No one plays hardmodes because they suck

[Excraft]

14 hours ago, TheSpiritFox said:

Yank them back out of the game entirely, and create new drop opportunities for Prismatic aethers so that they dont inch back up to 10m plus on the AH. 

 

This is only temporary.  Once most people have enough PAs to purchase all the costumes and pets they want, there will be more available in the AH and prices will come down.  As for removing hard mode content, no thank you.  I don't run them often myself, but that doesn't mean that it should get removed.  Others are really enjoying the hard mode content and that's a good thing.

[Laucianna]

7 minutes ago, Excraft said:

 

This is only temporary.  Once most people have enough PAs to purchase all the costumes and pets they want, there will be more available in the AH and prices will come down.  As for removing hard mode content, no thank you.  I don't run them often myself, but that doesn't mean that it should get removed.  Others are really enjoying the hard mode content and that's a good thing.

I feel like that would work if it was a case the Aether costumes were bound to your account, but as far as I am aware their not so everyone with alts they like and want a costume or god forbid one of the 250 (or even 1.5k!) ones will need a lot of Aether to cover the costs keeping them in demand.

[Cherry]

11 hours ago, twozerofoxtrot said:

 

 

I don't get where this poster is coming from. It's not a 1 or 0 proposition, there's a scale for a reason.

100% this. Many of the responses in this thread don't seem to consider this.  Its also a time factor. Sure, you can probably do a 4* with less-than-desirable ats but you better pack a lunch..

[Zect]

Caveat: I haven't done 4* LGTF.

 

I personally think the gameplay side of "hard" mode (because it's not hard nor comparable to genuine challenge content in other MMO's, it's just balanced for the gear and powercreep we have) is great. I do think they could value control more - mezzing should at least pause the hostless nictus countdown, for example. However, overall, in terms of mechanics, game design, theme, and just sheer pure fun, hard mode is a resounding success. It's a much-needed breath of fresh air into a stale old game, while not detracting from babymode content in any way - I see Homecoming is still putting out non-hard mode story arcs and such.

 

Now the rewards, those definitely feel problematic, but they need to go in the opposite direction that you want. Instead of adding non-"hard"mode ways to get aether, hard mode rewards not only need to be massively increased, but have new, exclusive rewards added to them - ones that can't be bought on the market or obtained any way. I can still make a lot more from playing the market and farming than I can trying to run a 4* anything and selling aether, which drops outside of hardmode anyway, so there's no rational economic incentive to do it.

[Indystruck]

I thought unique HM drop IO sets would be neat but iirc most posts about "hard mode" when first introduced were hooting and hollering demanding there should be no real reward for doing it.

[Rudra]

It's not like low star Hard Mode/Advanced Mode is actually hard. And MMs can definitely do them. A friend and I duo'ed some of the Hard Mode content as MMs. And once we learned what had been added to the TFs, they weren't hard at all. Just required paying a little attention and understanding what each part of the TF calls for. (Edit: And making sure we stayed near each other so we didn't get isolated and killed....)

 

Edited March 12 by Rudra
Edited to correct "dome" to "some".

[AerialAssault]

Personally, I don't think the devs should remove a feature that was heavily requested, that they spent hours, days, months of working on.

 

[Captain Fabulous]

19 hours ago, TheSpiritFox said:

I appreciate everything about being able to play the game. The work involved in keeping this going, the license deal. The new arcs and power sets. 

 

But hardmodes are a failure. 

 

People dont run them much at all. When they do its blasters and melee toons begging for /cold corruptors or defenders. There are tons of powerset combos which would not be accepted by someone running hardmode content, including the entire Mastermind AT which I main, because we'd be dead weight. 

 

Hardmodes are a fuckup. A mistake. And yall need to call them. Yank them back out of the game entirely, and create new drop opportunities for Prismatic aethers so that they dont inch back up to 10m plus on the AH. 

 

A real hardmode is going to involve more complex mechanics, not invalidating defense, resistance, and incarnates in one fell swoop so that normal enemies in "boosted" content can now murder you again like you're playing +4 at level 5. 

