UltraAlt

I'm assuming by "max-level character" that you mean level 50 and not veteran levels. Personally, I didn't have a "max-level character" before I was at the the point to "just sent inf to each alt as needed". I will admit that I have three 50's but I don't play them. I certainly don't farm with them. I only have those 3 level 50's because a friend was very insistent that they ding 50 (really to give them a sense of accomplishment) and check out the changes to the incarnate system. I have no plans for reaching 50 with any other characters. I have already xp-locked several at 49. That being said, many players - it does appear - use level 50 to generate influence for use by other characters. I'm on the other side. All my characters generate influence for themselves and other characters. I don't think I have any characters that aren't in the /AH one way or another. The only limit that the /AH puts on the amount of wealth you can generate is the number of slots they have on the market and the capital the character has to keep those slots full. As I indicated in my post, I expressed my position in regards to the cost of TOs, DOs, and SOs. Honestly, I'm not even sure if DOs drop for level 50s. But I do not market all the SOs that drop on my characters. I use a good bit of them to slot or level-up a slotted enhancement. The DOs I do completely trash. I honestly don't want to promote other players slotting them. All this being said, I do think that most players that ask for help with infl while playing a lower level character get some kind of help from other players, especially those on their team. I don't know how many of us there are, but there are a secret number of us that do what we can to help because we are playing a superhero game, and there are others that will simply do it because they want the characters that they are teaming with to succeed in order to help the team. But again, I will go back to ... I think that having a challenge to reach a goal, struggling for it a bit, and, then overcoming it, yields a greater reward/feeling of achievement. This goes for a character getting their butt kicked by the Tsoo and then leveling up enough to have some powers that you couldn't get at lower levels that enable you to defeat them -or- having a character struggle to have enough influence to even by TOs and then finding a way for that character to generate enough influence to slot fully with SO's, IOs, and some set IOs. Obviously, I'm not against the premise of your idea. I'm just suggesting to implement it differently.

What if we make TOs, DOs, and SOs free to level 10? Reduce the cost starting a level 15 and then gradually move it to 100% of the current rate by level 30? I do think some level of "gain vs use" of currency is an important part of MMORPG player level/achievement/progression. It's just like any other kind of target to defeat. You want to have some challenge there to build up for the excitement of reaching the goal/"dinging" it is much easier to accumulate influence by simply playing now than it was in the early years. This would allow players to experiment with enhancements all they want through level 10 and then save up some influence as they progress past that - if they aren't using x2 XP that is. I'm not sure what "minimal impact on established players" means, or more at what do you mean by "established players"? I am a player that has been on Homecoming for a couple of not several years now, and I don't play the end-game. I have well over 100 characters that I generally log-in within 40-50 days. My average character level across all characters and servers is 25, and I have level-locked some characters at levels below that because they were created for certain content or I feel that the character wouldn't fit their character conception of they advanced further.

If that is the fact, I have no idea why you are continuing to discuss this. And your point here being that you aren't intentionally trying to make personal attacks? Your claim that you aren't making personal attacks is ... So. I'm done. I'll make it easy for you and put you on ignore so you don't have to feel like the bad guy.

So I'm wondering how many MMORPGs that you have played on if you think that this is something that doesn't occur on all of them. The more common or obvious your thought for a character name is, the more likely it is that it will be taken. Of course, there is also always the thing where another player saw you playing the character in another game and though "Hey, that name is cool" and then they use it in a game where the name wasn't taken. That happens as well. You can always put an x (or another historical gamer "clan" tag) before and after the name or put a number after it, or change characters around (upper and lowers of similar looking characters or go the Freakshow route with numbers for letters).

When I come up for the concept for the character before I even log into the game to create them.

