Level 50 Boost Token

[PeterDutcherJr]

Well, I originally had two accounts, each with multiple level 50s on them. Starting over sucks...although I've had to relearn the game so it helps there.

 

However, this suggestion is that each account be given a disposable token that instantly raises one character to 50 so that those of us who sunk so much money and time into the game before can get something in return.

 

Making it disposable means once it is used, it is gone. So players would have to be sure before they use the token, which cannot be traded to other accounts or sold (last thing we need is to have them on the market place).

 

I'm enjoying leveling my characters, but...I do not get to go on adventures that only level 50s go on, and because I just returned two weeks ago, my friends who knew the game was back before me are doing those things. It sucks.

 

So some might wonder why I don't just get PLed?

 

Because I prefer not to. Not against it, but I just don't want to at this point. I just want to play with my friends, and the mentor function is not doing it.

[Redlynne]

Test server is ThatAWay ...

[BlueDragoon]

Oh dear... "so that those of us who sunk so much money and time into the game before can get something in return".

 

You do understand you're not "owed" something by the homecoming team, and you understand further that they are NOT the original development team? We ALL had to start from scratch, man.

[leese]

You don't want to get PLd, but you do want an instant 50 boost token?

 

Anyway, I'm against it, not only because it would reinforce the impression borrowed from other MMOs that level 50 is where the real game is and everything else is to be skipped, but also because of the enhancements question. How are you paying for your level 50 enhancements after using this token? Not everyone is going to have an alt or a friend to get inf from, and new players without connections could actually end up in a situation where they use the token, and then have no means by which they can pay for enhancements, potentially leading to a broken character. You couldn't just give inf along with the boost, it's be far too open to exploitation since inf can be transferred among accounts and you can make as many accounts as you want for free.

[PaxArcana]

[...] those of us who sunk so much money and time into the game before [...]

 

FULL STOP.  ::screeching sound::

 

The money you gave, was to NCSoft.

 

NCSoft is not who is running the HC servers.

 

Ergo, you have given ZERO money to the HC devs (who are probably directly prohibited from making money off of these servers, in order to keep NCSoft off their backs).

 

As such, you are owed nothing.  Especially in light of the game being 100% free, with no paywall locking off parts of it.

[Jon]

You don't want to get PLd, but you do want an instant 50 boost token?

 

Anyway, I'm against it, not only because it would reinforce the impression borrowed from other MMOs that level 50 is where the real game is and everything else is to be skipped, but also because of the enhancements question. How are you paying for your level 50 enhancements after using this token? Not everyone is going to have an alt or a friend to get inf from, and new players without connections could actually end up in a situation where they use the token, and then have no means by which they can pay for enhancements, potentially leading to a broken character. You couldn't just give inf along with the boost, it's be far too open to exploitation since inf can be transferred among accounts and you can make as many accounts as you want for free.

 

That's not a real concern. Any content run at 50 will generate influence, and you can even get rewards merits from simply getting all of the explore badges in a zone. When Homecoming launched, I PL'd myself to 50 with 0 influence to my name, and yet somehow I have been able to enhance my characters just fine.

 

An auto-50 button/token actually would have a lot of value, and it is something that MANY MMOs have done with a lot of success, but I'd rather it not be a one-time thing. It seems weird to me that we are fine with people dual-boxing to PL themselves but not fine with letting people just have the 50 that they're doing all that for anyway. I imagine it would be better for server stability to cut out the main incentive of dual-boxing by making it so that people are able to get what they need from just 1 account.

[Waypoint]

As much as I am all about an auto-50, the devs have said time and time again there won't be one. As much as that sucks, I can't really blame them too much.

 

I also made a farming character and got myself to 50 with 0 influence to my name. I actually made two characters because I didn't think Spines/Fire Brute would be very good early in the server's life, so I made a Fire/Kin which turned out to be a huge mistake. Got a relatively cheap build, farmed my first character to 50 in about four hours. Just upgraded the build recently to something significantly better and it takes around 2:30 hours.

 

I'd venture to say when farming L1-50 can be done consistently, by a large number of people, in under an hour, then it might be worth looking into a auto-token.

[justicebeliever]

An auto-50 button/token actually would have a lot of value, and it is something that MANY MMOs have done with a lot of success, but I'd rather it not be a one-time thing. It seems weird to me that we are fine with people dual-boxing to PL themselves but not fine with letting people just have the 50 that they're doing all that for anyway. I imagine it would be better for server stability to cut out the main incentive of dual-boxing by making it so that people are able to get what they need from just 1 account.

 

There is a difference between an auto-token and PL'ing.

