Consolidated CoH difficulty thread (Includes Poll!)

[Bionic_Flea]

10 hours ago, Illy said:

As I browse through this thread, it looks like that response was not an anomaly. I can see people stating their preference for higher difficulty, and they are called things like "insecure" or "blowhards", or hilariously baseless assumptions are made about their self-esteem in real life. The most common retort is that those who want higher difficulty have nothing else to live for and are using the game as a means to self-esteem. 

Can you point me to where on this thread anyone used the words "insecure" or "blowhard"?  I just searched on my own and your post is the only one that has either of them.

[Solarverse]

/sad rant  😞

 

I chose a global difficulty increase by any means necessary.

 

I hate to admit it, but the leveling process is far too easy and if I try to increase the mobs beyond +0 or God forbid +1, people complain about it and act as if it would just destroy their days to play at anything higher than +0. This game has lost its flavor for me because everything is steam rolled with little to no challenge. Lower level Task Forces are being steam rolled by level 50's who chose to skip all the low level content for whatever reason, but then return to conquer the low level content with their IO'ed might. No offense, I am just telling it how it feels to me, these players are honestly killing the leveling progression for me.

 

I miss the days when this game took teamwork...all this steam rolling reminds me too much of DCUO where low levels just chase around the high levels in low level content because honestly, the low levels can't keep up. I don't want to leave this game; but honestly, if things keep going the way they are, I am eventually going to get bored with no challenge in the level progression (which I spend the majority of my time doing) and will find another game that is still fresh and has not been overrun with the steam roll power creep thing we have today.

Sadly, judging by how most of the players have voted, it would seem nothing is going to change to my liking anytime soon. It would seem the majority of players are perfectly happy playing the leveling content on easy mode. Yes, I know, I can find like minded people who feel as I do to level with, however, I even made a thread on my server to try and find such people. I got crickets. I got a couple of curious questions, but nothing came of it, not even one single player. So it would seem people like me are a dying breed and MMO's have been taken over by players who prefer it the way things are today, as this is mirrored on many MMOs. IMO and from my point of view, when computer MMO gaming was young, it drew the attention of players like me who loved the challenge, but as popularity grew, the MMO worlds have seemed to change to give people instant gratification instead.

 

Once upon a time, if you seen somebody with a cape, you knew that player had to work for it and achieved something that player worked for. Once upon a time, if they had an Aura, they worked for it and earned it. They were milestones in your character's development. Now, it's all given to you at character creation and honestly kills the fun in progression even more for me. Yes, I know, I can chose not to wear capes until level 20 like in the old days and I can chose to wait until level 30 like the old days, but come on, let's be real with each other here, it's just not the same.

 

And before somebody accuses me of wanting the world to bend to my way of things, that is not what I am trying to say here...what I am actually telling you is that I admit defeat and I give up the good fight. Now, I can only hope and pray and dream that somebody comes out with a Vanilla server for people like myself.

 

One reason I was so turned on by MMO's was because they were not easy, they were not meant to be easy. They took teamwork and synergy. Somehow over the years it was changed and made easy. These days MMO's are not a reflection of what they once were and honestly, I am starting to lose my taste for them.

 

I promise, I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade who prefers the game as is, but you have to remember, before all these changes that came along that made the game the way you like it, I was the guy who liked it like it was BEFORE all the changes came along that made it the way you like it. If the game started off the way it is today, I would have never played it for longer than a couple of weeks. It was how it was when it was new that attracted me to it and has held me to it even after all these years. That is lost now.

 

As silly as this may sound to you, it feels from my perspective that the game was taken from me and then it was customized to fit your liking. Meanwhile, my preference for this game has been over for a very long time, and I keep hoping for some type of change that will bring the feel of the game and the way it was in the beginning back...but as I can see from how players have voted, I can either live with it how it exists today, or hope to God that somebody comes out with a Vanilla Server, or I can leave CoH forever...and honestly, that kills me inside to even think the latter thought.

 

/end rant  😞

[Heraclea]

2 minutes ago, Solarverse said:

 Lower level Task Forces are being steam rolled by level 50's who chose to skip all the low level content for whatever reason, but then return to conquer the low level content with their IO'ed might. No offense, I am just telling it how it feels to me, these players are honestly killing the leveling progression for me.

