issue 27 Focused Feedback: Repeatable Cimerora Incarnate Missions

[Cinnder]

11 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

In defense of these particular arcs though, they are incarnate content and should by definition be harder than standard level 50 content.

 

Most definitely.  As long as they are not geared for characters with all T4s as a baseline.

 

The solo Inc arcs vary in difficulty from easy (Heather Townshend) to challenging (Dream Doctor) to extreme outlier difficult (Sister Solaris*).  I enjoy the entire range between the first two, but would like to see less of the latter.

 

*Made worse with the recent upgrade of the monsters.

[Cinnder]

Happy to be corrected if I'm misinterpreting the latest release notes, but does 'These missions are now locked to level 54' mean that to run these mishs with mobs that are at the same level as the character one would need to have a T3 in Alpha, Destiny, and Lore as well as dropping the difficulty to -1?

[golstat2003]

On 8/5/2022 at 12:07 PM, Bionic_Flea said:

In defense of these particular arcs though, they are incarnate content and should by definition be harder than standard level 50 content.

 

Agreed. I would add the label "You might want to bring a team". Just like other missions that are a little bit more difficult have that label, even in a solo story arc as you pointed out. That would keep some consistency here.

[arthurh35353]

Quote

REPEATABLE CIMERORA INCARNATE MISSIONS:

• All missions have been upgraded to use a larger map for more combat opportunities.
• Additional missions have been added, which unlock once you've completed Valeria's arc.
• These repeatable tasks show up in the rotation and feature the Ravenna Conclave.
• These missions are now locked to level 54.

Well, that's an immediate turn off for me to play solo. 

 

Some of us don't live in solo-land against 54s. And new Incarnates will just die a lot.

[KaizenSoze]

8 hours ago, arthurh35353 said:

Well, that's an immediate turn off for me to play solo. 

 

Some of us don't live in solo-land against 54s. And new Incarnates will just die a lot.

I enjoy difficult content, but I agree that these mission should be level adjustable.

 

Just like DA missions which are also incarnate.

Edited August 15, 2022 by KaizenSoze

[Coyotedancer]

Adding a +1 to that. It should not be assumed that everyone going into these has all three level shifts.

[Cinnder]

2 hours ago, Coyotedancer said:

Adding a +1 to that. It should not be assumed that everyone going into these has all three level shifts.

 

Couldn't agree more, and the point I was alluding to above.  Again, I maintain that über-difficult should be an option, not the baseline.

[MsAligned]

Why are they all times missions?  No reason I can see for that.

[Puma]

On 8/2/2022 at 7:49 AM, The Caretaker said:

 

Definitely don't want to be misinterpreted here, so know I mean this with a smile - this group is hard to solo and that's OK - its another step towards preparing players for target prioritization, situational awareness, and team composition. As for their CC, one of the goals with Hard Mode ITF was that Cimerorans were nigh-impervious to control and making control archetypes have a purpose was very high on the list. This change to Cimerorans trickled back to regular enemies as well, if I'm not mistaken, to make control useful even in the regular ITF. Try bringing a controller or dominator along and see if there's an appreciable difference.

  

 

 

Can you elaborate on the "team composition" idea here?

 

Are the devs moving in a direction where we return to needing (or at least desiring) specific types of team makeups to run future content casually? 

 

That would suddenly make a LOT of the changes being proposed make more sense.  It would also concern me greatly.   As does the comment that "all content is team content".  That is not and never has been the design of CoH.  As was pointed out, SOME content was designed specifically as team content, and if all content were expected to be team content, that would not have been necessary.  CoH has always allowed soloing by default, save very clearly defined exceptions, and always should. 
 
Also, +1 to the "restricting it to level 54" is a bad move.  It's actually wasting resources, putting all of this effort into testing and developing the content just to have a very small percentage of the player characters have access to it.  Not even just incarnates, but T4 incarnates.   If this game were being developed at a pace that could do that and develop much more, it would make more sense. But it isn't.   So I'll ask...what is the perceived BENEFIT of restricting it to 54s, that outweighs the advantages of having another way for non-fully incarnated toons to progress toward their incarnate powers, and have a larger pool of players enjoy it?  Maybe there is some that we just haven't though of but you have.

 

It seems weird that at the same time we're trying to get people out of the AE to get their incarnate powers we're limiting content that they could use to get them outside of AE.  I can tell you that if this drops with content restricted to t4 incarnates, you'll be motivating more people to do the AE shortcut to get there just so they can run it and see what it's like, since many are starved for new content.  

