Devs: Too much powercreep, not enough challenge

[Snakebit]

I propose a temp power category from the p2w vendor as a testbed.

 

Let players choose from a variety of risk reward options and see what gets the most traction. Add or add to content focused on the most popular difficulty buff powers.

 

Scale up rewards for Ouro challenge settings and track how that gets played.

[Marine X]

You could also, since it is available now, run Taskforces with some or all of the Handicaps. No Inspirations, No Enhancements, No Defeats, etc. These have some badges associated with them to Commemorate the Accomplishment, you'll have to see which ones and it is way easier because you just have to choose to do it, NO Programming Required...There is an Ouroboros Version of this too, where you could expand the amount of Content. I know it's kind of "One arm tied behind your Back", but it would raise the stakes. I remember trying to Street Hunt with Vahzilok Wasting Disease, I have never felt like such a wimp, lol.

[jubakumbi]

10 minutes ago, Marine X said:

You could also, since it is available now, run Taskforces with some or all of the Handicaps. No Inspirations, No Enhancements, No Defeats, etc. These have some badges associated with them to Commemorate the Accomplishment, you'll have to see which ones and it is way easier because you just have to choose to do it, NO Programming Required...There is an Ouroboros Version of this too, where you could expand the amount of Content. I know it's kind of "One arm tied behind your Back", but it would raise the stakes. I remember trying to Street Hunt with Vahzilok Wasting Disease, I have never felt like such a wimp, lol.

Yup.

Make your Fun, with the tools provided, is the better plan.

Sure, everyone that plays games would love thier favortie game to get an endless amount of new content...that is just not reality...

 

MMOs especially appeal to a wide audience and therefore IME have more to offer a player willing to set thier own goals.

[DR_Mechano]

I will also point out that most people don't tend to run the 'harder' Incarnate Trials. I often see a BAF recruiting but very rarely see people recruiting for the Diabloique iTrial which was, at time of sunset, suppose to be the hardest one out of the bunch since it takes place at the end of the Incarnate storyline (Praetoria is already dealt with by that point). In fact I rarely see people running the later iTrials.

[jubakumbi]

Just now, DR_Mechano said:

I will also point out that most people don't tend to run the 'harder' Incarnate Trials. I often see a BAF recruiting but very rarely see people recruiting for the Diabloique iTrial which was, at time of sunset, suppose to be the hardest one out of the bunch since it takes place at the end of the Incarnate storyline (Praetoria is already dealt with by that point). In fact I rarely see people running the later iTrials.

While there always seems to be a chorus on the forums wanting harder content, I agree what I see actually occuring in-game is pretty much always the fastest, easiet way to get rewards...

 

Same with pretty much all MMO forums IME...

[Obitus]

There are already difficult factions in the game.  The balance of difficulty among NPC factions is, in fact, all over the place.  Many are pushovers; some seem to have been designed by a gleeful sadist.  Of course a team full of IO'd Incarnates can handle just about anything, but I suspect many players don't even know that the game gets harder than level 54 Council maps or the ITF.

 

There are challenges to be found if you look for them.

 

Otherwise, I agree with whoever it was who said that he wants to play City of Heroes as he remembers it.  CoH was never about hardcore challenge, and I believe the HC devs want to preserve the game's original flavor.  And even if you could convince the developers that CoH should be about hardcore challenge, they work for free, so asking for wholesale changes to the game's design is impractical.

[SlimPickens]

Do Oro arcs with enemies buffed, players debuffed, and enhancements have no effect turned on using +4/8.

 

enjoy the challenge.

 

Theres always ways of artificially creating challenge, you make rules for yourself not to slot powers, you dont ever use insp, you pick non ideal powersets, etc. So if its something non standard you are looking for, its not hard at all to engineer a challenge yourself.

Edited September 12, 2019 by SlimPickens

[StormyWeathers]

If I were to compare the game now vs. what it was I can remember the following:

 

Grey - 4 below level

blue - 3 below level

green 1-2 below level

White at same level

Yellow 1+ level

Orange 2+ level

Red 3 & 4+ level

Purple 5+ level

 

When you go to menu and select Help and then select villian rank, it does not give you the levels below or above by color now.  it gives by rank.

