuff, right? I've got exactly one character who's done anything with the trials, and I don't really feel like I'm missing anything. |
Ramiel's arc should have been a 24 minimum iTrial and the WTFs never added if raids are what Incarnates are all about.
Personally, I like Ramiel's arc. I like soloing Ramiel's arc. That feels much more epic than hanging around with 23 other people and watching a slideshow of Destiny bubbles and Judgement spam.
iTrials changed the tone of the game enough that now the whole thing just feels like it's yet another wannabe hardcore elite raiding game and really, if you're not that 800 lb gorilla and you don't have the resources to knock him off his skyscraper don't be going around in a monkey suit pretending to be him.
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Oops, I meant Empyreans only, not Astrals |
Originally Posted by Darth_Khasei
Hero Merits, Empyrean Merits, Reward Merits are all time gated. How are Astral Merits time gated?
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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Well, the Sewer Trial has some basic situational awareness stuff with the Hydra heads, and there were attacks to be avoided on the Kane's Mansion Trial, and there are some Incarnate Trial style mechanics with the Winter Realm, which is being reformed as a Trial this year, so Trials and Trial mechanics are getting spread throughout the levels, which will help the population with the Incarnate Trials, especially as the influx of new players since I21 will have "grown up" with Trials as an integral part of the game.
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Originally Posted by AkuTenshiiZero
My issue is that levels 1-50 hold your hand and basically give you levels. iTrials, by comparison, are sorta difficult. So after the game has finished carrying Little Timmy through 50 levels, he has learned that all he has to do is mash buttons until happy fanfare plays. Then he goes into an iTrial and mashes buttons. When the League leader tells Little Timmy to stop mashing buttons and click his temps of the War Walker, Little Timmy is puzzled and responds by mashing buttons. When the League leader spends 15 minutes explaining to Little Timmy that using his Ion Judgement while confused will, in fact, kill the raid, and all he need do is keep himself Break-Free'd the whole fight, Little Timmy responds by mashing buttons (and murdering the raid).
Paragon, if you didn't baby-coddle your players for 50 levels, maybe I wouldn't have so many braindead toddlers on my Leagues. Either dumb-down the iTrials to be as EZ-Mode as the rest of the game, or implement some way to make it more exclusive to people who know how to do more than mash buttons. Let Little Timmy play in his sandbox instead of letting him wander aimlessly into the demolition derby. |
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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Yes, that would transition players from the 1-50 game to Incarnate trials wonderfully and not be a brick wall at all.
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Originally Posted by Ogi
Ramiel's arc should have been a 24 minimum iTrial and the WTFs never added if raids are what Incarnates are all about.
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De minimis non curat Lex Luthor.
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I'm betting that the actual enemies will be harder and take longer for the solo player than killing enemies in the midst of a buffed league.|
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
The solo path rewards will be lower and slower, as the enemies in the solo content aren't as challenging as the enemies on the Trials.
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The solo/single team content will probably be less complex, quicker to start (only waiting for up to 8 people) and reward a lot less.
I don't suffer from altitis, I enjoy every minute of it.
Thank you Devs & Community people for a great game.
So sad to be ending ):
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Another problem with LFG is it needs an option to wait for bigger teams instead of sending the minium number.
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Originally Posted by Rodion
The problem is that everyone is convinced that they have to build leagues by hand, rather than just let people queue and run with the league with whatever players you get. This is partly justified: queuing for a BAF or Lambda and then winding up with no melee characters who can handle aggro will make the AV fights rather sticky. The other trials are even worse, because some require very specific role players (Keyes, for the way most people play it, requires one or two aggro magnets for pulling Anti-Matter around by the nose and one or two dedicated healers for them).
(snip). |
I don't suffer from altitis, I enjoy every minute of it.
Thank you Devs & Community people for a great game.
So sad to be ending ):
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If it's solo, then it shouldn't really take too long to start at all |
Originally Posted by tanstaafl
I'm betting that the actual enemies will be harder and take longer for the solo player than killing enemies in the midst of a buffed league.