There are plenty of players that have. As I said, those players now have what they were asking for. Enough that they made the hard mode taskforces The 1337 always want something more difficult to make sure that they are the 1337. I don't bother about hunting down their threads. I have run into them and mention of them enough times. I know it's a 1337 thing and it doesn't interest me. The group of players that I play with a couple days a week periodically crack on the players that say that the game isn't difficult enough. lol Of course, try to make it personal because you are having issues adapting to the content changes. First off, you can't fight 6 zillion guys "one-on-one" unless they fight you one at a time - which has never been a thing - unless you have really been taking your time and extremely good at pulling enemies away one at a time without aggroing any other opponents. Why does what need to be change now? Being able to steamroll +4/8 with no effort? Being able to pick enemies that are known to be weaker and less challenging simply so you can do that? All the DEVs are trying to do is to make sure that there is no significantly underpowered end-game enemies that can be easily farmed or are always the go-to because they are easily defeated. How often did you see the calls for PI Council Radio missions? And, no need for personal attacks, it has nothing to do with what I want. If you have anyone to blame, it is the part of the player base that was always going on about the game not being difficult enough. And more personal attacks to use to justify your position. I'm sorry you feel personally hurt by the changes so much so that you have to insult other people to make yourself feel better. You might be able to insult and belittle other people into not posting, but I'm not one of them. Your best result would be to force me to put you on ignore, but won't stop me from responding to other people.

This seems to be end-game focused. Have fun in the end-game. You won't find me there. Teaming with new players in the game has been a lot of fun. Most of them want to learn and are really loving the game which make the PUGs very enjoyable to me. I love to see a team flounder for a mob or two, then figure out how to work with each other, and then get tighter and tighter as the mission(s) progress.

I try to set it at what my character can bear. Generally, that puts it at +2/1 or 2 once I'm level 5 or so and have SO's slotted in everything. That being said, most of the time I'm teaming.

I don't think it is bad design. I could make a team of to-hit debuffers, so I'm not seeing why that isn't something the enemy could do. I could do things to resist the debuff, increase a character's to-hit, or even my accuracy. The debuffs stack, so if you make the mob bigger and you are the only one getting the debuffs, then, yes, they are going to be devastating. If you as a player aren't adapting and changing tactics and just want to steamroll the game then - of course - any change from the norm is going to seem to be bad game design to you. A handful of players is a very small minority of the player base.

Looks like the "game isn't challenging enough" crowd have some challenges now. I guess it was too much of a bother to turn it down and see how far you had to turn it down before it wasn't 100% undoable? It may seem like I'm taunting you, but I'm really not. I bet they aren't too difficult when you don't crank the notoriety to max. Personally, if I want to fight 6 zillion guys - more or less - single-handedly, I will play Dynasty Warriors instead of CoH.

S.T.A.R.T. means start. My guess is that "P2W Vendor" could be sore spot for NCSoft. It sure seems like less letters than H.E.A.D.S.T.A.R.T. - because when it comes down to it, that is really what it is. I think we all know how much more powerful our low level characters are with the ex-P2W gear than they would be without it ... ....well not those of us that immediately power-level to 50 every character they play ....

Whatever. I know what was going on in-game. I know what... ... implies... If you don't overcome foes, then you don't get xp for overcoming foes -and- if you don't get xp from foes overcome when you are on a team, then the team isn't dividing up xp among the team members. Lot of mechanics were hidden when this game as first released. So you show me where it says how XP worked on a team when the game was first released. Prove it.

Yes. Honestly, a good amount of the communication that I run into in Discord when I'm playing CoH has nothing to do with CoH. Well, I guess "good amount" is toning it down. Often times, I find myself trapped with someone rambling on and on about this and that and anything that can possibly not be about CoH while I'm trying to play CoH with them. I don't always use Discord when I'm playing CoH. Most of the time that I'm playing CoH, I'm not using Discord. I have used it for both. But I guess maybe the real question is have I used the official Homecoming CoH channel? No. I have never gone there. Not to use the voice chat, nor to use the forums.

Yes, it was. The change occurred sometime around when Wentworths was added to the game. I had an empathy defender and that could hardly get 1/2 half around on the xp bar when other characters that weren't sidekicked were leveling multiple times during a mission. I had to heal most of the time to keep the rest of the team alive and was able to do very little on the attack side if I wanted to keep the team from falling. The xp given did change from damage done per character (which we can see the history for doing so in games such as AD&D) to equally divided among the members of the team. The amount of influence you gained was always directly related to xp gain. "If you are grouped with a higher level person and receive no xp for overcoming foes, then you also will not receive any invention, salvage, recipe or inspiration drops." - https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Patch_Notes/2007-05-01

I'm a character-concept player. It makes more sense to me on a character conception level to pair battle axe with shield rather than bio armor.

