Incarnates, Future Content, VIP v.s. Freemium, Battalion, Ambiguous Lore Justifications
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2012-07-17 10:07 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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1 by your definition; 6 by my definition (T3 in every slot)| How many characters have you fully incarnated? |
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| How many characters have you incarnated? |
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| How many characters have you rolled with the intention of making them Full Incarnates? |
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| Do you have any characters that you, for whatever reason, are not going to make Incarnates? |
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
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None.|
Originally Posted by Bronze Knight
How many characters have you fully incarnated?
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Originally Posted by Bronze Knight
How many characters have you incarnated?
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Originally Posted by Bronze Knight
How many characters have you rolled with the intention of making them Full Incarnates?
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Originally Posted by Bronze Knight
Do you have any characters that you, for whatever reason, are not going to make Incarnates?
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Originally Posted by Bronze Knight
What all of this boils down to is how much content is going to be made that only VIP's can use and then how many of those VIP's are going to play it? There are many on these forums that screamed bloody murder when they couldn't solo their way to full incarnates. And now some of those same people are still saying "More solo content! I don't want to farm the same story ark over and over." I can understand this. But I ask you, when do we stop adding solo incarnate content?
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* No, I really really really really really don't like leagues. The biggest reason is that I don't feel like a superhero and certainly not like godlike incarnate. I feel like a grunt. Cannon fodder. Cog in the machine. And I disappear completely in a cloud of effects and scripted instructions.
Still @Shadow Kitty
"I became Archvillain before Statesman nerfed himself!"
1. Three of my characters are full T4 in those slots
2. I have one character which is T3 in everything except hybrid but don't intend on doing anything else on him for awhile
3. I was going to make my staff stalker incarnate but lost interest, my current water blast corruptor may be incarnated depending on how I feel at lvl 50
4. I have a number of lvl 50 defenders I wont be incarnating as I have long lost interest in playing them.
Oedipus and Fritzy hit my feelings right on the head. My VIP status is counting down largely because of how disappointing the Incarnate experience turned out to be. DA was supposed to fix it, but it just replaced the forced teaming with a double helping of repetitive grinding.
As for my answers
1) Zero. I have one character with 5 T4s (back when I was still trying to learn to enjoy trials), but none with 6.
2) Eleven. Most of those have only gone as far as Alpha, though.
3) This is a little vague. I put Incarnate slots into my Mids builds in the hopes that someday there will be a way to get them there that I'll actually want to use. As of right now, though, I generally go in knowing that I won't be bothering with anything past Alpha and design planning for the day when I go Premium and won't have that either.
4) Right now I have one character that I am running through the DA grind out of morbid curiosity. (15 commons in a row and counting) Otherwise I'm not really that interested at this point.
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The first two questions, by the definitions given, are three and four. The second two are harder to answer: I'll incarnate things as I get to them. I have every intention of slowly developing incarnate status for about half a dozen characters, but it was only last week when I decided to add a character to that list: my Katana/Invuln. There's also a few characters I'm on the fence on, but I do know I'll never fully incarnate out all my alts. But I see no point in making decisions far in advance of when I'll have the opportunity to do something about it.
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Originally Posted by Bronze Knight
Some definitions
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1. None. Nor is it likely I ever will, as T4s seem to take far more focus and effort than I'm likely to put forward.|
Originally Posted by Bronze Knight
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2. 5 or 6. EDIT: Actually, looking at the definition a second time: 1 or 2, though I'd personally define "Incarnated" as just having the Alpha slot with something in it.
3. None. Even if the definition of "Fully Incarnate" were diminished to T3s, I don't specifically "roll" characters with the Incarnate system in mind.
4. No. Just as I don't specifically plan to make characters Incarnates, I also don't specifically plan to NOT make them Incarnates.
