Have toggle debuffs become obsolete?

[Bill Z Bubba]

I would like to see the level shifts removed. Or capped at +1 when you T3 hybrid. There should be no level shift at all outside of incarnate content. I base this on how ridiculously easy it is to solo zerg max diff in Dark Astoria because everything is only +1.

[NEW DAWN]

Split teams in 2 and do separate parts of a map, for something more challenging, or even go solo your own mob. Incarnates and no new game content is going to leave you with an unchallenging nerfed game.

[Sir Myshkin]

On 3/16/2020 at 1:28 PM, Bill Z Bubba said:

I would like to see the level shifts removed. Or capped at +1 when you T3 hybrid. There should be no level shift at all outside of incarnate content. I base this on how ridiculously easy it is to solo zerg max diff in Dark Astoria because everything is only +1.

What's interesting about this idea is that, to a degree I understand and even sympathize with that thought, but I'm more inclined to say we just need a wider range of more "difficult" content that adapts to our improved skills. The reason I'm saying that is significantly influenced by having been doing some exemplar content on two characters now that have a high-spec IO build that works down to level 15 (mostly) and level 20 at a minimum for its bonuses, and even though I loose all Incarnate functions down there, IO Bonuses tend to compensate, on top of having better slotted abilities compared to leveling up.

 

Considering the level shifts only matter in that upper-level stuff, and a build can perform equally ridiculously at lower levels, we realistically just need tougher content options. To a degree, isn't the core idea behind being an Incarnate transitioning our character into that idea of Statesman, an individual that has a level of power vast enough to tackle what multiple heroes otherwise might struggle with?

 

And to imagine, there was supposed to be content coming down the pipeline that would've been challenging in that state.

[Caulderone]

Posted a related idea recently.  I like the idea of having the ability to toggle off the level shift and incarnate shifts to be able to regain actual +4 content at L45-50.

[DemonWithin]

One possible solution is build your own team  put it on +4×8. But only invite 3 or 4 members to the team.  Keep the team small and the mobs will last a bit longer.

[Apparition]

On 3/16/2020 at 2:28 PM, Bill Z Bubba said:

I would like to see the level shifts removed. Or capped at +1 when you T3 hybrid. There should be no level shift at all outside of incarnate content. I base this on how ridiculously easy it is to solo zerg max diff in Dark Astoria because everything is only +1.

 

But Dark Astoria is Incarnate content.  It was redesigned to give people that refused to do Incarnate trials a method of obtaining Incarnate abilities. 

[Bill Z Bubba]

24 minutes ago, Apparition said:

 

But Dark Astoria is Incarnate content.  It was redesigned to give people that refused to do Incarnate trials a method of obtaining Incarnate abilities. 

 

True, but when the incarnate content is EASIER than standard content, a very poor design decision has been made.

 

Edit: And NO I do NOT in any way want to lose the ability to incarnate it up while solo, THAT part of the design change was welcome and glorious. I'd just like to see 2 of the three lvl shifts done away with and the remaining 1 shift only be active in incarnate content.

Edited March 27, 2020 by Bill Z Bubba

[Troo]

I would totally agree with adding endgame while trying not to impact the rest of the game.

 

It's a tricky. Not everyone or AT has an uber build.

[Apparition]

1 hour ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

True, but when the incarnate content is EASIER than standard content, a very poor design decision has been made.

 

Edit: And NO I do NOT in any way want to lose the ability to incarnate it up while solo, THAT part of the design change was welcome and glorious. I'd just like to see 2 of the three lvl shifts done away with and the remaining 1 shift only be active in incarnate content.

 

It is not any easier than a bunch of 50+3s running roughshod over BAF iTrial, which was designed for level 50s.  Should Incarnate level shifts be removed there as well? 

[Bill Z Bubba]

22 minutes ago, Apparition said:

 

It is not any easier than a bunch of 50+3s running roughshod over BAF iTrial, which was designed for level 50s.  Should Incarnate level shifts be removed there as well? 

