Observations upon return to CoH

[ZemX]

14 minutes ago, BZRKR said:

Take a look through the forums and send messages to the folks who think like you do. Monos King, Oedipus Tex, Galaxy Brain all have expressed feelings somewhere in line with what yours. Y'all should pick a shard and team up.

 

This.  There is only so much control you can expect to be able to have over a random pick-up group.  If that kind of chaos is not one's bread and butter... look for regulars.

[Snarky]

On 7/10/2021 at 11:35 AM, Dazl said:

The people with a lot of resources had to work for them. We all started with nothing when we joined Homecoming.

I do hours of work each week to keep myself in about a half billion in liquid Inf, which I usually blow on a new alt or super packs.  But the point is I spend a LOT of time farming, crafting, converting to make the cash.  I have yet to find the magical "spigot" that pours out treasure in the game. The closest I have come is farming, which is tedious.

 

I can use my alt account farmer to PL my main account crazy new AT build idea to 50 in a few hours. Then use all that stored cash/enhancers to I/O the new toon.  Then I do run the toon. To test, see what I like.  But It was not like someone gave me the character. I have to farm. craft convert sell, conceptualize farm the alt, spend time devising an i/o build, respec, slot, tweak, then drop 50 mil in for must have travel powers at P2W.  Then...the character is "ready" to go.  It is fast.  Faster than on live.  But I cannot whip one out in less than a hard day, and it usually takes two. Add incarnating (if I like what is happening) and we are talking 3-7 days on the character before it is "complete" from idea in my head to 50 I/O w/ incarnates and a few accolades.

[Dazl]

Farming merits through hami raiding can help Snarky.

[Coyotedancer]

2 hours ago, DrZeus said:

Any suggestions on nomenclature to use? Phrasing that will get more bites?  I ask because of comments like dark dove.. He thinks +4/+8 is what everyone does.. Even though he is responding to a thread where clearly a lot of people don't like that sort of thing. 

 

People don't seem to use the lfg tool anymore, so I can't look there for lower level heroes... I'd like to let people know what they're signing up for in a quick way. I've tried the phrase street level hero, which I think is fitting, but it is not widely used or understood.

 

I never noticed many people using the LFG tool on Everlasting, honestly. But then, few of us ever used it back in the Liberty days, either...

 

Most people seem to form groups from their Friends lists, or by posting to one of the chat channels or the Looking for Group chat tab. If you're forming there, just a simple "Kill-most (or all) X-level Mission team LF(however many people you want). No lvl 50s pls. PST to join." ought to get your point across and set expectations. 

[A Cat]

I just recently started playing again too having stopped just after the Architect issue (2009?). I do miss the commuting. Made it feel like a real city having to switch trains! Maybe I'm just too much of a car driver irl so this seems fun to me but I always did enjoy just super jumping and speeding around the city.

 

I do also miss sweeping hazard zones in teams as lowbies. This seems to be replaced by the dfb trial and bypassed by early travel powers. With the merit meta there is simply less reward too compared to tfs, trials, and mission arcs. It would be nice to do this again with some nostalgic old players. Maybe some sort of thing can be set up to incentize sweeping like merits for killing x mobs in a zone that con at least green to you. 

 

Overall I feel like people are just richer compared to back when I stopped. I think super efficient ae farming haven't become a thing yet then so overall there were fewer fully built people. I guess merits weren't a thing either. Also the top end was less high of course.

 

This is of course anecdotal but I don't think people are any more or less nice to newbies and ignorants (that's me!). There always are a good supply of helpful people. I do feel that there are much fewer truly new to the game people. That is just the nature of things. I'm sure somewhere there is a list of common acronyms but I have just asked or creepily monitored the chat to deduce its meaning. Sovera's guide has been extremely helpful for everything for me to start back up.

 

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/14433-simple-guide-for-newcomers-money-making-amongst-other-things/

[Coyotedancer]

3 minutes ago, A Cat said:

 

 

Overall I feel like people are just richer compared to back when I stopped. I think super efficient ae farming haven't become a thing yet then so overall there were fewer fully built people. I guess merits weren't a thing either. Also the top end was less high of course.

