A modest proposal - Eliminate Sameness by removing the ability to Softcap. (Long)

[Coyotedancer]

The babies might be more likely. 

 

(No joke, I was picking up some fancy-pants candy for an Easter basket the other day and the shop had all sorts of little marzipan creatures. Including an assortment of little putti. They were adorable, but also... a little disturbing. Biting the head off of a chocolate bunny is one thing. Chomping a little baby cherub? Yeeeah. Maybe not. 😝 )

[ScarySai]

Aw hell nah.

[macskull]

7 hours ago, PhoenixV117 said:

Just figure out how to add a +5 problem solved (90% anyway)

A team that is able to steamroll +4 content will have no problem at all steamrolling +5 content. The way powers in this game scale based on level difference ensure higher-level enemies aren’t actually any harder for those teams, rather the engagements are just longer because your attacks do so little damage.

[SwitchFade]

I giggle when I see these threads. Please forgive me. Kind of like when your pal trips and party-foulsl faceplants, you snicker first, then help them up.

 

Why? Well, here's an example...

 

Lvl 43ish team in PI... I join on my 50 blaster. Were fighting contact missions, I forget which. It's at +2.

 

"Does the team want higher?" The scrap team lead asks, someone notes there are 3 scraps, a blast, a brute and support.

 

"Uh, I can solo this if needed," I reply.

 

Set to +4 and off we go. I can see it's a casual team, I'm one of two 700+ million inf build, crammed to the gills with uberleet goodnessnacks and there are some middling io builds. We do fine. I alpha, because iBlap rolls like that, and the team is hot on my heals. I hit insps, because even a 700mill blap build is not a scrap and I take hits. Big hits.

 

HP see-saws all over for many and it's plenty challenging, because they're fighting +5s. But it's fine, I can rescue people if needed by absolutely unloading on the random +5 boss harassing a Casual SO 43.

 

Then we get to Adamastor at +4 setting. Funny thing, the mission has the usually smattering of +1 on top of the +4 setting. So, I'm fighting +5s and the SKs are fighting +6s. It's tough, nearly impossible on a careless team, Support is pushed to the limit keeping debuffs up and people going and everyone is faceplanting. iBlap is just gobs of AoA as a water/elec and I'm still running alpha, but very, VERY carefully vs Pantheon. They wreck my softcap in seconds and if I don't kill them first, I go down in another 3 seconds. Which I did once or twice.

 

They we get to Adamastor. He's +6 to the SKs, +5 to me.

 

I dove in, we try, and we wipe.

 

Someone says "we can't do this +6 is impossible, there's no way, let's reset."

 

"Wait wait," I reply, in good faith, "everyone rez and hit the hosp, don't alt out or hit, just come back here. I'm going to alt to Pennie pebbles, re-invire me."

 

I switch out to Pennie, 50 earth/storm controller. Who's also stuffed to the rim with Brim®

 

When I get back,  the brute and I bum rush Adamastor, the brute holds as much aggro as he can while I roll up and throw down the good sauce debuffage that an Earth/Storm is capable of, and we proceed to hand Adamastor his undead booty, because his defense, tohit and recharge are in the toilet the team is doing the right work, and support is working overtime keeping us standing.

 

So, purple patch can kiss my controller behind, because I we were able to sit on a +6 Adamastor with his cronies in tow, and we were able to bring him down and his goon squad.

 

Softcap didn't matter, +6 didn't matter, what mattered was teamwork, tactical play and common sense.

 

So the next thread you see complaining that the game is too hard or easy and there's a quick fix, or that controllers are pointless because softcap blahblah, or that the brute makes the defender pointless.... I argue the game is balanced well, because we got our asses handed to us at +4 trying to afkroll with 3 of us we'll over softcap, but regrouped, got tactical, brought in the right support for the job and MMoTeamworked it.

Edited March 27, 2021 by SwitchFade

[golstat2003]

10 hours ago, Naraka said:

I'm actually curious: how many of you are actually playing on multiple CoX servers?

