And the mask comes off.

[FloatingFatMan]

I think the answer to that question is similar to the answer to the question "what was the end game for the entire game?"  The answer is: the devs didn't have an "end" to their end game plans.

"End game" as an MMO term is a bit of a misnomer in that its not about an "end."  The "end" in endgame refers to the point where conventional level-gating (cf: level cap) ends and content switches from being about getting through the next content gate and starts being about more open ended (if often grindy) development.

What I think was interesting about CoH's "end game" was that it wasn't, in spite of complaints to the contrary, focused purely on raiding.  The initial content was large scale raids, but that was because we didn't have any yet and this was when they were going to be introduced.  But the revamp of Dark Astoria suggested that the incarnate system was going to be a more seamless expansion of the standard content, with zone content, mission content, and task force content to complement the raid content. 

This ventures into a subject I spent a lot of time kicking around on the old forums: what constituted the "core" game and what constituted the "optional" game.  You could argue that the Incarnate system was evolving into Yet Another non-core gameplay mode.  The standard game was the conventional content-based (usually) leveling from 1 to 50, with the associated power and enhancement progression.  The incarnate system as a whole was developing from a raid niche to a more full-fledged game experience with a range of content driven by the core incarnate power system and the raids as a strong core component of progression.

Of course, many people who disliked raiding and disliked the incarnate progressional power system felt that time spent developing it was time diverted from the rest of the game, and player time spent on it diverted players from contributing to the rest of the game.  Both true statements, but also entirely in keeping with the philosophy I subscribed to and generally ascribed to the devs as "something for everyone, not everything for someone."  Part of acknowledging the fact that CoH allowed for diverse playstyles is that it often encouraged and spent valuable dev time on ones you might dislike yourself personally.  I think eventually the great irony of the Incarnate system is that the very players that were complaining about the fact that it was about nothing but raiding would eventually be complaining about the fact that there was all this other stuff happening in it they couldn't experience because they didn't want to participate in the incarnate system.

Optional isn't synonymous with undesirable.

One thing I felt they could have added in to the incarnate system, that might have interested quite a lot of folks otherwise not too bothered by it, was a way to unlock additional slots for your existing powers. 

And I'm not just saying that as primarily a Kheldian player, either!

[Thunder Glove]

The devs said in the Loregasms that the ten Incarnate powers were going to be eventually revealed to be only "tier 1" of the Incarnate system, with a second set of ten powers above it, and then ten more above those, and so on ad nauseum.

Frankly, I don't know how they were going to manage to come up with ten more powers that were more insanely overpowered than what they had planned for Omega.

[Sinistar]

The devs said in the Loregasms that the ten Incarnate powers were going to be eventually revealed to be only "tier 1" of the Incarnate system, with a second set of ten powers above it, and then ten more above those, and so on ad nauseum.

Frankly, I don't know how they were going to manage to come up with ten more powers that were more insanely overpowered than what they had planned for Omega.

What DID they have planned for Omega?

[Thunder Glove]

[Aggelakis]

The problem there is unless NCsoft gives the team source code access, and by some great boon they figure out a way to reasonably transplant CoH's scripting engine to UE4 (Therefore making it so a great deal of things don't actually have to be rewritten), it would be a massive undertaking almost on par with making an entirely new game.

Even IF they manage to transplant the script, it's going to be a lot of work.

APR is getting CoT's code base, which they will then massage into how City works (or as close as they possibly can).

It will never be a transplant from CoH. It was never intended to be. It will be "City...better, faster, stronger".

This saves a ton of headache and work on APR's end. But it does mean it will be delayed until CoT finalizes things. Then again, it will likely take that long to build the look of the game.

[ryuplaneswalker]

What DID they have planned for Omega?

Nothing, only that it would be overpowered.

[FloatingFatMan]

It was in the second AMA:
Also in the second AMA:
Frankly, I'm not sure that sounds sustainable.

It wasn't, it was an ever increasing cycle of buffs, and all our chars would have been literal gods long before we reached the end.  Obviously, mobs would also have to increase, so nothing would really change.

CoH would have ended up turning into Exalted...  I'm glad it didn't happen, and assuming things move forwards, I hope Irish_Girl abandons that approach.  There are far better ways to continue progression without falling for this trap.

[Everfreefire]

Now I'm wondering if there's an Exalted MMO, or if it'd even be possible.

[Techbot Alpha]

What FFM said.

[Cailyn Alaynn]

Frankly, I'm not sure that sounds sustainable.

It wasn't, and was never really intended to be. If I'm remembering correctly (and this is to an extent an interpretation of things Posi's said.)
The plan was basically have the players beat the Bastion, then the True Rikit, then the Dimensionless...and then pull a Rikti War type doomsday and start CoH2.
At which point the players would have been cosmic level gods...which would be solved when they just killed all the everything. (Same excuse why there weren't any heroes when CoH started "They all died in the Rikti War.")

[Cailyn Alaynn]

CoH would have ended up turning into Exalted...  I'm glad it didn't happen, and assuming things move forwards, I hope Irish_Girl abandons that approach.  There are far better ways to continue progression without falling for this trap.

Picking up the reins off the floor, and dusting them off... I have to say the Incarnate system is giving me one of the biggest headaches.
I wish I could just nuke it from orbit and almost re-make the end game from scratch...

[FloatingFatMan]

Picking up the reins off the floor, and dusting them off... I have to say the Incarnate system is giving me one of the biggest headaches.
I wish I could just nuke it from orbit and almost re-make the end game from scratch...