 

 

Some of that is a reflection of how much less messed up the in-game economy of Homecoming is compared to the ridiculousness of the Live days... No one here is selling PvP IO recipes for more than the INF cap, for instance. It takes a lot less to equip a character well on Homecoming than it did back then,

[tidge]

4 hours ago, DrZeus said:

Any suggestions on nomenclature to use? Phrasing that will get more bites?  I ask because of comments like dark dove.. He thinks +4/+8 is what everyone does.. Even though he is responding to a thread where clearly a lot of people don't like that sort of thing.

 

A few rando comments:

• "x8" is only a thing if the team has fewer than 8 players. AFAIK, setting it to 8 on an 8-person team doesn't have any direct affect (assuming folks don't drop between missions, or mid-mission for certain spawns)
• Even with proposed nomenclature, there will be room for misunderstanding. See below:

Misunderstanding abounds... Even on the most straightforward TFs, players will have different expectations. I will point out some approaches that surprise me about the way folks run a Penny Yin and discuss teammate behavior.

• "This is a speed run, only defeat what we have to"

The first mission (crashed copter) does not require the defeat of every group of Freakshow. I've had PUG leaders blow a gasket when I skip the unnecessary spawns.

• "This is a run for XP"

I've observed PUG leaders decide that they wanted to blow up all the doors in the PPD station after everyone else has left the mission... and then complain it was taking them too long.

• "This is a Kill All" / "This is a run for Badges"

I've observed PUG leaders flip their lid when players open up the side doors in the TV Reactor map to "Kill All" and/or get more Tankers/Super Stunners.

 

None of these actions/reactions are worth getting upset about.

[Darmian]

Just as an aside, people like to think in binaries.  I for one never play 4/8 because I don't build for it, it's simply not how I play.  Now, I may be in a minority, but that does not mean that those who DO play and build for 4/8 are a majority.  We are in a plurality of play styles here.  With no disrespect to those who do, more power to you, I'm frankly fed up reading posts where 4/8 is somehow seen as the "base" or "normal" level for anything.  It simply isn't.

 

Mini rant over. Normal service can now be resumed.

Edited July 16, 2021 by Darmian

[Dark Dove]

5 minutes ago, Darmian said:

I'm frankly fed up reading posts where 4/8 is somehow seen as the "base" or "normal" level for anything.  It simply isn't.

 

I don't think I've seen any (or if I have, not many) posts like that.  I think endgame builds in the archetype section are skewed toward +4/x8 survivability as the prime overall goal unless specified otherwise, but I've never really seen anyone say anything about 4/8 being some kind of standard, and I think the build preferences are more just to be prepared for anything rather than to specifically only do 4/8 content. If I saw a bunch of posts that said it was the standard I'd be fed up too, but I guess I don't read the right sections of the forum?

[Darmian]

1 minute ago, Dark Dove said:

 

I don't think I've seen any (or if I have, not many) posts like that.  I think endgame builds in the archetype section are skewed toward +4/x8 survivability as the prime overall goal unless specified otherwise, but I've never really seen anyone say anything about 4/8 being some kind of standard, and I think the build preferences are more just to be prepared for anything rather than to specifically only do 4/8 content. If I saw a bunch of posts that said it was the standard I'd be fed up too, but I guess I don't read the right sections of the forum?

Well, you've answered your query I feel.  Obviously it is my interpretation of what I read but I read quite a lot of the forum - not saying you don't but maybe we're not reading the same things - and that's what I see. Mind you, discussions as to builds and such will tend to aim for higher, so that makes sense, but then I see that then imported to posts where I for one don't see the relevance.  Ah well.

[skoryy]

19 minutes ago, Dark Dove said:

 

I don't think I've seen any (or if I have, not many) posts like that.  I think endgame builds in the archetype section are skewed toward +4/x8 survivability as the prime overall goal unless specified otherwise, but I've never really seen anyone say anything about 4/8 being some kind of standard, and I think the build preferences are more just to be prepared for anything rather than to specifically only do 4/8 content. If I saw a bunch of posts that said it was the standard I'd be fed up too, but I guess I don't read the right sections of the forum?

