Peacemoon

I think you are right. I just remember spending a lot longer in Outbreak on live trying to get that badge! Of course it wasn’t set to x8 then..

I seem to remember a second secret badge for the contaminated, now that it was mentioned. But perhaps I am misremembering it?

Just to finish the story, a Thermal/Archery defender called Suncrow and a talented peacebringer (whose name I forget, sorry!) who kept switched between a tanking hulk and nuking alien came to my rescue. Between the 3 of us we took down the +3/8 Shivans! We all got the Man/Woman in Black badge before we finished. As a Dark/Dark controller I might actually use that... Also, I never realised Peacebringers could be so tanky, so this really intrigued me.

I got isolator, but was there another badge as well? I can’t remember now. But I have reached a wall with the shivans in atlas park. Radiation attacks counter my -hit dark so badly.. I might have to lower the diff

Just doing the ouroboros introductory storyline (at 50, yeah I’ve been preoccupied..), and of course, these days I set it to +3/8 for the challenge. And then I find myself in the old Outbreak tutorial fighting hordes of contaminated at level...1! Interesting!! And talk about a flashback, WOW! All I can say is thankfully I had a full tray of inspirations (these mobs didn’t drop any, or give any xp!), and being a dark/dark controller helped a lot too. On a bright note I got the isolator badge for my hardship, another thing I forgot about. I love how this game sneaks up on you sometimes!

CoH has always developed new content for all levels, to keep it fresh. I really enjoyed first ward/night ward as this was released after I finished playing, and is solely 20-40!

One thing that we don’t mention, is the AH server specific? I have not really seen rare salvage go much higher than 500k, but then again I play during UK hours which seems to be off peak, especially on Everlasting. What I do find however is that because of attuned enhancements, and all enhancements sharing the same pool regardless of level, that level 50 enhancements are rarely worth crafting. If you add up the 500k crafting charge with the 500k for any rare salvage, your not making much profit if it only sells for 1.5m. And then sometimes it won’t sell for a long time even at a reasonable price. Personally I’m not seeing as much as inflation as everyone else. If anything prices seem to be going down. As for epics, just bid 18-20m and wait patiently 😉

I think there are two different developmental philosophies. One is to embrace the journey, the other is the reward of the destination. One is not really meaningful without the other. People need the destination as something to aim towards, otherwise their journey is over before it begins. While the journey is the game we all play together and gives our story some weight, but without a destination to aim towards or regular, meaningful progress, it feel like an unrewarding meander. The biggest developmental folly I find is that as games get older, the journey becomes increasingly trivialised, either through experience and players getting better, or eroded from increased power and new rewards. This is true of all games, from City of Heroes to World of Warcraft, to FPS games: Of course there is the argument that after 15 years, do we still want the journey? But of course without the journey, we might as well all log in at level 50 with every IO available for free. It would be fun for a short period of time, but quickly gets boring. Really by continuing to maintain the player journey and keeping it relevant, you keep the game relevant and alive. A game where the journey becomes irrelevant and it’s all about the destination will start to decay and die. So I’ve gone on a meander myself. But maybe this explains why I care about power creep; I really value the player journey and the stories we tell as we undertake it. I feel like the more that is eroded the more harm it will cause to this game long term. Enhancements are massively overdue a complete overhaul, which I’m in favour of, but I’d like to keep player power trajectory roughly the same as it is now (discounting outliers like massively expensive low level builds, etc). This makes me quite conservative in some areas, but I’m not against radical change where it is needed. In terms of portalling around, it’s all about moderation. How much fast travel is too much? Personally I’m not a huge fan of the /baseenter command, or /ah, because I feel like it takes more from the game then it gives. There are lots of little nice things it takes away which when you add them all up, can be a bit of a shame. At least with the Ouroboros portal there are more built in restrictions, on both availability and destinations. But that’s a bit off topic.

I’ve done one or two, but at most I only do it once. I prefer to either solo or play with some people in kings row/hollows, myself.

Also trials always rewarded high level enhancements, and I guess relative to the normal game an SO was considered something very powerful to have at low levels for completion of a trial.

It goes without saying that I have complete and upmost respect for the HC devs, and if I disagree with them it’s only because of a shared love for this game. I wouldn’t be playing this game again if not for them and I never forget that fact. If my passion bubbles over and I cause offence then please accept my apologies. Now back to enhancement debating... !

Thank you, because that’s exactly the quote I was looking for but could not remember when it was made. I remember this statement from Positron.

