Level 53 and weaker than a Hellion

What's important to note is these are not new complaints.

They've been rolling in ever since Apex, so it's not like the devs haven't had a chance to learn from the feedback.

In Apex they had Battle Maiden teleport in and ride her axe down from orbit, crashing into the Earth and making a crater that levels Blyde Square. She easily dispatches the heroes there. That's godlike. That's epic.

When we strike back in Tin Mage, we sneak in through the back door in Neutropolis sewers and fight mooks. Then we struggle against an angry cat girl and a half-wit. We cause no damage and our arrival has no impact, literally or figuratively. That is decidedly not epic or godlike.

People made excuses for the devs then as well. "We're just on our Alpha slot, we're not demigods yet." "This is just the first two TFs, wait until the trials."

Well now we're far into the trials and halfway up the Incarnate tree and things haven't gotten better. They've gotten worse. We're getting beaned by ****ing rocks and fighting moldy robots and we're drowning in cheating mechanics.

It's time the developers made good on their promises on Incarnate content and time people stopped making excuses when they don't.



.

irrespective of the "Incarnate" nonsense, that's actually not a bad idea.

Maybe the civilians are throwing *yellow* rocks and Incarnates have no protection from yellow things.

When they come up with the next Trials and solaoble content, please help test them.

In the meantime, I must chime in with Sam and Johnny on this. Presentation. If the Converted Citizens were blasting us with beams of psionic energy, there would still be complaints, but not about my character with Impervium (actually enchanted porcelain, but whatever) skin being hit by a rock. You want the citizens to stone me to death because the Seers have rendered me incapable of defending myself? Fine, throw a mag 9999 Hold on me so that it at least makes sense.

I LIKE the TPN trial overall. I love actually doing the smart thing and exposing the truth to the civilians; that's heroic. I love trying to take out the Seers without hurting the civilians; that's heroic. I love gaining public opinion by smacking around Praetorian Robocop around on national TV; that's heroic. Getting stoned to death by angry citizens? It didn't work on General Zod and it won't work on me (I overstate to make a point; I have plenty of super powerful characters that are not invulnerable).

Some constructive suggestions:

- Change the animation of the converted civilians; have them levitate and blast us psionically instead of throwing rocks.

- Instead of the Seers debuffing us, allow them to draw power from public opinion and deal huge amounts of damage when public opinion is in their favor. In addition, have them visibly draw power from surrounding civilians.

I understand what the citizens hurting us with rocks is supposed to be in-story; I get that, really. It's just one of those things that would look a lot better on a comic book page rather than in a game outside of a rendered cutscene.

Maybe they could raise the aggro cap for civilians in the TPN to 500. And then everyone's PC could melt.

Eco

Quote:

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."

I don't like the cheesy mechanics in the trials. It's at the point for me, that I don't consider the trials to be done "in-character" for my characters. The storyline rationalizations are too thin, too obviously just rationalizations to cover bad mechanics and limited AI, and the tactical elements of the trials are too much aimed at players clicking adeptly and at carefully choreographed places and times instead of the characters being super-powered, for me to think of them as being part of my character's history and evolution. But, like many others, I want the powers, so I run them, and run them, memorize the maps and monkey-rote clicking, and then grind them, and grind them again. Then, also like many others, I come up with explanations for these powers that fit my character and have nothing at all to do with the Well, Praetoria, or incarnate trials. This is not a good place to be.

I think the civilians using Psi attacks is probably the most logical change that could happen. The Maria Jenkins arc (I think) already establishes that something like that can happen. It's really not that big a deal to me, although, it does seem out of place that your character runs through a hail of gunfire inside the buildings and then is killed by a rock thrown by a schoolteacher. If nothing else though I would like future trials to feel more epic. I think both MoM and UG succeed on that front (and I'm saying that as a not very big fan of UG).

Unrelated to this, it's also strange that video cameras and civilians are potential targets but the HD TVs you're trying to protect are not. Not that I'm asking them to be made so, it's just an odd point of logical consistency within the task given.

Of course, it's also a little weird, logically speaking, that civilians we're trying to protect can't be hit with buff powers that would make them less likely to die. I don't expect that change to happen, but if this fight were actually happening in a comic book I think the first thing that would happen is the league Force Fielder would be encasing the crowd to protect them. Maybe there are other things at work though (eg I doubt if the general non-super hero public would appreciate the Cold or Thermal buffs even if they were there to protect them, and maybe Empathy just doesn't work on "normal" people).

I think what also compounds the problem is that we've had so long since a mission that really made us feel powerful, especially for heroes. Villians get their blood coral fueled rampage against 400 enemies, praetorians get their 100 depowered destroyers, heroes only get that single mission in the alpha arc where you club a few AVs in a couple of minutes. The next time we get a large invasion event I want to see something like this. (from 3:50 to 5:50)

http://youtu.be/ikzwSn71ums
(My personal favorite is Question's method of fighting)

That should be the battalion invasion, all the normal spawns erased and tons of level 1 enemies spread out over -all- the zones. It would solve so many issues I've had with previous invasions. People won't have to form a giant mosh pit to survive it, we won't have to worry about full zones and everyone could spread out and have their own adventures in being a hero or villian. The last event we had was a trainwreck (at least on virtue) it got to the point where people were so sick of zoning and moshing with 30 billion seeds that when zwill was going "Ooooo I'm attacking atlas park!" everyone was ignoring him and not paying a bit of attention to any of his spawns. The next invasion shouldn't be about giant mobs of heroes fighting mobs of god level purple spawns, it should be about every character getting their own moment to feel like a badass even if it's only for a few hours.

I think part of the problem is that I imagine flooding you with low damage, vast mobs would be ineffective. Having that many mobs on the map that you could take notable damage would probably crash a lot of peoples computers/video cards. So how do you get these people into the fray? Drinking Enriche, as was brought up earlier, seems like a reasonable way of doing it. Mind and body control in a bottle.

If you make the citizens level 1 or even con grey, they will be that much easier to accidentally kill and therefore fail the trial. I would not like that.