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Started by Ironwolf, March 06, 2014, 03:01:32 PM

Rejolt

But...but... You can solo your alpha slot in Dark Astoria! Eh?! Eh?! Yeah, never mind.
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Stealth Dart

#13581
 :-X
I am a dancer, a leaf in the wind...a leaf that can kick your Butt!

Rejolt

Quote from: Stealth Dart on December 04, 2014, 05:41:11 AM
Oh yeah, that is right.  thanks for reminding me.  I totally forgot about the solo path.  The revamped Dark Astoria was a good way to get some extra threads per day.  Either street-sweeping or doing missions.  Some of which were fairly fun.

Basically a time killer while you wait for lower powered power gamers to catch up to you. You're almost better off leveling an alt unless you're badging on your main at the same time.
Rejolt Industries LLC is now a thing. Woo!

LaughingAlex

Quote from: Stealth Dart on December 04, 2014, 05:04:17 AM
Climbing the Incarnate Tree kind of went like this. 

Step One: Unlock your alpha slot by going to Mender Ramiel in Ouroboros and completing the Unlock mission arc.  Which If I remember there were three missions to complete to unlock your slot.  You could also earn Incarnate XP to unlock the slot by doing either BAF or Lambda incarnate trials.  And by purchasing Psychic or Physical XP by using Incarnate Threads and influence which if I recall was one million influence per thread.  So get cracking earning that influence at Wentworth's!  So the quickest route was usually to do the Mender arc.

Step Two: Gather incarnate components to create your first common Alpha Slot power by completing the Task Force of the Week to completion as well as doing other Task Forces/Strike Forces for incarnate drops to create your first power.  Incarnate drops such as Incarnate Shards, Incarnate Threads, Notices of the Well, etc.  Once you have enough components you could craft your power.  Which power...you chose from amongst the various choices in the tree.  Each had their own bonuses and benefits.  Once you chose which attribute or power you wanted, you gather the components for that level.  There are common, uncommon, rare and very rare levels for each Incarnate ability.  I loved doing the Imperius Task Force for Shard drops and for the salvage.  You could also gain merits from fighting Rikti in the Rikti War Zone to craft into components.  Once you have all your incarnate salvage proceed to Step Three.

Step Three: Crafting your power.  Once you have the incarnate components to your first power you go to the Incarnate crafting menu and craft your power.  Once you have crafted your power you go the incarnate menu to slot your power.  Select your power and drag it to the Alpha Slot.  Once you have slotted your first common Alpha Power keep gathering incarnate threads, incarnate notice of the wells and other incarnate salvage until you have reached the very rare power of your Alpha Slot.  each time you craft a power it consumes the slot below it.  So if You want to craft "new" additional powers you will have to start at common again and work up through uncommon rare and very rare powers.  Once you have reached the rare level power in your Alpha slot you will receive a level shift to Level 50+1.   While in Incarnate Trials/Task Forces you will be effectively level 51.

Step Four. Unlocking Incarnate XP for your other slots.  Once Alpha is slotted you can then start doing Incarnate Trials such as Lambda Sector and Behavioral Adjustment Facility.  These trials earn you Incarnate XP towards unlocking your Lore and Judgment Slots.  Once you have enough Incarnate XP those slots will unlock.  Now you can repeat the process you used for your Alpha slot to fill your Judgment and Lore slots.  Alpha boosts your attributes.  Lore gives you pets and Judgment does large scale area of effect attacks.  Judgement Jump in the Ion tree seemed to be a very popular choice.  While you can do the other trials at this point, I recommend starting with the first two trials to understand the mechanics involved.  Once you have those slotted you can go to the next step.

Step Five.  Unlocking Incarnate XP from doing the Underground Trial, Keyes Island Reactor/TPN/Diabolique Dilemma and Minds of Mayhem Trials to unlock your Interface and Destiny Slots.  Repeat the earlier process for earning components, crafting powers and slotting them.  Interface Slots gave you certain Procs and the Destiny Slot gave you buffs for your allies.  Destiny slot was critical for completing the Underground Trial successfully.

