Reiska

February 11

I'd believe it. The most egregious one anyway is Malaise (who I'm almost positive should be an EB) having four copies of himself, but I think that mission might have carried a warning. 😛

February 10

20 hours ago, Blackbird71 said:

Personally I'd rather keep the original flavor. The AT names themselves are already indicative of their heroic or villainous nature, there's no need to strip them entirely of those identities. Unless we're really going to rename all the ATs next like we're doing with powers to blanderize them?

There's barely any aligned language to remove anyway, all it amounted to was a couple replacements of the word "hero" and removing "sadistic" from the description of Dominator's inherent. None of the other villain ATs' descriptions clearly align them.

In general I think the villain descriptions were much better written than the hero ones, but if someone were going to do a fuller rewrite it should be someone with broader experience than me. A good AT description at character creation should clearly and unambiguously communicate to the player:

The expected role of that AT in general terms, e.g. Blasters are damage specialists
How that AT differs from other ATs that share similar power sets, e.g. the varying niches of Scrapper/Tanker/Brute/Stalker/Sentinel, Controller vs. Dominator, Corruptor vs. Defender
Some sense of how difficult the AT is to play for a new player, especially in a solo context (e.g. Controller and Defender have limited damage output, EATs should absolutely have a "not recommended for new players" tag)

And no, I would absolutely argue against renaming any ATs at this point.

February 10

On 2/9/2024 at 11:11 AM, Lunar Ronin said:

Sweet. Does that mean that the originally heroic ATs should be re-written to have their heroic descriptions removed as well, since they can be played as villains?

Yes, I would say they should.

Since I'm bored I took a stab at doing a light rewrite of all of them to clean up both gendered and aligned language without changing the substance of the descriptions too much, which I'll stick behind a spoiler tag since it's long. I kept most of the substantive text unaltered, but removed aligned language in a few instances (except from EATs) and shifted all of the descriptions to second-person (I chose second-person because most villain descriptions were written this way and they were written later). Anyone can feel free to use these as a starting point for further cleanup/rewrites 🙂

Spoiler

Blasters are offensive juggernauts. You can deal a ton of damage from a distance, but are somewhat fragile compared to other offensive archetypes. The Blaster can't stand toe to toe with most opponents at melee for long; your best defense is a great offense!

Brutes live to fight, and as a Brute you revel in hand-to-hand combat. With strong offensive power sets to inflict pain and impressive defenses to take it, you're the best there is in a straight fight. Protracted battles only makes you mad, and the madder you get, the more damaging your attacks become. You do lack ranged attacks, which could leave you vulnerable to hit and run tactics without some allies to cover you.

Controllers are at the same time the weakest and yet the most powerful of the archetypes. As a Controller, you have few offensive attacks and few hit points, but you have access to a range of powers and abilities that few others do. Armed with these powers, you can affect the behavior of villains, from freezing them in place, to putting them to sleep, to routing them away. These abilities make you the backbone for any team, but dependent upon your teammates for protection.

Corruptors twist the forces of the universe to do their bidding. As a Corruptor, you might strike your foes down with blasts of fire, entomb them in ice, infect them with radiation, or curse them with pure darkness. As your foes are weakened, your Scourge ability kicks in, increasing your damage to an enemy as their hit points drop. You can even impart a portion of your twisted power to your allies to protect them from harm, heal them, or increase the damage they deal. This wide array of abilities comes at a price: your defenses aren't strong, and you can quickly attract the ire of your enemies if you aren't careful.

As a Defender, you help your allies and attack your foes from a distance. You excel at powers that assist friends, but can also hinder your enemies. You are able to attack at long range; however, you are fragile and will not last for long in close combat.

As a Dominator, you control a devastating combination of control and assault powers. You can freeze foes in place, render them unconscious, or cause them to flee in terror; you can also smite your foes with a selection of single-target melee and ranged attacks with devastating effectiveness. Additionally, each time you attack, you come closer to unleashing your true power of Domination. With so much emphasis on diverse offensive powers, you lack in defenses and work best with teammates who can provide protection.

