QuiJon

Well this is where we disagree then. First off i am not sure i have ever had a door at the top of a building, accept maybe grandville and lets face it, SS have easy to get jet packs and such for those places anyway. But 99 percent of the doors in this game are at easily reachable locations in the maps it is just a matter of going from point a to b. On live currently, even with AB running and hitting maybe 84-85mph i am routinely beat to doors by runners and jumpers. Just right now not by alot. Run speed is capped at 92.5 mph i am not sure on jump speed or how it is measured in its leaping mechanic. But they do beat fly still right now for sure even with AB running. The raise in speed caps takes making a huge investment in flight to keep up and lose, into a smaller investment in flight to not keep up and lose by ALOT more. I can handle saying "oh well your 5 or 10 mph slower because you can just hit auto run" or whatever. It at least leaves a bit of flavor to the travel pools, but no i dont think that a 20-32 mph difference is fair. You are getting to the point where people will pick a travel power based on how it works vs what they want to use.

That is about what i cam out with on live as well. Right now live caps run speed at 92.5 percent. Meaning that even with all the investment required to cap fly speed currently, you really cant get closer then being 5mph slower then what is essentially no investment on a speedster. The new system might make it much easier to reach fly cap, which i am fine with. However essentially with the increase in run cap a speedster now achieves 120mph all the time with 1 run IO in swift, sprint, and 2 run IOs +5s in SS. So basicly the investment of 1 power choice and 1 additional slot when you figure swift and sprint and inherent. So now every flier will always be atleast 18 mph behind a speedster and on longer trips part of the way up to 32 mph behind. So these changes put us right back to being the slow asses we were when the game launched before they added AB to begin with.

I was only looking on live which caps run speed at 92.5 percent but gives numbers of each individual buff to speed elements. And I am not a good numbers guy, but the best i can figure is that at a permanent speed cap of 120 mph all the speeder needs to achieve that cap is to have 2 invention IOs+5 in SS and 1 in swift. To my best estimate SS boosts 50.11 which 50.11x94.8=97.6mph granted by SS plus 14.32 for base movement speed plus 7.14 for swift with 1 invention IO in it. That would total 119.07mph with nothing but 1 power choice, 1 extra slot and 2 inherent powers. So yes flight can hit 87mph now with minimal slotting but in speed of travel doing so i am not going to be 18-32 MPH behind flights easily achievable top speed all the time instead of the maybe 8mph i was behind them normally picking the multiple powers and maybe adding 1-2 extra slots. Now it might seem like that is a favor in giving us that cap raise and easier ability to hit it. But for me over all travel powers are about theme of my character and how well i get around on them. I was willing to make that investment in afterburner for one reason only, between the speed boost and the nature of fly compared to SS or SJ i was still reaching my locations in a acceptable time frame as the other travel powers do. Essentially i was not making a team wait for me because i was flying. And this was the main issue with fly back in the day. And it was the reason why we got afterburner to begin with was to close that gap in travel speeds so they all worked closer together. So all i am saying is that i think the cooldown on afterburner should be left at the 10 seconds if it must have one, or at least double the duration of it to 1 minute. At least at 1 minute people can likely get the speed boosts for long enough to cross most zones but maybe the shard. Buti fail to see why i should be punished for taking flight by simply making what as you say is a somewhat passive experience (in that i can reach an altitude and then just hit the run lock) take even longer and leave teams waiting even longer at the destination for fliers to show up. For the main travel powers all that should be looking at is that they should all work mostly equal to get you where you want to go. Travel is not game play and one should not work to get you anywhere any faster then the others, or at least not in a major way. Which is why i say if AB was perma on a toggle, at my top speed a SS would still be moving 18mph faster then me. When before with AB they were only moving like 8 mph faster then me and already beating me to a door. I kind of feel in the dynamic that is SS advantage enough over fliers and jumpers.

All i can go off of is the numbers presented in this thread which back on page 1 say someone has a fly speed of 120mph and it is quoted as a full ltime speed cap increase. Where the 102 mph cap increase is only good 1 third of the time. The rest of the time a flier would be going 32mph slower then a speedster is capable of going all the time. Now if that speed boost was a temp also, that say for 30 seconds added in that cap boost and the jumping mechanic as a bonus to SS getting a proportional buff to keep up with the new flight speed cap that is one thing, but it doesnt sound like it works that way. Speed is getting the ability when it was already the fastest to go even faster all the time, while flight is being given its current cap with 1 less power choice but only gets a buff a third of the time.

