The problem with removing Training Enhancements

[Tigraine]

I'm an altaholic, so in the time since Training enhancements were removed, I've played through several characters, from beginning to at least upper 30s-40s, if not 50.  My usual path for character progression is to spend the first ~20 levels getting a feel for the character, then plot out a final IO-slotted build as a goal and respect towards that build at 27 where I can begin slotting most of what I need.  Until that point, I often run on 2x XP, and save whatever Inf I do pick up along the way (and merits, etc.) to invest towards that final build.  This means that until that respect, I mostly just slot whatever I happen to get as drops, in order to save Inf and not spend anything on stuff that's going to be obsolete after (usually) a few weeks of playing.

 

Previously, this method worked rather well for me.  TOs in the early levels were good enough to get me through, if nothing spectacular.  Which is fine; I wasn't looking for spectacular, just to make the leveling process a little smoother.  Now, with TOs gone and DOs/SOs in their place, I mostly find that I end up with a lot of enhancements I can't use because of origin conflicts, which results in me leaving a lot of slots empty until the lvl 27 respect.  I've even tried being more careful about what contacts I take, trying to get missions against enemies that should get me the right origin enhancements, and I still end up with a lot of useless stuff.

 

Training Origin enhancements were just that - for training.  Their advantage was in being origin-dependent.  Especially now that characters aren't herded towards origin-specific contacts, having enhancements available that aren't locked to origin was useful.  Now I find that climb to 27 to be more difficult and tedious, and I've dropped more character builds before getting to that target respect level than I normally do, just because I get tired of the grind without the benefit of slotting.

Yes, I realize I could spend my Inf to get DOs/SOs, and the automatic upgrade system, but frankly that drains more Inf than I want to sink into levels that I won't spend much time at.  It's a personal choice, but there it is; just one player's experience.  Please bring back TOs, or make it easier somehow to get enhancements that fit one's origin.

 

[GM Korvin]

Hey there! Per the Issue 27 Page 1 patch notes:

Quote

Acquiring Enhancements

• Single Origin enhancements can now be purchased from vendors at levels 5, 10, 15 and 20
  • This is meant to equalize the availability of those enhancements at low levels, which currently are mostly obtained through farming the Death From Below trial
• DOs can now be purchased from vendors at levels 5 and 10, just for parity
• TOs have been removed from regular vendors but can still be purchased from the Supergroup Base enhancements vendor if you're into that kind of thing

• Story Arc rewards that used to drop TOs and DOs will now always drop a SO of your origin

  • TOs and DOs will still drop from other sources as vendor trash

• The tutorial zones now reward the player with Talisman of the Initiate (Damage) SOs instead of Damage TOs

• Introductory tasks from City Hall reward the player with Damage SOs of their origin instead of Damage TOs

• The Shop Keeper and Smuggler day jobs will now always award a SO

Training Origin enhancements should still come up as drops - if that's not the case, it might be a good idea to file a bug report here, if it hasn't been reported already. So if you're looking to purchase TO enhancements, accessing a public supergroup base with enhancement vendors in it should do the trick. Hope this helps!

[Mr. Vee]

spend 24k up front at p2w for 8 hours of the three amplifiers at level 1. should last you to level 27 unless you afk a lot and will serve you in better stead than the TOs.

[UltraAlt]

I can still buy training enhancements. I'm confused. (well, I admit  checked my base and not some pusher ... I mean vendor ... on the street.)

What level are you at that you are still trying to by training enhancements and they aren't there?

Training enhancements don't have an origin. Dual origin and Single origin enhancements are origin related.

 

use https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Category:Contacts_By_Level

Look at the level ranges. Find your level in a band that is like 4-5 levels wide. It will tell you who is your origin contact

This page lists the contacts for Heros, Villians, and ...er.... Praetorians (they are sneaky and end up on your list of possible contacts even if you aren't a Praetorian)

 

Example :

https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Category:Hero_Contacts_Level_30-34

 

 

Magic	Mutation	Natural	Science	Technology
Allison King	Jose Escalante	Phillipa Meraux	Jenny Firkins	Tina Chung
Peter Stemitz	Merisel Valenzuela		Lou Pasterelli	Neal Kendrick

Edited March 2, 2021 by UltraAlt

[Razor Cure]

Play till 22 without buying ANY enhancements. Using DFB buffs and whatever you pick up. Totally easy to do.

At 22, craft lvl 25 IOs. Slot them.

 

Keep playing that toon.

