skoryy

I remember when SWTOR launched with Jedi and Sith factions and my mind instantly went to CoH/CoV. "Oh no. Nobody wants to play a bad guy!" And then the Sith became by far the popular faction. So, if we want to start there, we can compare the Sith to redside. The Sith were arguably the devs' favorite, getting better missions, map layouts, etc. That does lend itself to our situation, with the Isles being the red-headed stepchild of development: Fewer maps, less content, 'Flight Or Bust' map design. Though a good part of that can be pinned on CoV development having to compete with CoH for dev resources. HC would need to devote more resources to the Isles than to Paragon to play catch up, and I'm not sure we're in the situation to be able to pull that off. The other important thing, I think, is the lack of the 'cool factor'. Your blueside hero gets to save Superman Statesman. How cool is that! Your redside villain gets to... continue to be a second banana to Lord Recluse. You don't get to be Vader or President Luthor or DOOM. You don't get to pull off crazy hijinks like the Joker. You're the Shocker. Boba Fett at best. A Shocker or Boba Fett with incarnate levels but still the Shocker or Boba Fett taking orders from higher ranking villains. Either that or you're having to help save the world. Not to degrade anyone who likes being in a lesser villainous role, but there's certainly an audience there that wants to be DOOM and finds the Isles not to their liking. Not to mention that while a leveling experience makes for a good hero's journey, the villain's journey is usually either all backstory or done by the end of Act One. Even Anakin took all of one act to make the actual turn into Vader. Stretching that out to fifty levels of content doesn't make for a good narrative and drags down that 'cool' factor. Now for the easier and hopefully doable fix... Rogues and vigilantes shouldn't have to play mustache twirler or goodie two shoes for twenty levels until they unlock their true self. Give players the option to go rogue or vig at start, and with the content to match. Yeah, that'll mean building twenty levels of content. but I think that's more of a doable payoff that would easily increase redside population. And yeah, I also know Null's an option, but there's no rogue or vigilante content until 20 so what alignment are you really?

So, I gave it a quick shot before lunch here, and a couple just as quick observations: If you don't have negative protection of some sort, you're in for a bad time. Even S/L capped isn't going to do it for you, my poor blasters never stood a chance. My Rad/SJ tank broke just a little more of a sweat, they got through her particle shielding a couple times. What I more noticed was that tougher warwolves and galaxy rezzes made it considerably longer for her to chew through spawns. If the goal was to make them more champs than chumps, then mission successful. I'm not sure how I'd rate them yet as endgame difficulty but they're picking themselves off of the floor now.

sighs I'm going to have to dust off the ol' night widow and level her up, huh.

So, Cow Mastermind, huh? Better save that Ghost Riders In The Sky name now. XD And hey, thank you for keeping the dream and the game alive! I had hoped I'd see this day and I'm glad I'm here for it!

If you're going to be teaming a lot with your friends, you'll want to lean less into damage to start than being a controller and support. I've been re-learning my Elec/Time and I have to say its still a really fun combination and can be quite the credit to a newbie team. Generally, though, find what looks fun and give that a try. Anything and everything works in this game, especially if you're in a team, so go with what's fun for you!

Well, holy smokers, it actually happened. We're not only back but we're legal now! This is great news to start the year with!

You're not even arguing the idea. You're reacting as if I was about to flush your cocaine stash down the toilet. Again, that's not a me problem.

The funny part is I offered a solution to reduce the impact of farming without even needing to nerf farming, and you jumped on me like I just stole your security blanket.

I'm not a dev, I don't have the data. But the ancedotal data matches up to what I see when I check in on Everlasting or read on these here forums. If you don't want to believe the ancedotal evidence, that's fine but that's not a me problem.

I feel like you're both right and wrong: Veterans that have been through leveling content plenty enough already shouldn't have to grind their way through that. New players that haven't been through leveling content should not be discouraged from doing it. The problem is the current solution to the first problem, farming, is notably impacting the second problem. Here's a possible solution: Guild Wars 2 showers players in leveling tomes for doing dailies. The equivalent here, I would think, is cash in X number of Notice of the Wells for a free 50 level up and Y number of reward merits to start a build with.

