Allow characters to set their active level (their level or below)

[DougGraves]

Could just be added to notoriety.

 

If you are level 20, you can set your current level anywhere  between 1 and 20.  Just like being exemplared down.  You can street sweep, run your missions, talk to contacts, etc.

Edited April 3, 2021 by DougGraves

[Steampunkette]

I unironically love this suggestion.

[PeregrineFalcon]

Two problems with this.

 

One, I'd much prefer that characters never out level contacts. Instead of the contact going inactive you'd just be exempted down to the max level of the mission.

 

Secondly, while I agree that people shouldn't be forced to team in City of Heroes, allowing someone to just exempt themselves down to whatever level removes one of the few advantages still left to teaming.

[Andreah]

It could go both ways. Yes, it's possible fewer people might join teams doing specific below-50 content; but more might start and run that content and take teams along if it did not need be run as a Task-Force style Ouroboros arc.

[MTeague]

The two ideas are not incompatible.  We could have an "auto-exemplar if higher than contacts lvl cap", as well as players being allowed to self-exemplar when/how they see fit.

I'm fine with either or both being options. 

 

[Greycat]

I have no argument with this.

[Leogunner]

Personally would prefer if all enemy factions had a lvl 1-lvl55 scaling complete with different mobs, abilities and sub-factions so that you can't outlevel any content.

[Darmian]

Ah, if you level by content, then you level by content.  We do have Ouro.  It needs more things in there that aren't in there, but we have it.  Now, lower factions having new content at higher levels?  Oh yeah, bring that on. 

 

What Ouro AND the TFs need - especially since you can open a TF solo now, is the quasi TF function that the AE has.  If I start an Ouro/TF solo and someone wants to join then they should be able to.  Simple as that.

Edited April 4, 2021 by Darmian

[merrypessimist]

I could not object to this becoming a real thing.

[Turric]

5 hours ago, Leogunner said:

Personally would prefer if all enemy factions had a lvl 1-lvl55 scaling complete with different mobs, abilities and sub-factions so that you can't outlevel any content.

 

 

Exactly!

 

I have read elsewhere about the difficulties scaling up Skulls or Hellions to level 50. How exactly? True, they may not be as difficult as Arachnos, but they do not need to be as varied as CoT or even Council. A Bone Daddy / Death Doll / Death Walker could be potentially dangerous at 50. The lieutenants might need a little tweaking, but it cannot be much harder than what they have done for Council.

[Steampunkette]

4 minutes ago, Turric said:

 

 

Exactly!

 

I have read elsewhere about the difficulties scaling up Skulls or Hellions to level 50. How exactly? True, they may not be as difficult as Arachnos, but they do not need to be as varied as CoT or even Council. A Bone Daddy / Death Doll / Death Walker could be potentially dangerous at 50. The lieutenants might need a little tweaking, but it cannot be much harder than what they have done for Council.

The issue is that they literally do not have enough powers and power variety, currently, to scale to 50 without being more laughably pushovers than the Council at 50.

 

Adding more powers and variety to the SG group would be fine, of course. But that's the reason they haven't just been set to spawn at any level without a thorough redesign of the villaingroup.

 

That said, people make entire AE Villaingroups of upgraded street level enemies. Thanks to @Echo13 I personally have access to most of the game's low-tier supervillain groups as AE villains using player-powersets, so I can write short AE Arcs for level 50 skulls and stuff. Gonna be doing a lot of that in short order.

[Turric]

@Steampunkette Give me a AE map #, I would like to try one of those out.

[Steampunkette]

5 minutes ago, Turric said:

@Steampunkette Give me a AE map #, I would like to try one of those out.

@Hallucinogen created "The New Outcasts on the Block" at Arc ID 19731. Level 1-54 Outcasts rising up under new leadership with Frostfire turning Hero.

 

@Shocktacular created "Legacies Unchained (aka The Corrupted Chain) at Arc ID 21164. Level 1-54 Legacy Chain former members working together toward apocalyptic ends.

 

@Narcotic created "The Police Radio" at Arc ID 12492. Level 1-54 alternate radio missions with more variety than the Peregrine Island offerings.

 

@Echo's Echo created Radio Missions, too, at Arc IDs 38283 and 38284 which focus on the Destroyers (From Praetoria) as well as a new gang "The Scorpions" in a Radio Mish style format.

 

There's lots of little things like that available.

[Parabola]

18 hours ago, DougGraves said:

Could just be added to notoriety.

 

If you are level 20, you can set your current level anywhere  between 1 and 20.  Just like being exemplared down.  You can street sweep, run your missions, talk to contacts, etc.

I'm a fan of this idea. Hard to know without seeing the backend but it might be simpler than auto exemping to contacts (another idea I'm a fan of).

 

10 hours ago, Leogunner said:

Personally would prefer if all enemy factions had a lvl 1-lvl55 scaling complete with different mobs, abilities and sub-factions so that you can't outlevel any content.

This I don't like so much for a few reasons. I enjoy the exemping mechanic, different levels of play in the game have very different feels. If everything was only endgame incarnate fueled insanity it would turn me off massively. There would be a danger that such a change would hollow the game out, with the only teaming available being at lv50 regardless of the content. This in turn would further encourage farming straight to 50 before playing any real content in order to keep up. And having to keep half an eye on exemping performance is one of the few remaining brakes on IO builds and provides interesting challenges in it's own right. Some more backloaded AT's and powersets suffer a little because of this but that's a design problem with them not a reason to make the entire game lv50.

