Galaxy Brain

Regarding health sponge bosses: I think everyone is against just having padded boss fights that last a while just because. If fights took longer due to different objectives that's a whole nother story! Boss dips halfway and becomes invincible to throw minions at you for a bit before returning. Fights like recluse where you cant all pig pile the boss and have to fight different things at once, etc. Regarding difficulty and team comp: this is likely an impossible task tbh. There are so many team compositions that what might be hard for one is a breeze for another, and vice versa for the same teams in a different task. What we can do though is at least challenge the players a bit more and not so much the characters

Tbf, DA was meant for alpha slot wasn't it?

This is definitely an issue as those types of characters can blow past team content. However, that stems from a root of the average player IMO being much stronger than the content was designed for.

We could have both 🙂

While true, this is like saying if you want to play SM64 in hard mode try to use the 30 A presses method as an intentional challenge. As I pointed out in another thread in the Suggestions forum, players naturally want to boost their characters and the tools to do so are abundant and the knowledge readily accessible. Conservative IO building is likely very very common just through naturally playing the game, and saying "well don't do that" is saying that to get a real challenge, ignore a huge chunk of what the game naturally guides you to do.

I want to touch on this real quick, as the "uber-build" is a bit of a misnomer. IO's are multiplicative. With some exception, such as Energy Blast and Force Feedback, IO's and their bonuses really just push what a character can naturally do but better. Even if we ignored the Set Bonuses and unique perks (Procs, Unique Bonuses, etc), IO sets offer much better enhancement value. Frankenslotting 6 IO's can give you essentially 8 SO's worth of effectiveness. Add in the bonuses on top of that, and you naturally hit harder, faster, more reliably, and have better damage mitigation than you would otherwise by a little bit. The game naturally leans you towards this as well by having recipes drop from content. A new player jumping in will naturally get recipes and will likely inquire as to what they are and how to use them, either by themselves by stumbling upon Montague in your find contacts and seeing the universities, or asking other players which inevitably opens the floodgates into IOs and builds. New players coming into the game have likely played other games as well seeing as its the year 2020, and even games like Assassin's Creed have set bonuses for matching equipment so its not exactly a forgeign concept to have people craft items that when paired give extra goodies. By nature, most players will also want to make their characters better as they play. It could be by slotting whatever enhancements drop from mobs / buying from stores, or going one extra step and crafting. It's a perfectly normal and expected thing to do. New players have likely played other systems similar to this to where it is not some massive hurdle to figure it out. New players also probably got intorduced to CoH by a vet, and likely they are helping them learn the ropes with this too. In today's age, we have FB, Reddit, and Discord + these forums to easily share info on how IO's / Builds work. Vets coming back to this game came from a game where IO builds were around for the vast majority of the game's lifespan before closure. Building up your character beyond the basic level is likely the norm. This does not mean "uber builds costing 948621974862389475234 inf", but I firmly believe the average character is much stronger than intended already due to the above factors. The reason I bring all that up is that you do not really need an uber build depending on the AT and the Player in order to trivialize content. I know that many players out there can solo 4/8 before level 50, which leaves out a whole lot of slots, power picks, Purple Sets and Incarnates. Sometimes there are power combos that are simply that strong, like my Bot/Trap/Mu back on live that could solo max difficulty from lvl 38ish onwards when I got the electric fences. But, with the general power level of players going up that means they can more easily tackle these things, and in turn cause some team dynamics to shift. We see this with sets like Force Field where the more defense players naturally have, the more and more the +Def focus of Force Field is lessened in terms of what they provide. The more damage potential and survival tools players have, the less intrinsic need for crowd control there is as you can just brute force through opposition faster via the ultimate Mez (killing enemies before they can really hurt you). So on and so forth. Overall I think this is a good thing, as IOs have let us be incredibly creative about how we boost ourselves up. Hell, this is why I kind of don't like the Uber Builds as you know what's gonna be in there: the same 3-4 purple sets, a winter set, and the same couple of places to put the useful LotG / Health Procs. However those are really just for absolutely pushing your character to the limit. Conservative IO builds I believe already push players past what the game expects of them and that in turn makes all sorts of content a bit outdated, and that is more common than we probably all think.

