DSorrow

This right here. I don't think the lower level content is challenging because we lack proper enhancements, I think it's irritating because I miss 20% of the time instead of 5% and constantly run out of endurance even though I'm not able to use a full attack chain. The lack of enhancement slots and powers would still make a lvl 1 significantly weaker than a lvl 50, but at least I would have other avenues past the annoyances of low levels besides blazing through it. Like others have said about TOs and DOs (especially the former), the bonuses are so weak it doesn't feel meaningful to spend the time to slot them. Maybe we could do something like this to TOs and DOs: TOs: enhancement values bumped to current even DO level "attuned", stay gray until lvl 12, turn red at lvl 15 DOs: enhancement values bumped to current -3 SO level "attuned", gray until 22, turn red at 25 Basically you'd only need to slot either once in the 10 level range they're applicable in, they'd give a meaningful bonus and from 22 SOs would still be better than either. Additionally, because they'd turn red they wouldn't completely invalidate low level IOs.

Soft cap is only great if you can stay there. Without DDR, you won't be there long after an alpha against most enemy groups because basically everyone does some form of -Def. Autohit abilities aren't needed to make soft capped def meaningless. Given this practical consideration, I wouldn't really obsess about soft cap on builds without natural DDR, unless it's a build that intends to not be in harms way in the first place (most squishies). On a Tank, though, soft cap without DDR has limited usefulness against a large number of enemy groups which is why I chose to get capped Resistance instead of soft cap on my TW/Elec. The nitpicker in me would also like to point out that soft capped defense is thrice as powerful as 35% Def, not infinitely, and exactly equal given a lot of -Def and no DDR.

I think they have it exactly right. A petless MM is basically a Defender with worse everything. None of that matters when considering the given problem: finding out the worst build out there. My Ill/Cold Controller can solo the LRSF, so even if the worst possible build joined my team, we would still complete it and it would most likely be faster than me just soloing. That still doesn't make the worst build possible not the worst build, it just proves that given capable teammates, you can complete anything even with the worst build possible, which is one of the things I really like about CoH. I don't have to care about anyone else's build or performance, because it usually has no impact on me. In so many other games I've played, a bad player joining a team means you fail or at least have an unnecessarily rough time which makes people salty and toxic. Here I can just raise my eyebrows at odd builds and wonder if the player actually enjoys playing something like that and then continue gaming salt free because their build doesn't matter to me.

Pros: It's basically Sims: Superheroes, the character customization is simply amazing Very casual time commitment can get you far No need to have deep knowledge of game mechanics Basically any kind of team combination works Your characters can become movie level superheroes if you make a great build Cons: There isn't all that much to do for a really hardcore player The PvP scene isn't big and it's a very acquired taste You can notice that the game is old, but at least it has aged pretty well For me the cons don't really matter as I play other games for the hardcore/PvP content. I don't have a magical orb that would tell me if you're going to like it or not, but I suggest trying it out because the game is free. That's the easiest way of finding out.

That might be true for content that isn't end-game. In end-game content with end-game builds Tanks and well built Brutes have the same Res / Def*, and the situations where ~500 HP or slightly higher regen makes the difference are rare. Most of the time your tank (Brute or Tanker) goes down because of overwhelming debuffs and in that scenario 500 HP is one or two attacks. This may or may not be why I think all Tanker primaries should have a variety of debuff resistances to make them noticeably tougher than Brutes in the end game. * Consider my TW/Elec with capped S/L/E/F/C Res. A Tanker literally can't have better res against those categories so the only cases where they might have an edge is NE/Psi damage, which I can also easily cap with Eye of the Magus, Melee Hybrid or insps. Sure, a similarly built Tank might have soft capped S/L Def instead of the ~35% I have, but without DDR even that makes no difference after an alpha strike.

I met someone with the same problem some time back. It appears the power randomly summons two or three.

