illu/rad solo av's and GM's?

[Solarverse]

4 hours ago, Frosticus said:

I like IOs, but I largely agree.

I think set bonuses are the issue. They could all be cut in half and they'd still be extremely desirable. 

 

Just the ability to Franken slot that IOs gives matched or even exceeded hami slotting. 

 

I miss getting on a team and really feeling the impact of some buff/debuffs. They are all still welcome but far less tangible imo. 

I agree completely. IO's are like that drug addiction you have to have, and even though you love them, you know you shouldn't and even maybe wish they were never created. If Homecoming made a server pre IO's, with everything else in game remaining the same, I have to honestly say I would drop Excelsior and move to that server. I would be like a kid in a candy store.  😄

[Solarverse]

4 hours ago, HelenCarnate said:

Not everyone is sonic/sonic. I actually don't think we have one of those.  We have a mix of some sonic blast, Rad defender and controller debuffs, storm and a /Bio brute to handle aggro in the rare event it is needed. 

My Ice Tank would certainly appreciate a Sonic, since Ice Tanks have a huge hole in resistance even after IO's.

[Coyote]

5 hours ago, Frosticus said:

I think set bonuses are the issue. They could all be cut in half and they'd still be extremely desirable. 

 

I agree with this, or limit the stacking to 2 at full strength, then the 3-5 stacks have half effect. And the point about feeling the effects of what other teammates do for you without IOs, and then not caring much about teammates giving +Recovery or +Defense once you have IO and Incarnate levels is good... letting characters cap defenses on their own too easily cuts down the value of +Def buffs, which should be major selling points for some sets like Cold and Force Fields.

[golstat2003]

On 1/11/2020 at 1:47 PM, cparks70402 said:

isnt there something fundamentally wrong with the game if the weakest class, with the fewest attacks, lowest damage, and weakest debuffs can solo something that requires 8 people to take down?

Nope.

[golstat2003]

21 hours ago, Solarverse said:

Yup, because face rolling everything in this game is hella fun. Nowhere near as fun as a good challenging game that kept your heart racing. IO's and Incarnates was the worst thing the Devs could have ever done to this game. I said it when they introduced the idea and I'm saying it now all these years later. The game is unchallenging, and makes all sorts of AT's useless and pretty much bench warmers. I still love the game, but nowhere near as much as I did before IOs were created. IO's are this game's bane.

I think IOS and Incarnates were some of the best things ever done to the game. Before that the game had gotten pretty stale. Especially since they could never keep up in creating content faster than the playerbase could consume.

[Solarverse]

48 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

I think IOS and Incarnates were some of the best things ever done to the game. Before that the game had gotten pretty stale. Especially since they could never keep up in creating content faster than the playerbase could consume.

Well then judging by what you say here and judging by what you quoted in the post above that one, I must say you and I have a VERY different idea of what makes MMO's fun.

 

You seem very content with facerolling everything as if this were some console game set on easy mode. I stopped playing Console games because I found MMO's were far more challenging and required teams (hence MMO) to work together and share our strengths to form a unified powerhouse.

 

Then along came IO's. Now nobody needs anybody, this might as well be DCUO where it's practically a one player game. This game required everyone to pull their own weight and bring on their A-Game when this game first came out and that is why I believe most players loved this game so much. No matter what class you played, you made a noticeable contribution to the team. You felt needed and important. Players would actually go out of their way and thank you for your heals. Players would praise your bubbles, players would complement the Tanks and players would be more than happy to have a Controller bringing order to chaos. Now, players honestly couldn't be bothered with having a healer on their teams. "They are not needed and teams are fine without them" as some have been quoted saying.

 

Once upon a time, this game promoted team play in a way that no other MMO offered with the classes involved that made a symbiotic relationship. Sure, some games had Tanks and Healers and Ranged and Melee DPS classes, but controllers set this game apart from others. Plus...it was heroes, not some boring dungeons and dragons copy paste. This game was unique, required a well rounded team and had a wow factor unlike any other. Now...not so much. Now we have one man armies that can faceroll just about anything and Defenders, Controllers and the likes get put at the kiddie table and feel completely useless.

