dynafire

Adding content (arcs, TFs) is a lot of effort. Adding a level cap would be a much smaller amount of effort - and for the sake of argument; assuming it is an improvement, would improve all hazard zones with one change. Think of how much content we've had added vs code changes, and we can guess the HC team is much more developer heavy vs content creators.

Yes, you're right, I suppose fighting even con mobs for badges is actually still quite easy. Maybe it's even more fun. It's probably even still safe, just less fast. Then again, badges should be earned, I suppose, so a little more effort probably would be not a big deal. This is not the solution to the problem I want to solve. If a lower level char is the team lead, they will still rise to the level cap in a very short period of time, and hence make it time to leave the hazard zone, hence defeating the goal of revitalizing the hazard zones by making it attractive to spend more time in them. Yes, you could maybe have the team lead disable xp, but that's still not a solution. The goal is for everyone, team leader and the entire team, get great xp. I seem to recall the principle behind the hazard zones was - greater risk, greater reward. Well, they don't provide greater reward anymore, and they don't feel particularly risky - I'm not sure why but maybe because we level up so fast. What I'm looking for is a way to bring them back to greater risk, greater reward. I think being able to set it such that you see permanent +4s (or higher), and also perhaps maybe making spawns even bigger and more dense, might do the trick. This is kind of my point (HC vs live), you don't see these kinds of things on Homecoming because XP/inf/merits/incarnate stuff is basically quite easy to acquire, so it's not worth the effort to do anything that's slightly exploitative or abusive. Live was different, without double xp, AE probably(?) not as rewarding, markets that automatically transform enhancements from any level to any level and even attune them for you, etc - you had more incentive to try to take shortcuts. But also as I said, it's fairly easily avoided by enforcing either a 5s delay after changing, being unable to change while in combat, or only allowing change while in a rest state, or only allowing change at some NPC at the entry to the zone, or any other similar fairly easy adjustments. It's more of a question of which is better big picture. I still would argue for making it an opt-in, and more particularly being able to set your level below the level cap so you can see +4s (or higher).

This sounds pretty similar. I didn't play GW2 enough to really get all the dynamics, though it is documented here: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dynamic_event The first paragraph is a great summary: And yes, the Fifth Column/Council war you described seems like it would have some similarities. In the GW2 system, maybe the Fifth Column would make another attempt. Or maybe players could defeat the Council in certain neighborhoods, and the Fifth Column would take over after the players left. And then there would be a fight again. Or I also remember in GW2, sometimes you would clear out an enemy camp, and then some friendly NPCs would spawn after that event was concluded (say maybe some PPD show up). They would guard the location for a while, but then some enemies would come. And if no players were around to support, then the enemies would win.

I've seen several hints at another idea I also like, or maybe I'm just reading in to it. A couple MMOs have implemented dynamic events, I'm thinking of Guild Wars 2 in particular (though I also have seen it in FFXIV and I'm sure there's many others). I think that was one of the cooler unique elements to that game. I guess we do have a couple things a little similar in CoH, like the Rikti Invasions, and the zombies. Maybe this system can be evolved a bit more, with a look at how some other games implement them. As it is now, the rikti invasions and zombies feel like what they are, repeats of one time events that weren't necessarily ever intended to be a cohesive and permanent system. But there's some potential there.

Thanks for expanding on your point. However, I still think it would be preferable to make it user selectable. A few reasons: 1) Someone mentioned farming low lvl hazard zones for badges. I can imagine people still do this, and if this is an actual use for the hazard zones, the last thing we need is to take this away so that they become even more dead. Plus it was kind of cool back in the day to occasionally see a high level player come by and help you when you were otherwise going to die a grisly death. 2) Maybe I don't want to be capped to the hazard zone level cap, because maybe I want to fight all purples along with my teammates/etc. Missions being an easy source of purple mobs are probably the reason they are the most common xp grind method now, whereas hazards were once great for this purpose. It should be easy to make it a switch, just like the ability to set notoriety. As for the ability to exploit, it's not much different from the fact that you can exemp and sidekick simply by joining a team, and un-exemp/un-sidekick simply by quitting the team. To make it less prone to exploit, you could just disable switching it while in combat, and maybe it's a 5s "activation period" while you change, or you can only change while using the "rest" power You don't really see people attempting to exploit the exemp/sidekick behavior because it's so easy to get xp/rewards in a normal fashion, it's not even worth the effort to exploit, so I don't see this as a big problem either.

Isn't that what I said? Sidekick brings up player level, exemp brings down player level, so how could I mean otherwise? But I think it should be optional, just like setting notoriety, except that the setting is specific to a zone and resets when changing zones.

Building on this, I think it could make sense to simply also manual exemplar to any level within the range of the zone you are currently in (hazard or not). I could see hazard zones becoming a lot more fun by allowing this - and this should be quite low effort to implement. In the olden days, I seem to remember the hazard zones were popular enough that the devs wanted to discourage players from staying in there too long, and there was an XP penalty if you farmed the same mobs for maybe an hour. This probably still exists but no one ever farms this way in hazard zones anymore. Maybe allowing exemplar down would bring it back a bit. It's far too easy to just pass the level where it's might have been fun to go to Perez park, or whatever, but being able to go back when you're level 40 and see them as red or purple might actually be pretty fun.

Thanks for your reply. Yes, have done a lot of reading then, learned so much. 😉

I know this is an old post, but I had a question. When looking at crafted set IOs, it seems like all the levels share history, as well as bid/offer count. I'm not even sure how people are able to buy and sell, as you can't tell if it's a lvl 25 or a lvl 50 one being sold.. This can't be intentional, can it?