Doc_Scorpion

Apples and oranges. Code changes aren't even remotely the same thing as an entire new set of animations.

I don't think saving 10-15 minutes (or less) will make that much difference in leveling speed unless you're already powerleveling. At which point the difference is moot anyhow.

You don't need system mastery. You can make a decent character by the seat of your pants down at the local origin store. You want a top end fully tuned build, yeah, you're going to have to get into the nuts and bolts. But that's not the same spot on the spectrum as decent. And I find the creeping standards here disturbing... A couple of hours ago IO's were for optimized (by your definition of optimized) builds, and now they're prerequisite for a merely decent character. And we aren't going to get any better so long as you toss around terms like "n00b traps" and "false choices" and otherwise look askance at anyone who doesn't follow the One True Path.

Praetorians cap at 20. Cimerora and the ITF have a minimum level of 35.

Some of the things the OG devs said lead me to believe that origins were originally intended to have meaning and gameplay effects beyond contact chains... But that kept getting put on the back burner. Now? OK, it's not actually impossible the HC devs might resuscitate that effort, so I might be wrong there.

Dammit, I had to go and do housework and someone beat me to it. So instead, I'm going to go all fanboy nerd and point out that's not an Argo cap. This is an Argo cap. 🙂 🙂 🙂 (And the mods would probably kill me if I linked to my episode-by-episode review of 2199...)

I'm in firm agreement with this. Get rid of TOs. Get rid of DOs. Get rid of SOs. Replace them with a consolidated all levels system of AOs (All Origins). Use the IO model where the fixed level of benefit scales with the level of the enhancement, but they never actually "go bad" and cease to provide any benefit at all. Or use the current (T/D/SO) model, but instead of going bad and providing no benefit after a point - they always provide a minimum benefit equivalent to the current -3 benefit. The origin enhancement system is an irrelevant remnant of a game system that was never implemented and likely is never going to be. Keep it for flavor and to choose the "temporary" power, but sweep the rest of it into the dustbin of history.

My answer is - copy a character over to the Beta server and find out! (It should ignore IO's, but it's worth finding out whether there a bug or not.)

Agreed. Back in the OG days, that's why there was a constant cry for more content, especially at the lower levels. (Though deeply flawed in execution on a variety of levels, Praetoria was an excellent step in the right direction.) Though muted, and focused more on the upper levels, folks are still asking for more content. People want the game to be replayable. And with it's vast array of potential powersets, CoX is uniquely suited to answering that want. That's why I've been testing and spoken in favor of this change [to enhancements]. Revitalizing the lower level game is a key part of enhancing replayability.

Then obviously what I said doesn't apply to you. But you couldn't resist and just had to get in a dig at me. Of course, it's just not possible that the folks mocking me for not playing the One True Way are the ones lacking in understanding... To that end, I will repeat what I said there and have said many times before and since in the vain hope that it will finally sink in: Not everyone powerlevels. Not everyone uses XP boosters. People use the XP lock at a variety of levels for a variety of valid reasons. People play at all levels of the game. The game doesn't being at 50. It doesn't begin at 22. It begins at lvl 1.

Not aimed at you Caboose, just a general question that springs from the tenor of these particular discussions... Why the near religious fervor to "convert" people to the IO system? (Especially since at lower levels, IO's are markedly inferior in quality to DO's and SO's?) Why the constant subtext of "if you aren't using IO's, you're doing it wrong?"

SO's are already competitive - you're spending less money with IO's, but you also get less for your money. Those lvl 10 IO's are roughly equivalent to a -3 DO. Level 25 IO's are roughly equivalent to even level SO's. IO's don't beat even level SO's until lvl 30, and don't beat +3 SO's until lvl 40. (This is something that IO proponents forget to mention, if they even know that they're gimping their characters.) The intelligent choice between DO/SO and IO isn't just about money. In COX's case, it's not all development. It may not be development at all. Something... changed in COX's social meta during the Years Of Darkness. It may be due to the changes in the game made to suit a microscopic population. It may be due to the influence of WoW. But the current HC social meta is no longer "the journey is the reward", it's shifted radically towards "the game begins at 50". (I was all but openly mocked for testing Dark Melee in the single digit level during the Page 5 beta - that would never have happened in the OG.) That grind-and-raid mindset is particularly toxic in CoH because there is little to no endgame content.