 

We get it, power climb in this game is nuts. Its been like that forever, and yall should have let it be. 

 

You want hardmode we need more stuff like strong & pretty in BAF. Mechanics which remove one to three team members from the fight to do something else, things that require coordination and understanding to execute, and then the group wipes if they fail. 

 

I would totally understand if those kind of encounters arent really in the cards and if designing hardmodes around multiple phases requires more than this dev team is capable of putting out. Thats fine! We'll play the game as is!

 

But hardmodes need to go, and we need other ways to get Aethers on the market before they hit 10m+ each. 

Nah

[Excraft]

4 hours ago, Laucianna said:

I feel like that would work if it was a case the Aether costumes were bound to your account, but as far as I am aware their not so everyone with alts they like and want a costume or god forbid one of the 250 (or even 1.5k!) ones will need a lot of Aether to cover the costs keeping them in demand.

 

I've no idea about others, but I personally won't be trying to obtain costumes and pets for every single one of my alts.  It's too expensive and time consuming an effort.  I imagine most feel the same.  Even if most people did want every costume and every pet on every alt, eventually PAs will start becoming more plentiful in the market.  It may be a long while, but it will happen at some point.

[Laucianna]

49 minutes ago, Excraft said:

 

I've no idea about others, but I personally won't be trying to obtain costumes and pets for every single one of my alts.  It's too expensive and time consuming an effort.  I imagine most feel the same.  Even if most people did want every costume and every pet on every alt, eventually PAs will start becoming more plentiful in the market.  It may be a long while, but it will happen at some point.

Not every costume gods no XD But some affects people are going to want on their more played characters

[Ukase]

Do Hard Modes suck? For some, I'm sure they do. I think Rune of Protection reeks now, but so what? I don't have to take it. 

I do understand the frustration of being told by some tough guy that an MM or whatever someone's AT or powersets might be that they're not up to the task. That would irk me a good bit. But I don't think it's the fault of the Advanced/hard mode TFs. I think it's the fault of the players. They have a bad experience with one player on a given AT and they blame the AT/powerset. And maybe that's fair in some cases. 

I was on a Master MLTF, and the dominator died from the flyer while we were taking the pylons down, just before the Recluse fight. I don't blame the entire class of Dominators. It's just one of those things. Perhaps there are some things within the advanced modes that might need to be considered with regards to Masterminds. Or maybe Masterminds might need to consider a different type of build for these runs. No idea. 

But just like nobody is putting a gun to my head and telling me I can't run an advanced mode lgtf, nobody is forcing me to run one either. 

It's all by choice. Don't like 'em, don't run 'em. And I won't choose Rune of Protection either - at least, not until they reverse the nerf. But that's a whole different thread for another day. 

[Jiro Ito]

On 3/11/2024 at 4:24 PM, TheSpiritFox said:

But hardmodes are a failure. 

 

People dont run them much at all. When they do its blasters and melee toons begging for /cold corruptors or defenders. There are tons of powerset combos which would not be accepted by someone running hardmode content, including the entire Mastermind AT which I main, because we'd be dead weight. 

 

Hardmodes are a fuckup. A mistake. And yall need to call them. Yank them back out of the game entirely, and create new drop opportunities for Prismatic aethers so that they dont inch back up to 10m plus on the AH. 

 

Gotta disagree; hardmodes are awesome.  We run them all the time.  I always lead on a tank/corr/def.  We've brought along masterminds, kelds, blasters, whatevers.  I'm sorry you've had a bad experience, but your comments don't line up with my experiences.

Edited March 13 by Jiro Ito

[Ruin Mage]

As someone who closed beta tested them; Skill Issue.

It sucks to be denied entry to a team but that doesn't mean they failed. It's optional content that rewards decently, takes some brain power, and can usually be done decently quick even now - though Your Mileage May Vary applies here. It can be frustrating to wipe several times but that's why you do 1 or 2 star. 3 star starts to require some thinking and 4 star? Well, you're going to have a hard time if your composition isn't even a little thought out in my experience. At least if you're going to PUG it.

