New efforts!

[ukaserex]

I suppose people will always second guess the incarnate system.

Was it perfect? No. Was it fun? I thought so. In a way, it was ...annoying, having to take all those level-capped characters and getting them their requisite shards and stuff to open the alpha, and get the Judgement, Hybrid, Interface(was that it?) and however many other incarnate slots we got. I honestly can't recall, despite getting all of them on multiple 50 characters.

If I recall right, the level 50 was hard-coded into the game. For one reason or another, I believe it was Statesman who said that it couldn't be changed, even if they wanted to. Was that a true statement? I have no idea. I would think no; you write code, you can then change code - but there's a lot about it I don't know, so I can't really say.

I can say leveling up from 50 to 60 would be fairly annoying to me - particularly with all the new power sets coming out.

[Waffles]

Say what you will about the incarnate system.

Cardiac made me go from hating Dark Armor, to loving it.

[JanessaVR]

Say what you will about the incarnate system.

Cardiac made me go from hating Dark Armor, to loving it.

Cardiac was always my favorite Incarnate power.  Endurance was always an issue, no matter how I slotted for it.

[Ankhammon]

Nature Affinity was a set I'd not got around to exploring before the doors closed, was it really that bad?  What was wrong with it?

Beam Rifle... has a Beam/Traps corr in the 30s at closing and wasn't loving it.  Beam did come across as a little slow, a little low-damage, a little AoE-light for what I was expecting from the set.  But maybe saddling it with a set I didn't love hurt it unfairly, Traps bored me but fit the character concept.

The only thing about the Incarnate content that concerned me was the perception of dividing up an already small community.

Naff was a fine set. Visually challenging, but good. I didn't  get one up to high level (low 30s on test, mid 20s live) but it had huge potential in my book.

I remember being able to keep a full team (all MMs but my Naff/DP) alive and kicking on a steamroller team/doing a FF street sweep solo at level 27 or 28/beating an AV version of Manticore at low 30s (lots and lots of BFs and I used Magic PP for some extra damage).

All that was before getting to it's Tier 9 which adds a huge amount of +damage.

[Azrael]

Cardiac was always my favorite Incarnate power.  Endurance was always an issue, no matter how I slotted for it.

*nods.  Even with a very, very elegant and robust defence capped build, my Brute SS/Shield-er still had somewhat of an end problem due to the crash you'd get from Rage and obviously the end crash from Hasten.   I'd still have to occasionally 'watch the clock' with the end crashed but Cardiac made my brute a relentless Council 'killing', *cough, 'arresting' machine.   Speed.  Power.  Fire.  Bone crunching stuff.

As re: Beam.  I looked at Praetoria and thought, 'Wouldn't it be cool if we got all the rebel and robot plasma and beam pulse power sets into one juicy power set!?!?'  What did we get?  'Beam.'  *shakes head.  Probably the most shoddy piece of work they ever did.  They had all the juicy stuff in Prae', just re-package it as 'beam/plasma' set and 'done.'  But no...  I guess the obvious eluded them.

As re: old NC I.P.  If they want to truly go mobile...in the US, just port their MMOs to the latest iPad.  Could it be done?  Retro gaming on a tablet.  Blue tooth a keyboard and mouse?  Airplay it to big tv set?  *Muses.

Azrael.

I hope we get the teaser/hints soon soon...I've been going crazy thinking about what may be on its way. Yes I know it's not a return to the game in full, but still excited about whatever functionality may be coming.

*Smiles.  Whatever functionality is coming is one step closer to getting our game back on our terms. 

For example.  We can put simple commands into the chat window to 'spawn' a single mob.  Change costumes.  Go to other areas of the city.  etc.   However, what if there was some level of automation?  Scripting?  Just having the chat window client working and being able to wander around the 'city' with AN-Other player would be a seismic event in terms of saying, 'Game on.  We're back.  And we're coming back!'

So.  Yes.  I'm trying not to think about it too much.  *kid before Christmas feeling.   Or I won't sleep at all!  :o

[JanessaVR]

As re: Beam.  I looked at Praetoria and thought, 'Wouldn't it be cool if we got all the rebel and robot plasma and beam pulse power sets into one juicy power set!?!?'  What did we get?  'Beam.'  *shakes head.  Probably the most shoddy piece of work they ever did.  They had all the juicy stuff in Prae', just re-package it as 'beam/plasma' set and 'done.'  But no...  I guess the obvious eluded them.

