Consolidated CoH difficulty thread (Includes Poll!)

[TheSpiritFox]

Please leave IOs alone. The entire reason I play this game is to create Demi-gods. Rebalance IOs and I lose most of the reason I play. I am either on a toon I fully kitted out with an ideal build, or leveling a toon to fully kit out. I made a farmer to be able to IO out every single fucking thing I get past 22. Please whatever you do leave IOs alone. 

 

Like, I watch my roommate playing WoW Classic and I'm like FUUUUUCK THAT I want to be able to wade into armies and lay waste to them alone. 

 

Edited January 20, 2020 by TheSpiritFox

[DSorrow]

Generally I find the difficulty of CoX pretty good. After all, this is my "relax and kill skuls" game to contrast stuff like Sekiro or Dark Souls. That said, I think Galaxy Brain proposed a couple of great difficulty options that I'd like to see added:

• Advanced enemies. These could be a generic enemy group like the legacy Void Hunters (Incarnate Hunters?) who appear within others to simplify designs, but more importantly I'd like them to spice up combat by using AoEs you have to move out of and such. Buffing the enemies or just having insane stats themselves is boring, but making combat more interactive would be cool.
• Harder TFs sounds good and we kind of have that already with TFs such as Apex. Would be cool to have L50 versions of all TFs, though, with some added difficulty.
• Difficulty/rewards balancing. This is pretty obvious, but it would be cool if people had an incentive to fight stuff like Rularuu and Vanguard.

Finally, I'd like enemy groups such as Vanguard looked at a bit. Having an enemy group that can stack ludicrous amounts of -Res pretty much instantly is dumb because the only counter-strategy is to nuke them faster than they nuke you.

 

23 minutes ago, TheSpiritFox said:

Please leave IOs alone. The entire reason I play this game is to create Demi-gods. Rebalance IOs and I lose most of the reason I play.

Also this right here. 

[Parabola]

9 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

While the other enhancements are available for a sort of hard mode, and a TO run of the ITF would be hilarious, they are still sort of artificial difficulty in that you're just debuffing yourself and you have to go really out of your way to slot up like that...

Further to this and as a general comment about the idea that we already have the tools available to make the game harder for ourselves:

 

Yes, any individual can choose to not incarnate, or to not use IO's or even to use TO's at 50 if they want to make the game really hard. However that is beside the point because in the team setting it isn't just that one players level of performance that dictates their experience of the game.

 

When I was kicking around an idea for a buff to enemies in another thread I specifically wanted it to only apply when teaming for this reason. Solo it really doesn't matter how op or how gimped a player wants to be. Whatever they consider fun is fine as nothing they are doing directly impacts anyone else.

 

However in the team setting each individual is affecting the game experience of everyone. We all need to feel like we are contributing, that we are collectively working towards something. Playing on teams where individuals in that team are perfectly capable of soloing the content is in my opinion never going to be fun for anyone else.

[Novacat]

While I voted for "optional" on the difficulty change, I do believe there's a small amount of global fixing that would be needed - might make the optional changes simpler too.

Right now IOs are a bit of a crutch; some sets would still not quite be competitive were they not completely loaded with Sets and Incarnate abilities(both the Alpha and the extra abilities to round out its toolkit) while others are simply taken to new and greater heights or refined a little but overall functional on their own.

 

So adjusting difficulty would be similar to Live before i24; with everyone and their mother getting improvements and demanding something harder than +4/x8 while blasters were being reminded of their place at the bottom. It wouldn't really be ATs anymore (I hope) but particular sets are sure to have their weaknesses exacerbated.

 

As for what to fix on enemies, I like the idea of specials that mix things up a bit. Global health/damage increases would just screw people who aren't overpowered, and merely make it take longer for those who are. That's not difficulty that's grind.

Special enemies with all sorts of fun stuff could both double as prototypes for future player ability ideas, and give some life to tired old groups.

[Chris24601]

Looking at the tougher enemies in the game, they largely have ways of mitigating the typical player build advantages. Devouring Earth have their buff pets, Nemesis has their Vengeance-buffing LTs, Carnies target the Psi hole in a lot of defense sets and their mobs drain your END if defeated in melee, Malta has Sappers, Cimorarans have their -def on each attack, IDF has -regen with their plasma blasts, etc.