 

Since it's an iTrial, only allow the +1 as with all other incarnate content would be my wish. Don't get me wrong, I'm not hellbent on this change or anything. It's just a consequence of seeing a whole lotta steamrollin goin on these days.

[Hjarki]

On 3/20/2020 at 5:13 PM, Sir Myshkin said:

What's interesting about this idea is that, to a degree I understand and even sympathize with that thought, but I'm more inclined to say we just need a wider range of more "difficult" content that adapts to our improved skills.

The problem with "just make more difficult content" approach is that it doesn't really address the problem. The real problem is that individual characters are slamming up against the limits of the game and this warps the entire gameplay.

 

Look at the notion of 'soft-capping' defenses. Now, there's nothing wrong with trying to soft-cap defenses. There's a big problem with succeeding. It's one thing for a Super Reflexes Tanker to be effectively un-hittable. But when everyone on your team is un-hittable, what place is there for a Force Field Defender?

 

You see the same thing over on the resist side. I have no problem with a Fire Tanker who makes an effort to be Fire Resist capped. But when your Shield Defense Brute is Fire Resist capped... that's a problem. And it's not a problem that 'harder content' will solve - you're still left with the fact that a build purely focused on Fire Resist is no better than a build that should only have incidental fire resist. And, of course, it severely limits the value of your Thermal Defender when the Tanker doesn't need their buffs.

 

Or think about hit buffs. I take Tactics on quite a few builds. But I don't expect it to ever be useful to my group - I just take it for the self-buffs. If defenses/resists are normally - but not always - capped, hit is absolutely always capped.

 

My personal choice for fixing this problem is to limit how the game stacks attributes.

 

That is, if you have both Weave and Maneuvers, you only get the higher of the two defense buffs. You can still have both powers active - if you want Immobilize resist at the same time you want to buff your group - but you'd only get the +defense from Weave. Likewise, if you have Dispersion Bubble (Force Field), Maneuvers and Weave, you'd only get +defense from Dispersion Bubble (the largest effect), but you'd get all the various non-defense effects from Weave/Maneuvers. However, your friends would still receive the full bonuses from Bubble and Maneuvers.

 

This wouldn't really impact low level play because you don't have all those stacking powers anyway. But it would significantly limit how far you could push the limits on a single character in high level play. It would also diversify builds quite a bit since you wouldn't have every character taking the Fighting Pool, everyone taking movement pools for defenses, etc.

 

By the same token, you could change the 5-of-the-kind rule for enhancement sets to something like "triple your best bonus". So let's say you slotted Coercive Persuasion (+5% ranged def). No matter what other enhancement sets you slotted, you could never get more than +15% (triple your best bonus of +5%) to Ranged Def. But you could get that additional +10% from slotting a half dozen Blessing of the Zephyr if you liked (and somehow found that many movement powers to slot). Again, this wouldn't impact low level players at all - who don't have those set bonuses - but would pull back from the abyss at the high level.

 

Debuffs are another issue, where AV/GM resists render most of them worthless. However, this would likely require a case-by-case analysis of the different debuffs and their mechanics.

[Sir Myshkin]

On 3/27/2020 at 3:31 PM, Hjarki said:

The problem with "just make more difficult content" approach is that it doesn't really address the problem.

It 100% addresses the problem. I'm not talking about piling on HP, or giving all the enemies Unstoppable, that's just obnoxious. I'm talking about more diversified enemies with a wider range of powers that target the fact that more players have built up Defenses, have capped Resistances. Lets start getting more -Def and more -Res, lets really need that extra padding a Thermal or Cold brings to the team. I have played content in this game intentionally designed to challenge a high-spec build put together through AE. It was well thought out, manageable, and playable content, but mistakes cost you something, and on a team of 8 set to +4, we still got our butts kicked and some people died (a lot), but it was a victory that mattered at the end! It wasn't the kind of content you could roll your face across the keyboard and laugh about it. Tactics mattered, debuffs mattered, and buffs mattered.

