Blackbird71

It doesn't work that way for me. I have so many alts to choose from, that I'm never short of someone with Patrol XP. Adding more Patrol XP to one character I'm playing means that I'm not switching to a different character that already has accumulated max Patrol XP, so it's not using up that banked XP and therefore is in fact a net loss. Contrast this with the XP granted immediately on exploration, which does not add to the time needed to play a character in order to use the Patrol XP, and therefore does not take away from time that could be spent using the Patrol XP on another alt. You're more then welcome to like and appreciate this change, but it is not an "outright buff" in every case and condition.

When you juggle several alts so that they are frequently topped off on Patrol XP, it's a net loss.

100% this. These badges (and the original bonus that led to them) would be a lot less controversial and confusing if they just followed the existing playstyle categorizations. Instead, they present new players with information directly contradicting the information they were presented with on character creation, and which in several cases is just wrong or incomplete (e.g. Control Widows).

I understand your points, though I don't necessarily agree with your conclusion. That aside, I wanted to address a potential issue with this proposed language. When I read those two descriptions, it would make me think that the "classic City of Heroes experience" is what was officially created when the game was live, which would then imply that Praetoria was something unofficial created by others after the game shut down. It may be a minor bit of confusion, but it could possibly work against your goal in that people might be more likely to opt for what they think is the "real" version of the game as intended. This. Please. So much! Stop sending all of my Primal characters to FW/NW contacts, when there are plenty of legitimate Primal contacts out there! If I could, I would make sure that Twinshot lost my number and could never automatically contact any of my characters again when they hit level 5. She and her arc are just so annoying. Plus, it always pops up while I'm in the middle of either Hashaby's arc or the City Hall contacts' arcs, and to pursue Twinshot I'd have to abandon those and likely outlevel them and be unable to return to the arc in progress. Graves I can tolerate a bit more easily, but something about Twinshot and her cohorts just rubs me the wrong way.

Your previous statements indicated that even if you already had "classic" settings on your characters, new characters on the account would have the new "default."

Old players make new characters. If you're going to go through with making these new settings the default, then it would be nice if the "classic" settings could be chosen as default account-wide so that you don't have to remember to change it with each new character made.

This is going to mess with all kinds of shortcuts that have already been set. And making it work differently for old characters vs. new is going to create complications. I think it would be better to keep the way it has been for 20+ years as the default, and then make the new settings a selectable option, rather than vice versa.

The option is appreciated, however I'm not a fan of "hidden settings," as it's too easy to forget they exist or how to use them.

No thank you; this would make no sense. Matthew Hashaby specifically continues the story after the fall of Galaxy City. If you don't take the Galaxy City tutorial, there is no reason to route to him. By contrast, the old City Hall contacts still present some solid missions, and it would be a shame to have those forgotten and disregarded just because the Outbreak tutorial doesn't send anyone there anymore.

I'm not disagreeing with this basic premise; I absolutely agree that just because something is old doesn't make it "outdated;" rather it can often be "tried and true." And "progress for the sake of progress" is folly (unfortunately many of HC's changes seem follow this erroneous mantra, in my opinion). I just felt that the way you argued the point with an analogy that gave a false representation of the opposing argument came off a bit disingenuous and dismissive. As to the matter at hand though, I do think that the HC devs lean too heavily on the nerf bat. When several powers are underperforming and one or two are overperforming, they do seem to go for nerfing the stronger power instead of buffing the weaker powers. To me, this approach often reduces the fun and enjoyment of the game, forcing everyone into equal drudgery by making all powers equally underpowered. If there is a power that is legitimately "OP" to the point that it breaks the game, then yes, something like that should be addressed and scaled back. However, I believe such powers are rare in CoH, and most often an "OP" power is only overpowered relative to the available alternatives, and in such cases the game and players would be better served by treating the alternatives as underpowered and addressing why they are less desirable.

Totally fair; I just wanted to present a contrasting view. I do appreciate your engagement and openness to discuss these ideas.

I wholeheartedly disagree. As I level up, and gain new powers and slots, I expect the difficulty of the game to remain the same relative to the current state of the character. Yes, higher level enemies will be more difficult for what my character was at a lower level, but not once I reach the same level as the enemies and gain the appropriate powers. I would much rather have a consistent experience from 1 to 50 than an ever-increasing difficulty curve.

