And the mask comes off.

[opprime2828]

Its hard to reconcile the guy that says if a dev has a good idea that conflicts with prior plans you should usually go for it with the idea that he was simultaneously trying to shove his own personal gameplay preferences onto everyone else. 

 
I'm not sure it is hard to reconcile the two.  Really, what you could argue is that he was doing with the prior continuity and story lines what he wanted to do to altitis: saying "I have a better idea, and I'm going to try to make it happen whether it really fits the current game or not."
 
Now, to borrow a phrase from Obama, let me be clear:   I loved Posi as a Dev. I even tried Star Trek Online just because he's running it now, and I find Star Trek REALLY boring.   I think CoH was excellent, usually, in listening to their players' feedback and desires.  That doesn't mean that Posi didn't have his OWN desires, and that those desires were at odds, sometimes, with the community.  That's just the nature of design, especially in the technical realm.  But just because he's a smart enough businessman and politician to listen to his customers demands when they're passionate enough, it doesn't mean he didn't have very serious feelings of his own and a desire to take the game in a different direction.
 
To bring it full circle, maybe Posi is like Microsoft, and maybe his vision of curbing alts was similar to Window's vision of Windows 8 being a single user interface for all devices.  Sounds good on paper, may even work, may even be necessary for the continued success of the system, but the shock and bother the idea causes to the customer base might force some careful treading or even a retreat.
 
In my opinion, that's what we saw in this article.  Posi had his opinion and, given free reign and ultimate time, he would have liked to change things quite a bit.  That's not "bad" or "wrong", so we don't need to pretend he wasn't making that desire clear in the article.  It was his opinion and desires shared while reflecting on it months after the shutdown, just as some players' responses were the same thing: opinions and desires about what would have made CoH a better game. 

Personally, I liked the end game Incarnate Stuff, overall.   My only real problem with it was the focus on RAIDS over almost everything else early on.  I always felt like CoH worked best, for me at least, because of the 5-8 man team sizes.  I'd have REALLY liked some of the iTrials more if they had been Task Forces, not large scale raids.  I think the Lambda is the best example of this, followed closely by TPN and Minds of Mayhem. These really could have been set to run from 6-8 members total with the difficulty of the enemies scaled down slightly to compensate for the smaller teams and I think it would have been "better".  First, I think it would have "felt" more super going against some of these foes in smaller teams.  Somehow, piling on to 1 guy with 22 other heroes and still taking 10 minutes to take him down doesn't seem impressive.  Secondly, these could have been run more often/casually, even on smaller servers.  The problem I had was that the only two Task Forces the Incarnate content gave us gave out drastically weaker rewards than the actual Trials, even though, in my opinion, they weren't much different in difficulty.  To me, the way the system was laid out, it really was trying to get everyone in on the "Raids," but due to customer resistance, tossed a few bones out to people who refused.  It's kind of like Windows 10 keeping the metro interface but giving back the start button, with a built in metro interface. :-)
 
I think, had at least a few of the ITrials really been TFs, but offer full rewards like other trials, you may have found the perfect balance. Heck, I always wished they'd included some incarnate content that was gated at -4- players max, and balanced around being really tough on a smaller team, but with nice rewards. Something to say that now that we're so big and powerful, they're going to really challenge us as individual heroes.  It would also have prevented those people who can easily sit back and leech in an over sized raid team.  Feel like a raid, instead of the smaller challenge?  That's cool, run a Baf.   Have a five friends from your SG on, but don't have time/desire to find 10 other players to do a BaF?  That's cool, just run a Lambda or TPN with the six of you.
 

 
     

 
All that being said, I REALLY wish we would have been around long enough to see this come to fruition:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9dVlNA1SMM

[Triplash]

I understand that everyone here has a hard time wrapping their heads around that, myself included. But we are a self-selected audience of people who wanted what CoH was selling. The larger world of "MMO players" wanted endgame content, and Positron recognized that and gave it to them. I don't think he was mistaken, either in recognizing that deficiency in the game or in working to fix it. If anything, I think he was about twenty issues too late.