Step Six.  Unlocking the last Hybrid Slot.  You do this by earning Advanced Psychic Incarnate XP doing the Magisterium Trials.  To enter the Magisterium Trial you must have Alpha/Lore/Destiny slots unlocked.  By this point you want to have all the other slots filled so that you gain the other level shifts to boost you to at least 50+3.  You gain a level shift with Alpha and Incarnate Shifts with Lore and Destiny abilities slotted to at least level 3 (rare) or level 4 (very rare).  You will be fighting AVs who may be 3 levels higher than that.  I used to run Magi farms by doing the Magi Trial for the first huge mob fights until we got to the AVs and then exit the trial and repeat.  About 5 runs like that would get you enough Incarnate Xp to unlock the Hybrid slot.  Once the slot is unlocked you gather components to complete the last power to level very rare.  Congratulations you are now six tenths of an Incarnate!  Sadly the other four slots were never finished.  Genesis and Mind would have likely been the next two slots released then the last two...Vitae and Omega.

From what I understand once you had all ten slots filled that was not the end of your path to being an Incarnate.  As I Understand it, Omega the tenth slot would have become the first slot of the next tier of incarnate abilities.  Welcome to the next level!

You have to remember even doing those first steps, you'll still be fighting everything +3 to you.  Without fully IO'd characters and there won't be any fully IO'd characters when the game restarts it'd going to be a bit tougher than you may have remembered.

My suggestion, get lots of buffs, debuffs and crowd control.  And don't complain if a team fails a few times, don't be to surprised, especially if you don't have alot of multipliers.  I remember the very first team to really do well at the ITrials was an all defender/corruptor/controller league.  Because multipliers were king.  I know a lot of ITrials were started with only 2-3 of those archtypes, I'd recommend until a lot of +3s were running around to go for 6+ of those archtypes or even one whole team of them to really get a good start on the trials.  Just a recommendation.
Currently; Not doing any streaming, found myself with less time available recently.  Still playing starbound periodically, though I am thinking of trying other games.  Don't tell me to play mmohtg's though please :).  Getting back into participating in VO and the successors again to.

Stealth Dart

#13584
 :-X
I am a dancer, a leaf in the wind...a leaf that can kick your Butt!

Ankhammon

Quote from: Rejolt on December 04, 2014, 03:48:47 AM
If that's not enough - have a 4th that allows infinite server transfers to.

Oh sure, a special server just for Infinity transfers. Nice Jolty. :)
Cogito, Ergo... eh?

LaughingAlex

Quote from: Stealth Dart on December 04, 2014, 05:58:20 AM
I remember doing the Apex task force.  With my first level 50.  I had my alpha unlocked by that point but not slotted so I was level shifted -4 so basically a level 46 fighting level 54's.  Even the minions were purple to me.  So lets just say I died a lot.  While the other team members laughed.  Their only reason for taking me was so they had enough people to start the task force.  They were doing a speed run so I had no chance of keeping up with them.  I drew aggro from every single mob.  I stuck with it so I could at least get the rewards for my time spent.  But I was not happy about it.

I was left feeling that way in general when I was in situations like that myself, when I was on some kind of developing character that I couldn't keep up on.  Not the worst feeling I've had in games but certainly left me annoyed at myself, and my teammates if it was a more unwillful experience.
Currently; Not doing any streaming, found myself with less time available recently.  Still playing starbound periodically, though I am thinking of trying other games.  Don't tell me to play mmohtg's though please :).  Getting back into participating in VO and the successors again to.

Twisted Toon

Quote from: Stealth Dart on December 04, 2014, 05:41:11 AM
Oh yeah, that is right.  thanks for reminding me.  I totally forgot about the solo path.  The revamped Dark Astoria was a good way to get some extra threads per day.  Either street-sweeping or doing missions.  Some of which were fairly fun.
That was how I did most of my incarnating for the few characters that I had Incarnated. Once it was available that is. I did suffer through a few BAFs and Lambdas with Agent Standin until the New Dark Astoria allowed me and my small group of friends to go incarnate on our own.
Hope never abandons you, you abandon it. - George Weinberg

Hope ... is not a feeling; it is something you do. - Katherine Paterson

Nobody really cares if you're miserable, so you might as well be happy. - Cynthia Nelms

Stealth Dart

#13588
 :-X
I am a dancer, a leaf in the wind...a leaf that can kick your Butt!