As a Mastermind, you excel at using others to do your dirty work. Perhaps you build killer robots, command deadly Ninja, order hardened soldiers, or summon the undead to do your bidding. Whatever your choice, you have an army of minions at your beck and call. You can summon them when needed, order them to work your will, and even use your own powers to enhance them or weaken your foes. The Mastermind is a difficult archetype to play, often demanding constant attention to control your minions and stave off the retribution of your enemies.

As a Scrapper, you are a fierce melee combatant; in close combat, few other archetypes can compare to your ability to sometimes deliver critical strikes for increased damage. But you are not as resilient as the Tanker or Brute, and might find yourself in a little trouble if you heedlessly wade into combat. Your aptitude for melee is countered by a total lack of long distance attacks.

Sentinels are powerful mid-ranged combatants with moderate protective powers and protection against control powers. Sturdier than a Blaster, you also use your superior perception to quickly identify threats and expose their vulnerabilities, at the price of your area-effect powers being less effective.

Skill can divert clumsy raw power, and precisely applied force can solve many problems. As a Stalker, this is the core of your specialty. You do your best work when attacking from ambush, and can even hide in plain sight to escape foes. Deadly attacks and good defenses make you a dangerous combatant and assassin, but you can be overwhelmed if you're not careful.

As a Tanker, you can take it and dish it out all at once. You deal the lowest damage of all melee archetypes, but make up for it in numbers by being able to hit more enemies than your melee peers while absorbing vast amounts of damage. You lack ranged capabilities, but you would prefer just to charge straight into a large group of foes anyway.

Arachnos Soldiers begin their career as a Wolf Spider serving Arachnos, with a strong mix of Melee and Ranged attacks and strong protective powers available via their power armor. At level 24, you will have to choose whether you will progress down the "Crab Spider" or "Bane Spider" path; Crab Spiders gain access to the "backpack" and the powerful claw/cone attacks it provides, while the Bane Spider track provides stealth and a stronger focus on melee. This archetype must begin play as a villain on Primal Earth, and is not recommended for new players.

Arachnos Widows begin their career as a Blood Widow serving Arachnos, with modest melee, ranged and buff skills. At level 24, you will have to choose whether to switch to the "Fortunata" path, gaining stronger ranged attacks and control abilities, or remain on the "Widow" path and become a "Night Widow," gaining considerably stronger melee capabilities. This archetype must begin play as a villain on Primal Earth, and is not recommended for new players.

Peacebringers are formed from the fusion of an alien energy being called a Kheldian and a willing host. As a Peacebringer, you have solid hit points, a good variety of energy attack powers and strong defensive powers, inherent flight, and eventually, you even gain access to two shape-shift forms. You become stronger on a team, gaining bonuses to your own powers based on the archetypes of their teammates. This archetype must begin play as a hero on Primal Earth, and is not recommended for new players.

Warshades are former Nictus who have left that dark path behind and reformed, joining with a willing host. As a Warshade, you have solid hit points, a good variety of dark energy attack powers and strong defensive powers, inherent teleport, and eventually, you even gain access to two shape-shift forms. You become stronger on a team, gaining bonuses to your own powers based on the archetypes of their teammates. This archetype must begin play as a hero on Primal Earth, and is not recommended for new players.

February 10

4 hours ago, Sovera said:

Just as respectfully, collecting badges is an OOC activity, so then what's the problem with using Null to go to Paragon OOCly to collect the badge?

It also means you lose access to your alignment power for a week of real time, however much that matters.

February 9

I'm going to preface this report by saying that I'm aware some of the missions in the Night Ward arcs give the player a warning about them being higher than normal difficulty and recommending that you form a team for them. Generally CoH gives that warning when a mission contains one or more Elite Bosses, which sometimes (but not always) downgrade to Bosses (not Lieutenants) when you have solo bosses disabled.

That's not what I'm referring to; the missions with that message can be left alone.

However - and I apologize that I can't name specific missions as I ran all the arcs over the course of about a week and didn't take notes - there are a number of missions that don't give that warning and still spawn Bosses, sometimes multiples at once, regardless of your notoriety. It isn't clear if these would all be EBs when run with bosses enabled or not; I didn't think to reset the missions to check that.

Most of the missions affected by this also give you NPC allies, which I suspect were maybe intended to compensate for the increased enemy difficulty... except the "No Bosses" setting does successfully cap your NPC allies as being lieutenants, and so when you get to the bosses, they pretty much melt.