 

Either you like it, and keep playing, crafting lvl 25s and 30 IOs, all teh way to 50..or...

 

You don't like it. Respec, pull out all those enhancements, and use them on your next alt.

 

If you go all the way to 50, it is SUPER easy (if not a bit time consuming) to respec, pull off a 1-50 amount of enhancements and use them all on your next couple of alts.

 

Buying DO/SOs is just a waste of money. And as you said, origin conflicts make them even more annoying to slot between alts.

[Greycat]

15 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

I can still buy training enhancements. I'm confused. (well, I admit  checked my base and not some pusher ... I mean vendor ... on the street.)

What level are you at that you are still trying to by training enhancements and they aren't there?

Out of curiosity, ran a level 1 over to the field trainers (yes, with INF enough to buy stuff,) as well as the origin contacts in city hall. No enhancements at all.

 

I know you can buy them at the NPC vendors in bases, though. (I put one in the Classic Hero 2004 group's base specifically for that.)

[Tigraine]

21 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

I can still buy training enhancements. I'm confused. (well, I admit  checked my base and not some pusher ... I mean vendor ... on the street.)

I'm not trying to buy TOs; as I said, I try to get by on just using loot drops for the first ~20 or so levels.

 

21 hours ago, GM Korvin said:

Hey there! Per the Issue 27 Page 1 patch notes:

Training Origin enhancements should still come up as drops - if that's not the case, it might be a good idea to file a bug report here, if it hasn't been reported already. So if you're looking to purchase TO enhancements, accessing a public supergroup base with enhancement vendors in it should do the trick. Hope this helps!

I have not seen a TO drop in months; not since i27 dropped. And again, as I said, I'm not looking to purchase.  This used to be a viable option.  The change to TOs seems to be pushing players to spend Inf where they didn't have to before.

 

12 hours ago, Razor Cure said:

Play till 22 without buying ANY enhancements. Using DFB buffs and whatever you pick up. Totally easy to do.

I prefer running content other than DFB.  It gets boring and repetitive, and flies through the levels too quickly.  Leveling is the game experience for me; most of it anyway.  I may run on 2x XP a lot, but I do it mostly through regular contact missions.

Edited March 2, 2021 by Tigraine

[Tigraine]

22 hours ago, GM Korvin said:

Hey there! Per the Issue 27 Page 1 patch notes:

Training Origin enhancements should still come up as drops - if that's not the case, it might be a good idea to file a bug report here, if it hasn't been reported already. So if you're looking to purchase TO enhancements, accessing a public supergroup base with enhancement vendors in it should do the trick. Hope this helps!

Sorry to double-reply, but it took me a while to dig this up from the feedback threads: 

To save following the link, Faultline's comment (since I can't quote directly from a closed thread): 

 

Quote

TO drops are removed from everywhere I found them. The patch notes wording is mainly CYA in case I missed something. They are very much not intended to be around anymore, but if there's some obscure reward table somewhere that still drops one once in a blue moon and I can't find it, consider it vendor trash.

So no, TOs are not still supposed to drop.

 

 

 

[Galaxy Brain]

@Tigraine, if you have the funds to IO up your character as you said, then hopping to a store and buying up DOs or even SOs (generic stores always have your origin) shouldn't be an issue no?

[golstat2003]

1 hour ago, Galaxy Brain said:

@Tigraine, if you have the funds to IO up your character as you said, then hopping to a store and buying up DOs or even SOs (generic stores always have your origin) shouldn't be an issue no?

Issue here is he didn't have to do that before. He just ran with the drops he found.

 

With that said, NO, I do not agree that they should be brought back.

[Galaxy Brain]

If anything though.... I do feel like drops being origin-locked is rather dated. Maybe that could be looked into?

 

For example, maybe instead of only being able to slot your origin, instead what if they were simply more powerful if attuned to your origin? DO's would get 1/2 the bonus (whatever it may be) as it'd be 50% your origin, while SO's get the full bonus. A Magic Character could still slot a Tech SO but it would not be as potent as a Magic SO.

Edited March 2, 2021 by Galaxy Brain

[Myrmidon]

23 hours ago, Mr. Vee said:

spend 24k up front at p2w for 8 hours of the three amplifiers at level 1. should last you to level 27 unless you afk a lot and will serve you in better stead than the TOs.

This is the first thing to be done just before the leveling begins.