 

So lets change the semantics, if you want: We need more intelligently designed content that appropriately scales to reflect the dynamic change in player playstyle, build technique, and Incarnate performance.

 

We, royal we, the collective of the player base, need to stop trying to reinvent the structure of the game as it has become, and learn to build on the foundation we have. Did you know that in Issue 4 a patch note was written to include a -Res component into Tar Patch because the ability was altered due to performance issues, and they added the debuff to give it more value. In the note they said the recharge was extended to keep the ability from being double stacked because, back then, all anyone had were SO's. Slotting it with 3 level 50 Rech SO's brought it to 46/s. Do you suppose if someone told them that IO's would one day let a player drag that down to 25/s they'd have said "oh, well, then lets go with 120/s base recharge instead of 90"? No, no one knew the dynamic of the game was going to change like that, you had to design in that moment.

 

We, royal we, the collective of the player base, make the active choice to slot with set IO's in a fashion that gives us "unstoppable" builds and perform at a higher level than the content, as it currently stands, equalizes against. The developers of Paragon Studios acknowledged this fact, and had intentions to continue building on top of that foundation with additional content that would appropriately scale to reflect the dynamic change in player playstyle, build technique, and Incarnate performance. And we, as players, would have made the choice to play that content, with those builds. And we, as players, can also, at any time, choose to not play with those builds slotted, and instead revert to basic SO or IO builds, and play the game at its foundational core, at a level that benefited but did not require a dynamic team composition. Plenty of players still solo'd the game at its highest possible solo levels before IO's came down the pipeline, but lets not forget that IO's were in the game for 66% of its lifespan, arguably a bit longer considering Issue 9 was in development long before we saw it hit beta testing.

 

tl;dr There isn't a single player on Homecoming that would be 100% accepting of any mass change to occur to City of Heroes that changes its core dynamic, structure, and design so dramatically that entire builds have to be reconfigured to accommodate the changes due to negative impact, its just not worth the time and effort to make that argument.

 

We are all better off working to collectively develop new content ideas that can be made and built into fruition that work off the existing foundations we have currently, and I thank the Dev team we have currently for striving to find and fix the countless bugs out in the code-wild, and making the truly honest attempt at finding balance across the board for many things so that new content going forward can truly be positive and consistent in its execution versus going backwards and trying to "reinvent the wheel" by aggressively altering the core of the game to suit a singular preference.

 

 

[Hjarki]

1 hour ago, Sir Myshkin said:

It 100% addresses the problem.

I think we're talking about different problems.

 

The problem you're talking about - content that doesn't challenge people - isn't really a problem in my mind. If you want to experience catastrophic defense failures or psi control effects knocking down your toggles, that's available. People just don't do it much because there's no real advantage to doing it when you can just rip through far easier content. Certainly, it would be nice to have more content. Even better, it would be nice to have better content systems where players could usefully create missions other players would actually play (beyond simple farm missions).

 

The problem I'm talking about - the dramatic imbalance between 'haves' and 'have nots' - is a problem that simply adding more difficult content doesn't address and potentially exacerbates. There's a vast array of abilities in the game that simply aren't very useful - such as almost every secondary effect on blast and melee sets. A large part of the game's appeal is its customization. But if you want to build your concept character, there's a good chance you'll be gimped because your concept doesn't happen to hit the right power sets/archetypes. When you look at the power pools players take, they're almost formulaic (the reason we no longer have Fitness pool) rather than being ways to expand your concept.

 

To me, that's the real problem. When someone comes on these boards and says "I have a neat concept for a character", the response shouldn't be "well, you can build it, but it will suck compared to X" - which is what the response often is right now.

 

 

Edited March 30, 2020 by Hjarki

[Sir Myshkin]

2 hours ago, Hjarki said:

To me, that's the real problem. When someone comes on these boards and says "I have a neat concept for a character", the response shouldn't be "well, you can build it, but it will suck compared to X" - which is what the response often is right now.