Joshex

Quote from: Stealth Dart on December 04, 2014, 05:41:11 AM
Oh yeah, that is right.  thanks for reminding me.  I totally forgot about the solo path.  The revamped Dark Astoria was a good way to get some extra threads per day.  Either street-sweeping or doing missions.  Some of which were fairly fun.

you should see a video of my tank street sweeping in DA. I'll youtube it later.
There is always another way. But it might not work exactly like you may desire.

A wise old rabbit once told me "Never give-up!, Trust your instincts!" granted the advice at the time led me on a tripped-out voyage out of an asteroid belt, but hey it was more impressive than a bunch of rocks and space monkies.

Felderburg

Quote from: Stealth Dart on December 04, 2014, 05:04:17 AM
From what I understand once you had all ten slots filled that was not the end of your path to being an Incarnate.  As I Understand it, Omega the tenth slot would have become the first slot of the next tier of incarnate abilities.  Welcome to the next level!

Indeed: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Lore_AMA/Sorted#180 And getting the first 10 would have been "trivialized:"

Quote from: PositronThere was no "final", once Omega slot was reached that would be the new "Alpha" slot and 10 more Incarnate levels would appear above it. Getting the first 10 Incarnate powers would have been trivialized so the "new grind" would be the Omega-base tree. And then there was a tree after that, and one after that, etc.

The sustainability of this is clearly questionable... Reading Positron's column (www.mmorpg.com/features.cfm/view/columns/show/45_Matt-Miller) I got the sense he was "anti-alt," or at least uncomfortable with the fact that a lack of end game encouraged severe altitis among the CoH population. I would argue alting is a strength of CoH. But you have to wonder how a never-ending Incarnate tree would have affected it.
I used CIT before they even joined the Titan network! But then I left for a long ol' time, and came back. Now I edit the wiki.

I'm working on sorting the Lore AMAs so that questions are easily found and linked: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Lore_AMA/Sorted Tell me what you think!

Pinnacle: The only server that faceplants before a fight! Member of the Pinnacle RP Congress (People's Elf of the CCCP); formerly @The Holy Flame

Groundbreaker

I didn't get all the badges, I didn't get IO sets for everything that I wanted to, and I certainly didn't finish the Incarnate stuff, in fact I only went beyond Alpha on one toon.

I definitely had Altitis. For me there was still enough content below incarnate that I could have happily played for years after filling my first toon with Incarnate powers. Omega could happily have been the end for me, and it turning into part one of a new tier would probably have put me off wanting to continue. After the slog to get that far having to do it all again wouldn't grab me. I would definitely find myself rolling a new alt and starting again.

So constantly increasing the ladder would not sustain my interest, but it would for a lot of other people. If I had to choose between extra 1-50 content and extra Incarnate content I would always choose the former. There were so many different power combinations I would very much like to explore that the game still had plenty of life in it for me. And I always enjoyed helping new players, so much so that I would often reroll just to team alongside a newbie that I had taken under my wing (yes I know I could have exemp'd down, but it gave me a chance to play a new combo).

In an ideal world we would get both and that was really what we had with the constantly evolving storyline of CoX. It ticked every box for me, and completely ruined me for sticking with other MMO's lol

I'm looking forward to playing in the static I23 but i'm really looking forward to CoT and APR as the continuing story is what kept me going, as long as they feel like CoX I will be happy to give them my money until the end of time :)
"We don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing" - George Bernard Shaw

Rejolt

Quote from: Ankhammon on December 04, 2014, 06:43:57 AM
Oh sure, a special server just for Infinity transfers. Nice Jolty. :)

I see what you did there ... and I like it!

As for alts, I had too many toons to concern myself with io bonuses. However, frakenslotting just for all around boosting that power did wonderful things for those alts.
Rejolt Industries LLC is now a thing. Woo!