This happens mostly because the Homecoming servers encourage it.  Running the weekly target TF/SF earns level 50s double merits and incarnate geemies that are slow in coming any other way.  So of course there will be level 50s on your Synapse. 

[Galaxy Brain]

2 minutes ago, Heraclea said:

This happens mostly because the Homecoming servers encourage it.  Running the weekly target TF/SF earns level 50s double merits and incarnate geemies that are slow in coming any other way.  So of course there will be level 50s on your Synapse. 

Hmmm... you know, that is an idea. What about weekly or monthly "hardcore targets" that give bigger merit rewards to specifically hard tasks?

[Haijinx]

There is no way to know if someone skipped low level content and rushed to 50 or slowly leveled to 50 but didn't do TFs on the way.  Or if they are simply repeating TFs

 

My completionist run is just now getting around to TFs.  All 4 praetorian paths? Check.  Frostfire? Check.  The Skulls arc in KR? Check.  All the faultline stuff .. Striga isle ..  Golden Roller ... and so on 

 

Have holy shotgun shells, a wedding band, all kinds to temp powers Ill never use. 

 

But still I'm now a level 50 with 6 purple sets steamrolling Synapse ... 

[Solarverse]

29 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

There is no way to know if someone skipped low level content and rushed to 50 or slowly leveled to 50 but didn't do TFs on the way.  Or if they are simply repeating TFs

 

My completionist run is just now getting around to TFs.  All 4 praetorian paths? Check.  Frostfire? Check.  The Skulls arc in KR? Check.  All the faultline stuff .. Striga isle ..  Golden Roller ... and so on 

 

Have holy shotgun shells, a wedding band, all kinds to temp powers Ill never use. 

 

But still I'm now a level 50 with 6 purple sets steamrolling Synapse ... 

That's cool, but wasn't my point, man. Doesn't matter how you got to 50, the end result is still the same. Like I said, was not trying to rain on anyone's parade, so please don't take anything I said personal. Regardless of how a player gets to 50 or why, the end result remains.

[Bionic_Flea]

 

Seriously.  If you want to play a certain way, play that way.  Find others that also want to play that way.  Post on the forums, talk in discord, use LFG and other channels on your server. 

 

I ran a +4 Speed ITF today.  15 minutes, no deaths.  To many that sounds horrible, but I loved it!  And the others that ran it with me did too.

[Lines]

6 hours ago, Solarverse said:

/sad rant  😞

 

 

 

/end rant  😞

 

Take a look at some of the individual ideas that have come up in the thread. Granted there have been a few NIMBY posts, which is fair. There is still a lot of discussion about how we can achieve teamwork, strategy, and challenge in the context of the game's current state.

 

I agree that the game - at least the endgame - makes every character either generic or substandard, which is entirely against the grain of how it should feel. Simplicity in the circumstance calls for simplicity in the characters. But I am not at all pessimistic that the opportunities for the game to feel diverse again are possible and I don't think it need be done by going backwards. It's also something that will take a lot of solutions rather than one silver bullet.

 

I do not think that powerfulness and challenge are opposed goals. I also believe that challenge can be increased by altering or redesigning factors external to the players.

 

A large part of this, however, is risk:reward. With both inf and exp lacking in much meaning, the incentive to increase risk even is quite flat. This is a tricky balancing act - How to provide sustainable reward to higher challenges without alienating those who want/need an easier, casual game.

Edited January 23, 2020 by Lines

[Infinitum]

8 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

 

Seriously.  If you want to play a certain way, play that way.  Find others that also want to play that way.  Post on the forums, talk in discord, use LFG and other channels on your server. 

 

I ran a +4 Speed ITF today.  15 minutes, no deaths.  To many that sounds horrible, but I loved it!  And the others that ran it with me did too.

I ran a 24 min itf last night - 5 Scrappers a sent, domi, and blaster.  It was one of the most fun things I have ever done in this game.  We didn't even start as a speed run, it just kinda went that way, also killing most in the process.  So fun.  Haha

 

The point was brought up earlier that some people dont want to lead and organize, so I think thats part of the problem.

