biostem

No disagreement there. And there's systems in place to alleviate the early game. Don't get me wrong - I'm in no way saying CoH is perfect, but at the same time, we should be directing new players to the various guides on how to handle them. You wanna see convoluted messes - check out some of the so-called F2P MMOs or mobile games. Yeeesh! Well, it's not so much "playing without enhancements" - it's about player perception that not being fully slotted with max level enh's is somehow a punishment or renders them inadequate.

Unlike other games, your character can function perfectly well, even without enh's. Even ignoring that, there are, in fact, many ways to fund and slot your character, even without a 50 to fund you. You cannot on one hand say that you are ignoring major functions of the game, while simultaneously advocating against using the AH or even AE. Yeah - we wouldn't want to actually help people, now would we?

Game features/aspects have costs & benefits, and learning to manage them is every bit a part of the game as the costumes and powers.

Maybe I should have been clearer. The phrase "blowing all your income" or something to the effect means you WASTED it, not spent out of necessity. Let me assure you - I highly doubt anyone playing CoH has to worry about making ends meet, and if you do, I'd gladly look over your books to see where cuts can be made. I also do not think it is too much to ask new players to either forego slotting each and every power at all times/levels and/or to read one of the many guides on how to generate wealth in-game.

Yawn. If inf gain was increased but enh prices remain the same, are they more affordable or less? Yes or no? Also, "income equality" has nothing to do with "blowing all your income on clothes" - implicit in the phrasing is that you wasted the money, not that you bought out of necessity. Getting back to the game - no one "needs" to constantly edit costumes. I can certainly empathize with wanting just the perfect look for your character, but it all comes back to managing your resources.

I wonder how difficult, or to what extent, the devs can simply run a script that says "If player A has powerset B, issue X free costume change tokens, where X is the number of active costume slots they have".

My point is that one has to learn to manage their own resources. Like it or hate it, them's the breaks. It's not about politics, it's about managing what you have and getting the most from that. Good job disregarding my point about how the devs should compensate players if they broke something.

Yeah that stinks. If only there were some sort of free costume change tokens or ways to otherwise alleviate the cost of changing one's costume. That being said, if the devs broke a thing, they should enact steps to make it up to players...

And if you blow all your income on clothes IRL, whose fault is it when you can't buy food? No one is saying that people stop tinkering with their looks past level 10, but at some point it's on the individual player to manage their in-game resources, no?

I'd also love to see the "flash-step" animation from Blaster's Martial Combat -> Burst of Speed, as an option.

Were inf gains upped? Were SO prices raised or not? Since the supply is infinite, they'd be easier to afford. I have sympathy for new players who don't yet know the game's various systems and mechanics. That being said, they have access to resources that may not have been available when the game was live. It's not like they are hidden or anything. At some point, that naivete has to be grown out of and the player has to learn.

If the SCORE devs upped the XP and inf rates, but didn't raise the price of SOs, then it should be easier to afford them.

Well, one can simply sell stuff on the AH and buy elsewhere with the inf they gained - no need to compete for buys. Maybe have story arcs and such grant generic IOs that never expire anyway, instead of TOs/DOs/SOs, or grant a piece of orange salvage which sells for a good chunk of inf.

The only issue is that generic IOs don't provide as good a bonus as same-level SOs until around level 30 or so, which is why I think @Rudra's suggestion of them bottoming-out at -3 levels would probably be best. That would still incentivize using better generic IOs or keeping your enh's even level or higher, while not fully penalizing having some old ones.

I don't necessarily disagree with your points, but learning a game's systems is, well, part of the game. Not everyone is going to like every aspect of the game, and that's fine, but refusing to do so is at your own detriment and shouldn't be catered to.

Well, we have generic IOs for that. What I would like to see would be a sort of "floor", where enh's would never provide less than a certain bonus. Maybe not as good as said generic IOs, but beeter than losing everything...

I've seen a few players that want a support set, but don't care much for the blast sets that Defenders/Corruptors get. Some few will take the starting power and maybe the pet from the control set, with the rest being from pools and such.

I hear some of these arguments and it makes me think to practically every fantasy MMO, and trying to imagine players arguing that every drop should be a longsword because that's what their character uses. Don't get me wrong - having to grovel at the feet of RNGesus stinks, and I'm much more in favor direct currency awards instead. That's why my general advice is to slot generic IOs that are good enough, as they'll never expire and are origin-independent. I just don't see why we need to mess around with this aspect of the game, when it'd be much more productive to direct players to use the AH and/or sell what they don't need need and use whatever resources they do have to slot enh's in those areas/powers that are most critical...

The issue is that any such policy has to, by necessity, be malleable; You may be able to get a clever name, appearance, and/or bio that pay homage without going over the line, but others may not. One suggestion I've heard is to create your character, report yourself, and see what a GM has to say...

Right back at ya! The OG devs intended players to earn a certain amount of inf per level/time and priced enh's with that in mind. You haven't countered that. I acknowledge that you and others have made claims. None of them have proof to back them up, though.

I can think of at least 3 specific cases: 1. No other way to get the whip attacks besides rolling a demon MM. 2. While you can get the bug/bird attacks in savage assault for dominators, if you wanted those attacks paired with a support set, a beast MM is the only way to go. 3. If you want the special dark blasts that can summon ghosts, a necro MM is the only way to go.

You certainly voiced your opinion. Defended it? Not so much. Your claim that my argument is "terrible" doesn't make it so. Prove that the INTENT was to be fully slotted at all times after level 20. You haven't and you can't. As I've stated over and over again, they had ample opportunity to do so. Why didn't they, if that was their intent? If you are going to simply disregard the OG devs' intent, then why value any of their design decisions?

Incorrect. It only requires that they have a reasonable sense of how the game that they created/worked on operates. If you want to counter that, I'm gonna need some actual proof. My proof, for like the umpteenth time, is they could have adjusted the reward & enh cost rate many many times, but they didn't, so they must have been satisfied with them.

I.E. you can't defend your position and so have to resort to ad homs.

That only proves that they want you to know where to get enh's, not that you should be fully slotted at all times, from level 20 on. That's like saying you are supposed to take each and every power form your primary and secondary, because they provide them in the powersets, or because you can take 4 power pools means you should. Yeah... it's not like there are multiple guides on how to build wealth in-game or anything...