[Replacement]

On 3/1/2021 at 9:41 AM, Mr. Vee said:

spend 24k up front at p2w for 8 hours of the three amplifiers at level 1. should last you to level 27 unless you afk a lot and will serve you in better stead than the TOs.

I would enjoy this as a solution more if the price formula used level -1, which should result in them being free at level 1 and 1k each at level 2.

 

Remembering to email all my poor new characters stimulus checks gets old.

 

In regards to the OP topic, I think the values of TOs are so low as to be worth more as inf, so I find myself feeling like the change prevented participation in a trap system.

[UltraAlt]

2 hours ago, Tigraine said:

I'm not trying to buy TOs; as I said, I try to get by on just using loot drops for the first ~20 or so levels.

 

Okay, confused gain.

Why is a bad thing to have a better enhancement drop?

 

I'm assuming it is because you are fighting enemies that are not related to your origin so you are not getting DO and SO's that your character can use, but one shouldn't assume.

[Wintercat]

I'm confused.

I can sort of understand wanting to play using only drops, although why one would want to do so is a bit of a mystery to me.

I also fail to understand why it would be necessary to mail yourself inf. Sure, I do it myself, but I can easily do without.

I'm currently running an experiment. No double xp, no donations, just solo missions and each level appropriate taskforce once, and not while itøs the weekly, to see how much inf I can rack up, and have fun playing at the same time.

I use SO's except for three LotG (a moment of weaakness) and at lvl 34 have 86 million banked, just fro selling drops and earning merits.

 

[Razor Cure]

9 hours ago, Tigraine said:

I prefer running content other than DFB.  It gets boring and repetitive, and flies through the levels too quickly.  Leveling is the game experience for me; most of it anyway.  I may run on 2x XP a lot, but I do it mostly through regular contact missions.

You dislike DFB cause it gets boring (I can see your point) AND because you level too fast? Yet you still mostly use DoubleXP? Yeah, ok then.

Why not run DFB with xp off then? Make money, get the buffs, no xp at all.

Or form teams to run missions, like KR, SC or the hollows. Chances are, anyone joining around that level wont have any enhancements either.

[Tigraine]

11 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

 

Okay, confused gain.

Why is a bad thing to have a better enhancement drop?

 

I'm assuming it is because you are fighting enemies that are not related to your origin so you are not getting DO and SO's that your character can use, but one shouldn't assume.

As stated in my original post:

 

On ‎3‎/‎1‎/‎2021 at 5:50 AM, Tigraine said:

Now, with TOs gone and DOs/SOs in their place, I mostly find that I end up with a lot of enhancements I can't use because of origin conflicts, which results in me leaving a lot of slots empty until the lvl 27 respect.  I've even tried being more careful about what contacts I take, trying to get missions against enemies that should get me the right origin enhancements, and I still end up with a lot of useless stuff.

 

[Tigraine]

5 hours ago, Razor Cure said:

You dislike DFB cause it gets boring (I can see your point) AND because you level too fast? Yet you still mostly use DoubleXP? Yeah, ok then.

Why not run DFB with xp off then? Make money, get the buffs, no xp at all.

Or form teams to run missions, like KR, SC or the hollows. Chances are, anyone joining around that level wont have any enhancements either.

Even on double XP, I can spend weeks, even a month or two, leveling a character 1-50 through regular content at my usual pace.

Running DFB with XP off still means running DFB.  Again.  And again.  And again...  I'll do it every once in a while, but maybe on one out of every five or six characters I play, just to break things up now and then.

I often do run missions in those locations and more.  Sometimes teamed, most often solo, largely because of the time of day I'm available tends to be fairly quiet.

[UltraAlt]

I get a lot of useless drops in general. I get drops of types that I wouldn't slot on a particular character. Regardless of origin.

It sounds more like an influence issue more than a drop issue. You aren't getting enough return to even slot trainings that you could buy from a base.

 

I can feel you pain in regards to this as back on live, before the market was introduced, I had a defender that didn't have enough influence to fully slot even with training enhancements in the mid upper teens I think. The whole how much influence and xp you gained by fighting was all wonky at that point as well. It was all based on damage dealt and not being on the team. The character was an empathy defender and boy could I keep a team alive, even with the crappy enhances. Everyone was dinging left and right around me all the time. Not my character. Sometimes the other teammates would feed me scraps ... enhance that they couldn't use - because I wasn't getting those much either because I was busy keeping the team alive so they could do damage. Buffing them so they could do more damage. It was frustrating.

 

The market is your way out if you really want one.