It's still there, you can see it from his profile.

Even as a teen or a young adult I knew when I was being patronized and despised it. (Doubly so because I wasn't a "cool kid".)

And? What advantage accrues to the player in a trip to the vendor and standing around for the time it takes to buy and slot your upgraded enhancements? The current travel times around the world are certainly an issue (from the social perspective if nothing else), but there's nothing to be gained in this case from forced (social) inactivity.

It didn't make it into this build... While Rick Davies (Tech contact) granted me a Yin Talisman, the Clockwork in the mission are still dropping TOs.

And this is so common we actually have terms for those hybrid builds/playstyles - Scranker, Offender, Blapper... And they're [usually] merely descriptive rather than pejorative.

At which goal it fails utterly. By the time the Shining Stars arc gets around to explaining stuff, you've already been encountering that stuff for several levels. The arc's basic flaw is that it seems to assume you were powerleveled to "not quite entirely a n00b" and then entered the game - and pretty much only played the Shining Stars arc from that point. All that stuff was much better explained (and at a better point in a characters progression) in the original Breakout and Outbreak tutorials. The POS Galaxy City tutorial is not a replacement for either.

Other than their being no TO's, that's exactly how the system currently works - it only upgrades the levels within the type. Which means you can have lvl 33 DO's... Which is odd, but works withing what I understand to be the larger goal of the system. (Which is to eliminate the largely pointless trips to the vendor simply to "green up".)

No offense, but you should go test on the Beta server - the system only automagically updates the levels, it does not upgrade the types. (And it appears the Devs intend to leave it that way.) To upgrade the type (DO->SO since TO's are going away) you have to do so manually the same as you do currently. And leaving it that way makes sense, as slotting often changes with the jump in capability from DO to SO. (2xACC often becomes 1xACC 1xDMG for example.) And there's also the issue of additional code to determine the player's Origin and upgrade to the proper SO. I don't know how complicated such a thing would be, but it's not really needed for any reason I can see.

The new button (singular) does nothing the player can't or doesn't do manually. The added complexity is minimal. Yes, power creep will be a thing. That will be offset by the small number of slots available, and to some extent by cost. Six has said they plan to adjust things so the impact of cost is lessened, but I don't think the planned changes will eliminate it entirely. (Nor should it.) The big change will be people funded by sugar daddies, but those folks are already top-of-the-line for their level, so I'm not sure much will change there. OTOH, how many people actually play those lower levels? My experience suggests it's a relatively small percentage - people DfB up to their late teens/early twenties. For the small percentage of us who actually play the lower level game, it'll be a godsend and make the experience much more pleasant. It might even induce more people to play the sub-20 (or even sub-10) game... and that's nothing but good for the game overall. Almost anything that breaks the "powerlevel (read: DfB) to 20" cycle is desirable as it breaks the current social environment of "skip most of the game, rush to 50".

re: Praetoria I have a character that, for concept reasons, needs to come through Praetoria... But I'm really struggling to convince myself to do so. I've done a lot of stuff here on HC for old time's sake... But I went through the pain of Praetoria once on live, and that was a struggle to get myself motivated to complete. (In the end, I blew through the last of it on a Double XP weekend just to be *DONE* and get the character blueside.)

The only "ridiculousness" in this conversation is coming from the one individual insisting that there's Only One True Way to play and that everyone must be forced to play that way.

As a level 15 or 20 IO, they're less powerful than an SO... and you'll need two of them to get even the first tier set bonus... Honestly, not that much of an incentive unless they provide a particularly attractive set bonus to offset the low value of the individual IO. And that's a problem. You're shooting for a band so impossibly narrow it's practically non-existent - attractive enough to carrot-and-stick people into doing the content, but not attractive enough for the farmers and powergamers to come sniffing about.

Hard [censored] /jranger You want a game filled with powerleveled and then discarded toons who exist only to farm rare IO's? This is exactly how you get such a game.