If it is perma now has does keeping it perma unbalance anything. As it stands These changes basically re-institute it seems like all the unbalanced nature of flight from before Afterburner was added to the game. At least for any trip that is longer then .9 miles. When the game came out (its been a while but if i recall correctly) flight speed capped with fly and 3 slots at around 62-65 mph. While SS caped with nothing but its native slot at like 92 mph. So really the best that a flier could do was 25-30mph slower then a SSer. And it was always cried it was balance cause flying was direct path, safer etc. However as game play went on SS was found to really be just as safe and way faster, especially if you took something like CJing with it. Eventually they did a new round of powers and fly got afterburner, SJ got that teleport attack etc. So with afterburner flight got boosted to the 87mph it is now, still slower then speed when you consider that with free p2w powers the vertical limits of speeding are easily overcome. And the way it is right now, with afterburner i get to a mission maybe just behind a speeder and a jumper but not to far behind. But these chagnes boost SS to 120 mph ALL THE TIME, if i read it correctly. Which means that anytime afterburner is not running i am essentially going to be back at the same mph difference that originally existed in the game, even at a higher speed cap. Where previous to these changes the afterburner boost mostly closed that difference and allowed me to keep up. Not exceed mind you but keep up. Now even with AB on i will be 18mph slower then a speedster and if it is long enough it goes off i will be some 32mph behind them. So yeah i dont see any reason why the AB buff can not be perma like now, 10 - 30 second cool down. Keeping the only effect self and move the defense to elusive maneuvers.

Right now independence port is like 2.5 miles from top to bottom. That means if afterburner only makes it .9 miles before expiring that you could be left to travel up to 1.5 miles without it. Meanwhile someone using SS was already faster then your 87mph cap before this change had their speed boosted to 120mph full time. Giving it as a toggle rather then click helps to close that gap for long distances, which was the entire point of afterburner to begin with. Changing to a time limit, though maybe free, restores the disadvantage that existed between flight and other travel powers before there was an after burner in long distances.

Sorry to quote this same thing again but i just noticed this part and was wondering, if Fly was really kind of already the slowest of the 3 main travel powers (sorry porters i never really count you) and they all got buffs also. Speed is up to 120 mph, was already normally the fastest travel power because people paired it with temp and P2W powers or CJing etc. to over come the vertical limits and now it gets its own jump mechanic to do that itself. So really you could say that this change not only boost base speed but takes away one of its biggest limiting factors that was always the reason given for why it was the fastest. Super Jump was the second fastest really. Even at 87 MPH on my Flight+AB i was pretty consistantly still getting beat to missions by jumpers, and they get a fulltime increase and the ability for part of that time to get rid of the "falling" that slowed them down. So i guess my question is, i get saying we have to balance the powers, but they never had been before. Speed was always the fastest to a door, jumping was almost always second flight 3rd. And now you make these changes and most of them i like, but in regards to their over all balance they are being set to be exactly the same as they always have. You have essentially left the same speed gaps in their over all caps that always existed and simply attempted to take away eaches downside. But .9 miles of say afterburner doesnt even allow a player to cross a location like IP or Talos Island or a Shard completely before it turns off for a minute. So at that point a flier now drops back down to 87 mph all the while a speedster is still running 120 mph with his jumping still compensating for his vertical limits. So in some instances these changes, wont they actually make jumpers and fliers fall behind even further?

I am coming to this late and have not read every page of this thread, however i guess my question is WHY? I mean i like over all the changes you are saying exist in the travel pools. But if afterburner is going to be essentially a free power with flight now, and all it will do is increase long distance flight times, why can it not functions in that way as it does now and provide that boost without the timer. Take away its defense bonus(which i am assuming was already done and put into that combat flight power) and keep it as "only effecting self". At that point its only purpose and possible use is just to get from point a to point b as quickly as possible and will still need to be turned off in order to take part in combat and give it that similar 10 second cooldown to turn it back on. Wouldnt that end the complaints, allow 1 power to do what 2 powers currently do without being able to exploit its use? On a second note for me personally, if flight and related powers are going to have that popup menu anyway, perhaps it might be fun or easier for people to also put on that popup menu the various flight poses that are emotes now. Helps clear our buttons and makes it easier to change on the "fly".

