Remove the mob aggro and hit caps?

[battlewraith]

54 minutes ago, tidge said:

 

The *only* reason to rush to 50 was that HEATs got unlocked by having a level 50. Obviously this wasn't a thing *until* HEATs showed up.

 

I'm still not entirely sure what the motivation to rush to level 50 is on Homecoming. I can sort of appreciate a player wanting to see what a full level-50 kit can do, but I've never really bought into the argument that goes like "I'm bored with pre-45 content... so instead I want to run level 45+ over-and-over-again."

 

Wrong. Once pvp was added in 2005 there was a subset of the player base that needed to get characters to 50 asap in order to participate in lvl 50 pvp. 

On HC, my personal motivation to make new characters is to get them to 50, get them enhanced and set up with incarnates, and then run the build on harder difficulty levels to see how well it performs. Occasionally I'll run a character at lower levels, but it gets boring very quickly.

 

This isn't an argument for anything. It's a statement of preference. It is in no way significant whether someone like you can relate to it or not.

[tidge]

16 minutes ago, battlewraith said:

 

Wrong. Once pvp was added in 2005 there was a subset of the player base that needed to get characters to 50 asap in order to participate in lvl 50 pvp.

 

I... guess? The map-herding via Unai was a thing in Issue 1. Kheldians were in Issue 3.

 

To the point made by @Greycat... There wasn't that much of a reason to rush to level 50 in the early days of Live. The biggest motivator for me was the extra power picks and all those extra slots. We didn't even have the same considerations for Enhancements back then.

[battlewraith]

8 minutes ago, tidge said:

 

I... guess? The map-herding via Unai was a thing in Issue 1. Kheldians were in Issue 3.

 

To the point made by @Greycat... There wasn't that much of a reason to rush to level 50 in the early days of Live. The biggest motivator for me was the extra power picks and all those extra slots. We didn't even have the same considerations for Enhancements back then.

 

If you're talking about roughly the first year, yeah I didn't feel this urge to rush to 50. In fact, it took a long time for me to hit lvl 50 on my main. However, the end of that first year also probably marked the steepest decline in server population. By 2005 most of the people I had been actively teaming with were gone. Whole sgs I knew left en masse for other games. So imo it's a distortion to say that there was no reason to rush to 50. If you were very invested in the game, probably not. Realistically though, a lot of people got bored with the content and moved on, particularly when expectations of what your $15 a month was going to get you turned out to be unrealistic. 

[Psyonico]

So, back on topic… I’ve just gotten back from a stint on ESO where, it is common for tanks in dungeons to just run past mobs, straight to the bosses (when a boss fight initiates, everyone gets teleported to the boss.). I found this very boring, but at the same time incredibly annoying.  First; it meant that you either sat around waiting (if the tank was nice enough to even tell you that’s what they were doing) or you just straight up died right away.  Secondly, it meant that most boss fights would pause part way through to fight the string of enemies that finally caught up to the tank.

I find this play style to be incredibly tedious, and I have no interest in mimicking it in HC.

 

[Uun]

1 hour ago, battlewraith said:

If you're talking about roughly the first year, yeah I didn't feel this urge to rush to 50. In fact, it took a long time for me to hit lvl 50 on my main.

The live server devs changed experience progression several times during the life of the game. As I recall, they changed the amount of xp granted by mobs at various levels at least twice. Not sure if they also changed the amount of xp required per level. I was unable to find patch notes for this so not sure exactly when it occurred, but leveling was MUCH slower during the early years of the game. It was common to exhaust all your contacts at lvl 35-39 and run out of content.

[tidge]

1 hour ago, Uun said:

The live server devs changed experience progression several times during the life of the game. As I recall, they changed the amount of xp granted by mobs at various levels at least twice. Not sure if they also changed the amount of xp required per level. I was unable to find patch notes for this so not sure exactly when it occurred, but leveling was MUCH slower during the early years of the game. It was common to exhaust all your contacts at lvl 35-39 and run out of content.