Well I for one am glad that it wasn't added twenty issues earlier. If it had been, it would have attracted a much different playerbase, and it most likely wouldn't have evolved into the sort of game that people would put up this kind of fight over. If CoH had taken the same gameplay path as every other title on the market, then it wouldn't have stood out in the minds and hearts of its players.

Sure, it might have had more players (or less, depending on how it fared against the competitors who offered the same features), and it might have lasted longer (or been shut down much sooner, if a competitor offered the same setup done better), if it had been more standard in terms of player expectations. However, if it had been more standard in terms of player expectations, then it wouldn't have been missed when it left. The players would just have moved on to one of the forty other titles that offered the exact same thing.

I'm glad that it established its own choices in terms of gameplay options, and then made the attempt to add in endgame style raids and such at a later point. In that way, it had said "This is who we are, and we're not apologizing. Now let's try adding some things." I'm glad for it because, it was that willingness to be different that made it something that stood out. Sooner or later it would have shut down anyway, but if it had been just another "grind to the endgame, then grind to the good loot" title, then nobody would have missed it.

But that wasn't our city. We're not just being self-aggrandizing when we say our game wasn't like all the others. Our city was different. Our city was special.

[Codewalker]

But the most awesome example of needing to tone down powers was gang war.  Imagine a room full of minions.  Now imagine every single one of them possesses gang war.  Now imagine all of them wants to spam it immediately upon you entering the room.  Instant mosh pit, just add player.  Missions could get literally wall to wall with gang war members standing on the heads of other gang war members because there was literally nowhere else for them to stand.

Now make a few plant control critters and put them on the opposing team.

[BadWolf]

Any mastermind in an ambush; the mobs instantly bring out the henchmen. 

That was actually one of the missions I designed, built around an out-of-control Von Neumann machine. Every mob was a robot, every mob was a robot mastermind. Every boss encounter spawned more mobs when they hit their health thresholds. It was just a pure robopalooza!

[Noyjitat]

The ugly truth is that endgame, whether in CoX or WoW or wherever, is a Haven for those dwelling in the realm of Ego.  Biggest, Baddest, Best.  Pfffft.  Whatever.

Or perhaps it's for those that enjoy harder enemies, getting stronger characters and like large scale team content? Not everyone is under the stereotype you mentioned....

That's like saying all blacks like watermelon, chicken and sag their pants... neither are true.

Maybe you just played on unfriendly servers because I never ran into the behaviors you speak of in either game. The occasional rude group but that occurs in normal content too. Now I have run into many rude people on forums but for every rude person you meet many more friendly people.

[Minotaur]

Basically, on Rift you have 4 classes, Rogue, mage, Cleric and Warrior. By default, on every class you can have 4 diferent builds and you can swap between builds whenever you wish. For each of said builds, you can use a combination of 3 different talent trees (talent trees are called "souls" in the game) and every class has DPS souls, healing souls, support souls and tanking souls hence you can build, let's say a rogue with a melee dps build, a ranged dps build, a healer build and a tanking build, that's many people you don't need alts in Rift.

Also, you can purchase more builds (I think it is a total of 6 builds) so you could add to your rogue, let's say a PvP build and a melee DPS hiding build (like a stalker) besides all the abovementioned builds.

Also, character progression was exactly the same so it was exactly same content for every alt you were willing to roll hence not really much point in making alts. Having said that, I personally used to have alts for many reasons, first would be playstyle because it is way different tanking with a rogue than with a cleric, or dealing ranged dps with a warrior (yes, warriors had ranged dps souls) than with a mage. Another reason I had alts for was crafting, although I could purchase extra crafting slots so 1 character could have all crafting skills, I preferred doing it for free. Besides, of course, not all souls were available on F2P mode so, instead of purchasing a healing soul for my warrior or my rogue, I preferred to roll a cleric when I could be bothered to do the exactly same content.

