TomatoPhalanges

For anyone who worked on progression, enhancements, content, etc. or has worked on it since in another game: Are there any progression, itemization etc. systems or ideas from other games that you have worked on since or have played since CoH's development that you can see working in City of Heroes? And for everyone: Do you have any advice you'd give to the current people supporting the game, or things you'd personally like to see, whether as a player or former developer?

Made this thread for discussing the new Hard Mode LGTF- specifically strategies and things to be aware of when engaging with the content! I'll start us off by talking about the most persistent hurdle in the TF - the Heavies. Personally, I think what people need to pay attention to most is not the teleswap nor the field when they die, but the combination of both. I believe they teleswap the first enemy they target, so it's wise for the tank to try and anticipate this and position ahead and in a place that will mean the Heavy isn't smack-bang in the middle of the group after the swap. Another tip about the field- it REALLY hurts. Like, really hurts. You want to be out of it as fast as you can possibly move, or you're not unlikely to eat pavement the next time an enemy swings at you. You'll always know when you're in it from red status text up beside your buffs (in the same spot the 'Hidden' line shows up for stealthy types)

Excalibonk is a special power you can earn for completing a bonus fight in HM4 LGTF. To clarify, it's a bonus extra-hard fight layered on top of the already-hardest version of the Advanced LGTF. Your friend was going a little crazy with minmaxing and comp-building because they were trying to chase earning that power- honestly they probably should've properly filled you in on what they were doing! Beyond that, a few thoughts: The Barrier cycling strats in ITF and ASF aren't really explicitly the intended way to tackle Advanced content, I don't think, so they were never guaranteed to be a universal trick for Hard Mode as new content came out with enemies featuring different powers and threats. That aside, LGTF is an interesting one on its own, because it normally necessitates semi-balanced compositions to deal with the Hamidon fight, even without being in Advanced Mode. With the additional difficulties on top of that, and then stats being amped up all the way to 4*, things get complicated. You can still typically have pretty varied compositions, but you'll need to strategize around your composition to get through to the finish line, for sure. The Excalibonk fight forces that strategizing further simply by virtue of its difficulty. Also! Since I feel like this doesn't get talked about enough, and a lot of people don't know: I'm pretty sure it's been said by Cobalt Arachne in the past that each tier of Advanced Mode difficulty is tuned to account for a full team with incarnates of its equivalent tier. So 1* expects everyone to have T1s across the board, 2* expects T2s, etc. Not sure how relevant that is right now, but it comes to mind, since we're kinda talking about expectations of difficulty.

For what it's worth, they were saying they were testing as a solo player doing x8+4 - the hardest difficulty setting. If you're trying to relax, then there's nothing wrong with turning down the difficulty. x8+4 should be challenging to some degree.

Not gonna lie, I used 'Zzzzzz' the other day as an expression of frustration at something- hope other oldies didn't get confused! 😇

Thank goodness for the Tuatha de Dannan change. No idea who coulda spotted that being necessary. 🙂

Encountered on a Huge character, inspecting my own badges

In the mission 'Find the lab' from Doc Buzzsaw, it's possible to softlock the mission by simply dying to the ambush of Rikti that spawn while fighting Gav'ril. After they defeat you, they turn their sights to the desk and defeat it - if you haven't dealt with the desk before this, you can no longer complete the mission. Notably, they also attacked the pylon immediately afterwards.

This might be a Mandela effect in action but I could swear I remember them existing for the female build

The 'how many' and 'when' is somewhat irrelevant when you consider that the devs don't just choose by popular voice, they also choose by their own personal interests, team priority projects (KW for example), their own behind-the-scenes data, and what's feasible (and then mash all of those together to come to a decision). Something may be more niche but happen to be of personal interest to a specific dev, so they'll put time into making it happen, while a more popular change may also be incredibly time consuming, or forgo an important detail that the devs are considering. Point is, it doesn't matter how many people asked for something, all that really matters is that a dev (or multiple) decided to put it on their plate and work away at it. That also comes down to the volunteer aspect. If this were a profit-based business, then it'd be in the business' best interest to specifically appease majority requests (or the most majority-seeming), but the devs do it out of passion for their work and the game, and because they (usually) enjoy their work. There's absolutely been plenty of popular, great-sounding changes suggested that would have a positive impact on the game but the reality was 'no, that's far too time-consuming and painful to actually make happen, so I don't want to do it, at least right now' and that is absolutely an acceptable response.