 

From what I've heard, the communities are quite divided. I just feel that appealing to multi-server argument is less benefiting your perspective and moreso dismissing the argument similar to the "well why not make your own server" arguing point.

 

/raises hand. I play on at least 5.

[golstat2003]

45 minutes ago, macskull said:

A team that is able to steamroll +4 content will have no problem at all steamrolling +5 content. The way powers in this game scale based on level difference ensure higher-level enemies aren’t actually any harder for those teams, rather the engagements are just longer because your attacks do so little damage.

 

Agreed.

 

Thankfully there have been more useful suggestions over MANY months (and some even this week) than just make everything +5 as the new difficulty options.

 

Also, I've seen many comments where people actually believe making encounters take long is some sort of + towards challenge. It's really not.

[golstat2003]

9 minutes ago, SwitchFade said:

I giggle when I see these threads. Please forgive me. Kind of like when your pal trips and party-foulsl faceplants, you snicker first, then help them up.

 

Why? Well, here's an example...

 

Lvl 43ish team in PI... I join on my 50 blaster. Were fighting contact missions, I forget which. It's at +2.

 

"Does the team want higher?" The scrap team lead asks, someone notes there are 3 scraps, a blast, a brute and support.

 

"Uh, I can solo this if needed," I reply.

 

Set to +4 and off we go. I can see it's a casual team, I'm one of two 700+ million inf build, crammed to the gills with uberleet goodnessnacks and there are some middling io builds. We do fine. I alpha, because iBlap rolls like that, and the team is hot on my heals. I hit insps, because even a 700mill blap build is not a scrap and I take hits. Big hits.

 

HP see-saws all over for many and it's plenty challenging, because they're fighting +5s. But it's fine, I can rescue people if needed by absolutely unloading on the random +5 boss harassing a Casual SO 43.

 

Then we get to Adamastor at +4 setting. Funny thing, the mission has the usually smattering of +1 on top of the +4 setting. So, I'm fighting +5s and the SKs are fighting +6s. It's tough, nearly impossible on a careless team, Support is pushed to the limit keeping debuffs up and people going and everyone is faceplanting. iBlap is just gobs of AoA as a water/elec and I'm still running alpha, but very, VERY carefully vs Pantheon. They wreck my softcap in seconds and if I don't kill them first, I go down in another 3 seconds. Which I did once or twice.

 

They we get to Adamastor. He's +6 to the SKs, +5 to me.

 

I dove in, we try, and we wipe.

 

Someone says "we can't do this +6 is impossible, there's no way, let's reset."

 

"Wait wait," I reply, in good faith, "everyone rez and hit the hosp, don't alt out or hit, just come back here. I'm going to alt to Pennie pebbles, re-invire me."

 

I switch out to Pennie, 50 earth/storm controller. Who's also stuffed to the rim with Brim®

 

When I get back,  the brute and I bum rush Adamastor, the brute holds as much aggro as he can while I roll up and throw down the good sauce debuffage that an Earth/Storm is capable of, and we proceed to hand Adamastor his undead booty, because his defense, tohit and recharge are in the toilet the team is doing the right work, and support is working overtime keeping us standing.

 

So, purple patch can kiss my controller behind, because I we were able to sit on a +6 Adamastor with his cronies in tow, and we were able to bring him down and his goon squad.

 

Softcap didn't matter, +6 didn't matter, what mattered was teamwork, tactical play and common sense.

 

So the next thread you see complaining that the game is too hard or easy and there's a quick fix, or that controllers are pointless because softcap blahblah, or that the brute makes the defender pointless.... I argue the game is balanced well, because we got our asses handed to us at +4 trying to afkroll with 3 of us we'll over softcap, but regrouped, got tactical, brought in the right support for the job and MMoTeamworked it.

 

Nahh folks are just going to ignore this post dude. In 3, 2, 1 . . . 

 

(LOL)

[Oubliette_Red]

As I've said in multiple other suggestions along this line...