Some people mentioned that alting was a complete waste of time because, besides having to go through same content over and over again, you also had to take into consideration all the endgame raiding you had to do if you wanted to gear up 2, 3 or 4 alts however, I always found that argument a bit silly since it was probably petty much same time you would spend raiding to gear up the same character for 2 or 3 different roles. Of course, if you wanted 4 walts fullye geared up for every possible role, well, that was a totally different scenario akin to what Arcana defined as wide-completionists.

To add to this, each character could only have 3 crafting skills (and some stuff was limited to 1 a day), so I had some alts just so I had everything covered and some useful things I could crank out a little faster.

[Felderburg]

In fact, ironically my biggest gripe with Matt is that he didn't always reign in other devs like I think a lead ought to, particularly in terms of storylines.  While others are faulting Matt for the implied sins he never admitted to, one thing he did admit to was believing that prior canon and established backstory should not be considered absolute relative to allowing developers to create what he and they perceived to be good ideas.

Hmm... I'm not sure how the leeway he gave writers is the same as the leeway he may have given game system devs - especially since he was a lead designer on the I Trials himself. I don't have any issue with him allowing writers to contradict lore that the players never saw, as long as it's consistent with what is already in game (as he states: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Lore_AMA/Sorted#317).

In my opinion, that's what we saw in this article.  Posi had his opinion and, given free reign and ultimate time, he would have liked to change things quite a bit.  That's not "bad" or "wrong", so we don't need to pretend he wasn't making that desire clear in the article.  It was his opinion and desires shared while reflecting on it months after the shutdown, just as some players' responses were the same thing: opinions and desires about what would have made CoH a better game. 

Even if he gave devs some leeway in game design, this quote sort of encapsulates how I see things. And the issue for me is that his desires, as I read them in his column, are not compatible with mine. *shrug* c'est la vie

I think, had at least a few of the ITrials really been TFs, but offer full rewards like other trials, you may have found the perfect balance. Heck, I always wished they'd included some incarnate content that was gated at -4- players max, and balanced around being really tough on a smaller team, but with nice rewards. Something to say that now that we're so big and powerful, they're going to really challenge us as individual heroes.  It would also have prevented those people who can easily sit back and leech in an over sized raid team.  Feel like a raid, instead of the smaller challenge?  That's cool, run a Baf.   Have a five friends from your SG on, but don't have time/desire to find 10 other players to do a BaF?  That's cool, just run a Lambda or TPN with the six of you.

This is a good idea!

[Burnt Toast]

My experience...and pleasure from the game... vastly differs from yours. Aside from some forumites who did not constitute a good balance of the playerbase imo... I NEVER met anyone who did not like doing the itrials. i am a Freedomite...so maybe that is why, but when itrials came to be... the server actually benefited from them. Freedom became a more social server after the itrials.... Pocket D was a wasteland pre itrial... but soon became a VERY busy social hub for the trials and game in general. If it weren't for incarnates I would have probably let my account lapse...after being subbed since Issue 3 continuously. The incarnate content kept me playing and subbed...plain and simple.


You want to know which zone was dead on Freedom... New Dark Astoria. Freedom was always a big "Raid-centric" server with multiple Hamis running each day... and MSR happening numerous times throughout a day. So while I appreciate some people wanted smaller teams etc etc... the entire game was already centered around that...so I rejoiced when the "end-game" finally got more "raids." I always wanted more "raids" through the leveling experience (And no not the zone events). CoH is the only MMO I have ever played and the larger scale trials/raids made me feel like a part of a huge super team fighting to save the world....

 
I'm not sure it is hard to reconcile the two.  Really, what you could argue is that he was doing with the prior continuity and story lines what he wanted to do to altitis: saying "I have a better idea, and I'm going to try to make it happen whether it really fits the current game or not."
 