Nothing is stopping me from playing them other than playing other alts. I was playing a sub-20 scraper yesterday. In fact, I had my XP turned off because I didn't want to miss getting the Frostfire mission. I'm not sure what you mean by "early game" are you talking about "the game" versus the "end-game" or are you talking about a certain level range? I see no proof that "not many would want to play them". Just because you don't team with many scrappers or play one yourself doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of them out there. I see no problem with scrappers.

Before the /ah, I had the same kind of issues, but - back then - you gained influence based on how much damage you did. non-damage dealers were scr....er... getting the short end of the stick. I don't want to lean too heavily on the /ah. Well, I do, but ... I don't want you to feel like you have to. So here are some things that you can do to make things easier. DFB drops SO's. So run some DFBs. Sell all your orange salvage for at the very least 350k. If you have to wait, you should be able get more than that. If you are short in cash, I would say don't even bother with IOs unless you want to low end (since you can't outlevel them - though they can't progress either). These will show up for sale on the market for low enough sometimes that you can get them for a deal if you wait. Also, run the University arc to get one for free. This is a community game, so it isn't out of line in a team to say "does anyone have any tech (or whatever archetype) enhances they aren't going to use?" I would give all of them of that type that I had to you. I would just be putting them in the /ah for cheap anyway (did I already mention the /ah ... yeah... probably did) Why does this thread make we want to suggest using Buttstroke to earn the influence that you need? To me, the most important enhances to SO are the accuracy. If you need to skimp, skimp on the other ones. (go with the TOs or DOs') It's cheaper to buy a bunch of insps than it is to buy enhances. Also try to team up as much as possible. Your team is going to help cover you. No one wants to recruit, but everyone wants a team. Seriously. If you recruit, you pick the missions. The team assists you. Sometimes there is a hassle, but it really isn't a hassle very often. If it someone is too much of a hassle? You are team lead, use the boot. if they harass you for booting them, - obviously - I'm going to say /ignore [charactername]

Obviously, I'm going to say make a couple of both. It really depends on how you play. Are you trying to mini-max or go for character conception? If you are going for character conception then go for that works on the character. The difference between super reflexes and ninjitsu is that ninjitsu is sort of halfway toward being a stalker. If I were going the more Bruce Lee route, I would obviously go with the ma/super reflexes. If I was going the more toward the Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, I would go with the ma/ninjitsu (or just go Stalker). I've also made the ma/inv iron body/golden bell characters. There are just lots of ways to go once Wu Xia (or Wuxia or however whoever has decided it is supposed to be romanize this week) is involved. To me it is more of relating to the character than trying to make them some sort of perfection within the game rules. Another way to word it, I have fun from playing the character versus trying to defeat the system.

well, I'm pretty sure Freedom was the most populated server and Virtue was the 2nd most populated server a year before the shutdown. I can't tell you what was going on after that. That's when I cancelled my subscription and stopped playing. lol.

Well Liberty wasn't the 2nd most populous server - that's for sure. At one point, I was in a villain group called the Crazy 88s on Triumph. I'm assuming it wasn't the same group or, at least, I wasn't in it at the time you are talking about. The one I was in didn't have many members and the leader of the villain group didn't play very often. So rarely in fact did anyone play in the VG that one time I logged on I was made the SG leader. Next time I logged onto the character (which was probably a month or so later), I got an angry message from the person that had been VG leader threatening that I better give them the VG leader position back. Yeah, right. I quit the VG. And, based on how the system worked, the next character in the VG that logged in would have become the new VG leader. It wasn't like my character was dressed up like a member of the Crazy 88's at any rate. I can't even remember why whoever invited that character to the VG.

I think that happened on Friday, November 30, 2012, @Yomo Kimyata Did you miss it? I'm not looking forward to that happening again. I hope you aren't actually looking forward to that either.