 

Further, a lot of these are found tied to the LT level. The DE buff pets are spawned by their LTs, Nemesis LTs are infamous for their Vengeance, Carnie illusionists with their phasing mechanic are LTs (and the bosses are worse).

 

So what I’d like to see is something like stackable leadership buffs added to the LT’s and Bosses (and EB/ABs naturally). These might be one or more of the classic leadership buffs; defense, damage, to-hit; or they could be more exotic depending on the opponent type (mez protection, resistance, recharge speed).

 

One LT might mean a fairly trivial +2-5% buff while bosses might be +5-10%.

 

That would mean it would barely be noticeable at default solondifficulty because you’d only find, at most, a single LT in a spawn and maybe 2-3 stack if you’re really unlucky with your aggro.

 

But it starts to get more significant in larger spawns with more LTs and then bosses in them. Depending on the size of the buffs, a x8 spawn might completely obliterate the softcap defense advantages and pull down the accuracy enough that you can’t just shoot through Sky Raider force field drones like they’re not even there.

 

If you give some variety to the leadership buffs based on the LT/Boss type then each spawn will be a bit different based on its composition to add some variety.

 

Making the LTs and Bosses into actual leaders who make their minions fight better also makes sense thematically. More exotic buffs could be lampshaded with some

mobs in open world spawns mentioning they finally got their bid at Wentworth’s filled (i.e. the villain groups also have IOs).

 

It could also be something phased in; even with attunement, few of the IO sets with good bonuses can be slotted before level 27 and it’s not until the 30s when you start getting fewer powers and more slots that you can really fit many of the 5-6 slot bonuses (where a lot of the recharge and defense bonuses lay) into the build.

 

So you could reasonably have this only apply starting with the level 30+ mobs and maybe not even all of them. Then at 40+ leadership buffs from LTs and Bosses become more ubiquitous and at level 50+ you start seeing more exotic buffs related to the enemy groups’ own Incarnate access.

 

Which in terms of future high level content is something that needs to be addressed. In Homecoming are Incarnate abilities still “cosmic” powers limited only to the few (i.e. rare outside of the player heroes) or are they something that just naturally emerges at level 50+?

 

If the latter, then it’d interesting to see some of the 53+ Boss mobs start to employ Incarnate abilities; a Council boss throwing out a Clarion or an Ionic Judgement would be a game changer (which is why I suggest 53+; if you play difficulty +0 or +1 then you’ll never see them; +2 would mean half might have Incarnate power, +3 or 4 guarantees they turn up.

[TechbotAlpha]

I have no super strong feelings on difficulty, apart from the fact that I will chime in on the side of "If I want to get punted around by generic mooks, I would go and play WoW or any of its clone offspring."

 

At low levels, yeah, I'm not moving off +0 x1 except for the odd AT (Brute etc) but, by the time I hit 50 and slot and Incarnate? Feeling like a SUPER HERO/VILLAIN and being able to crank up the difficulty is one of the reasons I loved CoH and why no other MMO can scratch the same itch. In WoW, any equal con 'minion' becomes dangerous if there are 3 or more of them. That's not 'super' or 'heroic' or, a lot of the time, even 'FUN'. 

So none of that in CoH, please. Or you'll re-sink the game just as surely as any market data analysts ever did.

[Lines]

I guess this got posted to Reddit. Really good to hear a wider range of thoughts on the subject.

 

I'm definitely getting the vibe that leaving the balance of the player characters themselves should be left more-or-less alone.  Difficulty should be (1) extrinsic to the character and (2) not ubiquitous.

 

The tweaking that's happening is good, because it done with the intention of bringing more life into certain ATs/Powersets rather than making things any more difficult for them. I'm very pro adding more difficulty, but in the form of variety, unique encounters and improving opportunities where the game is currently neither challenging nor rewarding and are largely underplayed bits of content. Adding +5x16 only really makes things slower.

 

Having done Synapse a couple of times this week (which is in dire need of the Posi/Yin treatment anyway), it's so underwhelming that the Clockwork King is just some matey boi stood in a corner at the end. I think this is an opportunity to add some drama to the game. There are several examples like this, but that's a familiar one.

 

Streetsweeping, too, is an opportunity for more varied encounters, for interesting gameplay and for new rewards. There could be a lot more life and action in the streets. But I'm like a broken record at this point bringing this up.

 

A big goal for difficulty is giving value to support/control powers towards the endgame, particularly in that lvl 50/pre-incarnate valley. For control, I think smarter AI is part of the solution here, where there's value in someone keeping the enemies locked down and unable to spread out to mitigate AoEs, run for help, get to cover, etc.