Goodbye may seem forever
Farewell is like the end
But in my heart's the memory
And there you'll always be
-- The Fox and the Hound
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Fully Incarnated 0, though two are getting close|
Originally Posted by Bronze Knight
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Incarnated 4 (including those nearly full)
I got two more that I like to incarnate not fully incarnate
I have 50+ other characters that will never make the 50 mark let alone incarnate.
So yes if all content fromnow one was Incarnate stuff then I would be dissapointed.
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Originally Posted by Bronze Knight
A
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4
0
Dozens
@bpphantom
The Defenders of Paragon
KGB Special Section 8
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Originally Posted by Bronze Knight
How many characters have you fully incarnated?
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| How many characters have you incarnated? |
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| How many characters have you rolled with the intention of making them Full Incarnates? |
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| Do you have any characters that you, for whatever reason, are not going to make Incarnates? |
[*]How many characters have you fully incarnated?..............None
[*]How many characters have you incarnated?.....................None
[*]How many characters have you rolled with the intention of making them Full Incarnates?....None.
[*]Do you have any characters that you, for whatever reason, are not going to make Incarnates?
Probably all of them, because I like alting too much and I usually have to restrain myself from making new toons. I of course won't rule any of them out, but none were planned to be incarnated nor do I have solid plans yet to incarbate any of them.
I can understand that many players like end-game content, but it seems like drawing a line and saying "only 50s (and 'up') may cross" is segregating the population - bad idea in a game with low population. More than once on a low-pop server I've logged in and found most zones pretty empty except for Pocket D (no, that wasn't on Virtue! 
) or RWZ.
I had one fully incarnated character prior to the release of Hybrid, but during and ever since, this character has been on a Non-VIP account
Since then, I have managed to make an Incarnate character (unlocked all slots but Hybrid, have a T3 in each), and have unlocked Alpha+ on a couple of others.
Premium accounts can't edit signatures.
Huh.
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Except that if it's JUST your character, it can't be a threat/issue on the same level or scale as Praetoria/Mot/Battalion, yes? Because the whole idea around those is that they're problems that are too big for any one person to handle.|
Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
Here's the thing with incarnate content that ties to this. We're more powerful. We're tapping into a source of power that makes us godlike, right?
So why are we getting saddled with content that says "You CANNOT do this alone, you need more than a team's worth of other people?" OK, sure, some threats might require that... but the whole feel of "You're powerful" is turned on its head. You fight from 1-50 with only SOME (task forces) things requiring you to team up. YOU are "the star," as it were. Then you hit incarnates, and guess what? You're more powerful, but you're a wuss. you can't handle this alone. You need a league of some size to wipe your nose, you're so incompetent and underpowered. We're not sure how a Hellion with Brawl hasn't embarrassed you now. That's *wrong.* That's almost insulting. And what made my jaw drop is having the devs basically say, after trial after trial after trial was released, "Oh, solo/small team content? We didn't know you'd want it. Why would you want that?" and getting DA months later. I mean, I *get* wanting to add an "end game." Great. I even get more raid/trial size things - we don't have many of those, or didn't before incarnates. But this focus on nothing-but-trials? Then we finally get DA... and next up, a *whole new* trial, with a *whole new* type of iXP... and absolutely nothing to do solo/small team to gain it. Back to square one. Yes, I want *my* character to face challenges. I want *my* character,or *my* character (and a small team) to undertake a special strike mission inot enemy territory... I don't want to be "Player #987598 in Trial # 87549876." If we're doing that, why the *hell* are we bothering with more power anyway? The trials make me lose interest *quickly.* Which is why so few of my characters get very far in the system. Give me something where I'm getting stronger because *I* have to face this stuff on my own, and I'll have more characters running it... at my pace, when I have the time to. |
I mean it's fine if you want something for just your character to deal with, but you should know that it likely won't be AS important as the stuff that requires groups.
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It seems to me that the whole idea around becoming an Incarnate is to become 'big enough', as it were, to handle such threats on your own.
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Originally Posted by Issen
Except that if it's JUST your character, it can't be a threat/issue on the same level or scale as Praetoria/Mot/Battalion, yes? Because the whole idea around those is that they're problems that are too big for any one person to handle.
