One insta 50 a month! Bad idea or Brainstorm?!?

[Ghost]

Just an idea - if it’s been brought up before, I apologize.

 

What if once a month you could trade a 50?

You would basically give up a 50 for the opportunity to replace it with one of equal level/incarnate ability.

So if you have up a 50 with tier 4 incarnates, you could build a new tier 4 50

The caveat is, you also lose the name (and anything else that toon was named over the previous 30 days)

 

 

[battlewraith]

1 hour ago, Ghost said:

Just an idea - if it’s been brought up before, I apologize.

 

What if once a month you could trade a 50?

You would basically give up a 50 for the opportunity to replace it with one of equal level/incarnate ability.

So if you have up a 50 with tier 4 incarnates, you could build a new tier 4 50

The caveat is, you also lose the name (and anything else that toon was named over the previous 30 days)

 

 

 

Would work for me.

[Bionic_Flea]

One 50 a month.  Bad idea or Brainstorm?

 

I vote Brainstorm.  As in go to Brainstorm and have your wish granted!  You don't even need to limit it to one per month!

[Ruin Mage]

Brainstorm is there for all your instant gratification needs, indeed.

[Oklahoman]

[battlewraith]

1 hour ago, Krimson said:

Something I wouldn't mind seeing: Level 50 Recycling

 

Yeah I have a bunch of characters that I tried out and then lost interest for various reasons. It would be nice to be able to recycle that effort. Even if there was some downside, like needing to redo incarnates from scratch or something.

 

1 hour ago, Krimson said:

Are we ready for waves of unslotted 50s?

 

Maybe that would be an improvement over slotted 50s exemping down and burning through content.

[SeraphimKensai]

3 minutes ago, Krimson said:

Something I wouldn't mind seeing: Level 50 Recycling

 

You have a toon you have leveled but just didn't work out how you would like? Strip it down and bring it to the recycling center, and get your Level 50 Token which can be used on any newly made toon? How about that? So in order to get a Token, you first need a 50 to trade in. The toon gets deleted and you get the account bound token in Account Email. 

 

I think the general idea here is reasonable, but there should be a cost of 2 lvl 50 characters to create 1 lvl 50 token, that way the player has to actually think about how bad they want that instant lvl 50, and if the juice is worth the squeeze.

[battlewraith]

1 hour ago, SeraphimKensai said:

 

I think the general idea here is reasonable, but there should be a cost of 2 lvl 50 characters to create 1 lvl 50 token, that way the player has to actually think about how bad they want that instant lvl 50, and if the juice is worth the squeeze.

 

Why? They already leveled a 50, why should they need to burn two to get a redo?

For a lot of people the question is not how bad do they want the insta 50, but do they want to be wasting time in this game versus something else.

[SeraphimKensai]

16 minutes ago, battlewraith said:

 

Why? They already leveled a 50, why should they need to burn two to get a redo?

For a lot of people the question is not how bad do they want the insta 50, but do they want to be wasting time in this game versus something else.

Maybe I'm a bit old school and I totally understand that life has other requirements on our time then play CoH as I work full time and often have to stay late and remote in afterhours (wish I got paid for that but salary so I'm S.O.L. there), help out with requests from aging parents that live in my city and am on a daily basis trying my best to figure out how to take care of my 6 week old daughter, and support my wife.

 

So yeah it's nice to be able to find time to play a game. I try to not take it for granted, especially since this game was gone for many people for 7 years.

 

That all said, hell I have 150 or so lvl 50s that are incarnates and IO'd, it's extremely easy to level up in the game, and sure I struck while the iron was hot and farmed a ton. I still invested my time to be able to have the choices of tons of characters to play from.

 

A 1 for 1 lvl 50 exchange is kinda a slap in the face to someone that put in the effort to have access to a lot of characters at lvl 50. So if a token exchange for a fresh minted lvl 50 we're ever a thing I'd want there to be a cost to it, that's why I think a 2 for 1 exchange rate is a  reasonable price.