 

I see it also there are times where I ask what everyone would like to do and don't get much of a response so BAM +4/8 Apex, tin mage, mltf, lgtf, and we roll it.

 

I always like rolling the more difficult path and those with me seem to enjoy it when we do.

 

But there are times where you have had a soul crushing exhausting day at work where you just want to -1/1 the poo out of every TF you can just to blow off steam and throw crap around and not be there for 2 or 3 hours.

 

I've seen and been a part of both sides - both are fun, but both are situational to how your people's day has gone and how they are feeling honestly, which is why a good team leader can determine that and roll with it either way.

Edited January 23, 2020 by Infinitum

[Chris24601]

I will add that one non-optional part of difficulty adjustment I would be for is a rebalance of the rewards.

 

Carnies and Rularuu ARE more difficult than Council of the same level and the xp/inf/salvage awards should reflect that. Heck, maybe some of the harder enemy group missions could even have small merit rewards.

 

Also worth mentioning in terms of increased difficulty is that a lot of it (particularly some of the harder TFs) can be quite time consuming and I suspect the current player base skews older than a lot of MMOs with correspondingly less free time to play.

 

As such, breaking some of that harder content up into more digestible chunks akin to Posi 1/2 or adapting some of the trials that take 16-24 members into conventional task forces might also make it easier to run.

[nihilii]

14 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Can you point me to where on this thread anyone used the words "insecure" or "blowhard"?  I just searched on my own and your post is the only one that has either of them.

Illy is a troll in the oldschool sense of the term. A few months back he made a topic where he complained there was no difficulty, then he dodged every legitimate suggestion and kept bickering with less relevant posts.

[RikOz]

2 hours ago, Chris24601 said:

I will add that one non-optional part of difficulty adjustment I would be for is a rebalance of the rewards.

 

Carnies and Rularuu ARE more difficult than Council of the same level and the xp/inf/salvage awards should reflect that. Heck, maybe some of the harder enemy group missions could even have small merit rewards.

That reminds me - I think they missed a few things when they increased merit rewards for story arcs.  There's an odd bit of dissonance when I get 13 merits for Montague Castanella's mostly very easy "cure Lost" arc, but only 6 merits for the Talos Island arc involving my character's duplicate, with a quite difficult Protean fight at the end of it.

[Illy]

10 hours ago, nihilii said:

Illy is a troll in the oldschool sense of the term. A few months back he made a topic where he complained there was no difficulty, then he dodged every legitimate suggestion and kept bickering with less relevant posts.

I didn't even respond to that thread after the first retort. I let it run for pages and completely left it. When you're concocting a lie, you probably shouldn't allude to a thread which is still accessible to any who wish to see it, otherwise you're caught in your lie. 

 

I made a calm inquiry to the community as to whether or not difficult content existed in the game and was promptly called, after that innocuous question, a neck-beard and a pedophile by strangers on the internet whom I have never met. I am guessing you find these assertions more agreeable and reasonable that the innocent position of wanting higher difficulty. 

 

People who have different opinions to your own are not trolls.  

Edited January 24, 2020 by Illy

[Sakura Tenshi]

Okay, so I had an idea for a possible difficulty increases, some of which could be mutually exclusive or combined.

 

First one, as i mentioned, is that 'mission objective bosses' that come up in content should have an option to be upgraded into EBs, this one sticks out to me from playing a Citadel TF where we had to defeat a boss. A regular old boss for an objective and I thought to myself "there's no way in hell that was a challenge for an eight-man team even before IOs". The challenge would come from needing to basically make new 'generic' EBs and the coding options. Nevermind if you want to be fancy and give them some special attacks. Still, I think this could be, if nothing else, a way to let soloers have bigger challenges and big teams actually have time to notice a mission boss.

 

Second one that could be tied to this would involve giving standard bosses, EBs, and AVs a +5% accuracy boost (and thus +10% to Incarnate content bosses, etc.) A large part of 'runaway surviability' is how easy it can be to softcap the defenses of many builds, such a change would mean builds would either need to give up other functions like recharge boosts or recovery for more defense or accept a loss of survivability and focus on their other functions. Now, just doing this means that powersets geared towards defense (SR, Nin, Energy, Ice, possibly shield, SoAs can take it dry though.) would need to be boosted so they don't get screwed over, allowing them to basically continue on as somewhat normal, if not laughing much more heartedly laugh at minions and Lieutenants.

