Yomo Kimyata

I've talked about intrinsic and extrinsic rewards before, but here I'd like to discuss intrinsic v. extrinsic constraints. I'm all for various challenge modes, but the problem is that our human natures (or at least *your* human nature. I'm a golden retriever.) lead us to maximize outcome given limited resources. If I'm playing in Iron mode (no deaths allowed) and I die due to lag, I might say, "Well, that didn't count." Or if I get ganked by a sniper while running to a mission, "Ogh, that didn't count either." It's easy to violate an intrinsic constraint. But if the game knows I want to play this character in Iron mode, it can say, "Nerp. Time to make a new alt." That's extrinsic. One thing that I think would help others as well as myself is to institute various opt-in settings (maybe just the ones currently in Ouro, but hopefully more) for all game play. This would be in Notoriety settings, ideally. No temp powers? Sure, and the game will enforce that for me to keep me from "accidentally" using them. Yes, it would be my responsibility to inform people who join my team that we are playing with extrinsic constraints. Overall, I feel that it's no so much that the game is too easy (I think it is) but that there are way too many tools that Live and, to a far greater extent, HC gave us to make things easier. I understand Live's motivation to maximize profit, but HC's motivation is less clear. I think it is to keep as many people *who play the way they want to play* around for as long a time as possible. If they want to add an insta-50 button outside of Test, I would rant for a bit about how lazy kids are nowadays and how I had to practice Galaga for hours/days in order to get good enough to put "ASS" at the top of the high score list. Then I would go back to my business, because it mostly doesn't affect me. If they doubled damage on Judgement powers, however, that's affecting all of us and dumbing down an already dumbed down game. I'd have a real issue with that.

Usually on brutes and tanks, I think of Ranged AoEs as "out of character" but I accept them as debuffing mechanisms. If I have enough powers and slots to add Fireball on top of Melt Armor (which I usually slot with an Achilles and a Lysosome), I can almost assure you that I'm gonna put a Annihilation -res in there. I vastly prefer Arctic Breath over Bile Spray because of debuffing procs. My M.O. is to gather up a big crowd, jump backwards (or up) and spray them, then move in for the kill. The cones are a little chintzy, but so be it!

Intrinsic motivation comes from within, while extrinsic motivation arises from outside. When you're intrinsically motivated, you engage in an activity solely because you enjoy it and get personal satisfaction from it. When you're extrinsically motivated, you do something in order to gain an external reward.

There are plenty of ways to put restrictions on yourself. Try them! I’d like there to be settings that put Ouro-type conditions on all your content so as to make it externally enforced. Re: +5, start running +4 content below lvl 49. Half the mobs should spawn +5. There are bugs to get a little higher, but you can’t currently run +5/x1. Only +5-6/x8.

With all this renewed interest in SOs, I'm going to start working on cornering the market. So long, suckers!

I usually go Pyre for Melt Armor/Fireball. I also like Leviathan for Arctic Breath/Bile Spray. If having endurance issues, Energy Mastery (and Energy Torrent is such fun with procs). I don't see much use for the others.

There are 8 new pages since I last looked, and I’m not going to read them all. Procs are overpowered. SOs are overpowered. Inspirations are very overpowered. if you all are fighting over how easy you want this game ofTic-Tac-Toe to be, so be it. Balance and challenge left long before Live finished, so let’s just be grateful we can play and solo ITFs on SOs and inspirations.

It’s exhibit A in my +4/x9 postmortem.

That's good enough for me! The only person who counts is you and I'm a little annoyed at anyone who is trying to take away from your fun. That makes it (counts my alts) my 156th favorite name. Oops, I just registered Executor of Estate and Heir Apparent on Reunion. So 158th favorite name.

It's relatively simple with an unlimited budget (and it really doesn't matter if you make a billion on your sugar daddy or on your level 2), true.

Hmm, I was thinking about IO sets rather than commons. My experience on my +4/x9 characters has taught me that equipping EVERYTHING with SOs and upgrading every level costs about 500k at level 18. That's going to scale up as you add more slots, and I'm not sure if the cost of upgrading SOs is non-linear or not, but I'm thinking it's reasonable to estimate a high amount of 2mm a level on average to upgrade all of your SOs, every level. So total ball park estimate of about 100mm inf? I don't have a lvl 50 with a build that's less than x4 or x5 that, and that's not counting swapping out IO sets as I level. I do accept the idea (although I haven't run the math) that you are better off buying/creating common IOs at lvl 25-35 and never looking back.

