[It's 2021. Do we really want Paragon Protectors with the old version of MOG still?]

A few others beat me to it, but the powers that just make you go on a time-out from playing are not fun. yes, you can prevent it but if they manage to pop it the 45 second wait is just boring.

["The Game is not Balanced around IO's"..... should it be?]

41 minutes ago, Infinitum said:

But how fun was that?  lol. That gave me a run for my money that night too and I was decked out on my tanker - there was just.... So... Many.   lol

 

I have a knack for rooting out odd scenarios like that and its always fun.

 

I would love it if stuff like that happened more regularly but randomly also.

It was fun as hell, but also really out of left field as a weird event. I'd love for more X factor things: "INCOMING SWARM!"  "SUPER-CHARGED ENEMY INCOMING!" "THE NEBULIZER HAS BEEN USED TO DEBUFF YOU!" type of events that could mix up missions.

["The Game is not Balanced around IO's"..... should it be?]

I think the fact that we have a ton of veteran players is a big factor. Combine that with the ease of access to lvl 50, to IO's, Incarnates, and they all mix together to make CoH quite breezy at times even when running the hard stuff. Hell, the last time I remember really eating dirt with my non-softcapped blaster was on a MLTF with Infinitum due to every bane spider in existence coalescing in one room! If it were a normal encounter with a normal amount of enemies it'd be a breeze. 

 

Something that @Infinitum and I have talked about though is that there definitely needs to be something new for us to chew on, and luckily we have the perfect place: The Shadow Shard

 

Not only is this a criminally underused area of the game, but it includes a built-in means to have "Special Enemies" with the Reflections (https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Shadow_Shard_Reflections). Lore wise, the Shadow Shard has mirrored versions of a ton of existing enemy groups, given that this is a place of Dreams then it could feature remixed enemies that could expand to different tiers if we want:

 

Reflection - basically a slightly tougher version of X enemy group. I would definitely allow low level enemies to reappear as lvl 50+ versions as reflections!

Dream - one step up, granted new powers and abilities

Nightmare - final step, totally bonkers abilities fitting their theme (Freakshow with a full suite of elec and claws powers, etc)

 

We could fit it in as even Radio-Style missions in the shards where defeating these Reflections somehow weakens Rularuu, and like how every X radio missions gets you a safeguard, every X Dream-Missions grant you a shot at a thematic Shadow Shard encounter. 

 

On top of all that, basic Rularuu enemies are able to tear whole teams a new one lol. 

 

[Tanker Primary "Tough Test"]

On a second thought here.... is 4 min way too generous a cut-off?

 

Edit:

testing it out, it seems just sitting in the middle of the spawns (untargetable/invincible for pure offense testing) with Fire/Rad, just alternating Burn/Atom Smasher/Fiery Embrace/Build Up/+2 Damage Auras with basic slotting would take out all but the bosses in about 2 minutes on average at +4/x8. Given this is super minimal effort, we could assume maybe 2:30 / 3:00 would be a more reasonable "immortal" line in practice?

[Generic Purple IO's [Semi Serious]]

@SeraphimKensai, @golstat2003,

 

Its probably surprising for sure lol, but I think it's just a neat idea for the enhancement side of things for a lot of powers. For example, an attack with a solid debuff or mez effect could now be opened up to slot for both sides at the cost of not being able to fully place a set. Sure, there may be a few no-brainers like Hasten... but then you gotta think about some other powers with longer recharges that may benefit more...

["The Game is not Balanced around IO's"..... should it be?]

3 hours ago, Infinitum said:

That isn't so much caused by level shifts though, but more knowingly teaming with greater powered team mates - to which either switch characters or switch teams - either way it's not something I encounter resistance from when I team and a lot of the times I run max diff stuff.

 

But the end result stems from either knowingly doorsitting and being ok with it or not knowing what you were getting into and wanting the game to change based on that - which isnt really fair to the ones you were teamed with when you have the option to leave that team - or develop your character to be better - which has been proven to not be difficult at all in this game.

 

If its the other swing of the content seeming too easy - then build a sg of like minded people.

 

Theres plenty of options - but to remove something what I percieve to be the majority enjoys based on my experiences - doesnt seem right, or fair.

 

What I meant is that purposefully taking away from what the game leads you toward in any way is not a true solution. It'd be like playing Mario Sunshine without the Flood Backpack as much as possible. You can certainly do it, and it is making it harder for yourself, but it is not intended for you to do this.

 

["The Game is not Balanced around IO's"..... should it be?]

With regards to others effecting your game experience, this is 100% a thing in this MMO. We have had several examples in this thread talking about different levels of being "left in the dust" by just general teaming, to the point of many feeling like they're just doorsitting. 

 

It should be assumed that the basic gameplay should be using the tools given to us when able. Actively choosing NOT to use said tools is going against the basics of the game and should not be a "viable" solution.

[Tanker Primary "Tough Test"]

Real World Test 3: Malta

 

 

Edit:

 

Granite is 6min here as opposed to the 8 i gave it prior as though immortal, it was taking licks noticeably compared to council/etc.