I’m sorry Number Six, there is a big difference between one SO dropping from the end of a whole trial, and all SOs being purchasable in vendors for every slot. The scaling of enhancements were not to mimic more slots, that is completely inaccurate. More slots was an intended benefit of a higher level character exemplering. Enhancements scaled down to TO/DOs precisely because they didn’t want high level characters with SOs being too powerful. The changes you propose are going to do far more harm to this game than good. Also, will low level 10-25 IOs be upscaled to SO stats, or will low level crafting be pointless? The low levels are going to become absolutely tragic if this goes in.

I definitely think there is room for some QoL changes like this. I think with IOs and attuned IOs we could easily make the game a much easier for new folk, whilst not impacting on the power level of characters. However I am against high % enhancements at levels Where they shouldn’t exist. That’s why regular IOs still give only 10% at level 10 and work upwards from there. Personally I would much rather TO, DO and SOs were automatically attuned so they keep their effectiveness, or at least never turn off completely, regardless of level.

Its not bloat removal. There are very good reasons we don’t have SOs at low level. The whole idea is that characters are effective at that level with poor slotting. So that there isn’t a huge requirement to slot effectively. So people can learn their characters and the game. TOs do hardly anything because at that level you’re learning about the concept of slotting, and mobs are balanced around no enhancements at all. And for those that ‘want to skip 1-20’ then, as mentioned, they already can, and this change won’t really effect them anyway.

Saying a lot of players skip 1-20 through double xp and DfB (note a lot not all), is not a strong argument for changing the 1-20 enhancements. unless you’re saying that, with SOs available, they’re more likely to take the long way to 20, just needed to be bribed? 🤔

He means high level enhancements are scaled down to TO/DO percentages. Even if you are a full SO geared character your enhancements are not as powerful at low level. if we are trying to stop people going to the shop, why not just stop enhancements expiring from leveling? Have a floor of effectiveness at -2. If you outlevel the enhancement more than that then just keep it as -2 rather than switching it off.

Well I don’t disagree everything you’ve written. With double xp and good teams you can get to 20 in 2 hours without trying. But your argument is drifting away from enhancement convenience and towards the benefits of power creep. I think if we polled the playerbase on whether people think the 1-20 experience is ‘too hard’ or ‘fine as it is’ most people would answer fine. Which means the power creep is not only unnecessary, it’s liable to make the game worse rather than better. In my mind making enhancements not expire would be a much cleaner fix. It would help immensely with QoL whilst sidestepping this whole power creep debate. It’s not that I don’t enjoy being powerful. I like exemplering down as my level 50 full epics hero. But that’s not experience I’d want as ungeared lowbie. I hear what you’re saying about limited slots. But I still think this is completely unnecessary. Also I see plenty of non-DFB teams. This might be an everlasting server thing though?

I think what we all need to do is stay calm and rational. The beauty of CoH is it can be enjoyed in so many ways. There are 1) People who don’t slot at all at low level, 2) People who use regular enhancements, 3) People who craft regular IOs but no set bonuses, so they don’t need to keep replacing enhancements 4) People who give their characters full IO sets immediately. 5) People who boost/skip low level content completely. So of these types of people, type 4 & 5 won’t be impacted by this at all. They’re really interested in this subject anyway. People of type 1-3 are the interesting sectors of CoH society effected by this. They either use no enhancements, regular enhancements, or regular IOs (that mirror TO/DOs in performance). So does this change help them? Well the no enhancements guy might use enhancements that he can upgrade remotely, but he is keeping things simple and this is a hassle and another-thing-to-learn. His performance however would be sharply decreased relative to others who now have SOs. The regular enhancements guy would probably use the system of upgrading, but again it’s another system to learn in an already complicated system. Also he might upgrade so often he has no influence for other things. The regular IOs guy would only use this if low level IOs remain at their current %s, whereas everyone else is running full-power SOs. So my feedback overall? Pretty negative I’m afraid. 1) It makes a complicated system even more complicated by adding a new button to the enhancement window. Low level SOs will also be origin dependent whereas currently they’re universal. 2) Power creep. No matter how you cut this, this will be a thing. Low level mobs are designed, in terms of health, damage and abilities, for TO/DO/low level IOs. Introducing SOs at a low level, if they keep the same %s from level 30+, will have huge ramifications for the low level game. Now if you are a type 4 or 5 person then this might not concern you, but this change isn’t intended or will effect you either. I really think you have to take the power creep issue seriously, as some people play the low level game exclusively for this reason. I DO AGREE with what you’re trying to fix. Namely enhancements at low levels feel unrewarding. You either level too fast (not helped by double xp, lets face it), or they give little benefit. However there is nothing wrong with low level difficulty and for some people that is a bigger deal than you think. As others have said, it’s a journey to greatness. For those that don’t like this journey there are already the option to skip this. My defender went from 10 to 18 in one Positron TF. He had no enhancements slotted. I was fine with this. But don’t mess with the game for everyone else - it feels like too big a change. Just to reiterate my preferred solution that you should consider. Stop TO/DO/SO enhancements from expiring. It makes no changes to the power creep, doesn’t add any extra enhancement complications (there are enough already!), and largely solves the main issue of leveling de-gearing your character. I can’t see a negative really. No matter how high you level, enhancements should always operate at -2 and never switch off. Easy. Done.