 

One requires effort and intentional, and the other does not.

 

If you come to CoH to farm, powerlevel, or multibox, you will or already have invested in understanding how that works, understand the basic mechanics of it, and still put in the modicum of effort to do so.  Because it requires effort/knowledge/skill, it will not always be attractive to other players.  Other players will not be aware of it and hence will not participate.  These players will play their way up (ohh...the horrors), and team up along the way with other non-50 players to get there.

 

Now an auto-token means that these players will now have an option, fully endorsed by the game, and much more discoverable to bypass the 1-50 lvl content.  Those players who aren't farmers or PL'ers will take the opportunity to bypass the lower levels, because why else would the game have a auto-level 50 unless that's where all the action is.  Suddenly the lower level content is seen as only a grind by a larger and larger population of people, and people who do enjoy working our way up are left with a shrinking base of players to team with.

 

Now, I know I'm going to get some feedback, so I'll be clear on 2 things...

1.) I have no problem with farming or PL'ing.  I don't participate, but it doesn't bother me that someone else can level faster.  I'm not advocating removing/reducing rewards for farming or for running DFB.  I'm not advocating for mechanics to be built in the game to stop PL'ing...

2.) Yes, it is true, that a PL'er can already go from 1 to 50 in a day or less.  It's true that 90% of these players are never going to grind their way through the content.  But it would be false to say that the only people who would use an auto-token are those PL'ers.

 

[ShardWarrior]

So long as they are account bound and cannot be sold or traded and can only be unlocked once you have at least 1 50 on the account, I've no objection to this.

 

With that said, this is why we have things like XP boosts, DFB, DIB etc. 

[_NOPE_]

 

Make it happen.

[MalphiteMeIRL]

"Maybe" if it's like 1500 reward merits or something >_>

[SwitchFade]

No.

[Adeon Hawkwood]

"Maybe" if it's like 1500 reward merits or something >_>

So 1.5billion to insta-level a character? That would make a nice inf sink. Please add an option to buy merits in bulk though, I think clicking the buy merits button 1500 times would take longer than just leveling them.

[Rathulfr]

An idea that was once floated back in live was to put in a system to "bank" refunded XP from deleted characters.  I've built many alts, gotten them up to level 20 or so (basically as far as it took to get SOs or level 25 IOs), and then decided that I didn't like them for whatever reasons.  I put the hours in to level those characters, so I earned that XP.  When I delete them, it would be nice if some or all of that earned XP was put into a shared XP bank for my account, which I could then re-use later with newly-created alts.  I thought this might be an equitable way to handle this kind of thing.

 

Ultimately though, such a mechanism would require new code that doesn't yet exist.  And it would probably introduce new exploits/meta-gaming that would be abused, as with any other system.  The first one that leaps to mind is that this means a single power-leveled 50 would simply be recycled over and over as a newly-minted 50.  So obviously, it's not a perfect solution.  Mitigating such abuses would require a lower bank-to-earned XP ratio, or time-gating, or unlocking according to arbitrary criteria, etc.  Working out all of these kinks in a new mechanic is probably why it was never seriously considered back in the day, when there were other priorities.

 

[justicebeliever]

"Maybe" if it's like 1500 reward merits or something >_>

So 1.5billion to insta-level a character? That would make a nice inf sink. Please add an option to buy merits in bulk though, I think clicking the buy merits button 1500 times would take longer than just leveling them.

 

If it was an influence sink along the level of 1.5 billion influence per token, I’d be +1 with this.  It still requires effort and keeps people in the game, and it wouldn’t be a “gimme” for most players 

[Adeon Hawkwood]

"Maybe" if it's like 1500 reward merits or something >_>

So 1.5billion to insta-level a character? That would make a nice inf sink. Please add an option to buy merits in bulk though, I think clicking the buy merits button 1500 times would take longer than just leveling them.

If it was an influence sink along the level of 1.5 billion influence per token, I’d be +1 with this.  It still requires effort and keeps people in the game, and it wouldn’t be a “gimme” for most players

Well you can buy merits for 1million inf each so setting it to 1500 merits would be equivalent to 1.5billion if you bought the merits. Now if they level boost item was tradeable the market price would probably be lower but that's harder to predict since it would affect the general merit market price.

[Jon]

"Maybe" if it's like 1500 reward merits or something >_>

So 1.5billion to insta-level a character? That would make a nice inf sink. Please add an option to buy merits in bulk though, I think clicking the buy merits button 1500 times would take longer than just leveling them.