 

So I am glad you feel this game is now better with IO's and you are completely happy facerolling content with little fears, nothing to really put you on the edge of your seat; all the while feeling that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with a Troller soloing AV's. However, keeping everything that I said in mind, I must strongly disagree with you. In my strong opinion, this game went from being the absolute best game ever created, to a decent game that fell from grace almost overnight with the implementation of IO's.

[golstat2003]

If the devs had been able to create content on a regular basis then I could see the argument that IOs and Incarnates weren't needed. They were not able to, hence the needs for something to keep the masses busy while they did. (Their attempt of adding pvp to the game was a failure to the large extent that to this day most just ignore it or outright hate it.) I think the game would have died MUCH faster without those additions. Agree to Disagree as you said.

 

EDIT: Also Controllers and Defenders have the ability to still be force multipliers. I know I'm glad they are around when I play Incarnate Content or go after AVs. I don't find them useless at all. 

 

Clearly you and I are playing a different game. I also find your comments somewhat humorous based on the OP that started this discussion.

Edited January 13, 2020 by golstat2003

[Gulbasaur]

3 hours ago, golstat2003 said:

Now we have one man armies that can faceroll just about anything

I just wish there was some content that actively fought against tank and spank tactics - enemies that get more powerful huddled together would be amazing, like each one having a small +def +tohit aura or something so if you clump them all together they will tear you apart. Enemies that resist taunts would be great, if not for there being a secondary Threat mechanic that almost guarantees aggro (ice tankers do a lot of debuff and have a high threat modifier, which is why their aggro is so sticky). Give more enemies the mez-to-defeat protection that the hamidon mitochondria have to encourage teaming. 

 

Pandora's Box has a fight where you're encouraged to take down bosses before fighting the big bad boss to get bonuses by absorbing their power - I couldn't even get damage to register on the health bar until I took about five down -  and I think that's great. It's a shame that enemies with varied mechanics were such a late arrival to the game (and, you know, that development got axed).

[Lines]

There was really good stuff in the works toward the end of CoH's life. The final arc of Pandora's box was great fun and was the first thing to kill off my main in a long time. The devs got really imaginative with boss fights and it was great to see Market Crash follow the trend. The challenge in these comes from unique strategies and encounters, which I think are great but is a highly demanding act to follow for HC.

 

For me, the dissatisfaction comes from a kind of 'unchallenge valley' that starts at level 47 and ends at iTrials, incarnate content and some of the newer stuff. If you imagine the graph of challenge to level, it grows more-or-less steadily from 1 to 46, then drops dramatically at 47 - 50, then shoots right back up into incarnate content.

 

There's a lot of content that falls into that valley, and which is disproportionately rewarding for how easy it has become. It's endgame content that doesn't feel endgame and I find it hard to get excited about unless I solo it. It's in that valley that I think there is room for improvement.

 

However, that isn't the majority of content. I love lower level stuff and I love the incarnate content. It's just that the older level 50 stuff feels like a mismatch.

Edited January 13, 2020 by Lines

[Gulbasaur]

2 hours ago, Lines said:

There's a lot of content that falls into that valley, and which is disproportionately rewarding for how easy it has become. It's endgame content that doesn't feel endgame and I find it hard to get excited about unless I solo it. It's in that valley that I think there is room for improvement.

I quite often invite lowbies into incarnate story arcs to give myself a challenge - It becomes a fun escort mission as they level and I actually have to try in order to keep up with it all. 

