CoH: a game for Introverts, too
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Ad Astra,
Posted on: 2012-02-06 24:07 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
On the subject of hami raids and their comparison to incarnate content, when I can get a tell from my brother to head into a zone at a specific time, hit a monster once to get an incarnate component and then go on with my day, THEN and ONLY then will that comparison have any validity.
Be well, people of CoH.
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Thank you and it's completely forgiven. Again, I apologize if I reacted too harshly to that. I just happen to like finding out that I'm wrong sometimes! It means I get to learn something, hehe. Thanks again and no worries!|
Originally Posted by BellaStrega
Sorry, that comment didn't come off as I wanted it to. I wasn't trying to be insulting, and I am sorry that I came across as insulting or trying to say you're some *** who wouldn't admit to being wrong.
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Just quickly... and it looks like Arcanaville touched on this, but I only glimpsed at the first few words of that reply...
I think the main difference of our perspectives was that you were looking at it as endgame/high-end rewards and I was looking at it specifically as what those rewards are.
That's why I disagreed with your initial statement that the two systems and rewards were directly comparable.
It is truly my opinion that the Incarnate Rewards are so greatly different than such previous rewards, and that they relate more to regular level progression and power earning than advanced boosts/loot. So, that is how I judge and value those things.
Since they certainly deemed this stuff the "endgame content"... you are certainly not wrong to see the two as being equivalent in that regard.
I still do not see the two reward systems as being equivalent, but it is simply a matter of opinion/viewpoint and, if I said that you were "wrong" for your previous statement (I can't recall if I did), then I was wrong.
Apart from that, I don't judge and value them in that way, but I now understand how and why you and anybody else would do so.
At least, that's what I came to after reading your reply beforehand, but opted to avoid continuing it, hehe... Lemme see what Arcanaville had to say...
@Zethustra
"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
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Oh, it's completely valid. You can't just go into the Hive and smack Hamidon whenever you want to for a drop, you know?|
Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
On the subject of hami raids and their comparison to incarnate content, when I can get a tell from my brother to head into a zone at a specific time, hit a monster once to get an incarnate component and then go on with my day, THEN and ONLY then will that comparison have any validity.
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You're making a matter of how well the encounter was designed into whether the encounter counts for that philosophy. Intended behavior was not to simply hit Hamidon once and get your reward. Early on you would get an enhancement for every goo you killed, and supergroups would set things up to mass kill goos to get multiple rewards when the intention was one reward to a player. They changed the design to prevent that, just as they changed the design again to make it harder to just go into the Hive and smack Hamidon once to get your reward.
I wonder how Hamidon would have been designed if they'd worked Leagues into the game at launch?
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I agree that the incarnate rewards are so much better than any previous endgame rewards (HOs and SHOs primarily) even before all the nerfs there's practically no comparison in terms of quality.|
Originally Posted by Electric-Knight
At least, that's what I came to after reading your reply beforehand, but opted to avoid continuing it, hehe... Lemme see what Arcanaville had to say...
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Your reaction didn't seem harsh.
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Sorry, I thought you were suggesting that meaningful solo progress should only take a matter of hours, like going into a mission alone and coming out with your pockets bursting with rewards (my opinion is, solo rewards should have their own pace of rewards, and that pace should be comparatively very slow. This shouldn't be an "I WIN" button).|
Originally Posted by rsclark
That is how time is measured, sorry if that bothers you. If you want to break the examples down to minutes or seconds, so much the better for comparative purposes, but "week" is worthless, because it gives virtually no information in regards to how much time is spent playing.
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That is like the third time today I have misunderstood someone on the forum, and I swear I'm reading everything! I think I've also broken my record for number of posts in one day. Correlation?
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For what it's worth I don't think our misunderstanding was your responsibility. What I said lacked enough context to come across with my full intended meaning, and it was a terrible joke anyway.
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Originally Posted by Captain-Electric
That is like the third time today I have misunderstood someone on the forum, and I swear I'm reading everything! I think I've also broken my record for number of posts in one day. Correlation?