 

*shrug*

Edited August 22, 2022 by Puma

[The Caretaker]

On 8/15/2022 at 7:08 AM, KaizenSoze said:

I enjoy difficult content, but I agree that these mission should be level adjustable.

 

Just like DA missions which are also incarnate.

 

On 8/15/2022 at 12:06 PM, Cinnder said:

 

Couldn't agree more, and the point I was alluding to above.  Again, I maintain that über-difficult should be an option, not the baseline.

 

That's a miss on my part. I'll own that. I thought the DA missions ran at 54 because they were incarnate content. I scaled them up, and now I realize that was a mistake so I will scale them back.

 

On that note though, I see no reason to flatline them to 50. If this in Incarnate content, There should not be an option to run them at 49, level shift-less or powered up. So I will reduce the minimum level to 52, so that a "new" incarnate will still function without a level shift.

 

On 8/21/2022 at 1:45 PM, MsAligned said:

Why are they all times missions?  No reason I can see for that.

 

Holdover logic from when these were upscaled from Marcus Valerius. Rarely does a timer cause a mission fail, so I'm going to leave them there.

 

On 8/21/2022 at 7:09 PM, Puma said:

 Can you elaborate on the "team composition" idea here?

 

Are the devs moving in a direction where we return to needing (or at least desiring) specific types of team makeups to run future content casually? 

 

What you have to try and see, from a certain point of view, is that the subjective impression left from Live is that "In order to make our content harder, enemies just got more HP, one or two annoying extra powers, and rip apart Defense with enhanced ToHit". It was an unsustainable path forward. We want to give you guys something fun, different, fresh, and engaging without simply wasting your time in a fight (More HP) or undoing the benefits granted from a system (+ToHit to unravel the softcap builds) or badly implemented mechanics that just frustrate (Avoid this, ya Green Stuff 😠 )

 

In order to give the players even a modicum of interesting new mechanics, we first have to change the expectation that all content is explicitly soloable. To make everything soloable means a LOT of very fun, interesting, or otherwise experimental mechanics leveraged against that playstyle are impossible to implement. And before I take my place on the stake to be burned, just understand that:

1. I'm trying my very best to find the line here. I'm already making and have been making changes based on feedback, including the most recent posts above yours.
2. Not every AT can solo. So I'll mention once again that the argument for solo play limits the arguments to "typical" cases of ATs designed for the task. I cannot accommodate a Petless Mastermind's ability to solo, even if that's a hyperbolic statement. Mind/Empathy would also not be a super-fun time solo in Incarnate Content. (and that's not a knock against either build - but rather if you're making it work, then you're far better at the game than most, and your situation is unique.) Then again, a soloplay experience can be completely overrun by a single AT with the right IOs. If I were to design for soloability, I'd have to pick some metric for my baseline, which will automatically exclude some at one end of the spectrum and then cause others at the other end to complain that the game is too easy. HOWEVER, the game is designed as an MMO, and that Mind/Emp inviting a single other person suddenly changes the ENTIRE dynamic. Unless they invite the Petless MM, which could make things in fact even harder than if the Petless MM never came along. The moving parts are really interesting like that.
3. The ITF became a benchmark for a real problem: The way Cimerorans were designed gave average run of the mill Controllers a maybe-shot at being effective with help from their secondaries, while Dominators had a straight-up miserable time in many configurations. So we're looking, aggressively, at trying to design enemies and experiences that have opportunities for everyone to shine, and to bring an acceptable amount of risk. (To date, we designed a few of these things before we had solid data of how they'd be received. Ravenna Conclave's design is inferior to [********* **********] coming in the near future.)
4. The future looks bright, but in City of Lone Wolves we're still balancing the sheets. We need to test, implement, and design engaging content that allows a wide variety of team compositions to have epic experiences against a future world-threatening apocalyptic fight for their lives. We are a City of Heroes (and Villains... and Displaced Bizarro Dystopians), and it needs its heroes to work well solo or as a group. We want to bring sexy back team dynamics back to the forefront and remind people of the incredible interactions and force multiplication shenanigans that come with it.

TL;DR: I'm adding a patch to the pipe that will make the tasks Minimum Level 52, not forced to 54.

[Bionic_Flea]

It's your baby, so you can do as you wish and I appreciate you making adjustments and taking the time to explain. 

 

However, I do not see why this non-Itrial incarnate content has to be level 54 when all of the DA arcs and repeatables are based at level 50.  Why is this incarnate stuff from the past harder than incarnate stuff from the present?

 

Just like the Mender Ramiel arc, many players and ATs can solo it and many can not.  But the player still gets to decide at what level to run it and whether he or she wants or needs assistance.