 

That said I personally don't even want a token to get an instant lvl 50. If you want to play a lvl 50 you didn't earn or at least sacrifice for, there's Brainstorm, or you can play it in PvP as a Temporal Warrior, but the production servers for PvE don't need to be the wild west.

Edited October 14, 2022 by SeraphimKensai
Minor grammar

[battlewraith]

1 hour ago, SeraphimKensai said:

That said I personally don't even want a token to get an instant lvl 50. If you want to play a lvl 50 you didn't earn or at least sacrifice for, there's Brainstorm, or you can play it in PvP as. Temporal Warrior, but the production servers for PvE don't need to be the wild west.

 

We were talking about recycling. You are not getting a new 50, you are recycling an old one. You earned that old one. Yeah it's easy to level up, but that still involves hours of wasted time sitting in a farm. What point does it serve to always require players to do this? In addition to exchanging a 50, there could be a limited number per month or something if there was a serious concern about gluts of unslotted 50s running around.

 

People keep mentioning Brainstorm. Brainstorm has no population and is subject to getting wiped. When people request a change for the game, they are asking for a change to the game they actually play, not looking for advice on where to be sent elsewhere.

[Greycat]

*Shrug* What the hell. With them changing the levels powers are available at now and trivializing the content not designed for them, it's pretty much the next step.  (And yeah. By now it's going live, whether it's actually good or not. Hint - it's not.)

 

And as far about "learn to play it?" Get real. I've been in this long enough that it doesn't exactly take a lot of time to learn a powerset or combo's features. I'd say most people here and in game are. I, for one, would probably be burning the "1 50 a month token" recreating characters from live that I'd played for years already.

 

I've already had to walk uphill both ways in ten feet of snow. I don't need to "burn" or "recycle" 50s - and if that were somehow a requirement, that just leads to sitting in a farm and transferring whatever inf and interesting drops I get over before burning generic farmed characters.

[Excraft]

17 hours ago, Rudra said:

Where do we stop with the instant gratification bit?

 

Tools to create a fully decked out 50 with all the bells and whistles already exist on the test server and hardly anyone uses them.  That whole argument by the cheerleading squad falls kinda flat.

[Darkaiser]

A lot of things have been said and I'm typing with sore fingers so rather than try to quote everything, I'm going to generalize:

 

1) I understand why some people don't want a 'Free 50' button, whether it's once a month or whatever. We've likely all played with characters that were farmed up but then the players had no idea how to run them. With our current farming situation, this isn't going to go away. About an hour after the changes were made to the AE Fire Farms, the mission creators were fixing their maps. You can tell which ones have been edited by how much xp they drop. I see no difference between a limited number of free 50s and people both asking for farms and offering their farming services. At least with the free 50 on a limited basis, you might attract new players and I consider that a good thing.

 

2) The idea that a free 50, of any kind, is a slap in the face to those that leveled the traditional way is the same argument that some people are currently making against student loan forgiveness. 'I paid mine off so if they get theirs paid for them it's a slap in the face to me' or some such rot. Just because you did something the traditional way (some would say the 'hard way') doesn't mean that you have the right to force everyone else to endure what you did out of some misguided sense of fairness. I nearly died of an illness back in 2006 so what...everyone who DIDN'T got a free ride? I should feel bitter that I had to do things 'the hard way?' It's a ridiculous line of thinking. Just because you soloed an AR/Devices Blaster on Live doesn't mean that everyone else has to share your pain. Stop acting like a martyr.

 

3) Back on Live you had to get to a 50 to unlock Khelds and the VEATs. So why is this a bad benchmark for the idea of swapping (or trading in or whatever term you want to use) a 50 for another 50? Rather than having a whole stable full of 50s that you may or may not play, I like the idea of being able to recycle them (good term for it IMHO). Sure, some people will still farm to 50 but they're going to do that anyway so what's the harm?

