Incarnate Scaling for Dark Astoria

[MasterTang]

While the revamped Dark Astoria was initially supposed to be a challenging zone for lvl 50 characters, the saturation of Incarnate-shifts has actually made the content easier than regular non-Incarnate material (e.g. PI Radio Missions). Currently the zone rarely sees any traffic and presents little challenge to the demographic of players/characters it was created for.

 

My suggestion would to be to have missions spawn mobs as a base level of 54 with notoriety settings allowing you to modified the enemy level range from lvl 53 up to lvl 54 (+4).

Ideally mobs in the zone would might also spawn in the lvl range of lvl 54 to lvl 54(+4 ) or the wider range of lvl50 to lvl54(+4), but I could see how that could be a bit tougher to implement.

 

While this would make the zone much harsher for fresh 50s, I feel like those are a vast minority in comparison to the Incarnate-shifted community.

I believe these changes would bring a significant amount of traffic back to the zone and renew/refresh interest in the zone and the DA-content.

[Apparition]

Dark Astoria was never meant to be a challenging zone.  It was designed as a solo-friendly training wheels and an on-ramp towards Incarnate trials, which is the challenging content.  It was never meant for full teams to run Dark Astoria content.  The idea was if you have a full team, go run an eight person iTrial.  If you want to play solo or have a small team, there's Dark Astoria.

Edited May 20, 2021 by Apparition

[MTeague]

Perfectly doable to unslot your destiny and lore to forgo the Incarnate Shifts, too, if you find it too easy with them in place. 

 

[arcane]

I love it how it is. Awesome solo xp. Literally only place street sweeping is still fun. And balances itself somewhat by having what would actually be pretty hard enemy groups were it not for your level shifts.

Edited May 20, 2021 by arcane

[Greycat]

DA was revamped so people could unlock and build their incarnates without grinding through the same trial over and over again. It gives solo and small team players a way to do this - something that was sorely missing (annoyingly) when Incarnates were unveiled.

 

Starting mobs at 54 would work against that. There *are* higher mobs in the zone, just like regular zones have higher leveled mobs in different zones. Just (obviously) not right up front.

[MasterTang]

I understand the initial intention was to allow solo or small-team easier Incarnate progression, but now that's an inherent part of the game it makes the zone practically redundant.

 

The point of the change would be to:

1) Give Dark Astoria a unique feel again (since it's no longer unique in giving Incarnate XP), which would hopefully generate more player traffic.

2) Give Incarnate-tier characters a easily accessible and meaningful challenging content.

 

Honestly, I feel like even a lot of the iTrials (or the incarnate TFs) could benefit from a similar change. Back on Live, Trials were genuinely difficult due to the lack of accessibility to Incarnate goodies, but now-a-days with easy access even the most difficult Trials or content (e.g. Hamidon) have been reduced to minor speed-bumps that are regularly speed-run.

 

As things currently stand, most content provides little challenge to a Incarnate-shifted team and I believe there is a strong desire for more challenge content.

Yes you could always unslot your Incarnate gear for enhance the challenge, but I think the average sentiment is that people would rather face greater challenges than handicap themselves to create a challenge.

Isn't it a bit silly to suggest you have to purposefully become sub-optimal in order to face a suitable challenge?

 

Honestly when was the last time you saw any significant traffic (not just a singular player or small team) in Dark Astoria? I think the lack of challenge is why the zone is so vacant in comparison to live is why the zone is so comparatively empty.

Homecoming changed how Incarnate progression works, effectively rendering Dark Astoria redundant, so I don't think it is bad idea for a minor rework of the zone to make it relevant/unique again.

Edited May 20, 2021 by MasterTang

[Greycat]

36 minutes ago, MasterTang said:

I understand the initial intention was to allow solo or small-team easier Incarnate progression, but now that's an inherent part of the game it makes the zone practically redundant.

 

The point of the change would be to:

1) Give Dark Astoria a unique feel again (since it's no longer unique in giving Incarnate XP), which would hopefully generate more player traffic.

2) Give Incarnate-tier characters a easily accessible and meaningful challenging content.

 

1. DA already does.

2. Would screw over those of us using it for its original purpose.

 

The zone has multiple story arcs in it, as well as Incarnate-rewarding repeatables. It has its own purpose. It doesn't need to be messed with.

 

I also have to point out, for the "how often do you see people that..." bit, that (a) we have a *much* smaller population than live, and (b) even here there are servers that apparently people have trouble finding other people on. I'm on Everlasting, so yes, I do see people - less frequently than live, but that should be expected.

Edited May 20, 2021 by Greycat
Making a point about population I forgot to put in.

[Coyotedancer]

The zone, its arcs and its spawns are fine as-is. (And yes, it gets traffic. Typically from solos and duo/trio small teams, which is exactly what it was made for. Just because you don't see people endlessly spamming LFG to PUG those arcs doesn't mean they aren't run.)

 

If you want something harder for an 8-member wrecking ball to do, the answer is to advocate for new end-game level full-team content, not to commandeer something designed for solos and smaller groups.