My source is that I've run through 4-star Aeon multiple times, beat the Vanguard full fight multiple times, and had an absolute blast. Repeat the same for the ITF (except for the singular run stopped by the colossi) and now the HM LGTF. I can say from personal experience that MMs have never been denied, but groups can pick and choose who they want. That's the fun part about MMORPGs: no one is obligated to invite you to their team!

An example of sets I've personally run with; Nature Affinity, Dark Miasma, Empathy, Pain, Thermal, and Force Field. Mind you Force Field, Nature, and Dark are all REALLY good and help out against the Hard Modes. Hell, I've beaten the Vanguard fight with a fire farmer brute as the tank. Now THAT was a fun run!

Try forming your own! Maybe do a 1 or 2 star at first and then go for 3 or 4 star. Cultivate and curate your own teams and you won't have these issues. It's either that or move servers, but that may not be the greatest option depending. But the hard work of the devs shouldn't be decried as a failure or removed just because YOU can't get on teams for them.

Edited March 13 by Ruin Mage

[Luminara]

13 minutes ago, Ruin Mage said:

no one is obligated to invite you to their team!

 

Now that you've said that, someone is itching to post a suggestion that involves forcing players to invite them to teams.

 

[ApolloInferno]

Hey Guys!

Long Runner of 4* content here Just want to say I understand people frustration. 4* is daunting and difficult and its a bit scary getting into. There is alot of practice and work that goes into the runs for content and speedster people get alot of hate.

But ultimately think that the framing is flawed. Content like hardmode should exist and should be difficult. Its the only way for you to truly learn your character and the content in the game. There are many ways that it can be done and because people make posts like this saying that it is "all bad" does a big disservice to People who play the "weaker" classes in the game. There are many out there who specialize in MMs, controllers, Sentinel and I invite them to run content for the others like you.

But for me I am mainly sticking to meta. The fact is that most of the people who are not doing 4* now are just not planning on putting in the work or time to complete it. And I never plan on spending more the 1.5 hrs in anything in game before going back to RL stuff that is more important to me.

Hope I see some of yall around and interested to hear about what wacky teams other people come up with. Always good to hear more content 4* is running rather then less. Regardless of context.

Edited March 14 by ApolloInferno
spelling

[Mayaedits]

59 minutes ago, ApolloInferno said:

 And I never plan on spending more the 1.5 hrs in anything in game before going back to RL stuff that is more important to me.

 

This is something I think that gets misunderstood when people see others running meta or speedy for 4star. We have lives, and a larger part of is just wanting to get through the content we like in the time we have. Some people can spend multiple hours on a 4star LGTF. Others like myself can not spend that time at one thing for that long, so we speed it. Neither is wrong. Just different.

 

At the end of the day, content be cleared with any AT with right building, strats, and team comp. Hell knows I have tortured Apollo with my "bad" toons and he has tortured me with his. But we still clear and get through fine.

 

If you are getting turned away, consider the ATs/sets you bring might be filled by another. Team balance is one the big keys to 4star. If someone is really snobbing you just for your AT, you are probs better off for it. They would not be someone you would have a fun time playing with it.

[Shin Magmus]

Hard Mode (now Advanced Mode) is some of the most fun I have in this game.  You can bring anything realistically to 1 star or 2 star, need solid builds and incarnates but not specific ATs yet for 3 star, and then finally you need a good team comp for 4 star.  To go fast and smooth on a 4 star, the "meta" offensive and defensive buffs/debuffs just make the team more fast-paced and less tedious.  OP could be out here getting tons of Prismatic Aethers and playing their MM on 2 stars all day: they'd just rather sit and complain. 

[DrRocket]

I would not consider the hard mode material as failures, but they are as one could expect less than perfect.

 

I had historically disagreed with the concept of increasing challenge by the adoption of arbitrary happenings, such as auto hit, auto kill, teleport that can't be resisted, extra high mob accuracy and the abusive spam of status effects that has a very disproportionate impact on the non-melee classes.

 

In the live days, the concept of specific group configurations was hardly a novelty, it was in general a must. As the game evolved and afforded the support classes better survivability through the use of IOs and later Incarnates, it freed the players from the cookie cutter group mix from the early live days.