Of course don't use any xp boosters if you need influence as using them limits or stops your influence gain through defeats.

Run on teams and you will gain more than running solo.

Don't depend on drops and make a base or access one to use the enhancement vendor ... but once you get to a point, it won't even sell you Trainings any more.

I'm not sure if the auto enhance leveling function works on training or not. Maybe I'll go on test and see as I have time.

[UltraAlt]

I checked the old wiki.

It looks like generally training enhances ever possibly went to level 30, but mostly capped out at 20 before the sunset.

 

I went to test/beta.

Leveled to 10. slotted training.

leveled to 20. slotted training. used the upgrade function to level up the training enhancements

leveled to 30. the quartermaster in the base would only sell me DO's or better. Went to Talos Freedom Corps and they would only sell me SO's. used the upgrade function to level up the training enhancements.

leveled up to 50. used the upgrade function to level up enhancements. Training enhancements slotted are now showing as level 50.

 

So :

Couldn't buy training past 20.

Using the Upgrade function in the Manage window, slotted Trainings can be Upgraded all the way to 50.

 

 

 

Edited March 3, 2021 by UltraAlt

[Tigraine]

16 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

The market is your way out if you really want one.

Of course don't use any xp boosters if you need influence as using them limits or stops your influence gain through defeats.

...

Don't depend on drops and make a base or access one to use the enhancement vendor ... but once you get to a point, it won't even sell you Trainings any more.

I'm not sure if the auto enhance leveling function works on training or not. Maybe I'll go on test and see as I have time.

This completely misses the point, i.e., getting through the first ~20 levels  or so just on using what drops, without spending any Inf that's just going to be wasted when I get to IO-slotting levels.  I could do this before without much difficulty, now it's become more of a problem.  I'm highlighting this issue as a "law of unintended consequences" effect I'm guessing the Devs didn't consider when they took out TOs.

 

16 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

Run on teams and you will gain more than running solo.

That's a great suggestion!  Would you like to tell everyone to log on during the wee hours of the morning when I'm usually available to play and the server is dead quiet?  Thanks!

 

Sometimes I solo by choice.  More often, I solo out of necessity.

 

I'm sorry for the snark, but I feel like everyone's solution to this is just to tell me to "play differently," and that comes off as rather condescending.  Most of the time it seems people haven't even read my original post, or don't grasp the stated intent.  The point here is that I could do something before, and this change made it so that I can't do it as well now.  By locking early-level drops to origins, the devs have reduced options and pushed players towards spending more Inf than was previously needed.  And maybe that was the end goal; rather than improving enhancement quality at lower levels, maybe it was really just a push for more of an Inf sink.  I understand enough of game economics to know that such sinks are necessary, but if that was the intent then I wish that would have been communicated so that it wouldn't feel like an underhanded maneuver.  If it was not the intent then this consequence of removing TOs needs to be examined.

 

Edited March 4, 2021 by Tigraine

[Glacier Peak]

The OP wants it their way and no amount of advice otherwise will help them get that. For every other player who isn't self imposing their own constraints, you can buy from base vendor or hold out for drops by turning off xp to prevent out leveling. 

[Tigraine]

4 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

The OP wants it their way and no amount of advice otherwise will help them get that. For every other player who isn't self imposing their own constraints, you can buy from base vendor or hold out for drops by turning off xp to prevent out leveling. 

No, I was pointing out a change in what was possible as a consequence of removing TOs.  Telling me to go buy stuff or play in groups is ignoring the whole purpose of this statement:  highlighting what I believe was an unintended and unconsidered consequence of the change.  In short, ignoring the whole point of the post. 

 

This isn't the Help forum, it's Suggestions and Feedback.  If I was looking for advice on different ways to play, I would not have posted here.

Edited March 4, 2021 by Tigraine

[EmperorSteele]

I don't think "making TOs less available" is an unintended side effect of, well, making TOs less available.

 

TOs are literally terrible, their only good side being origin-independent, like you said. Though maybe something should be done about how DOs and SOs drop, and making it easier to acquire ones you can use, instead of pretending that TOs offer any tangible benefit and trying to cling onto them.

[Doc_Scorpion]

6 hours ago, Tigraine said:

I'm highlighting this issue as a "law of unintended consequences" effect I'm guessing the Devs didn't consider when they took out TOs.

The issue was brought up to the Dev team when this feature was first experimentally tested.  We had a conversation about methods of mitigating the economic costs of the change.