There's plenty of folks who wouldn't object (but also plenty who would!)

Personally, i never liked the forced story path involved in the whole Incarnate thing, and RP wise, completely and utterly ignored it as the most base kind of railroading.

My main got all those extra powers because of her continuing changes wrought by the Kheldian energy on her latent mutant genes and the other things done to her and consequently, she was becoming more powerful and and less human as time went on...

[Goddangit]

Picking up the reins off the floor, and dusting them off... I have to say the Incarnate system is giving me one of the biggest headaches.
I wish I could just nuke it from orbit and almost re-make the end game from scratch...

There's plenty of folks who wouldn't object (but also plenty who would!)

Personally, i never liked the forced story path involved in the whole Incarnate thing, and RP wise, completely and utterly ignored it as the most base kind of railroading.

My main got all those extra powers because of her continuing changes wrought by the Kheldian energy on her latent mutant genes and the other things done to her and consequently, she was becoming more powerful and and less human as time went on...

I would put myself in the Not Mind category if it weren't for the fact I hated the Incarnate thing so much that Not Mind is well beyond understatement.  You go from all these choices in costume, origin, power and customization, roleplay...  The choices you made didn't matter, because all roads lead to just this.  It felt like an exercise in futility.  If it were replaced with something that didn't feel like such a funnel I would rejoice.

And if you were to make such a change this would be the opportunity to do it.

[BadWolf]

There's plenty of folks who wouldn't object (but also plenty who would!)

Personally, i never liked the forced story path involved in the whole Incarnate thing, and RP wise, completely and utterly ignored it as the most base kind of railroading.

My main got all those extra powers because of her continuing changes wrought by the Kheldian energy on her latent mutant genes and the other things done to her and consequently, she was becoming more powerful and and less human as time went on...

Imagine how my Incarnate felt--she had no superpowers. Street Justice/Willpower brute, used Ninja Run as my travel power because it was the only one that didn't have a connotation of "superhuman" ability. Ran the whole Dark Astoria run before I even filled my Alpha slot, and had all these people telling me that my Incarnate power was the only thing Mot feared. I was like, "Listen buddy, I punch things. With my fist. If he's afraid of that, we may be in better shape than I thought."

[Cymmetri]

Picking up the reins off the floor, and dusting them off... I have to say the Incarnate system is giving me one of the biggest headaches.
I wish I could just nuke it from orbit and almost re-make the end game from scratch...

Don't you dare. 

...

I personally loved the first half of incarnation. Hybrid could have been better.
It still kills me that we never got to see through Omega. 

[FloatingFatMan]

Imagine how my Incarnate felt--she had no superpowers. Street Justice/Willpower brute, used Ninja Run as my travel power because it was the only one that didn't have a connotation of "superhuman" ability. Ran the whole Dark Astoria run before I even filled my Alpha slot, and had all these people telling me that my Incarnate power was the only thing Mot feared. I was like, "Listen buddy, I punch things. With my fist. If he's afraid of that, we may be in better shape than I thought."

My main, RP wise, failed and was devoured by Mot... She had too much emotional baggage for him to prey on.

Luckily, when others defeated him (we made a thing of it, server-wide, on Union), he spat up most of those he'd devoured and my main came back!  Was a couple of weeks without playing her though!

For those that knew her, the fiction I posted up at the time was pretty heart rending!  I -loved- the Mot storyline. :p

[BadWolf]

My main, RP wise, failed and was devoured by Mot... She had too much emotional baggage for him to prey on.

Luckily, when others defeated him (we made a thing of it, server-wide, on Union), he spat up most of those he'd devoured and my main came back!  Was a couple of weeks without playing her though!

For those that knew her, the fiction I posted up at the time was pretty heart rending!  I -loved- the Mot storyline. :p

I loved it too. One of my all-time favorites, actually. When you gather together all your allies for the final battle against Mot, and he just eats them all...oh, man. That was epic whammy. Right down to the fact that it said "Finale" in the story text, even though it wasn't. Headtrip on a massive scale. And then the real finale, where _everyone_ is gathered right down to Apex and War Witch, was awesome-sauce. It really got me into the Incarnate content, and when I found out that raids weren't the kind of ordeal that they were on WoW, I wound up doing some of those too. Having a solo Incarnate path, though, especially one that well-designed, was really important to getting me involved.

[dpawtows]

It was in the second AMA:
Also in the second AMA:
Frankly, I'm not sure that sounds sustainable.

On possible solution that opens up a whole new can of worms: 
The game allows you to earn X Incarnate powers.   You can only *use* Y of them at any given time, where Y < X.   You can change which ones are active, but not in the middle of a fight.  Choose wisely.

[Thunder Glove]

Even though, as I said, I don't think Incarnate powers were sustainable over the long term, I still love the idea that, even at the endgame, you improve your character by getting new abilities, not like every other game where endgame just means farming to get gear that gives you +10 more HP or +2 more strength than your previous gear did.  Incarnate powers were another layer of customization on top of everything else, and expanded your character's breadth instead of just making numbers bigger (except for Alpha and Hybrid, which is why I think the latter was a bit of a misstep).

.... damn, I still miss this game.  Are we there yet?

[AlienOne]

I would be among those who would mind about the Incarnates thing--mainly because it was the only way that my human-only Warshade could not be mezzed all the time. It was a QoL thing I was asking for for years (and the VEATs had), and it finally came about in the form of the Incarnate system...