What you're saying here, versus what you said previously, I'm not seeing the connection of how you went from one, to the other, and how that piggy backs into what I empathized with Bill Z on, nor Solarverse's original claim, both of which is what I was staying on topic to addressing.

 

To address this specific statement, I ... and truthfully we're speaking your opinion against my own, I don't see what you're saying to the degree at which it threatens the game. There were just this last month two different players in the MM sub thread talking about running and playing "the worst combo possible" (and truthfully there are just naturally bad pairings), just to experience it. In the Blaster sub thread, same things, players looking at the bottom of the most recent "Played to 50" pairings board and selecting the highly uncommon choices and driving them to 50. The initial player got all the way to 50 and came down to the conclusion that, yeah, the combo was pretty bad together and didn't really work out very well, it makes sense no one plays it.

 

The game's mantra at this point is practically "Play what you want, have fun doing it."

 

2 hours ago, Hjarki said:

There's a vast array of abilities in the game that simply aren't very useful - such as almost every secondary effect on blast and melee sets.

There's a big difference between an "ability" and an "effect" you can't bunch that together, or blame one for the other. Given that, you might be surprised at how often something does occur, you miss the fact that it did, that it was positive, benefited everyone, and moved on without ever knowing. But(!) lets carry that torch for a second as it has a somewhat amusing anecdotal relevance here. I said earlier:

• "We are all better off working to collectively develop new content ideas that can be made and built into fruition that work off the existing foundations we have currently..."

You're saying there are abilities in this game that lack purpose (broader term). Some cases many players may (sic: do) feel that way. Of course we do, when was the last time anyone got resurrected from an actual Resurrect? It's all Barrier now, or folks just using P2W temps to spot-res themselves (or other players). Heck, my Blaster carries Resuscitator! I can't tell you the last time I saw an Empathy player who took Resurrect, let alone barely the last time I saw an Empath in general. Resurrect is a situational ability that has a one singular purpose, and is otherwise a dead power in your tray and that's very frustrating.

 

This is an ability in the new powerset Electrical Affinity being moved to the live server soon (posting for all to follow along):

 T7: Defibrillate (Melee (Targeted AoE), Ally Rez, Foe Sleep, -End, -Recovery)

• Strike a target with a highly-charged jolt of electricity, reviving all nearby allies and draining all nearby foes. Any enemies affected will be drained of some endurance, have their recovery reduced and be put to sleep for a short time. Defibrillate consumes all stacks of Static, and the strength of the offensive component of this power scales with the number of stacks consumed. Allies will always be revived with full health and endurance regardless of the number of Static stacks consumed. Recharge: Long

Now that's a pretty cool power, it does perform a huge revive, and it has a great sapping mechanic packed behind a solid Sleep with an enhanceable duration baked into the design of the power set. We're also getting a handful of new IO sets based around Endurance Modification to go along with this set, and we already have several Incarnate abilities wrapped around endurance modification and -recovery/-end effects. I also just recently posted in the Beta Testing thread about that same sets ability called Amp Up, commenting specifically how it felt that many were missing the fact that the ability massively benefits the secondary effects on non-support related characters (ie: Blasters, Melee) by ahem Amping Up their Mez, Debuffs, To-Hit effects. A lot of comments prior to that were about how "useless" it was, but for me personally I ... really can't say there's any one power that I would skip in that new set.

 

That right there is new content designed to enrich our existing ecosystem. New content doesn't have to be just story lines or enemy groups.

 

3 hours ago, Hjarki said:

When you look at the power pools players take, they're almost formulaic (the reason we no longer have Fitness pool) rather than being ways to expand your concept.

Have you ever done a blind survey of the players around you? I logged into Oroborous for a hot second and took a survey of the builds. Eight players were standing around including myself. Four of us had the Fighting Pool, and three of those four had Leadership, two others (six total) had some combination of Leadership (ones without Fighting didn't take Maneuvers), and one of those first four was a Fire Farm build with bonus stats stacking F/C to hit 45% specifically. Four players took Combat Jumping, not all of which had Fighting, and three total took Hasten, but only two of us Super Speed. Four players dipped into the Flight pool. Only one of us had Scorpion Shield (me), and the Epics were otherwise diversified. One of the players that had Fighting honestly didn't need it (Super Reflex) so I'm guessing it was purely there for iCap 59%. At least one player was Leadership + Flight, and a few Epics.