 

Even when not an incarnate, purple levels should be a bit more difficult to take down.  IMHO the "purples" are considered "purple wannabees"   It used to take a team of 3 to take down a purple.  Now it does not.  It can take a team of 2 to take out a purple and it doesn't matter if they have pets or not. (with pets, they just go down that much faster)  I'm not saying to make it super hard where it turns everyone off, but maybe make it a little more challenging so that those who are looking for a fight can get one and those who enjoy grouping together, can do so bit easier.   

[Riverdusk]

8 hours ago, cejmp said:

I propose a temp power category from the p2w vendor as a testbed.

 

Let players choose from a variety of risk reward options and see what gets the most traction. Add or add to content focused on the most popular difficulty buff powers.

 

Scale up rewards for Ouro challenge settings and track how that gets played.

I do like this idea regardless.  Would be nice if the extra challenges you can do on TF's/Ouro flashbacks gave better rewards than just badges.  More people might try them.

[Snakebit]

8 minutes ago, Riverdusk said:

I do like this idea regardless.  Would be nice if the extra challenges you can do on TF's/Ouro flashbacks gave better rewards than just badges.  More people might try them.

I don't bother with them for exactly that reason. The Ouro challenges do not make the time in game more productive. If they did, I would play the hell out of them.  

[Riverdusk]

Just now, cejmp said:

I don't bother with them for exactly that reason. The Ouro challenges do not make the time in game more productive. If they did, I would play the hell out of them.  

Yep, just thought, probably the easiest most obvious one would be to simply give them a merit bonus that would vary depending which challenges you activated.

[Demon Shell]

On the one hand I would also like to see harder content and adding a +1 or 2 to an enemy seems like the easiest way to go about it.

 

On the other hand, Market Crash.

 

Freakshow are a joke to an incarnate. Sky Raiders? The normally-level-30-max-pushed-into-40-for-Admiral-Sutter villain group? They're a laughing stock. I went into that TF expecting to see Jump Bots with their own Force Fields, different damage-types, maybe some mez or debuffs beyond defense debuffs (or if it is just defense debuffs, huge values like what the Awakened PPD are capable of). But they have none of the things you'd expect of even a level 50 villain group. They're just pitiful, and they melt. The final boss was kinda cool, and you can see where the devs were certainly able to make an interesting engagement from that alone (and without sufficient AoE I could see being overwhelmed a possability), but every other time a Sky Raider was on screen it was as a corpse.

 

You can't just +1 or 2 away a problem with difficulty in this game. You most likely could in DA, but those are groups designed to be harder. They have fears and confusion. They can anchor debuff you, bypassing your defense. They have a varied and strong suite of debuffs.

 

A 55-56 Council will get steamrolled slightly slower, but be able to do nothing with the extra time given. They, as a villain group, do not have the tools necessary to challenge you. Most villain groups don't, and would need their powers redesigned.

[Chance Jackson]

I think the level of challenge is where it needs to be, no new purple patches no new nerfs.

The last  DD trial I was on was a full league disaster once we got to the sentinel, I told the league leader we didn't have supports but they erroneously thought incarnate destinies would some how be enough, (they weren't)

We didn't have the DPS to beat him with 1 team working on adds and we didn't have defenders, corrupter or controllers (but we had 5 or 6 blasters) to keep the squishies alive during the combined assault of the sentinel & adds so we failed rather miserably to my own credit I managed to stay alive through that hell in that hellish place until the trial failure killed everyone,

*I was on my Bots/Traps and I had already been on a successful DD on my Time/Sonic kind of wish I had been on the latter for this trial.

[EyeLuvBooks]

On 9/11/2019 at 2:52 PM, Coyote said:

 

No, because the point isn't that a SINGLE character is challenged. You could make a non-OP build and run with unslotted powers, and still be on a team that rolls from spawn to spawn about as fast as the characters can run from spawn to spawn, activate 1 or 2 AoE powers, and run to the next spawn. Your challenged build will not even be noticed in many Incarnate teams.

