Is this game too solved to be fun? :(

[UltraAlt]

On 9/18/2022 at 8:56 AM, pawstruck said:

I really love making costumes, writing backstories, and coming up with cohesive heroes with odd powersets. But I was also hoping that there was some real "meat" to the endgame where even this dated combat system would be pushed to interesting levels. Am I wrong?

 

Forget the end game, allied and unsworn altoholic!

You are an altoholic! You just don't want to accept it!

The endgame is not for you. Throw it aside. Embrace your creativity!

Make those alts! Craft those costumes! Make more characters to write your own backstories about!

 

 

Create your own pantheon...er...army of robots..... I mean supergroup!

Make those cohesive heroes and level up with those odd power sets.

Can you do it?! Yes! You can!

 

What I'm saying is play "the game" the part that is before the end of the game aka the end-game.

Sound like fun! It should. It is!

The game is the journey.

 

The endgame is sitting on your laurels and saying how great you are ... along with a lot of character that doorsat to get there ... and undoubtedly some level 600 Veterans that make you feel like you are level 1!

 

Come back to the game! Play the game!

Give in to making alts!

 

 

Maybe a robot mastermind would be fun ....

 

 

Edited September 20, 2022 by UltraAlt

[Shred Monkey]

22 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Do the opposite of the speed run sometime. Hop into a normal +*/x8 TF

 

This.  I have min-maxed toons because I really enjoy min-maxing and I know the speed run checkpoints pretty well on all the high level TFs.  And still, I avoid speed runs most of the time.  They're just not all that fun to me.   

 

Kahn is probably the worst example of how much you can skip over in a speed run.  But at least it has a final boss fight that everyone can contribute. 

[Max Firepower]

On 9/18/2022 at 1:48 PM, Krimson said:

A simpler solution. Run smaller teams. 

I found a team of 2-5, running x/+8, will usually give everyone enough 'to do' to feel busy.  Very few TFs feel that way on a team of 8.

 

I also found working through TFC, just doing solo TFs as much as possible, was a nice path for one alt.

 

I find the 'grind' to 50 to be more intriguing than the L50 content, personally, so... I alt quite a bit.  Just a thought on path options.  Good luck!

[shatterpoint]

CoH has been like this for a LOOONG time. Yes, you are irrelevant. People who've been playing forever have farmed out and tricked out every character they have. They've run these T/Sf's until they can do them in their sleep. They do it for hours on end in an endless cycle. New people can be highly discouraged by a lot of this. They don't even KNOW if they are contributing or not. I've even seen some ridiculed for not doing enough damage or dying a lot because they aren't tricked out. YOU are there purely to up the mob count. That's it.

The game isn't that challenging to begin with. Kill a mob, move, kill mob...move...lather...rinse repeat. 

The IO/incarnate system has removed challenge. Its dead, dead, dead. Now its farm. Farm characters, farm IOs, farm merits....while they argue over if its good or not.

I wish this reply didn't sound so ugly, but facts are facts. You could run a T/SF with a character that has no enhancers and I'm betting no one would even notice. I think SBB would be the only one that's an exception because its only 4 people.

I'd LOVE to see a server taken back to pre-IO days. Back when a purple named base enemy could wreck an entire crew. You absolutely NEEDED the defender, tank, blaster, scrapper and controller to even THINK of surviving at high difficulty. I miss huddling in an adjacent room while the blaster attempts that all important pull. It all goes wrong and everyone must contribute to stay alive. THAT was when CoH was a glittering diamond. You KNEW who understood their role and understood their character. 

Hami....is a procedure now, not an event.

Welcome to City...of farming.

[biostem]

The best solution is to form your own teams and to specifically advertise them as "casual" or "laid back".  It's amazing how this filters out those whose only concern is "ECKSPEEZ" or "LEWT"...

[Gulbasaur]

It's definitely a thing. I think a lot of endgame builds seem to be designed to be totally self-contained with massive recharge, stamina and defence buffs, and that's against the spirit of an MMO, especially one with such a cool buff and debuff system as CoX.  It's not uncommon to have like +90% in defence buffs floating round when you hit level 45 and at that point it just becomes a mob grinder. 

 

I'm a big fan of slow levelling - pause your XP at any levels with a 4 or a 9 at the end and only move on when you're ready. I'm currently enjoying "self-sufficient" character levelling, where you don't just shit a load of inf on a character at level 1. It makes the game much more interesting. It's also pretty easy to find groups of 3-5 players if you run mission teams - a lot of players don't really want to run the same 3 task forces week after week. 