Now, to borrow a phrase from Obama, let me be clear:   I loved Posi as a Dev. I even tried Star Trek Online just because he's running it now, and I find Star Trek REALLY boring.   I think CoH was excellent, usually, in listening to their players' feedback and desires.  That doesn't mean that Posi didn't have his OWN desires, and that those desires were at odds, sometimes, with the community.  That's just the nature of design, especially in the technical realm.  But just because he's a smart enough businessman and politician to listen to his customers demands when they're passionate enough, it doesn't mean he didn't have very serious feelings of his own and a desire to take the game in a different direction.
 
To bring it full circle, maybe Posi is like Microsoft, and maybe his vision of curbing alts was similar to Window's vision of Windows 8 being a single user interface for all devices.  Sounds good on paper, may even work, may even be necessary for the continued success of the system, but the shock and bother the idea causes to the customer base might force some careful treading or even a retreat.
 
In my opinion, that's what we saw in this article.  Posi had his opinion and, given free reign and ultimate time, he would have liked to change things quite a bit.  That's not "bad" or "wrong", so we don't need to pretend he wasn't making that desire clear in the article.  It was his opinion and desires shared while reflecting on it months after the shutdown, just as some players' responses were the same thing: opinions and desires about what would have made CoH a better game. 

Personally, I liked the end game Incarnate Stuff, overall.   My only real problem with it was the focus on RAIDS over almost everything else early on.  I always felt like CoH worked best, for me at least, because of the 5-8 man team sizes.  I'd have REALLY liked some of the iTrials more if they had been Task Forces, not large scale raids.  I think the Lambda is the best example of this, followed closely by TPN and Minds of Mayhem. These really could have been set to run from 6-8 members total with the difficulty of the enemies scaled down slightly to compensate for the smaller teams and I think it would have been "better".  First, I think it would have "felt" more super going against some of these foes in smaller teams.  Somehow, piling on to 1 guy with 22 other heroes and still taking 10 minutes to take him down doesn't seem impressive.  Secondly, these could have been run more often/casually, even on smaller servers.  The problem I had was that the only two Task Forces the Incarnate content gave us gave out drastically weaker rewards than the actual Trials, even though, in my opinion, they weren't much different in difficulty.  To me, the way the system was laid out, it really was trying to get everyone in on the "Raids," but due to customer resistance, tossed a few bones out to people who refused.  It's kind of like Windows 10 keeping the metro interface but giving back the start button, with a built in metro interface. :-)
 
I think, had at least a few of the ITrials really been TFs, but offer full rewards like other trials, you may have found the perfect balance. Heck, I always wished they'd included some incarnate content that was gated at -4- players max, and balanced around being really tough on a smaller team, but with nice rewards. Something to say that now that we're so big and powerful, they're going to really challenge us as individual heroes.  It would also have prevented those people who can easily sit back and leech in an over sized raid team.  Feel like a raid, instead of the smaller challenge?  That's cool, run a Baf.   Have a five friends from your SG on, but don't have time/desire to find 10 other players to do a BaF?  That's cool, just run a Lambda or TPN with the six of you.
 

 
     

 
All that being said, I REALLY wish we would have been around long enough to see this come to fruition:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9dVlNA1SMM

[MM3squints]

My experience...and pleasure from the game... vastly differs from yours. Aside from some forumites who did not constitute a good balance of the playerbase imo... I NEVER met anyone who did not like doing the itrials. i am a Freedomite...so maybe that is why, but when itrials came to be... the server actually benefited from them. Freedom became a more social server after the itrials.... Pocket D was a wasteland pre itrial... but soon became a VERY busy social hub for the trials and game in general. If it weren't for incarnates I would have probably let my account lapse...after being subbed since Issue 3 continuously. The incarnate content kept me playing and subbed...plain and simple.


You want to know which zone was dead on Freedom... New Dark Astoria. Freedom was always a big "Raid-centric" server with multiple Hamis running each day... and MSR happening numerous times throughout a day. So while I appreciate some people wanted smaller teams etc etc... the entire game was already centered around that...so I rejoiced when the "end-game" finally got more "raids." I always wanted more "raids" through the leveling experience (And no not the zone events). CoH is the only MMO I have ever played and the larger scale trials/raids made me feel like a part of a huge super team fighting to save the world....