 

Yeah, I run +2/x4 on my controller and stalker, though I might push them up to +3/x6 now that I've noticed that's a good difficulty for my blaster.   The lack of a taunt aura and layered defense makes things less entertaining at anything higher.

[Coyotedancer]

The assumed-+4/x8 thing seems to come mostly from our semi-regular "This game is too easy!/This game has no challenge!/Nerf all the things!"-threads, I suspect. A lot of the people who grump about the game being trivially easy even at current high settings do regularly seem to run at that level. Occasional assumptions are made that their mode of play is "typical" for Homecoming players at large... even though I don't think it's really as common as some forum regulars, power-builders and MIDS Gurus may think.  

[ZemX]

18 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

even though I don't think it's really as common as some forum regulars, power-builders and MIDS Gurus may think.  

 

This goes along with the usual mistake people make of thinking what they see on the forums is representative of the playerbase as a whole.  It's not.

 

As far the +4/x8 thing goes, it's common exactly where you'd expect it to be common:  If you join a kill-most ITF  or a PI radio team, it's usually 50+4/x8.  The occasional Dark Astoria team seems to be there as well since it's now an Incarnate zone and lots of people running around there are already at +3 level shift.  TinPex, iTrials, etc.   

 

Regular mission teams and lower level TFs/radios/tips seem to adjust based on how the team is doing and team leads will often solicit "how we doing?" opinions on bumping the diff up or down.  You can certainly run into thick-headed team leads who insist it's +4/x8 or bust... even when people are dropping like flies... but the thing to do there is leave them to it.

[tidge]

13 minutes ago, ZemX said:

Regular mission teams and lower level TFs/radios/tips seem to adjust based on how the team is doing and team leads will often solicit "how we doing?" opinions on bumping the diff up or down.  You can certainly run into thick-headed team leads who insist it's +4/x8 or bust... even when people are dropping like flies... but the thing to do there is leave them to it.

 

I want to echo this. It is very rare in my experience that players will take their characters, even lvl 50s, through low level (team) content set at +4... especially if it is below the cutoff point for certain enhancement set bonuses. I've seen cases where an 8-player PUG (where the leader was leveling) was unwilling to turn up the difficulty on Frostfire, which as most people know will end up with a team facing con gray enemies by the end of it. A TF like Synapse (and it's many defeat alls) will be a slog with difficulty turned up, but in many ways I consider the ITF to be a slog.

[ZemX]

4 minutes ago, tidge said:

A TF like Synapse (and it's many defeat alls) will be a slog with difficulty turned up,

 

Worst I usually run across is someone wanting to run Posi 1 at +anything.  +2/3 CoT bosses with force fields and friends that debuff your toHit will make you cry.  They are bad enough at +0/1 at level 15.

[lemming]

17 minutes ago, ZemX said:

 

Worst I usually run across is someone wanting to run Posi 1 at +anything.  +2/3 CoT bosses with force fields and friends that debuff your toHit will make you cry.  They are bad enough at +0/1 at level 15.

A friend of mine forgot to set his difficulty down from +4 for a Posi 1.   That first mission was tough, but we got tons of levels.

The last mission is hit or miss at + anything.   If you have a bunch of controllers, those dupes can be hell to fight.

Edited July 16, 2021 by lemming

[Snarky]

3 hours ago, Darmian said:

Just as an aside, people like to think in binaries.  I for one never play 4/8 because I don't build for it, it's simply not how I play.  Now, I may be in a minority, but that does not mean that those who DO play and build for 4/8 are a majority.  We are in a plurality of play styles here.  With no disrespect to those who do, more power to you, I'm frankly fed up reading posts where 4/8 is somehow seen as the "base" or "normal" level for anything.  It simply isn't.

 

Mini rant over. Normal service can now be resumed.