Burnt Toast


He was not anti-alt. People quote the story at http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature/7676/Altism.html when they say this, but what he is saying is that CoH had a "problem" because unlike other MMOs they did not cater to the "Have one main" and play that toon to death...because creating alts was something players enjoyed doing. If you read the article he is basically praising CoH for the things a lot of games don't have... the plethora of powersets...the costume creator...etc... which is what led to people having so many alts. In other words... he was taking the time to remind the interwebs...that CoH was a unique game...with a unique "problem." ;)



Quote from: Felderburg on December 04, 2014, 03:30:12 PM
Indeed: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Lore_AMA/Sorted#180 And getting the first 10 would have been "trivialized:"

The sustainability of this is clearly questionable... Reading Positron's column (www.mmorpg.com/features.cfm/view/columns/show/45_Matt-Miller) I got the sense he was "anti-alt," or at least uncomfortable with the fact that a lack of end game encouraged severe altitis among the CoH population. I would argue alting is a strength of CoH. But you have to wonder how a never-ending Incarnate tree would have affected it.

Felderburg

Well this turned out to be quite long. I'm not sure about anything now.




That's why I put "anti-alt" in quotes. But reading his column, I got the sense he very much was in favor of traditional end-game content, like the I Trials that we got. And per the article, he felt "dread" when adding them, because of the resistance he thought it would be met with:

Quote from: PositronBut this also presented a problem: Altoholism was so bad that any attempt to add an endgame to City of Heroes was going to be met with great resistance.

I don't know if the resistance the Trials met with was due to people with altitis complaining about doing it for their many characters - I personally think it was grindy all by itself on just one. He goes on to discuss how other games steer players into having just one character, and overall I think he makes the general argument that "end-game" is antithetical to alting:

Quote from: PositronAlting is fun for a lot of people, and for those who don't care at all about endgame content, alting can BE the game for those people.

So given that he is: 1. saying that alting and end-game are incompatible, to an extent, and 2. very much pro end-game, I would argue that he is not in favor of alting, or at the very least would consider options in the game itself to limit alting to a more manageable level - for the sake of an end game.

I will say that this quote is illuminating:

Quote from: PositronFinally there was the biggest flaw of City of Heroes (in my opinion) that contributed to Altoholism; the lack of a real end-game meant there became a time where it was counter-productive to log in your "main" if you wanted to get some superhero gaming done that evening.

It seems to me that his motivation for "end game" is more along the lines of "having something to do" - i.e., you can't "get some superhero gaming done" with a max-level character because there is no (end) gaming to get done. He didn't want people to pick up an alt just because they couldn't do anything on their main (boredom) - he wanted people to pick up an alt for better reasons (that he lists examples of).

It seems like Positron is in favor of a never-ending end game, of always "having something to do" on any character. Of course, that runs up against the main problem of any MMO - people can complete content faster than developers can put it out. And even if the end game is dynamic, allowing people to "do stuff" forever, there will be some sort of "max level" power that people will want to achieve - and some people will want to do so on every single alt. And therein lies his problem with alts - he seems to think that allowing a plethora of alts, that people feel they "have" to get to max power, is a bad thing.

Quote from: PositronIf you decide to level that character to max, you should have a reason in mind.

This is a very interesting quote. He does not address, in his examples of good or bad reasons for leveling to max, "reaching max level for the sake of reaching max level." Based on the examples, I would hazard a guess that he would feel like that is a bad reason. The issue there is that it is a reason that many people strive for max level - just because it's there (and I would argue in a superhero game, integral to the RP of many people, and even for non-RPers, feeling like a "true" hero / villain).

So I guess he has less of a problem with alts in-and-of-themselves... it's a problem with people who have a lot of alts, thinking that they need to get all their alts to max level, for the sake of getting them to max level. But in reality, that's why a lot of people go to max level, so I'm just not sure how compatible his MMO values are with the reality of alting.
I used CIT before they even joined the Titan network! But then I left for a long ol' time, and came back. Now I edit the wiki.

I'm working on sorting the Lore AMAs so that questions are easily found and linked: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Lore_AMA/Sorted Tell me what you think!

Pinnacle: The only server that faceplants before a fight! Member of the Pinnacle RP Congress (People's Elf of the CCCP); formerly @The Holy Flame

umber

Thanks for that writeup Felderburg, it largely mirrors my own take on the subject just described infinitely better than I would've managed, the "anti-alt" quotes definitely had some nuance that needed to be considered.

