The Hard Way Option - Incarnate Extraordinaire

[Lockpick]

A number of people have been stating the game is to easy, so my suggestion is to create an option at character creation that allows that character to choose to level the Hard Way.  I'm sure someone will come up with a better name; maybe call it Incarnate Extraordinaire.  The intent will be to limit the abilities / power of the character and make the grind harder, but once all tasks are accomplished a badge and an accolade will be awarded.  Got to put some restrictions in to make sure people cannot just power level their way through the Hard Way.

 

• During character creation the character selects the Hard Way option
• Only SOs can be used for the first 30 levels
  • The character will not have the option to slot anything but TOs, DOs, and SOs
• Only basic IOs for 40 to 50
  • The character will not have the option to slot anything but TOs, DOs, SOs, and Basic IOs
• Set IOs can be used at 50+
  • All IOs available
• All task forces must be done at original level
  • No exemping down to do the Task Force
  • New badges provided for doing the TFs the Hard Way in addition to the normal badges
  • All task force must be done for the side selected at creation
    • Might have to rationalize this because I think Villains get less Task Forces and the intent would be to make sure every character has to do the Shadow Shard task forces
• Temp powers cannot be used and will not be accessible at P2W
• All the Shadow Shard badges must be completed
• All the DA badges must be completed
• Hamidon badges must be completed
• XP will be limited to one level every 20 hours
  • This will help prevent over leveling the task forces
  • Maybe also have the system prevent leveling past a certain level if you haven't completed the required task forces at level
• At vet level 100 if all the prerequisites have been met the character receives
  • A Badge - Incarnate Extraordinaire
  • An accolade power that provides an auto buff that can be selected by the character (can only select one option):
    • 7.5% Recharge
    • 5% Defense to all
    • 5% Resistance to all
    • 7.5% Move speed
    • Maybe something else
  • A travel power that allows the breaking of the rule of 4 power pools, but the travel power only has one slot
    • Basically, if you have selected 4 power pools like Leadership, Fighting, Speed, and Leaping, but you want Fly you could get the Fly power, but you would not be able to add more than the original slot.
  • A new costume part that only characters that have completed the Hard Way challenge can receive
  • Once the character receives the Incarnate Extraordinaire badge everything reverts to normal
    • Leveling reverts to normal, so you can get more than one level per day
    • You can exemp with set IOs
    • Etc.

I think the reward is pretty good and I would certainly create a character to do this challenge, but it would take a long time to do with the leveling restriction.  You can't completely stop the power leveling, especially when you are working on the vet levels, but you would still have to put in an extreme amount of time.  You would also be able to team with others that are leveling normally, so it might not be as challenging as possible.

 

Any ideas on what restrictions you would add?

Any other rewards you would add?

Would you do this challenge?

Am I crazy?

 

Edited November 18, 2020 by Lockpick
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[Grindingsucks]

So, from my perspective, yes- you're missing something.  I don't want more grind.  In fact, I HATE grinding.  I don't view grind as challenge.  Grind is about patience and stamina. Grind is about enduring boredom.  Challenge is about problems that need to be overcome through skilled play.  I want to play a potent character, with diverse powers and abilities (and here is the important part) ON A TEAM of characters of similar ability, and still have combat be an interesting challenge FOR THE TEAM.

 

My own solution to this problem is to simply try to find players with similar tastes and place self-imposed restrictions on our characters.  No incarnates, or no characters above X level.  Or whatever.  Presently, it's the only real solution to find my challenge comfort zone in group play.  It is not, unfortunately, an ideal solution for regular, casual play, because when you LFT/LFM you're kind of just taking what you can get.  It would be swell if you could always find people that share your play preferences but, sadly, that's just not the case.  Also, I'd love to be able to enjoy those cool incarnate powers just like everyone else- but not if it makes group play a cake-walk.

 

It's very easy to enjoy challenging play solo.  You simply restrict your level/power/enhancement choices, fine-tune your difficulty level and you can pretty much get the exact experience you're looking for.