I mean it's fine if you want something for just your character to deal with, but you should know that it likely won't be AS important as the stuff that requires groups. |
Goodbye may seem forever
Farewell is like the end
But in my heart's the memory
And there you'll always be
-- The Fox and the Hound
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And SOME stuff like that is fine. |
Originally Posted by Issen
Except that if it's JUST your character, it can't be a threat/issue on the same level or scale as Praetoria/Mot/Battalion, yes? Because the whole idea around those is that they're problems that are too big for any one person to handle.
I mean it's fine if you want something for just your character to deal with, but you should know that it likely won't be AS important as the stuff that requires groups. |
Almost all of it? No.
Honestly, we've fought Antimatter/Neuron/Battle Maiden/etc. all solo before. We've beaten them before. Repeatedly, in some cases. Sure, they're getting jacked up on Incarnate Juice... but *so are we.*
In fact, we're getting it directly, not secondhand from Tyrant.
So why does it make the LEAST bit of sense that we've gone from "I can solo this guy on SOs, thanks" to "Hey, I need 23 other people around to be able to leave a scratch on him? And him? And her? And him? And him?" It makes it almost seem like Incarnate-ing is a powering DOWN, in that case, of your character.
*A* bigger threat to cap it off? Sure. Even *A* bigger trial partway through - Underground, dealing with Praetoridon, for instance - sure, absolutely. Having it be absolutely everything? No.
1. One character with T4s in every slot.
2. Four characters with lesser levels of incarnate powers, mostly just Alpha.
3. Zero characters created with incarnate stuff in mind.
4. Most of my characters, including 50s, will never see the inside of an incarnate trial.
From playing a lot of different MMOs, I generally hate these add-on end-game advancement systems that give your characters' powers which are unrelated to their real abilities, slowly transforming everyone into generic tankmages.
I run incarnate trials when and if they sound like fun, and I do enjoy most of them, but getting specific incarnate powers is never my actual goal.
My typical character uses level 30 IOs and likes to exemplar back to the levels where even ancillary power pools don't work.
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But don't forget that we're getting it by the back door, to avoid the Well having any control over us - the loyalists are getting it directly from the champion of the Well who's been given enough power to conquer the multiverse.
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Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
Honestly, we've fought Antimatter/Neuron/Battle Maiden/etc. all solo before. We've beaten them before. Repeatedly, in some cases. Sure, they're getting jacked up on Incarnate Juice... but *so are we.*
In fact, we're getting it directly, not secondhand from Tyrant. |
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
Yeah, we're picking up batteries one by one. The Loyalists got to take hold of a power line. Different levels of 'juice'.
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What about the Incarnate system as its actually implemented gives you that idea?
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Originally Posted by Tenzhi
It seems to me that the whole idea around becoming an Incarnate is to become 'big enough', as it were, to handle such threats on your own.
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Your definitions of "Incarnated" seem a bit demanding. By that definition, I have not a single one, despite having I think three or four characters with something in their Alpha slot.|
Originally Posted by Bronze Knight
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Moreover, I really, REALLY hope we don't go down the traditional MMO path of end game power creep, where all the new stuff shows up on top of the old stuff where you have to have the old stuff to even participate and where you can only participate in the new stuff and nothing else if you want to make progress. This is a game that the development team can never win.
I really, REALLY liked CoH's old "end game," where new "end game" content just showed up as more stuff for level 50s to do without necessarily stringing them along a never-ending but rather very linear path. I didn't have to have defeated the Hamidon in order to run the Statesman TF, nor did I have to have beaten Terra to attempt the Hamidon. We were given choice in what to do and pretty much anyone who was over 45 could participate in all of it and contribute meaningfully.
The last thing I want to see is a constantly sliding fake level cap, basically.
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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.