 

There's only 18 abilities between Primary/Secondary, and 24 power picks, three of which are forced from an initial pool of five options. If I skip at least one ability each from my Primary/Secondary, that gives me eight total to pick from out of Pools/Epics, and since most folks tend to only grab one travel power, that means only five power pools are an option and one epic. With an average of three powers per pool, there's six to seven choices to be made, good chance to see dual pools show up. I'm not saying we don't see a lot of "might as well grab that good ol' Fighting Pool" but realistically, what else are people going to take, Presence? Before we had IO Sets, the two most common power pools were Leadership and Medicine, with Hasten splashed in a good amount, and Recall Friend because... literally there just wasn't a better common choice. It's not really formulaic, it's convenience, and IO sets make it even more manageable and logical to choose specific ones over others. No one has to, but at least six of their abilities are going to come from that collective, and they can't all be Epic.

 

3 hours ago, Hjarki said:

The problem I'm talking about

If that is/was your intention behind [ this ] comment, then it sounds an awful lot more like you're just upset that people are taking the pool choices they have to make and utilizing them to a wider holistic benefit, and that the mean average of that choice is typically Fighting and/or Leadership which you find upsetting for... the fact that it results in... "unstoppable" builds? Which... sounds an awful lot like this is still the response to you:

 

5 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

It 100% addresses the problem.

 

5 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

We are all better off working to collectively develop new content ideas that can be made and built into fruition that work off the existing foundations we have currently, and I thank the Dev team we have currently for striving to find and fix the countless bugs out in the code-wild, and making the truly honest attempt at finding balance across the board for many things so that new content going forward can truly be positive and consistent in its execution versus going backwards and trying to "reinvent the wheel" by aggressively altering the core of the game to suit a singular preference.

 

[Hjarki]

7 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

The game's mantra at this point is practically "Play what you want, have fun doing it."

Except it's not really much fun to join a group and find that you're totally useless in that group. No one takes their level 5 character into an AE farm with a level 50 Brute because they find watching some guy stand in a puddle of effects for 10 minutes 'fun'. Mostly, they just go afk and come back to their xp.

 

When half or more of the archetypes/powers in the game aren't really of much use because they can't be competitive at high levels, that is a significant problem. Nor is it one that can be solved by introducing really challenging content that even more dramatically showcases the shortcomings of such archetypes/powers.

7 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

Now that's a pretty cool power, it does perform a huge revive, and it has a great sapping mechanic packed behind a solid Sleep with an enhanceable duration baked into the design of the power set. We're also getting a handful of new IO sets based around Endurance Modification to go along with this set, and we already have several Incarnate abilities wrapped around endurance modification and -recovery/-end effects. I also just recently posted in the Beta Testing thread about that same sets ability called Amp Up, commenting specifically how it felt that many were missing the fact that the ability massively benefits the secondary effects on non-support related characters (ie: Blasters, Melee) by ahem Amping Up their Mez, Debuffs, To-Hit effects. A lot of comments prior to that were about how "useless" it was, but for me personally I ... really can't say there's any one power that I would skip in that new set.

I get the impression you haven't spent a whole lot of time playing around with this 'new content'. Personally, I think it's fairly balanced - by which I mean that much of it isn't going to make an appearance in any 'power build'.

 

Defibrillate is essentially a mass disorient with a longer recharge and shorter range than most mass disorients. While it's neat to completely sap a spawn of endurance, that's only half the story. The other half is the recovery debuff - which has a relatively short, unenhanceable duration. Once their recovery starts ticking, there's no real difference between being at 1% endurance and 100% endurance. So really you end up with an effect that might be considered an interesting variation on a tactic that few players use in the first place. Remember, we can already do what Defibrillate does with Thunderous Blast. But no one does.