I trend to agree. A small server like Triumph, people would drop what they are doing and do a iTrial because it was "we needs bodies, any bodies just to start an itrial" After itrials were over, people went back to their own devices. You want to know what which zone was dead in Triumph, probably all of them except when an iTrail form literally 50%+ of the population would be in Pocket D

[Arcana]

I'm having trouble thinking of a set that doesn't end up being broken when you give the full thing to an x8 spawn worth of minions.

That was one of my arguments for changing the system, yes.

[Arcana]

I made several custom characters specifically for different uses as a demonstration that mezzing was NEVER necessary to balance the game. I added resistance to all of the bad guys. I then varied the weapons the assorted evil doers used to absolutely stop herding. I added 2 broadsword/katana users to each group and using this model with only at most one debuffing character per group - it made every group exciting and a challenge - I recall having people run it and warning them this is NOT a farm - proceed with caution and seeing them faceplant immediately.

It was not overly hard just an exercise in balance.

I would say it was trickier than most people thought to make balanced critters, as judged by the *players*.  One thing I liked about the AE was that it gave some authors more of an appreciation of how difficult it is to actually do that.  Its often easy to do what you visualize in your head, the difficult part is realizing what you think is really not so similar to what everyone else thinks; it just seems that way when you're talking about it, less so when it smacks them in their face with a broadsword strike.

[Arcana]

I'm not sure it is hard to reconcile the two.  Really, what you could argue is that he was doing with the prior continuity and story lines what he wanted to do to altitis: saying "I have a better idea, and I'm going to try to make it happen whether it really fits the current game or not."

You could say that, except that's the exact opposite of what I said.  I didn't say Matt felt he had a better idea than prior continuity allowed and was willing to make it happen whether it fit the game or not, I said Matt allowed other devs to override prior continuity even if he felt it didn't quite fit naturally.  That is literally the opposite mindset.

[Arcana]

Now make a few plant control critters and put them on the opposing team.

They wouldn't let me.

[Arcana]

Hmm... I'm not sure how the leeway he gave writers is the same as the leeway he may have given game system devs - especially since he was a lead designer on the I Trials himself.

I can't say for certain, but what I can say is that whenever I was informally working with one of the devs on a problem or such it was rare for a dev to imply that a change was going to be rejected by Positron himself.  It was far more likely I'd be told something wouldn't get past a more general internal review.  Part of the problem I think is that none of the devs could consistently keep it all in their heads enough *to* micromanage very much, because there was just so many things going on (keep in mind that Statesman had no idea whatsoever how Defiance worked when he wrote the guide to Defiance.  I had to correct him by actually testing the power and demonstrating it did not work the way he actually documented it to work).

But from the outside looking in, the management style at Paragon seemed to be that the higher-ups decided general high level things and then left it up to the other devs to sort out the details, and when time permitted the devs were allowed significant latitude to pursue other projects of their own interest.  For example power customization came about partially because BaB began investigating it himself first.

Not saying higher ups didn't override devs lower on the totem pole: I'm sure that happened occasionally.  I just didn't see that as a pervasive issue at Paragon.  The people that actually worked there could have a different opinion.

[opprime2828]

You could say that, except that's the exact opposite of what I said.  I didn't say Matt felt he had a better idea than prior continuity allowed and was willing to make it happen whether it fit the game or not, I said Matt allowed other devs to override prior continuity even if he felt it didn't quite fit naturally.  That is literally the opposite mindset.