Some interesting decisions regarding enhancements, and completely different to what I would have done, but I’m a bit confused as to how enhancements will now scale. Previously if you exemplered down to 10 my understanding was your enhancements would scale down to DO level, no matter what you had slotted. Will this still be the case? Regarding power creep and saying it’s not a big concern for you, I would absolutely think about power creep. We’ve just had a huge thread on the general forum about the game being too easy, and people’s opinions. The general consensus was that most people were happy with the 1-20 game. I would be really careful upsetting the low level difficulty because things are already pretty easy at that level. Basically consider what you are trying to fix. If it’s about convenience, like enhancements expiring too quickly at rapid level increases, then focus on that. If changing the power levels of heroes at low levels is not something you want to change, then avoid messing with that. I don’t think it’s necessary collateral damage. Personally when we talk about convenience I would be more inclined to simply stop TO/DO/SOs from expiring. Let them still work as -2 to +3 levels relative as now, but stop them from going red and switching off altogether. To me that is a simpler fix, with a lot less unintended consequences to the early game which is largely enjoyed. (The low level game can already be very quickly skipped with double xp for those that wish). There would still be advantages to upgrading, but if you wanted to be lazy, like me, at least they would continue to work! If we are going to make a change, it should be to better introduce and promote IOs to the playerbase. For example allow standard IOs to be bought from the shops from 25, for a premium, and add crafting stations to the shops encouraging people to craft their enhancements for a cheaper rate. High level SO shops used to be gated by missions. Maybe repurpose those to better introduce IOs. Unfortunately the university is not a place a lot of uninitiated players bother visiting.

-def is useful, but more at low levels when accuracy isn’t great, or when fighting really high level stuff. Otherwise most people solve their accuracy problems and it is overkill. The best thing about -def overkill (like in rad blast) is slotting the Achilles heel -res proc. Otherwise one that often gets overlooked but shouldn’t is the type of powers each blast has. If you are going to be up close to the enemies and amongst them you want to focus on PBAOE and AOE. Cones are useful, but it means you have to be a mid range, or prepare to hop out to attack. This alone will probably affect you more than the type of (debuff or not).

The shades summoned by Dark Control: Haunt regularly get stuck in a back-and-forth loop cycle, unable to move. It generally happens between spawns when they’re following you and not in combat, but I have seen it happen in combat too. Sometimes they keep moving back-and-forth in the spot unable to move to where I am or attack a target, other times they go completely crazy and can dart all about the map as if teleporting between multiple points and being dragged between them. Sometimes if they’re active when going up and down a lift they somehow appear elsewhere on the map, as I’ve often had whole spawns charging me at the lift from where my shades have aggroed them (to confirm these were definitely not ambushes). This happens frequently enough that I feel I should post about it. Does anyone else have any issues with the Haunts? I’m not sure what causes it - I regularly run with lots of pets and they are the only ones afflicted by this. My only guess would be the way they’re taunted onto their target. Two other minor dark control issues thrown in for free: *The immobilise spell effect does not last as long as the immobilise. It disappears well before the immobilise wears off (ST and AoE versions, and Beast’s howl) The sphere graphic from Dark Control is substantially smaller than the actual area effected by the power. Not sure if this is intended or not? Thanks! 😊

Any news on whether this has been fixed? I’ll stick to the -7.5% for now. Thanks to those who researched and reported this.

Telekinesis is not perfect, but if we were going to tweak control sets to improve slightly off powers, I'd be more inclined to start with Ice Control? There have been some good suggestions for Telekinesis in this thread, but talk about touching Mass Hypnosis makes me feel uncomfortable. Lets just stick to Telekinesis and maybe reducing the cooldown on Mass Confusion. Heck if any power warranted an 'immobalise', both in terms of balance and thematically, then telekinesis is surely it!

Sort of agree, I think Kinetics has a lot of ‘impact’ animations in speed boost and increased density - just use those instead and everyone is happy. Also are the sound effects the same as electric blasts? I was getting confused as to whether we had aggroed extra clockwork or if our defender was just buffing us the other day...