 

Mid-level builds tend to be more chaotic and less I-can-solo-everything and this means that the game feels more challenging. There's a sweet spot around the time that players hit Founders Falls, in my opinion, where characters are quite well rounded but not overpowered. 

 

Writing "chilled out" in the the LFG if you post seems to instantly increase the quality of team if you're not clock-watching. I play on Everlasting and RP-friendly groups are often the most fun to roll with because people tend to have a bit of a sense of humour and not focus completely on converting mobs into inf. 

Edited September 21, 2022 by Gulbasaur

[Seed22]

51 minutes ago, shatterpoint said:

CoH has been like this for a LOOONG time. Yes, you are irrelevant. People who've been playing forever have farmed out and tricked out every character they have. They've run these T/Sf's until they can do them in their sleep. They do it for hours on end in an endless cycle. New people can be highly discouraged by a lot of this. They don't even KNOW if they are contributing or not. I've even seen some ridiculed for not doing enough damage or dying a lot because they aren't tricked out. YOU are there purely to up the mob count. That's it.

The game isn't that challenging to begin with. Kill a mob, move, kill mob...move...lather...rinse repeat. 

The IO/incarnate system has removed challenge. Its dead, dead, dead. Now its farm. Farm characters, farm IOs, farm merits....while they argue over if its good or not.

I wish this reply didn't sound so ugly, but facts are facts. You could run a T/SF with a character that has no enhancers and I'm betting no one would even notice. I think SBB would be the only one that's an exception because its only 4 people.

I'd LOVE to see a server taken back to pre-IO days. Back when a purple named base enemy could wreck an entire crew. You absolutely NEEDED the defender, tank, blaster, scrapper and controller to even THINK of surviving at high difficulty. I miss huddling in an adjacent room while the blaster attempts that all important pull. It all goes wrong and everyone must contribute to stay alive. THAT was when CoH was a glittering diamond. You KNEW who understood their role and understood their character. 

Hami....is a procedure now, not an event.

Welcome to City...of farming.

HM 4 Aeon kinda gives the OG CoH feel and let me tell you, it’s not a diamond like you thought it was. I used to think the same thing, because when I played CoH way back when, I had all the time in the world and didn’t really care about the quality of my toons or the overall experience because it was fun enough.

 

But, after having been back 3 yrs, with I think 72(?) 50’s(which is 47 more 50s than I had preshutdown). HC version is a lot more efficient and fun overall, imo.  Though thats probably because I’m a lot more casual now than way back then.

[biostem]

28 minutes ago, Seed22 said:

But, after having been back 3 yrs, with I think 72(?) 50’s(which is 47 more 50s than I had preshutdown). HC version is a lot more efficient and fun overall, imo.  Though thats probably because I’m a lot more casual now than way back then.

There's definitely a different feeling to playing CoH now vs then - I used to do a lot of street sweeping, and TFs or trials were never really on my radar.  I felt a great compulsion to play back then, as I was paying to play, and any notion of just hanging around felt like a waste to me.  Leveling was definitely a lot slower, but I don't know if that was just due to my general inexperience with optimizing my builds, fewer powersets to choose from, or the lack of any real farms or P2W powers, (or a combination thereof)...

[BurtHutt]

Incarnates have definitely ruined a lot of the 50 content. I know the Live Devs were planning on more trials etc but this never made sense as all of the pre-incarnate level 50 content turned into a cake walk. 

 

HC is doing a great job and it feels like it's being run by a professional team. Unfortunately there's no way they can add enough content etc to satisfy the need for end game content. They did come up with a decent idea by adding the hard mode scale - this should make things a bit more interesting.

 

I will say it is human nature to stick with what's familiar and a certainty. I think the regular speed runs will dominate the LFG and the odd hard mode tf will form. I think HC came up with a good idea to put some challenge back in the game. Now it's on the players and, as I said, a lot won't go this route because it will be hard.

 

Personally, I don't play much these days. My 50s aren't used too often. I have made solid builds and I often like taking my melee toons into Cimerora and clearing the wall - just like back in the good old days!

 

Honestly, I kinda wish incarnates were never introduced into the game but it's too late for that now. So, PLAY ON, PLAYAS! 

[Darkaiser]

Sadly, there will always be situations where your character feels left out of the fun.

 

I won't bring Melee characters into high-level PUGs unless I'm leading the team. Past about 35 or so, my melee toons hits the mob right about the time the mass of Controllers, Blasters, and debuffers is making them paper thin for the hyper-built Brute or Scrapper to shatter them. No fun for me. Might as well door sit and be PL'd IMHO.