[Greycat]

6 minutes ago, Excraft said:

 

Tools to create a fully decked out 50 with all the bells and whistles already exist on the test server and hardly anyone uses them.  That whole argument by the cheerleading squad falls kinda flat.

 

What's *not* on the test server is ... population. Existing bases. Existing supergroups, friends, etc. Events run by other groups.

 

That's why, outside of testing stuff with no issues, hardly anyone uses them. (On top of the "May be wiped at any time.")  I'd think that'd be obvious.

[Excraft]

13 minutes ago, Greycat said:

What's *not* on the test server is ... population. Existing bases. Existing supergroups, friends, etc. Events run by other groups.

 

That's why, outside of testing stuff with no issues, hardly anyone uses them. (On top of the "May be wiped at any time.")  I'd think that'd be obvious.

 

Instant 50s are available to everyone, so friends/family/whole SGs can play there together, yet people choose not to.  I'd think it would be obvious that server wipes are a non-issue since any character can be re-created from scratch with all the bells and whistles within a few minutes.  Bases are a fair point.  I can't really say how big a selling point bases are to most people though. 

 

15 minutes ago, Krimson said:

If we're going the "Go somewhere else" route, why not just tell players to go to the Cake server?

 

Wasn't really suggesting anyone just play on Brainstorm.  Point was more that the tools to roll up an instant 50 already exist and hardly anyone uses it.  I don't think it would destroy the universe to have that functionality on the live server.

[Ruin Mage]

34 minutes ago, Greycat said:

Shrug* What the hell. With them changing the levels powers are available at now and trivializing the content not designed for them, it's pretty much the next step.  (And yeah. By now it's going live, whether it's actually good or not. Hint - it's not.)

Entertaining this more than "No" or "Just go to Brainstorm":

It's not really the 'next step' in any sort of way. While its true that the Power Level Availability change will have an effect on lower levels, one shouldn't jump to conclusions or lean into the 'well why not do this instead' trap. Just because one change was made does not mean that Instant 50s (PVE) are viable. It's one thing to change when you get access to powers, but its another to grant an Instant 50 for PVE. They're two very different things.

 

 

1 hour ago, battlewraith said:

Maybe that would be an improvement over slotted 50s exemping down and burning through content.

That's more a criticism on how the Exemplar system works than a knock on 50s, really.

Ultimately, my stance on Insta-50s is that there are two better suited locations for those seeking Instant Gratification. That being Brainstorm and the Cake/New Dawn server. It's valid to point out where there are places that give you what you want. Sure, they don't have the population or the bases or the events. However, that's a trade off that comes with the territory. If PVE Insta-50s were a thing that was agreeable, it seems easy enough that it would have been done by now. They clearly can do it for PVP, but why not for PVE?

Because they don't want to, plain and simple. There's no good reason to give it as an option on a server with an active population. Now if someone points out the Temporal Warriors, it should be noted that those characters have restrictions and PVP often almost always happens at 50. Where as PVE has hundreds of contacts across several zones, task forces, and more across various levels.

But sure, give people insta-50s. Make it cost 1bil-2bil inf or 1000 Empyrean Merits.

[Yaliw]

Since the devs have ruined literally everything and the game is entirely unplayable and not giving me my dopamine fix, I suggest we get rid of levels entirely and just play at level 1 with all powers unlocked and no health bar! Thats basically what the devs are doing to this video game anyway!! /s

[battlewraith]

1 hour ago, Shadeknight said:

Ultimately, my stance on Insta-50s is that there are two better suited locations for those seeking Instant Gratification.

 

It's not about instant gratification, although it seems that the people who oppose this sort of thing view it that way. For me, it's simply about skipping the hours that I am going to spend farming the new 50. It's not "oh boy oh boy I've got a new 50"! Once I have the character at 50, I'm enhancing it and testing the build, grinding the Incarnate levels and components, doing accolades, etc.  And if I enjoy the character just playing it. There's nothing instant about it, just a few hours less grind.