February 9

Checking in as someone else who also has this bug, yes I have saved my settings, and I usually have to reload them when I zone into a mission because of this bug.

Without knowing the underlying code I'd wonder if it's a symptom of CoH being originally designed for a 4:3 aspect ratio.

February 9

On 2/7/2024 at 11:47 AM, arcane said:

Honestly Seeds needs to be nerfed. Any ability that is so overpowered that it’s convincing people Mass Confusion is bad… can die in a fire. And they put it in the same set as Carrion Creepers. Everything sucks if you’re naive enough to make Plant Control your baseline.

On 2/7/2024 at 11:55 AM, User said:

This kind of mind is fine special snowflaking literally goes back to Issue 1 too. I didn't understand it then and I don't understand it now. I guess it's like the Beanbag shot thing, some people just like playing a bad powerset because it makes them feel unique?

Objectively speaking though mind/ is in the worst place of any control set on controllers, which is why you only see it as a gimmick, if you see it at all.

These are not mutually exclusive positions, it can be possible for both Plant Control to be overpowered and Mind Control to be underpowered. I definitely remember Mind Control being considered as being pretty bad on live as far back as my memory of live goes (issue 4), and I also definitely remember Plant Control being considered to be the best control set basically from the moment it went live and people being surprised it didn't get nerfed when it got proliferated to Controller.

I assume people like playing Mind Control because to someone who doesn't know the game, it's the most obviously thematic controller primary.

February 9

13 hours ago, megaericzero said:

It's understandable in that the live devs were probably going to add more stuff like that to lower level content in future updates back then but, since we've been stuck for a decade with only those few new pieces with GR's style writing, it stands out quite a lot compared to how a lot of pre-30-ish content will actually be on Primal Earth.

Yeah, it would not have surprised me at all if in the hypothetical universe where CoH didn't shut down, Paragon would have progressively revamped some issue 0 content to have more of this stuff over time; they were doing little revamps to older content all the time, like The Hollows in issue 16 for instance.

I do think it'd be a good stretch goal for Homecoming to go through and clean up issue 0 content still, streamlining out some filler and maybe introducing a little more map variety without actually changing the overall plot of those arcs.

February 8

I had a long elaborate reply typed up and then crashed my browser and lost it, so I'll just retype the tl;dr version of what I was going to say:

If new players are expected to interact with the AH to sustain their influence flow (and I think they should be), then fixing the massive problems with the AH UI needs to be a higher development priority
The game used to obliquely hint at the connections between certain villain groups and certain origins through the issue 0 hero contacts' biases in what villain groups were involved in their arcs and what enhancements they would sell after you did enough missions for them, but this link was broken when they were made to no longer sell enhancements
New players don't have the institutional knowledge to know that it is a bad idea for them to give up all influence gain from defeats in exchange for double experience; you can argue that this should be intuitive or obvious, but the value of specific amounts of currency is not immediately apparent until you've played for a while
Regarding confusion of the system, "Should we even keep enhancements tied to origin?" is a question that I think needs to be asked, but one I don't have an opinion about, nor does it have an obvious correct answer; if enhancements were no longer tied to origin it would be even more of a vestigial mechanic than it already is
An idea I saw no one in this thread suggest is extending the usable level range of DOs and SOs beyond the current +3 to -3 range; if it were up to me I'd suggest +3 to -5 instead, and also reducing the bonus degradation per level from 10% to 5%

February 8

1 hour ago, Tigraine said:

It also does not help when they drop in to effectively say, "We don't like the feedback you're giving; tell us what we want to hear or we won't ask for feedback anymore." At that point, is there really any purpose in offering feedback?

Interpreting what Jimmy said in this way is taking his words in bad faith IMO.

What they're actually saying is that feedback on features which are no longer part of the build is noise.

I do agree that they could do a better job of formally stating, for example, why they decided on particular changes between builds or why certain things are off the table (like, for instance, the AoE immobilize arguments in the Assault Control thread).

Just now, Psi-bolt said:

I don't disagree that more communication is worthwhile. That said, if someone expresses the sentiment you have in the underlined text, then honestly they are a pretty crappy tester. There are always going to be things about updates that we like or dislike. Sometimes those things won't make it live. That's OK. We're no worse off, it never made it live.

