Ice themed Defender/Corruptor is on hold...waiting.

[Solarverse]

I rolled an Ice/Cold Corruptor pretty much within the first week of this game coming back out. Until I hit late levels and realized there are no Epic Pools for Ice. I don't know why, but at the time I could have sworn that Defenders got Ice Epics, so then I rolled an Cold/Ice Defender...and much to my surprise, I found out that Defenders don't get Ice Epics either. I was a bit let down, so much so that I hung up the two Ice themed characters and decided I would wait until one day if and when the Devs create an Epic Ice pool for Defenders and Corruptors.

How many of you have done something similar and what were the circumstances?

[MTeague]

I have a Beast / Empathy MM who may only have one epic power total. 

• blueside / committed hero, so Patron Pools are just flat out. Don't care if they might have better powers. They're OFF the table for this character. 
• character concept isn't fire/ice/frost, so that's three ancillary pools out the window.
• leaves her just Field Mastery, and in there, I can justify Temp Invulnerabilty... and nothing else. 

So for a what the hell, I'm making her a Kickboxing Empath, who charges right in with her pets and uses Boxing, Kick, and Cross Punch, along with all three Leadership toggles, and some Fly powers. I'll still have most of the Empath powers, and keeping buffs up and healing where required will be more important than cross punching for great justice but... what the heck. I'll see how it works because the other choices aren't doing it for me.  On the plus side, I know my pets will be in range of all the pet aura IO's.

[EmmySky]

I have a few characters who dont take any ancillary or patron powers because either they suck or dont fit the character.  It is very doable to just stick with primary/secondary and pools. 

 

I do think there should be more choices for more ATs but who knows if/when that will be a viable undertaking for the HC team.  

[Erydanus]

I just took Captain Mako's pool on my Ice Blast/Cold Domination corruptor on live.  It's a mix of water, dark, and shark powers, the main prize being Hibernate. 

[Shadowsleuth]

I wish there was a blueside storyarc which either gives hero access to those exact Patron Pools or instead gives heros blueside Patron powers (i.e. Positron, Manticore, etc...) that are comparable to the redside Patron Pools.

 

If the intention of restricting the Patron Pools is to encourage players to play redside, I feel that this isn't the best method to go about doing so.

 

As it is, how many players stay playing redside after side-switching as opposed to players who simply run the storyarc then immediately switch back to hero.

 

Perhaps there could be something different to encourage players to play redside.

 

There should also be a greater selection of Ancillary Pools to better match existing Primaries/Secondaries. (Even if they made from recycled/recolored powers from other powersets.)
 

[MTeague]

3 hours ago, Shadowsleuth said:

I wish there was a blueside storyarc which either gives hero access to those exact Patron Pools or instead gives heros blueside Patron powers (i.e. Positron, Manticore, etc...) that are comparable to the redside Patron Pools.

 

If the intention of restricting the Patron Pools is to encourage players to play redside, I feel that this isn't the best method to go about doing so.

 

As it is, how many players stay playing redside after side-switching as opposed to players who simply run the storyarc then immediately switch back to hero.

 

Perhaps there could be something different to encourage players to play redside.

 

There should also be a greater selection of Ancillary Pools to better match existing Primaries/Secondaries. (Even if they made from recycled/recolored powers from other powersets.)
 

Adjusting incentives is dicey at best.  Like if they gave 25% more inf and merits for redside content for a month to see what impact that had, etc.  

• such wailing and gnashing of teeth you'd see from people who'd feel forced to change sides, even if it were entirely optional. 
• I still don't know how much impact it would have.   Some of it, I'm sure is people play blue because people play blue and they want teams so they go where people already are, and all other concersn be damned. 
• But some of it, probably, more people may just enjoy being heroic over villainous. Even if it's harmless villainy in a computer game against pixels that don't hurt anyone real.  I mean people may feel that villains are Cooler Than Heroes (ie, Darth Vader vs Obi Wan, Doctor Doom over Mr Fantastic, Magneto vs Cyclops or Prof X, ).  But that doesnt' necessarily mean people want to PLAY the villain or BE the villain.  I like some of each, and have 12 blue, 12 red, and 6 gold.  But my impression is that's RARE, and I doubt it's ALL because of teaming. 

So is it really worth trying to dangle carrots in front of someone to get them do what maybe they just don't want to do?

[Solarverse]

I had the same situation happen with my Psi/Mental Blaster. No Psi for Epics kind of turned me off. Not all my characters are themed based around powers though, so I don't have too many characters that I have hung-ups on. We at least have Elec Blasters who can get Elec/Elec/Elec. Lots of fun to play back on live. I'll eventually get the one I have here and now finished up.

[Clave Dark 5]

8 hours ago, MTeague said:

Adjusting incentives is dicey at best.  Like if they gave 25% more inf and merits for redside content for a month to see what impact that had, etc.  

• such wailing and gnashing of teeth you'd see from people who'd feel forced to change sides, even if it were entirely optional. 
• I still don't know how much impact it would have.   Some of it, I'm sure is people play blue because people play blue and they want teams so they go where people already are, and all other concersn be damned. 
• But some of it, probably, more people may just enjoy being heroic over villainous. Even if it's harmless villainy in a computer game against pixels that don't hurt anyone real.  I mean people may feel that villains are Cooler Than Heroes (ie, Darth Vader vs Obi Wan, Doctor Doom over Mr Fantastic, Magneto vs Cyclops or Prof X, ).  But that doesnt' necessarily mean people want to PLAY the villain or BE the villain.  I like some of each, and have 12 blue, 12 red, and 6 gold.  But my impression is that's RARE, and I doubt it's ALL because of teaming. 

So is it really worth trying to dangle carrots in front of someone to get them do what maybe they just don't want to do?

The pro vs. con of incentivizing red-side's been chewed over pretty well here, so I won't go into that.

 

I will note that the red-side Patron pools were in the game long before there was any way to cross over for your hero to get them, so they can't have been kept separate " to encourage players to play red-side."  Coh and CoV were separate games at first.  I would imagine that they're done with patron arcs to get you to engage more with game lore, by aligning yourself with one of the top villains.  (Hero-side maybe could do something similar, although I dunno if heroes would try and encourage side-kicks as much as villains might.)

[Erydanus]

That's exactly it. Originally you had to choose a patron permanently. Players hated it but Positron stuck to his guns - it was a gamemaster choice he was fixated on though, not a game developer balance choice. Eventually it was relaxed and when going Rogue allowed switching they had to give heroes access to patron pools and cook up some generic pools for villain ATs who went hero. If you ever wondered why the Patron pools are all very similarly structured for villains, but then the generic epics are complete mishmashes this is why. It was one of the few decisions the original devs made that I really strongly disagreed with. (For instance if you look at Ghost Widow's pool for stalkers, and then compare it to the Dark general pool they're very different but actually they could have been about the same; the disparity is so bad it almost feels like you're penalizing yourself to not flip evil and take her pool.)