The solo/single team content will probably be less complex, quicker to start (only waiting for up to 8 people) and reward a lot less. |
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
I think MOO has a point when he talks about "accessibility," because that's what's keeping me, personally, away from them. Anything which requires this many people and this much organisation is not accessible, even if you just wait for one to happen and scoop you up. I simply happen to have very little patience for any of this, and much prefer to be able to sit down and play as soon as I log in, as opposed to hoping that whatever I feel like doing has other people wanting to do it at the exact same time.
A time commitment is one thing, but at least in most conventional content, that time's spent playing the game, not waiting for your team loading bar to fill up.
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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.
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Better a brick wall saying "DO NOT ENTER" than a nice lovely garden lane that dumps you unexpectedly into a cesspool.|
Originally Posted by Bosstone
Yes, that would transition players from the 1-50 game to Incarnate trials wonderfully and not be a brick wall at all.
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If the Alpha slot experience was anything like the iTrial slots experience I'd never have even bothered with the incarnate stuff.
After playing the trials many times on different kinds of characters, I've come to the conclusion their biggest issue is how long it takes to get level shifted. Once you slot the level shifts in my experience it's like flipping a switch. But you spend a long, long time playing the trials as a lower level character and it magnifies all of the frustration of being one-shot many times over. The overall feeling I get is that in order to get to where the trials are somewhat comfortable you have to be murdered repeatedly and spend hours being a mostly ineffective pity spot.
To roughly steal an idea from Arcanaville, I think the level shift should come when you slot Tier 2 anything. You would still only get up to +2 total but you could get it from Judgment or Interface. Plus that way I wouldn't feel like I have to intentionally bypass Interface and Judgement while waiting to unlock the next tier, because the level shift from Lore is more important to playing the trials than anything else you get except the Destiny power.
I will likely go the solo route even though it's likely to be significantly less rewarding for one very simple reason:
I do not like to fail because of the actions of strangers.
If I can't be with a force of people I know are competent (which is seldom because there are low odds at getting enough people off my friends lift to fill a whole League who are in the mood to run Trials and are also online at that moment), then I will gladly accept the solo path when it becomes available.
To me, solo path is 'a bird in the hand', while UG, TPN and MoM may as well be an orchard with an army of hillbillies screaming at the top of their lungs and blindly thrashing at each bush with clubs.
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If only it were that fun! Phase Two: Defeat Fuzzy Lumpkins and allies. Now that would be a FUN trial. lol| Butane: To me, solo path is 'a bird in the hand', while UG, TPN and MoM may as well be an orchard with an army of hillbillies screaming at the top of their lungs and blindly thrashing at each bush with clubs. |
QgeneralR: Took my +3 Defender on a MoM tonight, just for giggles.
What surprises me - and this isnt the first time I've seen it, and I'm not prompting this response either... is the amount of "man, this is no fun at all" I'm seeing. One person had been on 5 different leagues today, trying to complete this trial and when this one failed as well, they got quite upset.
Its as if they took the mindset from Keyes and just 'ported it over to MoM piecemeal. Unresistable KU/KD/KB/whatever it is, for the lose! Especially when coupled with the new tactic in town, unresistable damage pulses. Those are so enjoyable, so absolutely INCARNATE I just can't tell you.
Now, we can have Smiley-Girl in here running hither, thither and yon trying desperately to do all the damage control she can, as if she were a little Dutch girl trying to plug as many holes in the dike with her fingers as she can. "No oh no no NO, its not nearly as bad as you think it is!
" But one person cannot keep a dam from breaking. And one person cannot mindwash an entire player-base into thinking this stuff is fun, when.... its really not. I am glad that the second half of the Incarnate stuff does not really interest me, because I am here to have fun.
FUN. Remember that word?
Rhetorical question only. Back to BAF!
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Well, here's a sentence I wasn't expecting to write today: I agree with J_B. |
Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
I do not like to fail because of the actions of strangers.