In this case the people making those comments are upset that the original bonus with the aether *isn't* making it live, so from their point of view they *are* worse off.

But yes. In 20 years of playing MMORPGs I have yet to see a single game update in any MMO that I have been 100% pleased with. Every single change will have both fans and detractors.

February 8

I remember feeling that redside story arc merits were undertuned even back in the Live days, and it's compounded further by the fact that they don't have expansion zones like the Hollows, Faultline, Croatoa, or (until I27 Page 7, anyway) Striga Isle, all of which give a bonus pack of merits for completing all the zone's arcs.

So I'd be inclined to agree that villain story arcs should give more merits than their content length would otherwise justify.

February 7

11 hours ago, Clam Leader said:

Anyone that thought people were going to speedrun ... what? Tin Mage? For 1 aether per alt. Do you really think 40 merits arent already enough pf a reason to do that? Which are worth far far more than 1 aether.

Penny Yin more likely I'd bet, and in sheer cash value, 1 aether is currently worth somewhere in the ballpark of 11-12 merits.

Anyway I would have preferred a solution that retained the aether reward while removing the incentive for dark patterns in team formation, to be clear. But at least you removed the incentive for dark patterns in team formation.

February 5

20 hours ago, Cyclone Jack said:

Mids is great, I use it all the time, but I feel that the Power Description page for the powers is fine. Why? Because the numbers are already available in a nice, clean Power Details window, available for every power. There is no need to dump all of that into a basic description of a power.

I would suggest allowing the player the ability to view the Power Details of powers they have not yet unlocked. If I'm L10, let me right-click on a L12 or L20 power and view the details.

Good idea overall but, even with a tutorial message that'll be forgotten in a few minutes, Damage Scale doesn't really mean anything; I've been playing since 2004 and I've never used Damage Scale in any conversation. If you're going to show numbers, just show the base damage of the power at that level.

But, the problem with showing 1 or 2 numbers, is that then people will then want all of the numbers, which will absolutely clutter the Power Description. That's why we have a Power Details screen.

I was operating on the assumption that the power description text is static text and designed in a way that it *can't* show level-scaled damage figures.

Other posters have already noted that the in-game power details window is often misleading, inaccurate, or simply information overload. Either way, I'm not married to Damage Scale as a unit either; *any* consistent unit is fine.

February 4

Yeah, immediately directing newcomers to Mids would be information overload. But I think you could do a lot better than the current disclosure without overwhelming players. Simply disclosing the damage scales and base cooldowns of powers in game in place of the "Damage: Moderate" etc. tags would go a long way. (Never mind that some sets are missing even those; Battle Axe, for example.)

Something like, taking Broadsword/Hack as an example:

Before:

You Hack your opponent for a high amount of damage. This attack can reduce a target's Defense, making him easier to hit.

Damage: Moderate.

Recharge: Moderate.

After:

You Hack your opponent with your Broad Sword. This attack can reduce a target's Defense, making them easier to hit.

Damage Scale: 1.64.

Base Recharge: 8 seconds.

You'd need to edit the tutorial a little bit somewhere to explain what a damage scale actually *means*; most current MMOs express the power of special abilities as a comparison to auto-attack damage, but we don't have autoattacks here to use. Still, the basic idea of "higher damage scale = stronger" is intuitive. FFXIV actually uses a similar concept as Damage Scale in how it presents ability information to players; they call it potency there, and at least for physical abilities, potency 100 is equal to 3 seconds' worth of autoattack damage.

Note that you don't necessarily have to present the numbers in the same decimal form as they're used internally; if you think it'd be easier for players to digest, you could just as easily say "Damage Scale: 164" instead of 1.64 - at the end of the day it's an arbitrary number that lets you compare powers across sets. You could just as easily revive the old player measure of Brawl Index and use it as the basis, but given that the current devs typically use Damage Scale in patch notes, it's probably best to just present that.

February 3

On 2/1/2024 at 10:21 AM, BurtHutt said:

Would it be easy to add numerical values for things like power damage? I still don't like the descriptors. New players will be lost without MIDS. Honestly, 'Superior'? Moderate? Minor? I would be totally lost without MIDS if I wanted to make a toon.

