SmokinIndo

Why don't I just play the game with my arms tied behind my back? I'm sure that will make the game more challenging.

That's because I didn't say that. I talked about removing attunement, which I think is fair balance. You already lose powers you had past the max level of whatever task force you're on. And this makes sense for balancing purposes. You're playing with level 14s who still have TOs.

I'm one of the people playing, and I'm not having fun. If constructive criticism isn't your thing, then continue playing a broken game that's soon to have zero players.

This is the biggest concern for me. People who are against increasing the difficulty are playing damage dealers. Anyone who plays a support class knows that support is pointless on teams. Even tanks aren't needed as most characters can cap defense with set bonuses. You don't need to hold aggro against enemies that are dead. As a /nature controller, my biggest contribution is increasing the speed something dies from .5 seconds to .4 seconds. It does a huge disservice for support players, and actually makes the class feel WEAK, as opposed making characters feel powerful.

I'd start with taking away attunement. Make it so that playing on a lower level team would actually take away set bonuses. Also give task forces the option to play without IOs for a special reward. Badges or titles would be a really good incentive. Doing task forces in that challenge mode would require players to switch to a build with only SOs. Maybe an even greater challenge mode would require players to switch to a build with only TOs, for even cooler badges/titles. I'm not a game developer, but these sound like easy ideas to implement, with good incentives for the player.

Not just SOs. I use normal IOs/incarnate powers to solo missions. It's a reasonable challenge, but my point is that if I can do it solo, then playing with a team is trivial.

I played the LRSF with a group of people who weren't level 50 and we didn't have IOs. We actually failed. I think your comments about CoH always being easy is a gross exaggeration. It was far more challenging than what it is currently. Even if the LRSF was figured out after a week, it still required a well-built team to finish it. Granite tanks used to herd entire maps, but they needed SB to do it. Support classes were still useful. They aren't useful anymore. They're expendable, which actually makes the classes feel weak, contrary to wanting to be powerful. I also remember when teams weren't automatically sidekicked to the team leader. If you were three levels below the mission difficulty and you didn't have a mentor, you were shit out of luck.

I already do this. I solo mobs at +2/x8, which gives me at least some semblance of a challenge. At least I can buff my animated stone and have it actually matter. The problem with playing with SOs is that people actually put time and energy into their builds. Asking them to throw it away is an enormous waste of effort. At least if there was a more challenging difficulty, people's builds and incarnate powers could actually count for something. It'll be hard with incarnates and IOs. Without them, you wouldn't stand a chance.

I don't think is true at all, at least not before issue 9 when IOs were introduced. CoH used to be a challenging experience. Debt was extremely crippling to XP gain. You had to walk everywhere before level 14. You actually needed to invest in the fitness pool. TFs/SFs took hours to finish. The LRSF was such a rare achievement, and people wore Archvillain as a badge of honor.

This is dumb. It doesn't matter if 7/8 team members have nothing but TO enhancements. If one person on the team has incarnates/set bonuses, then they're going to stomp the whole map. The rest of the team can wait by the map door. If I could find a dedicated team that to play with, who agrees to only use TO enhancements, then I'd be all for it. But this an unrealistic expectation. Far less unrealistic than someone turning their difficulty all the way down so they can give have their power fantasy.