 

I'd love a system like GW2's mistlock instabilities where you can add random effect modifiers to missions and get extra rewards because of it. There is already a system in place to debuff players for Ouro missions and task forces - I wonder how hard it would be to attach a "plus 1-3 random effects" mod to it. Things like enemy defence or resistance auras, taunt resistance, an enemy unresistable (but percentile so it's not too unfair) damage proc, enemies all healing over time, nictus crystals spawning, players all having a repel effect or players all getting debuffed if they're not tightly huddled, enemies having run speed boosts and the like... obviously, the framework would need to be set up but something comparable is already in place with the player debuff and enemy buff modifiers in the flashback system. 

 

Perhaps with a neat little into story arc and a need to have an incarnate power unlocked? Stick in an NPC who gives you a spiel about the Curse of Ms Fortune or something and say a witch has cursed your enemies with good luck as she felt you weren't pushing yourself and then add a little button next in the Notoriety menu so people can ignore the story arc.  

 

Slap on a giant reward roll every ten missions and track it like the alignment change missions are tracked or something and add extra merits per modifier used. 

 

Anyway, years of DMing have left me with a lot of ideas that I've never used, but this one is something I really think could work with existing tech to use as precedents. 

[DR_Mechano]

7 hours ago, Solarverse said:

Well then judging by what you say here and judging by what you quoted in the post above that one, I must say you and I have a VERY different idea of what makes MMO's fun.

 

You seem very content with facerolling everything as if this were some console game set on easy mode. I stopped playing Console games because I found MMO's were far more challenging and required teams (hence MMO) to work together and share our strengths to form a unified powerhouse.

 

Then along came IO's. Now nobody needs anybody, this might as well be DCUO where it's practically a one player game. This game required everyone to pull their own weight and bring on their A-Game when this game first came out and that is why I believe most players loved this game so much. No matter what class you played, you made a noticeable contribution to the team. You felt needed and important. Players would actually go out of their way and thank you for your heals. Players would praise your bubbles, players would complement the Tanks and players would be more than happy to have a Controller bringing order to chaos. Now, players honestly couldn't be bothered with having a healer on their teams. "They are not needed and teams are fine without them" as some have been quoted saying.

 

Once upon a time, this game promoted team play in a way that no other MMO offered with the classes involved that made a symbiotic relationship. Sure, some games had Tanks and Healers and Ranged and Melee DPS classes, but controllers set this game apart from others. Plus...it was heroes, not some boring dungeons and dragons copy paste. This game was unique, required a well rounded team and had a wow factor unlike any other. Now...not so much. Now we have one man armies that can faceroll just about anything and Defenders, Controllers and the likes get put at the kiddie table and feel completely useless.

 

So I am glad you feel this game is now better with IO's and you are completely happy facerolling content with little fears, nothing to really put you on the edge of your seat; all the while feeling that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with a Troller soloing AV's. However, keeping everything that I said in mind, I must strongly disagree with you. In my strong opinion, this game went from being the absolute best game ever created, to a decent game that fell from grace almost overnight with the implementation of IO's.

This entire post does KIND of smack of elitism the "Everyone should play the way I feel like and if you don't, you're a no good scrub who just likes things this way because their easy!".

 

Tell me something mate, you go ON and ON about challenge but have you actually DONE challenging content or are you the one who just facerolls everything, ignoring said content, then complains on the forums? Have you done challenge runs? Power pools only etc. Have you gotten 'The really hard way' badge on a character? Are you trying to speed solo taskforces and push yourself to the very limit of what you can achieve? No, then you've no right to complain that regular content is too easy.

 

Also, HISTORY LESSON, you know WHY we have an aggro cap now? Because when this game first came out, zone herding was a thing, tankers would tough enough that they could survive a zones worth of mobs an then two blasters would AoE the crap out of said huge mob and bam, everyone gets huge XP gains, only tanks and blasters mattered. As I have been informed prior to IOs there were still builds that could solo AVs. The usual suspects like ill/rad were the obvious ones but a Dark melee scrapper could output enough damage to beat AV health regen. There's a reason why Dark Melee/* (I believe it was DM/SR) combo on scrappers was known as 'the buzzsaw' since its attacks hit hard, hit fast and were probably the least resisted damage type in the game that isn't toxic (that being negative).