[Blackfeather]

Slightly off topic, but I'm pretty sure Controllers were initially balanced around "can pretty safely solo in most instances, but very slowly due to their low damage".

[The Caretaker]

48 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

It's your baby, so you can do as you wish and I appreciate you making adjustments and taking the time to explain. 

 

However, I do not see why this non-Itrial incarnate content has to be level 54 when all of the DA arcs and repeatables are based at level 50.  Why is this incarnate stuff from the past harder than incarnate stuff from the present?

 

Just like the Mender Ramiel arc, many players and ATs can solo it and many can not.  But the player still gets to decide at what level to run it and whether he or she wants or needs assistance.

 

It's being reduced to 52. I think that's an agreeable midpoint. 51 at -1.

[The Caretaker]

38 minutes ago, Blackfeather said:

Slightly off topic, but I'm pretty sure Controllers were initially balanced around "can pretty safely solo in most instances, but very slowly due to their low damage".

 

Lots of feature creep and power creep did eventually open that gap up. Toolkits expanded, and Controllers got a few things (Looking at you, /Time, dear Lord) but the other ATs starting getting a lot of sustain and survivability bumps that made the Support aspect of the game less and less needed, to where certain powersets and playstyles (Healer types) really fell off the map in terms of play and desirability.

[Cinnder]

4 hours ago, The Caretaker said:

[[lots of thoughtful responses to stuff folks have been saying about soloability and difficulty]]

 

Thank you.  Very good to know we've been heard.

 

4 hours ago, The Caretaker said:

 

What you have to try and see, from a certain point of view, is that the subjective impression left from Live is that "In order to make our content harder, enemies just got more HP, one or two annoying extra powers, and rip apart Defense with enhanced ToHit". It was an unsustainable path forward.

 

Of course the irony here is that's precisely why the cyclopes and minotaurs are not very much fun.  A huge bag of hit points that each have powers that make whittling down those hit points go even more slowly towards the end.  Plus the new minos also have End drain.  As others have said, it's not that they are particularly deadly (one on one) but that they are just a really tedious slog.  

 

4 hours ago, The Caretaker said:

we first have to change the expectation that all content is explicitly soloable. 

 

I don't think you really believe we have been asking for this, but just to be clear I think everyone has acknowledged there should be content like TFs that is not expected to be soloable, but that anything that's not a TF should be.  But also to acknowledge the point that not every AT is designed to solo, especially Defs.

 

Again, thanks very much for letting us know our concerns are being taken into account.  Even if it takes a while to get the balance right, it's good to know that the game's development trajectory is not explicitly increasing the baseline diff to Dark Souls level.

 

 

Edited August 23, 2022 by Cinnder
typo

[The Caretaker]

4 hours ago, Cinnder said:

Of course the irony here is that's precisely why the cyclopes and minotaurs are not very much fun.  A huge bag of hit points that each have powers that make whittling down those hit points go even more slowly towards the end.  Plus the new minos also have End drain.  As others have said, it's not that they are particularly deadly (one on one) but that they are just a really tedious slog.  

 

That's why we test. I ran Valeria mission 2 with a friend and hit the wall with those EB spawns. You can only get so much perspective locally with certain ATs and power choices. His T4 Blaster got flattened and fundamentally changed the momentum. I didn't experience that until then.

[Puma]

20 hours ago, The Caretaker said:

 

 

That's a miss on my part. I'll own that. I thought the DA missions ran at 54 because they were incarnate content. I scaled them up, and now I realize that was a mistake so I will scale them back.

 

On that note though, I see no reason to flatline them to 50. If this in Incarnate content, There should not be an option to run them at 49, level shift-less or powered up. So I will reduce the minimum level to 52, so that a "new" incarnate will still function without a level shift.

 

 

Holdover logic from when these were upscaled from Marcus Valerius. Rarely does a timer cause a mission fail, so I'm going to leave them there.

