City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

In Regards to Incarnate Trials...

Agent White

By Agent White,
Posted on: 2011-12-21 22:33 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex View Post
Let me remind you once again that it was the developers, not the players, who were prepared to nerf rewards in some trials because others weren't being run enough.
Most players will never want to nerf anything unless it's negatively affecting them personally, which is also why they'll -fight- against any such nerfs that affect them, whether it's better for them in the end or not, so sometimes the Devs do have to be the bad guys. Any player attempts to do such are always met with snark and vitriol because players aren't allowed to dictate to other players 'how to play this game'. So really it's a no-win situation when it comes to 'doing bad things for the good of the game in the long run', because players will always be petulant children.

 

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Originally Posted by Wing_Leader View Post
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that it doesn't really matter where these sorts of gimmicks appear, be it TFs or iTrials, they are weak sauce game design elements just the same. A lazy way of delivering a challenge no matter which part of the content they affect.

Special text wouldn't be necessary if they didn't resort to lame "tricks" to turn the iTrials into a puzzle-solving exercise reminiscent of a Rubik's Cube. LLR'U'RBL and you can take down Penelope; anything else at that stage and you just end up with a cube more mixed up than when you started (i.e., you lose).
You might also consider -why- they feel these gimmicks are necessary. I'd venture a guess it's because any group of end game characters can support each other enough and hit the hard caps that if they -don't- cheat players will just steamroll the content. You can't keep making everything 'bigger numbers' without running into the ceiling cap.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Wing_Leader View Post
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that it doesn't really matter where these sorts of gimmicks appear, be it TFs or iTrials, they are weak sauce game design elements just the same. A lazy way of delivering a challenge no matter which part of the content they affect.

Special text wouldn't be necessary if they didn't resort to lame "tricks" to turn the iTrials into a puzzle-solving exercise reminiscent of a Rubik's Cube. LLR'U'RBL and you can take down Penelope; anything else at that stage and you just end up with a cube more mixed up than when you started (i.e., you lose).
So what sort of trick, puzzle, and gimmick-free AV fights would you consider to be a "challenge"?

Without an answer to that question, it seems that your type are the ones being elitists. You're all judging the iTrials from on-high and finding them all wanting, without making any suggestions that would improve things or be superior "challenges" compared to what we currently have. If you don't like the iTrials then that's your prerogative, but to say you don't like them because of X, Y, or Z and then be mute as to what you think would make for better mechanics is just weak sauce.

 

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Originally Posted by Agent White View Post
You can't keep making everything 'bigger numbers' without running into the ceiling cap.
And they should know by now how people feel about Reichsman.

'I don't like the look of it at all,' said the King: 'however, it may kiss my hand if it likes.'
'I'd rather not,' the Cat remarked.
'Don't be impertinent,' said the King, 'and don't look at me like that!' He got behind Alice as he spoke.
'A cat may look at a king,' said Alice.

 

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Originally Posted by Aneko View Post
And they should know by now how people feel about Reichsman.
It should also be noted that while people will often lose interest in easy after a time they also will most of the time chose doing the 'easy sure-thing' over 'challenging with chance of defeat/failure'.

Not trying to direct this at anyone. It's just something to note really and doesn't just apply to online games but to most of life in general. The 'hardcore' or 'extreme' (or whatever) group that wants difficult/challenging is vanishingly small compared to the group that wants easy. And heck, even when you give those folks a challenge it's not always the type of challenge they want.

MA Arcs: Yarmouth 1509 and 58812

 

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Originally Posted by Fugacity View Post
So what sort of trick, puzzle, and gimmick-free AV fights would you consider to be a "challenge"?

Without an answer to that question, it seems that your type are the ones being elitists. You're all judging the iTrials from on-high and finding them all wanting, without making any suggestions that would improve things or be superior "challenges" compared to what we currently have. If you don't like the iTrials then that's your prerogative, but to say you don't like them because of X, Y, or Z and then be mute as to what you think would make for better mechanics is just weak sauce.
This would be my point exactly:

The devs have said on occasion that we players always seem to trivialize challenges they make for us in a matter of months. We already had people soloing +4/x8, dual box-soloing ITF, and rushing the whole AV group at once in STF and LRSF, all before incarnates became available. Any standard challenge (like debuffs, damage, or mezzes) would be shrugged off by groups of 8, let alone groups of 24, so the devs can only resort to ridiculous challenges (Mark of Death, Sequestering, etc)

 

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TBH you guys are kinda lucky. The mechanics aren't so stupidly hard or time wasting that you can't win by pure DPS.

In Everquest 2, we are now 90 and I use to make money soloing old raids. These, at 80, use to take full 24 teams of good players and I ran around soloing them at 90 because of level/gear progression.

But even at 90 there are a few fights that aren't trivialized because of stupid mechanics. One is a dragon who, from 80 to 20%, at every 10% will become invincible to all damage. A member of the raid will get a buff. They have to run across a room filled with little wisps that knock you around to click on a statue. There is one for each AT, so you need at least 1 of every AT. The dragon is invincible until they are clicked, no buts.

That is an example of a stupid gimmick that you can't trivialize as you grow stronger. Sure the fight may be easy now, but one person goes AFK or LDs and the raid is basically doomed to keep slapping away until kingdom come.

But another mechanic which can be trivialized is the fight with a giant monster. Normally he blocks all damage from attacks less than level 87 and he was a level 80 raid mob.

The way to beat him was use an item which would teleport you inside him. Kill the monsters in his belly, loot them for an item, and keep doing that until you are spat out. You then had farm enough of these (about 50 to take him from full health to dead), go back inside him and use them.

Or...at 90, with some of the new AAs, debuff his protection and slap away at him. He dies without any need to go inside him now.