[Ruin Mage]

7 minutes ago, battlewraith said:

although it seems that the people who oppose this sort of thing view it that way

Probably because that's the best first guess of this being where it comes from, given the rise of Insta-level cap/insta-level tokens in other games.

 

Just now, Krimson said:

that people who engage in Badwrongfun should leave YOUR game and go elsewhere. 

This isn't my game and it's not Badwrongfun to want Instant 50s. Don't put words in my mouth or put the wrong intent behind my words.

 

 

2 minutes ago, Krimson said:

ONLY interact with those who play the game in the way you approve of.

There's no approval/disapproval in terms of how one plays the game. Aside from the game design and/or vision & intent of developers.

Vitriol aside, it is more that PVE is its own thing and that there should be some sort of cost. Perhaps not as Sky High as what I put down, but a trade-off/cost should be there. Mind you, this isn't about gatekeeping. 50 isn't some grind that I'm nostalgic for. I'd likely partake if this ever became an option. That being said, I still disagree with allowing Instant 50s at this time. I just don't like the idea, and others obviously like it.

Which is fine.

[Ruin Mage]

It's pointing out there are places that do this.

There's no harm in dabbling in other servers or playing around on HC's test/beta server.

[SeraphimKensai]

1 hour ago, Darkaiser said:

 so what's the harm?

Another thought that allowing a 50 to be recycled into another 50, means that there are no recipe, salvage, converters, catalysts, etc. drops along it's path to 50.

 

That potentially would be a decrease to items being sold on the market, and may have an inverse reaction causing prices to go up (supply vs. demand).

 

if the player base is dead set on some kind of token, perhaps limiting it to once/6 months, as 1,000 people recycling a toon to 50 once a month and needing to slot it out will likely cause some supply issues.

[Rudra]

I've stated on this thread that I am not a fan of the instant-50 token and my mind has not changed. However, the comments about recycling a level 50 into something else? I actually like that idea. Have the token cost whatever the devs think is fair and have that character have to start over on their incarnate abilities. (I don't see any way to start over on vet levels as someone also suggested since those are marked by badges.) I think that is a fair compromise between the two sides of this debate.

 

Edit: Have them stay the same AT, just go with new power sets in that AT.

Edited October 14, 2022 by Rudra

[Rudra]

3 minutes ago, SeraphimKensai said:

Another thought that allowing a 50 to be recycled into another 50, means that there are no recipe, salvage, converters, catalysts, etc. drops along it's path to 50.

 

That potentially would be a decrease to items being sold on the market, and may have an inverse reaction causing prices to go up (supply vs. demand).

 

if the player base is dead set on some kind of token, perhaps limiting it to once/6 months, as 1,000 people recycling a toon to 50 once a month and needing to slot it out will likely cause some supply issues.

No, it doesn't. I don't believe I'm arguing against you, but oh well. If a 50 is being recycled as opposed to new instant-50 character, you're basically playing the same character with a respec. Not the same as brand new character that a player just clicks a button to max level on. (Edit: It would be the same as if they had not rolled into a new power set and kept playing the same character. Even with the new power set(s).)

Edited October 14, 2022 by Rudra

[SeraphimKensai]

1 minute ago, Rudra said:

No, it doesn't. I don't believe I'm arguing against you, but oh well. If a 50 is being recycled as opposed to new instant-50 character, you're basically playing the same character with a respec. Not the same as brand new character that a player just clicks a button to max level on.

There might be some overlap with IOs and such, but as you well know not every toon needs the same enhancements. 

[Rudra]

1 minute ago, SeraphimKensai said:

There might be some overlap with IOs and such, but as you well know not every toon needs the same enhancements. 

Incidental cost of the player/character for recycling the character. Just something else for the recycled character to deal with to get back into full swing.