File this under the many, many cool NPC things we wanted but never got.  From weapons to costumes to powers, there was so much that should have been made playable.

[Arcana]

As re: Beam.  I looked at Praetoria and thought, 'Wouldn't it be cool if we got all the rebel and robot plasma and beam pulse power sets into one juicy power set!?!?'  What did we get?  'Beam.'  *shakes head.  Probably the most shoddy piece of work they ever did.  They had all the juicy stuff in Prae', just re-package it as 'beam/plasma' set and 'done.'  But no...  I guess the obvious eluded them.

You're going to have to explain how Beam was "shoddy" while you believe the correct thing to do was copy a bunch of other pre-existing stuff and jam it into one set.

My recollection was that Beam was a premium set, which means players had to buy it, and it was a fairly popular premium set just the way it was.  It was nice having a ranged set with -def, -res, and -regen, and the only real knock on the set was that it had insufficient AoE.  But every set that wasn't an AoE monster  was knocked for having insufficient AoE.  I also thought the disintegration effect was an interesting one. although I did think it needed to be tweaked a bit.

[Prism Almidu]

Personally, I liked the way the Incarnate system was handled... from the powers aspect, at least. The practically (and literally, in the case of Hybrid) mandatory raid requirements could be irritating, true, but the Dark Astoria revamp was a step away from that, though the reward tables could have used some adjustment. And as I recall, there were plans to make more Incarnate path content outside of raids, in order to address the lack of options. Not to say the raids weren't fun for me, but I wouldn't want to always be doing them. Removing them wholesale just doesn't sound like it'd be in the spirit of the game, i.e. "something for everyone, not everything for someone."

[Waffles]

I kinda wished they had moved the "Gun drawn" animation from beam to Assault rifle.


As far as Beam was concerned, my beam/time leveled rather well, I personally did not like it just because it felt too 'slow', but it was without a doubt one of my more successful leveling characters, so YMMV.

[Winter Fable]

Cardiac was always my favorite Incarnate power.  Endurance was always an issue, no matter how I slotted for it.

This^^^^^^

[Sentinel King]

Personally, I liked the way the Incarnate system was handled... from the powers aspect, at least.

That's where I've always been.  The decision not to raise the level cap provided closure with Incarnation allowing tweaks to the final build that couldn't happen with just enhancements.  Thinking back on all the other MMO's I've been forced to play since closure, the CoX Incarnate grind was an ABSOLUTE pleasure in comparison.  I guess it really makes a difference when one loves the game heart and soul.

Going on three years now and I still think about/dream of/long for a game I cannot play MORE than the drivel that is shoveled onto our computers these days and called MMO's.

[AmberOfDzu]

Thinking back on all the other MMO's I've been forced to play since closure, the CoX Incarnate grind was an ABSOLUTE pleasure in comparison. 

I agree. It worked pretty well; it took some time and effort, but not so much a casual couldn't do it, or that person couldn't do it on multiple characters, and CoH stayed alt-friendly through that.

[blacksly]

You're going to have to explain how Beam was "shoddy" while you believe the correct thing to do was copy a bunch of other pre-existing stuff and jam it into one set.

My recollection was that Beam was a premium set, which means players had to buy it, and it was a fairly popular premium set just the way it was.  It was nice having a ranged set with -def, -res, and -regen, and the only real knock on the set was that it had insufficient AoE.  But every set that wasn't an AoE monster  was knocked for having insufficient AoE.  I also thought the disintegration effect was an interesting one. although I did think it needed to be tweaked a bit.

Beam is great against AVs and other single hard targets. AoE it was light, but as Arcana (& Syndrome) says, you can't have every set be great at AoE, because then none are great. Certainly, it seemed better both single-target and AoE than Psy Blast, albeit with the annoying weapon redraw.

[Vee]

They could've fixed all of my problems with the incarnate system just by making the raids scale for team size and available for 8 person teams. I hated sitting around waiting for one to start more than anything. Maybe once DA was done it would've been fine but at a certain point i just couldn't take it anymore and started stopping with alpha. Shortly after i went to freemium.

[Prism Almidu]

They could've fixed all of my problems with the incarnate system just by making the raids scale for team size and available for 8 person teams. I hated sitting around waiting for one to start more than anything. Maybe once DA was done it would've been fine but at a certain point i just couldn't take it anymore and started stopping with alpha. Shortly after i went to freemium.

