Level 53 and weaker than a Hellion

I've played while nodding off at my keyboard as well as when half-drunk, that aside, you've:

1. brought up a point that I'm in agreement on; more dimension to what basically amounts to a "pretty button masher"

2. revisited a position I've seen before; more challenge =/= a bigger sack of schlitz.

Hell, if that's all people want is more HP wrapped in a prettier, bigger or more twisted package then just cut the BS and give them a bunch of basic chumps with more DEF, RES, HP and Regen (and make them hit for more and more damage) with no gimmicks available to overcome these progressively larger 'challenges' (or just let all the Incarnate content revolve around spitting out maps full of EBs, AVs and GMs)

I think the disconnect here is how this is achieve. You can force people to move in at least two separate ways. I like to call them "Press X to proceed." vs. "Press X to not die." In both case, you have to press X, but in the former case, it's the players who are in control and this gives a much greater sense of power, at least in my opinion. An early Atlas Park mission has you face off against an invulnerable Eidolon. You can boss-fight him until the cows come home and he won't budge until you destroy the machine that's making him invulnerable. This puts the onus on the players to act of their own accord, rather than having to react to what may as well be quick-time events.

I don't know what it is, but almost everything I've seen since Freedom and, indeed, since Going Rogue comes off like the development team can't trust us to think for ourselves and can't trust our attention span to last more than a minute, so they're constantly throwing flashing lights and quick-reaction objectives at us, yet never letting us actually play the damn game free-hand. You enter the Destroyed Galaxy City tutorial and the game starts as it means to go on by yelling at you to jump over a pit, then go stand over there, then kill three of these, then go click that, then go click this, then kill five of these, then shoot at that AND HURRY! Why? Are you worried that my brain will shut down if it's not constantly being stimulated with ground coffee dissolved into a can of Red Bull? Are you worried I might find a way to stack boxes and climb out of the game if you let me think for myself?

It's honestly not just Raids any more. The whole game feels like it's being designed by that Raid leader yelling something about Whelps on the Onyxa raid that went around YouTube a few years back. The whole game feels like someone's looking over my shoulder and constantly telling me where to go and what to do like a back seat driver.

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And you know what's really funny? Getting players to move about isn't that complicated. Pull a large herd of enemies and have someone toss Rain of Fire over them. Mission accomplished. Your enemies have scattered and your melee folk will now have to move to catch them. This isn't just a bad tactic, this is how large groups of enemies behave naturally. One of the reasons AV fights feel static is you're fighting one guy who's mostly glued to the tank who doesn't move because he's running permanent Granite Armour. Have more of them - and not necessarily as strong - and people will have to move around.

If you have to use gimmicks, turn those into mandatory objectives, as opposed to instant death sentences. Make players have to leave the fight and go kill something else before they can continue like in the Winter Trial, make players have to coordinate the destruction of specific items like in the Hydra Trial, make players have to go press a button or just plain make the AV run away ala Captain Castillo and force people to move forward to find him again. There are ways to make people move that don't involve instantly killing them if they don't.

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 Tyrant Trial could require us to destroy things to depower him - like if he lets the Well totally take him over, then even making him 54+3/4 wouldn't really reflect the level of power he'd have from becoming an avatar of the Well - so he might be invulnearable at first, and we'd need to break his connection to the Well, kinda like we smash the towers on the STF.

Actually, I addressed that pages ago.

The Matrix series does this:

Primarily you have a group of people that get plucked from their existence in a dual dimension. Their subsequent training then allows them to be superhuman when brought back into the 'mundane' virtual. For all intents and purposes... the Incarnates (at least for the first movie) would be the Agents (who were surprised accordingly when the pre-incarnate Neo was able to fight them off (possibly the same expression when Seraph escaped them). This would be the same shock that 'Incarnate' Neo would express during the fight with the 'vampires' when they nicked his hand.

But the quote from the Matrix that most sums up the TPN is, "The mind makes it real."

As far as the discrepancy between the outdoor and indoor portions of the mission - outside, image is everything; you're being goaded to cause civilian casualties - its a shell game for the Praetorian forces (just like the BAF plans were). Inside, you're behind the curtain of the great and powerful Oz.

All they need to do is tweak the mechanic (and/or story presentation) of the 'stone-throwing-devils' and call it good. The tactic is legitimate, mechanically sound and has precedence in any mission that involves mobs similar to GBs and Wailers (or any character that can drop a Tar Patch beneath them.

The argument that somehow wet-behind-the-ears Incarnates are above all reproach is still bollocks with me. Even the Norse gods weren't immortal.

Which, by the way, is a horrible explanation that only actually works because the rest of the first movie is so tight. And I'd really rather not bring "vampires" into the Matrix. I like to pretend Reloaded and Revolutions didn't happen.

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.

Hell, a lot of gods from mythology weren't immortal. You had deities getting hacked and mangled left and right. Celtic, Egyptian, Norse, Sumerian, Mayan, Japanese; none were safe from death.

While I'll be the first to admit the level of power in that mission is hideously broken and not something I expect to see in the game proper, that IS more or less how I want to see Incarnates presented, if to a lesser extent. We should be the people breaking the laws of nature and we should be the ones that everyone has to gather an army in order to stop. Yes, the mission is broken, but it's the ego behind the mission that I really enjoyed, and it only exists for that one mission.