 

Now, at levels below Incarnate, there is a challenge and your build choices can make a difference. But in teams with characters that could each solo +4/x8, or at least do it in duos, what challenge can you create for your character.

 

Without drastic changes, though, I think that the only way to get real challenges is to solo or duo TFs, especially using some of the difficulty options. Not normal teams at Incarnate levels.

Careful...now you sound like you want everyone to play how YOU like to play. That never flies.

 

If you want a challenge for a SG filled with people who feel the same way, level to 35 and lock your xp gain. There...if +4/x8 isn't good enough you can go looking for enemies up to 15 levels above you!

[Megajoule]

Back on live, I would often run missions with my friends, playing characters who were a mix of ATs, with no Incarnate powers at all - because they hadn't been invented yet - and nothing but IOs or sometimes just SOs.

The pace of killing "arresting" progress was such that it inspired the term "spawnmower".

 

Full teams of experienced players with fully-leveled characters tossing around cones and AoEs, buffing each other, debuffing the enemy, and exercising even basic strategy, target selection, etc have always been extremely effective in this game.  Maybe not "+4x8" effective, but I hope you get my point.

Miscalculations and even wipes do occur sometimes, but this is not a game where the group has to stop and take a knee (and buff up again, regain mana, etc) after every room.

Edited September 13, 2019 by Megajoule

[Clave Dark 5]

3 hours ago, EyeLuvBooks said:

If you want a challenge for a SG filled with people who feel the same way, level to 35 and lock your xp gain. There...if +4/x8 isn't good enough you can go looking for enemies up to 15 levels above you!

Better yet, lock yourself at 35 and team with other players in their teen levels.  I I did this this morning (I was one of the teens, not the 35) and died twice and saw others drop off as well.

 

But the day this becomes "a real challenge," because of Incarnates or whatever else you might cite, is probably the day I leave.  I have trouble justifying wasting my time on a game when I get one-shotted by Malta as it is!

Edited September 13, 2019 by Clave Dark 5

[Doc_Scorpion]

1 hour ago, Megajoule said:

Full teams of experienced players with fully-leveled characters tossing around cones and AoEs, buffing each other, debuffing the enemy, and exercising even basic strategy, target selection, etc have always been extremely effective in this game.  Maybe not "+4x8" effective, but I hope you get my point.

That's kinda the OP's point...  These aren't folks exercising even basic strategy - it's almost always simply a graceless zerg rush.  In the week and a half I've been back, I've seen exactly two team wipes (one Malta, one Carnie). Tactical game play is almost non existent, even at +4x8. 

That's not the CoX I used to play.  The game has changed, and I'm not convinced it's for the better.

[HeroReborn]

On 9/12/2019 at 1:52 PM, DarknessEternal said:

I want to play CoH as it was, which is what this currently is.

 

I don't want to play some else's game.

Homecoming is much faster to incarnate including being able to do so without doing any incarnate content. It's easier to amass IOs than live was especially attuned, purples and especially PvP IOs. 

It is not the same game.

 

Not saying it's worse, but it's not what it was.

[Clave Dark 5]

2 hours ago, Derekl1963 said:

That's kinda the OP's point...  These aren't folks exercising even basic strategy - it's almost always simply a graceless zerg rush.  In the week and a half I've been back, I've seen exactly two team wipes (one Malta, one Carnie). Tactical game play is almost non existent, even at +4x8. 

That's not the CoX I used to play.  The game has changed, and I'm not convinced it's for the better.

It's the game as I've played it in the past, and I've seen plenty of team wipes since we came back.  We currently have a thicker population of CoH die-harders than the average back-then days shards did, I think.  These are the folks who download builds and so on, who were already pretty knowledgeable about this game.  The market's a bit easier to use to pick up what you want too, which is a change I'm going to argue for until my full-mask option turns blue, because it was frustratingly difficult to get into by the end of the game at shut-down. 

