Haijinx

My active character is a STJ/EA stalker that is pretty much OP for nearly all content. I am thinking about starting another blaster.

This statement comes of as internally self-disproving. I have to agree that to try and tell someone ELSE they don't understand this game when you admitted yourself you basically ONLY have played this one and its sort of successor .. but at the same time suggest you instead DO understand it .. Seems arrogant. Coyote's suggestion is an attempt to address one of the glaring aspects of high level gameplay - Nearly everyone being softcapped to S/L or Ranged at a minimum - By making it harder for that to happen. Identified problem. Suggestion directly aimed at that problem. To me that suggests a better understanding of the issue than to suggest that simply having optional extra difficulty will actually solve the problem. But frankly I don't think you actually believe there *IS* a problem. And from my perspective your suggestion is more a token to attempt to placate complainers. Since you practically said as much last night saying how old the complaining was getting. I don't think your viewpoint is unique at all. In fact I think most people do not want the game to be harder. Thus I see this as pointless. We should just leave things how they are. But its not because the "complainers" don't understand the game. Many probably understand the game .. as a game .. very well. If its something they don't understand perhaps its the popularity contest politics of the game, which is the authority you actually seem to be appealing to.

A poor solution is worse than no solution. With a poor solution people will just expand on the current "But Task Force Challenge settings ..." Argument to include the poor solution. And be even more likely to dismiss the concerns out of hand.

It won't really. If its an option 99% of the time no one will chose it. Wasting resources on something that won't get used is pointless. No, it really won't.

Badges are more a "do it once and get it over with" thing. I'm not sure what Rewards you would mean TBH. Stuff you can't already get? There is no nodrop in this game. And XP falls like water. By unpopular I was referring to the idea of making the main game harder, all the time. Which if you ran the game without taking the player's opinions into consideration is what you would do. The health of the actual game mechanics are poor. Too many people spend too much time at the extremes for chance to hit, Defense, Resistance, DPS and so on. Basically I can run through entire Task Forces where I have a 95% chance to hit everything. My ST DPS is 450+ probably. Softcapped and Possessing Status Protection against everything I face. I never need to stop to rest for Blue OR Green. Before any Support at all. Then throw in Everyone's leadership spam. And my builds are hardly anything special. A lot of people have better ones they post on here.

Judging by how the options are used now. Almost no one would chose them. Therefore it would be a pointless waste of resources. It would have to be mandatory to actually increase the game difficulty in any meaningful way. Since this is so unpopular its basically Moot. You never really have to do Lady Gray though. And its only that goofy Hami part where its really mandatory. You can play almost all of the game's content without it being an issue. Its not like some raid boss that drops some insane no-drop loot that you NEED but can only get from that TF. So for almost all content you don't need any Support OR Control. That's easy mode. Just grab people at random and play. Which is nice for making teams. But if the content were challenging you'd need a little more planning than that.

This idea is to the detriment of challenge though. Hence if there was a hard mode it would be the first thing that would have to go. No one gets to be Superman in a Superhero game that is difficult. They are lucky if they get to be Hazardman . As to the trinity; this is really removed by the cool aspects of this game's Support and Control Set designs. These are much more varied and versatile than most MMO games get. The fact no one even needs Support or Control hardly at all anymore is part of the problem.

Yes. Somehow the old devs made a bunch of questionable decisions that somehow had no impact on the aggregate result. Or something. I guess.

If we can't even agree the game is too easy at present, it seems premature to discuss "solutions" to the "problem" IMO. I wonder if it goes to expectations. Does one AV giving some teams a hard time equal a reasonable challenge? That sort of thing isn't going to seem a challenge at all to people reared on Raids that required an entire team of healers just to keep the raid tank alive.

In Ultima Online you could get pretty good at killing stuff that was sort of close to town, with a maxed out Character. Much past the Bandit camp or the Orc village though and you could easily be instantly killed if you forgot what spawned where. Any actual exploring required a group. That could only really talk to each other in close proximity. Giants? Dragons? haha, yeah right. I only ever saw them killed on the game box. Oh and when you died you lost all your stuff you had with you and had to wander as a ghost back to a healer to bring you back to life. Hopefully you remembered where you died so you could try and get your stuff back .. Anarchy Online required you to kill deep red (their version of purple) stuff to level at any speed through the .. 200 levels (later 220). And if you got killed you lost all experience you gained since you last saved/leveled. So you could and would easily lose hours of progression. They liked to seed roaming baddies 1.5x the level of the general spawns just to f with you. So say you were camping some mutant spot for XP, a Lifebleeder (a floating Radioactive Horror) would spawn every 20 minutes and force the team to scatter or get wiped. And that was the low level game. Where stuff was "easy". Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, etc all had some similar aspects. City of Heroes even when it was "hard" was relatively casual. A lot of games are causal and MMOs in general are much easier than they used to be. Still, there is a point where stuff is too easy.