 

If it was an influence sink along the level of 1.5 billion influence per token, I’d be +1 with this.  It still requires effort and keeps people in the game, and it wouldn’t be a “gimme” for most players

 

If you're going for a comically large inf sink that makes the entire idea pointless, then yeah that works. But it makes way more sense to set the price at something a little closer to the amount of inf you'd make farming for the same duration of time it takes to PL someone to 50 instead. That would be MUCH less than 1.5 billion because you can already get to level 50 really fast as it is. The whole idea is would be to remove the meaningless farming grind from the equation.

 

The problem with PLing is that it fills up zones unnecessarily fast because people are on 2 accounts at a time, which may not technically be allowed during busy periods but is almost entirely unenforceable. It also unfairly gates out people whose machines can't handle dual-boxing from being able to PL themselves like everyone else. Adding some kind of level 50 boost mechanism would be a huge QOL improvement without being a massive change from the speed of leveling as it currently stands.

 

It certainly would not be an 'I Win' button by any means. Anyone who has spent time building and paying a level 50 character should agree.

[Primantis]

 

The problem with PLing is that it fills up zones unnecessarily fast because people are on 2 accounts at a time, which may not technically be allowed during busy periods but is almost entirely unenforceable.

 

 

Which is becoming less and less of an issue. It's prime time right now and the only server above the "2 boxing threshhold" is Excelsior, and only by a few dozen.

 

However your point is still valid. It helps reduce taxing the server.

 

 

 

 

I'd say that since the idea is best left as an Inf-sink it should be 2-3x more than what you'd earn via Powerleveling. You pay for time saved with cold hard cash, a concept that's been around through the ages! (It should also be account bound imho)

 

 

Well, I originally had two accounts, each with multiple level 50s on them. Starting over sucks...although I've had to relearn the game so it helps there.

 

However, this suggestion is that each account be given a disposable token that instantly raises one character to 50 so that those of us who sunk so much money and time into the game before can get something in return.

 

 

I would like to think "Getting hours of fun" counts as "Getting something in return". CoH is not a job, nor is it school or a life-prepping class. You play it for fun, that's what You get in return, enjoyment... Granted some people do turn it into a job of sorts xD

[justicebeliever]

If you're going for a comically large inf sink that makes the entire idea pointless, then yeah that works. But it makes way more sense to set the price at something a little closer to the amount of inf you'd make farming for the same duration of time it takes to PL someone to 50 instead. That would be MUCH less than 1.5 billion because you can already get to level 50 really fast as it is. The whole idea is would be to remove the meaningless farming grind from the equation.

 

This my whole issue...there needs to be some effort required to level up, whether it's an Inf sink, PL'ing, Farming, Multiboxing, or whatever.  There are game mechanics and they should mean something...If we let people bypass these game mechanics than we are going to lose people in this game.  If the entire universe of players in CoH was just PL'ers and guys like me who like to go slow, I wouldn't care at all how you get to 50.  Heck, you could have a slash command to do it for free for all I care.  A PL'er is never going to team with me at lower levels...I get that.

 

But...that is not the whole universe of CoH players...there are people who for whatever reason do not PL/Farm/Multibox what have you.  They want to level quickly but don't have the knowledge/skill/hardware to effectively do it.  Or, for many of them, it just seems wrong to do for them personally.  It feels like a cheat.  (Again, I'm not saying you are wrong for doing it.  I'm not saying those players are wrong for doing it or not doing it...just saying they don't).

 

But if you give those players an in-game option to just buy their way to 50, they will use it.  It requires no skill or effort.  It's endorsed by the HC team (they put the option there).  It's now part of the game.  And players who are NOT PL'ers will start skipping lower content in droves...That's BAD

 

I'm not sold on 1.5 Billion as the price point...it can 1 Billion...It can be 500 Million.  There are several guides in the forums on how to do that in a very short time...But it still requires effort/skill/knowledge, and that means it won't be used by everyone...

 

The problem with PLing is that it fills up zones unnecessarily fast because people are on 2 accounts at a time, which may not technically be allowed during busy periods but is almost entirely unenforceable. It also unfairly gates out people whose machines can't handle dual-boxing from being able to PL themselves like everyone else. Adding some kind of level 50 boost mechanism would be a huge QOL improvement without being a massive change from the speed of leveling as it currently stands.

 

We haven't had population load issues for some time.  Servers are stable and I haven't seen queue's in a long time...We can handle the PL'ers.  And Multiboxing is a workaround to leveling.  It is most certainly NOT the game design.  So it's not a "right" that players have, it's a privilege that some players have because they have the skill/hardware/knowledge to do it.

 

It certainly would not be an 'I Win' button by any means. Anyone who has spent time building and paying a level 50 character should agree.