See, now that would be pretty cool. Far easier to get teams that way. I wonder how it would affect things like LAM's splitting up section though.

[Arcana]

They could've fixed all of my problems with the incarnate system just by making the raids scale for team size and available for 8 person teams. I hated sitting around waiting for one to start more than anything. Maybe once DA was done it would've been fine but at a certain point i just couldn't take it anymore and started stopping with alpha. Shortly after i went to freemium.

Three Incarnate trials would start with eight: Lambda, MoM, and Diabolique.  Every other trial could start with twelve.  And scaling content for teams of eight to twenty four sounds laudable, but it comes with severe design costs: particularly in forcing the content to be far more linear.  BAF, for example, is predicated on the notion that its up to the players to figure out how to best deploy interception forces on the ground.  Its not designed to allow for three hot spots if there are eight players, and five if there are sixteen.  There's no obvious scaling rule that wouldn't make things either boring or broken.  So you'd just have to plain avoid designing content like that: content which requires actual tactical options to be expressed.

For every player you'd win doing that, you'd lose two for which the purpose of the incarnate system was intended to offer content to.

It may not be the most diplomatic thing to say, but on the official forums I often made the statement that while I didn't like to see players frustrated or turned off by content, I also did not want to see the game stuck in a box either.  In particular, I said that I believe many players did not like the invention system, and some probably even quit because of it.  I consider that unfortunate, but I wouldn't trade the invention system to get those players back.  At some point, you have to decide to go after the players that will play because the game has content they like, not because it doesn't have content they don't like.  The players who need a certain amount of enjoyable content and can ignore the rest are the players you want.  The players who demand nothing be added they can't stand are the players you will never be able to keep anyway.  At some point, you have to let them go.

I was also very adamant about not playing word games.  It was sometimes suggested that if the devs added content that contained a particular kind of reward, the devs had an obligation to make that reward achievable by every other kind of content that existed so that players were not forced to play content they did not want to play, and that was "adding options."  No, it wasn't.  It was setting a design rule that said the devs could not add any reward or content in the game unless they were prepared to award that reward to everyone for every reason, or they were prepared to make that content accessible to everyone who wanted to access it by every means available.  That's not adding options, that's design containment.

[Arcana]

See, now that would be pretty cool. Far easier to get teams that way. I wonder how it would affect things like LAM's splitting up section though.

I ran eight man Lambda.  Four go this way, four go that way.  It was very difficult initially, but got easier with level shifts.  The rule was if at least half the people weren't confident in soloing boxes and tubes, and the other half couldn't reliably duo them fast, don't go with only eight.

[Prism Almidu]

I ran eight man Lambda.  Four go this way, four go that way.  It was very difficult initially, but got easier with level shifts.  The rule was if at least half the people weren't confident in soloing boxes and tubes, and the other half couldn't reliably duo them fast, don't go with only eight.

I see. Makes sense.

[Noyjitat]

Thinking back on all the other MMO's I've been forced to play since closure, the CoX Incarnate grind was an ABSOLUTE pleasure in comparison.

This is what I've been trying to tell people here for quite some time. The "grind" if you can call it that of incarnate trials, isn't even 1/8th the amount of effort and time involved raiding in basically any other mmo.

Since CoX closure some of the more recent mmos are a bit more relaxed. But only a bit.

[Arcana]

This is what I've been trying to tell people here for quite some time. The "grind" if you can call it that of incarnate trials, isn't even 1/8th the amount of effort and time involved raiding in basically any other mmo.

Since CoX closure some of the more recent mmos are a bit more relaxed. But only a bit.

I didn't consider the incarnate system much of a grind at all, but I could understand those that thought it was.  For me, it wasn't about the incarnate system being less of a grind than other much more grindy end games.  That just portrayed it as the best of the bad.  It was more that the system had a much more reasonable progression curve in general.  The amount of effort necessary to get alpha was comparable to that of earning other similar progression landmarks in the game.  The optimal return wasn't the top powers, but rather the tier 3 powers with level shift.  That meant that on the one hand you did have something for the more prolific incarnate runners to earn, but those tier 4 powers didn't push the level shifts too far away from more casual incarnate trial runners.  With minimal effort you could get something, with significant effort you could get most of the benefits, and there was still something left for the die-hards.  You could argue the details, but those are the properties I would want from any end-game system.  I wouldn't want even one of those properties removed.