I've got Starwave right here to provide the music!

Adding: Would Batman think of himself as too OP to bust some low-rent den of thugs? Also adding: Use the Quantum stuff to throw in random Malta if you are running this stuff at 50. That way there's still an element of surprise.

Since we have tons of legacy content, I think its a noble idea in theory. Honestly, my idea would be removing the level caps from missions. Why do I have to do timey wimey exemplaring shenanigans to fight Skulls? They're still a problem now!

We already have near-insta-50s via farming, anyways.

So I thought on it and here's the thing: In Guild Wars 2, you get all your weapon skills at level 10 or so (IIRC, its been a long while) and will have your heal, utilities, and elite well before 80. Gearing up an exotic power build at 80 is relatively trivial. If you play long enough and/or often enough, you'll get showered in enough scrolls and tomes so that leveling becomes much easier to eventually unnecessary. And even then they're selling level 80 tickets in the shop that also give you free lvl 80 high end gear. (And you're not backhanded when running older content in older zones, you keep all your skills while your stats are pro-rated down so you can still be a god among men. Yes, I am looking at you Ouroboros.) In Final Fantasy XIV, you don't get all your skills until 90 but you do get enough at the lower levels that you'll feel powered up by at least 30 and definitely by 50. Gear is pretty much irrelevant save for the ilvl. The shop offers instant level and quest boosts to get you to 80 with free gear at that level. I haven't played World of Warcraft in years, but they do offer free max level boosts with free gear in the shop. Here at Homecoming, there's a definite gulf between 0 and 30, 30 and 50, 50 and fully incarnated, fully incarnated on SOs and fully incarnated on IOs. To get fully incarnated on IOs requires at least a half billion in inf and a lot of empyreans. There are no instant levels or instant gears, the only fast method to get there is by farming. Most MMOs on the market learned that leveling is great for training your new players, but your experienced players tend to want geared-up alts already at endgame and will gladly throw money at the screen to do so. Homecoming is working with an outdated model and farming is basically the equivalent of buying those free endgame characters. Its why I don't think farming is that bad for the game in its current state, as long as the rewards aren't out of line enough to break the market or - more importantly - bypass the endgame stuff you want players filling up. The devs think so as well, what we're seeing now is damage control before things do get out of hand. Until if/when we do get freebie'd 50s, a regulated farming environment is probably the best we can hope for to match the current MMO gaming experience. Its a happy medium.

I'm starting to feel like Paul Newman trying to tell everyone the tower's got some problems. There's a reason why devs across the board hammer outliers like this as soon as they find them. Once word starts spreading, they don't stay outliers.

But for how long? This was a-okey-dokey for three years until now, its likely that the devs are seeing something there now.

Or capping for that matter. The issue is when others decide following their footsteps is the only way to keep up and the market starts getting away from everyone else, and so they feel this is the only way to keep up. Not sure if this is happening now, but the Barney Fife Rule applies: Nip it in the bud. Replacing emps to RMs with emps and equivalent RMs for non-VL rewards seems like the better play. Just need to make sure all the emps are covered.

Emps are tradeable so you'd only need one character with the accolade and we're back to square one. Honestly, I think we should go back to what emps were created for: Incarnate powers. Expand the existing abilities and build new ones. Which, I think, is on the roadmap a way down the line?

If it helps get/keep people in Dark Astoria and other solo incarnate content to possibly come, I think it'd be a good idea.

I'd recommend doing the same reward merit boost for Dark Astoria and other quests that reward emps as well. This way all non-vet level methods are covered.

Yeah, multiple tricked out 50s here as well, don't recall ever going emp to RM. Needed the emps far more for gold and purple incarnate salvage.

OK, prove it.

I don't think the devs could've painted it clearer with this change: VLs weren't the problem. Speed farming AE for RMs defeated the purpose of RMs being a reward for time investment and keeping lower level content alive (WSTs), and that was the problem. They believe its an unfair advantage. Personally, I'd like to see some numbers myself comparing VL farming to rest of the game content, but I can kinda see it.

I'll have to chew on this. Reward merits for incarnates is a nice buff, but now we'll have buckets of unused empyreans to deal with. But that's thoughts for another thread!