Andreah

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.

I think either their base rewards should be lowered a bit, according to how easy they are, or they should get some love & kindness tweaks to their mobs or some special new mobs added.

Hrm. A special Notoriety flag for "Incarnate Difficulty", or ID. Available to any team leader running missions of any normal kind at level 45 or up. ID can be set to on for any other notoriety setting, including -1/x1. ID set to "On" gives every mob a +14 to-hit, +10 Defense (All). It also grants every Lt either "Leadership: Maneuvers" or "Leadership: Assault" at random, every Boss or EB "Leadership: Tactics", and upgrades a quarter of bosses at random to EB's by default. Mobs give +50% Xp and Inf when defeated, and have double the normal chance to drop shards, threads, and other special salvage. Mission completion always rewards an Incarnate Thread, a 20% chance at a Common incarnate component, and a 10% chance at an Astral Merit for those who qualify for incarnate drops.

Similarly to the Weekly Strike Targets for TFs/SFs, add a new feature to get people to run different radio/newspaper groups. Each day, a Hero and Villain zone is picked in rotation, and of the available enemy groups in each, one is chosen at random. For that day only, enemies defeated in those missions would be yield half again more xp and half again more inf, and mission completion rewards would be doubled, and one reward merit granted as well to everyone on the team. Alternatively, the foes could also be buffed for that day only. There would be no limit on how many of these missions could be run during the 24-hour period.

I was on a radio team on Everlasting this morning. Mainly doing councils. We steamrolled nicely. I'm on my non-softcapped, almost defenseless in-fact, kin/sonic defender, and the team has a good tank and is fairly well balanced - plenty of buffs. Not too many lower levels, not too many tier-4 incarnates. People were getting only lightly touched with damage. Then we got a "Defeat all Arachnos in Bank" radio, and oof, what a difference. We had some deaths; but we rezzed them. We got split as some of our people had to retreat, and others were scrapper-locked on the fight, it was hard and also fun in a good way -- the way that breaks the routine up, but doesn't make you struggle constantly and forever. A little later we got another such mission -- only it was Malta. That was even harder. But again, those missions are out there and they are not easily steamrolled by a pick-up group. A good team leader will sprinkle them in, just to remind Caesar he is mortal. I think some OPTIONAL tweaking of difficulty would be welcome. +4/x8 ought to be hard to run, even in tougher groups. But +0/x1 should not. Weaker enemy groups should not reward as much as tougher ones. Maybe what we could have is a "Weekly Strike Foes" which sets radios/papers with certain enemies to have extra rewards, just to get people to run more variety. Most AT's are vulnerable to defense debuffs. It's hard to protect against without a lot of "emergency" defense from destiny buffs, better inspirations, and so on. This could be tweaked on some enemy groups, too. Maybe certain council parasites would have a defense debuffing attack. This is also neat because it keeps people on their toes watching out for certain tactical situations; as much as we watch for Night Widows and their blindness, or for Sappers and their end drains. The softcap itself isn't necessarily the main issue. I do think the Purple Patch could be looked at as low hanging fruit -- I think the six level wide plateau of critters to-hit vs players was designed for old-style sidekicking, where you would often have people on your team sidekicked quite a few levels below the team lead. With super-sidekicking, everyone is either at the mission holders' level, one combat level shifted above (exemped with an alpha shift), or one below (sidekicked lowbie). I'd bring the increasing to-hit's back down to level +3 instead of level+6. That alone would move the effective softcap for the hardest content down, without explicitly nerfing anyone's powers.

It would be really cool if there were (fun) defeat/xp/loot mechanisms based on control, cleverness, and other non-damage means.

Rotten tomatoes has the Snyder cut at 73% reviewers / 95% audience. Not too bad at all.

I'm of two minds about the clicking. On the one hand, clicking is awful, and you have not suffered until you've bought, claimed, converted, and sold 1000 or more superpacks in a day. On the other hand, if it was easy everyone would do it, and profit margins would drop. 😄

Also, if you run Who Will Die, Episode 4, from Tyrka, as a villain or rogue (https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Tyrka), at x2 or thereabouts, you should get enough hero defeats to get Hero Slayer, and unlock Lord Schweinzer.

When you are offered a mission from him, ask to talk about something else, and he'll give you the full list to pick from. No need to fiddle with mission cancelling, etc.