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For the record, I don't think it is a matter of "in retrospect", it's simply a matter of how I, personally, judge, value and classify certain things.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
That's in retrospect. What would you have told the players back then, who said that Hami enhancement was the only end game progress this game had, and it was locked behind participating in a huge trial they didn't want to participate in. Because there were players making that argument then. Would you honestly have told them that no, in fact this isn't really end game progress and so they had no foundation for their objection?
While the Incarnate system is definitely a much more developed and intricate system, that's a matter of detail. The question for the players themselves has always been is there an identifiable end game progression mechanism, and is it gated? Its clear to me that HOs do satisfy the notion that the devs were willing to tell players that some elements of the end game would be gated behind teamed content. That willingness to say it is the best indicator of their design philosophy, not the comparison to raw numbers. Moreover, they said it more clearly when the LRSF was released. There, they actually used the words end game, and stated that while this game (at the time) was not a game with an involved end game, they felt it was reasonable to have some end game content for the highest performance players, and that end game content was going to be teamed as that was the most obvious way to create high end and high difficulty content at the time. If people are looking for proof that the devs in the past have been willing to lock what they call end game content behind teamed tasks, the LRSF is unambiguous proof of that. The incarnate system is vastly larger and qualitatively different of course, but that doesn't change the fact that the LRSF was proof the devs were *willing* to lock some end game stuff behind teamed content. And until the markets showed up the only way to get HOs was from large raids or teamed task forces, or have someone give one to you. There was no way for a solo player to get them on their own. That means the sum total of the Hamidon encounter and the LRSF and STF are proof the devs have in the past have been willing to create an end game, albeit a small one, which was predominantly locked behind teamed content. Whether that was the right decision or not doesn't change the fact that they did make it once before. |
I wasn't thinking of the Incarnate Rewards as endgame content. It's funny, because I can understand how some people would scratch their heads at that... And that's fine. It's not an important distinction, in my book, but now I understand how others see and classify such things and that makes some sense.
To me, the advanced progression system of the Incarnate Rewards best relates to leveling up and earning powers. Why? Because it is a bunch of pools of powers with various choices/options and that is something that (just about) everyone and anyone playing the game jumps after. And that is why I see it as different from boost that come from a particular raid and why I wasn't placing them in the same category.
It's something that so many more people would be attracted to than Hami-Os.
Anyway, I'm not saying any of this stuff now as a rebuttal or to refute anything anyone is saying.
This is actually where I was coming from when the entire system was revealed and initial feedback was being given about the means to acquire the rewards.
All of the above is why I felt it was different from anything before and why it should be open to more than just multi-team play.
@Zethustra
"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
I remember the goo change, but nothing that ever stopped me from leeching with my show up at hold phase, get HO, give it to brother cuz I didn't need it plan.
I'll agree that it was supposed to be a raid encounter but it was certainly never that for me. Incarnate content at its introduction was the first time I had encountered raiding-only-for-phat-loot-soloists-can-suck-it syndrome. (Yes, CoH is still the only MMO I've played longer than two weeks.)
Be well, people of CoH.
Oh, and just to acknowledge this question!
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Absolutely not!|
Originally Posted by BellaStrega
Do you think I'm arguing against the idea of various advancement paths?
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Our exchange came entirely from me just having one tiny bit of disagreement with what you said.
After discussing it, I see how we were looking at it differently and now I understand why you said what you said.
I still see it differently and disagree that one means the other... but... you are not incorrect to say what you said.
Also...
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Originally Posted by BellaStrega
I specifically focused on the numbers aspect because people were saying that "nothing like level shifts existed before," which is incorrect. Despite the lack of an explicit level shift, enhancing one's powers will have a similar net effect of enabling one to fight against higher-level enemies with fewer complications. It is true that no explicit level shift mechanic has existed before, but similar outcomes were achieved in the past via other means. How am I supposed to explain my position on this without referring to game mechanics and numbers?
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Still, to be honest, I found the discussion and the result to be rewarding.
@Zethustra
"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
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I think that Hamidon was always meant to be that, but they never managed to design it that way. The later change to it to limit the Hive to 50 players was an attempt to get away from this, but since it was still set up as an open world raid, people still leech. At least I recall this happening when I was doing Hamidon raids in 2010.
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Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
I remember the goo change, but nothing that ever stopped me from leeching with my show up at hold phase, get HO, give it to brother cuz I didn't need it plan.