With regards to the Gold Standard discord, the only real expectations are that you aren't rude and malicious on the discord (this isn't aggressively enforced, you don't need to worry about being 'silenced') and that you don't leak information or upcoming content from the discord anywhere, since things are so bound to change, in addition to just not being a spoiler-poster and ruining the fun for the devs/players who don't want to see it. For example about things changing on a dime - we saw maybe two or three very different iterations of the Sentinel rework in P5, for example, and there is content that sometimes misses a level of polish expected by the time things reach Brainstorm. There's also occasionally experiments that are done with the intent to never touch Brainstorm, as preparation or information-gathering for changes or content down the line. You're expected to test, as well, but that's not really measured in any way AFAIK, so you do it when you can and/or think it's needed. Joining the discord just to get a sneak peek on upcoming changes without providing any contribution is generally frowned upon.

I also just wanna say, referring to multiple comments that I've seen in this and other threads using this specific word, it's highly highly unlikely that you're ever being 'ignored' when delivering feedback on the forums and receiving radio silence in return. A dev isn't about to look at a piece of feedback and go '...anyway', unless the feedback was so entirely unrealistic, poorly communicated, and/or missing the point that it's impossible to gain something constructive from it. Even then, bluntly, that's not 'ignoring', that's deciding your feedback was bad or too unhelpful to be utilized. There's plenty of great feedback on here that goes unanswered, and equally plenty of terrible feedback. Honestly providing quality feedback is as much a skill as anything. In my personal opinion, here's some things to think about when constructing feedback for CoH specifically: Considering multiple perspectives, with as broad a consideration as possible, and factoring in a combination of data and anecdote Being realistic with what you know or don't know the team is capable of (I tend to base it on prior actions, or otherwise ask directly if something is possible, personally - and keep those questions as focused as I can to a specific Thing) Taking into consideration general game design values (based on whatever education you have in the subject) as well as the specific values of this team (and, importantly, how they differ from the original CoH team) Allowing your feedback to be unobstructed by a bad faith, cynical perspective. Maybe your own personal playstyle has been or is likely to be especially negatively impacted by a change (or even multiple stacking changes!). It's understanding why that would be upsetting, but try to express that you're upset with clarity and with a lack of hostility if you want to be helpful in your desire for change. Similarly, leaning too hard into excitement over something you're giving feedback on is unhelpful. It's worthwhile to express just how negative or positive you feel about a change, but try not to let it dominate your feedback. "This is great! I love it!" is feedback, and it's usable feedback, but it's not the most useful feedback, and only gets less useful the more characters are dedicated just to that sentiment without explaining the 'why', 'how', 'for', 'but', etc. of the Thing being Good. Same all applies to "This is bad! I hate it" feedback. Willingness to admit you're entirely wrong and misinformed on a situation, and taking the time to allow others to educate you, or double-down on research. Testing! Actually directly testing the changes, rather than making a take based on the patch notes. I'm guilty of this as much as anyone, but it's easily the most likely feedback to be ignored because often it's entirely incorrect and, if it isn't, has no evidence to prove it's not. Either keep it brief, or make it dense. When providing feedback, try to make each line of what you're saying helpful in some way. Give real data when you can, devs love data. Consider the information gap when making guesses about changes that have yet to be fully communicated on. Simply put, the devs have a lot more raw data and general information than a player will ever have access to. Similarly, some players are much more capable of testing specific things (farming efficiency, powersets, etc) than the average tester or player or even dev, so their perspectives should be viewed through a different lens than someone whose perspective is constructed on less effective methods. This list ended up longer than I expected, but it's all things I actively try (and sometimes fail, admittedly) to consider when providing feedback. Anyways: :pensiveasstomato:

This is essentially what I'm intending to discuss - there's no issues already with XP gain in my opinion, but I think more can be done to make it cohesive and play well for a group experience - notably without hurting the solo experience. Honestly, I think the idea I suggested of auto-exemplaring to the max level of the zones and arcs would be the true solve for the issue, allowing players to play the content even if they outlevel it, at whatever pace they wish. They may not get to use all their goodies immediately if they're following along the path as it goes, but that also means they can skip the parts they don't wish to play if they want to move forward to a later zone. I'd LOVE to see pieces of Goldside content- whether an arc or Strike Force- branching the narrative gaps between the later zones. Strike Forces fitting that narrative context would likely also be great candidates for a Goldside TFC equivalent (alongside the earlier mentioned Yin/Posi equivalents). I think that you're right about Goldside being at its best currently as a solo playing affair, and I wouldn't want to hurt that experience whatsoever. I'm simply asking what changes would be necessary for people here to find themselves wanting to group on Goldside. You make a good point about reward merits - that's just a simple case of 'add them' though. If the missions of the same level of difficulty on the other sides of the game grant them, why not Praetoria? I'm also of the opinion teaming in general for non-TF/SF content needs some updates to the reward structure (outside of XP) to make it more rewarding, but that's a much larger topic.

