Level 53 and weaker than a Hellion

LOL, I think he's too late for that. Like, about seven years too late. Furries have been playing this game since... well, since the beta!

It is noteworthy that the mechanics are not the problem, ie, folks are not trying to avoid a difficult challenge from powerful mobs.

It is the story, the presentation... the Lore, if you will.

If it were a horde of purple reptiles with zapper guns taking these Incarnate heroes down, much of the outcry would not be occurring. But it is citizens chunking rocks that are doing it, and that strikes a lot of people as Just Wrong.

Good, compelling story-telling is vital to the process. The accolades for Troy Hickman and the "Smoke and Mirrors" arc do not come just because somebody died. There are plenty of stories in which people die, and many of them are terrible. Troy made us care what happened.

The wires upon which good writing hang are rather frail, and it takes someone skilled to string them. I keep clamoring for Troy to be brought back into the process because of his established bona fides, not only in general, but with the CoH characters SPECIFICALLY.

The Incarnate Lore is problematic in a myriad of ways. And as you have indicated, Dante, bad writing can suck the fun right out of what might be an enjoyable challenge under a different presentation.

Yes, forestalling the truly epic stuff for much, much later (maybe 12-18 months out?) runs the risk of losing most of the potential player base who has just given up waiting for things to "get interesting". Only time will tell if this was a huge miscalculation on Paragon's part, or if it will all work out in the end.

Are the iTrials unavailable to villains completely (I wouldn't know since I don't ever play redside)? The Prometheus infodump states outright that the Coming Storm is something heroes and villains will have to join together to fight against. The war for survival against The Battalion is not winnable if traditional moral/battle lines remain drawn between humanity's superpowered elite. This suggests a full-on cooperative aspect to the Incarnate trials to come, making the distinction between Hero and Villain ultimately irrelevant.

No, Villains can join in on Incarnate content but they're expected to abandon all pretences of being villainous to join up with the Heroes to defeat 'The Greater Threat'. Whatever that may be this week. This is a separate conversation that has come up in over threads but in effect, the Incarnate content is completely heroic. If there's an option to do evil things in them, I haven't seen it yet.

In general, I don't have a problem with Villains having to team up with Heroes occasionally but IMHO, it's been overused in this game. I'm informed that the new Dark Astoria will have options for Villains but whether that's an actual separate story arc or just more options to kick puppies while doing essentially the same mission as Heroes remains to be seen.

I hear it'll be something like, while heroes and villains join up to defeat the drug lords, the villains will occasionally be able to sneak around to look for all that drug money, so they can keep it for themselves. In the end though, the heroes will make them give the money back.

there are no villains. There are just those who go redside to get extra choices for their 40+ Power Pools.

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

They're already run out of mine.

I have not touched a UG, TPN or MoM trial once it hit live, nor do I plan to ever. They're contrived trash full of cheat mechanics; a silly dance we're expected to perform for what? Nothing. There's no new Incarnate abilities to earn from doing them, and even if there were, I'd be running BAFs or waiting on the revamped Dark Astoria to get them, regardless of how much longer it takes. Not having to put up with bad content on a bloated league is worth the price.



.

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

What Dante brings up is a very basic truth in storytelling - your audience doesn't know nor care what you've planned far ahead. What they care about is what's happening now. What this means is you can't afford to waste their time. Everything you create HAS to in some way inspire or entertain, such that your audience will have a reason to bother checking out what comes next. If you have to tell an unpleasant story to set things up right for a more exciting conclusion, that's fine, but you have to make it clear to your audience that you are, in fact, going somewhere with this. They don't have to know WHERE you're going, just that you're going SOMEWHERE.

I simply don't get a sense of this from the Incarnate system. To me, it feels like just raid grind with ever more ridiculous excuses for why we're the bottom feeders who need a zillion other people to accomplish anything. That, really, is a step DOWN from the pre-Incarnate storyline, and this is the mistake that just cannot be justified. Even if I were inclined to believe that there's a grand storyline in the works - and given this team's track record for self-consistent storytelling, I don't - having what amounts to a hard reset of our standing in the world just has no place in it. You don't go from fighting gods and saving a thousand worlds to fighting civilians... And losing.

Planned long-term storylines are nothing more than an excuse. Whether they exist or not is irrelevant in the face of the fact that the storyline has to entertain players NOW. Because if it doesn't entertain players now, they'll stop coming back, so what happens later isn't going to matter.

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.

There are some good arcs redside. Just nobody playing them because of the self-fulfilling method of people flocking to the higher population.

Praetoria never, ever, ever should have been Incarnate content. Extradimensional Marcus Coles are a dime a dozen, and this one should never have been made any different. At the absolute most, a trial to take down Tyrant and the Praetorian Hamidon (potentially in stages, or at the same time). Every single trial so far could be tacked into a single-team story arc that would be interesting to play once or twice for the story (when you don't have to grind them). The Well should have been non-sentient and only a source of power, and there should only have been one.