 

The second one though is really just a rough idea, I know the 'ease' of city of heroes is a much more complicated situation than just runaway survivability, but it could be considered as one facet of a larger difficulty rise.

[Grouchybeast]

6 hours ago, Illy said:

I didn't even respond to that thread after the first retort. I let it run for pages and completely left it. When you're concocting a lie, you probably shouldn't allude to a thread which is still accessible to any who wish to see it, otherwise you're caught in your lie. 

 

I made a calm inquiry to the community as to whether or not difficult content existed in the game and was promptly called, after that innocuous question, a neck-beard and a pedophile by strangers on the internet whom I have never met.

Well, literally none of those things are true.  No one called you either of those things, and you responded for 3/4 pages.  I'm still interested to know what your actual definition of challenging content is, though, since you never answered that.

[Lines]

Since that topic was locked, let's not bring the discussion of who is trolling who to here.

 

Having said that, definitions of challenge are significant and welcome. We're bound to disagree on the nature and appropriateness of challenge in this game, but it should all be good discussion.

[AerialAssault]

I'll confess to not reading the thread fully so apologies if this has already been suggested:

 

How about expanding the Ouroboros challenge options to regular play? Perhaps an NPC of some description can offer the same options, which will apply to any and every mission. Oh, and add a little warning before joining a team with these options enabled.

 

As an incentive, upping the difficulty would give better rewards in the form of XP/Inf per challenge added, and more generous reward rolls for end-of-arc completion? And of course, badges.

[Sniktch]

To point out a simple reversal:

 

Those who say the difficulty is too low are told to do various intentional self-gimping things, usually facetiously and snarkily.  TOs only, for example.

 

To that, I say: if that's a valid suggestion, so is suggesting that everyone who wants 'easy' should just kick it down to -1.  +4/x8 is supposed to be a challenge.  -1/x anything is supposed to be easy mode.  Unfortunately, currently +4/x8 is steamroll-easy - as a note, I have multiple characters who do indeed do Rularuu, Nemmy, Malta, Carnies, and DA at +2/x8 and CAN do it at +4, but I don't because it's not 'challenging', it's just slower.  IO bonuses, active Incarnate abilities, and Hasten (which, BTW, is the single biggest +Recharge effect in the game - even Speed Boost and Siphon Speed are weaker, and they either are not-affect-self or require regular reapplication with a hit-check on a hostile) all make survivability via the soft-cap too easy to reach, and relegate early powers to the set-mule trash-heap.

 

And as a comparison point, I remember Repeat Offenders and all the sub-groups they had - to me, THAT kind of power isn't 'bad' because everyone actually contributes, no player is an island, and the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.  As so many others have said, it falls foul when one person is basically doing the mission and everyone else is just there for pity slots.  In a way, we've full-circled back to launch tanker-herding, just without the tanker and with an aggro cap.

[golstat2003]

16 minutes ago, Sniktch said:

To point out a simple reversal:

 

Those who say the difficulty is too low are told to do various intentional self-gimping things, usually facetiously and snarkily.  TOs only, for example.

 

To that, I say: if that's a valid suggestion, so is suggesting that everyone who wants 'easy' should just kick it down to -1.  +4/x8 is supposed to be a challenge.  -1/x anything is supposed to be easy mode.  Unfortunately, currently +4/x8 is steamroll-easy - as a note, I have multiple characters who do indeed do Rularuu, Nemmy, Malta, Carnies, and DA at +2/x8 and CAN do it at +4, but I don't because it's not 'challenging', it's just slower.  IO bonuses, active Incarnate abilities, and Hasten (which, BTW, is the single biggest +Recharge effect in the game - even Speed Boost and Siphon Speed are weaker, and they either are not-affect-self or require regular reapplication with a hit-check on a hostile) all make survivability via the soft-cap too easy to reach, and relegate early powers to the set-mule trash-heap.