If I had to formulate an optimal 8 man team for end game, it would mostly be Corruptors and Defenders. Basically you just want a metric ton of buffs/debuffs combined with AoE damage. Damage saturation happens quite quickly, though, as it only takes so many attacks to decimate a mob of enemies, so you only really need a couple of damage dealers given an abundance of buffs. So, an "optimal" 8 man team with some practical consideration: 4-6 ATs with support sets with the rest being anything that can do decent damage. In other words, just combine pretty much anything. This is one of the reasons why I like this game. If you don't have an abundance of buffs to make everyone tanks, get an actual tank to take the beating. If you don't have healing, get buffs and debuffs to avoid taking damage in the first place. If you have few damage dealers, just get buffs/debuffs to multiply the damage. If you don't really have that many buffs, several damage dealers and a tank works too.

Rather than making Hasten an inherent because most people take it anyway I'd look at making some other power pools more useful. Right now power pools are pretty much a non-choice factor when you make a character: pretty much everyone wants Hasten and travel power plus Fighting and/or Leadership. Some builds might want Medicine, but overall we have 3 power pools (Fighting, Leadership, Speed) that are much more useful than the rest of the utility pools and once you add a travel power as a fourth, nobody has space for Presence or Concealment.

My Brute has capped S/L/E/F/C Resistance, so same as a capped Tanker. Even with a copy pasted build a Tanker would still have more NE and Psi Resistance, more HP and more Defense. Then again, I wouldn't just copy paste the build to a Tank as several of the +Res set bonuses I have would go to waste when I could swap them for even more survivability through additional Defense. In an end game build, with an end game team in end game content the survivability gap between a Brute and a Tanker is often pretty meaningless. If you don't have many buffs in your team and the enemies kill a Brute, most likely they'll kill a Tank too. If you have a lot of buffs, they won't kill either.

I'd also look at shortening the effects of MoG on them because as it currently exists, it's just obnoxious. Unstoppable I'm fine with as you can usually chip them down, Elude is okay even though missing is much more frustrating than slowly chipping away, but MoG is just unbearably annoying because it combines the two effects.

This should be the solution, in my opinion. Level difference, team size, and actual enemy difficulty. For a completely arbitrary example, you could have a standard minion with Flares, Fire Blast and Fire Sword. Enemy difficulty could add powers like Blaze, Incinerate and Fire Ball making the individual enemies more dangerous. In addition, the enemy difficulty could add special enemies into the groups you otherwise don't encounter, like Quantums, but with more generic powers such as Leadership or other team buffs / debuffs. Basically the thing that's going on with the Family at low levels vs their level 50 version. Unfortunately I have no idea how difficult the implementation of a system like this would be.

That's actually quite a bit more than I expected, but then again it's been 8 years since I've last touched a farm. Then again, because most of the player population can't get anywhere near 500k inf / min and a few can get far above it while just about anyone can make 1 merit / min and few people can make significantly above that, I don't think the inf economy is in that great of a risk. I haven't really played my 50s all that much compared to live, but then again back in the day I had around 30 50s and I wasn't that interested in making new ones. Right now I'm just setting up my stable back to a situation where I can join a group no matter what role they're playing so I'm mostly just getting my 50s IO'd up and into T3s and then back to leveling alts. Once my current handful of alts (4 characters in the 30-40 range) hit 50, I'll have a lvl 50 of each role and most ATs at which point I'll probably start running more lvl 50 content. I might also get back into badging depending on what the discussions with NCSoft yield, as so far I've been wary of committing myself into such a long term goal with no practical rewards. As for the decline in general, I'd guess there are two main factors that contribute to it besides it being pretty easy to max out a 50: the "novelty" is wearing off and summer holidays are coming to an end. A lot of people constantly move from one game to another, for some the nostalgy just wasn't enough and then for many jobs / school / whatever is again starting to require time in their schedule.

I generally buy a mix of level 25 generics and attuned sets while leveling with inexpensive frankenslotting as placeholders for purples or in powers I'm planning to respec out at 50.