IF dominators can already lock down mobs and kill them then giving them longer recharges on stronger controls really does nothing, unless you are going to make that strong control effect enemies that right now are tough to lock down like a monster or AV etc. And frankly i just dont see that as really helping anything. One of the reasons control was nerfed in the first place was because even before dominators a controller could solo an AV and keep it perma held. AVs were totally negated with control abilities in the early game. This is even back before IOs. If anything is done to dominator at all, all that really would help anything is a damage buff. First off it is a buff to everyone no matter how you build you dominator. Using less attacks uses less end, obviously also allows for killing faster which in turn requires less re-application of controls which again, uses less end. Essentially buffing dom damage will help all doms but really if you think about it a perma dom already can kill an entire +4/8 mob anyway. They have enough control to keep everything locked down and can do enough damage as is to kill everything off and enough end from constantly refilling off domination. What a damage buff really does is open up the class for people that might not really want to build to perma dom, or be able to go a different route in design. It lightens end use, increases speed of killing which then requires less duration or control applications, which both make the thought of skipping permadom more plausible as a play style and less of a choice that might gimp your over all build. But like i said, that is IF anything was to be done. I frankly think i would say leave them alone before i started doing the "give and take" game the devs i am sure would play if they were going to take another pass on them from a scope of AT design. I would rather they just look at sets as which ones might under perform and work to fix those on their own.

Agree sort of i dont care for sentinals, however if sentinals got a damage buff and keep their defense levels then i do also think dominators should get a dam buff as well. Doms are definately a more risky playstyle then a sentinal and should have a higher damage scale as a result.

How is it any different then melee sets that have clickable status protection? I mean not everyone takes claws or a fast recharging power set many melee toons still have hasten and have to manage either clicking it or the status protection and seem to do just fine. Just saying i have like 9 perma doms, yes i have to pay attention but i can keep up with the click for it just fine. And if i dont want to bother there are scripts that allow you to bind changing the auto asignment between hasten and dominion every time you push a movement key.

Not really. You could just make it so more enemy groups had the ability to do things like debuff resistances and defense, or to hit etc. As someone mentioned above somewhere, why not drop minions from certain level playing. Most basic enemy becomes LTs with the previous bosses spawning as Elite Bosses and anything that had an option to be EB or AV automatically is an AV again like the old days. Then yes maybe up the slider to +5/10 or so.

What it really comes down to for me is that several different aspects and systems in the game combine together and create a problem for finding challenging game play in the post 50 world. IOs already upped our game so much, then they added the incarnate system. However they gave us a level shift which already (depending on how you set the difficulty) can skew being able to use the difficulty slider to take advantage of being over level of your enemies to being just under level but earning max rewards. Then you combine that on top of slotted power buffs that even further skew us by doing things like giving melee toons an alpha strike, and such. There is really only two solutions, either take something away to make what content we have meet an appropriate challenge level, or to add content that meets the challenge level that fully IOd and Incarnated characters are capable of playing at risk of failure. Part of me thinks the later is the better idea. I like the idea of making the game we have now have like a "extreme" mode. Like an alternate universe where all the current zones and missions are availible but everything is level 50 incarnate content. All the villain mobs have been adjusted for challenge. And suddenly you can go and do like perez park running into level 50 incarnate hellions on the streets and in the door missions.

Wouldnt this just prevent people who are friends from being able to team if one was incarnate and one was not? I get what you are saying in theory, but the sidekick system was one of the best features of the game. I dont think we should cut off incarnate players and make it harder for them to find a team simply because they might have friends that lagged 2-3 levels behind them.

Then what is the point of teaming? I mean yes i can run in there and solo those mobs myself, so why not just keep playing solo? Why go to the trouble of finding 7 other players to begin with if you are just running off in your own direction the entire time so you get a chance to feel you are doing something.

No that is not what i said. In my example that dominator is maybe vet level 70ish. He is perma dom'd and capable of farming +4/8. He is not a gimped character. What i am saying is that i hit Seed of Confusion and 2 seconds later that mob is dead. I dont hit seeds of confusion and 2 seconds later that mob is still dead. The make up of the rest of the team doesnt require me to really even be there. Everyone wants to feel like they have a role to play. Like there is a reason they are present on the team. Not feeling that way doesnt mean you created a gimp character, it means that the game is at a point when 3-4 players can now do what used to be difficult for a team of 8 fully developed character. Hell think how important a rad defender used to be. I play with one now that says he barely ever gets a chance to get toggles up to even effect the mobs with them now. And if that is just the new reality then i guess whatever. But then maybe we need to look at the way some powers work. It is not fun spending all day just toggling on the same powers to have a mob be dead before the animation finishes. So maybe if we are not going to find a way to up the challenge we at least need to look at things like animation times or such so everyone feels there is a point to them being there.