Also, has anyone thought of doing something like MIDS and making it a bit easier to manipulate and update? Something native to the HC site? Personally, I have to make a build before I start making a toon in-game. I don't like to just wing it and then realize I should've done it another way then have to respec.

+1 to both of these. I don't see any real reason why we can't (or shouldn't) replace the vague descriptors with the numerical Damage Scale, or a number derived from it but made more player-friendly somehow.

As for Mids Reborn, well... it's a great tool built on extremely legacy code that runs very sluggishly.

February 2

Something that came to mind from in-game conversation: I think the game inconsistently uses the terms "stun" and "disorient" to mean the same thing in various contexts, and feel like we should standardize them to one or the other.

February 2

On 1/29/2024 at 3:30 AM, Grouchybeast said:

I don't think anyone is hoping for more than that for Praetoria. Stretching the initial three zones to cover 1-30 (or even 1-25) and stretching FW/NW up to 50 would be an amazing upgrade.

Agreed, really; the biggest challenge would be making sure that the initial 3 zones have enough XP in them to *get* you past 20 when not using any multipliers.

I think covering 1-30 with them is probably a very big stretch, but 1-25 is probably vaguely doable (might necessitate larger arc completion rewards maybe. Or teaming.)

I'd probably then extend FW out to 35 and make NW 35-50. You could also examine whether it's possible to let Praetorians go directly to and from Cimerora (without being able to "backdoor" into Primal Earth this way, of course) - Cimerora is well before the historical divergence point so there's no logical reason they shouldn't be able to go there if you can come up with a reason for Praetoria to have time travel in the first place. You probably have to limit them to only the repeatable missions there though, or create a set of Cimerora arcs specifically for Praetorian characters (remember, after all, while the ITF is co-op, the zone arcs in Cimerora are actually aligned).

On 1/29/2024 at 10:01 AM, Lightyears said:

Habashy's story continues from him escaping from Galaxy City. It would break flow to have him be the initial contact after Outbreak. A new player may even think "This guy's quest is from the other tutorial. I guess I picked the wrong one."

I don't know if they have the tech to - A: Know which tutorial a player completed when they spawn in AP.

-and B: If so, send them to Matthew if they picked Galaxy or their Origin contact if they picked Outbreak.

Also, if If we split player's guidance based on which tutorial they picked - we run into the conundrum of Galaxy being a weak tutorial but Habashy's story arc being the better, more consistent 1-10 content.

Easier suggestion IMO: rewrite the first bits of Habashy's arc to simply not assume the player is coming from the Galaxy City tutorial. Issue 21 was a long time ago, we can treat it more like legacy content now rather than current lore.

20 hours ago, Paradox Fate said:

Not bad, however can be something done about the layout of the Chat/Hotbars?

[...snipped screenshots...]

Also to declutter the 'Global' Chat tab: (snipped screenshot)

When you use LFG and Help, you probably aren't in a situation where the Global Chat is going fast, like in combat. General is something of a relaxed chat, you engage with it more easily, even when being busy.

/chat_save 🙂

9 hours ago, gameboy1234 said:

Just making pasta (throwing stuff against the wall to see if it sticks): require a trip to Null the Gull to unlock TF team sizes less than 6. Might be a bit of a pita, but we all seem to make the trip anyway so it's just one more thing as long as you're there. It might keep new players from making mistakes until they're a bit more experienced.

At the very least Task Force contacts should have a more prominent warning when starting the task force that doing the content with less than whatever the minimum number of players for the TF was on live (and why). I'm not against requiring you to visit Null the Gull to unlock the ability to solo TFs, though.

January 30

On 1/29/2024 at 8:51 AM, Lockely said:

Encouraging team diversity and the playing of various other ATs is not a bad thing in the slightest. Using a carrot that's fundamentally not impactful to gameplay is a good way to do that.

What might be a good solution is to give a 20% chance *per* unique AT in a team, versus all this role nonsense. That way, you still have to have 5 unique ATs to qualify for the 100% bonus, but at the same time, no one is faffing about with various roles.

Honestly, I could dig this as a reasonable compromise solution.

23 hours ago, PoptartsNinja said:

One of the purposes of this seems to be to separate out Defenders and Corruptors, to encourage people to play Defenders more in high level content. So the question is: what about high level content is hostile to Defenders (and Masterminds, and Kheldians)?