[Generic Purple IO's [Semi Serious]]

4 minutes ago, BZRKR said:

Sounds great!

When you say "Unique" do you mean per power, or across the build (I suspect the latter)? I know I would love to free up a slot on every character build by only having to 1-slot hasten!

Also, for my favorite characters, it would feel nice and "prestige-y" to have purple Run and Jump IOs in Swift and Hurdle.

Do you envision these being craftable? Do the enhancements themselves drop? Would you put them in the Merit vendors?

Im thinking the latter where you can only have 1 purple damage, 1 purple end redux,  etc.

 

They would drop and be crafted the same way as purples.

[Generic Purple IO's [Semi Serious]]

29 minutes ago, arcaneholocaust said:

Don’t you mean 53% and the corresponding values from other schedules? To match the single effect IO’s from other purple sets?

Basically they'd be equal to 3 (level 50) IO's for the cost of 1, which would be roughly 100% or 60% enhancement after ED.

["The Game is not Balanced around IO's"..... should it be?]

Just now, Sovera said:

A Rad defender's debuffs are for tough enemies. Enemies we find out in the streets if sweeping are not tough enemies.

Problem is,  missions are 99% the same enemies you'd find sweeping 😕 

[Generic Purple IO's [Semi Serious]]

 

So, random thought came to me today: Generic Purple IO's

 

The premise is simple, a Generic Purple will be a Unique IO (can't have 2 purple damages, or defense, etc) that is worth 100%/60% enhancement (depending on the schedule). Being purple tier, they still will be very rare to find, but can be a slotting boon for many builds. They are still subject to ED of course (if you slap a 100% recharge in a power, more recharge would be miniscule after), and take up a slot in your powers still when it comes to slot bonuses / etc.

 

Thoughts?

 

[Knockback Attack! What cool stuff could KB do?]

1 hour ago, Max Firepower said:

I would prefer knockback to either do damage if a flying mob hits an immovable object, take some damage relative to the percentage of distance not yet traveled.  Power Thrust a Hellion who flies 45’, but hits a wall 15’ away, do 2/3 of the ‘minor KB damage bonus’ or something .  I would not advocate for KU or KD.. yet... I haven’t thought this all the way through, and the SA proc complicates this.

 

The other idea is the billiards transfer.  The Hellion above hits one of his mates and splits his remaining KB distance/damage with his victim, I mean, his friend.

I think for simplicity, KB should just do bonus damage based on the applied magnitude on enemies instead of having to math out the distance / etc. So for example, lets say you hit an enemy with Mag 10 KB, but they have some KB resist that makes it Mag 8. They would be swept away, and take 8 * Damage Bonus. If the KB is converted entirely to KD, the bonus likewise gets multiplied by the 0.5 mag it now has. 

["The Game is not Balanced around IO's"..... should it be?]

1 hour ago, Hew said:

You mean, CASUAL players? Who really just want to _play_? And maybe, not market, or craft, just mash buttons?

So, here I gotta throw a flag on the play.

 

Sure, there may be a super Casual McNoobington out there who doesn't slot anything and just presses buttons, but even they have to go to a trainer and level up, and thus get slots. Slots then have enhancements which require them clicking the Enh Tray, which is right next to the Salvage/Recipes which will eventually glow red as they get ignored. Being curious, I bet McNoobington would click on  them and get some ideas / questions.

 

But this goes back into the expectations + what the playerbase on the whole is doing.

 

[Elec primary has a bad rep]

So, according to Mid's 3 slotted SC + PB = 97.21% end drain, I don't think that is accurate but lets just say it's 100%

 

 

The purple patch works as such for basically all combat interactions, where if we have 100% end drain, it would go up to 111%, 122%, etc as you go higher than your enemy. Likewise, it lowers to 90%, 80%, etc as you go lower.

 

TBH, this is something I straight up forgot about when it comes to End Drain, and makes it's Zero-Sum mechanics all the more dubious...

["The Game is not Balanced around IO's"..... should it be?]

2 hours ago, Linea said:

801 took a very long time to balance, and uses out of game tools (but doesn't have to, it's just easier). 

It's easy to slap together a simple group for solo only play, but the default simple AE methods tend to not scale well.

 

There is an exponential^3 potential difference in a small team of SO only non-incarnates, and a full team of 8 full Tier 4 IO Tier 4 Incarnate players.  A single T4^2 player can encapsulate the capabilities of a full team of 8 SO Heroes.  And that only gets worse when the synergistic Incarnates start bouncing off each other in teams.  That's probably a 64:1 power ratio difference, if not potentially worse.

I've seen vet teams crumple to 801.0, and at the same time I've seen rare teams stomp 801.5, and I have a few very rare teams asking for more.

My BEST tank crumpled to 801.9, and I expect THAT (very rare) team to come back and ask for MOAR! The IOed INCARNATE is out of the bag, and there's no putting it back.