 

How would it not be?  I have a level 50...And I don't agree...And there are several posts on this form from many other level 50's to that extent...

 

[Apparition]

I leveled a Thugs/Sonic Resonance Mastermind from level 1 to 50 doing content mostly solo in three weeks, and that was with turning XP off every five levels so I didn't outlevel specific content I wanted to do.  It's not that hard.

[retiarius]

In the near-term, I could see using such a token when I'd reached level 47 and felt there was no significant reason not to do so.

 

In the long term, well... I've got over 100 alts already, just on one server.  I'm thinking the likelihood of getting them all to level 50 before they go "poof" is pretty slim.  So I don't necessarily see anything amiss with a mechanism to auto-level them to 50 after I'd already done it countless times, just so I can experience combinations or situations which I haven't yet experienced.

 

At the least, I'm open to the possibility.

[Burnt Toast]

Test server is your friend :)

 

In the near-term, I could see using such a token when I'd reached level 47 and felt there was no significant reason not to do so.

 

In the long term, well... I've got over 100 alts already, just on one server.  I'm thinking the likelihood of getting them all to level 50 before they go "poof" is pretty slim.  So I don't necessarily see anything amiss with a mechanism to auto-level them to 50 after I'd already done it countless times, just so I can experience combinations or situations which I haven't yet experienced.

 

At the least, I'm open to the possibility.

[justicebeliever]

In the near-term, I could see using such a token when I'd reached level 47 and felt there was no significant reason not to do so.

 

In the long term, well... I've got over 100 alts already, just on one server.  I'm thinking the likelihood of getting them all to level 50 before they go "poof" is pretty slim.  So I don't necessarily see anything amiss with a mechanism to auto-level them to 50 after I'd already done it countless times, just so I can experience combinations or situations which I haven't yet experienced.

 

At the least, I'm open to the possibility.

 

I'm becoming more and more open to the possibility...I could see making it available only to people who a certain QTY of level 50, or at least one of each AT at lvl 50, or something like that.  But if it's just 10M to pop a pill to get to 50 that anyone can grab?  Not so much. 

 

But my pushback would be that you can experience combinations or situations on the lower levels too.  I mean there is more content there than at lvl 50.  And that's the fundamental thing with CoX - it was built with the idea that the journey would matter and that life doesn't start at 50.  I understand completely if you personally don't like the journey, but a "pop to lvl 50" button gives the impression to everyone that lvl 50 is where it's at.

[golstat2003]

In the near-term, I could see using such a token when I'd reached level 47 and felt there was no significant reason not to do so.

 

In the long term, well... I've got over 100 alts already, just on one server.  I'm thinking the likelihood of getting them all to level 50 before they go "poof" is pretty slim.  So I don't necessarily see anything amiss with a mechanism to auto-level them to 50 after I'd already done it countless times, just so I can experience combinations or situations which I haven't yet experienced.

 

At the least, I'm open to the possibility.

 

I'm becoming more and more open to the possibility...I could see making it available only to people who a certain QTY of level 50, or at least one of each AT at lvl 50, or something like that.  But if it's just 10M to pop a pill to get to 50 that anyone can grab?  Not so much. 

 

But my pushback would be that you can experience combinations or situations on the lower levels too.  I mean there is more content there than at lvl 50.  And that's the fundamental thing with CoX - it was built with the idea that the journey would matter and that life doesn't start at 50.  I understand completely if you personally don't like the journey, but a "pop to lvl 50" button gives the impression to everyone that lvl 50 is where it's at.

 

I actually enjoy the story more at level 50 than a lot of the story before then. I actually like what story there is for the Incarnate story line and post the defeat of Emperor Cole. ALOT of the stuff in lower levels I don't find appealing. (Though that may be because of all the un-updated defeat all missions.)

 

EDIT: Plus the fact that I've done the lower levels to DEATH on live, and haven't really done as much in the lvl 50, post 50 range due to the unexpected shutdown years back. (Still sobbing a bit LOL)

[Mark Stabler]

Well me personally I'd say no, but if it was there it wouldn't phase me to be fair, I do enjoy trying to find a good team and there's great ones I've literally been on a couple months and developed my Altitis lol its back with a vengeance but I love that, as for an instant 50 I think if it's implemented into the game then you should work your ass off for it OR Pay the devs for it, only problem with that is that you'll have a ton of people that will pay and lag up the servers I mean that will obviously help with paying for the servers etc but will impact the servers I THINK, I dunno................ I don't think we are entitled to anything it's FREE and most of the stuff we paid out for when the game was on LIVE we now get for free practically all the outfits and no rates for SGs (Base items etc)

 

-Mark