Homecoming Server Update (April 5th): Nemesis Plots, Contests and Progression

[Acroyear]

Not thrilled by the planned change to Enhancements. Making it so you just have to push a button to update your enhancements means characters will never go to a store or vendor, which means less characters moving around the game world. This, to me, is just more power creep coming into the game, which is already very easy as it is now. I would ask the Devs serioulsy rethink this plan. 

[Rathulfr]

1 minute ago, Acroyear said:

Not thrilled by the planned change to Enhancements. Making it so you just have to push a button to update your enhancements means characters will never go to a store or vendor, which means less characters moving around the game world. This, to me, is just more power creep coming into the game, which is already very easy as it is now. I would ask the Devs serioulsy rethink this plan. 

As was stated previously, players still need to go to a store/vendor to equip empty slots, or to replace one kind of enhancement with another.  The upgrade button doesn't change that.  It won't magically insert new enhancements into empty slots.  Nor will it replace TOs with DOs, or DOs with SOs, or SOs with IOs.  It simply upgrades whatever is slotted already.

 

Edited April 6, 2020 by Rathulfr

[Greycat]

4 hours ago, Redlynne said:

 

My reason for taking this position is that everything in Levels 1-20 is scaled for TOs and DOs.

I'm going to argue that nothing is really "scaled" for TOs. They've very little effect (popping a small inspiration has more effect,) and are really just a cheap way to learn "which color means what" and "what inspiration fits where." They basically make your enhancement window slightly more colorful than if they weren't there. Oh, and give a tiny bit of INF when sold. (a few hundred INF, I think, at best, now that they haven't dropped at high levels since sometime on live?)

Edited April 6, 2020 by Greycat

[Parabola]

4 minutes ago, Greycat said:

I'm going to argue that nothing is really "scaled" for TOs. They've very little effect (popping a small inspiration has more effect,) and are really just a cheap way to learn "which color means what" and "what inspiration fits where." They basically make your enhancement window slightly more colorful than if they weren't there. Oh, and give a tiny bit of INF when sold. (a few hundred INF, I think, at best, now that they haven't dropped at high levels since sometime on live?)

I'd actually go a bit further and argue that there is a danger that TO's could teach a complete newcomer that enhancements don't do anything. It's better if they feel a difference from the things they slot to learn the importance of doing so.

[Doc_Scorpion]

11 minutes ago, Acroyear said:

Making it so you just have to push a button to update your enhancements means characters will never go to a store or vendor, which means less characters moving around the game world.

And?  What advantage accrues to the player in a trip to the vendor and standing around for the time it takes to buy and slot your upgraded enhancements?  The current travel times around the world are certainly an issue (from the social perspective if nothing else), but there's nothing to be gained in this case from forced (social) inactivity.

[Peerless Girl]

10 minutes ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

And?  What advantage accrues to the player in a trip to the vendor and standing around for the time it takes to buy and slot your upgraded enhancements?  The current travel times around the world are certainly an issue (from the social perspective if nothing else), but there's nothing to be gained in this case from forced (social) inactivity.

This was only really a viable mechanic when it served to prolong one's time play the game, back when we were paying monthly fees. Cost/time investment is still a thing, but those sorts of things were already being phased out and downscaled by Paragon after the shift to "FREEMium", this is really more of the same. 

[skoryy]

I read "it'll make the early game too easy," I say "players will be running less played early missions more often now that its no longer a slog".  I mean, how often are we hearing about the Rogue Isles and Praetoria being empty?

 

I read "nobody will use the stores," I say "four DFBs and a couple TFs, I'm already level 22 without having ever had to step into a store to begin with."  Now there's an incentive to visit stores early on to get your slots filled.

 

I read "immersion", I say "unnecessary enforced downtime sucks and this isn't an unpopular opinion."

[CodeJunkie]

On 4/5/2020 at 3:57 PM, Peerless Girl said:

I remember the old days of "Ok so, everyone take a break so we can all go level up and green out our SOs, then we'll pick this back up in say 30 minutes? Ok cool!" I do not miss those. I do worry that just having them purchaseable from the enhancement screen will make most of the game vendors pointless. (I do miss the old good feeling you got unlocking your Origin-specific store contact back in the day).