 

And as a comparison point, I remember Repeat Offenders and all the sub-groups they had - to me, THAT kind of power isn't 'bad' because everyone actually contributes, no player is an island, and the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.  As so many others have said, it falls foul when one person is basically doing the mission and everyone else is just there for pity slots.  In a way, we've full-circled back to launch tanker-herding, just without the tanker and with an aggro cap.

You and I must be playing a different game.

 

EDIT: There is a reason this option won the poll:

 

I would play on an advanced difficulty setting only if it were optional (like the current settings, only more!)

 

Optional new difficulty level is the best way to go.

Edited January 26, 2020 by golstat2003

[AWOL]

I would like an optional harder seeing and this should have badges (like matter of) and rewards like inf,  XP and merits scaled with this difficulty increase but not additional rewards that give further buffs as this would just defeat the purpose. I think IOs are fine as is.

 

Incarnate could be weakened as they scale players beyond content difficulty.

[Illy]

On 1/24/2020 at 4:09 AM, Grouchybeast said:

Well, literally none of those things are true.  No one called you either of those things, and you responded for 3/4 pages.  I'm still interested to know what your actual definition of challenging content is, though, since you never answered that.

That's because an admin removed the post and several others. Weird stalker. 

[Tahliah]

On 1/13/2020 at 1:17 PM, ShardWarrior said:

I am not sold that adding +5 or higher is the answer.  Given how the game works, anything higher than +6 chances are you will never be able to hit it, let alone cause any damage.   Seems to me this is leading more toward a stalemate than anything else. 

 

I cannot speak for anyone else, but most all of my fully decked out characters will solo bosses and EBs rather easily whether there is one or ten of them.  Adding more HP and ludicrous spike damage to NPCs is the easy answer, but to me this is not adding challenge, just drawing out the battle.

 

Were I a real choice, I would choose a more intelligent AI that can adapt to you. 

I think that all of these discussions about difficulty do miss this point completely.  There is nothing inherently more difficult about killing 30 instead of 10 baddies that you can easily kill anyway.  It just takes longer and gets boring more quickly than just steamrolling the 10 throughout a map.  I see nothing challenging about fighting at /x8 at all, to be honest (unless I'm on a troll, then it is kind of more fun).  If I can kill four on my incarnate blaster, I can kill 8 or 10 or 30.  Shrug. 

 

And your point about upping the diff to +5 and up is also spot on.  If I can't hit anything or do any damage, I'm not going to be challenged or find it "hard." I'm going to be aggravated and annoyed, and every mission will take forever (adding to the aggravation and annoyance factor). 

 

Ultimately, the only solution to the "problem" of some players finding the game too easy is very limited: either gimp everyone or make the enemies stronger in a way that is balanced and includes every element from level to damage to resistance to defense to debuffs, and etc.  The first choice is ridiculous and will cause far more turmoil and rage than the "easiness" of the game, and the second would take a major overhaul by the devs (who are currently working for freaking free).  I say just leave well enough alone until a real solution can be found that will make everyone happy or at least not totally alienate the majority of players (as would gimping everyone to make it "harder").

[Wavicle]

On 1/18/2020 at 9:41 AM, gameboy1234 said:

Be careful with this kind of analysis.  We have a very small sample size.  Only 45 people voted out of what I'm sure is a much much larger playing population.  There might be selection bias in that people who want such changes are the ones who would click on a thread like this. Many folks probably didn't bother to read or vote because they weren't interested.

 

This may give us some direction to work towards, but I don't think it's representative of the overall population's views.

Cannot emphasize this enough.

[Wavicle]

The people saying the LEVELLING game is too easy are just wrong and should simply be ignored.  Is the game too easy at high level?  Maybe. But the idea that the game just generally should be harder is really stupid.  That's what the difficulty settings are FOR.  If you claim that +4 x8 isn't hard enough for you WHEN LEVELLING then you're a liar.

Edited January 28, 2020 by sacredlunatic

[Shiznaught]

On 1/19/2020 at 9:27 PM, arkieboy72472 said:

 Having perspective on how things used to be will better help you understand why they are how they are now.

I feel like you completely missed my point, which was to make Dark Astoria more rewarding.

 

But hey, thanks for being needlessly patronizing.