Difficulty in CoH: Community Discussion

[Snarky]

For those who want things tougher. Everytime you get a level where you get a new power hit your big toe with a hammer
 

for every incarnate power hit both big toes.  Everytime you tier 4 hit the same toe twice

 

there. Content just got tougher. And it affected no one elses gaming experience

 

unless you are on a voice server because your SG mates might hear crying

[Wavicle]

1 hour ago, Heraclea said:

Now there are certain ways to make content 'difficult' that do not scale well, and actively discourage teaming.  Dark Astoria Tsoos are probably the most familiar example of 'difficult' content that turns tedious and frustrating when you get the larger spawns that come with larger teams.  The minions are all spamming Kinetics debuffs, making it too hard to move, while lieutenant class healers with other debuffs are poofing in and out.  Doable solo, awful for large teams.   This sort of thing puts a priority on preemptive damage to one-shot as much as possible.   Night Ward and many other goldside mobs like Seers and Ghouls are annoying but playable solo, but which become extremely tiresome when encountered at the spawn size you'd get with a team of 8.  Too many minions spamming the same kind of debuffs and mez is a recipe for unplayability. 

Seems to me this kind of content incentivizes bringing a Controller or Dominator or two along.

[ZeeHero]

6 hours ago, jubakumbi said:

If you like to dance like that in a group...IMO, that is yet another valid, but small, portion of the playerbase - I detest 'the dance' and all the llama drama around herding the cats.

I would prefer pretty much any form of challenge I have played in games over 'stay out of the death patches'...

You would not like basically any other MMO. However, I am not dumb enough to want the dance in COH, a game which roots you for over a second on most attacks. that  would be sheer stupidity.

 

The dance is only fun in games which allow it to be.

[Wavicle]

7 hours ago, jubakumbi said:

If you like to dance like that in a group...IMO, that is yet another valid, but small, portion of the playerbase - I detest 'the dance' and all the llama drama around herding the cats.

I would prefer pretty much any form of challenge I have played in games over 'stay out of the death patches'...

I certainly don't mean we should be expected to dps while constantly moving.  That obviously won't work in this game.  But dps from point A, then move to point B and DPS from there for a while, then move back to point A, is essentially something we already have, in Magisterium for example but elsewhere as well.

[golstat2003]

5 hours ago, Wavicle said:

I am also a mostly soloer and while I understand what you mean I feel like we've gone too far in the other direction.  A balance must be struck and this ain't it.

 I think the ship has sailed on that. Especially with how small the current "dev" team is.

[Wavicle]

1 minute ago, golstat2003 said:

 I think the ship has sailed on that. Especially with how small the current "dev" team is.

True, and I'm not terribly bothered by it. It'll be ok.

[golstat2003]

2 hours ago, Wavicle said:

Seems to me this kind of content incentivizes bringing a Controller or Dominator or two along.

Good luck finding one . . . or any other team members goldside.

[golstat2003]

51 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

I certainly don't mean we should be expected to dps while constantly moving.  That obviously won't work in this game.  But dps from point A, then move to point B and DPS from there for a while, then move back to point A, is essentially something we already have, in Magisterium for example but elsewhere as well.

I'd be fine with that in NEW content.

[Wavicle]

3 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

Good luck finding one . . . or any other team members goldside.

I didn't mean bringing a controller is the solution to playing goldside.

I meant creating new content of that kind is a good way to increase the importance of Control effects.

[Wavicle]

6 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

I'd be fine with that in NEW content.

I have no desire for them to significantly change ANY existing content.

[Jackanapesink]

3 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I thought so too, but the some of the hardcore badgers get really bent at the idea of new badges that aren’t trivially easy for them to get.

TEAM BADGES

 

Easy as pie.  No nerfing or rewriting or even creating new content.  Not too hard, but not too easy.

 

Jeepers.

[Galaxy Brain]

53 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I’m seeing a lot of “let’s encourage [certain behavior] by offering more rewards.”