What you guys have, it seems to me, is mechanic B, with the exception of Penny. Nightstar/Siege/the escape have been trivialized because you have gotten a lot stronger. You are at +3 they are only 54, a 1 level difference. Lambada, sure the badges are a bit of a pain, but Maruader enraged ain't that hard, nor is getting the badges.

Basically, what I am saying is you guys have good mechanics at the moment and the devs are improving on them. They ain't doing some so unfair as to make it so only 1 person can let you keep damaging the mob. Even on Penny all you have to do is taunt the storm voids.

And eventually, this content will be trivialized as you grow more and more powerful.

 

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Originally Posted by Agent White View Post
Most players will never want to nerf anything unless it's negatively affecting them personally, which is also why they'll -fight- against any such nerfs that affect them, whether it's better for them in the end or not, so sometimes the Devs do have to be the bad guys. Any player attempts to do such are always met with snark and vitriol because players aren't allowed to dictate to other players 'how to play this game'. So really it's a no-win situation when it comes to 'doing bad things for the good of the game in the long run', because players will always be petulant children.

The fact that players normally don't support nerfs has no bearing on whether nerfing is always good. Nerfing the BAF and Lambda rewards--and specifically, the way they were being nerfed, which penalized you for gaining too much XP relative to trial completions--was not going to fix the much deeper issue of people staying away from the remaining trials.

 

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Originally Posted by Fugacity View Post
So what sort of trick, puzzle, and gimmick-free AV fights would you consider to be a "challenge"?

Without an answer to that question, it seems that your type are the ones being elitists. You're all judging the iTrials from on-high and finding them all wanting, without making any suggestions that would improve things or be superior "challenges" compared to what we currently have. If you don't like the iTrials then that's your prerogative, but to say you don't like them because of X, Y, or Z and then be mute as to what you think would make for better mechanics is just weak sauce.
That's a fair question. I have a mental whiteboard of ideas I would love to explore, if only I could quit my day job and go into MMO game design full time. Granted, most of my ideas would not retrofit into CoX given its current limitations (it is level-based for one thing). But while I don't have the resources to design my ideal replacement for CoX, that doesn't mean I don't actively think about this, in some detail, on a more or less continuous basis. However, I don't feel these forums are the appropriate place to discuss them, mostly because they wouldn't be constructive. That nevertheless does not invalidate the complaints directed at the current design philosophy of the Incarnate trials. I have, in other threads, spoken about the concept of multiple solution vectors, where a "problem", "obstacle", or "challenge" can be solved in numerous ways, rather than just through the direct application of blunt-force dps (Penelope is no different from this; adding the need to taunt another mob to a specific location so you can smack it with overwhelming dps in order to open the gate that allows overwhelming dps to actually affect Penelope is not a sophisticated design development IMO). The only objection I've ever heard to the notion of multiple solution vectors is that they are hard to design properly. Yeah, well, nobody said good game design was easy.

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Originally Posted by Trilby View Post
And eventually, this content will be trivialized as you grow more and more powerful.
But isn't that sort of the problem? "End-game" content shouldn't become trivial just because of level increases. Elaborate tactical problems, which require coordination, good timing, and good improvisational skills when unexpected wrinkles arise, are not invalidated by large level gaps. If you base all trial problems on the application of dps, then you almost guarantee that said trials become trivialized as the level gap increases. That's where such a primitive approach to trial (game) design really starts to reveal its grave weaknesses. But if you think/design with a little more creativity, you can come up with game problems that can't always be solved just with more damage, or for which having more damage available wouldn't necessarily help much. The current crop of gimmicky "puzzles" is an attempt to do this, perhaps, but they are so binary in nature (either you do exactly the one right thing or the gimmick defeats you), that they only barely scratch the surface of what can be done.

NOR-RAD - 50 Rad/Rad/Elec Defender - Nikki Stryker - 50 DM/SR/Weap Scrapper - Iron Marauder - 50 Eng/Eng/Pow Blaster
Lion of Might - 50 SS/Inv/Eng Tanker - Darling Nikkee - 50 (+3) StJ/WP/Eng Brute - Ice Giant Kurg - 36 Ice/Storm Controller

 

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I'd call Recluse's towers a gimmick (in the negative sense) long before I'd whine about an OHKO or location-based auto-hit power, but neither of those is bad design.

PenanceжTriage

 

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Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex View Post
The fact that players normally don't support nerfs has no bearing on whether nerfing is always good. Nerfing the BAF and Lambda rewards--and specifically, the way they were being nerfed, which penalized you for gaining too much XP relative to trial completions--was not going to fix the much deeper issue of people staying away from the remaining trials.
If it has no bearing then you don't need to bring it up when you bring up the nerf.

The way they were being nerfed was just removing Emp merits. You could still get salvage drops, it just meant a less reliable way of getting a Very rare, and that's what upset people. It's true it wouldn't have entirely solved the problem, the higher trials needed tweaking (some might argue Underground still does). But it wasn't a wholly bad idea, it was simply bad because it was their -only- idea.

 

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Originally Posted by Agent White View Post
If it has no bearing then you don't need to bring it up when you bring up the nerf.

The way they were being nerfed was just removing Emp merits. You could still get salvage drops, it just meant a less reliable way of getting a Very rare, and that's what upset people. It's true it wouldn't have entirely solved the problem, the higher trials needed tweaking (some might argue Underground still does). But it wasn't a wholly bad idea, it was simply bad because it was their -only- idea.

I brought up the nerf to counter the idea expressed in this thread and others that people not running enough trials is an invention of the message board posters. The developers raised this issue, and the proof was the intended nerf, followed up by a fairly explicit statement of such.