 

I'd rather they incorporated the Ouro debuff settings to regular content (missions/TF's/SFs/etc) than to alter the game so that it hits everyone.

 

Things getting too easy? Make a second build limited to common IO's or even SO's.

 

[RunoKnows]

4 hours ago, Naraka said:

Well there, your either straw manning me or the argument. No one is talking about eliminating people characters. It's closer to a hypothetical about targeting a perceived issue. I understand the will to counter with a moralistic rebuttal but it makes me sick listening to people whine like that but it's literally your go-to response.

Read the OP's idea in the first post. If the softcap is removed, it isn't going to literally delete people's characters in the process, but it WILL break a lot of characters. Why bother putting together billions of influence and tons of IOs for enhancement set bonuses over hundreds of hours when all of that work -- might I add, work that people have ALREADY put into their characters and wil likely continue to put into them if the original suggestion is disregarded as it should be? Why would you ever roll a defense-based armor set when their primary method of staying alive is rendered worthless?

 

That is not hyperbole. That is not a strawman. That is fact. The proposition outlined by the OP is not the answer. Adding more (optionally) difficult content is a thing that a lot of players want (myself included), but artificially imposing an increased difficulty level by arbitrarily nerfing well-built defensive characters is not the way.

 

And if I may ask a question: if this suggestion DID go through and the softcap was removed and/or other methods of defense were dramatically lowered, do you honestly think people are going to stick around if they log on and find that their character's build(s) have been drastically altered for the worse? Do you think that the people who mentioned that they'd leave if this happened are just full of hot air? It's not an instance of moral rebuttal -- it's being realistic.

 

There are ways to satisfy both sides of the crowd, but certain people seem to be adamant that a happy medium isn't good enough and that the game has to play the way THEY want it to play, and no other playstyles are acceptable. And in a game that is, was, always has been and likely always will be about making your dream comic book character and playing them in whatever way you find fun, that's absolute horse-hockey.

[PeregrineFalcon]

My understanding, and someone please correct me if I'm wrong, is that the Homecoming development team is trying to provide a version of City of Heroes that is stable and will have conservative, incremental updates and improvements in line with what they believe the live devs would or should have done. I'm fairly certain that I even read a statement from one of them that said something to that effect.

 

As such, massive changes like turning Hasten into an inherent auto ability or adding ED or Diminishing Returns to IO set bonuses are unlikely to happen. There are however many other City of Heroes servers out there that throw caution to the wind and add new AT's and institute massive changes just for the fun of it.

 

My recommendation is that instead of trying to convince the Homecoming developers to institute your massive changes, which many players are likely to be against, that instead you should go to one of those other servers and talk with their developers, who already have a demonstrated propensity for wild and massive changes, to institute your idea on their servers. It seems to me that if your actual goal is to have the changes actually be in game that's your best bet for success. If, on the other hand, your real goal is just to stir up the forums and troll people then carry on.

[Haijinx]

4 hours ago, Leogunner said:

Nope, I don't want to hear you proclaim what it was "made to be".  That's purely your own assumption because I'd assume the game meant for powersets like Force Field and debuffs like Dark Miasma's -ToHit to serve a purpose and not join the various other antiquated mechanics in the realm of obsolescence.  And the reason I don't want to hear all that mess is because you're not going to touch on the power creep and over-convenience that removes much of the community aspects and charm of the original game either.  If you're not going to go the full mile, no need to paint your agenda.  Just the first sentence would suffice.

It wasn't actually made to be that anyway.  They originally thought 3 minions should provide some challenge to a single hero.

[Apparition]

15 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

It wasn't actually made to be that anyway.  They originally thought 3 minions should provide some challenge to a single hero.

 

They actually achieved that with the Champions Online launch patch... where everyone who was enjoying the game in its open beta and pre-launch state fled in droves.

[PhoenixV117]

I’d like an option to make every mission have lv 50 mobs baseline. Would open up a lot of content for those who like playing with their full build. 

 

They couod also make it so no minions spawn. Only lieutenants and higher. Or all bosses are elite bosses etc.