 

Masterminds on almost any Incarnate content, the Hami raid, or the MSR. The pets are still too squishy in these circumstances and the MM turns into a second-hand Defender buffing their team and resummoning pets.

 

I deliberately put the long-animation powers at the far end of my power bar because in many situations they simply won't be necessary or useful. Many Blasters will do fine with their 2-3 single-target blasts, their explosive AoE, and their Snipe if they have one. Anything with a 2-3 second animation will be hitting a dead target.

 

Many of my buffers feel like benchwarmers on high-level teams. Most of the teammates never die and my buffs don't feel like they're making us move any faster so why bother?

 

I feel your pain, believe me.

[DoctorDitko]

On Torch, I have seen crazy people who run things like a "World's Slowest ITF."

 

The one I went on was a hell of a lot of fun!

The XP is excellent, and there is time for shocking things like --  banter with your teammates!

 

Give it a try before you give up on high-end content!

 

Edited to add: Darkaiser has an excellent point: Lead the team you want to be on!

 

Edited September 25, 2022 by DoctorDitko

[Coyotedancer]

8 hours ago, Darkaiser said:

Many of my buffers feel like benchwarmers on high-level teams. Most of the teammates never die and my buffs don't feel like they're making us move any faster so why bother?

 

In the past, I would have said to try running those support types with mid-level teams instead of high-level groups. That's the point in the game where you're still needed, and it's what I used to do with my defenders and controllers and such. I even designed their builds in some cases around that idea. 

 

... And then people started grumping about how much they hated having exemp-ed level 50s on their mid- and low-level teams, and how those of us playing that way were ruining their game.

 

So, I don't do that anymore and have stopped recommending that anyone else try it. I shelved my support characters, and pretty much only run them with the family SG these days. If you can find a group of lower-level people like that, who are willing to put up with you "wrecking their leveling experience" with your support character, it's still fun, though. And you'll definitely feel more useful than you would running with a level 50 PUG.  

[golstat2003]

If you don't want to speed run . . . don't. Form your own teams as others have said.

 

And do more Hard Mode stuff.

 

Also keep in mind: it's a game. You're not stuck on a team you're not having fun on (for whatever reason). Yes, you ca quit and find another team. For tfs pay attention to what the leader is advertising. If in LFG they are saying "speed this or that" don't expect it to be a team that slows down for any reason. Don't join if you're not interested in speeding through the content just to get the merits. As that is the POINT of those advertised teams.

Edited September 26, 2022 by golstat2003

[shatterpoint]

This post as prompted me to do an experiment. How long can I go without helping on teams in any significant way? Put my initial power on auto and just run with the group. Don't purchase ENH or anything. How far can I get? I'm betting I can hit 50. I may even try to do it without double XP boosters.

 

TO THE CHARACTER CREATOR!!!

[MoonSheep]

9 hours ago, shatterpoint said:

This post as prompted me to do an experiment. How long can I go without helping on teams in any significant way? Put my initial power on auto and just run with the group. Don't purchase ENH or anything. How far can I get? I'm betting I can hit 50. I may even try to do it without double XP boosters.

 

TO THE CHARACTER CREATOR!!!

 

1-50 and most incarnate trials i’d imagine

 

in the average 8 man team, at least 1 person isn’t really contributing in a meaningful way. 8 people aren’t required for most content, so it doesn’t get noticed too much

[Grouchybeast]

12 hours ago, shatterpoint said:

This post as prompted me to do an experiment. How long can I go without helping on teams in any significant way? Put my initial power on auto and just run with the group. Don't purchase ENH or anything. How far can I get? I'm betting I can hit 50. I may even try to do it without double XP boosters.

 

Roll an Emp defender and people probably won't even notice anything unusual.

 

Roll a Mastermind, though, and there might be a few questions if you auto the summons.

[shatterpoint]

Well to be honest, I do contribute. Not really in my nature to NOT contribute. As to what I chose, I won't be disclosing that. DFB got me to 11. Ran Frostfire with a group and got to 21.

Its rather easy. Once my initial XP boosts run out I won't be getting more. I'll collect the loot as my fee for being on the team. LOL.

[RikOz]

On 9/18/2022 at 1:04 PM, srmalloy said:

diving into the AE building at level 1 and not coming out until 50, not to mention having to figure out how your powers work together all at once

That was my initial problem with Death Knights in WoW. You'd be starting with, effectively, a level 60 character, with all the powers a level 60 character would have. I had a really difficult time figuring out, all at once, how they were all supposed to work together.