LaughingAlex

Anyone saying the solo path for incarnates was viable is hopelessly clueless or just wants to keep anyone from ever making any progress on the incarnate path entirely.  When you actually look at how slow the reward gains were you'd be rather surprised, shocked and disappointed.  I think the max was one empyrean merit per week, so thats over 8 weeks for a rare component not to mention the thread drop rate was way to slow.  You needed 60 threads for a tier ONE abilities and many more for a tier 2, so it was outright impractical to do so.  If we get the game back i'd recommend first thing to patch was the solo path, make it a bit more viable if possible.

Edit: Made my post a little less hostile towards those who think the solo path was doable.  Will add this though;

When the Itrials reward 100x more in only 30 minutes to an hour than a solo path somethings off :S.
Currently; Not doing any streaming, found myself with less time available recently.  Still playing starbound periodically, though I am thinking of trying other games.  Don't tell me to play mmohtg's though please :).  Getting back into participating in VO and the successors again to.

Stealth Dart

#13597
 :-X
I am a dancer, a leaf in the wind...a leaf that can kick your Butt!

LaughingAlex

Quote from: Stealth Dart on December 04, 2014, 08:48:35 PM
The problem there is if you give too much reward for the solo path....you ruin the chances for league play for the ITrials.  I know many who did not do ITrials because of the time invested and the more complicated mechanics of the missions.  But if you can get the same rewards for solo content as for team play it is just going to make it harder to form teams.  I think solo play is fine for adding additional rewards above and beyond team play but should not replace team play.  I had no issues with solo rewards as it was.

aye, I understand that there, honestly it's a hard thing to really figure, the irony though, of your post is that, because in city of heroes setting up a team can usually be done in very little time, those who have less time are better off doing the ITrials than doing the solo path, as the solo path takes far more time to get the rewards which are also far less.  One would think that if one has little time, the solo incarnate content would be the way to go when in fact the opposite is kind of true.  Just my thoughts anyhow.
Currently; Not doing any streaming, found myself with less time available recently.  Still playing starbound periodically, though I am thinking of trying other games.  Don't tell me to play mmohtg's though please :).  Getting back into participating in VO and the successors again to.

KennonGL

Quote from: Stealth Dart on December 04, 2014, 08:48:35 PM
The problem there is if you give too much reward for the solo path....you ruin the chances for league play for the ITrials.  I know many who did not do ITrials because of the time invested and the more complicated mechanics of the missions.  But if you can get the same rewards for solo content as for team play it is just going to make it harder to form teams.  I think solo play is fine for adding additional rewards above and beyond team play but should not replace team play.  I had no issues with solo rewards as it was.

Problem there is that if you FORCE people who want to advance to only be able to advance via large-scale-team-raids, you limit freedoms.

The solo path for incarnates was so slow and crippled that it may as well have not been there. 
I have no problem at all with a solo path being quite a bit slower than team play -- (by it's very nature,
team play is going to give faster, bigger, rewards. You're mowing down mobs faster and in much larger
quantities) -- but deliberately crippling the solo path rewards on top of the natural lesser rewards for
solo vs team play was a mistake (imo).

Me, I hated the large scale raiding -- I deliberately avoided Hami Raids, Mothership Raids, and the iTrials because of that. 

Of course, on top of that, the only place the Incarnate abilities were usable was while in Incarnate raids, so
(after grinding out an Alpha slot) there wasn't really a need to get all Incarnated up if you didn't want to do the raids...

Still, I would have liked to explore the Incarnate paths, but it was basically pointless for me to try.  And the further up the Incarnate tree you went (for the later iTrials) the even less likely I was to participate as 1) I didn't have enough lower level incarnate power to keep up, and 2) I got more and more left behind on tactics.

Plus I started missing out on Game Lore, which probably bugged me more than anything else about the raids.

I never had a problem with the Incarnate Trials; let those who enjoy them, play them.  It just would of been nice if there had been a slower (but not stupidly, cripplingly, slower) solo path to follow.