Any character can become obsolete now the way this game is played. I can run a +4 ITF with 8 blasters, we kill so quick we dont need a tank or support. I can run the same thing with 8 dominators, everything is locked down, we dont need to kill fast we are taking no damage. And i could say the same thing for defs, MM any class in the game really almost. Now imagine you are a single tanker or brute on that team of now 7 blasters. You likely never even get a mob around you before they all fall. The dominators likely have locked them all in place and you cant herd them. So yes i have run things like an ITF on my dominator and been on a team of like 5 melee toons and 2 debuffers and felt like it really didnt matter if i was there or not. I have also taken that same dominator and soloed the first 2 missions of an ITF on +4. SO no it is not really that the dominator build is so much bad, it is that on a particular team build i dont feel particularly super playing it compared to at other times on other teams.

I understand what you are saying, but limited in slotting the 3rd IO or not, people do it to get the max. And if they dont then they get the benefit of other slotting from IOs that SO dont provide. After all if a standard SO slotting in a blaster attack was 2 acc, 3 dam and 1 of whatever (if you even put that extra slot on it) Being able to pass with 2 acc 2 dam and 1 recharge suddent increases your output in your damage cycle by quite a bit with quicker recycling powers. Or slotting a End red gives you the ability to attack longer before extinguishing your endurance. Or maybe just frees up slots to slot other powers that you might have run short on over all. The point is that over all balancing around IOs means that the game starts to recognize that there is end game content to build for. Albeit slight at this point. And i also like the idea that a totally decked out level 50 with sets might have to make choices between their percentage buffs from a set w/bonuses vs. perhaps that power being stronger if they left it as just IOs. But more over if we want to the game skew up so that those of us that do build IO min max builds feel we are even slightly being challenged, then frankly the game needs to decide a level of acceptable challenge and then allow standard game play and missions and TFs to accomplish reaching that level. Which right now though you can buy and craft IOs the game is really still skewed to SOs and at 50, even if you played with cash turned on the whole time, you would not earn enough influence to buy a full set of level 50 IOs by level 50. So IMO giving players the ability to get common IO through game play drops solves this issue. If we stick with the idea that a common casual player doesnt want to bother with AH, crafting, salvage, recipies etc. But we skew the game up for IO level enhancement then we should definately atleast allow for those players to reach the basement of that play level through doing their own thing their way like they can now.

I am not sure it is worth going back and reading 38 pages so i read the first few posts and just thought i would offer my 2 influence. I do think the idea of balancing a game with a clear path to higher abilities to a lower standard is a mistake. However i also think it is a mistake to balance it to a geared up the ass model as well. I do think though it is possible to find middle ground. With the recent changes we have already seen a change in the basic drops of TO, DO, and SO enhancements. I personally think that standard common IOs should also be included in those drop scales. In such a way at least that it is weighted by level. So maybe lets say if you get a drop (and i am totally making these numbers up because i have no idea what drop rates really are) in level range of 1-20 you have a 50 percent chance of it being a TO, 35 percent of DO, 10 percent SO, and 5 percent chance of being a IO. Past level 20 you take out TO drops because lets face it they are useless. And maybe 21-30 you adjust the drop rates of the three remaining, from 31-50 DO get dropped and your biggest chances are SO with maybe up to a 15 or 20 percent IO chance for IOs. And the effective buff levels of the IOs and other enhancements stays like it is now, where IOs scale up as you get higher level ones so they can not skew low level playability and at level 50 they are still 44 percent. Now you have a basis that anyone can get to with a bit of lucky drops and a bit of standard post level 50 playing. You balance your content to that level through the game and at level 50. Then the purchase or crafting of sets and bonuses becomes an extra buff. But in many ways might also now measure up as much. For example, many IO sets when you add total buff levels dont quite reach what you could get doing a standard 2/3 slotting on an attack of Acc/Dam. Which means when doing sets you might be actually lowering your over all damage or accuracy in order to get a buff to recharge, or def, or resistance or whatever then if you kept the IOs in place. \ Essentially bringing then the top level of slotting closer to what should be the goal balance. A well slotted level 50 would be ideally slotted with common IOs very similarly to how a SO character would be now but have the benefit of higher then 35 percent buffs. You balance to that 45 percent buff level and then IO sets are a step above balance still, and incarnates a step above that. But at least your basic level of balance becomes the starting point of the IO system and not the ending point of the enhancement system that proceeded it.