Many great points here, but personally I'd list the following: Limited number of slots per alt and purples are no longer the obvious choice for "best in slot" as we have winter IOs and ATOs to compete with them. I only need to buy them once per alt and right now it's been a month since my last character hit 50, though I'll probably have a handful hitting 50 in short succession in a few weeks. I'm patient. Really patient. And I plan ahead. I get most of my purples for ~15mil or less because I usually have an end game build planned by the time my character is in the 20s so I have several weeks to wait for my bids to fill. Then there's the more speculative part. I'd guess the supply mostly comes from the more hardcore folks who sell their own surplus. With summertime coming to an end the more casual players have less time to play which translates into less demand, while the supply side from hardcore players is less affected. Converter prices are also down, maybe for the same reason, but if the going rate for them is at around 85k each, that makes 100 merits worth around ~23 million after you subtract market fees which just so happens to coincide with the purple prices. I'm not sure where the trend will go, but there are definitely some soft and hard caps: Hard cap: 1 merit = 1 million inf at the merit vendor. If we assume that the players act even somewhat rationally, the maximum prices of items will never go much above that. The only potential exception I can think of is people with loads of inf but no merits who want the item right now, and might be willing to pay some extra for the convenience of avoiding some TFs. Soft cap: 1 merit = however much influence a fairly optimized farmer can make in one minute. Most TFs can be done at a pace that equals about 1 merit / minute and I'd be really surprised if the 1 merit = 1 minute for semi-speedy TFs and 1 minute = x inf for good farmers weren't consistently transitive relations.

I'd say it depends on your build goals and what you want your character to do. With moderate to high IO investment, any secondary that's predominantly Resistance based will be better on Brutes because they have much higher Resistance caps and thus better maximum survivability. For Defense based sets, the survivability question is only slightly in the Brutes' favor due to their high HP, but the difference is so small in my opinion it doesn't really matter. With low to no investment in IOs, the survivability differences will be negligible regardless of your secondary. If you're picking a set that has +DMG buffs (Dark Melee, Claws, Shield Defense, etc), it's going to be more useful to a Scrapper because of their higher base damage values. If you want to have tools for aggro management but have picked a set that doesn't have a taunt aura (Elec Armor, Fire Armor, etc.), you'll probably want to make it a Brute as all Brute versions of the secondaries have taunt, they can punchvoke (only single targets, though) and they have a multi-target taunt. Fury makes Brutes do more damage in the pre-50 game, but it evens out and in the end Scrappers will do more damage in a saturated buff situation, and even without buffs with comparable end game builds if the Pylon thread is anything to go by. Other than that I'd say it's mostly down to preference and character concept. My TW/Elec is a Brute because I thought the character concept fit Brutes better and I liked the higher Resistance caps with Elec Armor. My Rad/SD is a Scrapper because the +DMG is more beneficial with the higher base damage and with Defense as my main, uh, defense, the AT didn't make a difference when it comes to survivability.

To buff Force Fields I would add refreshing +Absorb to Dispersion Bubble and various Debuff Resistances to the ally shields. It would still suffer from a bunch of less useful powers, but I'm not sure how they should be changed to make them interesting and useful without violating the cottage rule.

But isn't this effectively the same thing? Make a character that can slot a maximized number of the most expensive IO, transfer it and sell the stuff for free inf. It would probably have pretty big repercussions for the in-game economy if every single player was able to generate 30+ purples, a dozen uniques, two AT IO sets, several winter IO sets and who knows what you can still fit in there for free, even if it was just once. If it would affect nobody's game, why implement it in the first place? I'm trying to avoid sounding condescending, but considering how easy it is to get influence and IOs in this game I honestly think that outside of some very special circumstances, it's a player choice to be poor. Fortunately, that doesn't really matter in the game as you can still do any content you like pretty effectively with just SOs.

Huh, guess that's news to me. Then again, I rarely exemp once I get to 50 so it makes sense I would miss this kind of stuff.

I can confirm that the resistance works as described. I have a brute with capped (90%) S/L/E/F/C resistance but any attacks that come with NE, psi or especially toxic secondary effects still hurt. There's a reason people want all the mobs in a fire farm to do pure Fire damage with no secondary S/L components as you can then skip building for S/L Resistance. In-game you can send yourself a tell (to save others from spam) with [Power_Name], for example "/t my character, [Fire Ball]" and then click the created link and check the detailed info tab.

