Remove SOs replace with built IOs from Vendors?

[scarlet_f]

at this point general IO's are better than SO's so there's no real reason to keep them. also, if ppl are using 100% XP boost, they won't have the money to buy/upgrade them anyways. so, either remove them or make them dirt cheap.

[Rudra]

No. IOs have to be crafted. Even the ones you may buy from the AH had to be crafted by a player. SOs can simply be purchased from contacts and vendors. Also, it doesn't matter if generic IOs (at high levels) are better than SOs, because the game is still balanced around SOs.

[scarlet_f]

are you telling me they are ppl running around at lvl 50+ with Only SOs in their build? that's insane! why would you do that?

[Rudra]

1 minute ago, scarlet_f said:

are you telling me they are ppl running around at lvl 50+ with Only SOs in their build?

Uhm, yes, there are.

 

2 minutes ago, scarlet_f said:

why would you do that?

Because you don't need IOs to beat the game? You don't even need SOs, though they do help. And playing through the game using SOs maintains the original feel and challenge of the game.

[Greycat]

25 minutes ago, scarlet_f said:

are you telling me they are ppl running around at lvl 50+ with Only SOs in their build? that's insane! why would you do that?

 

Because you want to?

Because they drop versus having to be built?

Any number of reasons that frankly are nobody else's business?

[Luminara]

SOs are the baseline for balance.  SOs are the reason an attack might deal 100 damage, instead of 75, or debuff Defense by 12.5% instead of 15%.  Every power in the game, and the interaction between powers, relies on the fulcrum of SOs, and if that's changed, everything has to be changed.  Every power adjusted, every enemy revamped, all of the content reviewed and revised.  It would take several years with the current size of the development team.

 

SOs also more powerful than IOs below level 30, and not fully eclipsed by IOs until level 40+.

 

1 hour ago, scarlet_f said:

if ppl are using 100% XP boost, they won't have the money to buy/upgrade them

 

2XP doesn't disable drops, or restrict access to the player market.

[Rudra]

If we're going to address the double xp turns off inf' from defeating enemies, that is the tradeoff for doubling your rate of leveling in a game that has already expedited the character leveling rate. And as @Luminara has stated, players choosing to go the double xp route for leveling still get salvage, enhancement, and recipe drops from enemies that can be traded for a profit on the AH. And if you are doing actual game content instead of AE, you also still get mission reward inf' even with the double xp booster.

[megaericzero]

3 hours ago, scarlet_f said:

are you telling me they are ppl running around at lvl 50+ with Only SOs in their build? that's insane! why would you do that?

Because I have incurable altitis and no wherewithal to micro-manage my enhancements on the way to 50.

[SeraphimKensai]

4 hours ago, Luminara said:

SOs also more powerful than IOs below level 30, and not fully eclipsed by IOs until level 40+.

^ This right here.

 

To the OP,

If the proposed suggestion were implemented, characters would be weaker overall until they got to the point that Generic IO's scaled high enough to surpass them,
The overall suggestion doesn't really add anything to the game.

Also SO's are already dirt cheap considering that you can convert a few reward merits into converters and sell them on AH. Even using the Double XP, its pretty easy to outfit a toon with SO's using no outside influence that isn't generated from the character. It just takes a little work, but the notion of work seems counter to your interests.

[Chris24601]

On 8/4/2024 at 11:47 PM, SeraphimKensai said:

Also SO's are already dirt cheap considering that you can convert a few reward merits into converters and sell them on AH. Even using the Double XP, its pretty easy to outfit a toon with SO's using no outside influence that isn't generated from the character. It just takes a little work, but the notion of work seems counter to your interests.

It doesn’t even take work.

 

Bang out the three arc chain starting with Habashy in Atlas and you get 9 merits in maybe 15-20 minutes… 27 converters x 65k average sale price (about 60k each after commission) is about 1.6 million influence.

 

That’s enough to refresh your SO’s every 5 levels up through at least level 26-ish… and that’s with no other drops or merit rewards.

 

The only thing easier would be for the merit vendor to just do a direct merit to influence conversion (which I am totally against because the converter market is the key to keeping all the good set-IOs stocked on the auction house at reasonable prices… offering direct merit to inf conversion would just raise the price of everything on the AH).

Edited August 6 by Chris24601

[Oklahoman]

Probably an unpopular opinion, but I'd like to see us get rid of TOs (are those still around?) and DOs, and the simple act of adding a slot to a power will inherently boost the power a little. For example, if you 2 slot Fly but don't put any enhancements in it, you get a small boost in flight speed and endurance reduction to help offset the absence of TOs and DOs to fill it. That boost gets overridden when you put an enhancement in it.