I personally see potential value in Praetorian missions as an avenue for RP-heavy group levelling. You're right currently that 'if you want to level quickly, don't play Praetoria', but that generally leads to very very small numbers of people or characters even bothering with the content. Ultimately, one of the large motivators in this game to group with others is pace of XP gain. With the challenge provided by the enemy groups found in Praetoria, I think it's a missed opportunity to not enable team play more effectively for players who might want it. Doing so wouldn't hurt the solo experience within those zones whatsoever - in fact I think some of my suggestions would only improve it (the exemping suggestion for example). If you ask me, Praetoria only makes more sense as a storyline than a 'side' because there simply aren't enough stories in it. For all the Praetoria burnout people experienced during live's later patches, it is a fairly rich and interesting setting within the CoH multiverse (certainly as interesting as either of the Primal cities), with each of the 6 zones (including First/Night Ward, and the Underground as an entire singular location) having a huge amount of potential for side-plots distinct from the core Loyalist v Resistance struggles and their lead into the war. There already are some - I'd consider the Syndicate and its narrative to be a sideplot, as would I consider the ghouls and their whole *gestures at that* to be one. Interesting point about the ambushes, though. Personally they don't bother me at all, but minor modifications to mission content like that might not be a horrible idea if the devs think it would improve the content.

Though I have my thoughts on this topic, this is ultimately more a desire to open up discussion on the general thoughts and feelings on Praetoria and their own motivations. I want to ask people, what would motivate you to create a Praetorian character and play through that with an intent to group with others to complete missions? My own personal general thoughts and suggestions to open up the conversation, feel free to grab one or multiple at will and follow that/those thread/s: I simply do not play the content often because nobody else plays it. Like with redside grouping, I find it somewhat a chicken-and-egg situation in that regard, however that doesn't mean it's an unfixable problem, or at least untreatable. More explicitly group-specific content goldside (a couple short trials or task forces for example, filling the space of Posi and Penny in terms of their place in the player experience) might encourage groups in other goldside content (even if said groups are only 2-4 players, it's better than nothing) or at the very least, increase goldside population. Redside needs a Posi equivalent too, for that matter, but that's Redside. Perhaps the lower interest in grouping in redside and goldside is connected in that matter, as Posi 1 and 2 are an incredibly popular element of the blueside levelling experience for a number of reasons (Accolade completion criteria leading to increased player power alongside fun, accessible missions and a very low level requirement). A radio equivalent might have value in injecting variety into the Praetorian experience. Flavor on that could vary from 'tunnel expeditions' in the Underground to your standard variety of missions. Perhaps more value should be given to the three outdoor events that take place in Praetoria's core zones? People want to level quickly, especially in groups, but levelling quickly specifically harms the Praetorian experience, leading to a severely conflicting situation. The level brackets being as slim as they are is a significant negative. Nobody likes starting a story, outlevelling it and never finishing it, and Praetoria's contacts are so interwoven narratively that this has a pretty detrimental effect. Perhaps broadening the level range of each of the zones and their mission arcs would have a positive impact? Or perhaps implementing forced exemplaring within the zones and missions within them? While Praetoria does feature more challenging content than the levelling experience in blueside for similar levels, I do not personally consider that a detriment, and it doesn't make me want to play the content with a group anyy less as a result. If anything, if player counts were higher in Praetoria it would be a motivator to do so. I don't think AE Farming (ie 'i dont play Praetorian content to level because AE is faster/more convenient/etc) needs to be factored heavily into this conversation necessarily, as Praetorians have AE access via Pocket D, and the nature of farming impacts the whole game, including blueside, not just Praetoria. If we want to discuss AE players, though, they still participate in levelling Task Forces at max level due to seeking merits for WST and wanting to finish their Accolade badges. This ties somewhat into my second earlier point, though does further beg the question of a TFC equivalent for Goldside (as well as one for Redside). If player power creep is a concern regarding that, then perhaps those could reward, say, 20 Prismatic Aether on completion? Or some Super Packs, perhaps? Some sort of notable incentive to completing the accolade that any player would want on just about every character. Thanks in advance for taking the time to lend your voice to this discussion, and I'm looking forward to seeing other opinions, discussion and suggestions on what would improve this particular element of the game that is, in my opinion, so deeply underappreciated due to not quite hitting the mark it needs to hit.