 

So yeah the game has ALWAYS been casual focused, it's never been this uber-hardcore thing you're making it out to be. Oh and Healers? Yeah people on LOWBIE teams thanked your for the healing, high end level 50 teams even before IOs saw healing defenders as a waste of space on a team, only useful for their 2 buffs or did you forget that people would take literally any other set over Empathy if they had the choice? Also people still like having debuffers/buffers on their teams for harder content. Nobody is going to turn down a Grav/Time controller for example, everyone is welcome on teams still. I don't know where you're getting this idea that people don't want Tankers and will actively exclude them from teams, not once have I seen this. In fact during a MoSTF attempt the team lead insisted on a tank because "Whilst brutes can be IO'd into defense and resistance to an decent degree, a tank provides a safety net that if something goes horrible wrong or they get unlucky, they're not just going to drop dead in an instance like a Bio brute would."

[Mitchman]

10 hours ago, Solarverse said:

Well then judging by what you say here and judging by what you quoted in the post above that one, I must say you and I have a VERY different idea of what makes MMO's fun.

 

You seem very content with facerolling everything as if this were some console game set on easy mode. I stopped playing Console games because I found MMO's were far more challenging and required teams (hence MMO) to work together and share our strengths to form a unified powerhouse.

 

Then along came IO's. Now nobody needs anybody, this might as well be DCUO where it's practically a one player game. This game required everyone to pull their own weight and bring on their A-Game when this game first came out and that is why I believe most players loved this game so much. No matter what class you played, you made a noticeable contribution to the team. You felt needed and important. Players would actually go out of their way and thank you for your heals. Players would praise your bubbles, players would complement the Tanks and players would be more than happy to have a Controller bringing order to chaos. Now, players honestly couldn't be bothered with having a healer on their teams. "They are not needed and teams are fine without them" as some have been quoted saying.

 

Once upon a time, this game promoted team play in a way that no other MMO offered with the classes involved that made a symbiotic relationship. Sure, some games had Tanks and Healers and Ranged and Melee DPS classes, but controllers set this game apart from others. Plus...it was heroes, not some boring dungeons and dragons copy paste. This game was unique, required a well rounded team and had a wow factor unlike any other. Now...not so much. Now we have one man armies that can faceroll just about anything and Defenders, Controllers and the likes get put at the kiddie table and feel completely useless.

 

So I am glad you feel this game is now better with IO's and you are completely happy facerolling content with little fears, nothing to really put you on the edge of your seat; all the while feeling that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with a Troller soloing AV's. However, keeping everything that I said in mind, I must strongly disagree with you. In my strong opinion, this game went from being the absolute best game ever created, to a decent game that fell from grace almost overnight with the implementation of IO's.

Eeeeesh chill out buddy..........

[RabbitUp]

On 1/11/2020 at 8:47 PM, cparks70402 said:

isnt there something fundamentally wrong with the game if the weakest class, with the fewest attacks, lowest damage, and weakest debuffs can solo something that requires 8 people to take down?

There would be something fundamentally wrong with the game if that description was accurate.

[Gulbasaur]

2 hours ago, DR_Mechano said:

Tell me something mate, you go ON and ON about challenge but have you actually DONE challenging content or are you the one who just facerolls everything, ignoring said content, then complains on the forums? Have you done challenge runs? Power pools only etc. Have you gotten 'The really hard way' badge on a character? Are you trying to speed solo taskforces and push yourself to the very limit of what you can achieve? No, then you've no right to complain that regular content is too easy.

I don't wholly disagree with some of your points but if you're having to speed solo task forces and doing self-motivated challenges in order to make things feel difficult enough to feel like rewarding gameplay, I really do think you have every right to say that regular content is too easy. 

[Solarverse]

40 minutes ago, Mitchman said:

Eeeeesh chill out buddy..........

I was a bit harsh. I'm sorry about that. I just got a bit worked up, lol.