You still have to go to vendors to fill slots without an enhancement when you level up.  So they will still be needed.

[CodeJunkie]

Personally, I really like the upgrade option.  The worst is sitting there having to count out all individual types of enhancements you need, buying them...then dragging/dropping them all into place.  Then of course if you happened to have leveled up to sat 28 and you hadn't upgraded your 25s to 30s at level 27 you get to sit through the combine screen crap for... every. single. enhancement.  It wouldn't be so bad if the enhancement management screen wasn't a full screen window, but still.  Some way to be able to maintain them in a popup non-modal dialog would be great...similar to the incarnate windows.  Something else to think about.

 

With that being said...it's even worse for me because I have to also do my wife's enh upgrading...she hates doing it.  I just told her about the new upgrade option that's going into test and she was excited.

[Peerless Girl]

33 minutes ago, CodeJunkie said:

You still have to go to vendors to fill slots without an enhancement when you level up.  So they will still be needed.

Yup. I know, I was there when Six made the post clarifying it. 😛 

[Knightward]

I'm not going to claim to have much to add to the arguments here.  What I will say is I like the auto-upgrade for enhancements that have already been slotted.  I also _really_ like the suggestion in here that non-IOs get a floor at -2 rather than going red.

 

Completely removing TOs and DOs.... I'm not comfortable with.  But then I'm one of those rare few crazy people that doesn't DFB through the early levels, so I don't have the tantalization of getting a handful of lowbie SOs.  I'm one of those insane people because I like the slowboating as it gives plenty of opportunity to get a feel for your character's build: what works, what doesn't, what's essential and what can be skipped, where the strengths and weaknesses are, etc.  So once they get to the endgame I already know exactly how to kit them out.  And let's be honest, going from difficulty playing a character to tearing through everything is satisfying as hell!  But there's no One True Way to play the game or have fun, so I don't blame anyone for not going with my idiosyncrasies here.  What I'm rambling my way to, is that having SOs from the start seems like it would make it more difficult to parse how exactly any given build ultimately works.

[Maagic]

3 hours ago, Acroyear said:

Not thrilled by the planned change to Enhancements. Making it so you just have to push a button to update your enhancements means characters will never go to a store or vendor, which means less characters moving around the game world. This, to me, is just more power creep coming into the game, which is already very easy as it is now. I would ask the Devs serioulsy rethink this plan. 

THEN

 

DON'T 

 

USE

 

IT

 

You can still do it the current way, you just have the OPTION of upgrading if you want. Good lord people calm DOWN. 

[thunderforce]

2 hours ago, Maagic said:

Then don't use it.

 

You can still do it the current way, you just have the OPTION of upgrading if you want. Good lord people calm DOWN. 

Whether or not you agree, it's pretty clear that Acroyear is saying that they think if players in general use this option, it will be bad. That's not something they can fix by not doing it personally.

 

In all candour, posting one word to a line in 72-point type doesn't suggest calmness to me.

 

(For myself, I'm rather for this proposal. If it turns out to be "too good" at low levels, it would presumably be easy enough to add a bit of a scaling factor so that SOs below 25 (and DOs below 15) are still better than TOs but less effective than they are at level 25 and up.

 

I think the answer to the "ghost town" problem Acroyear mentions is to fix the base teleporter exploit.)

[ArchVileTerror]

/ah is probably a much more significant contributing factor to people not going to Vendors.  And really, I don't think I've seen much in the way of socializing at Vendors anyway.  People go to them, do their business, and go on their merry way.

That's just my perception on the matter, of course.  I very obviously could be missing something huge there.  I just find most of that kind of socializing happens around Trainers and Task Force Contacts in my experience.  Incidentally, there are Vendors near them usually, but it's pretty clear which NPCs the players are hanging around.

Also, as has been mentioned; this won't really eliminate the need for Vendors under most circumstances.  People will still need to purchase the SOs in the first place, not everything will be accommodated by drops alone.  People are still going to be selling their "trash."  

