Level 53 and weaker than a Hellion

Not even. They defended the rocks. It's not that they can't fix the problem of demigods being slaughtered by citizens tossing stones, they don't agree there's a problem.

In other words...

Devs: "The customer is wrong."

They're cool with it and they even threw a little bit of "ur doin it wrong' and 'L2P' sentiment in as a reply to the complaints.



.

And the funny thing is that doing it wrong has worked out far better in nearly every trial I've run that ignored the Telepathist vs. trials that have tried to take them out.

Well you are doing it wrong.

So who says they represent you? At what point was your name mentioned? Are you claiming to be a 99er and still hold with a political party bent on pushing the country over the edge for the personal gain of a small minority? Good luck with that.

Meanwhile in the Twilight Zone...

Heh, If the comment had never been posted in the first place I wouldn't have replied. I have a hard time with people making political statements on the forums, even if it's just being snarky, or for thier own pleasure or purpose. You however, seem to be fine with it, or can't grasp the concept. Good for you.

Perhaps you should take it up with the original poster of the snarky comment (preferably in PM's rather than this thread) rather than rail against Sam's rejection of being included in a majority that may or may not represent him. The origin of the comment aside, I think Sam's position is rather apolitical and more philosophical. After all how many times do you see people speaking for the "majority" here on the boards about what should or shouldn't be in the game? It's more a point that those who claim to be representing a majority often are espousing their own beliefs under the banner of the "majority". See the feedback thread for the Coyote travel power for a prime example, in which, someone speaks for the alleged majority and how they fear the Coyote power will draw furries to this game.

Also, I doubt (and I may be wrong) Sam would align himself with any party in the United States as he does not reside here.

Well, kinda. However, no matter how debuffed you are, rocks should not K.O. a super so easily. If the toon has armor (concept here and immersion etc) then the rock is not likely to do a thing. I think everyone would have been happier if the players were attacked by supers and not civilians. The public opinion could still have been incorporated. This trial was not well thought or well designed, IMO.

Which just proves that they don't really understand the original complaint: that a god-like super-powerful being brought down by citizens throwing rocks just isn't 'epic' or 'cosmic' no matter how depressed the Seers make you.

Giant robots, Earth Avatars, Cosmic beings, Hellspawned Demons and Dimensional Entities... these are the things Incarnates of the well should be pitched against, not an office worker with a rock.

Precisely. While not a nation under law, our community here still operates on the basic mechanics of a society. Every once in a while, a person or a group of people get it in their heads that they represent all or most City of Heroes players and being telling us what's "good for the game." Incarnates are a prime example. "People" want raids and "people" want challenge and "people" want elitist exclusivity. And just like the argument in question, this group will give you the "you're either Nexus or against us" choice of either we agree that this is what "people" need or we should go play another game because we're clearly in the minority and don't belong in this community.

Radicalising a community is always a bad thing, because it ends up trodding all over people who are content with the current situation. In general, I have a problem with people who foist their rebellious antics over my peaceful life and insist that I take a side in this conflict when I want no part of said conflict to begin with. Kitsune is correct - my position is entirely apolitical. I don't want to be drafted into a picket sign mob or demonised as a "pawn of the oppressor." Leave me out of your political activism.

This is true. I really have no vested interest in US politics. Right now, all over the Internet, sites are giving me popups about "Stop SOPA! Call your local senator!" Whether I'd like to help or not is irrelevant before the fact that I HAVE no senator of my own. I really have no stake in any of this, nor any interest to involve myself long-distance. My stake really mostly extends to Paragon Studios' continued prosperity and possibly Valve, so that Steam continues to run.

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 funny thing is, they've already done that once. There's a mission where the Resistance Crusaders cause the Clockwork on the Magistrarium to go insane and start attacking people. When you arrive, basic civilians are fighting with the Clockwork. If you watch, you'll notice that the civilians are not doing any damage to the robots, but the robots can more or less two-shot them with flamethowers and energy weapons.

