Upgrade installed enhancements option

[Luminara]

Enemy groups already drop enhancements for specific origins.  Council = Natural, Circle of Thorns = Magic, etc.  Been that way for 20 years.

[The Chairman]

8 hours ago, Luminara said:

Enemy groups already drop enhancements for specific origins.  Council = Natural, Circle of Thorns = Magic, etc.  Been that way for 20 years.

 

Is this mentioned in-game anywhere? Do they always drop origin specific enhancements (i.e. when they drop an enhancement at all, is it always origin specific)? I just ran through Outbreak and Galaxy City, and there was no discussion of origin at all. Twinshot's second arc introduces the player to origin stores, but makes no mention of specific enemy factions dropping enhancements for specific origins.

 

The following is directed to the discussion in general rather than to Luminara in particular.

 

I think part of the problem might be that unless you are running missions from your origin contact, there is no guarantee that you will even face off against enemies that will drop origin appropriate enhancements with any regularity. Completing Galaxy City directs you to Matthew Habashy. His arc series (i.e. Habashy -> Costel/Fields -> Thiery) has you fighting Hellion, Skulls/Vahzilok, and Arachnos. If I'm playing a Natural origin character, what are the odds I'll get any useful drops (I genuinely don't know what origins Skulls or Arachnos are associated with, and the HCWiki doesn't appear to provide this information)?

 

By the time you complete these three arcs, you'll likely be level 7, at which point you get the pop up about Shauna Stockwell wanting to meet you in Kings Row. Matthew himself suggests at the end of Thiery's arc that KR could use your help (this is if you pick the first option in his dialogue tree). You will have already gotten the pop up about Twinshot, but the game looks like it wants you to go to KR next. If you do, it is pretty easy to outlevel Twinshot's first arc which locks you out of her subsequent arcs.

 

Choosing no tutorial at character creation give you a pop up telling you to either go to Habashy or your origin contact, and tells you to use the Find Contact button to find them. The first option when I opened Find Contact was Habashy. Absent any reason to choose otherwise, I would expect most new players to go with the first contact presented.

 

Choosing Outbreak is the only option that directs to you to your origin contact with no mention of Habashy.

[Luminara]

2 minutes ago, The Chairman said:

Is this mentioned in-game anywhere?

 

Don't know.  I generally street sweep to level 10 or so, then only do filler missions until I can access Faultline.

 

2 minutes ago, The Chairman said:

Do they always drop origin specific enhancements (i.e. when they drop an enhancement at all, is it always origin specific)?

 

Yes.  Natural enemies always drop Nat/* DOs and pure Nat SOs, Magic enemies always drop Magic/* DOs and pure Magic SOs, and so on.  They can't drop enhancements that don't match their origin.  Each enemy group has a drop table, and for enhancements, only the relevant origin enhancements are included.

 

2 minutes ago, The Chairman said:

I just ran through Outbreak and Galaxy City, and there was no discussion of origin at all. Twinshot's second arc introduces the player to origin stores, but makes no mention of specific enemy factions dropping enhancements for specific origins.

 

The following is directed to the discussion in general rather than to Luminara in particular.

 

I think part of the problem might be that unless you are running missions from your origin contact, there is no guarantee that you will even face off against enemies that will drop origin appropriate enhancements with any regularity. Completing Galaxy City directs you to Matthew Habashy. His arc series (i.e. Habashy -> Costel/Fields -> Thiery) has you fighting Hellion, Skulls/Vahzilok, and Arachnos. If I'm playing a Natural origin character, what are the odds I'll get any useful drops (I genuinely don't know what origins Skulls or Arachnos are associated with, and the HCWiki doesn't appear to provide this information)?

 

By the time you complete these three arcs, you'll likely be level 7, at which point you get the pop up about Shauna Stockwell wanting to meet you in Kings Row. Matthew himself suggests at the end of Thiery's arc that KR could use your help (this is if you pick the first option in his dialogue tree). You will have already gotten the pop up about Twinshot, but the game looks like it wants you to go to KR next. If you do, it is pretty easy to outlevel Twinshot's first arc which locks you out of her subsequent arcs.

 

Choosing no tutorial at character creation give you a pop up telling you to either go to Habashy or your origin contact, and tells you to use the Find Contact button to find them. The first option when I opened Find Contact was Habashy. Absent any reason to choose otherwise, I would expect most new players to go with the first contact presented.

 

Choosing Outbreak is the only option that directs to you to your origin contact with no mention of Habashy.

 

All of that should be posted in this thread.  Immediately.

 

[Rudra]

18 minutes ago, The Chairman said:

Is this mentioned in-game anywhere?

No, it isn't.