 

[srmalloy]

3 hours ago, MTeague said:

Perfectly doable to unslot your destiny and lore to forgo the Incarnate Shifts, too, if you find it too easy with them in place. 

 

Or make and keep T2 versions of your Lore and Destiny powers if you want to keep them but avoid the level boost that the T3/4 give you, slotting them for DA content.

[Cenozoic]

I like to set -1x8 in DA missions and just lay waste to everything at high speed.  Yay.

[MTeague]

5 hours ago, MasterTang said:

Honestly when was the last time you saw any significant traffic (not just a singular player or small team) in Dark Astoria? I think the lack of challenge is why the zone is so vacant in comparison to live is why the zone is so comparatively empty.

I would say it's not because of LACK of challenge, but actually BECAUSE there's a moderate step-up of challenge that you rarely see DA's teams.

 

I would guess a lot of people probably do Council Radios in Peregrine, because that still gives Incarnate XP for their alpha, and it's FACEROLLY EASY. 

Or they join one of the 3,000 ITF's because I don't know why, I would probably stab my own eyeballs out if I ran ITF's as non-stop as some people do. 

 

Of course, it's also possible that DA teams are simply popping from instance to instance. 

I don't spend all night hanging out at the Heather Townsend arc, just to see who comes by. 

 

If people were actually LOOKING for challenge you'd see a lot more people doing Rularu story arcs. Or Number Six arcs.

You'd see team after team going to First Ward at lvl 21 or so to try out their new characters against the Shepherds and the Awakened, and staying in the Wards through and past the Talons of Vengeance and the Arcanus Anima.

 

They Don't. Mostly. Some rare exceptions.

But mostly, I really do not think most people WANT a challenge in this game. 

[Mezmera]

Running the arc all the way to the end I got a significant damage buff that lasted me like 5 months on a character I play quite often.  I don't remember that reward from live lasting so long, it's pretty nice they tinkered with the reward to make it feel like a meaningful decision to obtain more powah at the end of it.  

[Coyotedancer]

31 minutes ago, Mezmera said:

Running the arc all the way to the end I got a significant damage buff that lasted me like 5 months on a character I play quite often.  I don't remember that reward from live lasting so long, it's pretty nice they tinkered with the reward to make it feel like a meaningful decision to obtain more powah at the end of it.  

 

It's always had a good, long duration... 'Pretty sure Kestrel still had hers for months after running the arc right after it went live. 

[Mezmera]

32 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

 

It's always had a good, long duration... 'Pretty sure Kestrel still had hers for months after running the arc right after it went live. 

 

I remember doing that whole arc once on Live and taking the powah like I did on HC but I don't remember that buff persisting for so long.  Maybe I hadn't just paid such close attention before seeing how now I do have a few active stats showing on the side where I didn't before.  That 10% damage buff that lasted forever was quite a nice reward for being villainous.  

[MasterTang]

10 hours ago, Coyotedancer said:

 

If you want something harder for an 8-member wrecking ball to do, the answer is to advocate for new end-game level full-team content, not to commandeer something designed for solos and smaller groups.

 

 

Ultimately this is probably the best solution, but I am not sure if we'll ever see that come to pass so I was aiming for something more achievable.

 

I don't necessarily camp out in Dark Astoria, but I do run by semi-regularly on Everlasting and rarely see a soul.

[Marine X]

New Dark Astoria has some of the most well written stories in the game. There are Mission Mechanics used that are Unique, and several of them play out, at least for the first run thru, in surprising ways. I like that it was built for Solo or Small Teams, a rarity in this game. Piecemeal has commented that there is a commitment to developing " The Coming Storm / Battalion " material, but it may be a while out to say the least, but at least we know they are trying to develop more content.

Edited May 21, 2021 by Marine X

[Jarrakul]

For what it's worth, I run these arcs a lot, solo and with small teams. I think they're quite good, both mechanically and writing-wise. I don't generally find them too easy (the Banished Pantheon in particular are pretty nasty), but then I am usually running +4x8 either solo or on teams of 2-3.

While I'm sympathetic to the OP's difficulty scaling concerns, especially with larger teams, I feel like a better solution might be to increase the notoriety setting caps, either for incarnate content specifically or just for everything. That would allow people to up the difficulty if they wanted to, but it wouldn't make the existing content any harder if people stuck to the settings they're already using.

[Bill Z Bubba]

4 hours ago, Jarrakul said:

While I'm sympathetic to the OP's difficulty scaling concerns, especially with larger teams, I feel like a better solution might be to increase the notoriety setting caps, either for incarnate content specifically or just for everything.

 

I'd absolutely love the scaler to go higher. +5/x10 sound fun. Another option is to get rid of the 2nd and 3rd level shift entirely. Yank them completely from the game and be done with it.

[Coyotedancer]

20 hours ago, MasterTang said:

 

Ultimately this is probably the best solution, but I am not sure if we'll ever see that come to pass so I was aiming for something more achievable.

 

I don't necessarily camp out in Dark Astoria, but I do run by semi-regularly on Everlasting and rarely see a soul.

 

For what it's worth, I'm also on Ev and rarely seem to have the zone to myself. There's not a lot of street-sweeping going on, but I almost always see other people around, going to and from missions.