[MTeague]

1 hour ago, parabola said:

This I don't like so much for a few reasons. I enjoy the exemping mechanic, different levels of play in the game have very different feels. If everything was only endgame incarnate fueled insanity it would turn me off massively. 

So much this. I would go from "solo half the time" to "solo 95% of the time" overnight. 

I'd likely be able to find a small cadre of like-minded folks, but it would reallllly change the feel of the game for me. Not for the better.

[Shocktacular]

10 hours ago, Steampunkette said:

 

@Shocktacular created "Legacies Unchained (aka The Corrupted Chain) at Arc ID 21164. Level 1-54 Legacy Chain former members working together toward apocalyptic ends.

 

Wait... someone actually played my arc?!  

Is it odd that my first reaction was "... why?"?

Anyway, I hope you liked it, or at least found it tolerable.

[xl8]

Was just thinking of a zone exemp feature. where you could choose to pick a lvl in the zone range (or not) when you enter.

[Haijinx]

While the suggestion wouldn't really break anything, I thought this was the whole point of Ouro in the first place.

 

[Naraka]

10 hours ago, parabola said:

This I don't like so much for a few reasons. I enjoy the exemping mechanic, different levels of play in the game have very different feels. If everything was only endgame incarnate fueled insanity it would turn me off massively. There would be a danger that such a change would hollow the game out, with the only teaming available being at lv50 regardless of the content. This in turn would further encourage farming straight to 50 before playing any real content in order to keep up. And having to keep half an eye on exemping performance is one of the few remaining brakes on IO builds and provides interesting challenges in it's own right. Some more backloaded AT's and powersets suffer a little because of this but that's a design problem with them not a reason to make the entire game lv50.

If that's the case, the game has already been pretty hollowed out.

 

With such a system, the limitation would obviously be "who had the mission available" and if you didn't unlock the contact and have slots opened for more missions, it's likely going to be whoever has that mission is the level you do the mission at.

 

On the prospect of exemping to the mission level (as @Haijinx mentioned), doesn't Oro cover that? If not every mission is available, just make more missions available for flashback.

 

 

[Leogunner]

37 minutes ago, Naraka said:

If that's the case, the game has already been pretty hollowed out.

 

With such a system, the limitation would obviously be "who had the mission available" and if you didn't unlock the contact and have slots opened for more missions, it's likely going to be whoever has that mission is the level you do the mission at.

 

On the prospect of exemping to the mission level (as @Haijinx mentioned), doesn't Oro cover that? If not every mission is available, just make more missions available for flashback.

 

 

The way I see it, people want more content and extending faction level would assist with that.

[Steampunkette]

41 minutes ago, Naraka said:

If that's the case, the game has already been pretty hollowed out.

 

With such a system, the limitation would obviously be "who had the mission available" and if you didn't unlock the contact and have slots opened for more missions, it's likely going to be whoever has that mission is the level you do the mission at.

 

On the prospect of exemping to the mission level (as @Haijinx mentioned), doesn't Oro cover that? If not every mission is available, just make more missions available for flashback.

 

 

If I am 3/4 of the way through the Freaklympics arc, then gain the 1 level that puts me out of it's level range, I'm SoL on the Reward Merits.

 

If I go through Oro, I have to go back and do all the missions leading up to where I was over, again. And while doing it I'm in "Task Force Mode" so I can't bring friends along unless they're present when I start the arc through Oro.

 

It's a good and solid system, but setting your level on the fly would be more immediately useful going forward and keep people from missing out on rewards for effort put forward.

[golstat2003]

23 hours ago, Leogunner said:

Personally would prefer if all enemy factions had a lvl 1-lvl55 scaling complete with different mobs, abilities and sub-factions so that you can't outlevel any content.

 

I think the OPs idea might be easier to implement, but I would not be opposed to either his or the one quoted above.

[golstat2003]

2 hours ago, Haijinx said:

While the suggestion wouldn't really break anything, I thought this was the whole point of Ouro in the first place.

 

 

I and many others find Ouro very unwieldy. Which is why I hardly ever exemp to run old story arcs.

[DougGraves]

2 hours ago, Haijinx said:

While the suggestion wouldn't really break anything, I thought this was the whole point of Ouro in the first place.

 

One thing Ouro does not work with is street sweeping.  If you do the Habeshy arc in atlas you are level 7 or so.  But the street sweeping enemies are level 1 or 2 at the start.  So most of your missions are trivially easy.  Or if you just want to street sweep in a zone for fun.

[Leogunner]

2 minutes ago, DougGraves said:

 

One thing Ouro does not work with is street sweeping.  If you do the Habeshy arc in atlas you are level 7 or so.  But the street sweeping enemies are level 1 or 2 at the start.  So most of your missions are trivially easy.  Or if you just want to street sweep in a zone for fun.

Being honest, "street sweeping" has been mostly niche and ignored.  To me, if I'm a "hero", I can street sweep regardless of if the enemy is at my level or 10 below.  You're rescuing people and helping the neighborhood.  Needing to get exp and drops feels mostly inefficient and pointless compared to running missions.  You'd have to start implementing aspects of overworld impact or events to make street sweeping more than just grinding random mobs for stuff.

 

Probably better for a different discussion.  I wouldn't mind street sweeping being a thing, but it gets messy (read: obnoxious) trying to keep the same-level players in the area not overwhelmed by scaled mobs aimed for street sweeping prospects.