 

And hey, we also have a bunch of newbies, like the person who just posted here who needed directions on how to get to Peregrine Island because they didn't even know it existed (this is not a dig at that person whatsoever, we were all newbies at one time or another).  I know I've been on several teams in the past since about May when I started playing again that had such new-comers, and you better believe we suffered team wipes; I've also seen plenty of them on teams of experienced players, Malta and Carnies are never going to be easy. 

 

As usual, anecdotal evidence isn't always the best indicator of something.  And hey, if nothing else, come team with me and I promise you we'll die repeatedly!

[Omega-202]

3 hours ago, HeroReborn said:

Not saying it's worse, but it's not what it was.

I disagree.  Even before incarnates were released, I remember plenty of times where I was part of total steamrolling teams, not too different than now.  They're more common now but they've always existed, and that was back before there even was harder content than PI portal missions.  

 

Everyone's experience back then was different but mine wasn't that different from present day.

[quixoteprog]

I was in a team last night that wiped once and nearly wiped another time. One guy was trying to get people to corner pull and engage in even a little bit of strategy and most of the team just would not listen. It really depends on how many of the players are at least minimally competent. Or, at least age 10+

 

I think, as people have already said, that the game is very dense with optimized twinked builds, played by adults. And these people tend to be more motivated to level and so dominate the LFG channel. That means that even if you know very little about the game, are 7 years old, and are running with several expired training enhancements and tend to spam flurry of blows because it looks cool your average experience may well still be that you steam roll a +4x8 mission.

 

The problem is that when a group forms with more than a couple people who don't know what they are doing it will wipe, repeatedly. I've been in a couple of those and it can be frustrating because all it would really take to get it to work is for people to exercise a LITTLE bit of strategy. Because, yes, the game is pretty easy for the most part.

 

You just do corner pulls, give the tank time to use their taunt, HEAL the tank. And probably most important. Make sure the tank is not 7 with a horribly sub-optimal build.

 

 

Edited September 13, 2019 by quixoteprog

[Lines]

On 9/11/2019 at 7:41 PM, DSorrow said:

The issue with challenge is that it comes in several forms and not all of those forms are fun for everyone. Personally, I usually classify PvE challenge in four categories:

1. The numbers challenge. Basically the "are you tall enough for this ride" type of challenge where the difficulty diminishes as your gear improves. This is, in my opinion, a very artificial form of difficulty because it usually just boils down to handicapping the player in some way. Obviously these types of challenges don't work (unless maintained) in games where the players obtain more power over time through new content releases, and they also often suffer from that fact that in order to be considered challenging, they become very exclusive as very specific team combinations and gear levels are required.
2. The puzzle challenge. Especially in the case of static puzzles, these also cease to be a challenge once the players learn what they have to do.
3. The strategic challenge. As the name implies, this basically challenges players by requiring adaptive playing. In CoX terms, this could be something like special enemies that require priority targeting, such as Sappers.
4. The don't make mistakes challenge. This is essentially the Dark Souls type of challenge. Everything is pretty fair, but mistakes are punished heavily.

 

This is exactly how I feel. A lot of the time people focus on the challenge of the numbers game and balancing out powers, but the numbers game in PvE content was won by players a very long time ago. Balancing out powers at this point is just comparing efficiency of winning, rather than the difference between victory and defeat. Doing something to enemy values is, as you say, just an illusion of difficulty that only draws out battles for longer or might require some shifting of numbers on the player side.

 

I'm also not keen on difficulty that makes the grind longer. That isn't real difficulty, it's just... longer. Pooling salvage in the AH is a very welcome change.

It's a tall order, but I'd love to see more strategy brought into the game, like the LGTF Hamidon fight. Boss fights that require you to be in the right position to avoid AoEs or that requires some team coordination would be really enjoyable to me. While breaking the usual MMO tank/healer/dps pattern should be hugely celebrated in the game, I would like to see content that does need damage to be soaked directionally or that puts healing powers back in the picture. Some of the new content had fun stuff like this going on, but I get the feeling it was really hacked into place from the limitation of the tools.