As others have noted I don't think this is actually an intentional effect, but rather just a product of the fact that the devs wanted it designed such that a team featuring all of the original aligned archetypes together fills the bonus, but villain ATs (having been intentionally designed to hybridize roles rather than specialize) complicate the matter. You could just about as well argue that Masterminds should be classified under ranged damage rather than support (after all, Corruptor support values are stronger than MM's).

Regardless of anything else, if the roles defined at character creation don't match the roles given by this system, you're sending mixed messages, which is bad.

As to the original question at the end of the quote: the fact that those ATs do less damage. The min-max "meta" is to bring the exact minimum amount of tanking, control, and support necessary for an efficient clear, then load up the rest of the slots with pure DPS. If you don't have enough tanking or support, you'll have to slow down to compensate.

Control in general has a pretty low value in most 8-man team scenarios, but especially at level 45+, as most enemies will simply die way too fast to ever apply it and the few that won't (AVs/Heroes) are hard-coded to not be possible to fully control (purple triangles).

January 29

7 hours ago, ShinMagmus said:

I am just amazed people are this mad about this change and still asking for it to be scrapped, when it's this inconsequential. I get it, most ATs are a mix of different roles and the mix is even more varied based on specific powersets... but like this is a minor change and small potatoes compared to fixing new powersets and other aspects that affect the game in the upcoming patch.

From the beginning I've been in the "1 PA reward lul, I will mostly ignore this" crowd and it's not going to ever affect me as much as gutting my Stalker's performance will for example.

I can't speak for others, but I'm not "mad" about it at all; I'm with you in that it's not going to change my behavior in joining or forming TFs if it goes live as is.

I'm just concerned that it's going to incentivize behavior I consider to be bad for the game.

Even if the number of people who decide to drop from a forming TF team before it starts because it won't earn the PA is small, I am extremely confident that it won't be zero, and it will make the process of getting a TF started just a little bit more annoying, especially for TFs that are already annoying to get people to want to run anyway (e.g. Shadow Shard TFs). Having reflected on it more, I suspect this may actually be more of an issue long term than team leaders being picky about recruitment.

January 29

3 hours ago, Jimmy said:

You're not wrong - but a little bit of narrative incongruity is much better than than the player not understanding the basics of the game. The sad reality is that the Galaxy City tutorial just isn't a very good tutorial. Annoyingly, the Praetorian tutorial is actually the most effective one - but you're then in Praetoria, which is way too hard for a brand new player.

My hope is that we can do some improvements to all the tutorials in i28, but in this patch we're specifically focusing on low hanging fruit.

Serious question: how feasible (and how controversial) would it be to look at fixing the tuning of low-level goldside to be less hostile to new players?

January 27

4 minutes ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

Curious as to what that insures.

GL would be general liability

January 27

Would it be possible to make the 5th Column guy's arc optional/skippable and allow players to just jump in at the second step? Seems like that'd resolve a bunch of people's concerns.

Could even implement it with an alternate single-mission "arc" where your villain essentially just does the "sorry, I don't work with your kind" speech and bashes the fash.

I can understand that this wouldn't be able to make it in for this page most likely, but figured the suggestion would be valuable.

EDIT: because some people apparently didn't understand me correctly, I'm not saying the first arc should be removed, I'm saying players who aren't comfortable doing it should have the option of skipping it without being locked out of the rest of the zone's content. That's all.

January 27

12 hours ago, Seed22 said:

I dunno, it may still go live, but as something different. I dont care either way being honest, you get more PAPs doing HM 1 of which I am certain all the naysayers have never nor will ever do

I have literally never seen anyone forming a team for HM 1 and I don't feel comfortable forming one myself with no experience.

So, yes, I have not done HM 1. But again, I am not complaining about the addition of additional PA vectors. I think there needs to be more of them!

I am complaining about adding a specific vector which I believe will likely incentivize bad behavior.

13 hours ago, arcane said:

Yeah, no chance of it going live at this point. Our playerbase despises free and completely optional bonuses apparently.