 
Did said writers usually run things by Matt before making these changes?  Was Matt usually involved collaboratively in the writing process and direction of the game?  My experience leads me to the assumption it was, in many ways, a collaborative process, and one in which Matt would have occassional input.  In other words, when someone in the process came up with a storyline that may not fit neatly into the existing game lore or concepts, but was seen by Matt and the rest as "a good direction" for the game to go, then they went, concerns be damned, so to speak.  To me, that is exactly the same mindset I see at play in the article, and would get the two seemingly different mindsets you mentioned to mesh well.  In essence, they are both a subset of a larger mindset of "I'm not the kind of person who is beholden much to the status quo or who is scared to upset the apple cart if I think it's a good direction."  Nothing of that mindset requires the idea to be of his origin. 
 
It also, frankly, explains why he was also willing, at times, to alter course on concepts or design when the community convinced him it was necessary.  I'd suggest it's the kind of mindset that made someone like you so valuable to them.     

[Ironwolf]

My experience...and pleasure from the game... vastly differs from yours. Aside from some forumites who did not constitute a good balance of the playerbase imo... I NEVER met anyone who did not like doing the itrials. i am a Freedomite...so maybe that is why, but when itrials came to be... the server actually benefited from them. Freedom became a more social server after the itrials.... Pocket D was a wasteland pre itrial... but soon became a VERY busy social hub for the trials and game in general. If it weren't for incarnates I would have probably let my account lapse...after being subbed since Issue 3 continuously. The incarnate content kept me playing and subbed...plain and simple.


You want to know which zone was dead on Freedom... New Dark Astoria. Freedom was always a big "Raid-centric" server with multiple Hamis running each day... and MSR happening numerous times throughout a day. So while I appreciate some people wanted smaller teams etc etc... the entire game was already centered around that...so I rejoiced when the "end-game" finally got more "raids." I always wanted more "raids" through the leveling experience (And no not the zone events). CoH is the only MMO I have ever played and the larger scale trials/raids made me feel like a part of a huge super team fighting to save the world....

I, and some of those I teamed with dispised the I trials. I found that now that I am more powerful than ever - I am now lumped into a huge mass of mob mentality. I am spamming powers without seeing any result other than a health bar on a huge being slowly dropping. My best powers are nothing alone and singly I would be wiped out - yet somehow I am supposed to be an Incarnate being - one of galactic powers.

In a TF my contribution can be huge. It is a measurable quantity. Whether we are mowing down Romans, Battling Villians in the States TF or any other of the 8 man missions - I personally can be seen exerting my powers. I am not a spam cloud of special effects rivaling a Hollywood blockbuster. There is satisfaction in skill and knowledge. I recall doing an all Corruptor ITF and after we waltzed through the entire thing without a death getting the Master of ITF badge for some who had never had it - a newer player who had only played WoW was saying I can't believe we are doing this! I pulled both AV's and the Computer at once on that mission and we sailed through it.

This is what Incarnates were to me - a chance to show that my skill and perseverence made me unique in the universe and instead I was generic hero number 25 on the League. I did 2 of these back to back on one of my most powerful characters. The first run I used all my powers - attacked, debuffed and buffed the full reach of my skills. The second run I did NOTHING. I sat back stayed out of the way and you know what? It took the same amount of time. I made little to no difference.

I wanted the "end game" to show that my universe shattering power - made a DIFFERENCE. The idea that I am just another cog in a machine soured me off of these instantly.

[BadWolf]

You want to know which zone was dead on Freedom... New Dark Astoria. Freedom was always a big "Raid-centric" server with multiple Hamis running each day... and MSR happening numerous times throughout a day. So while I appreciate some people wanted smaller teams etc etc... the entire game was already centered around that...so I rejoiced when the "end-game" finally got more "raids." I always wanted more "raids" through the leveling experience (And no not the zone events). CoH is the only MMO I have ever played and the larger scale trials/raids made me feel like a part of a huge super team fighting to save the world....

That's weird. I was on the VIP server (Exalted?) and Dark Astoria was the hub for iTrials. Everyone met there because if you were waiting on a trial, there was stuff to kill and missions to run in the meanwhile. I could always log in and find some 10-20 people hanging out by the hospital getting something going.