 

 

What you have to try and see, from a certain point of view, is that the subjective impression left from Live is that "In order to make our content harder, enemies just got more HP, one or two annoying extra powers, and rip apart Defense with enhanced ToHit". It was an unsustainable path forward. We want to give you guys something fun, different, fresh, and engaging without simply wasting your time in a fight (More HP) or undoing the benefits granted from a system (+ToHit to unravel the softcap builds) or badly implemented mechanics that just frustrate (Avoid this, ya Green Stuff 😠 )

 

In order to give the players even a modicum of interesting new mechanics, we first have to change the expectation that all content is explicitly soloable. To make everything soloable means a LOT of very fun, interesting, or otherwise experimental mechanics leveraged against that playstyle are impossible to implement. And before I take my place on the stake to be burned, just understand that:

1. I'm trying my very best to find the line here. I'm already making and have been making changes based on feedback, including the most recent posts above yours.
2. Not every AT can solo. So I'll mention once again that the argument for solo play limits the arguments to "typical" cases of ATs designed for the task. I cannot accommodate a Petless Mastermind's ability to solo, even if that's a hyperbolic statement. Mind/Empathy would also not be a super-fun time solo in Incarnate Content. (and that's not a knock against either build - but rather if you're making it work, then you're far better at the game than most, and your situation is unique.) Then again, a soloplay experience can be completely overrun by a single AT with the right IOs. If I were to design for soloability, I'd have to pick some metric for my baseline, which will automatically exclude some at one end of the spectrum and then cause others at the other end to complain that the game is too easy. HOWEVER, the game is designed as an MMO, and that Mind/Emp inviting a single other person suddenly changes the ENTIRE dynamic. Unless they invite the Petless MM, which could make things in fact even harder than if the Petless MM never came along. The moving parts are really interesting like that.
3. The ITF became a benchmark for a real problem: The way Cimerorans were designed gave average run of the mill Controllers a maybe-shot at being effective with help from their secondaries, while Dominators had a straight-up miserable time in many configurations. So we're looking, aggressively, at trying to design enemies and experiences that have opportunities for everyone to shine, and to bring an acceptable amount of risk. (To date, we designed a few of these things before we had solid data of how they'd be received. Ravenna Conclave's design is inferior to [********* **********] coming in the near future.)
4. The future looks bright, but in City of Lone Wolves we're still balancing the sheets. We need to test, implement, and design engaging content that allows a wide variety of team compositions to have epic experiences against a future world-threatening apocalyptic fight for their lives. We are a City of Heroes (and Villains... and Displaced Bizarro Dystopians), and it needs its heroes to work well solo or as a group. We want to bring sexy back team dynamics back to the forefront and remind people of the incredible interactions and force multiplication shenanigans that come with it.

TL;DR: I'm adding a patch to the pipe that will make the tasks Minimum Level 52, not forced to 54.

I hear what you're saying but I just need to state, on the record, how strongly I disagree with you.  

  

First, I can't name a single archetype I have played in this game (and I've played them all, including some not even available on this server) that I haven't been able to solo with.  Some powersets, sure, but not a single archetype. For you to say some can't solo is just...well...wrong. I'm sorry but it demonstrably is. By the way, I have a few single pet Masterminds I'd LOVE to show you, because, while they aren't the best thing ever, they do damn well and didn't need anything designed specifically for them and their playstyle.   

 

Second, you have to understand that many people solo out of necessity, so you really need to get over this idea that people just do it because it's somehow easier.  When you create content that is by design not really meant to be soloable by the general player, you are intentionally excluding the people who CAN'T reliably team because it doesn't fit their lifestyle.  Your attitude toward "City of Lone Wolves" is dismissive and honestly, I think you're way off base.  

Third, if you feel some archetypes aren't performing as shiny on teams, the answer isn't to suddenly start making enemies and missions specifically tailored to them, especially if it makes others suffer without them.  We all know how annoying it became when you still needed various specific archetypes for Barracuda once the novelty wore off.  It didn't increase the playability for your players, it lowered it (until iPowers made that issue obsolete).   

 

Instead, a much better approach is what was done with Defenders.  Change them to better help a team AND better solo.  This is still the approach I wish you all had taken with tankers instead of just making them AoE brutes 2.0.   This actually would increase the amount of people willing to play them because suddenly they CAN solo and yet, when they team, they can still contribute. There are a ton of ways to do this that I think are relatively easy if you ever want to discuss it. Especially for Controllers, Dominators, and Masterminds.  

 

No one here is saying that you should design content that every POWERSET COMBO on every archetype can solo.  But like the changes to defense, you all seem to be taking some pretty big right turns that are moving the game in a direction that appears to be penalizing a lot of players, for reasons that I think boil down to a playstyle you're pushing that is both out of date with most modern games AND one CoH had and moved away from for very good reasons. 

 

You will drive people to other servers, or to just finally walk away from a 15+ year old game.  Tread carefully.

 

Edited August 23, 2022 by Puma

[Emerald Fusion]

Just finished the Sister Valeria story arc.  It was epic!

 

However, Alexandra Sideris is not offering the repeatable missions.  She says:  Your reputation does not precede you, and because of that, I cannot be sure if you are worthy of my time.

 

Filed a bug report in-game.