Because we know that many people will not treat them as optional, because we have seen them not do so over and over and over again in many games including this one. The path of least resistance + most reward is almost always taken. That's why so much of high end teaming that isn't AE farming is +4x8 Council/CoT farms in PI; why would you *choose* to fight Arachnos or Carnies when you can fight those easier opponents for the same reward? Why do you think people are complaining so much about those two specific villain groups getting buffed in this very same patch?

Why would you choose to form a team that gives you less rewards when you quite easily can choose not to do so?

Literal decades of history of game design has taught us that player psychology always sees the best possible result as the expected baseline and complains whenever they get less. The devs can intend it as a bonus and call it a bonus all they want; it will not be treated as one.

10 hours ago, PancakeGnome said:

Scenario 1) The feature becomes one in demand and people actively try to achieve it.... causing the way City of Heroes groups form to become more toxic and arbitrarily exclusionary (despite the game not requiring this sort of "optimal group makeup" in reality).

Scenario 2) The feature is ignored, and was added for no reason.

The people arguing it's fine are basically arguing that it will be "no big deal Scenario 2", where it will just largely be ignored and won't effect how people make groups. It's very weird that the argument FOR adding a feature is "don't worry, it won't be used much and people won't care about it".

Devs should add stuff that people want to engage with.... not random things that they hope people DON'T engage with.....

This sums it up pretty well, I think.

If scenario 1 happens, I think all of us can agree it's a bad outcome, yes? (I'm not addressing the likelihood of that scenario, because it isn't relevant to my point.)

If scenario 2 happens, nothing changes except a small increase in PA flow, probably smaller than is actually needed.

So I really have to ask the devs: What is the actual primary intent of this change? Is it a purposeful attempt to influence the way players form teams? Is it a purposeful attempt to increase the flow of PA into the game? Is it both?

Because right now, the core intent is unclear, and without knowing that core intent, it's difficult to give meaningful, directed feedback on the change's efficacy.

If the primary goal is to influence the way players form teams, I think it will be reasonably successful at doing so, but I question if that is something we *want* to do and I agree with some of the other voices around here that it would make me less excited about attempting to team with people in general.

If the primary goal is to increase the flow of PA into the game, I think there are other suggestions already in this thread that would do so more effectively while not being nearly as contentious or controversial, and I think this is a worthy goal that should be pursued.

What I want to see is an unstated scenario 3: a better feature goes into the game that doesn't divide players and achieves the intended goal of the designers.

So what is that goal?

January 26

18 hours ago, GM_GooglyMoogly said:

Sorry, but I had to hide some posts for arguing back and forth in this feedback thread.

What the devs would like to see:

I like this because [reasons]

I don't like this because [reasons]

or best of all: I tried this on test server and found [findings]

You should not be arguing with each other.

Thanks.

Okay. I don't like this in its current form for the reasons broadly expressed by Doc_Scorpion. I do think there should be additional vectors for PAs over what we currently have. I don't think this specific one is a good idea.

Several other posters in this thread have all made good suggestions for alternatives like Andreah, Dispari, and Bastille Boy. I would add to that pile that I think it would be a good additional fungible reward for joining additional WST runs beyond the one that gives you double merits in a week. Yes, I realize you already get a badge for that. Badges aren't fungible, a fungible reward will be a stronger incentive. (Not that people have issues getting WST runs generally, just, if there needs to be more PA vectors - and I think there does - this seems like an easy vector for them!)

Unfortunately, as some others have noted, there isn't much to actually test on Brainstorm about this change beyond the sheer fact of whether it awards correctly or not - the psychological effects of it on the playerbase at large are not ever going to be testable in a beta environment because it's simply not a useful sample.

January 25

13 hours ago, psylum1 said:

If you think 1 Aether per character per day is going to flood the market wait till you see what me and my friends do with 4 star advanced modes.

For what it's worth, this isn't my concern at all; I'm all for additional vectors for aether in general. My concerns are about the methodology, not the substance.

I'm old. I've been playing online games for a long time, including this one. I'd like to think I have a pretty good intuition for how this will affect player behavior. That said, I'd honestly be overjoyed to be proven wrong in this case!

12 hours ago, Marbing said:

So to summarize, the people against this are afraid of the following happening:

1) It will ruin the spirit of the game by forcing people to play certain roles.

2) It will add way too many more PA into the market, which will cause a negative disruption of some kind.