 

 

[Naraka]

3 hours ago, RunoKnows said:

Read the OP's idea in the first post. 

Read the title then.

 

Like I said before, just stick and tired of being inundated with perpetual pearl clutching and hyperbolic whining.

 

As for your question: who knows? I'm certain you've already polled every player on the forum to come to your comprehensive conclusion but before you go STRAWMANING any further, why not pin down the *actual* hypothetical change so you can more accurately gauge the resulting backlash, hm?

[golstat2003]

4 hours ago, Oubliette_Red said:

As I've said in multiple other suggestions along this line...

 

I'd rather they incorporated the Ouro debuff settings to regular content (missions/TF's/SFs/etc) than to alter the game so that it hits everyone.

 

Things getting too easy? Make a second build limited to common IO's or even SO's.

 

 

This is actually a great idea too. Simply porting that over to regular content would add more options to the notoriety system.

[golstat2003]

4 hours ago, RunoKnows said:

There are ways to satisfy both sides of the crowd, but certain people seem to be adamant that a happy medium isn't good enough and that the game has to play the way THEY want it to play, and no other playstyles are acceptable. And in a game that is, was, always has been and likely always will be about making your dream comic book character and playing them in whatever way you find fun, that's absolute horse-hockey.

 

This what it pretty much boils down to every time this thread comes out. "I don't want to change my playstyle or form my own teams for whatever reason, but I'd sure like to control how everyone else plays" . . .

[golstat2003]

3 hours ago, PhoenixV117 said:

I’d like an option to make every mission have lv 50 mobs baseline. Would open up a lot of content for those who like playing with their full build. 

 

They couod also make it so no minions spawn. Only lieutenants and higher. Or all bosses are elite bosses etc.

 

 

 

Yet more excellent suggestions.

[golstat2003]

1 hour ago, Naraka said:

Read the title then.

 

Like I said before, just stick and tired of being inundated with perpetual pearl clutching and hyperbolic whining.

 

As for your question: who knows? I'm certain you've already polled every player on the forum to come to your comprehensive conclusion but before you go STRAWMANING any further, why not pin down the *actual* hypothetical change so you can more accurately gauge the resulting backlash, hm?

 

Or how about we don't waste anyone's time. At this point we all might as well agree to disagree.

The HC devs seems to not want to make any massive game breaking changes. I'm fine with that.

 

If that ever changes I'll take my own advice and go to another server for good. No harm no foul. (I'm sure others will also).

[SwitchFade]

3 hours ago, PhoenixV117 said:

I’d like an option to make every mission have lv 50 mobs baseline. Would open up a lot of content for those who like playing with their full build. 

 

They couod also make it so no minions spawn. Only lieutenants and higher. Or all bosses are elite bosses etc.

 

 

As discussed in multiple threads before this one, that wouldn't be practical, as not all factions scale that way, due to powers abilities, etc...

[PhoenixV117]

5 hours ago, SwitchFade said:

As discussed in multiple threads before this one, that wouldn't be practical, as not all factions scale that way, due to powers abilities, etc...

Sure maybe that’s true. What about my second suggestion of option for no minions and lieutenants and above (replacing the lost minions ) only. 

[srmalloy]

4 hours ago, PhoenixV117 said:

Sure maybe that’s true. What about my second suggestion of option for no minions and lieutenants and above (replacing the lost minions ) only. 

Upscaling all the mobs (i.e., minion->lieutenant, lieutenant->boss, boss->elite boss, elite boss->archvillain) would seem more doable, although it might be necessary to create the AV-grade version as a separate entity if the game doesn't have scaling mechanisms in place (I know AVs will downgrade to EBs, but I don't know if there's an algorithm in the code to go the other way). Doing that would be simpler than trying to scale villain groups out beyond their level range.

[Voltak]

On 3/26/2021 at 4:15 AM, Bastille Boy said:

 

Yup. These changes would alienate many experienced players who've invested a lot of time into their high-end, softcapped builds. It would also make the game less accessible to newer players. Swing a nerf bat this big, and it's Game Over.

