Dr_Darkspeed

Darkman also has the nerve damage thing too, so he's a candidate.

And I can't help but think of willpower working like Lawrence of Arabia's trick.

So you are deliberately gonna mess up CoH2 then, to ensure that CoH remains the best?

He'd also have to throw Science, Magic or Psychic punches.

First off, I have given plenty of suggestions in Beta. I don't see why i should repeat them eveyrthime I post on the subject.

Secondly, I don't think they need new mechanics, just that someone said the main attraction of them was all the new interesting mechanics and i wondered which ones they meant. The escapees bit are from that fir bolg mission, we already have several 'get the special temp power to hurt the boss/take down his shield' ones (not to mention the destroy the portals to , we have had super attacks with warnings since Proaten (or maybe Reichsman), co-ordinations of teams from the Deadly Apocalypse/Cathedral of Pain/Hollows Trial, Defeating enemies within a certain time of each other harks back to the Thorn Tree respec trial. Badguys who get more powerful the longer they are alive is new, but I don't think its particularly interesting as it can lead you into an unwinable situation. You forgot to mention the new mechanic of auto-failing if you lead Marauder out of the courtyard. Because that one is great!

But, I'm not saying any of that is a bad thing. I like CoH and a nice big mashup of the best bits of other missions into one big multi-team trial sounds pretty good.

My problem with the trials is that they are repeatable content that isn't designed to be repeatable content. I'm making the distinction between contant that can be repeated multiple times on the same character and contant that is specifically designed to be completed multiple times on the same character. The storylines for both Trials make no sense from the point of view of something that one hero or villain would have to do over and over. Compared to the story of Hamidon or the Mothership raid, where we are fighting back threats that will return. We can't stop them but we are preventing them from becoming more of a threat. (Note: not saying the storys are great, just that they attempt to be suitable for that kind of content)

Instead the iTrials story is in a weird twilight zone of too specific (They try that same 'brainwashed resistance plot' every night? with the same length cutscenes to boot) but not continuing or progressing any story or even of being very epic. To me, in terms of storyline they feel like they should be the last mission in a story arc or TF.

So, since you asked, how would I improve the trials? I'd fix the stories so they made sense for someone to do over and over. i.e. Instead of attacking the Lambda Sector, you attack one of many military bases (all can have the same design, since hey, its the military) Cole has set up. If you win, you cripple it but who knows how many he as out there in the multiverse? So, go destroy another one and another and another.

Secondly, I'd add some randomness to them. Maybe this time the guard loadout is a little different, its not Warworks its Seers. Maybe a different AV comes to help stop the problem, maybe different reinforcements are called in, Maybe the experimental serum Marauder takes has a different effect this time. A few aspects of each trial that have a few different variations would mean that each run feels slightly different. Would be more work and harder to balance probably, but make for more engaging repeatable content, in my opinion.

Just out of interest, what interesting mechanics are you talking about? As far as I can tell, other than the league UI thing, pretty much everything in the iTrials is from other missions in the game (which have been around for years). Maybe I've missed something though.

Its because its much more efficient to make. Why make 10 new missions when you can just get people to do the same mission 10 times?

Twilight's Son is a prime candidate for a little context sensitve dialogue upgrade. It would be great if he had even justa few little bits of different dialogue when talking to a Kheld.

It doesn't stop it being a qiuestionable design choice though. Particularly when you look at the reward structure for the trials that seems to indicate that repeated playthroughs of them are designed. And also that since the plots are hardly intricate or story driven, nor is there any particular epicness, making their storyline make sense (or at least, any attempt to do so) in terms of actions that would have to be done over and over (like defeating Hami or the mothership raid) would have been nothing but beneficial.

Even better, what if they had switched minds like in some sort of whacky 80s comedy?

Woah, Pumpkin Waffle?!?

One question, what is the cutoff time for this? is it when the server merge happens? If so, what is to stop some nasty people from making US side trial accounts with global names of various people known to have EU accounts in the meantime, to deliberately make them lose their names?

A similar thing happened when CoH launched, with the whole name reservation thing. A bunch of long time forum users/beta testers lost out on the names they had had for several years.

Just on a point of maths/logic but... Not necessarily, since each user can have more than one account (under the master PlayNC account). For example, those 100 US accounts could be owned by 100 different users, whilst the 100 EU accounts might be owned by 50 different users. So it is entirely possible that doing it this way will affect a lower number of total players overall (though affecting some users more, since they will have several account name changes).

Whether or not that is the case, I can't say, but you can't claim it is impossible without knowing the numbers yourself.

The adobe suite has a pretty good discount for student/teachers, up to around 80% off (plus a nice licence agreement, meaning it can be used perpetually for commercial purposes too)

They can check if his uni has even better discounts with them here