 

What else can possibly be offered?  Even with the nerf to lvl 49 farming, inf and merits and incarnate godlike powers are currently thrown around like they are nothing.  Even the godliest items and achievements are trivially easy to get.

 

I think it depends. More Inf/Xp/etc can be one thing, but having a good deal of bonus merits, special temp powers, special accolades, or other such goodies are possible too. It doesn't even have to be stuff at max level but stuff that'd be nice while leveling

 

[Neuronia]

I dunno.

When I first started aeons ago, there was very little web help so I thought you had to slot one of each enhancement in each power, so my Mind/BUbbles had 1 range, 1 hold, 1 recharge, 1 end redux, 1 damage, etc. in Dominate. It took me forever to kill stuff, until a rl friend showed me how to play.
The game difficulty is fairly easy, but you can make it more difficult for yourself by tweaking the settings and so on.
The best part is that your team can really change how hard things are; if players are on SOs or a mix of SO and basic IOs you can sometimes get slowed down.
Overall the game is quite forgiving but some powerset combos are obviously going to be slower levelling than others.

 

[jubakumbi]

13 hours ago, ZeeHero said:

You would not like basically any other MMO. However, I am not dumb enough to want the dance in COH, a game which roots you for over a second on most attacks. that  would be sheer stupidity.

 

The dance is only fun in games which allow it to be.

I play/played almost all MMOs at one point or another over the years.

I just avoid the dance missions where I can and I do not participate in group activities that require the herding of the players, I find it terribly tedious to wait for some person I don't know to finish petting the dog and focus on the game...I don't play video games to stand around an wait on other people...don't care to deal with other people losing thier minds because Jim the Barbarian do not get our of the red stuff in time either...nothing about it is appealing to me.

 

Doe not prevent me from playing MMOs, I just avoid some content.

[ZeeHero]

Honestly if someone is not paying attention to the game they have no right to be attempting "dance" content, and you should kick them and not feel bad if you know for sure this is intentionally the case.

[Heraclea]

2 hours ago, ZeeHero said:

Honestly if someone is not paying attention to the game they have no right to be attempting "dance" content, and you should kick them and not feel bad if you know for sure this is intentionally the case.

Particles can be a problem with death patches.  Some characters generate all sorts of funks, clouds, and ground patches of their own.  These can come in any of the colors allowed.  Trick is to adjust particles so that you see the patches but they aren't obscured by player generated effects. 

 

Another reason why that generic MMO crap is incompatible with the design, philosophy, and spirit of this game. 

[hastened]

I've been trioing my way through all of the old story arc with a fairly optimized Thermal/Ice Defender, Mace/Invuln tank and an SOed FF/Rad defender.  Honestly, difficulty isn't too bad.  Yes, we can faceroll a bunch of stuff, but there's still real challenges waiting.  Trying to rescue Waylon McCrane successfully is practically impossible at +4/x8 and made for a fun puzzle we came close to solving but failed.  Trying to keep every NPC alive through the Rikti War Zone arcs at +4/x8 was likewise challenging (we were not successful; Fusionette lived, but Deitrich makes her look stable and competent), and the weakened Hamidon required significant prep and modification of our approach to complete Lady Grey successfully.  Fighting the Croatoa War and killing Eochai and Jack in Irons was likewise nontrivial, as huge swarms of boss witches scattered and dropped lightning storms everywhere with stacked snowstorm and hurricane.  Nemesis ambushes have to be handled carefully, as two +4/x8 groups can even kill an invuln tank with capped resists and 100 defense to everything if you screw up and let them stack too many vengeance stacks (literally one of two times the tank has been forced to run in post 40 gameplay).

 

There's still challenges here, they're just not in 8 man steamrollers. 

[carroto]

I think the balance shifted on Homecoming because IOs are so much easier to get.  Because of this it's much more common to get on teams with a bunch of highly optimized characters facerolling everything.  Back on live it was much rarer to see someone with a fully kitted out build.  It was more common for people to run with generic IOs or frankenslotting for much of their leveling career.