 

Likewise, your argument about Amp Up fails to recognize how rarely boosting those powers on others is of any meaningful value. Bear in mind that we're currently playing a game where people slot their mezzes for damage, the only debuff that really matters is the unenhanceable -resist (or the equally unenhanceable -regen) and players build their characters around having enough +hit so they don't need your help. When a power like Amp Up affects the player - who can specifically build around the certainty of its presence - it makes sense. When it buffs others (whose builds were created independent of that buff), it almost never provides them with anything they can use.

 

Or consider the new IO sets. Bombardment has a new proc which will probably see some use. The pure end mod set has some nice set bonuses that existing end mod sets don't have so you're likely to see it in powers like Transference. But the others? Why would you need a hybrid End Mod/Damage set in the first place? If you wanted to increase both End Mod and Damage in the same power, you can already do that by mixing End Mod and Damage sets - and normally far more effectively. But, of course, no one does that because endurance drain is only useful if you're draining endurance faster than you're draining health - and the powers we have in game don't do that.

 

Once the first blush of "ooh... shiny" wears off, I think you'll discover that this new content is relatively balanced... by which I mean it's not something most players will use. Electric Affinity is nice, but it's basically Kinetics with a bubble rather than Fulcrum Shift - a trade most people would be unwilling to make.

 

From my perspective, that's a big problem. It's not "play what you want, have fun doing it". It's "play what you want, but you'll probably be gimped". Adding new content that no one wants to use is no different than adding no content at all.

 

7 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

Have you ever done a blind survey of the players around you? I logged into Oroborous for a hot second and took a survey of the builds. Eight players were standing around including myself. Four of us had the Fighting Pool, and three of those four had Leadership, two others (six total) had some combination of Leadership (ones without Fighting didn't take Maneuvers), and one of those first four was a Fire Farm build with bonus stats stacking F/C to hit 45% specifically. Four players took Combat Jumping, not all of which had Fighting, and three total took Hasten, but only two of us Super Speed. Four players dipped into the Flight pool. Only one of us had Scorpion Shield (me), and the Epics were otherwise diversified. One of the players that had Fighting honestly didn't need it (Super Reflex) so I'm guessing it was purely there for iCap 59%. At least one player was Leadership + Flight, and a few Epics.

The complexity of CoH builds tends to mean that most of them aren't very good, so I'm not sure how valuable such a survey really is. If you compare between strong builds, I suspect you'll find a lot less diversity in choices - and much of the diversity you do find is simply due to the fact that some abilities synergize better than others.

 

What I'm pointing out is that CoH's primary problem isn't "there's nothing to do" or "there's no difficult content". The problem is game balance. You briefly mentioned that you rarely see Empathy. That's a problem. Empathy isn't a bad power set - it just doesn't provide much that's useful when you're playing slammed up against the limits of the game. If you're a player who thinks its fun to play that sort of pure support character, you're eventually forced to confront the reality that few others can benefit from the support you provide - and that you're not much use to the team. Being useless is not 'fun'.

[troya]

It's interesting how so many threads tend to derail into the same direction of "Incarnates and heavily IOd builds makes the game less interesting"... I can't say I disagree with those statements.

 

But back on the subject opened, I definitely agree with the feeling around toggle debuts. I never actually played a radiation emission character on live, but I decided to roll one in Homecoming. I had always heard about rad being so amazing and tide turning... but I was actually disappointed in the performance of the character for the same reasons you mentioned. I feel like crowds are melted and dispersed and the debuts make no difference. 

 

I've had to make a couple of shifts to keep things interesting for myself. I only really bring the character out to do task force/ strike force content, trials, and anything else where there's a single or several really tough targets. If I bring her out in PUGs, I just feel like a subpar blaster with a paltry heal. 