3) It will cause people to be booted from teams at a much higher rate than before by team leaders chasing the bonus (which is limited to 1 PA per character per 18 hours).

As best as I can tell, the people against it are overwhelmingly concerned about points 1 and 3. I have not actually seen point 2 brought up by anyone criticizing the system; every post I have seen about point 2 is from a supporter who appears to be misreading people's concerns from skimming the thread rather than reading the arguments in detail. (It's possible I've missed some posts myself, or that posts in that vein have been hidden/deleted by the moderators.)

12 hours ago, psylum1 said:

If you're kicked off a team or can't get one because of a single Aether that team lead was a not great person and would have done it anyway. there are 5 roles to fill and room for 8 on a team.

I fully agree with this, but having the game incentivize this behavior - even if extremely lightly - is likely to amplify it and produce negative vibes where they don't currently exist.

11 hours ago, arcane said:

I’m probably defending this feature most because several people in my SG are looking forward to it, and so far the arguments against it have been either highly speculative (“I won’t be able to team”) or downright silly (“I’m being punished!”).

On my own, I’d still say it’s a fine change, but I can’t say I’m worried about missing the tiny reward if you guys really do manage to sink this.

In case I haven't been clear enough, I think the overall goal of "add more aether vectors" is a worthy one. But I can't help be concerned that this particular vector is going to introduce a layer of friction to team formation where one currently exists. And, to be clear, I fear this friction has the potential to be two-sided; while everyone in the thread (including myself) has focused on the hypothetical situation of a tyrannical team leader refusing invites to people for being the wrong ATs to get the bonus, there's also the equally possible bad situation of a wholesome and friendly team leader having increased difficulty filling their team because of individual players refusing to stick around unless the leader ensures the bonus is earned. (See the quote below)

5 hours ago, ranagrande said:

I think the comparison with the DFB badges was particularly appropriate. Yes, people are reasonable when they don't get it. That's not the point. The point is that people go for it in the first place. The presence of a reward has altered the way people play the game. The same thing will happen here.

"But it's only once per day!" It's once per day per person. On any given team, there's a strong likelihood that someone hasn't gotten their PA yet. And we'll almost always accommodate that person, because the CoH playerbase is overwhelmingly composed of nice people (this is a good thing), and no one wants to prevent someone else from getting a reward.

If this goes live, I expect the Role Diversity bonus will become the new standard for PUGs within a short amount of time. Recruiting will become a bit more confusing and time-consuming, teams will become a bit more homogenized, and people will learn that there is, in fact, a "right" way to play, and a very small part of what makes this game so great will be lost.

I couldn't agree with this more.

I think this particular issue has generated so much controversy and noise because it's one that gets to the heart of community psychology and overall vibes. CoH's community and friendly vibes have always been one of the game's strongest draws for people, and as a result, people are deeply fearful of any kind of change that they feel has the possibility to change those vibes. This isn't new, nor is it unique to Homecoming; similarly strong reactions happened during the Paragon Studios era over the introduction of inventions, the introduction of "Master of TF" badges, the introduction of CoH Freedom (and the chat restrictions placed on free accounts), and the introduction of the Incarnate system, too.

In complete fairness, the good news is that in most of those cases, people's fears turned out to be unfounded:

I never heard of people being kicked from teams on live for not using IO sets.
People who attempted Master runs were largely okay with the possibility that they might fail and have wasted their time, and in all the attempts I was ever part of, we either re-formed and started over if the failure was early, or simply finished the TF for the normal rewards if it was late
I also never heard of people being kicked from teams on live for not having incarnates.

The one counterexample I can raise is that I did occasionally see people's tempers get heated when attempts at the ITrial badges (which had bonus merits attached to their success) failed because of mistakes or, rarely, intentional griefing. And, of course, the common thread there is that there was a tangible reward for succeeding at the task (as opposed to a fully intangible one such as a badge) like there is here (albeit a small one).

I'm honestly less worried in the long run about "not getting teams" than I am about people seeing me as "the bad guy" because I'm not personally inclined to drag out the process of forming a team and reject people because they're the wrong ATs for the bonus. It doesn't matter that much to me; I pretty much "no-life" games. I do worry it'll be more problematic for more casual players who might only log on long enough to run a single short TF then be done for the night.

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