 

I would fully support a two additional settings:

• No Bosses - We already have this
• Regular - We already have this
• Bosses to EBs:  Minions -> Lts,  Lts -> Bosses,  Bosses -> EBs
• Bosses to EBs Plus:  Minions -> Bosses, Lts -> EBs, Bosses -> EBs
• All EBs: ... all EBs

 

You could give AVs a similar synergistic treatment.  I'd probably never touch that outside of teams, but I can see some teams loving it.

• No AVs - We Already Have this
• Regular Avs - We Already Have this
• EBs to Avs - regular EBs to AVs
• All AVs - All AVs

 

 

I like this a lot, and to be honest we see this in-game in a roundabout way. 

 

Ever notice how Council Robots are bosses in the 30's, but in the 40's they're LT's? Or low level Lost have the TV head dudes as LT's, and the Pariah's as Bosses, then they downgrade to Minions and LT's later? This kind of shows how your character is progressing in a neat way, but I feel it could be expanded for the enemy groups too. Why not have some groups ramp up to meet you more?

 

 

["The Game is not Balanced around IO's"..... should it be?]

52 minutes ago, arcaneholocaust said:

And that would put the error on the player’s end IMO 🙂

Again, that points to a key point of the thread: what is *expected*?

[Elec primary has a bad rep]

3 hours ago, AxerJ said:

But I'm finding even with these enhancements, it's not enough to completely 100% drain even an orange minion. I have to couple it with Ball Lightning. And I can't even drain reds/purps when adding Ball Lightning.

This is due to the Purple Patch. A +4 enemy will take 0.48x less effect from end drains, so with that 69% boosted by 78% > 122.82% * .48 = 58.95%. It gets better with the lower con, but yeah...

[Thoughts on a recharge speed inspiration?]

23 hours ago, Replacement said:

I like the idea of a minor-moderate recharge buff as well as a +move speed buff.  Just an all around celerity inspiration.

 

I realize it would probably be (too) cumbersome, but I would love some mid-mission inspiration "recipe" options in the right-click menu for adding new inspirations.  ex: Combine break free and accuracy of same tier to build a +speed insp.  This lets you avoid adding the new inspiration to the drop pool and increase the relative "cost" of them, which seems like a good way to ease it into the game.

Hot damn thats a good idea

["The Game is not Balanced around IO's"..... should it be?]

11 minutes ago, America's Angel said:

-New level 50 missions/trials/TFs that have stupidly OP fight mechanics. I don't mean missions per se. I mean the end bosses of them. Just stupidly hard to fight. They laugh at defense softcaps/-res debuffs/inspiration stacking/destiny/judgement/procs/all other level 50 min/max staples. They break all the rules. (And these "end bosses" would be tweaked every ~3 months so that the strategy for defeating them would never be the same. Similar to how Hamidon was in the early days of live.)

I'd love it if you had the bosses have actually random buffs like Diablo 3 encounters, so each time is difficult and hard to prepare for / game it.

["The Game is not Balanced around IO's"..... should it be?]

So, lets toss a hypothetical out there.

 

Say tomorrow we log in and any non proc, unique/special (stuff like LotG which isn't "unique"), purple, etc, IO's could simply drop into your tray as you play. How do you think this would impact your experience?

[Hey Devs, can you please some or all of this to HC?! :)]

1 minute ago, Aeroprism said:

There are other CoH servers? o_0

I just googled them and.. well, no thanks.  

 

I never considered Homecoming as "A server".  To me, Homecoming -IS- City of Heroes.  Everything here meshes so well together, the continuity is so well planned and executed, the community is so solid, it's the real deal.  

 

I'll be happy with whatever the devs give us and ever since I jumped back, it's been nothing less than the same joy I felt on live.  It's all I need, really.

HC is for sure the best community! Though, there are certainly plenty of cool things out in the wild (like @ScarySaimentioned we need to... proliferate some Necromancy changes hehe), but your mileage will definitely, definitely vary in terms of quality when it comes to not only the community, but the professionalism and general game quality.

[Hey Devs, can you please some or all of this to HC?! :)]

50 minutes ago, PainX said:

hah no you cant nerf pets that's a give and take just like TW so in compensation simply fix the AI 😉 cant wait for singy to finaly make it to a pack before it is allready dead

Not to leak anything from closed alpha but...

 

 

[Tanker Primary "Tough Test"]

Real World Test 2: Carnies

 

 

Stone Armor was a suprise! Well, if you think about it it's ability to defend against Psychic Damage specifically was a huge boon on top of it's other defenses that gave it the best average, though all the Defense sets did better on average here. However, Carnies at +4 really just tore everyone a new one with their stacked debuffs out the wazoo. In particular, sets that relied on hitting an enemy for something really fell short with even dark armor hitting a rough spot with their harsh Mask debuffs.

[Hey Devs, can you please some or all of this to HC?! :)]

6 hours ago, Myrmidon said:

Whaaaaat?

It's going to have /Regen and thus be nerfed