 

As the advanced/hard mode is enacted with the arbitrary properties given to mobs, the support classes returned to a similar level of helplessness reminiscent of the early live days. Despite having say Clarion, Clarion is not permanent and the spamming of status effects in a prolonged battle, because mobs are much more numerous and tougher to kill (lots of hit points and way too much resistance), Clarion comes and goes while in the same fight. The idea of carrying break frees which almost never drop in battle, just can't cut it, you can't carry enough, even if that was all you carried. I have tried slotting a clarion destiny and a melee hybrid to have better mez protection as in duration, but even doing so, I just can't get the duration.

 

I can't quite say the advanced mode is broken, since it is really a matter of perspective. There is nothing wrong, observing a cookie cutter group composition; on the other hand, going back to a cookie cutter group composition requirement was in my opinion a great loss in flexibility and the evolutionary path of being class friendly the game had endeared itself to pursue.

 

LGTF is the most obnoxious of all the advanced modes, and as a result, I got the badge, and have no intent of ever doing them again, there reward does not even come close to make it worth my while, and incidentally, it will never be done in a support class, I have plenty of tough melees to do it if I am crazy enough to waste my time on it. If I want a bit of unbalanced challenge ITF is more reasonable.

 

Regards

 

 

[Luminara]

42 minutes ago, DrRocket said:

In the live days, the concept of specific group configurations was hardly a novelty, it was in general a must.

 

Nope.

 

47 minutes ago, DrRocket said:

As the game evolved and afforded the support classes better survivability through the use of IOs and later Incarnates, it freed the players from the cookie cutter group mix from the early live days.

 

Someone slept through Issues 0-23, when supergroups like Repeat Offenders and Green Machine were blitzing all of the hardest content like it was -49 to them, without any scrappers, tankers or blasters on their teams.

[BrandX]

1 hour ago, DrRocket said:

I would not consider the hard mode material as failures, but they are as one could expect less than perfect.

 

I had historically disagreed with the concept of increasing challenge by the adoption of arbitrary happenings, such as auto hit, auto kill, teleport that can't be resisted, extra high mob accuracy and the abusive spam of status effects that has a very disproportionate impact on the non-melee classes.

 

In the live days, the concept of specific group configurations was hardly a novelty, it was in general a must. As the game evolved and afforded the support classes better survivability through the use of IOs and later Incarnates, it freed the players from the cookie cutter group mix from the early live days.

 

As the advanced/hard mode is enacted with the arbitrary properties given to mobs, the support classes returned to a similar level of helplessness reminiscent of the early live days. Despite having say Clarion, Clarion is not permanent and the spamming of status effects in a prolonged battle, because mobs are much more numerous and tougher to kill (lots of hit points and way too much resistance), Clarion comes and goes while in the same fight. The idea of carrying break frees which almost never drop in battle, just can't cut it, you can't carry enough, even if that was all you carried. I have tried slotting a clarion destiny and a melee hybrid to have better mez protection as in duration, but even doing so, I just can't get the duration.

 

I can't quite say the advanced mode is broken, since it is really a matter of perspective. There is nothing wrong, observing a cookie cutter group composition; on the other hand, going back to a cookie cutter group composition requirement was in my opinion a great loss in flexibility and the evolutionary path of being class friendly the game had endeared itself to pursue.

 

LGTF is the most obnoxious of all the advanced modes, and as a result, I got the badge, and have no intent of ever doing them again, there reward does not even come close to make it worth my while, and incidentally, it will never be done in a support class, I have plenty of tough melees to do it if I am crazy enough to waste my time on it. If I want a bit of unbalanced challenge ITF is more reasonable.

 

Regards

 

 

 

I played almost since the beginning of CoH.  I can tell you, it never required specific group make up.  At most I recall people wanting (and still making do without) a Tank (MLTF comes to mind) but even then it got completed without.

 

As for the fun of the hard mode.  I can't say I've done 4*, but I've done 2*s and they were fine.  Fun is subjective tho.

[shortguy on indom]

no