Pleonast

Excellent advice. I’d make it more general: just change the difficulty from time to time. Especially if you’ve been on the same difficulty for a long time. For totally different feels, try both -1x8 and +4x1. (Or less extreme as needed; this isn’t a competition, it’s for finding fun things to do.)

And that’s okay, but the original poster self-described as burned out from leveling. More leveling as a goal is contra-indicated here.

This, so much this. Leveling is just something that happens. It’s not a goal in its own right. You're burned out because you’re not having fun. I’d suggest picking a character that feels fun to play. Then think about what’s fun for that character to do. And do it! I have a favorite character. My favorite pastime is beating up Nazis. So I’ll do Ouro missions that let me do that. I’m not doing it for experience or influence or drops. I’m doing it because it’s *fun*.

It took me four real-life months to get to level 50. Since I play less than an hour a day on average, that’s less than 120 hours.

Each time a portal is opened, there’s a chance we attract extra-dimensional attention. Every other world that had an active portal program has been destroyed. We’re the last one left. /doom

I gave up on the Incarnate system for a long time, until a friend pointed that out to me.

This. Power-leveling isn’t a problem. The problem is the “hump” in missions in the upper level range. Characters have the choices of 1: Persevering through the hump. 2: Spend millions of influence upgrading their enhancements to make the hump less harsh. 3: Power leveling past the hump. I'm sure we all have preferences for which option we take our own characters. My concern is that too many new players try option 1, get frustrated, and quit.

That’s survivor bias. There’s more many people who played and gave up.

That’s fair. But as it is now, DO and SO enhancements are a trap to new players. They don’t get enough useful drops to keep them up to level. Spending inf to buy them is a huge waste. We need to either make them not a trap, or remove them like TOs were removed. Maybe replace the drops with basic recipes and salvage.

I love these suggestions! I’d add another: All DO and SO drops in non-AE, level-appropriate missions should be usable by the character receiving the drop. For example, a Science-origin character should be getting only Science enhancements. Furthermore, characters below level 50 should get a boost to the enhancement drop rate while doing non-AE, level-appropriate missions. Reasoning: Characters should be getting enough basic enhancements while leveling to give them meaningful choices about what to slot as they are leveling. In terms of level-50 content, DO and SO enhancements are vendor trash; the game should be much more generous giving them to players who are leveling with appropriate missions and task forces.

Actually, new players will hit a pain point starting sometime level 35 to 40. The game is balanced around having SO enhancements, but the current xp and inf curves means a character won’t be able to fill all of their slots if they’re only doing missions and task forces. Veteran players avoid the pain point by sending inf from another character, by playing the auction house, or by power leveling through it. Not great options for someone still learning the game. While most players will learn their powersets and archetype, it’s not really fundamental to the game—which is playing a superhero fighting villains. Focusing on things like optimal power picks and enhancements and level-50 content are all player choices. We shouldn’t be demanding that of new players, if we want to be welcoming. It’s possible we don’t want to be welcoming, and just play with the friends we already have here and a few newbies who can jump through our hoops. It’s okay to ride off into the sunset and slowly fade away.

Unless this game is welcoming to new players, it is going to shutdown. Again. I’m sure it’ll last ten more years. But twenty or thirty more? I don’t see it happening. Telling new players that they have to do this or that is not helpful. Especially the expectations that they learn all these game mechanics and systems. No one wants homework to play a game. The game needs to be easy to continue playing first and foremost. Everything else can be figured out later. Players don’t have to be good or effective, as long as it’s fun enough for them to keep logging in. Are new players having fun? Are they being discouraged by game systems catering to veteran players? Or, are they being scared off by the expectations of veteran players?

We fail new players when missions and task forces don’t provide characters with enough resources to fill all their enhancement slots. There’s not enough for even dual-origin enhancements. That basic gameplay loop is broken. You have to play the market or be funded by another character, which is fine for many of us, but a pain point for players new to this game. There's any number of solutions, which would be another topic, but until a player can level a character to 50 and keep all their slots filled with dual- to single-origin enhancements, the difficulty curve is broken.

Players don’t learn by osmosis. Someone has to teach them. If a team is not taking the time to explain things, there should be no expectations. I've played CoH for a long time, but rarely team. For task forces and trials that don’t allow solo play, I simply don’t know them. I try to encourage explanations by saying “I don’t know this mission”. Often someone helps. Sometimes not. This game isn’t any better than who we are.

This. Double kills are double xp. If the team has set the difficulty high for the extra xp, then the team wants the double kills. Double kills are an extra challenge. If the team has set the difficulty for extra challenge, then the team wants the double kills. If the team doesn't want extra xp or extra challenge, why set the difficulty so high?