 

The net effect, based on present evidence, suggests these changes should have minimal impact to Vendors as a social space.

[Replacement]

7 hours ago, Acroyear said:

Not thrilled by the planned change to Enhancements. Making it so you just have to push a button to update your enhancements means characters will never go to a store or vendor, which means less characters moving around the game world. This, to me, is just more power creep coming into the game, which is already very easy as it is now. I would ask the Devs serioulsy rethink this plan. 

You mean typing /ah from wherever I am and filling out my kit with IOs and never touching SOs or under?

 

These arguments just don't hold water, for me.

[Peerless Girl]

1 hour ago, thunderforce said:

(For myself, I'm rather for this proposal. If it turns out to be "too good" at low levels, it would presumably be easy enough to add a bit of a scaling factor so that SOs below 25 (and DOs below 15) are still better than TOs but less effective than they are at level 25 and up.

 

I think the answer to the "ghost town" problem Acroyear mentions is to fix the base teleporter exploit.)

I suspect that they already are set up to scale to a similar extent, they likely were when they were put in during DfB. I thought the base TP exploit was fixed ages ago. 

 

[ArchVileTerror]

The enterbasebypasscode command will be removed when the various Base Teleports Powers (emphasis on plural) are adjusted to something more functionally effective.

I hope they also look at the Pocket D and Mission Teleports at the same time.  I want a Pocket D Party Bus!

[Voltor]

2 minutes ago, ArchVileTerror said:

The enterbasebypasscode command will be removed when the various Base Teleports Powers (emphasis on plural) are adjusted to something more functionally effective.

I hope they also look at the Pocket D and Mission Teleports at the same time.  I want a Pocket D Party Bus!

Just make them like the Ouroborus Portal.

[ArchVileTerror]

That's what I'd do too!

 

But we're way off topic now.

[TomatoPhalanges]

9 hours ago, parabola said:

I'd actually go a bit further and argue that there is a danger that TO's could teach a complete newcomer that enhancements don't do anything. It's better if they feel a difference from the things they slot to learn the importance of doing so.

When I was a young warthog City of Heroes newbie back in roughly i11/i12, I remember very distinctly that I had zero interest in slotting enhancements for exactly the reasons you're saying. TOs felt like the most inconsequential improvement on my abilities and after I gave up on maintaining them it took me a long time to both to actually look at DOs and SOs and realize just how much stronger they were. Let's not even mention how long it took me to then cross the gap over to IOs.

[Rahveryn]

So, I have spent alot of time with new friends in the last few weeks, I just introduced to CoH.  They are still in that phase where they make several new characters phase, so I've spent alot of time in the level 1-25 range this past month.  So this is my experiance and opinion from that recent focus.

 

TOs are crap, dropping them in favor of earlier DOs would be welcome.  It's the first thing I do when I hit 12, fill all my slots with DOs.  The cost should be adjusted, but for what it is worth, I make plenty of money auctioning off the occasional rare salvage, more then enough to pay for TOs and DOs.  Fact is, you can play with TOs, or without any TOs and the difference is difficult to recognise in normal gameplay.  There are not enough slots provided yet to make stacking TOs truly impacting, so DOs in those slots would create a noticeable upgrade, and makes getting those "+2 slot" levels almost as exciting as that "new power" levels.  

 

As far as SOs go, those few characters I've gotten up to that tier of power, rarely buy them, and never more then once.  As soon as I'm able I replace them all with common IOs, and simply fill the new slots with increasingly bigger IOs as I go.  Far cheaper, and plenty easy to obtain, then spending and replacing SOs every 5 levels from 25 to 50.  I point this out simply to suggest that due to IOs, SOs have only a very short window of use in the current game.  Making SOs avaliable a bit earlier has value. 

