New efforts!

[JanessaVR]

All they really needed to do was make it possible to earn iXP and everything else through everything, not just the damned Praetorian stuff.  That way, soloists could still get everything, and those that loved the trials could do them and get the stuff a bit quicker.

Well, they did have the "Solo Incarnate" path in Dark Astoria, but it was just the same one story arc over and over, and it was painfully slow to get iXP and iComponents that way.  At least with the iTrials you had some variety as there were 8 of them.

[FloatingFatMan]

Well, they did have the "Solo Incarnate" path in Dark Astoria, but it was just the same one story arc over and over, and it was painfully slow to get iXP and iComponents that way.  At least with the iTrials you had some variety as there were 8 of them.

Indeed, but they really needed to just enable it for ALL content a level 50 runs.. All trials, GM's, all of it.  Any kind of mob that would give XP at all, so basically anything from level 46ish upwards.

[thunderforce]

OK, in a BROAD sense, the entire game, and pretty much EVERY MMO, would be considered a grind.  There are only so many kinds of missions.

Oh, indeed. One "defeat all" against enemy group X, or one "boss and guards", or one glowie hunt, is much like another, even if there's a bit of fluff text that's different each time.

However, the existence of grey areas doesn't mean there aren't black and white areas, and I'd argue when you're doing the exact same iTrial (or the Imperious Task Force, or Croatoa TF when that was the optimal one) over and over, that's pretty well at one end of the continuum of grindyness.

[KennonGL]

Well, they did have the "Solo Incarnate" path in Dark Astoria, but it was just the same one story arc over and over, and it was painfully slow to get iXP and iComponents that way.  At least with the iTrials you had some variety as there were 8 of them.

Indeed, but they really needed to just enable it for ALL content a level 50 runs.. All trials, GM's, all of it.  Any kind of mob that would give XP at all, so basically anything from level 46ish upwards.

FFM is, IMO, correct on this one.  Incarnate progression should have just been "normal" Post-50 progression.

As a mostly solo / small team (and often pick up team) player, I just didn't run the TFs much or the iTrials/Raids at all.

So with my Incarnate progression limited to the utterly crippled iXP solo rate (what was it, something like 1/10th the normal rate?),
I basically wrote off Incarnate stuff entirely. 

Frankly I found that "Solo Path" more of an insult than anything else.  It really felt like "So you don't want to run our wonderful massive Trials
and Raids?  Fine, here's a completely worthless way to do it solo or with a tiny team.  It'll be pointless and you'll never make any progression,
but you can't complain that we didn't give you a path."

And that's a shame really, as there were many interesting things in the Incarnate stuff to explore,
but there was simply no way I'd ever get much beyond the first slot opening while running with my style.

[Burnt Toast]

I loved Itrials... seriously.. loved them. I was starting to get bored with CoH right before the whole incarnate path came out. I had several 50's (Around 20)..and several lowbies (Around 12)...and had been playing nonstop since Issue 3. I had amassed billions in inf...played the market...pvp'd hundreds of hours..played market some more...designed/built my base and at least a dozen of other SG bases.... I needed something new...and voila... the itrials came.


I remember the first time I did a BAF...the day Issue 20 released... and we failed it. We of course had no clue what we were doing LOL and allowed too many prisoners to escape. That was the first time...there were hundreds of BAFs to follow. After around the 4th or 5th time I started to lead BAFs and led them up until close...as well as the other itrials (Except the Underground trial..I didn't like that one). I played exclusively on Freedom and itrials were a 24/7 machine on Freedom. I remember being in Pocket D before Issue 20...and it was a complete ghost town (Unless it was winter event time). The itrials actually helped bring the Freedom community a lot closer...Pocket D became our itrial spot as well as a social hub. I of course love teaming up...having only spent MAYBE .01% of my CoH time soloing missions...which is probably why I liked the league feature. Little known fact... I did 14 Keyes back to back..why?... that damn AVOIDS GREEN STUFF badge I needed for MoKeyes!!!!


I truly can't wait for CoH i23 to come back so I can start doing itrials again :)

[BadWolf]

Well, they did have the "Solo Incarnate" path in Dark Astoria, but it was just the same one story arc over and over, and it was painfully slow to get iXP and iComponents that way.  At least with the iTrials you had some variety as there were 8 of them.

Well, it was really more like about five story arcs. plus one repeatable mission vendor. I thought the content in Dark Astoria was great, and offered a lot of interesting and fun gameplay with some nice twists on the usual missions (like the arc that could be done in any order, or the challenges within specific missions). Sure, it would get repetitive eventually, but that brings us back again to "eventually, anything can seem repetitive."

For that matter, I think that offering eight Inarnate trials that all offered useable rewards to Incarnate players was pretty sweet. Sure, we went on a lot of BAF raids, but there was always something else to do when you got bored with a particular trial or storyarc, which I think the devs deserve credit for. I think they did very good things with their endgame content--I remember avoiding it for the longest time because I assumed it would be an unpleasant experience like WoW raiding, only to be pleasantly surprised at the fun gameplay and welcoming players. Nobody was a jerk to me just because I wasn't already so powerful as to not need to do the trial in the first place, people joked and had fun, and the experience was enjoyable. That was pretty awesome, and I'm all in favor of more things like that as well as fun new alt-based content. No need to be an either/or. :)

[Thunder Glove]

Just to get technical: there were five or six chained mission arcs in DA, plus one in Night Ward (the Belladonna Vellantro arc introduced a couple of updates back), plus Number Six's arc that was going to be added in I24 (which I ran once on the Test Server).