I love much about redside, hate a bit about it, but the unforgiveable part is that there is too much vertical, and the game is unplayable without travel powers.

Well, my self-funding no-market alts don't have the inf to buy and upgrade to +3 every time they level. But yeah, they are generally cost-effective in comparison to IOs.

I've actually been playing a lot on SO builds due to various challenges. If you have the inf for them, they are ridiculously overpowered at early levels! I would have interest, but my ability to schedule consistent team play is virtually nil. But I would want the name Flea Agent.

Their livers are poisonous. Beware.

To be fair, I don't think Sally ever studied law.

Your PUG is like bad medicine. Bad medicine is what I need. (Woah-a-oh) Shake it up, just like bad medicine. There ain't no empath who can cure the Vahzilok Wasting disease.

You could not possibly be more correct. It is a game breaking problem that Seeds doesn’t have a significantly longer recharge.

I commend you for thinking outside the box, but I’m not sure I support the rework of a basic mechanic of the game in order to make one specific AT a little better. My two cents.

My thoughts on how I would approach Iron rules for the AH: 1. No selling on the /AH. Vendors only. Unfortunately that means only 5k for a rare. 2. No buying on the /AH unless it is a seeded item, then pay the seeded price. 10k for common salvage, 100k for uncommon, 1mm for rare, 10mm for Hero packs, 25mm for Winter Packs. Buy whatever you want from vendors. 3. Anything else goes, including merit vendors, pvp vendors, etc. This feels sufficient to stay decently equipped in SOs, you should be able to accumulate lots of merits (and therefore converters) so you can strategically add crafted IOs based on drops if you get lucky. This is pretty strict, but I’m also the kind of person who accumulates 100mm on an new alt in an hour, so an unrestricted budget would probably make things too easy. Am I right in assuming people are running +0/x1, bosses, no AV?

I'm very pleased that as I start on a new project: The Natural Limit The Human Limit and The Natural Human Limit were all available on Excelsior!

This is exactly what I'm looking for, thank you! Could you point me to the source material if you know it offhand? As far as I'm concerned, Powerhouse and his/her/its team are the only ones who have opinions that are particularly relevant to me, so I'd like to have a handle on what they figure the specific problems are in order to determine what my responses will be. Thanks!

Specifically with respect to uncommon salvage, I micromanage it (on a very micro level) for two reasons. 1. It's a good fast way to build up a couple of hundred thousand inf on a new character. 2. I consume a lot of them, and I realize that it's a potential bottleneck in the AH. I won't buy it NAO but I will buy it Soon(tm). It's when someone starts messing with my Soon(tm) price that I get annoyed so I log onto an alt, dump yellow salvage until it's at my target, put in lowball bids to fill up my AH slots, profit slightly.

At level 2? It's difficult. At level 49, nerp.

Early observations: @Doomguide2005 is exactly right. This whole experiment is understanding the purple patch. https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Purple_Patch Early on, defense is almost irrelevant. You're probably gonna get hit by anyone and everyone. I've been focusing on resist over defense. Also, accuracy is critical. SOs at level 2 are ridiculously overpowered. If you are using SOs then and not playing at +3 or more, in my opinion you are beating up kindergarten kids. Amplifiers are also ridiculously overpowered. See above comment. Strategic leveling is always fun, and you will do it early and often. Take your ding as an opportunity to shell out as much as you can before running away. Remember, if you level a few times and you are facing the comparatively trivial mod of +3/x8, they will slay you. Echo of Statesman lasts for seconds. Run away a lot. I keep Sprint active, and I'm actually going to two slot it soon. I may three slot it eventually. Early on, I don't think it really matters what AT you play. I wouldn't play a mastermind, controller, or dominator (except mind of maybe plant). Pets don't last. But I think almost anything else is "doable". I'm setting up a Beam/Willpower sentinel for an additional data point. Right now she's making inf and getting res day job bonus.