TomatoPhalanges

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.

Yeah, the main audience for this is people who feel like they have to/should be doing farming in AE but find it too boring to justify (or worse, do it anyway despite it being boring, simply as a means to an end) That said, I'm definitely in full support of more story in these zones! I'd frankly be happy for any amount of love heading their way. Edit: The other main audience here is people who simply have played through the core game enough times that the simply want a faster means of progression (and don't love AE farming enough to justify playing it if another alternative is out there)

Personally, I don't believe any level scaling is required to make this work, whether on the enemy end or the player end. Most of what's needed is already there, because nothing has really been taken away, just made obsolete by better methods as the game has had reward creep.

Very happy to be seeing the support and ideas for this! With Boomtown's interesting situation with the War Walkers in the corner and very large neighbourhoods in the northern end of the zone, I think it'd certainly be a great place to experiment with this before rolling it out for other Hazard Zones.

It'd be no more City of Hazard Zones than it's currently City of AE - arguably less so, as I'm not suggesting we make max level hazard/trial zones better, so people will outlevel them at points, and they don't award merits so TFs and arcs would still see plenty of value.

I understand and don't entirely disagree with what you're saying (and Six as well) - in a perfect world, I'd agree entirely. With a bustling villain playerbase and far more dev resources, I'd absolutely be pushing for a set of Hazard Zones unique to redside instead. Unfortunately that's outright unfeasible with the team's limited resources, at least unless they want to put all hands on deck for something like that for many builds- which I don't think they would. The purpose would essentially be to allow street-sweeping groups to 'graduate' to the next zone at a level that they are comfortable with. For example, if a group is super successful, they may want to graduate early. If not, they may be taking it slow, and want to graduate later. It also allows room for player preference. If there's overlap, and the next zone is less favored by a group of players, they could opt to minimize their time spent there. The zones that are considered Trial Zones, according to HCWiki, are: Terra Volta Eden Sewer Network Abandoned Sewer Network Rikti War Zone Cimerora Dark Astoria The Hive/The Abyss Personally I wouldn't count those last four as applying to what I'm pitching (they have plenty of purpose as-is, and being level-capped at 50+, would likely lead to high concentrations of powerlevelling relegated exclusively to those zones) but I listed them on the technicality. What I'm aiming to go for when it comes to events is a variety. Some would be more solo-friendly, others definitely far more pitched towards groups organically forming around it or taking a break from street-sweeping to do it. The fundamental point of the events would be to add some spice to the routine of cleaning through the zone in your group (or solo) with a nice reward to boot. Worth acknowledging though, events and story arcs being suggested are fully ancillary to the core pitch, which is the return of street sweeping in Hazard/Trial Zones as a leveling alternative.