I'll agree that it was supposed to be a raid encounter but it was certainly never that for me. Incarnate content at its introduction was the first time I had encountered raiding-only-for-phat-loot-soloists-can-suck-it syndrome. (Yes, CoH is still the only MMO I've played longer than two weeks.) |
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Aha, so I had it just a bit backwards!|
Originally Posted by BellaStrega
Or in other words: How you view incarnate advancement now is how I've pretty much always viewed endgame content, whether it was well-designed or not.
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Yeah, I never saw the previous types of endgame rewards as such. And now I see the Incarnate Rewards as such...
It's funny, but the reason really boils down to that I enjoy options and don't ever really find myself concerned with increase in power. Obviously more options tends to increase my power, but my enjoyment comes from having more that I can choose to do at any moment, rather than having greater numerical statistics to do things quicker/easier.
If I have to put some effort/work into increasing my numbers a bit... I generally won't bother.
If the rewards to the same effort/work is to get some new options, then I probably will.
I'd say this is especially true for me in CoH, where you can feel quite powerful and be so successful without anything beyond the basics.
Not that there's a single thing wrong with anyone else's personal enjoyment... that's just how mine seems to operate.
@Zethustra
"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
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I find that increased power gives you more options. It's just not as explicit, as it's not "I have a new power to shoot you with" but more "I can use my existing powers more frequently, effectively, etc. and engage in riskier play with greater chance of survival." Obviously, there's not really much in the game that can match the ability to have permanent status protection on characters that didn't have it before. That's a huge game changer.|
Originally Posted by Electric-Knight
Aha, so I had it just a bit backwards!
Yeah, I never saw the previous types of endgame rewards as such. And now I see the Incarnate Rewards as such... It's funny, but the reason really boils down to that I enjoy options and don't ever really find myself concerned with increase in power. Obviously more options tends to increase my power, but my enjoyment comes from having more that I can choose to do at any moment, rather than having greater numerical statistics to do things quicker/easier. If I have to put some effort/work into increasing my numbers a bit... I generally won't bother. If the rewards to the same effort/work is to get some new options, then I probably will. I'd say this is especially true for me in CoH, where you can feel quite powerful and be so successful without anything beyond the basics. Not that there's a single thing wrong with anyone else's personal enjoyment... that's just how mine seems to operate. |
For example, IOs make my DM/DA scrapper into a passable tank, and solves a lot of the weaknesses in both powersets. Of course, a lot of that is geared so I can run ten toggles at once and fight without keeling over, but still.
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As for Hamidon raids vs. Incarnate trials, I think the main difference for me was simple: Hamidon raids didn't offer anything I cared about, and the presence of that zone was easily ignored (I've never even been there just for a peek). The Incarnate system does offer something I care about: Advancement. New powers. New content. The difference between a level 50 and a level 50 with a little plus next to his name is staggering, and that does visually impact my gameplay.
So yeah, for me the two systems are so different they barely belong in the same universe. Hamidon was easy to ignore, Incarnate trials are painful to ignore. This is a balance that other games have managed much better than CoH does: Sure, raid content exists. It's content I will never see, and loot I will never have, but in other games they have managed to segregate the whole thing to the point where I just don't worry about it. In CoH I do worry about it.
I don't like having content I can never take part in rubbed in my face constantly.
Thought for the day:
"Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment."
=][=
I hate to say it, but that's probably an intended feature, Slaunyeh.
Like Arcanaville and I both said, it's about qualitative improvements.
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Oh god no. If anything, I think trial speed is too fast, but there's no getting that genie back in the bottle.
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Originally Posted by Captain-Electric
Sorry, I thought you were suggesting that meaningful solo progress should only take a matter of hours
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This is true. But honestly, I think the problem here is that the iTrials are too rewarding, not that DA is too slow. A T4 per day (even more, at your rate) seem too fast for me
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Originally Posted by DreadShinobi
And I can get 6 T4 incarnate powers in 5 days doing incarnate trials. :S
I plan to do the DA content occassionally late at night when people aren't on to do trials, but the progression rate won't be remotely comparable to how fast you can incarnate out a toon via trials. |
What you chose to see Hamidon raids as is not relevant to how they were intended, which was endgame content with what were at the time fairly powerful rewards. It's been overshadowed intentionally with further additions such as IOs and the Incarnate system, but what you're saying here has little connection to accuracy.