Yet it is not doing any of that because COH is not in any way representative of an actual economy with actual moving parts that work as push and pull influence against themselves. There is no balance to be achieved other then a random goal. It doesnt provide a barrier to entry because i can still be earning merits, buying convertors and making 4-10m influence pieces before even can even run a snyapse TF on a character. It doesnt control inflation because it doesnt remove any real beneficial amount of influence from the game. I can still right now make 2b a week running market scams, farming, etc. I already have enough influence to completely build my next 10 characters from nothing to complete with purples and winters and such all off just buying from the market if i wanted to. The point is the market is what it is. Nothing about this tax controls that. Sellers list pieces at prices based on what they feel the market should sell them for and buyers either meet that price or simply wait for them to come down if no one is buying them. But being how much influence we all mostly have most of us will load up on convertors and buy something similar to convert or just drop the cash to buy it at the listed price. And not once ever when setting items to sell have i thought about the tax in any way. I am sorry i agree with the OP in my opinion at its current level this tax does nothing. The sellers are getting what they want and the buyers are still buying and the prices have remained mostly steady because there is an ultimate point where it is easier to get it or make it for yourself then it is to buy someone elses on the market. That is what controls the prices not the fees.

I dont see this as true at all. Taking your example a LOTG recharge runs normally around 4-6million depending on how quickly you want it. And as you have said even paying (essntially lossing) a 10 percent fee on the sale of that item, those prices are steady in that relm. This fee doesnt effect the buyer at all, they are paying a set price no matter what. But as i said that cost can swing within a set range based on what people post them at and what people will stand to pay. So every seller of a LOTG already assumes if they post it for 4 million they are going to lose 400k of that to fees and have accepted that. If that fee was taken away it would stand to reason that perhaps the costs would go down 400k because the seller is still getting what they consider an acceptable return on the purchase now that they dont have to pay the fees. It also stands to reason that if the fees were increased say to 25 percent, that the selling prices would go up 400-500k so that the sellers again would be remaining in their comfort zone for profit off their sell. So frankly i agree, this system takes little out of the market. and likely would not have a substantial impact on anything if it was removed.

The only functional item that i would like to be able to put into my bases is a targeting dummy like they have in RWZ that you can actually attack. Not only for testing my toons, but also being i play ALOT of dominators it is nice to be able to log in and quickly build up my domination in like 30 seconds before i head out to play. So far as anything else i think there is already a ton of options, i do think they could be organized better and perhaps have better menus rather then that long scroll bar at the bottom of the screen.

I was thinking for a while that either associating the name with the global name or an abbreviation for your global name or super group might be nice way to circumvent the name backlog. So like my global is QuiJon. So maybe let me set an abbreviation of [QJ] somewhere and then if i want to make a character named Super Dude and the name is taken i can elect to have it display as Super Dude [QJ] in game denoting my global. Or do it for SG, so my Maximum Effort becomes [MxF] or some other clan style tag i set for hte super group and that displays as a part of the name. And at least that way you are only in conflict with those in your super group.

My initial thoughts is that sure you can get by without perma dom, but Hasten? I kind of feel like you should want this. And though in IO slotting you dont have to reach perma dom levels of globall recharge the more you do have the more powers are going to be up, the more you can attack and control meaning the more effective you gameplay will be, no matter what level you want to run at. That being said, as an big fan of running perma dom let me just say, there are some advantages. First Dom grants you status protection, so prevents you from being held. Now you might think "oh well i can get Clarion in incarnates for that." And you are right, but if you dont take clarion in incarnates then you can take Barrier which gives you def and resistances for tough calls which is something you dont have alot of options for in dom powers or typical power pools. But over all to your question, no no dominator needs domination depending how they expect to perform. Running the basic difficulty where you are getting likely no more then 2 minions and a Lt in each spawn i cant imagine it would be a problem no matter how you built the character. Oh and BTW with Mind you can engage bosses if you want to. Confuse doesnt cause agro so you can stay at range and confuse a boss before starting a fight.

I think time should be looked into. Snypse comes to mind as one that could really stand the Positron treatment. Maybe revamp the missions a bit but split it into two TFs also. The main thing for me is that i like the idea that a TF or SF has a unique mechanic to it that perhaps is not seen in game elsewhere. So changing positron to fight dark images of yourself was kind of cool. The nictus that rez the AV on ITF, or how Recluse has power colums etc. And i really hate it when i feel like things are a waste of time or just there fore timesink purposes. Example of that would be like the hunting in every zone of Numina. The vast majority of those mobs you have to kill are totally grey to you its just a time sink to kill them. I think replacing all those missions with maybe 2-3 train missions that take you to city maps populated with various mobs at your TF level to hunt down x number of whatever would be more fun with less useless travel time. Maybe kill less types of mobs but more of each at your level or higher. And i do think an "ultra" version of TF would be fun also. A way to run every TF with its normal mobs at 50 instead of always having to play down. It would be kind of fun to see what a level 50 incarnate Hellion could do to me.