 

Ideally?  I would like some new end-game (Incarnate/veteran lvl) content that is sufficiently challenging to teams that each member of the team is a helpful- even vital- part of the whole.  Content that can't be beaten, unless the team is reasonably diverse (as opposed to mostly the same AT's), works carefully together, and uses sensible tactics to overcome a difficult foe.

 

How it feels to me now, on a team of fully kitted-out incarnates (or even just 50's with good IO sets):  Run from one group of mobs to another.  Spam random attacks at each group.  Mobs die in a few seconds.  Repeat until end boss.  Wail on boss with random attacks until it falls down (takes noticeably longer, but requires no more thought or strategy).  During this process, you might die once- or even twice.  But probably not.  If you do die, you get rezzed quickly, then you can randomly spam buttons until you win.

 

I'm sounding like I'm bitching a lot more than I intend to.  I really DO love this game and I think it's great fun, even with my various gripes.  I just think a bit of more challenging end-game content for groups would be a welcome addition.  I'd like AT choices and strategy to be more relevant to team play.  There ought to be at least one mission/foe where you really NEED have a diverse team and good strategy to be victorious- not just a god-squad that can steamroll over everything.

 

Also, my posts are always WAY too long.  Sorry about that.  Brevity has never been my strong point.  🙁

[Razor Cure]

The name should be 'The insanely grindy way.'

How many people would do this?

18 hours ago, Lockpick said:

All task forces must be done at original level

• No exemping down to do the Task Force

 

That would be such a pain.

 

18 hours ago, Lockpick said:

All the Shadow Shard badges must be completed

HAHAHAHAH. No, really, you were serious? What about for Villains? We dont need no stinking shard badges.

 

18 hours ago, Lockpick said:

XP will be limited to one level every 20 hours

• This will help prevent over leveling the task forces

 

Only one level possible, for the ENTIRE Synapse TF? Yeah, no thanks.

 

 

The rewards you suggest would be really cool...but for the effort involved? ALso, how would teaming work? What is to stop my gimpy toon on SOs just teaming with a bunch of IOd 50s running every tf? Sure, I'd be useless (compared to being able to slot stuff), but they would just mash everything anyway. No challenge at all.

And you just KNOW people would do exactly that with multiple accounts..Main Account tricked out, running with Gimp Accounit. Gimp account does literally jack shit, from 1-50, but still hits it.

But then 100 DAYS to get to Vet100?

 

I agree that more grinding does NOT equal more of a challenge.

[Lockpick]

1 hour ago, Razor Cure said:

The name should be 'The insanely grindy way.'

How many people would do this?

That would be such a pain.

 

HAHAHAHAH. No, really, you were serious? What about for Villains? We dont need no stinking shard badges.

 

Only one level possible, for the ENTIRE Synapse TF? Yeah, no thanks.

 

 

The rewards you suggest would be really cool...but for the effort involved? ALso, how would teaming work? What is to stop my gimpy toon on SOs just teaming with a bunch of IOd 50s running every tf? Sure, I'd be useless (compared to being able to slot stuff), but they would just mash everything anyway. No challenge at all.

And you just KNOW people would do exactly that with multiple accounts..Main Account tricked out, running with Gimp Accounit. Gimp account does literally jack shit, from 1-50, but still hits it.

But then 100 DAYS to get to Vet100?

 

I agree that more grinding does NOT equal more of a challenge.

If you didn't want to do the challenge you wouldn't have to choose it.  This is for people that miss the grind or want harder game play.  Of course, they could team with 50s and be carried through the TFs, but you can't close every loophole.

 

This is for people that want to grind. which surprisingly a number of people like and they would get some decent rewards for doing it.  I would definitely do it once, but couldn't imagine doing it more than that.

[Razor Cure]

48 minutes ago, Lockpick said:

but you can't close every loophole.

Well..yeah, you can. You could do the entire thing with an alt and do nothing at all. Sure, it would still take time, but even the vet levels could be farmed, and with only one level per day, that would take all of 20 mins (per day) in a fire farm.