 

19 minutes ago, The Chairman said:

Do they always drop origin specific enhancements (i.e. when they drop an enhancement at all, is it always origin specific)?

In my experience, yes. Though they no longer seem to be limited in this fashion for salvage drops, but salvage isn't part of the conversation.

 

20 minutes ago, The Chairman said:

Twinshot's second arc introduces the player to origin stores, but makes no mention of specific enemy factions dropping enhancements for specific origins.

I don't know how this information can be fit into either Twinshot's or Dr. Graves' arcs, but a blurb somewhere for new players to find out that enhancements are typically limited by the defeated mobs' origins would probably be helpful.

[The Chairman]

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

1 hour ago, The Chairman said:

I just ran through Outbreak and Galaxy City, and there was no discussion of origin at all. Twinshot's second arc introduces the player to origin stores, but makes no mention of specific enemy factions dropping enhancements for specific origins.

 

The following is directed to the discussion in general rather than to Luminara in particular.

 

I think part of the problem might be that unless you are running missions from your origin contact, there is no guarantee that you will even face off against enemies that will drop origin appropriate enhancements with any regularity. Completing Galaxy City directs you to Matthew Habashy. His arc series (i.e. Habashy -> Costel/Fields -> Thiery) has you fighting Hellion, Skulls/Vahzilok, and Arachnos. If I'm playing a Natural origin character, what are the odds I'll get any useful drops (I genuinely don't know what origins Skulls or Arachnos are associated with, and the HCWiki doesn't appear to provide this information)?

 

By the time you complete these three arcs, you'll likely be level 7, at which point you get the pop up about Shauna Stockwell wanting to meet you in Kings Row. Matthew himself suggests at the end of Thiery's arc that KR could use your help (this is if you pick the first option in his dialogue tree). You will have already gotten the pop up about Twinshot, but the game looks like it wants you to go to KR next. If you do, it is pretty easy to outlevel Twinshot's first arc which locks you out of her subsequent arcs.

 

Choosing no tutorial at character creation give you a pop up telling you to either go to Habashy or your origin contact, and tells you to use the Find Contact button to find them. The first option when I opened Find Contact was Habashy. Absent any reason to choose otherwise, I would expect most new players to go with the first contact presented.

 

Choosing Outbreak is the only option that directs to you to your origin contact with no mention of Habashy.

Expand  

 

All of that should be posted in this thread.  Immediately.

 

Great suggestion! I'm working on verifying my findings on Beta before posting there.

 

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

1 hour ago, The Chairman said:

Do they always drop origin specific enhancements (i.e. when they drop an enhancement at all, is it always origin specific)?

 

Yes.  Natural enemies always drop Nat/* DOs and pure Nat SOs, Magic enemies always drop Magic/* DOs and pure Magic SOs, and so on.  They can't drop enhancements that don't match their origin.  Each enemy group has a drop table, and for enhancements, only the relevant origin enhancements are included.

 

This does not appear to be true on Beta, at least for low level enemies. Only three out seven DO drops from fighting Hellions in in Habashy's arc were of Magic origin. Might be a bug from when HC got rid of TOs?

[Rudra]

1 minute ago, The Chairman said:

This does not appear to be true on Beta, at least for low level enemies. Only three out seven DO drops from fighting Hellions in in Habashy's arc were of Magic origin. Might be a bug from when HC got rid of TOs?

Possibly. Since Hellions, Skulls, and other starter factions only gave out TOs, their drops may be coded wrong for DOs since TOs no longer exist.

[Reiska]

I had a long elaborate reply typed up and then crashed my browser and lost it, so I'll just retype the tl;dr version of what I was going to say:

• If new players are expected to interact with the AH to sustain their influence flow (and I think they should be), then fixing the massive problems with the AH UI needs to be a higher development priority
• The game used to obliquely hint at the connections between certain villain groups and certain origins through the issue 0 hero contacts' biases in what villain groups were involved in their arcs and what enhancements they would sell after you did enough missions for them, but this link was broken when they were made to no longer sell enhancements
• New players don't have the institutional knowledge to know that it is a bad idea for them to give up all influence gain from defeats in exchange for double experience; you can argue that this should be intuitive or obvious, but the value of specific amounts of currency is not immediately apparent until you've played for a while
• Regarding confusion of the system, "Should we even keep enhancements tied to origin?" is a question that I think needs to be asked, but one I don't have an opinion about, nor does it have an obvious correct answer; if enhancements were no longer tied to origin it would be even more of a vestigial mechanic than it already is
• An idea I saw no one in this thread suggest is extending the usable level range of DOs and SOs beyond the current +3 to -3 range; if it were up to me I'd suggest +3 to -5 instead, and also reducing the bonus degradation per level from 10% to 5%