Personally, I LOVE the idea of a low-popularity hero being stoned, but the stones doing nothing at all. That'd actually make for a pretty dramatic scene, not because of the physical danger, but because it shows just how angry people are that they'd attack someone the clearly have no chance of defeating just out of sheer frustration. "Get off our world!" Having them actually defeat the hero just seems... Goofy.

That's why I say presentation, presentation, presentation. I think we need to say that enough times until it sinks in with someone, because presentation has been a running problem of our development team for some time now.

And really, presentation is all it's ever been about. Villains didn't want to be other people's lackeys, but that was a question of presentation. Contacts just had to treat us like bosses, rather than like minions. Dean McArthur proves this can be done. SOME villain players wanted to do more repugnantly villainous things. Presentation was the key, as the new Mercy Island storyline proves. People wanted a to have their biggest heroes challenged, so in I2 we got the Shadow Shard. Its size, scope, scale and backstory make even the most egotistical among as admit that we shouldn't be able to walk all over Rularuu the Raveger. That's presentation for you.

Presentation is always the key. The mechanics behind an event are wholly secondary to how that event is presented. I can watch a movie and leave pumped up and excited over its amazing final battle. That's not even interactive, but it was presented to me in such a way that it excited me. Games don't have to be "like" movies, but they have to have the kind of representation which can get us excited like a movie can.

And Incarnates wholly lack presentation. Let's hope Dark Astoria will change this.

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.

Is there anywhere we can read/watch this?

I'd be interesting in seeing it myself. I find it interesting they've commented on the thread elsewhere, and not within this thread itself.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

That was my typical slant on it. Were they as overtly dismissive and condescending as actually telling people to 'L2P'?

No, but they gave no indication they saw a problem in what people were complaining about and basically told them not to play that way.


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Very much this. The trials were not used to deliver us the cosmic level threats worthy of demigods that we were promised. They've ended up simply as an excuse for the devs to put on their 'sadistic DM' hat and throw cheating mechanic after cheating mechanic at us while dressing them up as the same old, same old.

The trials are the worst way to do that in the first place. Nothing makes someone feel less super and godlike than being one of a hundred cogs in a machine that divides and shares any victory a hundred times. You will never face down Tyrant and get your 'Crane Kick' moment. Instead it'll be you and a bunch of strangers who gang bang him while running from colored patches.


.

Thanks chaps.
I watched the Ustream twice and I must admit I didn't take what you saw from it Johnny.

What I did notice was that Zwillinger completely failed to address the principle issue here and reason for this thread, and I want to respond to some of his comments in the Ustream. The relevant bit is 18 mins into the stream for about 10 minutes and Zwill prefaces it by saying "We're going to address this issue head on" and asks Baryonix "What is your advice to deal with the rocks?"

They then tend to go into a mini-guide about what needs to be done to achieve victory in the trial - that it's designed to give a Live Breaking News feel to the events - fast pace lots of back and forth etc. And that the Telepathists need to be taken down to prevent the debuff and the conversion of civillians.

Citizens have been buffed a bit to essentially prevent griefing of the trials.

The point was made it's a tough trial and that there's a learning curve to the trial and once it's been run a few times it will become easier, rather like the Lambda and BAFs first appeared impossible but now mini-Mo runs are regularly being completed.

Zwill, I need you to understand that you completely failed to address the fundamental complaint I'm making here: Nobody is saying they don't want a challenge, nobody is claiming the trial is too tough. (And if they are, I definitely am not.) As regular readers of my posts will know, I love challenging content. It's something Sam and I have had a few spats about so I know he'll back me up. I'm the guy that's tried to get to 50 without ever being defeated and trying to trio everything - with a fair degree of success with the latter (not so much with the first.) I completely get that initially new content presents a challenge. People said that about the ITF and the LGTF and STF and and and... But nothing I've seen in the game is impossible. That is not my complaint.