I don't think it would be bad for FF to have not just defense, but also other sorts of debuff resistances added. Empathy might also benefit from some lingering effects in the heals. Traps could have cooldowns reduced for many of the powers or have some of the made mobile like FFG. Not sure what to do with Trick Arrow because I've never played it. Other than that I think most support sets are in a pretty good place when it comes to what they can add to a team full of end game characters. Definitely! TFs seem to be very well balanced at around ~1 merit/minute with end game stuff being generally slightly above and easy TFs slightly below that, but XP/inf doesn't quite have the same balancing when it comes to enemy group difficulty. I'm also wondering whether or not it would be possible to adjust recipe drop rates for more difficult enemy groups such as Vanguard or Rularuu. Arcanaville mentioned having done an XP scaling project for custom enemies in AE based on their ability selection so I hope our mathematical monarch could be summoned to tell us about also implementing such a system outside of AE.

This is probably not 100% comprehensive, but someone will correct/add whatever I've missed or got wrong. If it's treated like a set bonus (i.e. shows up in the set bonus list when you look up your character ID), it's going to work down to -3 of the level of the enhancement or -3 of the level of the set in case you're using something that's attuned. Example 1: if you have 6 slotted a power with a set of level 50 IOs, you'd get the bonuses down to level 47. Example 2: you have 6 slotted a power with attuned IOs from a lvl 20-50 set, you'd get the set bonuses down to lvl 17. Example 3: you have 6 slotted a power with two IOs at 50, one 40, one 30, one 20 and one attuned, from a IO set that's lvl 20-50. You'll get all bonuses down to lvl 47 after which the two level 50 IOs cease counting leaving you at 3 bonuses down to 37 after which the lvl 40 ceases counting and so on all the way to 17. Example 4: if you've slotted purples or ATOs, those set bonuses carry down to level 1 if you still have access to the power. If it's treated as an enhancement (i.e. unique effect that doesn't show up in set bonuses: Miracle +Rec, most if not all procs), it'll work so long as you have access to the power it's slotted in. I'm pretty sure this was changed at some point late on the official servers, but you now have access to powers 5 levels higher than what you're exemplared to, for example, exemplaring to 20 allows you to use the powers you acquired at 22 and 24, too.

Salvage is seeded into the market. Commons at 5k, uncommon at 100k and rare at 1million each, IIRC. Additionally, as was said previously in the thread, when you drop in a piece of salvage into the market, it ceases to be a Hydraulic Piston and you're actually selling a common salvage. All IOs (besides generics) and the respective recipes work in buckets. If you drop in a lvl 27 Positron's Blast Acc/Dam, it can be bought as a lvl 25, 50, anything in between or attuned. The most notable effect this has on the market is that many low level recipes aren't worthless anymore. What's also interesting is that thanks to converters, there's basically an endless supply of rare recipes as anything that's traditionally not worth much (sets like sleep, def debuff, etc.) can be converted into more sought after stuff, which makes bad recipes worth more and good recipes worth less, stabilizing the prices.

Honestly, I really don't see the point in offering players a fully kitted out lvl 50 for free. The time investment to get one is already very modest (~50 hours from nothing, if you know what you're doing) compared to most games.

Something along these lines would be my preferred choice. We could have enemies that: have at least partially unresistable attacks have very high ToHit values have strong debuffs have strong aoe buffs provide debuff resistance to their allies can use taunt / placate can summon several allies (making mobs go beyond aggro cap size) high damage resistance unless CC'd damage reflect unless CC'd (not sure if this is actually possible) etc. Mix and match those into one enemy group so you'd actually have to stop between mobs, check what you're fighting and prioritize targets depending on your team composition. I think that would be both more challenging and fun than the current "haha every enemy in this group does all debuffs + long DoT in every attack so gg unless you can just cycle nukes" you see fighting basically every end game enemy group.

IOs and the power you can unlock through them are a big part of why I like playing CoX: my character actually gets to feel like one of those movie superheroes, plus I like the process of tinkering with a build to optimize it. Personally, I'd say nerfing IOs would carry a pretty hefty risky considering the quite small potential gain as any player who thinks IOs are too powerful can already choose to not use them.