Andreah

I could see something like this being done. Maybe with alternative animations that would be suitable for any character theme.

Let me offer a serious alternative. Keep the 2-Billion inf limit on each character. Much as I'd love to change this, it could create wide ranging unforeseen bugs. Instead, add a new piece of special salvage, which is purchased at the merit Kiosk for inf at 1 Billion each, and which can be sold for 1 Billion Inf at the same Kiosk. These would be transferable only to characters on the same account. Or maybe even allow them to be traded/emailed to anyone -- that's how normal Inf works, after all. Each character could keep as many as 9,999 of these at one time. If this were done, we would no longer need to store inf on pages of special purpose characters, or float it in emails to ourselves, or in clever auction house bids.

I could see a completely new body model requiring significant data edits to all the costume pieces. If that's the case, like Davy said above, this is a colossal scale effort. But if there were a simple way to get 90% of that, sounds cool.

I like it when content has us think a little, now and then. But not too much, or for many of us, it turns into work. Or especially if the tactical problem becomes so nuanced it requires voice-comms coordination to get it right. I love you all, but I do not want your voices coming out of my computer; not now, not ever.

There are a lot of problems with CoH's system. But it works. That alone does encourage the HC developers to be very deliberate, cautious, and minimalist with changes to the core mechanics. Now, we're free to make suggestions and speculate on how they might affect gameplay. But keep a reasonable perspective about it. When I suggest something, I won't suffer terrible disappointment when it's not in i29. And on the other hand, if someone makes a suggestion I think is terrible, it's not a threat to my ability to play the game, for the same reason -- it's not about to suddenly show up in the next build, or even the one after. A suggestion I've made before, and will probably make again, is to adjust the critter attacking players to-hit table in the original purple patch. This would change the effective softcap, in some high-difficulty content. Don't think for a moment that this wouldn't be a huge change, even if it turned out to be as simple on the development end as changing three numbers in a data table. They know some changes have huge repercussions. Nothing like that would goin without a lot of internal debate, and the further public debate with us. It might have good sides, but it would also have bad sides. So, suggest, speculate, discuss, advocate, all that. But also let's remember to be excellent to each other along the way.

I agree it would be cool if we could join, say, up to five supergroups on a single character, and then pick from them for the one I wish to represent my character as being in at any given time. It might also be cool to implement some sort of global channel variation, that is belonged to by characters and not globals, and is limited to a single server. Maybe allow Supergroups to invite non-member characters to their chat channels. All this sounds very messy and unlikely, software- and effort-wise. But we can dream. 🙂

Options are the way to go, if we go anywhere at all. 🙂

The assertion that powerleveling would be a thing at such high difficulties is a hard one to sustain. Even now, it's not uncommon for teams to drop difficulty to +3, or even +2, sometimes, to improve xp and inf gain rates. This is also something that's hard to convince people of now and then. Harder isn't always better, from a powerleveling or inf-gain perspective. Consider XP/Hour running radio missions. XP gained is the XP per kill, times kills per hour, plus mission rewards per hour. If you're doing content that's too easy, then even though you kill things fast, they don't give much per kill. And you can only do so many missions per hour, since it takes time to pick them, travel between them, and breeze through the insides. At the harder end, if the team is struggling, that's many fewer kills per hour, and fewer mission rewards per hour. Possibly with a lot of debt being accumulated from repeat deaths. So, for any given team, there's a sweet spot where they are killing fast and getting good rewards per kill. This is why council radios are so popular; not because they give more XP per kill, but because we can kill more of them per hour at any given XP/kill. If we put in more difficulty levels, some teams might run at +5, +6, or even +7, but they are going to slow down. And they'll figure out that unless they're all already top-tier incarnates, they get less XP per hour. And if you are all already top-tier incarnates, who exactly are you powerleveling? And let's think about inf gain. I think, much, if not most of it, already comes from special purpose farms, not people doing normal content.

A level 50 +1 running normal content at Notoriety level +10 will be fighting combat level 60 bosses when they are themselves at combat level 51. That's +9 on the purple patch tables. I don't care how good your build is fighting +4 council, they'll destroy you. The softcap there will be 75%, they'll have a 1.5x accuracy multiplier, and you'll have an effective -56 to-hit. A team might swing it, but not if they're dragging lots of lowbies around to powerlevel. It only gets moderately better as you drop down to +6 or +7. They're going to be very hard to hit, hard to affect, and will hit us back a lot more often. People sidekicked at 49 or non-level shifted 50 will be in some truly horrible pain fighting at +10 or worse.