[Rejolt]

That's weird. I was on the VIP server (Exalted?) and Dark Astoria was the hub for iTrials. Everyone met there because if you were waiting on a trial, there was stuff to kill and missions to run in the meanwhile. I could always log in and find some 10-20 people hanging out by the hospital getting something going.

After rushing in for names, I never used the exalted server. I just couldn't drag myself from Infinity (even with a number of transfers still in my pocket).

[opprime2828]

I, and some of those I teamed with dispised the I trials. I found that now that I am more powerful than ever - I am now lumped into a huge mass of mob mentality.
 
...

This is what Incarnates were to me - a chance to show that my skill and perseverence made me unique in the universe and instead I was generic hero number 25 on the League. I did 2 of these back to back on one of my most powerful characters. The first run I used all my powers - attacked, debuffed and buffed the full reach of my skills. The second run I did NOTHING. I sat back stayed out of the way and you know what? It took the same amount of time. I made little to no difference.

I wanted the "end game" to show that my universe shattering power - made a DIFFERENCE. The idea that I am just another cog in a machine soured me off of these instantly.

 
That is exactly why I was hoping at some point for them to include smaller teamed special Incarnate Trials.  If they were set up similar to the Summer Blockbuster event where you were robbing a Casino it would have been PERFECT.
 
Imagine TPN being rewritten in a way where you and three others are teleported into the heart of Imperial City, clearing your way into the buildings together. Once inside, however, you each must split up to accomplish four different tasks in order to make the broadcast reach all of Preatoria:  one must disable the current security systems, one must prevent the power to the station being shut down, one must upload the new broadcast, and one must reprogram the Clockwork in the building to protect the broadcast once you leave.  Each of you face serious threats along the way, but each of you feels like you're contributing as epic individuals.   Then you go to the next station and do the same thing.  In the end, as a team, you confront Maelstrom and three other high ranking officials.  You would feel "incarnate" in that kind of mission, and it would be just as difficult as a raid sized iTrial. 
 
The possibilities for "end game content" are...well...endless, if you're creative.  The key is to not make players feel like their way is "second class" which the new DA, the incarnate TFs, and the "solo path" seemed to do to some with the seriously gimped rewards they offered. 

[Burnt Toast]

That's what I took Dark Astoria for...soloing/teaming incarnate content. I did the DA stuff on all my toons because it did make me feel powerful...and challenged (Well that and I loved badges). I always felt that using my incarnate powers outside of itrials or DA was almost like cheating hehe. I usually duoed DA stuff... I think maybe I was on a full team once or twice, but 99.9% time it was a duo. I always thought the rewards could have been bumped up SOME, but not by a huge amount.

I, and some of those I teamed with dispised the I trials. I found that now that I am more powerful than ever - I am now lumped into a huge mass of mob mentality. I am spamming powers without seeing any result other than a health bar on a huge being slowly dropping. My best powers are nothing alone and singly I would be wiped out - yet somehow I am supposed to be an Incarnate being - one of galactic powers.

In a TF my contribution can be huge. It is a measurable quantity. Whether we are mowing down Romans, Battling Villians in the States TF or any other of the 8 man missions - I personally can be seen exerting my powers. I am not a spam cloud of special effects rivaling a Hollywood blockbuster. There is satisfaction in skill and knowledge. I recall doing an all Corruptor ITF and after we waltzed through the entire thing without a death getting the Master of ITF badge for some who had never had it - a newer player who had only played WoW was saying I can't believe we are doing this! I pulled both AV's and the Computer at once on that mission and we sailed through it.

This is what Incarnates were to me - a chance to show that my skill and perseverence made me unique in the universe and instead I was generic hero number 25 on the League. I did 2 of these back to back on one of my most powerful characters. The first run I used all my powers - attacked, debuffed and buffed the full reach of my skills. The second run I did NOTHING. I sat back stayed out of the way and you know what? It took the same amount of time. I made little to no difference.

I wanted the "end game" to show that my universe shattering power - made a DIFFERENCE. The idea that I am just another cog in a machine soured me off of these instantly.