[Greycat]

1 hour ago, Oklahoman said:

Probably an unpopular opinion, but I'd like to see us get rid of TOs (are those still around?) and DOs, and the simple act of adding a slot to a power will inherently boost the power a little. For example, if you 2 slot Fly but don't put any enhancements in it, you get a small boost in flight speed and endurance reduction to help offset the absence of TOs and DOs to fill it. That boost gets overridden when you put an enhancement in it.

 

TOs are only available by *specifically* going to a vendor (think it even has to be a base NPC) and purchasing them.

[Doomguide2005]

4 hours ago, Chris24601 said:

It doesn’t even take work.

 

Bang out the three arc chain starting with Habashy in Atlas and you get 9 merits in maybe 15-20 minutes… 27 converters x 65k average sale price (about 60k each after commission) is about 1.6 million influence.

This^

I don't farm and largely don't use my high levels to fund my new lowbies (excepting a rare few specific projects).  I don't "play" the market but yet most of my sub lvl 10 are equipped with +3 SOs and have banked a few million.  In addition to running low level story arcs (like Habashy) I'll collect the exploration badges.  I'll also only use 5 merits the first time typically after which it becomes 10 merits for 30 converters to sell.  And sell pretty much everything off to the AH.

 

Edit: At least this is my current SOP.  I've gone through various phases of doing it.

 

 

Edited August 6 by Doomguide2005

[honoroit]

no one is using SOs at 50.... we're clinging to shit from 20years ago.

 

but... you can make lvl 30ish IOs simply enough, and cheaply too - so often for key things like hasten, just put a couple in like that until you get 50, and it'll serve until you can make enough merits and things to get fancy.

 

truth be told though - inf problems go away if you are willing to make a farmer character.  it still remains a pain, to actually do the farming, but inf is no longer a hard barrier that way.

 

[Rudra]

3 minutes ago, honoroit said:

no one is using SOs at 50.... we're clinging to shit from 20years ago.

There are players on these forums that have already stated many times that their characters, at level 50, are slotted with SOs. So this argument fails. And it doesn't change that the game, other than new content created specifically to deal with incarnate content and set IOs, is still balanced around SOs. Because the game's content has not been changed to match player capabilities with set IOs and/or incarnate powers.

[biostem]

If you don't want to build/craft IOs, you can buy them from the AH.  No need to undercut the market.  SOs are still viable - I've used 50-53 SOs on characters that I either don't want to deal with a "complex" build or if I don't want to invest in one of their secondary builds as a sort of experiment, (using drops I've accumulated through normal play)... 

Edited August 6 by biostem

[Greycat]

39 minutes ago, honoroit said:

no one is using SOs at 50.... we're clinging to shit from 20years ago.

 

Really?

 

I don't recall anyone asking, and you certainly can't see other peoples' builds. Care to back this up? (Especially since I have characters in an SG specifically designed to emulate issue 1 as close as possible... which means SOs.)

[honoroit]

38 minutes ago, Greycat said:

 

Really?

 

I don't recall anyone asking, and you certainly can't see other peoples' builds. Care to back this up? (Especially since I have characters in an SG specifically designed to emulate issue 1 as close as possible... which means SOs.)

 

Such gatekeeping nonsense. Why would you do that to yourself?

[arcane]

46 minutes ago, Greycat said:

 

Really?

 

I don't recall anyone asking, and you certainly can't see other peoples' builds. Care to back this up? (Especially since I have characters in an SG specifically designed to emulate issue 1 as close as possible... which means SOs.)

I hope for accuracy’s sake that your SG is full of Regen scrappers and Emp defenders.

[Rudra]

11 minutes ago, honoroit said:

50 minutes ago, Greycat said:

 

Really?

 

I don't recall anyone asking, and you certainly can't see other peoples' builds. Care to back this up? (Especially since I have characters in an SG specifically designed to emulate issue 1 as close as possible... which means SOs.)

 

Such gatekeeping nonsense. Why would you do that to yourself?

So, because some players make use of the assets available to them, even though they aren't the most powerful assets at end game levels, it is both gatekeeping even though they aren't stopping anyone from playing however they want, and it is nonsense because they aren't playing the way you want or expect them to. Not what you mean? Then please clarify, because that is exactly how your statement reads.

 

No one is saying players can't slot generic or set IOs when they are available. And they are available as early as level 10 depending on what you are looking at. (Edit: Level 7 actually. Because you can slot level 10 enhancements as early as level 7.) So there is no gatekeeping going on here. However, if SOs were to be taken away and only IOs left, then you would be gatekeeping because you are requiring other players to play the way you want them to or expect them to, rather than letting them play how they want to.

 

And it isn't nonsense since again, the entire base game, of which Hard Mode/Advanced Mode is not part of, is balanced around DOs and SOs depending on your level.

 

Edited August 6 by Rudra

[Greycat]

17 minutes ago, honoroit said:

 

Such gatekeeping nonsense. Why would you do that to yourself?

Ahh. Trolling, I see. I'll put you in with the others. Ta!