 

So now there's less need for teamwork, people can run off and solo groups on their own, so yeah overall that makes it much easier.

[jubakumbi]

13 hours ago, ZeeHero said:

Honestly if someone is not paying attention to the game they have no right to be attempting "dance" content, and you should kick them and not feel bad if you know for sure this is intentionally the case.

Kicking people off of an MMO team is part of the llama drama I avoid by simply soloing.

I simply do not play online MMO type games to meet people, herd people, teach people, listen to people, or to really 'people' at all...I play to relax my mind and people usually just mess that all up... 🙂 

[KC4800]

The games is not too easy, because I cannot solo +4/8 without inspirations. I can solo +4/8 with one character, using inspirations, but he is Tier 4 across the board.  That seems like it's just right. I cannot say he never dies, because if I do not keep up with my combining, and judiciously use my buffs and self heals I can die.

Things have to go just right.

With that said, I usually run that one character, when I use him as a farmer, at +3/8 because I do not need it to be THAT challenging. 

 

It is challenging enough with my lesser characters, running at lower settings. I feel like this game is right at its sweet spot for most tasks. Some characters cannot solo well. I look at defenders, at least the sets I have chosen. 0/0 is a slow slog just soloing, but defenders really shouldn't solo. With that said, when the defender gets on a team of 8, I feel he looses his identity, he blows through content and doesn't need to use his powers correctly. So it's just not as fun for me. Therefore I just do not play defenders all that much. I dont know if this is a popular opinion, but it is what I observe. I play this game by feel, not by number crunching. 

[MunkiLord]

On 3/31/2020 at 5:36 PM, Yomo Kimyata said:

I thought so too, but the some of the hardcore badgers get really bent at the idea of new badges that aren’t trivially easy for them to get.

I get that, I do. But I think it's something some people would just have to accept. Similar to the exemplar influence thing, no hard caps on market prices, the likely eventual Titan Weapons nerf, etc.

[Yomo Kimyata]

1 minute ago, MunkiLord said:

I get that, I do. But I think it's something some people would just have to accept. Similar to the exemplar influence thing, no hard caps on market prices, the likely eventual Titan Weapons nerf, etc.

I only want two new badges:  Dr. Evil, for burning 100bn inf, and something for soloing the Hamidon.

[dz132]

The vanilla game is too easy.  Alot of the balance issues with tanks vs brutes vs scrapper etc. are all symptoms of that.  A properly IO'd character with incarnates can easily solo 54x8, so of course there's no room for tanking or CCing or anything else.  Hence why classes are feeling left out in the game.  Raw damage is everything in the end game because all characters are just to powerful and clearing speed is the only metric that matters.

[Wavicle]

I figured out the solution, but you're not going to like it. (Hell, I don't like it, and I'm not suggesting it, but this would have done it from the beginning.)

The solution would have been:

 

AT specific Defense softcaps (somehow). Tanks and Brutes 95%. Everyone else in a range between 80% and 90%.

But it's too late for that now.

[Parabola]

1 hour ago, Wavicle said:

I figured out the solution, but you're not going to like it. (Hell, I don't like it, and I'm not suggesting it, but this would have done it from the beginning.)

The solution would have been:

 

AT specific Defense softcaps (somehow). Tanks and Brutes 95%. Everyone else in a range between 80% and 90%.

But it's too late for that now.

Yeah that would have been huge. Of course back when they were putting the mechanics together there was no way for most characters to hit the softcaps without outside help anyway so it didn't matter. A similar effect could possibly be achieved with the current mechanics by using the AT modifier that applies to powers like weave and applying it to defence set bonuses. Then a tank would get more out of a defence set bonus than a blaster and there would be far fewer softcapped squishies running around.

 

I genuinely think the game would be better for these kind of measures but appreciate that I have a bit of a hardline purist system approach that isn't shared by everyone. If the recent rage over the inflation curbing measure (that far too many people are still failing to understand) is anything to go by, a change like this could melt the internet :).