 

I'm interested to know how folks feel about difficulty : reward. 

[Grouchybeast]

14 hours ago, DougGraves said:

If you could create teams and set them for no IO set bonuses and incarnate powers, I would be happy with that.  90% of teams probably would not have those options on.  But I would team with the dozens of players who would prefer that.

Do you currently run arcs in Ouro with those settings turned on?  Do you find that you get dozens of people wanting to play them with you?  I'm generally against spending dev time on something that's only going to be of interest to a tiny minority of players.

Edited January 20, 2020 by Grouchybeast

[Bionic_Flea]

I have thought about this topic over the years and have made some observations:

1. There's a wide variety in the player base.  Believe it or not, there are players who don't have a level 50; players who don't use any IOs, players who only use generic IOs; players who PL to 50 in a couple of hours; players who solo exclusively; etc.  Some of these want the game harder, some want it easier, some just want people to slow down . . . or hurry up!
2. If difficulty is not tied to reward, players will generally avoid it.  The game currently provides several ways to increase difficulty: play against tougher foes (Rularuu, Arachnos, etc); play at higher settings, use the TF and Ouro settings to buff and debuff.  I don't think I have ever seen any of the below level 50 TFs run at +4 (except accidentally).  However, you will see +4 frequently when players know that they can beat it quickly and with ease.  The only time I see the TF difficulty settings (players debuffed, enemies buffed, timed, no deaths, no enhancements) being used is once for the specific badge and however many times it's needed to get a "Master of _______" badge.
3. It doesn't take much of a reward to encourage players to try difficult settings.  Some people are willing to try over and over to get a "Master of _______" badge or The Really Hard Way or other difficult badges.  After getting the badge, they might be willing to help others get it, but generally players avoid the additional difficulty after the reward goes away.  Synapse, Citadel, and most of the Shadow Shard TFs are repetitive and a slog, but people run them for the badges, the associated accolades, or because it's the weekly TF and has bonus rewards.
4. A significant slice of regular players will pursue maximum rewards for minimum effort.  Hello?  Fire farms?  Even at half XP fire farms are a quick and easy way to get XP, influence, and drops.  It's repetitive, boring, and yet beloved.
5.  Things like fire farms and other min/max speedy play creates disparity.  Players who like that kind of play get lots of XP and inf that lets them build characters that can do that content even faster.  The rich get richer.

My conclusion: Additional difficulty has to be rewarded or it will be avoided.  But instead of awarding XP and influence for killing critters, add other rewards, like badges, desirable IOs/recipes, incarnate salvage, etc.

 

Suggestion:  Add additional arc completion rewards.  If mission completion and especially story arc completion carried additional rewards more people would do those.  If it were possible to add a TF Mode to story arcs, such that you could grant bonuses to the entire team at the end and add other difficulty settings that would be great and allow additional challenge opportunities.

 

Edited January 20, 2020 by Bionic_Flea

[TC]

I voted. I don’t want to see any hard changes to the current game, like changing IO sets to different things, but I would love higher difficulty settings. I think changes that should be made to the game are two fold:

 

1) the game needs to have harder difficulty settings, full stop. Personally I think an M+ approach like from WoW would fit perfectly with CoHs instance based gameplay approach.

 

2) Re-tune ATs and existing powersets so that they feel and work better. I think the server has been far too conservative with changes, especially when you look at what the other servers have done since the re-launch of the game.

 

I think this game would benefit a lot from an overall buffing of weaker sets, especially s/l sets, while simultaneously offering players greater challenges within the game.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

Id go a multi pronged route. Id create Incarnate Hunters, Those who hunt Incarnates to siphon off their energy, Id tie them to the rulushin faction, maybe add a few bits of enemy banter suggesting this is to free Rulrul from the shard by feeding him the stolen power.  Id make this only able to happen in content were at least one player has active incarnate powers.

 

Id also start having nictus infused enemies and shadow cysts just become things that can happen at any level range and have nothing to do with kheldian players specifically. The Path of the Dark arc makes it very clear the nictus represent a long term global threat to all Earthlings. The Factions starting to have Nictus among their ranks whispering promises of greater power should be seen more often. Having a Shadow Cyst have a chance to be found in boss rooms alongside bosses as an example as well as a chance for the boss and his group having some added darkness abilities.

