[Old school playing is getting rare]

1 hour ago, DSorrow said:

Exactly. There are a multitude of reasons for power leveling, including:

• leveling up feels too slow
• characters are more fun at 50
• optimizer mentality: many players just prefer the most time-efficient way of achieving whatever it is they want to achieve
• etc.

The way I see it, very few if any of the underlying causes will be gone if power leveling is restricted, and I agree with your assessment that many people would just go to other games where they don't have to suffer through whatever it is they dislike about CoH's leveling up process. The optimizers still wouldn't do "regular teams" because joining a lvl 50 radio team would still be much more efficient than running missions <50. In my opinion, if anything, removing AE would reduce the number of available teams and most likely make the IO economy painful for average players. 

As basically a "new player" (started on Homecoming about 2 weeks ago) I have to agree with this.

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Backstory of my CoH/V and gaming History: Started playing CoV back in like 2005ish, quit when I got to College cause of time restraints, and friends wanting me to play WoW -_-. In my CoV time, I only got to about level 36ish on a Fire/Fire Blaster, but loved every minute of it. Since then I've played a lot more ARPGs (D3/PoE/GD/Wolcen) which all focus on fast paced Min/Maxing end game and a story you need to blow through on every character to get there. Therefore I am used to reading the story the first time and then IDGAF on any other character. And this game has given me my worst case of Altoholism. As of Writing I have the following: lvl 50, 37, 28, 27, 21, 18, 17, 15, 12, 10, 10, and 8 along with a s mattering of characters not yet past the tutorial.  

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As far as I am aware with CoV/CoH, there isn't much difference besides which contacts you take and the side stories they give. All of which are enjoyable, I will admit, as all the characters listed above that are below 20 I have leveled via questing.

 

BUT, that means in less than 2 weeks I've done the same or similar quests on 7 characters. I know your gonna tell me to just Focus on 1 character, but again: "Altoholism".  

 

Now that said, being able to solo farm in AE from lvl 10-50 with Spines/Fire brute in like 2 days was just pure enjoyment (for me). This has allowed me to set up another account to PL any AT character I want up a few levels and start at any level I want OR pass through some of the "empty" leveling areas where you would just be doing random side/paper/w.e missions, ideally in groups.  (I should mention that, I just had a baby so grouping and doing long missions just isn't in the cards for me atm and the quick 10-20min AE runs that I can step out of at any time and return has been the perfect situation for me.)

 

So in conclusion, while I know my situation is very specific, I don't think nerfing the AE is a great idea. I think there should be a push in the community to inform newer players that the bulk of the enjoyment for the game is in the actual questing process and that they should look into it if they get tired of the end game farming. Honestly, if you have 1 end game character that can farm, all others can/should be for pure enjoyment.

[Claws/Bio, expensive and leveling build for newbies.]

This is amazing, I have been fiddling with builds since I found out about homecomming a week ago. Ive finally settled on Claw/Bio brute build today as I love the consistant fast attacks and the ability to solo most content. I will be making good use of the info provided here! Thanks