I don't move enhancements from character to character, because I will sometimes revisit past characters, and it's just a pain to do. "5 minutes" is a rather optimisitic estimate. You don't just have to respec to strip all the enhancements, but also then mail them to yourself, one at a time. And 100 million Inf per character doesn't go very far if you're talking IOs. At current market prices, a solid IO build can run at least 300-500 million. I've seen some post here about "billion inf" builds, which it's hard for me to fathom spending that much on a single character build, but apparently it happens.

Well, "buy some IOs" goes back to my previous point of being an altaholic. Tricking out every character with a high-end IO build gets expensive. I do it for some characters, but not all.

I do believe that was directed at me. 😉 Other factions have their own issues. CoT may not be as easy as Council, but they were still a better option than some of the others. Particularly for magic-focused characters. I often play at the lower end of the difficulty slider. Depending on the AT and power sets, I'll typically be at +0/x1-4. Ouroboros is a means of replaying lower-level content. I'm an altaholic who plays through the lower level content while I'm at that level, so there's little reason for me to want to revisit it one one character to get to 50 when I'm just as likely to go through it on my next character. TFs and the like 1) require a significant time investment to do multiple chained missions back to back, while I prefer playing in shorter spurts, and 2) are more geared towards groups, whereas I do most of my leveling solo. All around, these sorts of changes (CoT and Council) just further reduce viable options for players like me.

This is a misleading analogy. Do you wear pants made of coarse homespun wool? Or do you wear modern cotton-synthetic blends?

I'm saying at that level range, there are limited activities I enjoy; it's why I refer to the grind from 40 to 50 as a slog. Changes like this just reduce my options further, and push me further away from the game. It's more likely I'll just be abandoning more characters around level 40 and moving on to lower-level alts instead of completing the path to 50.

The difference being that you typically only get the stuff like DFB badges in a certain range of levels while running that particular content, while these badges could be picked up any time, any level, on any content. I doubt there will be nearly as much demand for groups to get them, just because of the wide opportunity, a lot of which may happen naturally without specific effort. Not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing, just an observation.

I know some people really like collecting badges, but at least for me this statement is totally wrong. I couldn't tell you what badges my characters have; I don't care. Plus there is so many of them already as to make them largely meaningless; each is just one more drop in the proverbial bucket. And I don't ever bother displaying badge titles, and I don't care about what titles others show - it just comes off as bragging. So no, I don't consider them important or noticeable. That's probably a minority opinion around here, but I still think it's worth expressing that not everyone thinks badges are worthwhile. As far as I'm concerned, adding badges is a waste of time and resources.

I hate using AE. Farms are boring, and the quality of non-farm content is too much of a mixed bag. I prefer running stuff out in the world. I've done Tina's stuff several times before, and it's probably my least favorite arc. The portal missions are just not my cup of tea. So many of them are "go to this outdoor map and find three glowies to click" that end up being time-consuming busywork that result in hardly any XP, so you don't feel like you're progressing and it becomes a slog. Not to mention the number of Crey and Malta you have to mess with in the later part of her arc. Plus thematically, I don't really care for playing a hero who is spending their time traveling to other worlds. In short, Tina's arc is exactly why I often end up doing stuff like CoT/Council in the 40s.

What about under-50/unfinished-build/non-incarnate solos who want a mindless bash-fest? That's the category I typically fall into by the time I hit 40 on a character.

Which frankly probably contributes to a lot of the frustration and arguments that go around during open beta, and the general feeling that staff doesn't communicate well. Open beta is seen by a larger portion of the player base, and so giving this negative impression of a lack of communication (and the resulting miscommunication) at that time has a broader negative impact.

I'm going to get that put on a billboard in Atlas. 😉

The change from a repeatable reward to a one-time badge has likely moved this feature from "hotly controversial" to "all-around meh." On top of that, the AT categorization still doesn't fit the character creation descriptions or practical function of several ATs. There's really no purpose to release a mediocre feature that gives incorrect/incomplete information. At this point, it's probably best to just scrap the whole idea.

"It goes to 11." Seriously. Every other volume control system on a computer goes from 0-100%. Calling the top end 150% just gives the impression that the setting will go above system limits. I understand shifting the slider to a curve, and I think that part is a great improvement. But changing the label on the upper limit is Spinal Tap levels of silly. Might want to get on the same page there. 😉 Dueling staff in consecutive posts causes confusion.