My complaint is that the rocks and the debuffs are very bad content.I've done the TPN successfully, but when citizens can defeat you by throwing rocks, that is not awesome, it is not epic, it is not exciting and it is not a challenge. It is very poor story. We work hard on our characters, getting them through the first 50 levels then through Incarnates and the level shifts and then some tough trials.

We are following a story that from the moment we step into the Incarnate game tells us that we are going to become godlike beings, that we will inherit untold power. Our first experience of that is a taster where almost all the signature characters are powerless against us. Hero One, Statesman, the Crystal Titan... they can't touch us. We increase in power every step of the Incarnate journey and actually the mechanic works reasonably well, with the trees and the ability to craft threads and shafts into the powers we need.

Then we get to the TPN and because we are debuffed by some Telepathists, Civillians defeat us. That's bad in its own right but taken in the round, the fact we are under exactly the same bloody debuff inside the buildings and yet giant robots with big frellling guns don't do as much damage. The fact that from level one, civilians are portrayed as being in great need of our help - in both Primal Earth and Praetoria... and we are the thin blue line - and then this happens.

This is a stunt. It's not big, it's not clever and frankly it stinks... and that's the central point of my complaint, and the one that Zwillinger and Baryonix both failed to address. I could be charitable and say they misread my original post and the comments here but I suspect it's because if they did address it they'd realise it needs fixing.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

Yeah... that was exactly how it seemed to me when I watched the Coffee Talk podcast too.

My understanding of the back story of the Incarnate powers is that the Well is infusing us with power and making us Demi-Gods, or something to that effect.

The Devs could have had us go up against Rularuu and his minions. Up til level 50 you were just saving the world, now you're saving the Multi-verse! That would have felt epic and Incarnate.

Instead they're turning us into demi-gods that can't handle rocks being thrown at us by ordinary, un-augmented people. And they can't even understand why some players may have a problem with it.

Wow. Just... wow.

I guess I'll just wait until that solo incarnate path thing comes out. Cause I sure as heck won't be wasting my time with these Incarnate Trials.

I agree with that whole post, but I only quoted the excerpt because I feel it is a concise summary.

A citizen defeating my lone lvl 10 blaster: totally understandable. Hell, Hellion and Skull minions are basically just angry citizens. A level 50 character (never mind +3), benefiting from an entire league's worth of buffs, getting hurt by a rock? Does not compute. When a maximum of six telepathists can debuff a character to the point where a rock does significant damage, especially if that character was buffed to begin with, the character ceases to feel like an Incarnate, which should not be the case on content specifically designed for Incarnates.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

I get the impression, from reading page after page of Prometheus' infodump text in Orobouros that the Incarnate trials that we've been given so far still only constitute Act One of the overall epic storyline. Act Two is another showdown with the Hamidon, and Act Three is the "Coming Storm" we've heard so much about for so long: the war against The Battalion.

If this impression is right, then the trials in which we will feel like, and be expected to fight like truly godlike beings comes in Act Three. Everything else is just prologue, in a sense. This isn't meant to excuse the lackluster feel of the current trials as much as put it in perspective and perhaps help orient expectations. This is very long-form storytelling, and it may turn out that the only real mistake Paragon has made is in not making it clear enough that our 50+3's are really still in their "Incarnate infancy" and that there is still a whole lot more to come.

Citizens with rocks is still full of fail though...

Alas, by the time they get to those kind of encounters, they could well have burnt through every last bit of goodwill I have left to give the game. The Dark Astoria revamp is really their last chance to retain my interest in anything Incarnate and potentially anything worth my subscription.

I've tried to enjoy the Incarnate content, I really have. But there's nothing there that makes me feel like a hero (or a villain for that matter, given that the Devs have abandoned villainous content for iTrials). When issues old, low level missions make me feel more like a hero or villain than the game's 'premier' content, there's something distinctly wrong.