[nihilii]

12 hours ago, golstat2003 said:

I think IOS and Incarnates were some of the best things ever done to the game. Before that the game had gotten pretty stale. Especially since they could never keep up in creating content faster than the playerbase could consume.

 

11 hours ago, golstat2003 said:

If the devs had been able to create content on a regular basis then I could see the argument that IOs and Incarnates weren't needed. They were not able to, hence the needs for something to keep the masses busy while they did. (Their attempt of adding pvp to the game was a failure to the large extent that to this day most just ignore it or outright hate it.) I think the game would have died MUCH faster without those additions. Agree to Disagree as you said.

 

EDIT: Also Controllers and Defenders have the ability to still be force multipliers. I know I'm glad they are around when I play Incarnate Content or go after AVs. I don't find them useless at all. 

 

Clearly you and I are playing a different game. I also find your comments somewhat humorous based on the OP that started this discussion.

Hear, hear. I kinda feel like there's some nostalgia for the good old days at play.

 

It was fun to feel buffs/debuffs really helping, yes. At the same time, it led to LRSF/STF runs stacking corruptors/defenders/controllers as the automatic "I Win" answer to anything.

There wasn't much endgame content to tackle either. And you had no carrot to keep you running on the treadmill. Your build was pretty much done with HOs, and you'd reroll just to have something new to play/do.

The only thing that's missing from the game is IMHO a more comprehensive reward system. AE seemed like a strong attempt in the right direction, with player-built missions you could have theoretically infinite content. Trying to build rigid rules for rewards doesn't work so well because players will find ways to exploit things, but a self-balancing system tied to datamining completion times could have worked, perhaps (not unlike what they've done with merit rewards).

[Shred Monkey]

Power creep in this game was paced well I think, but the problem is that the new endgame content that should have come in 2012-2013 got cut off.   Thus we have the increase in player strength, but not the increase in endgame content to follow.

 

Initially, I didn't like how the incarnate powers are specifically built to blur the lines between ATs, but they've grown on me.  They're not as overpowered as they first sounded.

 

As for IO's.  No doubt, without the IO's system I wouldn't play this game.  The IO system makes this game a min/max'ers heaven.  It's the only game I've found where (on a slow day at work) I can spend all day with my spreadsheets and builders playing this game without ever logging in.   

 

I've never had a problem finding my own little "challenges" and mini-games to keep my interest (e.g. 'must use powerset XYZ and not use Hasten').   

 

I find it odd that you've picked out Ill/Rad being able to solo AVs and GMs as the problem.  That's the powerset combo that has the reputation of doing it the easiest.   Are you aware that you can solo GMs with blasters and Stalkers, too?

 

[quixoteprog]

If you think they are out of control NOW, I remember back in the day, prior to Enhancement Diversification and the pet changes (I think pets used to last 5 minutes and recharge in 5 minutes, until they made it so that you could only have one out at a time, but they stayed out and could zone with you)

 

You could also slot Hasten and Accelerated Metabolism with 4-5 recharge SOs and get them and PA perma by the time you got Phantasms and by 33-4 you could be running around with 3-4 Phants out spamming Energy Torrent and summoning decoys. Anything that was not flat on its back was busy fighting Phantom Army or on of your 3 Phantasm's decoys.

 

THAT was broken. Now, they can just solo AVs and GMs, which I think is fair.

 

The short answer is, this game is not balanced. It never was. In my opinion it is one of the reasons it never got much traction beyond its core fan base. Some ATs are easy mode because they have extremely effective damage mitigation built in, while others require a lot of thought and consideration to do anything more than +1/x1 because the only damage mitigation is strategic playing.

[Noyjitat]

You can solo gms on anything that has -High -regen and the ability to self

heal or regen. I solo them on traps mastermind and fire kins. I also can solo some of them on my pistols/mental blaster thanks to drain psyche, softcapped defense and longbow incarnate pet.