 

I do feel that it should be mostly opt in, like our dif slider Id add the above as additions to the current system. Id make the I hunters have an increased chance of dropping threads and shards, and the Nictus stuff could be as simple as the few various nictus based temp powers in the game, and additional charges/time to them for beating the cysts and upgraded bosses. Something modest but fun and flavorful.

[Bastille Boy]

Want the game to be harder? There are so many ways!

• Go to Ouroboros and run Flashback arcs with the difficulty cranked up.
• Do the same with strike forces (or "task forces" as blueside people call them).
• Create AE missions with challenging enemy groups (e.g. defender super-teams)
• Play with self-imposed limitations, e.g. run a petless mastermind or use SO enhancements only

Having trouble finding people to join you for extra-challenging missions? Maybe that's because most players enjoy steamrolling missions. (Player behavior is stronger evidence of player preferences than a forum survey that gets responses from a small, unrepresentative sample of the player base.)

 

Why should the volunteer devs running Homecoming change the game to suit your preferences, rather than the preferences of a large majority of players? Instead of asking the Homecoming team to do work that most players don't especially want them to do (and might adamantly oppose), find the users who want to use the advanced difficulty settings that already exist and arrange to run missions with them. Let the rest of us enjoy the game as it is. Don't ruin our fun.

 

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

On 1/13/2020 at 8:18 PM, Heraclea said:

Another major issue with goldside is that the alignment system there is team unfriendly from the starting gate.  Separating the player base and missions into Loyalist and Resistance means that you can't join teams running opposite faction content without a penalty.  It was an interesting idea poorly implemented.

 

This is also why mobs that stack debuffs and mez should be avoided as a way of artificially inflating difficulty.  That kind of mob punishes you for having a larger team, and devalues aggro attraction especially badly. 

I feel compelled to talk about something you touch upon here that you treat as a negative but by the time the game shut down was seen as a negativ4e aspect in MMO that modern MMO devs were moving past.

 

Aggro draw, in other words tanking. Tanking much like support healing has long been a heated and controversial issue, because as many have pointed out and rightly so, it depends on bad AI and is basically exploiting the limited ways AI can adapt to such things. CoH devs early on saw the issue with this hence the reduced number of mobs any one person can have aggro to.

 

A fair few MMO gamers Ive seen tend to agree randomized aggro, or aggro based soley on personal dps/healing should always pull aggro no matter what. Because that is what we players do. We always ignore tanky soft hitters to focus on healing mobs, and mobs that hit the hardest. That the role of the tank as an aggro magnet is basically one that can ruin the fun of the game for many who no matter their AT/playstyle want to have at least some foes in their faces making them feel like the mobs see them as a threat and not just a blip.

 

This is why you often see players scatter in maps so they each have their own mobs and fights, why some who lead TFs with AV solo killer builds will ask team mates to leave the big boss to them and do the other tasks at hand.

 

And mobs should have a multiplication factor for larger teams to deal with them and the means to debuff and hinter the players. The above post of yours basically says sorry nothing can be done to actually challenge the players because the same tools we use are too good for the mobs to have.

[Doomrider]

43 minutes ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

Id go a multi pronged route. Id create Incarnate Hunters, Those who hunt Incarnates to siphon off their energy, Id tie them to the rulushin faction, maybe add a few bits of enemy banter suggesting this is to free Rulrul from the shard by feeding him the stolen power.  Id make this only able to happen in content were at least one player has active incarnate powers.

 

So kind of like Quantums but only spawn when players (or a player) have incarnates slotted? 
 

44 minutes ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

 

Id also start having nictus infused enemies and shadow cysts just become things that can happen at any level range and have nothing to do with kheldian players specifically. The Path of the Dark arc makes it very clear the nictus represent a long term global threat to all Earthlings. The Factions starting to have Nictus among their ranks whispering promises of greater power should be seen more often. Having a Shadow Cyst have a chance to be found in boss rooms alongside bosses as an example as well as a chance for the boss and his group having some added darkness abilities.

 

I do feel that it should be mostly opt in, like our dif slider Id add the above as additions to the current system. Id make the I hunters have an increased chance of dropping threads and shards, and the Nictus stuff could be as simple as the few various nictus based temp powers in the game, and additional charges/time to them for beating the cysts and upgraded bosses. Something modest but fun and flavorful.