Forgot about DiB! Havent run it in a bit lol I'd love if they had some fresh arcs in the existing zones for their level. But then, you have like "New Boomtown" for example that you revisit after playing the arcs in the old version once you're (Incarnate) that has some altered assets and new content. Like imagine running the hollows low level, then come back later and see that the CoT and Outcasts teamed up and made super-elementals that need your attention. As for redside, could offer the same deal but maybe you're using your Incarnate power to cause the trouble instead of help fight it.

You know thatd be cool to revisit those Shivan's from the tutorial. Iirc those specific ones dont show up again?

Easy, we can have instanced versions of these that when you reach X point you can choose between (Normal Hollows vs Incarnate Hollows). It doesnt have to be every zone as @MunkiLord mentioned, but for the return on investment we get to recycle unused zones instead of having to make whole new ones which would def take longer

Its essentially what is being suggested with the response to how nerfing everything is what certain people want. The opposite of that would be to buff everything and ignore what the "other" players think is fun.

@Heraclea, @Lines, Kill 2 birds with 1 stone? Revamp Hazard Zones into actual **HAZARD ZONES** that are truly dangerous and even Incarnate level? Make them have villainous equivalents too of course.

If you wanna have a fun time, look at FB each tuesday

QFT IOs are still an amazing positive part of CoH. It's just unfortunate that they sort of got funneled into "slot for defense and recharge and you win" and the effect that has on gameplay. If anything, buff some of the weaker IO bonuses so that becomes something to shoot for and increases diversity! A challenge mode I would argue should be better for merits/time than the normal roflstomp. The caveat of course being it is harder and more dangerous to attempt. The fire tank herding could be allegorical to what others experience today. That playstyle and strategy took away from other players even if the individual fire tank was having fun. Imagine going into a zone to have it be totally empty of mobs cus some other player rounded them all up and defeated them. Or joining a team where everyone doorsits because a tank is doing similar. In today's game, being on a team with somebody decked out who could just solo the whole thing anyways feels bad as they often could just run ahead and brute force a mission that you all would play together. That is why things should get nerfed, when they are powerful to the point of stifling enjoyment for others.

Agreed, I would rather have new modes or just new content to run with than to nerf anything. Though, it is quite a task to create modes that would be worth doing and also capable of making fully decked out characters pause.

I've played the trial back in the day and that was obnoxious. I'm not asking for that degree of separation, but in my observation over the last week of pugging across random level brackets I noticed there was universally only one thing that really caused trouble: team split. Objectively, teams are strongest when you are all together attacking up damage and buffs/etc. If an 8 man team is split into 2 4 man groups, objectively they are not as strong and thus content is harder. It could be 1% more difficult sure, but it would be more difficult. As for the SO only server, not my bag. I like the way IOs (which have been the norm far longer than SOs) and Incarnates have added to the game. I just think they added a bit too much in how it lets you vastly tip scales. We can either tone those back, or add in new 'challenging' stuff and both options would cause firestorms.

The comment about people being able to solo max difficulty and then teaming is one that does concern me. At that point players can inadvertently encroach on the fun of others by denying them opportunity to contribute as they normally would. However, a good thing I've found with this is when the power level allows you to have teams split up scooby doo style in a mission. The full team of 8 sticking together is a force to reckon with in most content, but if the team has to split up for whatever reason it becomes a lot more strategic. Theres a glowy guarded by enemies that see through stealth, and a boss fight at different sides of the map. They have to be dealt with within a similar time of each other / there is a strict time limit on the mission / some other factor that makes sticking together nigh impossible. More things like that would be fun and help curb some of the steamroll.