So this is a suggestion I've been making over multiple different channels of communication for a little while now, figured I'd formalize it and put it here. Just about everyone and their dog in this game has an opinion on speed-levelling as it exists in this game currently (predominantly AE-based). Personally I believe that speed-levelling is an important aspect of the game, due to the build-depth and age of it, but also believe that AE farms are monotonous, boring and honestly? Bad for the game's health. ( But this thread is not for debating that, and I would prefer we do not do so. ) It's due to these feelings that I have a suggestion to make regarding a new alternative, quick levelling path for players who are tired of the standard progression. Said path would be (relatively) simple in implementation at a fundamental level, and have tons of opportunity to expand and make more dynamic and interesting. Said path also carries a level of nostalgia for an earlier era of City of Heroes that could, I believe, be recaptured again in the right conditions! So, what is this path? Well, I've already mentioned it in the title: Hazard Zones! (and Trial Zones! Just assume I'm talking about them as well whenever I mention Hazard Zones) (also I'm specifically talking about street sweeping) So all of this fundamentally revolves around one concept: Buffing yields for street sweeping in a group in Hazard Zones in such a way that it would become a fun and engaging alternative way to level characters. Hazard zones as they exist are currently already in a pretty prime place to enable this, as they already are filled with high density packs of decently challenging enemies, and have no lockout for levels, meaning a group can enter, progress through until they're on-par with the strongest enemies in the zone, and then move onto the next Hazard Zones. Those who never did it may not quite understand, but there was a simple charm and quite a bit of fun to getting a group of 8 together and sweeping through the streets of the Hollows, and/or oldschool Sewers, back in the day to get through the early levels. You would find yourself routing around packs of enemies that looked too dangerous for your group, while targeting the ones you thought you could take on, and generally pushing deeper into higher level territory as you progressed, walking the line between 'too hard' and 'killable for best yield'. What do I propose to make this a reality, then? Three important changes: Buff XP yield for street-sweeping in Hazard Zones. Nice and simple! This could be achieved with a zonewide %-based buff that's applied whenever you enter these zones, perhaps? That would be the easiest method for tweaking this in testing. This could honestly be done on its own and go a long way, but I think would benefit tremendously from the two following additional changes. Increase the level bands to each Hazard Zone. This is to allow more variety in zone choice for teams moving down this path in the game for their speed-levelling. I appreciate that this is a little more fiddly than the xp yield buff due to the way enemy groups work, but in those situations I may suggest subdividing some of the existing neighborhoods to add new enemy groups that do fit the additional level range. Due to the design of Hazard Zones, they tend to have very large neighborhoods, and as such, dividing them would be legitimately feasible in many examples. For some neighborhoods, the devs could simply replace the enemy groups within, instead, but that's somewhat of a 'case-by-case' decision to make. Either way, increasing the level bands of Hazard Zones is, I think, a decently important aspect. Arguably far more important than increasing the level bands for Hazard Zones is making them co-op zones! I believe Villains, via a sewer-based hub, could be granted access to the Hazard Zones under the lore context of 'NPC Group brought you in to help them out, Arachnos facilitated transport, and then you got here and decided actually you'd do what you want, but no way you're getting through those Hazard Zone gates'. Giving villains alternatives for levelling is sorely needed, due to how aesthetically one-track-minded their zones are, and how relatively linear their choices are (at least compared with heroes). In some parts of their levelling process, this would effectively double their choices in which zones to level in, maybe even triple. With these changes, I think that Hazard Zones would come into their own as a vital, diverse and greatly appreciated part of the game's progression, far uplifting them from their current, heavily neglected state. In addition to the three core changes, I also have further ideas that could be considered an optional extension to the core premise, which would add variety and moments of interest when playing within the zones. Elite Bosses! I would like to see special Elite Bosses in the zones. Whether a rare spawn in groups of enemies or a roaming, patrolling threat, I believe they would be kinda like the 'chocolate chip' in the cookie, something you'd be excited to see when you encountered them (since you're likely in a group of 4-8, and EBs give better yields than your average enemy). Of course, they would likely be level-locked to the maximum level of the zone, meaning groups just starting in a zone would find them an exciting threat to navigate around. They'd bring the 'Hazard' into 'Hazard Zone' quite a bit, I think! Zone Events! You know 'em, you love 'em, you probably think they're generally quite unrewarding! But I'd say that usually that's because they feel more like something to be done when already running around within the zone - something unlikely to be done when bouncing between contacts and missions. Perhaps tying existing GM spawns within Hazard zones to associated zone events that appear on a timer would be a fun thing too? Naturally these zone events would also benefit from the zone-wide XP buff, meaning players may end up additionally motivated to contribute, especially if the events are using 'levelless' enemies, much like the GMs themselves. Naturally, not all Hazard/Trial zones have GMs currently, and I don't think that necessarily has to change, but I think that they could still benefit from zone events as well for the same reason! As usual with zone events, they could simply grant a temporary power of some kind, but some other interesting reward alternatives could be a Attuned Universal Enhance set (think SBB's Overwhelming Force set as an example) or patrol XP for every contribution! I think the zone events would likely be best implemented on a grouped timer, with a random event spawning every 20-80 minutes or so. Story Arcs! As we all know, the Hazard Zones are famously lacking in Contacts and Story Arcs, as a deliberate design choice. I'm always happy for more Story Arcs, and there is certainly plenty of ground to cover in the majority of these zones narratively, especially when factoring in which particular groups could be 'hiring' the villain players in each zone. Of anything, I recognize this would be easily the most time-consuming aspect of these changes to these zones to implement, and am also the least in need of them. After all, we have plenty of mission content in the game, and very little street sweeping for the sake of street sweeping! Anyways, that's my ideas! Thank you for reading, if you made it this far, and I'm excited to hear your thoughts. I believe that street sweeping can be quite an enjoyable activity in the right circumstances, alongside a group, and really captures that MMO feeling when you see other groups sweeping the same zone as you. It's a shame that it's fallen to the wayside as anything other than a completion criteria for missions and badges. I think this would revitalize it! Disclaimer: As always, I fully acknowledge the spaghetti of CoH's code, and recognize that literally anything I've described here as being potentially 'simple' could actually, in reality, be a total dev nightmare lmao - I'm so sorry devs ❤️