 

All that to say... I think it would be less frustrating if the debuffs were not toggle and just were powers to fire off. If the idea is to prevent a single player from applying the same debuff more than once to a particular target, I'd hope some clever coding could angle around that and keep things balanced. I realize the ability to apply the same debuff to more than one target might be an issue, but I am confident that minds steeped in the arena could figure out ways to prevent something game breaking there too. 

 

Troya

[arkieboy72472]

The changes you all are complaining about were brought on by a few things:

 

1) inherent fitness. Now, I love it...but tough and weave has become the new fitness. Used to you had to cram a build and pick and choose what to take and what not to.

 

2) insane set bonuses. Being able to soft cap defense, and go well beyond perma-hasten has made things much easier. Now, I like these also...

 

3) incarnates, especially everything beyond the alpha slot.

 

4) the obsolescence of the HO, the SO, and in some cases the generic IO

 

Now, what to do? Well for your own sakes you can choose to use generic IO's, Only SO's, or use none of the incarnate stuff (beside maybe the Alpha slot). If it doesn't make sense to be able to summon enemy pets, have a free proc in every attack power, have endless ageless endurance or barrier defenses, or all of the other stuff, just don't use it.

 

To me, what the game needs is either a global buff to all creatures somehow someway, or a way to +3 the +4. If 4/8 is just too easy, you should be able to increase the difficulty somehow that doesn't involve missing every attack. What does exist, i think, is the ability to buff the bad guys in a TF or debuff yourself. Maybe that is a fix. I kinda miss hazard zones being hazardous. I was around for the travel power bump from 14 to 4. With all these standard of living fixes, there comes a price.

 

The easiest fix for all this, I feel, is some sort of global creature buff, whether it be extra def, resistance, or something baked into everything. Since people don't like missing everything all the time, a resist buff across the board to all things is the best way I see. You could make incarnate stuff only available @ 50 and beyond, not 45.

 

Will the server do this or anything at all? nope. Therefore, if you want the good old days, you are going to have to make them yourself and play with others who feel the same way. Remember when on a STF (aka MLTF) where it was super tough and just a tank couldn't hold recluse? Now people can handle all of the patrons at once..Soloing a pylon for time. 

 

The things that used to be unthinkable are no longer. So you either have to introduce new, tougher content, make the content you have tougher, or just create artificial toughness yourself.

 

It is either that, or embrace the ease of the new CoH and just use it as a socializing platform that is also a game. Kinda like those little Facebook ones. I myself still find difficulty here and there. 

[Peacemoon]

The thing about Dark Astoria is there should be enemies that are 54+3, so you need those incarnate shifts to tackle them. Then it would be proper incarnate content. Right now it’s just normal content but with more perks available to the player. Just to summarise!

[Sailboat]

This is heresy, but...

 

I've always felt that one effective way to address this problem is to increase the damage differential between single-target and AoEs.  Whether this would involve nerfing AoEs or buffing single-target attacks (and enemy hit points, thus effectively nerfing AoEs), I can't speculate.  Maybe just dramatically increasing the END cost or cooldown of AoEs would be sufficient.  In the genre, AoEs often are depicted as requiring ultimate effort from the protagonist and leaving them drained afterward,

 

A very large part, if not the entire part, of the problem of teams blowing through crowds is due to being able to effect, and kill, crowds with a few clicks and subsequently not much animation time.  And yet the superhero movies and comics we love feature predominantly single-target attacks for most of their dramatic effect.  AoEs exist, but are mostly used to dispose of minor threats ("trash") before the plot moves on to  duel with the big bad.  Crowds are terrifying UNLESS you have AoEs, in which case they're exciting targets but trivial threats.  In real life, of course, being outnumbered was dangerous...at least until the era of weapons of mass destruction, explosive shells and machine guns.

 

If most of the work of bringing down mobs had to be single-target in nature, crowd fights would take longer and be scarier, but individual defeats of each bad guy would remain satisfying.  Debuffs and buffs would matter more.

 

I realize AoE is ingrained in the playerbase at this point.  I don't expect my idea to be adopted, but it does address the key problem and it would improve the experience.