It still wasn't much compared to the number of iTrials.

Disclaimer: I liked many of the iTrials. I think BAF was my favorite.  I loved the "Tower Defense" part in the middle.

[Ironwolf]

I am one of those who loathed iTrials.

In the rest of the game I could play it just exactly the way I wanted and get a reward. Once the Trials started it was - do this and nothing else to infinity and beyond for the rest of the content. So I weighed it up and said - no Trials I can play with anyone doing anything - or I can mindlessly run the same trials over and over again.

So I would run the single arc to get my +1 and quit the extra "content" it is only content if you play it. I would have loved to have seen the numbers on what percentage of players did the Trials - I will bet it is below 10%. You had the same group doing the same trials repeatedly - just on different characters.

[Arcana]

My only problems with the iTrials were the idiots that were running one, took one look at my PB, and said "bugger off".  Idiots didn't have a clue what they were doing, clearly...

Unless you were doing something like a badge run like Avoids the Green Stuff or Master of Underground, no one player or character could have enough of an impact on an iTrial to make what character they brought significant, unless the team as a whole were completely clueless.

The only reason to take one look at your PB and kick you off would be if your costume had more than eight colors in it and the team was full of epileptics.

[FloatingFatMan]

Unless you were doing something like a badge run like Avoids the Green Stuff or Master of Underground, no one player or character could have enough of an impact on an iTrial to make what character they brought significant, unless the team as a whole were completely clueless.

The only reason to take one look at your PB and kick you off would be if your costume had more than eight colors in it and the team was full of epileptics.

You said the magic words, right there.  Unfortunately, it seemed that on Union at least, there was a perception that EAT's sucked, which kinda proves they were completely clueless! ;)

[Shadowe]

Unless you were doing something like a badge run like Avoids the Green Stuff or Master of Underground, no one player or character could have enough of an impact on an iTrial to make what character they brought significant, unless the team as a whole were completely clueless.

The only reason to take one look at your PB and kick you off would be if your costume had more than eight colors in it and the team was full of epileptics.

Completely clueless... Yeah. I once managed to successfully run a badge-hunting BAF, and I can't organise the proverbial convivial celebration in a beer factory (that was my one and only iTrial lead). And I had no clue what half the league were capable of.

If I can do it (and Union made it a point of pride to only do a BAF as a Gotta Keep 'Em Separated run, which surprised some people who dropped in from other servers, apparently) with a PUG league, there's no good reason to exclude anybody.

And no, Tiger White was a (relatively) conservative appearance RP character (as well as quite a beast of mishing machine), her hero cozzie was almost monochrome. I'd have probably caused more problems on my main (Shadowe), and I imagine most people can guess what the colour of his costume was.

[FloatingFatMan]

And no, Tiger White was a (relatively) conservative appearance RP character (as well as quite a beast of mishing machine), her hero cozzie was almost monochrome. I'd have probably caused more problems on my main (Shadowe), and I imagine most people can guess what the colour of his costume was.

She had a variety of costumes, but all merely variances on the same theme.  At the time of closure, her main costume was this:

https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v248/FloatingFatMan/CityOfHeroes/TigerWhite_zpsd5c3ad53.png

[LaughingAlex]

I am one of those who loathed iTrials.

In the rest of the game I could play it just exactly the way I wanted and get a reward. Once the Trials started it was - do this and nothing else to infinity and beyond for the rest of the content. So I weighed it up and said - no Trials I can play with anyone doing anything - or I can mindlessly run the same trials over and over again.

So I would run the single arc to get my +1 and quit the extra "content" it is only content if you play it. I would have loved to have seen the numbers on what percentage of players did the Trials - I will bet it is below 10%. You had the same group doing the same trials repeatedly - just on different characters.

I did I trials alot but I tended to play a variety of character classes in them, I'd say I enjoyed the Lambda trial the most when I was on my fortunata, as I'd often go out of my way to solo groups on her regularly.  I had enough defense and mixed in -to hit from diamagnetic to bring the base 60% or so tohit enemies had down to 40 or so, ensuring I could minimize the hits taken.  But I can see the problem people may have had with trials.

I also did them more because I wasn't particularly unlucky with the drop roles.  But then I know what it's actually like to have the random number god as an enemy declaring all rare drops never show up for you.  I'd get purple components from incarnate trials regularly, that kind of thing doesn't happen in other games for me(especially since they often lower the drop rate for top stuff down to .000000000000001% with very, very few opportunities).  I actually got rewarded for the itrials, unlike other grinds.  Only time I EVER got a super rare drop from any other game was perhaps a certain sword in guild wars that ended up devalued to only like 2 plat later due to to many people running the content.