Just saw it in a Posi1 final mission!

The Shadow Shard are technically blueside zones, so it makes sense that Rogues can't earn the badge, and is consistent with other Paragon-exclusive features (trains, for example). They should definitely be getting credit though, if it's consistent. Can you try logging out and back in from inside the Shadow Shard to get the a sliver of the badge and see what happens to the progress? Maybe it'll play catchup

The natural answer to this for me is a form of content in future that acts as a 'decent' PAP source (maybe equal to iTrials?) that is solo/duo-focused and challenging. Easier said than done in a game balanced like CoX though. That said, I think people will be surprised, though, with how much currency actually shows up from the 2% drop rate on missions. It's a common bit of advice in game dev that 5% is actually a remarkably high number for drop rates. 2% is still pretty high for how often it's going to be checked when doing missions. You can go through a lot of missions in an average day of CoX, and it won't surprise me if someone figures out a mission with a completion time low enough and with decent enough routing via ouro to spam. Would that be the best use of your time? Absolutely not. Would it get you PAPs? Probably. All of that said, I think the Tier 3 rewards especially are designed specifically to be very rare, and this whole system in the first place is made for the purpose of incentivizing people further to do the hard mode TFs. I think it's fine if those particular rewards are unobtainable for people who don't engage with the content it's meant to incentivize. Those people still very much have access to the grand majority of costumes via the Tier 1 category. 10 is a very, very obtainable amount.

I mean, Tier 2 and 3 clearly are designed to be a top level reward, whether that's for being rich enough to buy the salvage or skilled enough to do the hard content (or patient enough to save up the Salvage long-long-term for them). Tier 1 though, just run missions and the WST and jump into iTrials when they're run from time to time and you'll get plenty of 'em no problem.

I think this is a pretty compelling argument from Flea. I can't imagine people are going to be grinding 60/day or even remotely close to that. Imagining the average player interested in challenging content is an adult with a day job, or at least other commitments, at most the player would probably do two or three 4-star runs a week, treating it like a WoW raid night. They might do iTrials scattered throughout their week as well, and occasionally have a day of 'binge everything', but those should probably be considered outliers. Any player doing two 4-star runs on a daily basis would probably lose their mind doing the exact same content again and again. With numbers like that, I think an appropriate Time-To-Obtain for the aforementioned 2-runs-a-week player would be something like 3-4 months for one tier-3 costume. Roughly, the player would be making ~130 PAPs per month, so an appropriate T3 price would be something like 500 PAPs. 4 months for one reward for one character on your account is still a long time, especially as more T3 powers eventually get added, but that calculation doesn't factor in days where a player might make extra effort into grinding additional PAPs from chaining itrials across characters, or buying additional PAPs on the AH, or even gain them from the 2% mission drop chance. So yeah, my suggestion would be setting the Tier 3 price to 500/600 Salvage, and Tier 2 to 250/300 Salvage. Tier 1 is perfectly fine as-is.