City of Heroes' newest Incarnate Trial learns from past mistakes

by Justin Olivetti on Feb 22nd 2012 5:00PM

Super-hero, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Previews, Free-to-Play, Dev Diaries

Incarnate Trials have proven to be some of the most challenging -- and interesting -- endgame content in City of Heroes to date, and players who have enjoyed them are undoubtedly anxious for the latest one, Dilemma Diabolique, which is coming with Issue 22.

Senior Designer Chris Behrens wrote an informative dev diary in which he outlines five lessons the studio's learned from past Incarnate Trials and how these lessons will affect Dilemma Diabolique. These lessons include adding rest periods between fights, giving players clear information, keeping trash mobs from exhibiting super-powered (more so than usual) abilities, delivering attractive rewards, and tuning special mechanics so they don't overwhelm players.

Dilemma Diabolique looks to be a quicker trial than its brethren, although Behrens sees this as a virtue: "We feel that the faster pace of the trial for maxed Incarnates is reward in itself, since it makes accumulating Empyrean Merits for our most dedicated Incarnates a faster endeavor."

Source: PC Gamer

Tags: Chris-Behrens, city-of-heroes, city-of-villains, coh, cov, cox, dev-diary, Dilemma-Diabolique, Empyrean-Merits, f2p, free-to-play, incarnate-trials, ncsoft, paragon-studios, trash-mobs, trials

Reader Comments (3)

All I can say is, I'm glad they're adding a solo/small team path at long last. I ground up my first level shift in the Alpha Slot 100% solo with Shards. There's not too many CoH players who can say that. But with the new Dark Astoria, I'll have lots of company.

@Daemodand You know what, I am right there with you -- except for soloing the alpha (that's insanely dedicated -- the existing incarnate stuff ticked me off so much I didn't even bother with it). I'm very interested to see how solo version works out -- and I suspect Paragon's metrics are going to show that more people are subbing to solo than were previously, too. I'll be resubbing for it myself.

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@Daemodand

I also earned my first level shift working the shard path (it was a Cardiac boost, I believe...), but once they had iTrials and threads, that was my path of choice.

I can't say it was all shard-grinding, I guess, I did run a Weekly Strike Target to get the Notice of the Well for tier 3.

In fact, I credit the incarnate system for getting me to actually run task forces (even if just for shard opportunities), for most of seven years, I had been a soloist or casual teamer.

I'm also looking forward for solo incarnate missioning.

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