All my Brutes can handle 4/8.  any I/O Brute should be able to.  My "squishiest" Brute is my Farmer.  I have a farm build for him, on fire farms, that is insanely good.  Not my build, so I just use what others discovered.  I have a Task Force build for him that is more reasonably balanced.  For incarnating, getting accolades etc.  Even with Fire Armor not being the sturdiest he is a beast.  That is my build, and I have run Tanky Brutes a long time.  But I do not want to run 4/8 with him except for farming.  Outside a farm I want merits/badges/incarnate pieces.  Most 4/8 is a waste of time, literally wasting my life for no reason.  I have seen people run Khan TF at +4.  Why?  Why the F would you do that?  So you can rub yourself and think about how much time you wasted for 7 other people?  Instead of burning the final room in under 5 minutes you made them suffer 20-30.  If only you could go out and stop traffic on the freeway for an hour your life might be complete.  Pant pant.  Okay, I'm done.  Off soapbox.

[Darmian]

1 minute ago, Snarky said:

All my Brutes can handle 4/8.  any I/O Brute should be able to.  My "squishiest" Brute is my Farmer.  I have a farm build for him, on fire farms, that is insanely good.  Not my build, so I just use what others discovered.  I have a Task Force build for him that is more reasonably balanced.  For incarnating, getting accolades etc.  Even with Fire Armor not being the sturdiest he is a beast.  That is my build, and I have run Tanky Brutes a long time.  But I do not want to run 4/8 with him except for farming.  Outside a farm I want merits/badges/incarnate pieces.  Most 4/8 is a waste of time, literally wasting my life for no reason.  I have seen people run Khan TF at +4.  Why?  Why the F would you do that?  So you can rub yourself and think about how much time you wasted for 7 other people?  Instead of burning the final room in under 5 minutes you made them suffer 20-30.  If only you could go out and stop traffic on the freeway for an hour your life might be complete.  Pant pant.  Okay, I'm done.  Off soapbox.

I think we are actually agreeing on things....I think!  Yes, you do all that, and build for all that but you're not advocating that that is somehow the default.

[RikOz]

On 7/8/2021 at 4:52 PM, BurtHutt said:

On that note, I really think having lengthy text in this game is not a great idea. You really can't read it. 

Cite: I had to go talk to Indigo after a mission. I clicked on her, and she had a six-paragraph info dump for me. Which I didn't get to read at all, because the mission arc also had Malta ambush me while I was talking to Indigo. The ambush included a Sapper, who of course attacks from range, forcing me to move far enough from Indigo that the dialog window closed, forever removing the possibility of reading what she had to say. Poor forethought there on the part of the mission designer.

 

On 7/9/2021 at 8:10 AM, DrZeus said:

I'm still undecided as to whether or not early travel powers are good or bad... sure, I like the convenience, as does everyone, but I also like exploring which you just don't do as much with travel powers.  There's a reason other MMO's don't typically have them at early levels either.  It lets you feel you're in a big impressive world.  I can say that I think the ability to teleport from one zone to another with base portals available to all is a bit over the top.

The "lets you feel you're in a big impressive world" thing is the reason the World of Warcraft devs disable flying at the beginning of each expansion. The main problem WoW players have with this is that they used to allow players to purchase "new expansion flying" once they reached max level, but now they make the players jump through a bunch of hoops (which aren't especially difficult), and then they still can't actually unlock flying until the first major patch, which is usually a few months after most players have reached max level. Now, of course, City of Heroes - Homecoming isn't likely to see any expansions, so at this point players have seen all the zones multiple times and know them inside and out, so we're not missing much by early travel powers.

 

As for the instant zone teleport power, I personally tend to reserve it for specific situations. The primary one being when a mission sends me a mile away from the nearest tram station (particularly common in IP and Talos Island). I've already had to fly all the way to the mission entrance; there is nothing gained by having to fly all the way back to the tram station by the same route, so I'll call my contact as soon as I exit the mission, get the next mission, and then teleport to the next zone. Granted, I could accomplish more or less the same thing by teleporting to my SG base and then using a portal from there, but given that the long-range teleporter always drops you at the new zone's base portal, the only thing teleporting to my base first accomplishes is adding an extra loading screen - one teleporting in, and one teleporting out. So all I'm "losing" by using the long-range teleporter instead is "waiting through a second loading screen".

[callador0630]

I'm a new player that briefly played COH/COV when I was gaming back in the day while mainly playing WoW.  I always liked the the concept of the game, but it was pretty hard to play solo as a tanker.  Like others mentioned, endurance usage really sucked.  I also felt like there weren't enough missions, so I was stuck street sweeping or doing newspaper missions.  I really disliked doing both of those.