Your analogy is also false, as Hamidon enhancements have also been part of the game since the beginning, and they did have a fairly profound impact on gameplay, especially given that some of the balance issues that led to the global defense reduction and ED were caused by extensive HO slotting.
Anyway, no one is saying that HOs are just like Incarnate powers. My own point was that the devs have in the past designed around the idea of gating rewards behind raid-level content. That this was not a new decision or direction for the game.
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I stand corrected on the time WoW started. But ever since I started playing CoH (just after the first anniversary), the mantra I have repeatedly heard has been "Wow has lots of raids, why don't we?" from the fans of that playstyle. And since I have never heard anyone claim CoH invented raiding, I assume it was at least a known element of MMORPGS when the Hami was created.|
Originally Posted by BellaStrega
There were no "WoW refugees" on April 27, 2004, when City of Heroes launched, with a level 40 Hamidon raid in the Hive. Hamidon was upgraded to 50 when levels 41-50 were added in issue 1. WoW launched on November 23, 2004, 194 days later. It was one of the few pieces of repeatable content that existed at level 50 for some time, for that matter.
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What you chose to see Hamidon raids as is not relevant to how they were intended, which was endgame content with what were at the time fairly powerful rewards. It's been overshadowed intentionally with further additions such as IOs and the Incarnate system, but what you're saying here has little connection to accuracy. Your analogy is also false, as Hamidon enhancements have also been part of the game since the beginning, and they did have a fairly profound impact on gameplay, especially given that some of the balance issues that led to the global defense reduction and ED were caused by extensive HO slotting. Anyway, no one is saying that HOs are just like Incarnate powers. My own point was that the devs have in the past designed around the idea of gating rewards behind raid-level content. That this was not a new decision or direction for the game. |
Maybe I am misunderstanding your point. The main discussion in this thread has been team vs solo options for the Incarnate system. Are you bringing up the Hami raid as an example of how that model has been tried before and failed? Because I certainly wouldn't consider it a success, even back before the introduction of IOs.
"Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to let you in."
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I can get thousands of shards doing nothing. So I guess the Incarnate system is equally exploitable.
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Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
On the subject of hami raids and their comparison to incarnate content, when I can get a tell from my brother to head into a zone at a specific time, hit a monster once to get an incarnate component and then go on with my day, THEN and ONLY then will that comparison have any validity.
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Thank you.
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Yes, other games had raids prior to City of Heroes.|
Originally Posted by Remidi
And since I have never heard anyone claim CoH invented raiding, I assume it was at least a known element of MMORPGS when the Hami was created.
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| Maybe I am misunderstanding your point. The main discussion in this thread has been team vs solo options for the Incarnate system. Are you bringing up the Hami raid as an example of how that model has been tried before and failed? Because I certainly wouldn't consider it a success, even back before the introduction of IOs. |
Perhaps my perspective comes from being involved with people who have been active in Hamidon raids, but I am not sure the ability to fill up the Hive and defeat Hamidon even when the game is nearly 8 years old qualifies as a "failure."
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That'll get you, what, a T2 in 7.5 months?
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I can get thousands of shards doing nothing. So I guess the Incarnate system is equally exploitable.
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Be well, people of CoH.
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Since you can get T2 solo in under two weeks just by doing five tip missions a day, I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion. It takes a long time to get that alpha slot going due to low drop rate, but that long time is a matter of days, not weeks or months. I was able to get my T1 in three days, which included confirming my hero alignment once and doing each SSA chapter twice, while set on x4-x6. After I confirmed my hero alignment the second time, I had 10 shards left to go toward my T2, and that was within five days. I haven't really played the character much since due to another MMORPG (aside from speed running SSAs to get once/week rewards), but I can probably finish up my T2 fairly quickly the same way.
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Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
That'll get you, what, a T2 in 7.5 months?
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The hyperbole tag should have been apparent.
/but hey, on the plus side, new exploit to ponder!
Be well, people of CoH.
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