I feel it's a general principle -- harder content should offer better rewards. I think there's room to make the case we don't have that set up well right now; especially by enemy group. And if we have higher difficulty, I feel it ought to reward on a sliding scale. Maybe the existing content at +4 rewards too well. I could see that being tuned down so there could be an upward slope straight to +10, but that would violate the OP's desire that nothing at +4/x8 and below be changed. Maybe some other kind of rewards could be tied to these new difficulties.

There are folks who absolutely hate the incarnate system, probably on principle, and haven't used it at all, and these important nuances escape them. Not only does only the single level shift from Alpha work in normal content, it only works if your character is exemped to level 45 or higher. In fact, ALL the incarnate powers turn off if we are at level 44 or below. I often see people in LFG asking for teams, and saying anything level 45+ is okay with them -- that's usually a sign they're a 50+1, and want to keep their incarnate powers.

If I was running a team at +6 or +7, or wherever the real knee in the curve ended up at, I'd think really hard about bringing significantly lower levels along for purposes of speed-leveling them. There might be slack to bring one or two, but the days of running "+4/x8 council radio farm all levels welcome" with one 50+1/T4 and a bunch of lowbies would be past. That's not necessarily bad; most likely a mixed blessing, but the downside would be there.

I don't think that works. You can become +1 vs him, but your normal +1 incarnate shift from alpha only works if you are at level 45 or higher. So when you are exemped down to the level for Posi-2, you can get, at most, a +1 shift out of an Ultimate. Still really useful.

Oh wait, I see the mistake I made. I'll fix it! They do not stack, but they -work- in regular content. You can only have one active at a time. If you are a 50+1 normally, and use one, you become a 50+2 for the time it's active. In incarnate content, you can shift to a 50+4 while it's active.

They work, and I use them often in regular content. They DO NOT STACK. Not ever. Once you use one, they're disabled (greyed out in the tray) and cannot be used again until the active one expires. They are expensive, but let you do do certain tricks that are really fun, and imo, worth it situationally.

On the whole, I approve. It has the advantage of absolutely not changing anything at notoriety +4 or less. That wouldn't bother me so much, if it left +0 alone, but clearly it would bother a lot of others.

And only the first one works in regular content.

I understand the sentiment, but IMO, stories that purport to change the world state just don't work well in MMO's.

I'd say, on both, the audience wants to like them, and is being charitable. Both sets of numbers are probably overstatements, but the second cut, if you can sit for four hours, or are satisfied watching it in sessions, is much improved.

It's not meaningless -- it's the clearly obvious reason it's true. The second part is also obviously true. They are auto-exemped down to the level they are given at. They cannot be run at a higher level. They can be run by higher levels, but only by exemping down. Time people spend running radio missions in, say, King's Row, or Sharkhead, is time they are not farming inf steamrolling +4/x8 council missions or pocket-D farms. And if people who would not be playing at all, or perhaps only idling are also playing these, surely that's a good thing. And granting reward merits, even in small amounts, is anti-inflationary. If I were convinced the extra Inf being injected in by an idea like this were a serious issue, I'd reduce the Inf bonus, increase the XP bonus, and grant bonus merits for each bank mission completed in the course of doing a cycle of radios/newspapers in those zones. I'm getting these sense your original "hard no" meant you decided to be closed to this idea, no matter the arguments that could be made in favor of it.

You can run a newspaper in a lower level zone. Unlock Lord Schweinzer in Port Oakes and you can run any newspaper, auto-exemped down to the proper level. Edit: my brain crossed its wires: Lord Schweinzer let's you run any Mayhem red-side after he is unlocked. One can still run newspapers by finding someone who is in that level band who can use the newspaper contact, and having them lead the team. If there were bonus rewards for missions in those bands, I think these would be run more often, and there would be more opportunities to get on those teams. There is not a similar means Blue-side, but one could be added, perhaps an unlockable PPD senior detective. And if not, this would give reason for people's alts to choose to run these when they are in those level bands. There's already a certain, small number, of radio teams that run and do bank missions. It stands to reason that if those missions occasionally get better rewards, more people would run them.

Most of these would end up being in lower level zones and being run at lower levels. One could even eliminate the easier groups from the list, e.g., Council and CoT, and even not include PI and Grandville. Now, despite there being unlimited runs and increased rewards, the impact on total inf generation would be controlled, and possibly even lower. But there'd be more groups running lower level zones and groups other than Council.

I don't get that sense at all. I have three tanks, and they've all been super useful on teams, even teams that steamroll, and especially on teams that are having trouble.

We could have group-relative buffs for "Incarnate Difficulty". Council would need quite a lot to really be a challenge. Although, it might surprise us how strong a relatively easy group gets when you give them just the buffs I suggested.

If we don't decrease or buff council, you can still go smash them at +4/x8. But people who choose harder content should not be relatively penalized by that, either. Instead, we could increase the XP/Inf drops the harder groups offer so they're rewarded consistently to their challenge.