 

 

There are AE missions that challenge high-end builds. Go in solo at +2/8 with no protection other than softcapped defenses, and you'll be on the floor almost instantly. These missions are the challenge that keeps me coming back to the game. Perhaps we could have some endgame missions with similarly challenging enemy groups (with appropriate warning to casual players).

 

The way to add challenging content is to add challenging content. Nerfs are not the answer.

 

 

I would probably quit, too. My best guess is that Homecoming would lose 50-75% of the player base.

I have created missions in AE where if you go in solo and THINK that with your fully geared build will mow down the mobs... those missions will change your religion.   

The content I create is meant so that your team composition requires thought.  Any solo character will have to be very cautious.  

That kind of content should be rewarded for doing.  

Other games, so many other games, where gear , the gear you have, can make your characters so so so so strong... that's part of the game.  

And you know how devs address that?  

By providing more challenging content with even bigger rewards

NOT BY NERFING the very gear they have created to entice and award players for achieving whatever they have achieved by being with the game for a long time an getting all they need to get that gear 


If you want more challenge, go get it 

DO not put other players down 

Just advocate more challenges ON TOP OF THE ONES already in place and along with that, add more rewards

When CoH was down I went to play other games

There is a lot of content to challenge fully geared builds 

You can do that in CoH WITHOUT nerfing what is already in place 

AE is a good ground to explore 

Already we have some incarnate trials that cannot be "Mowed down" just because you have incarnates

Some trials will mow you down if you just walk in there thinking your IOs will save you 

Focus on expanding and adding 

Do not focus on taking away 

[Voltak]

10 hours ago, golstat2003 said:

 

This what it pretty much boils down to every time this thread comes out. "I don't want to change my playstyle or form my own teams for whatever reason, but I'd sure like to control how everyone else plays" . . .

This is exactly what I wrote about in another thread

The player posting started out by disguising his proposal 

He was talking about options he wants to play under and wanted the Devs to do it

After reading further and further.... well, the real truth comes out

The sentiment was that he/she wants to control the way OTHERS play when the options to play the way he /she wants are already there. 

NO, that's not enough , he /. she wanted the limitations FOR OTHERS 

I don't support this

You play the way you want and I play the way I want 

 

[Alchemystic]

26 minutes ago, Voltak said:

This is exactly what I wrote about in another thread

The player posting started out by disguising his proposal 

He was talking about options he wants to play under and wanted the Devs to do it

After reading further and further.... well, the real truth comes out

The sentiment was that he/she wants to control the way OTHERS play when the options to play the way he /she wants are already there. 

NO, that's not enough , he /. she wanted the limitations FOR OTHERS 

I don't support this

You play the way you want and I play the way I want 

 

 

That's one hell of a false attribution there, buddy.

 

That thread was about expanding the current notoriety options available to players, there was nothing sinister about it.

 

This thread imposes a strict change that nobody can opt out of, the two threads are nothing alike.

[Andreah]

There are a lot of problems with CoH's system. But it works. That alone does encourage the HC developers to be very deliberate, cautious, and minimalist with changes to the core mechanics.

 

Now, we're free to make suggestions and speculate on how they might affect gameplay. But keep a reasonable perspective about it. When I suggest something, I won't suffer terrible disappointment when it's not in i29. And on the other hand, if someone makes a suggestion I think is terrible, it's not a threat to my ability to play the game, for the same reason -- it's not about to suddenly show up in the next build, or even the one after.

 

A suggestion I've made before, and will probably make again, is to adjust the critter attacking players to-hit table in the original purple patch. This would change the effective softcap, in some high-difficulty content. Don't think for a moment that this wouldn't be a huge change, even if it turned out to be as simple on the development end as changing three numbers in a data table. They know some changes have huge repercussions. Nothing like that would goin without a lot of internal debate, and the further public debate with us. It might have good sides, but it would also have bad sides.

 

So, suggest, speculate, discuss, advocate, all that. But also let's remember to be excellent to each other along the way.