 

After coming back, and I'm still a newbie, it's feels a lot better to level.   Maybe all the missions existed before, but it helps that I can easily find contacts and do real story arcs.  I don't know any of the tricks to power level, so it isn't like I am hitting 50 any time soon.  It is fast leveling, but for a new player, not ultra fast.  So I'm getting way more into playing my tanker this time.  Now I want to actually level a guy to 50 and start doing some real tanking.  I played EQ before WoW, and that was also too hard to play for solo leveling, raiding, etc.  

[Snarky]

13 minutes ago, RikOz said:

The "lets you feel you're in a big impressive world" thing is the reason the World of Warcraft devs disable flying at the beginning of each expansion.

and this is one of the reason WoW is 2nd tier gaming for me.

[Snarky]

I wasnt kidding about the Khan either.  We just ran one in under 20 minutes, semi-PUG team.  The idiots who run them at +4 take more than that time on the final fight.  exact SAME rewards.

[ForeverLaxx]

14 minutes ago, Snarky said:

and this is one of the reason WoW is 2nd tier gaming for me.

Adding flying at all to WoW was a mistake.

 

29 minutes ago, RikOz said:

I had to go talk to Indigo after a mission. I clicked on her, and she had a six-paragraph info dump for me. Which I didn't get to read at all, because the mission arc also had Malta ambush me while I was talking to Indigo. The ambush included a Sapper, who of course attacks from range, forcing me to move far enough from Indigo that the dialog window closed, forever removing the possibility of reading what she had to say. Poor forethought there on the part of the mission designer.

Chances are, the ambush was already headed your way before you even got to Indigo. They caught up because you were standing there reading text. That said, there's a chance that if you opened your mission window and clicked the "show more" button that Indigo's information could be displayed there to re-read. I'll do this sometimes if I get a "multiclick" bug where the game thinks I clicked my mouse twice and closes a window immediately after I open it. The information lost isn't always there, but it often is.

[SwitchFade]

On 7/16/2021 at 6:08 AM, Snarky said:

I do hours of work each week to keep myself in about a half billion in liquid Inf, which I usually blow on a new alt or super packs.  But the point is I spend a LOT of time farming, crafting, converting to make the cash.  I have yet to find the magical "spigot" that pours out treasure in the game. The closest I have come is farming, which is tedious.

 

I can use my alt account farmer to PL my main account crazy new AT build idea to 50 in a few hours. Then use all that stored cash/enhancers to I/O the new toon.  Then I do run the toon. To test, see what I like.  But It was not like someone gave me the character. I have to farm. craft convert sell, conceptualize farm the alt, spend time devising an i/o build, respec, slot, tweak, then drop 50 mil in for must have travel powers at P2W.  Then...the character is "ready" to go.  It is fast.  Faster than on live.  But I cannot whip one out in less than a hard day, and it usually takes two. Add incarnating (if I like what is happening) and we are talking 3-7 days on the character before it is "complete" from idea in my head to 50 I/O w/ incarnates and a few accolades.

All inf generating information is now removed and private.

Edited July 22, 2021 by SwitchFade

[SwitchFade]

1 hour ago, callador0630 said:

I'm a new player that briefly played COH/COV when I was gaming back in the day while mainly playing WoW.  I always liked the the concept of the game, but it was pretty hard to play solo as a tanker.  Like others mentioned, endurance usage really sucked.  I also felt like there weren't enough missions, so I was stuck street sweeping or doing newspaper missions.  I really disliked doing both of those.

 

After coming back, and I'm still a newbie, it's feels a lot better to level.   Maybe all the missions existed before, but it helps that I can easily find contacts and do real story arcs.  I don't know any of the tricks to power level, so it isn't like I am hitting 50 any time soon.  It is fast leveling, but for a new player, not ultra fast.  So I'm getting way more into playing my tanker this time.  Now I want to actually level a guy to 50 and start doing some real tanking.  I played EQ before WoW, and that was also too hard to play for solo leveling, raiding, etc.  

You could be real tanking at lvl 20, with some tips. Also, you can level faster with p2w double XP.