And you know what the really funny thing is? We're allowed to have that ego in the 1-50 game. Back then, people are always telling us how "You're the only one who can stop them!" and "It's tough, but I'm sure it's nothing you can't handle." Numerical power is a draw, obviously, but the power the narrative ascribes to our characters is a draw, as well, and I fear this has been quite mishandled.

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.

Agreed. Thankfully nobody is making that argument.

Having said that, though, a level 50 superhero is above virtually all reproach from normal civilians, a superhero with Incarnate powers even more so. They aren't invulnerable to other superpowered beings or technology that delivers massive damage potential, despite what the power set calls itself. But surely we all recognize the difference in threat potential between a Malta Titan and civilian demonstrator (irrespective of any -DEF or -Res debuffs that might be in effect).

Power, as it pertains to attack damage/effects, is a spectrum, and a very wide one at that. The existance of beings farther along that spectrum than our 50+3 Incarnate toons does not change the fact that most everything else in the CoX world is further behind. It is also not unfair to ask that we be given an iTrial experience in which we feel like near-godlike beings once in a while without having to go street sweeping Atlas Park. What some folks are asking for are trials in which parts of the story makes us feel like the rare inheritors of godlike power we are, rather than just being schooled in how inadequate the game engine can make us feel by giving everything we face more hit points, more level shifts, more non-resistable damage and/or debuffs, etc. They aren't asking for the trial AVs to be eqivalent to even-level Elite Bosses that can be trivially solo'ed by any one member of a league. They are asking for challenges that don't marginalize our position on the power spectrum. Anyone who feels that the current approach to trial design is the best (or only) way to do this is profoundly mistaken, IMO.

The more I think about it, the more I am coming to the conclusion that the solo Incarnate content may actually be what it should always have been. Stories in which individual heroes can feel like the stars of their own books, or in which regular teams can engage in epic storylines that resemble the comics. I don't know where the devs got the idea that the narrative and dramatic potential of the "Incarnate Journey" and "The Coming Storm" was best represented by WoW-style dungeon raiding, but it is clear to me that is the primary source of this disconnect many folks are feeling.

It's even been suggested that Goliath was Nephilim. So a demi-god being brought down by a rock is not unheard of.

Balder (a god) was killed by mistletoe, so our incarnates should be afraid of twigs too.

Sticks and stones won't break a normal hero's bones but incarnates must run for cover.

Both statements are misnomer's:

Baldur could've been actually killed by anything prior to the quest to make him invulnerable to all things; if Loki wouldn't have intervened then Baldur could well have been Norse mythology's only immortal.

And

Sticks and stones will and do break normal heroes' bones (especially if you're a squishy) otherwise, the Staff Fighting powerset would kind of be a moot point (I move to strike development on it on the basis that its just a stick, and as such, not a legitimate tool for the super that's serious about actually causing bodily harm (and restrict players that use it from ever becoming an Incarnate, again, because its a stick); then there's the whole Scrapyarders, Dockworkers and Luddite thing.

Just be glad those same missiles weren't in the same portion of that part of the mission.

You're still pacified in the building.

My squishy hasn't had problems either way... so whatever.

Then if anti-tank missiles can't hurt your pacified squishy WHY SHOULD MERE ROCKS EVEN BE A CONCERN?

lol, I'm not concerned about them... I get what the intent was even if the mechanics behind it needs to be tweaked (as I've already stated multiple times) or even its presentation (as others have pointed out) or a bit of both. I've chosen not to let the mechanics get in the way of what the intent was on having the civvies in the mish in the first place. Selective suspension of disbelief.

I was fortunate enough to be on a good team for our first few runs and our issue was never getting put down by rocks or even getting curb-stomped by Maelstrom. Our issue was us not killing the civilians.

I would endorse such a campaign. At least until such time as the game provides a clear separation between content intended for merely-talented heroes and content intended for super-powered hereoes.

Well, there are basically three options here: selectively suspend disbelief and take the boning (i.e., "Thank you Paragon, may I have another?"), stop paying/playing (i.e., "I'm not putting up with this, see ya!"), or express discontent and try to steer the devs in a better direction (i.e., "I'm gonna kvetch and moan about it in the forums."). Of the three, the second option is probably the most effective while still keeping one's intellectual integrity intact, though it is just as much total capitulation as the first option. The third is the most actively constructive, but the hardest to translate into concrete reality. I think it is obvious which one I am taking at the moment...

The rocks are made of a rare ore found on Praetoria, Primalite. All beings from Primal Earth are highly vulnerable to them, Incarnate or no. The next trial will be us trying to shut down the mining operation that provided the civilian with this deadly weapon.

Fortunately neither of you have any say in the development of this game, as I'm actually looking forward to Staff Fighting. If they come up with more simian costume pieces and a flying cloud travel power, it'd be perfect to make a Journey into the West tribute character with.

What about Incarnates originally from Praetoria?

Exposure.

Breathing Primal Earth air alters their metabolism, and makes them open to being harmed by Primalite.