Weekly Discussion 59: Veteran Level Rewards

[Ura Hero]

I've been around quite a long time.   I used to be hardcore on Live and spend 40 to 60 hours a week in game.  Pages of 50's all kitted out on three servers.  I loved doing the extremely hard stuff.  I don't have that much time to spend in game anymore; two kids, grandkids, work, chores...  I get a few hours a week at best to play.  I still love a challenge, I just don't have time to grind out all of the stuff needed.   I only have a couple of 50's that have Tier 4 Incarnates.  Why?  Lack of time.

 

I don't think the answer is to punish those who only get a few hours a week of play time to '"balance" the game for those who are abusers.  Not everyone gets to spend 40 hours a week playing.  I would be willing to bet that the majority of the population plays maybe 6 hours a week.  Hardcore players always want things harder without regarding what casuals need because "casuals don't pay the bills".  WoW has this same mindset.  Moor harder, moor difficulty, must longer.   That;s great when you have tons of time to farm up what you need.  Not so great when you don't.

 

Quit trying to punish everyone for a few bad apples.  The right thing is to get rid of the abusers.  Saying up front door sitting isn't allowed.  Kicking them if it is persistent.   Folks have lives and hardcores seem to forget that fact.

Edited July 17, 2020 by Ura Hero

[arcane]

19 hours ago, gameboy1234 said:

My Fort is currently vet level 20, and has all six incarnate abilities slotted, all the way through Hybrid.  I only have them slotted with level 2 abilities, not all the way with the top tier level 4 incarnate abilities, but if we're just talking vet levels vs getting the slots, that's all it took for me.

 

Personally I think this is way too fast.  It happened basically by accident, just doing some ITFs to get inf for IO Sets.  I did some random content like that, didn't even run most of the incarnate TFs, didn't do any DA missions, and bam 100% unlocked.  The rate of gain for XP for incarnate abilities is way out of whack with regard to say Inf for buying IOs.   In my case (as I mentioned) I promptly lost interest at that point.  Lower level content is more interesting (and challenging) to me.

 

You should have way more than 6 T2’s by vet level 20. At least 6 T3’s or a mix of T4’s and T2’s... strictly from AE farming or any other character that does zero incarnate content, you should have enough for all T4’s somewhere in the 40’s. Are you not using anything but threads yet, perhaps? No merits??

 

This reminds me of something that’s not exactly a pet peeve but that just blows my mind: ever seen a vet level 10+ that isn’t level shifted? Mind-boggling.

Edited July 17, 2020 by arcaneholocaust

[arcane]

4 hours ago, DSorrow said:

I'd agree with you if CoH was a game that promoted playing just one main character, like vanilla WoW or something.

This is an important point to elaborate on. Every other MMO I’ve played doesn’t have a 10th of the character diversity CoH has. Take guild wars 2 for instance. The ability to swap skill lines and weapons within a class at will means there was hardly any good reason to make more than 9 characters (9 classes) total. In CoH, I think we discussed that the total number of unique powerset combinations was pretty obscene by comparison.

 

And going back and making things harder for characters when so many of us have dozens can be pretty cruel (the no xp / double inf nerf resulted in me gutting half my characters to keep the IO’s coming at a reasonable rate for newer ones), so we should at least be careful about such things.

[Lockpick]

Another suggestion for Vet Level Rewards:

 

• IO storage vault in the bank at a certain level and increase the amount of storage over time
  • At VL 100 access 10 IO slots for storage
  • At VL 200 access 20 IO slots for storage
• Recipe storage
• Additional salvage slots

[Darkneblade]

Scaled rewards be nice as well.

Like if you finished mission get like 10 charge of unnecessary temp power. Scale that?
ex: 10 charge: [unnecessary power] becomes 20 charge: [unnecessary power] at vet level 100 or 200?

And maybe SG buffs last longer ?




 
 

[tidge]

On 7/17/2020 at 9:49 AM, arcaneholocaust said:

This reminds me of something that’s not exactly a pet peeve but that just blows my mind: ever seen a vet level 10+ that isn’t level shifted? Mind-boggling.

It is very rare that I take brand new level 50s into any incarnate content, as I've already done so much of it so many times.

 

I'll usually do a Respec to get kitted with the final power choices and IO sets, and then run non-incarnate content (via Ouroboros, exemplar, whatever) because there's plenty of fun to be had without touching the incarnate stuff.

[Yomo Kimyata]

I am curious as to the macroeconomic aspect of veteran levels, in terms of money supply, I.e., inf.  The devs would have a lot more hard information as compared with my idle speculation.

 

Consider two scenarios (assuming regular xp and inf):

 

1.  Player runs one character to veteran level 100.  They have accumulated 150 levels, and 2/3 of that time are gaining inf at lvl 50.  Presumably there is little change in terms of IOs after lvl 50.

 

2.  Player runs one character to level 50, then creates two more alts and levels each to 50.  Total of 150 levels.

 

Let’s make the simplistic assumption that those 150 levels take the same amount of time and effort.  Scenario 1 will generate significantly more inf, while Scenario 2 will consume 3x the investment in IOs and such.

 

I’m totally biased because playing alts is my preferred play style, but it strikes me that it’s also probably “better” for the overall inf based economy.

 

This reinforces my belief that veteran rewards should remain “cashless.”

 

my two inf

 

Edited July 19, 2020 by Yomo Kimyata

[Peacemoon]

On 7/13/2020 at 6:13 PM, Lines said:

I'm certainly in the 'more challenge' camp, but grinding the same content doesn't really qualify to me. It's very easy to build incarnates now, but I appreciate being able to do things however I like. I feel instead like the ambient world needs (options for) a few features to deal with our incarnated characters, but that's a different conversation.

 

I like veteran rewards as they are, I think. My main is vet level 69 (and I've turned off xp. No reason), and it's been nice to have something to level up towards. As BZB says, maybe there ought to be something for people 100+? I dunno what, though - you don't want to cram your inventory with redundant crap, nor do you want features that exclude lower vet-level players.

Actually speaking of inventory, a bigger inventory for higher vlevels would be nice. Anything like that which improves your convenience would be great.

 

Im a bit late to the party on this thread, but I always thought an additional enhancement slot for every 50 vet level would be cool. The amount of effort would be huge, but imagine getting a few extra enhancement slots? It could be awesome. And would be quite fitting of a heavily experienced hero/villain. Maybe even an extra power? 
I don’t see the problem myself. If someone wants to devote that much time to one character then a few extra slots and an extra power or two would not break this game. Arguably the game’s balance is already borked 😉