 

I self impose a lot of challenges, as others have suggested. On that account, I get very bothered when one rogue member of the team decides to go off and speed run the mission just because they can. That, more than anything, has really taken the fun away from the game for me over the last few weeks.

Edited September 13, 2019 by Lines

[EyeLuvBooks]

2 hours ago, Lines said:

This is exactly how I feel. A lot of the time people focus on the challenge of the numbers game and balancing out powers, but the numbers game in PvE content was won by players a very long time ago. Balancing out powers at this point is just comparing efficiency of winning, rather than the difference between victory and defeat. Doing something to enemy values is, as you say, just an illusion of difficulty that only draws out battles for longer or might require some shifting of numbers on the player side.

 

I'm also not keen on difficulty that makes the grind longer. That isn't real difficulty, it's just... longer. Pooling salvage in the AH is a very welcome change.

It's a tall order, but I'd love to see more strategy brought into the game, like the LGTF Hamidon fight. Boss fights that require you to be in the right position to avoid AoEs or that requires some team coordination would be really enjoyable to me. While breaking the usual MMO tank/healer/dps pattern should be hugely celebrated in the game, I would like to see content that does need damage to be soaked directionally or that puts healing powers back in the picture. Some of the new content had fun stuff like this going on, but I get the feeling it was really hacked into place from the limitation of the tools.

 

I self impose a lot of challenges, as others have suggested. On that account, I get very bothered when one rogue member of the team decides to go off and speed run the mission just because they can. That, more than anything, has really taken the fun away from the game for me over the last few weeks.

This is as much a player issue as an issue with the game itself. As has been cited already, the numbers war was won by the players long ago. The only way to get the game 'as it was' (and Omega said it well...even the game on Live was like this) would be to only team with like-minded players and then play the game 'the old way' i.e. no double xp boosters for anyone, no bankroll 50s to pay for stuff, no top-end recipe builds etc.

 

Asking the SCORE team to come up with new and challenging content 15 years after the game's release is unfair IMHO. NCSoft and Paragon had, at the top of the game, more than 50 people working on the game. I'm not sure how many people the SCORE team has but I'm sure it's not that many. They're also literally working with code that was so spaghetti back in the day that the Devs simply couldn't implement many of the changes they themselves wanted.

 

The players have also changed. Over the last 8 years or so games have gotten dumbed down quite a bit. Players spend more time on console games where 100 hours of play is considered a lot. They don't WANT to slog through the same content for 50 levels...they want it NOW. It took me two years to get a 50 when the game was Live and I considered myself one of the slow players.

 

Our game is just like the world around us...an older time watching newer, faster times speed by while we stand and tell people to get off our lawns. We can't go back to 'what it was' unless we fort up with a few select friend, draw the curtains, locks the doors and pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist.

[Heraclea]

When I was levelling Heraclea I joined a mission team.  They were running Night Ward missions, against enemies that looked like evil constables among others.

 

I got held, confused, and held some more.  On a tanker. 

 

We finished the mission.  I found an excuse and left the team.  I have not set foot in the zone again except to get characters into Cimerora, and once when I mistakenly took a Belladonna Vetrano arc.  Not a good use of my time.  And definitely not fun. 

 

 

Edited September 13, 2019 by Heraclea

[Abraxus]

An Incarnate, equipped with I/Os is as powerful as one would expect to be in the endgame content, of a Super Hero genre game.  If you got this far, and couldn't feel that you were powerful, it would be completely counter-point to progressively getting more powerful through the levels, only to find you are constantly over matched in the end-game content.  Of course, there are places like Nightward, and Dark Astoria that can present a challenge for even powerfully equipped heroes like I described above.  So, it's out there if you want to challenge yourself.  But, if you love being powerful, and being able to dominate, the regular content, and Task Forces allow you do that too.  I think we have a situation where both camps can find a modicum of satisfaction.

 

I'll admit that I'm not a number cruncher, so from that perspective, I don't measure things to the decimal point.  I just have fun playing the game.