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Of course, that's one perspective. There were a lot of people who for a long time complained that the LRSF and STF were fairly exclusive, and there existed no way to build power to eventually beat it if you couldn't already beat it. Until the invention system came along and created a treadmill that wasn't directly connected to it, but indirectly provided just such a progressional path.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Your definitions of "Incarnated" seem a bit demanding. By that definition, I have not a single one, despite having I think three or four characters with something in their Alpha slot.
Moreover, I really, REALLY hope we don't go down the traditional MMO path of end game power creep, where all the new stuff shows up on top of the old stuff where you have to have the old stuff to even participate and where you can only participate in the new stuff and nothing else if you want to make progress. This is a game that the development team can never win. I really, REALLY liked CoH's old "end game," where new "end game" content just showed up as more stuff for level 50s to do without necessarily stringing them along a never-ending but rather very linear path. I didn't have to have defeated the Hamidon in order to run the Statesman TF, nor did I have to have beaten Terra to attempt the Hamidon. We were given choice in what to do and pretty much anyone who was over 45 could participate in all of it and contribute meaningfully. The last thing I want to see is a constantly sliding fake level cap, basically. |
People don't want treadmills, until they need treadmills. And there's no such thing as never needing one for all players: unless the content is so easy everyone can do it with their eyes closed, reasonably difficult high end content will eventually escape the capabilities of some players. And then its either provide a path to grow, which inevitably creates some creep, or tell them tough luck.
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Personally, I was just fine with never being able to complete the Statesman TF, and a lot of the reason for this was that it WASN'T sold as the logical progression of the game from level 50 to level 50STF. To me, it simply represented a higher difficulty setting for those that found Invincible too easy. I mean, I was still struggling with Tenacious, so I really felt no need to do something even harder. This is no longer the case, because the game no longer "ends" at 50.
But sideways from that, this creates a problem Matt Miller himself predicted - you can't create content faster than people consume it, and that's exactly the situation a sliding level cap creates, even if the level cap is fake. This was the argument given for why the game didn't raise its cap to 60 - you'd still be there in a week and the development team would need several months to make more content. Matt Miller's solution of making this into a "system" instead of providing content strikes me as nothing more than choosing to ignore the problem and push forward anyway. If they can't make content fast enough, then they just won't and we'll simply repeat the same one Trial until the next one comes out.
However, the higher up the chain of iTrials we go, the farther from what I'm capable of achieving we go, and a game which was once accessible and which once held back level 50 content because most people didn't have a level 50, now seems to be fully in the throes of level creep.
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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.
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... at times, that's an exceptionally apt description of the system.
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
But don't forget that we're getting it by the back door,
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Ewwwww. That's a mental image I did NOT need.
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Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
... at times, that's an exceptionally apt description of the system.
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But it was such a *perfect* setup. >.>
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Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
Ewwwww. That's a mental image I did NOT need.
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All I can really say is that I don't really spend much time playing the trials. I'll be point blank here: when I think about the incarnate system, I really want to log off and play something else. The incarnate abilities and the way they are acquired remind of the kinds of things some players pay real life cash to acquire on the blackmarkets of action rpgs.
For me it's not so much about the trials themselves but about the strangehold they on advancement. As missions they are okay. As content that needs to be run over and over and over and over and over I really dislike them. So I just stopped.
I feel the same way about the "Summer Blockbuster" event FYI. I never did get the procs I needed. Rather than run those I just play an alt, or failing that, another game.
I wish the game would stop bribing us into content by putting a highly desired reward behind a very narrow band of content. It may get some players to play it, but it does the opposite to me. It just makes me wonder why I am wasting my time doing this when I could play something that is actually fun.
I finally gave up on the future of CoH and went Premium, playing a character only when my primary MMO is down for maintenance. I just wish this dev staff had the foresight to see the Incarnate system, while it may appeal to a specific group, is not a viable end game solution for the long term.
CoH brought me so much fun and enjoyment for so many years and then it all was ruined by the woeful Incarnate stuff. I fought the good fight for a long time then finally had to give up, shut up and go do something more fun.