[Noyjitat]

Sure would like to run a Really Hard Way right now.  :'(

Soon my friend! I look forward to our friday night msrs and MOUGTs and all other cox fun.

[Arcana]

She had a variety of costumes, but all merely variances on the same theme.  At the time of closure, her main costume was this:

If anything, I would have asked you to turn on all your PB shields and told those morons who kept getting lost in the Underground trial to follow the bright white glow.

[FloatingFatMan]

If anything, I would have asked you to turn on all your PB shields and told those morons who kept getting lost in the Underground trial to follow the bright white glow.

Aye, she was quite the light bulb! :p

[Scendera]

She had a variety of costumes, but all merely variances on the same theme.  At the time of closure, her main costume was this:

Absolutely gorgeous!

[Teikiatsu]

Hmmm.  On Virtue, I rarely had a problem finding an iTrial, as long as it was during "prime-time" hours - it was only at odd times of the day that it would be problematic (or the available people were not exactly "A-List" material and our ability to succeed was a bit iffy).

Yeah, it was easy on Virtue to hop on to 1 or 2 iTrials a night if you wanted, though there was no guarantee *which* trial you could hop onto.  Most of my 50's ended up parked in DA and I would be hopping between them to get a specific toon into the league group.

[Baja]

The critical subjective issues are what the motivation of the player is, and to what degree they believe they are running completely repetitive content.  If I run Lambdas all day long because I love Lambdas, and another player runs the same Lambdas with me but only because they feel its the only way to earn enough incarnate rewards, he's grinding and I'm not.  If I run Lambdas all day long but each time completely differently, on different alts, with different tactical gameplay I might decide that's not a grind because to me, I'm not running the exact same content repeatedly.  If I run Lambdas all day long because I'm on a team that wants to break the server record for Lambda, I might still not consider that grinding because the multiple runs might be similar, but the objective isn't about the repetition per se.

What constitutes "the exact same content" is different for different players, and that's part of why there's significant disagreement as to what constitutes grinding.  Personally, I think running random newspaper missions for an hour to earn the last two bubbles to level before calling it a night is in fact grinding.  Mostly harmless grinding, but grinding nonetheless, even though the content is not "exactly" the same.  I think the principle of grinding is observed there.  Conversely, someone who tries to defeat all the pylons in the RWZ solo, just for bragging rights, is not grinding pylons even if they are doing something far more repetitive than the newspaper player.  They are in fact doing something eighteen times in a row, but in their mind they are actually doing one single thing which has eighteen identical parts, and if they don't see themselves as grinding I don't think it is, even if there were substantial rewards involved.

I disagree, that being said it's really a matter of opinion if you aren't going to accept the defined meaning of grinding. What constitutes content being the exact same is really just that, it's no different no matter what you do. Sure you can apply different strategies, run for speed, or for some other type of objective that you've applied. However it's still the exact same content. I mean if you were to read a book and said "wow that's a great book, I think I'll read it again." you're still reading the same book, just because you enjoyed it and someone else didn't does not mean the book has somehow changed. Now with that said, by all means re-run the same content over and over if you enjoy it, I'm in no position to tell someone what is and is not fun to them because it's entirely subjective. Like I said in my previous post, I have played games where I enjoyed grinding because to me it felt fun, but when it came to Itrials I suppose it lost its excitement -to me- because I could not control the pace of things. I mean I loved farming AE because I had total control of the situation and could easily just stop, the rewards were very consistent and I didn't have to try to perform a certain way just to get rewarded (meaning those who dealt more damage got better components etc, considering I mainly played my night widow it was somewhat frustrating, even as my MM before they adjusted the rewards it was pretty much pointless for me to try and compete). So I guess what I'm saying here is I'm a control freak and enjoy being able to manipulate the variables of grinding in order to feel enjoyment from it.

Now with the the whole debate of grinding aside, I still think iTrials had there place for sure. I think we can all agree the communities opinion on this subject is pretty evenly split. I just wish there was some way to solo through incarnate abilities that was equally as fast as Itrials, I mean how long did one honestly take to complete? It's not like it was an all night adventure that challenged all aspects of your intellect, it was pretty rinse/repeat and everyone knew their roles for the most part. To be fair I'd be happy running something that took an extra 15 minutes or so if that meant I could solo/8 man team the runs. Obviously this is just what some people want, and in all likely hood will not happen given the circumstances behind the re-release. I suppose the best we can hope for is maybe long down the road the people behind this amazing gift of re-release get the ability to change or implement new idea's or even revise content, they will do so with our best interests.

Either way I've said it before I'll say it again, these are trivial debates taking place to fill time. I could not be happier with the news of a -possible- re-release and right now am just hoping that works out.

[okami]

So with my Incarnate progression limited to the utterly crippled iXP solo rate (what was it, something like 1/10th the normal rate?),
I basically wrote off Incarnate stuff entirely. 

IIRC, Captain Electric (2?) kept a thread that monitored the solo rates. 1/10 iTrial would have been an improvement. What you could knock out in a weekend grinding iTrials would take over a month in DA, and there were some components you would *never* see.

Punitive is the most complimentary word I can use about DA and Posi trying to herd people into his raids.