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More importantly, though, I do not like to make strangers fail through my actions. I haven't run UG more than once, and I haven't run anything past UG and don't intend to, because I have no interest in any situation where I can cause problems for others by not doing the right thing. I have no problem with difficulty, and I have no problem with consequences for myself if I do not do the right thing. But I'm not going to put the time and effort of 23 other people at risk. I don't need that kind of stress in my pretendy fun time game. I'll be soloing to Incarnate.
@SPTrashcan
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Why MA ratings should be changed from stars to "like" or "dislike"
A better algorithm for ordering MA arcs
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One last go for luck:|
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
The devs have said the the enemies in DA will be harder than normal content, but not as hard as the Trial enemies - it'd be silly for them to all give the same level of rewards.
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More hit points <> Harder
AV on a team of 6 is more often harder to defeat than super-dooper Incarnate AV on team of 24.
If rewards truly matched difficulty then the BAF rewards would be nerfed into non-existence. The rewards are there for teaming with people, not for difficulty.
This is a song about a super hero named Tony. Its called Tony's theme.
Jagged Reged: 23/01/04
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That's where I stand. I hate being the reason a task fails, and that's not so much out of some sense of altruism that I don't want to impede people's fun. Much more selfishly, when I'm the reason a task fails, I leave feeling like crap. Even when it's unavoidable, like I just didn't have enough level shifts or something, I still leave feeling like I was worthless and the team would have been better off without me. And that's not the kind of feeling a game should inspire.|
Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan
Well, here's a sentence I wasn't expecting to write today: I agree with J_B.
More importantly, though, I do not like to make strangers fail through my actions. I haven't run UG more than once, and I haven't run anything past UG and don't intend to, because I have no interest in any situation where I can cause problems for others by not doing the right thing. I have no problem with difficulty, and I have no problem with consequences for myself if I do not do the right thing. But I'm not going to put the time and effort of 23 other people at risk. I don't need that kind of stress in my pretendy fun time game. I'll be soloing to Incarnate. |
Bad Influence mentions "fun," and that's an important point to remember. I've often brought up the key problem I see with Incarnate content - it makes us overall seem weaker than before we became Incarnates - and yet people tell me that this is just because our threats are now all the bigger. While that may be logical, it doesn't make it fun. Being more powerful is not expressed through seeing bigger numbers in your character sheet, it's expressed by what you can do, and when an Incarnate in his own content can do far less and need far more help than I can in mine, then Incarnates in general feel like they've become weaker.
Frankly, I feel that the raid mentality is exactly the opposite of what Incarnates should have represented. At its core, City of Heroes is an empowerment fantasy. We take on hordes of goons, we fight giant monsters and look good doing it. Throughout the game, though we may fight tougher enemies, we always get tangibly stronger and more confident in our abilities. Then all of a sudden we're gnats before the might of god-modding NPCs. The raid mentality and the balance point it brings is why Incarnates feel like a step DOWN the ladder.
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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.
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I would not mind half as much if they also gave us opportunities to face the same characters as Elite Bosses. So that when we face them on iTrials and TFs there is some story reason (access to the reactors or whatever) why they require so many to take down. I still think the AV to EB change was one of the most inspired additions to this game and has allowed me to single handedly (footedly?) kick the butt of almost all the signature villains and quite a few of the signature heroes too.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Then all of a sudden we're gnats before the might of god-modding NPCs.
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I want to face Tyrant is single combat, hero to villain, and defeat him utterly. Then he can skulk back to wherever, and power up for the incarnate trial show down. Such events are comic book A B Cs as far as I am concerned
This is a song about a super hero named Tony. Its called Tony's theme.
Jagged Reged: 23/01/04
My melee characters can jump/run away but if they do they have to stand there and do nothing while the patch is under the AV.
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You can't taunt the AV out of the pink patches? I saw someone do that in my last MOM trial run...worked beautifully...
Or you don't have any ranged attacks by chance? Yes less chance of this but...*shrugs*
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