In older MMOs any single baddie of sufficient level to get decent xp from could easily kill any member of a team, even the tank. You had to off-tank or CC adds so the team didn't wipe. Compared to that even archvillians are playskool easy. With a scrapper or stalker you can solo most even level archvillians without even a finished build.

I was thinking Gorilla also tbh. It is disappointing it goes wolves-lions-wolf It makes the lions seem out of place in the Wolf mastery set. Maybe the T1s could be hyenas instead or something. Then at least you could have a theme song.

I personally think this game is way too easy. Its too easy at all levels. Its *really* too easy at high levels once everyone fills out their IO builds. Its even worse with incarnates. Other than the Alpha slot they all are badly thought out and OP in my opinion. I'd love to fix it by buffing the hell out of Enemy groups and changing things so the worst offenders (95% of all attacks missing you, while you hit 95% of the time) are tamed. While were at it, xp is way too easy to get and hitting 50 is too easy. I read posts where people claim its not easy with a skeptical eye. Wondering what their motivations are. But lets get real, tinkering with everyone's fun is too unpopular. And popular is required to get teams. And teaming is why I play MMOs.

DC is a bit weird like this. Gotham related stories generally do not involve super-powers at all. They really are a link back to things like the Shadow, Green Hornet the old Batman and so on. Its only when Batman's world meshes with the larger DC world do super-powers matter as much. Or if writers bring them into Gotham. When brought into Gotham the power level tends to be much closer to street level than powers in other DC story areas. When Justice League stuff butts in it always seems clutsy to me.

Pretty sure it was a case of what was easily available.

Make the incentive bragging rights. You have a level 50+3 on "Excelsior"? Pffts. Try playing on "OMGWTFBBQ"* I've got a level 19 there and I can almost solo a level 20 Freakshow boss. === *The name would obviously need to be something better than that. And to fit within the naming scheme homecoming has come up with.

ah, ok. Yeah. I've given up on trying to change difficulty in the main game. Its literally impossible. There is simply too much inertia.

If you are in the "throw current mechanics out" mode this is easier. For less inspired ideas - For a start you could set the ceiling for chance to hit to 90% making most people miss 2x as often. You raise the floor for chance to hit from 5% to 10%. This would make all those high defense builds get hit twice as often. You could lower ALL resist caps. Say 75% for Brutes,Tankers and Dwarfs, 50% for everyone else. You nerf all status resistance/protection to be closer to what baddies get. You could take a chainsaw to Temp Powers. ===== But really. You have a computer figuring stuff out. Maybe a look at what is under the hood. Would opposed rolls be better? I don't know. They have become more popular in tabletop but they require more rolling. Something the computer is good at.

Its a good question. I'd rather it be attached to Homecoming though if something like this were possible. I remember UO had a harder mode server "Siege Perilous" for a time. The SO only idea seems it would be the easiest relatively to implement though. Just get rid of all IO's, WW, Black Market, Salvage, Etc.

War Mace is the next best after TW for ST, and has great AOE. It also lacks the whole stutter step up and downs of TW that you describe. So you could sort of rebuild your TW/WP as a WM/WP and be close to the original intent.

qft

This sort of feeling is why I suggested the more hard-mode Server shard, with new mechanics. And to be honest, ignoring or shouting (spam posting) down people who feel that way does not improve the situation any. But, the way I imagine that is you would HAVE to use IOs to be at the level survive in the Hard Mode, that and/or use a lot of support/control/aggro management. Or fight lower level stuff. Basically a game balanced around IOs. One throwing out the entire idea that the Heroes should be more uberer than the bad guys by default. -however- If people just want a SO only game. That's way easier to pull off. Not sure which, if they had their own shard, would be more popular. I find SO only builds boring since they don't challenge me to think about ultimate performance the same way. For SOs every build sort of looks the same. I expect the first type would attract those looking for a hard challenge, that prefer things on the edge. Sort of those who like Requiem in Skyrim. While the Second type more casual / nostalgic types who don't like the fact that someone with a billion dollar IO build can eclipse an entire team of SO builds.

I think the Blaster version Energize may be the best power ever. But this one sounds pretty damn good.

This is pretty much true. And if you were to select something like "No Enhancements" there would be a lot of complaining. You can sometimes run at +2/3/4 depending on the team to make it less bad and more people are cool with that. But this is more recent at least on Everlasting. You do run the risk of turning the TF into a Debt farm for the couple of people using it for leveling purposes.

they do have the cool pistol crossbows though.