I'm all for Shadow Cysts coming back in whatever form that may come. I play my Khelds more so than any of my other alts, and I really miss Cysts spawning on maps. I know many probably feel very differently about Cysts in general so I could see this only being available as an opt in, whether that was integrating into the current system or reserved only as an Ouro challenge setting. I would take either at this point but I agree it would be nice to have special/rare chances attached to them.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

18 minutes ago, Doomrider said:

So kind of like Quantums but only spawn when players (or a player) have incarnates slotted? 
 

I'm all for Shadow Cysts coming back in whatever form that may come. I play my Khelds more so than any of my other alts, and I really miss Cysts spawning on maps. I know many probably feel very differently about Cysts in general so I could see this only being available as an opt in, whether that was integrating into the current system or reserved only as an Ouro challenge setting. I would take either at this point but I agree it would be nice to have special/rare chances attached to them.

To the first yeah basically an incarnate equiv of a Q hunter for khelds. I usually try to draw from current mechanics when making suggestions especially for a vol dev team. They wouldnt need anything too special, maybe they could simply be immune to judgement or give off an aura that disables inc powers if such is possible.

 

For the cysts, yes they would be an opt in dif scale slider aspect just like enabling solo AVs etc. If the leader has it on then yep you might get path of the dark foes, id actually call the dif option just that, path of the dark.

[Lines]

That Kheld hunter idea is making me think, and it would be a big'un and unrealistic'un.

 

What about a nemesis system where players could create one or more nemeses AE-style. That nemesis and their gang would appear randomly in missions every now and again when you least expect them (perhaps with the exception of missions that already have an AV, so as not to interrupt). They level up with you and are scaled to you, being an incarnate as you become an incarnate.

 

If they win the fight, they gloat and run off and despawn, so they don't become an insurmountable obstacle, but are a looming threat.

 

I think it could have hilarious results.

[Chris24601]

1 hour ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

Id go a multi pronged route. Id create Incarnate Hunters, Those who hunt Incarnates to siphon off their energy, Id tie them to the rulushin faction, maybe add a few bits of enemy banter suggesting this is to free Rulrul from the shard by feeding him the stolen power.  Id make this only able to happen in content were at least one player has active incarnate powers.

Can I swipe this to add it to my list of “let’s update the Shadow Shard” concepts? Because I’m seeing a way to create a unified concept here.

 

The short version was someone was asking to make the Shadow Shard co-op so red-side could get there. I suggested replacing the generic troops there with Vanguard (the people tasked with actually dealing with extradimensional theats; see Rikti and Praetoria) and moving the access point for the Shard from Portal Corps to the existing portals (currently used to reach the RWZ) in the Vanguard depots.

 

Where your idea would be a nice addition is the idea that the Rulu’shin are stealing Incarnate power to break Rularuu free (via the extra mobs popping up in enemy groups); so Incarnates need to head into the Shard to steal it back by performing various repeatable missions scaled to Incarnate power levels to add some additional things to do inside the Shadow Shard (along with some revamping of the Shadow Shard TFs akin to Posi/Yin).

 

Throw in a Circle of Thorns level adjustment (i.e. stop making the different mages and casters level locked to certain small bands... level 54 life mages and earth casters alongside the air/fire/ice casters and ruin/death mages would make their spawns far less predictable) since they’ve got a presence in the Shard and some high end Nemesis troops (I’d like to see some models with the steam pack players can get from the P2W vendor added for flying units in the Shard) and you could have another Incarnate Zone akin to Dark Astoria.

[Sakura Tenshi]

57 minutes ago, Lines said:

That Kheld hunter idea is making me think, and it would be a big'un and unrealistic'un.

 

What about a nemesis system where players could create one or more nemeses AE-style. That nemesis and their gang would appear randomly in missions every now and again when you least expect them (perhaps with the exception of missions that already have an AV, so as not to interrupt). They level up with you and are scaled to you, being an incarnate as you become an incarnate.

 

If they win the fight, they gloat and run off and despawn, so they don't become an insurmountable obstacle, but are a looming threat.

 

I think it could have hilarious results.

Honestly, this would make papers and tips become pretty damn awesome. Coding nightmare aside. I'd love to give my heroes and villains their own foes and even their own lackeys outside of AE.

[Galaxy Brain]

Only issue I see with a nemesis system is making pushover nemesis designed to be wrecked by you.

[Sakura Tenshi]

24 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Only issue I see with a nemesis system is making pushover nemesis designed to be wrecked by you.