Edited January 13, 2020 by Noyjitat

[Riverdusk]

On 1/13/2020 at 12:19 AM, Gulbasaur said:

I just wish there was some content that actively fought against tank and spank tactics - enemies that get more powerful huddled together would be amazing, like each one having a small +def +tohit aura or something so if you clump them all together they will tear you apart. Enemies that resist taunts would be great, if not for there being a secondary Threat mechanic that almost guarantees aggro (ice tankers do a lot of debuff and have a high threat modifier, which is why their aggro is so sticky). Give more enemies the mez-to-defeat protection that the hamidon mitochondria have to encourage teaming. 

 

Pandora's Box has a fight where you're encouraged to take down bosses before fighting the big bad boss to get bonuses by absorbing their power - I couldn't even get damage to register on the health bar until I took about five down -  and I think that's great. It's a shame that enemies with varied mechanics were such a late arrival to the game (and, you know, that development got axed).

Nemesis?  There is already also tougher content in things such as carnies or malta.  Problem is almost no one actually wants to fight them.  They are too busy doing their AE fire farms or easy Council missions.  Which is what always makes me question the theory that most people want a harder game.  The way they choose to play the game now doesn't really show it.

 

At the least you'd need to also look at the reward system and better balancing that as well in order to "encourage" most people to play the harder stuff.  That would be a delicate task.

 

 

[vibal]

On 1/13/2020 at 10:48 AM, quixoteprog said:

If you think they are out of control NOW, I remember back in the day, prior to Enhancement Diversification and the pet changes (I think pets used to last 5 minutes and recharge in 5 minutes, until they made it so that you could only have one out at a time, but they stayed out and could zone with you)

Didn't imps also summon 2-5 imps/cast with a cap of 32? So you could have a siphoned/hastened imp machine fulcrum shifting?

[quixoteprog]

1 minute ago, vibal said:

Didn't imps also summon 2-5 imps/cast with a cap of 32? So you could have a siphoned/hastened imp machine fulcrum shifting?

I never ran a fire controller back then. I think you got 3/cast, at least. Which meant you could have at least 9-12 out. To my knowledge there was no "cap" but I could be wrong on that one.

[Coyote]

26 minutes ago, quixoteprog said:

I never ran a fire controller back then. I think you got 3/cast, at least. Which meant you could have at least 9-12 out. To my knowledge there was no "cap" but I could be wrong on that one.

There was no direct cap, but even if you could reach the 400% Recharge Cap, that would limit the number of summons that you could have out at one time. I think it was remotely possible to manage 4 summons at a time, though.

[vibal]

On topic - aren't all AT's soloing AV's these days? Not every combo will be able to, but that's always been the case. GM's are a bigger hp pile with similar tactics.

 

I don't see a problem tbh. There would be a problem if there were legions of elite players excluding people from teams for playing off-meta. That wasn't the case on live, and still doesn't seem to be the case here.

 

 

[Gulbasaur]

1 hour ago, Riverdusk said:

Nemesis?  There is already also tougher content in things such as carnies or malta.  Problem is almost no one actually wants to fight them.  They are too busy doing their AE fire farms or easy Council missions.  Which is what always makes me question the theory that most people want a harder game.  The way they choose to play the game now doesn't really show it.

 

At the least you'd need to also look at the reward system and better balancing that as well in order to "encourage" most people to play the harder stuff.  That would be a delicate task.

Nemesis are definitely on my "a bit hard" list due to their mezz protection and the damage-on-defeat issue.

 

I almost never have trouble getting a team together in the LFG channel for story arc missions and the like. I think there is an audience there for more challenge variety than ±X levels and spawn sizes. The reward system would definitely have to be tweaked. My one real gripe with Homecoming is the ease of access to incarnate powers (aka rewards) without running incarnate content - it removes an incentive to try content that requires teaming (even if most of it is a faceroll if you're not worried about badges), leading to endless +4x8 tank'n'spank PUG missions. 

Edited January 14, 2020 by Gulbasaur