I'm sure there are lots of people that play this game for the power fantasy. That's fine. They have the option to solo everything at -1 with bosses as lieutenants and AVs as EBs. For the rest of us, I don't think I'm alone when I say that with set bonuses and incarnates, this game is easy AF.... and it's boring. The game is losing population, and I think it has to do with the fact that there's no challenge left. All this talk about buffing ATs is silly. Even the most gimped build can solo everything at +4/x8. We've got videos of people soloing iTrials. Something is fundamentally broken here. Most MMOs make leveling a brain dead slog, and save the fun and challenging content for endgame. City of Heroes has the opposite problem. Leveling is actually decently hard and rewarding, since you're usually poor, don't have IOs, and certainly don't have incarnate powers. You rely on SOs, and having them drop is an amazing feeling. But once you hit 50 and you get those late-game buffs, your character steamrolls everything. There is no option for challenging content past 50. Incarnate trials are a joke. I've never had an iTrial fail on me. Why give a fuck about challenging content? Because without it, there's no point in teaming. Mobs die so fast as a group, I can just stand by the door and nobody will notice. Controllers don't have to activate a single power, and why should you? When discussing builds for my controller, I had someone tell me "The best control is damage. They can't hurt you if they're dead." He's absolutely right. Controllers have no purpose on teams. Neither do defenders or corrupters. The only thing that matters is damage. Pure damage carries teams in this game. Everything else is irrelevant. You don't need healers, buffers/debuffers, or controllers. I would love to see a new difficulty that increases enemy levels to +8, and there needs to be incentive to play at that level. Give all new badges for defeating enemies, taking damage, healing, ect. at +8 difficulty. As far as my character "feeling" powerful, the current EZmode makes my character feel weak and insignificant on my team. I would feel way more powerful if I knew that my active healing was keeping my team from wiping, or if my holds were actually keeping the team from taking damage. Right now, I feel weak being a healer on a team that doesn't need to be healed. My Earth/Nature controller solos missions at +2/x8. That's pretty broken. Earth is the lowest-tier controller primary in terms of damage. And this is the AT that doesn't have to do anything when she's on a team, since mobs are wiped before I even lay down my control field. I don't have to spam heals, the team barely even notices when I drop Overgrowth. The only way to appreciate what I offer my team is by soloing. At least my animated stone supports my heal and buffing capability. EDIT: Some quick fixes for the difficulty. I'd start with taking away attunement. Make it so that playing on a lower level team would actually take away set bonuses. Also give task forces the option to play without IOs for a special reward. Badges or titles would be a really good incentive. Doing task forces in that challenge mode would require players to switch to a build with only SOs. Maybe an even greater challenge mode would require players to switch to a build with only TOs, for even cooler badges/titles. I'm not a game developer, but these sound like easy ideas to implement, with good incentives for the player.

By default, the story arcs on redside presume that your villain is nothing more than a mook that only cares about his next score. So what if Dean MacArthur's arc gives a voice to your character or presumes info about you? That's better than doing the millionth hit for the Family and having no ambition of your own. A huge staple of comic book villainy is obtaining power and using that power to change the world. CoH understands this since arch-villains at the head of every group, like Nemesis, Dr. Vahzilok, Crey, and Requiem, are ambitious in their bid for power. Myself and others make villains to share the same space as this bunch. Here's an example of what proper villain content looks like. I find a tip that reads my character's internal monolgue. I act on my latest scheme and kidnap a powerful wizard with knowledge about the Flames of Prometheus. I blackmail him and use his knowledge of the mystic arts to take the Flames for myself. Sound familiar? That's how the Mortimer Kal arc starts. Or maybe I pillage a dying dimension for items of power, and I find a man on the verge of death, who bargains with me for his life. He agrees to serve me if I let him live, and he feeds me tips about the Praetoreans which I use to strike fear into the city. That's how Mr. G's arc starts. There's lots of ways to go about doing this. As you can tell, I'm a big fan of internal monologues, and I think they play a big part of being a proactive villain. I want to see more content follow in these footsteps

Right now, the Rogue Isles shouldn't be called City of Villains. It should be called City of Mercenaries. 95% of story arcs written in City of Villains follow this basic premise: a contact needs somebody to be his muscle, so he "hires" you to go beat up bad guys. The real villain is the contact your working for, while you're nothing more than his goon. It's pathetic that this is the overwhelming majority of arcs in CoV. Despite Going Rogue introducing "rogue" alignments, the "villain" alignment is what's been missing from this game since it's inception. Only recently with some of the newer updates did writers start to figure this out, but the game ended before they could keep it going. Mr. G's arc in St. Martial is an example of a good villain arc. You actually feel like a villain because you're trying to spread your power and influence across the city. You're trying to control your enemies through fear and oppression. It's all about power. And the entire time, you're a leading contributer to the direction of the story. You aren't simply being told what to do. You are actually taking initiative and enacting plans that your character created. There are small moments in the game where you see potential in the writing. The inner monologues of the villain alignment missions are a perfect example of what a real villain would be like. You aren't trying to make a quick buck. You have a master plan to rule the world, and you are taking the necessary steps to see that plan fulfilled. Money isn't as important as removing that pesky hero who will no doubt be an obstacle for you going forward. Even the stories where my character is SAVING THE WORLD make me feel more villanous than just being some cleaner doing a hit for the Family. Fighting Mot or Rula-Wade actually makes me feel like a villain, because the story explicitly describes my using these events as a springboard for my eventual rule. When saving the world makes me more evil than most of the content that redside offers, that's how you know your writing ain't up to par. When I saw that CoH was introducing two new arcs, one of them being for rogues, I groaned. This game was always made for rogues. It's time we start making it for villains.