I think this could mostly be mitigated in that you can only choose primary, secondary, pool, and ancillary powers, but not which powers specifically.

 

Alternatively, instead of specific powersets, we could only choose a broad theme (naturally with power overlaps) and from there they can even get power combos normally impossible as a player. So if you pick a 'fiery powers' theme you could start with them only using a bit of the fiery assault mixed with fiery armor, but come incarnate levels they're laying into you with every single possible fire power in the game. Such could even be a way to not necessarily need to give them a full suite of incarnate powers down the line (maybe just the judgement). Drawbacks with this could include the obvious fact that not all powers are as broad as fire, such as Assault Rifle, even assuming we can throw in SoA attacks like Single Shot, Heavy Burst, and so on, they'll still have less than others, and then there's just those powersets that would need all new powers given to them to keep them in the running like Katana or broadsword.

[Chris24601]

17 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Only issue I see with a nemesis system is making pushover nemesis designed to be wrecked by you.

The main issue I see is the Standard Code Rant given it’s a rather extensive change.

 

A slightly more scaled back option that avoids the pitfall you mentioned would be selecting your nemesis from a list of pre-generated ones (so they don’t have a particularly exploited weakness).

 

Another option I could see that would actually make Origins matter more would be to link a pre-generated nemesis to you based on your origin and maybe AT.

 

A third option would be to make your first radio mission assign you a random nemesis and then they periodically show up again and again.

 

The reason I suggest this is because it’s not like Superman chose Lex Luthor to be his nemesis. It happened as part of his early adventures and circumstances clicking. Lex also points out that a nemesis doesn’t need to be physically similar or a dark mirror (I’ve seen several personal nemesis suggestions hinge on using mirrored powersets)... they just need to be your opposition.

[Frosticus]

I love the missions with doppelgangers. Sometimes they can be one heck of a challenge. Like stalker combos can be hilarious. Although it turned my savage melee into dominator savage assault. It was still cool. 

[Psi]

A realistic solution maybe just be to scale the enemies to the actual number of players on a team. Not through the existing difficulty system. So a single player doing x8 missions will not be bothered, but a team of 8 players may be facing enemies that have a scaling buff applied to them. I wouldn't do increased mob numbers nor increasing their level, but instead something akin to a resistance and damage buff for each player on a team.

 

I don't mind anyone feeling godlike on their own, but I do mind it when I cannot play the game as it was intended because you can't stand to let the rest of your teammates enjoy the game as well.

[Mystic_Cross]

For the survey, I chose: 

 

• I feel that only certain parts of the game need to be looked at (IOs, Incarnates, etc)
• I would play on an advanced difficulty setting only if it were optional (like the current settings, only more!)
• I would only like to see minor changes to difficulty

for question 1, and then for question 2: 

 

• Change up IO and/or Incarnate bonuses
• Enemies should get some sort of stat changes to better fight players in general

 

To be clear, I don't agree with the "guided choices" put forth by the survey... but these were ultimately the "closest" to how I feel about the game.

 

IO's specifically have created a power vacuum that everyone is now able to fill, while the rest of the game was left "as is" for the most part. Incarnates only exacerbated the issues that IO's created. That said, I don't necessarily feel that IO's need to be touched in any way to create more of a challenge. I like my "god-mode" as much as anything, it's great fun and IO's were a boon to that type of play. IO's truly make one feel "super" on an individual level, and I'd be remiss to take that away from anyone (including myself), so that leaves a dilemma where you know something is fundamentally wrong in one regard, but absolutely enjoyable in another... what do you do?

 

Nerfing or changing IO's is an easy go-to... moving around set bonuses and the like, or reducing them, seems to be a common call-out that I've seen. I *may* have even been guilty of this on occasion... but that's basically a knee-jerk reaction to something that everyone can (or should be able to) plainly see. It's not a suggestion based on deep thinking or analyzing the issues that were created and never addressed after the introduction of IO's. It's also been so long since their introduction that everyone has gotten used to the game being like this. Heck, I'll be the first to admit that I'm used to it. I don't want to lose my ability to be super, but at the same time... if I'm honest with myself, that's a knee-jerk reaction with no thought behind it either. So, now that we've established, with this long-winded rant,  that I'm conflicted... a quick thought on how to balance it all out (or maybe not so quick, we'll see...)