So, we should buff everything instead? What about those two poster's fun?

You could do that, but given that the option to avoid those things are there and accessible leads to keeping those shortcomings being intentionally nerfing yourself. If this was years ago and IOs that can easily patch these things were not accessible that's one thing, but by naturally playing you can gather these resources in HC.

This is something that is really, really hard to do well in a video game. Look above to where a player was downright mad that such "kryptonite" style mechanics were present in some content. By nature, the game guides you into getting stronger with no real setbacks aside from how picking one power means you might not be able to pick another. There are very, very, very few cases where you actually have a real weakness in your character by design (such as a true damage type hole (the way defense works can cover such weaknesses), or a power that actually gives a drawback like a self debuff of hurts yourself). The powers that still do give you drawbacks (crashing t9s) are widely ignored due to their benefits not being worth the downsides, mostly due to the sets they are in offering what the T9 does without downside other than time to grab the powers. For example, Elude in SR sort of copy/pastes the effects of the set again on you then crashes after 2 minutes. For somebody who had played with all the sr powers till 38/32, they are most likely already 1 small purple from soft cap at all times anyways and have good movement speed boosts. Why take that power that adds relatively little then takes away?

The only time a build is truly bad IMO is when a player for whatever reason goes out of their way to omit key powers. Like if a blaster took absolutely no AoEs or self buffs somehow.

This topic comes up rather often and the opinions vary wildly from person to person. However, I don't think we have actually had a to the point talk about what we think about the game's pacing / difficulty in general! Included is a poll meant to gauge the general community's thoughts on how we feel about the difficulty curve. This should be open ended and try and hash out how we feel, or any observations, in a more relaxed or generalized setting. My personal take on the difficulty is that we have the freedom of choice in how to tackle it. You can play on a variety of difficulties and even pick and choose content on top of these choices to varying degrees! However, by nature of many players simply building or playing well (not 100% optimal min/max, but just kind of going as the game guides you) you can out pace a vast majority of content, which is multiplied in a team setting. This takes away from some of the optional difficulty outside of self imposed challenges (either by Flashback settings or actually self-imposed) especially as you continue to level. This is neither bad, nor good in my opinion as I am rather neutral to it. For every steamroll team I've been on, I've also been on teams where at the 20-30 range we hit real road blocks! At max level we've run into really tough encounters as well even with incarnate / IO'd characters, but those same characters make a joke out of most anything else. There exists a definite balance to all this, but I do think the game leans more towards "easy" as we have figured out most of it and how to master our abilities. What are your thoughts?

You seem confused. Superman using his powers for good is indeed heroic, but is him stopping a mugging more heroic than if somebody without his gifts did? Probably not, as the normal guy had far more personal sacrifice on the line doing that. But this is slightly off topic. What needs to be addressed is: are incarnates as they exist right at this moment problematic? (For ANY reason)

Blast sets are next on my testing list since I've ran through all the melees 🙂 While true you can't just keep upwardly adjusting, the snipe changes also have not all been equally powerful depending on the set. We need some numbers on them compared to the other blast sets, but the non snipers I think could be adjusted slightly without it being overwhelming (like 1 of their ST attacks gets a scootch better idk). DP lacks both Snipe and Aim, so maybe having a slight buff when you unlock Swap Ammo is in order. I do like how you had to hit a certain goal to unlock quick snipe / it made Aim really good within blast sets (and devices). That said, I do really like the quick snipes now as a tier 3.5 blast

I think quick snipes are in a great spot honestly. Ironically, it was the sets with snipes that were far behind (except Fire) before the change. There are only a handful of sets without snipes at the moment (just Sonic, DP, and Water iirc?) and they all have differing issues that could be addressed.

So, circling all the way back I think the question we should really answer is this: Do Incarnate Abilities alter the state of End Game / Near End game content in an unfavorable way?