 

As for making visiting a vendor obsolete, nah.  No change there.  We'll still go to vendors to sell useless common IO recipies, and useless enhancements, frequently.  Since this feature only upgrades existing DOs and SOs, it's just shortening that after leveling visit.  Currently it is Ding (level), head to the trainer, get new power/place new slots.  Head to the Vendor.  Sell crap, buy new enhancements for new slots... notice you can now buy the next tier of enhancements (from 20 to 25).  exit the store, open the enhancement screen, count how many enhancements you need to replace/upgrade all your existing slots, buy them, (this likely repeats a few times), then place them all individually.  Then leave the store and head back out to join your friends who have been waiting patiently for you.  Adding the upgrade button just speeds this up.  With it, you do the same thing, notice you can upgrade to the next level tier, get your 1 to 3 new enhancements, exit the store, open up and click the upgrade button, then leave and rejoin your friends in missions in a quarter of the time.  But you are still at the store when all this happens.  Hense no change in behavior.  So I'm in favor, and I appriciate this consideration.

 

------------------------------------------------

 

Now if only they could go into the Story Arc and universally increase their level caps to 50 (like live did with New Pretorians, RWZ , Midnight Squad, Cimmora,...).  Oroboros is fine for badges, and seeing the stories, and what not, but it's not "real".  I save Fort Darwin in Mercy from the contact, and the Fort has Arachnos in it afterward... I do it in Oroboros, it's still full of Longbow when I go by it normally.  I get the Resistance Passcodes in Nova Pretoria doing those missions normally, but I do them in Oroboros, I'm still unable to use those doors when in Pretoria normally.  Noble Savage is not in First Ward Compound if I do First Ward in Oroboros... etc.  It would be nice to either Link Oroboros completions to equal doing it normally (and give the phases and friendship earned in the Flashback to the contacts in the regular world), or as I said, a more simple fix, raise the level caps for all Arcs to 50.  You still get them at the same time, but don't get screwed because you went and did Posi 1 and 2, just to find out afterward that those contacts now tell you to pound sand.

 

 

[Cinnder]

I'm confused by part of the premise for this change.  What 'slog' is there at lower levels?  I've always found the low levels fly by too quickly just doing normal (non-DFB) content, and it's not till around 30 that progression seems to slow down.

[Li_Sensei]

19 hours ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

OTOH, how many people actually play those lower levels?  My experience suggests it's a relatively small percentage - people DfB up to their late teens/early twenties.

For the small percentage of us who actually play the lower level game, it'll be a godsend and make the experience much more pleasant.  It might even induce more people to play the sub-20 (or even sub-10) game...  and that's nothing but good for the game overall.  Almost anything that breaks the "powerlevel (read: DfB) to 20" cycle is desirable as it breaks the current social environment of "skip most of the game, rush to 50".

Am I the only person who came back to this game and *still* hasn't done a single DfB.

 

At all.

 

On any of my 16 or so alts?

 

I'll be over it the crusty old folks corner, then.

[thunderforce]

7 hours ago, Peerless Girl said:

I suspect that they already are set up to scale to a similar extent, they likely were when they were put in during DfB. I thought the base TP exploit was fixed ages ago.

There's no scaling of SOs at low levels (you can check by viewing them in the AH on a lowbie).

On Reunion we have irritating base teleporter macro spam in General, so I can assure you it's not, alas, fixed.

6 hours ago, ArchVileTerror said:

The enterbasebypasscode command will be removed when the various Base Teleports Powers (emphasis on plural) are adjusted to something more functionally effective.

On Discord we were told by a member of HC staff that the intention was to make it only work in close proximity to Base Portals.

59 minutes ago, Li_Sensei said:

Am I the only person who came back to this game and *still* hasn't done a single DfB.

No. I'd quite like to see what it's like at some point; ideally with a group all of whom have hilariously outlevelled it. 😉

Edited April 7, 2020 by thunderforce

[Peacemoon]

58 minutes ago, Li_Sensei said:

Am I the only person who came back to this game and *still* hasn't done a single DfB.

 

At all.

 

On any of my 16 or so alts?

 

I'll be over it the crusty old folks corner, then.

I’ve done one or two, but at most I only do it once. I prefer to either solo or play with some people in kings row/hollows, myself.