Edited September 27, 2022 by RikOz

[pawstruck]

On 9/27/2022 at 11:05 AM, shatterpoint said:

Well to be honest, I do contribute. Not really in my nature to NOT contribute. As to what I chose, I won't be disclosing that. DFB got me to 11. Ran Frostfire with a group and got to 21.

Its rather easy. Once my initial XP boosts run out I won't be getting more. I'll collect the loot as my fee for being on the team. LOL.

 

I've always wondered about this. It's got me amused and depressed at the same time. Weird.

 

To be fair though, you could probably do the same thing with other MMORPG's if they had an auto-power feature. Pretty sure a WoW Paladin could do nothing but spam Flash of Light for a large portion of that game's lifetime.

 

Still, I think most of us here seem to agree that CoX in its current state struggles to force people to think and play hard for much of its content.

[golstat2003]

45 minutes ago, pawstruck said:

 

I've always wondered about this. It's got me amused and depressed at the same time. Weird.

 

To be fair though, you could probably do the same thing with other MMORPG's if they had an auto-power feature. Pretty sure a WoW Paladin could do nothing but spam Flash of Light for a large portion of that game's lifetime.

 

Still, I think most of us here seem to agree that CoX in its current state struggles to force people to think and play hard for much of its content.

 

I'm okay with this. Especially now that folks who want to play hard have such content being built..

[Herotu]

On 9/18/2022 at 1:56 PM, pawstruck said:

Why? Who cares? Damage doesn't matter if you're just stomping the game already.

 

I really love making costumes, writing backstories, and coming up with cohesive heroes with odd powersets. But I was also hoping that there was some real "meat" to the endgame where even this dated combat system would be pushed to interesting levels.`

My own dilemma is that I want to play with other people, but they don't want to escort some "noob"-ish person around - and why should they? So I do a mission with the text-to-speech going over the mission text in the background, but it can get pretty boring and feel ponderous with very little exp for a mission.

But then I join a team and it's "there was a story"? Aaaaand mission complete, well done everybody thanks for joining and now I've got 3 more levels (wtf?!). 

I'd like something in between.

 

Apologies if this seems unrelated, I know it's not exactly the same issue as the OP has, but I believe they both fall under the broad banner of user-experience.

[Sneakers]

On 9/18/2022 at 5:56 AM, pawstruck said:

I played a lot back on live, but the only endgame content I ever did was one Hami raid. I am definitely new to the Homecoming additions, and only recently figured out the extent of the IO and Incarnate systems.

 

So I get to 50 on my blaster, get as many good IO sets as I can afford, and unlock my Alpha slot. I'm feeling pretty good about my character and am enjoying seeing his power level continue to rise after level 50.

 

Then I join a "speed Kahn" task force to get my first level shift... and I haven't played CoH since.

 

My problem was that I was completely irrelevant the entire time. There was no challenge in anything. The multiple-incarnate, whatever-super-build level Brute charged into enormous mobs alone and just melted them. Thunderous Blast? Yeah right, the mob was dead before it even animated.

 

I would ask that you not get bent out of shape and scold me over this if there's something I'm missing here. I'm just not sure if the endgame stuff is even interesting because people seem to build uber-characters that don't need support, or even a team at all, to beat content. Meanwhile my whole team is chatting about doing X or Y to increase their damage by another 1.5% and I'm just like... Why? Who cares? Damage doesn't matter if you're just stomping the game already.

 

I really love making costumes, writing backstories, and coming up with cohesive heroes with odd powersets. But I was also hoping that there was some real "meat" to the endgame where even this dated combat system would be pushed to interesting levels. Am I wrong?

 

P.S.: Love the game and really grateful for Homecoming, so again, please don't flame if I'm missing something.

 

You're not wrong. 

 

The game is basically the same from the first punch to the last. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

 

Just remember the speed runs are only fun if you're into that.

 

If you're not into speed runs, you won't have any fun so avoid them or just enjoy the ride.

 

And if you get built completely out and your thunderous blast hits first, it will be you doing the annihilation.

 

The core of the game is still awesome *making your personal superhero.

 

Unfortunately, the game doesn't really change that much along the way.

 

Your job is to punch enemies, collect things or escort someone out of a building and make quirky comments along the way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[DoctorDitko]

If you are interested in the story, your only option is to lead the team, otherwise you won't be able to read all the story stuff.

 

(Apparently the Narrator only talks to the boss. Who knew?)