The only reason I can come up with for making it so Praetoria-intensive was to justify a marketing decision to lock people out of the alpha slot if they didn't buy Going Rogue, which is a completely moot point since it's now VIP only.

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

My interpretation of the point being expressed by those in this thread is that you believe that being defeated by citizens throwing rocks isn't representative of your Incarnate status, from a story standpoint. I get it, and understand your viewpoint.

I steered the commentary in that direction during Ustream, and made some comments to explain our story driven reason behind that (telepaths weakening you and whipping ordinary citizens into a mentally induced rage). If that didn't come across, then I apologize.

We have a reason that the story is told in whatever way it is. Whether it's due to a nuance of the actual story or because of limitations imposed by mechanics (it could be either or in this particular case, I honestly don't know), we wanted there to be the chance that you could be brought low by a guy throwing a rock. I'm not a story designer, so I'm not going to pretend to know why TPN was written in the way it was, but I know the way that Positron, Protean, Baryonyx, Viridian and Dr. Aeon work: Deliberately and with purpose.

I'm not asking you to agree with our story telling decisions 100% of the time. I am asking you to discuss the story for it's merit.

Also, if every single fight was against Galactus, it would get a little boring after awhile .

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

I think that it might have partly been meant to try and provoke players into attacking the rock throwers, as a sort of mental test to add an extra layer of challenge to the Trial.

Z, please understand that I'm trying to be constructive when I ask the following:

Everybody always says this, but has anyone actually tried it? I keep hearing people say that you can't always fight gods and goddesses because it would grow old. Will it? How do we know? I've never seen a game which let me do that. People say that it's no fun to be incredibly powerful because if you're not constantly threatened, the game is no fun, but that hasn't been my impression.

The way the Incarnate storyline is being written, it comes across as being afraid to put us over and show us as being powerful, as if to budget its empowerment storytelling. But are we really so confident that people would grow tired of being gods nearly instantly? Because I strongly suspect that's one thing which I, personally, will never get tired of. It's just a pity I don't know of any games that let me do that.

And then there's this. I agree. Being empowered by the well loses its lustre when everyone else is ten times as empowered. Promoting this power as desirable because without it we would suck even more just isn't a great motivation. Achieving greatness is a far bigger motivator than staving off embarrassing failure.

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.

No matter how powerful we get, there'll always be enemies who are more powerful than us, otherwise we wouldn't have anything challenging at the highest level.

OK sure I can agree with that but guys with rocks? really?!?!!?? come on.

What the hell happened to Rullaru???? and why aint I fighting him, instead I'm left to duke it out with the running joke called Preatoria.

But the challenging parts don't have to come from the same things we've seen before, just with more levels and higher base to-hit. I like the comment earlier about how the tutorial feels more epic than the Incarnate trials - it's far easier, but it feels bigger because of what everything looks like.

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

I thought that adding "gimmicks" to AVs was a crime agaisnt humanity?

Personally, I view it more of, you have to learn to walk before you can run.

Part of the reality of the Well is that those who are imbued by it tend to be those who pursue it's power. You're being granted it in doses...working your way up to the same power as a figure such as Statesman (in story terms). You're not quite there yet, but you're working on it, lest you end up like Recluse or *shudder* Cole.

Awesome (demi)godlike power is not necessarily something you just wake up one morning and have completely harnessed.

Rularuu is still around...

Just check out the SSA's...

Also, keep in mind, we've basically said that we're tying a bow on the Praetorian content. The showdown with Tyrant is coming. You can count on it.

Which leaves the question...where do we go from there?

I hope we can put him on the naughty step

Ask the Battalion

a) You won't find that comment (or sentiment) from me anywhere. Edit: although I suppose it does matter what you consider a "gimmick". Level shifts don't count in my mind; they're just a lazy way to artificially add challenge when a better mechanic would suffice. Nor does the "huge sack of hit points that you can go to sleep beating down" that Reichsman has.

b) What you quoted was referring to the fact that we're fighting the same enemies we've already beaten. The story had to suffer ("Now they're empowered! Really!") in order to reuse them, and the lore about the Well just keeps getting worse and worse to justify wrapping up the Praetorian storyline via the Incarnate system instead of just a regular level 50 story arc.

c) There's a sense of regression the further you go along because you aren't facing new, bigger things.

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

Right there is the problem. We can already walk, run and even fly. Incarnate abilities should not be about going back to square one. They should be about moving forward against world-shattering threats.

That's exactly what Tyrant and the loyalists are - if they win, then it'd be the end of humanity.

Because villains in comic books never come back after their first defeat by the hero?