 

The main issue that I see is that the defense soft-cap is just entirely too easy for anyone to achieve, via IO's. I feel like it should still be easy for those with defense-based Primary or Secondary sets (EX: SR or ICE - neither of which I play, btw), while moderately-easy for other mitigation sets, and moderately more difficult (but still entirely possible) for squishies. The only way I can think (with minimal thought, mind you) of doing this, is to raise the defense soft-cap. I feel like changing this one aspect would ultimately give the opportunity for increased difficulty that (some) people seem to want, while not changing how the game plays in practically any other regard. Enemies will hit you more, period... unless you're at the soft-cap. That alone is a moderate difficulty increase. People don't find the game challenging at all because the enemy attacks just aren't landing... they don't need more damage, they don't need "smarter" mob AI... they need to be able to -Hit- the player. (and queue "the uproar" please... )

 

I don't think It's a drastic suggestion, personally. Right now, we have a soft-cap of 45% defense which will leave enemies whiffing their attacks 95% of the time against you... if that were increased to say, the current incarnate-level of 65%, but in regular content... it could still be reachable, but also a bit more difficult to reach without giving up a little, which would in-turn moderately increase the difficulty in the sub-incarnate world. It -may- even require a slight buff to IO's in order to make sure that level of performance is still attainable (just not quite as easy as it is now, and you'd most likely need to give up something in order to reach that level of survival - a choice). Right now, we can have our cake (+Survivability) and eat it too (+Everything-else) with IO's. We should keep that metric, I think, but it shouldn't really be fully attainable until Incarnate-level. 

 

There would be a lot to consider, obviously..., player To-Hit De-buff values come to mind and may need adjustment, on top of many other things. But overall, I think raising the base-game soft-cap to incarnate-level would be an overall positive change. By extension, Incarnate-level would then likely need to be raised, creating an actual need for choice throughout the Incarnate tree, instead of "everyone takes X - almost all the time".

 

I also think Incarnate stuff should do -something- for exemplaring (maybe it does and I just don't remember?)… if you've grasped the power of a "god", it feels inadequate that you lose it all by helping someone at a lower level... maybe something like being able to keep all of your IO set-bonuses regardless of level or something? I dunno, just a random thought. 

 

The other thing I'd like to see, is all of the regular enemies/missions in the game get a "praetorian" re-work, maybe even have it as an option... like how we can choose not to fight AVs in missions or something (again, no deep thought involved here).  I'd think this would take a lot longer to implement though. Maybe just try it with a single faction or story arc and see how it plays out over on Pineapple... see how it feels. Anyway, I'll stop myself here... because otherwise I'll keep rambling. 

 

TL;DR - We can currently have the -best- cake with the -best- frosting, I think we should have to choose between an -ok- cake and the -best- frosting, or vice-versa... prior to incarnate-level play.

[Ironscarlet]

I had a dream ….. 🧙‍♂️

 

 

Seriously before I went to bed last night I read this post and I pondered.

 

It is really IO's that change this game into easy mod, but to overhaul it now would be to time consuming for the dev team. So I suppose a different approach.

 

Right now the 2 classes that are going the way of the dinosaurs are CC type like controllers and Tanks. What made this game fun before was you need these 2 classes to move through groups because damage and placement of groups made it so you could not run through them.

 

 

I would say make small change to better all

 

Phase one

Remove  punch-voke from brutes

Remove Gauntlet from tanks leave them with only punch-voke

Remove Aoe cap from Tanks.

 

This will cause more agro problems which will lead to controllers having a better role on teams. Brute wont lose all aggro gimmicks they have taunt aura in powers and have a aoe taunt. They will have to actively choose to taunt or damage.   Tank loose the firm grasp of aggro but gain a place in the game. Controller have a bigger role now and CC re-enters relevance.

 

Phase two

Increase damage of mobs

This will need to be tested a lot to figure out a raise between 5%-20% increase

Increase xp equal to the damage increase

 

Phase Three

On future end game content  

Should create new mobs that have sapper like effect on groups where you have to target that npc to CC them before you jump into the mob or focus target.

Mega De-buffers that have to be CC

 

This will lead to more strategy in everyday missions on all levels. Which is how I remember COH where sometimes you had to stop with your group think before you jumped in.  It's not the best idea but it would be the simplest and least time consuming on the dev team. With out overtaking a major overhaul that might alienate some vet players.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 20, 2020 by Ironscarlet