 

I definitely remember doing a LOT of street sweeping (in Brickstown, FF, and then PI) at certain points. I don't explicitly recall the changes to XP-granted, but I remember debt being a terrible obstacle. I still feel a twinge whenever I see the University in Funders Falls, as that was the area I had done sooo much street sweeping in!

 

Larger spawn sizes was always one of the reasons to spend time in Hazard zones, assuming they wouldn't murder you.

[Uun]

41 minutes ago, tidge said:

I don't explicitly recall the changes to XP-granted, but I remember debt being a terrible obstacle.

I did find the debt changes. Debt was reduced in I5 (in-mission debt cut in half) and I6 (debt cap cut in half).

[Psyphon]

I was there in the old days with the herding and the nuking, and I agree that caps are needed .... I just feel like the agro cap needs to be doubled from it's current value and hit cap needs to go back to being normalized across all powers. With the current caps, I have a hard time having ANY of my Tanks, Brutes, or Scrappers taking ANY level of significant damage (even with the difficulty changes). I'd love to actually feel like I needed a support toon backing me up, in order to survive at +4 x8. As far as the hit caps go, I think they should be normalized for numbers, so that different powers don't have different caps. It used to be that way, and it made AoEs so much more useful ... with the more recent deviation from standardized hit caps, some powers have dropped from top tier powers, to barely useful. For instance, Shadow Maul got hit REALLY hard. It didn't just get nerfed a bit, it got neutered. The extra cone width they gave it was nice, but when they made the hit cap for it like 5 or 6, or something silly like that, it made it only slightly more useful than Cross Punch.

[Psyonico]

I’d be careful what you wish for.  If a set performs better than average and they normalize the target cap for its AoEs, they might opt for the lower number.

 

Also, with the Shadow Maul example.  I *really* doubt that you were hitting more than 5 targets before the change.

[Uncle Shags]

I guess it says something about our game that people can still get worked up about developer decisions from 20 years ago. 

Edited Sunday at 01:43 AM by Uncle Shags
Bit my tongue

[Cold Bob]

1 hour ago, Uncle Shags said:

I guess it says something about our game that people can still get worked up about developer decisions from 20 years ago. 

Ha!

[skoryy]

19 hours ago, Uncle Shags said:

I guess it says something about our game that people can still get worked up about developer decisions from 20 years ago. 

 

When everyone refuses to admit they were wrong on the internet, the beefs will always be eternal.

[Psyphon]

22 hours ago, Psyonico said:

Also, with the Shadow Maul example.  I *really* doubt that you were hitting more than 5 targets before the change.

 

Not if I was just casually strolling into a group ... but if you group them by pulling around the corner, or agro way over the agro cap, so they filter in (at x8 of coarse) it was easy to get more than 5. If you happened to be in a large group with multiple melee types agroing multiple groups to tight areas, you could cap it out with the old cap, easily. I can't even remember what the cap used to be for it though, I feel like it was over 10, though probably not by much.

Edited Sunday at 08:54 PM by Psyphon

[Uun]

2 hours ago, Psyphon said:

Not if I was just casually strolling into a group ... but if you group them by pulling around the corner, or agro way over the agro cap, so they filter in (at x8 of coarse) it was easy to get more than 5. If you happened to be in a large group with multiple melee types agroing multiple groups to tight areas, you could cap it out with the old cap, easily. I can't even remember what the cap used to be for it though, I feel like it was over 10, though probably not by much.

You must be talking about prior to Issue 5 (2005), which was when target caps were implemented for offensive powers, or for about 8 months in 2020. Other than that, the target cap for Shadow Maul has always been 5. (Homecoming increased the target cap in Issue 26 Page 5, when the arc was increased, but reverted the target cap increase in Issue 27 Page 1.)

[Snarky]

On 4/22/2025 at 5:03 PM, Telifusious said:

 

The aggro cap is bad and makes the game very boring.

1st, you necro'd this.  

 

2nd, 

[Psyphon]

20 hours ago, Uun said:

You must be talking about prior to Issue 5 (2005), which was when target caps were implemented for offensive powers, or for about 8 months in 2020. Other than that, the target cap for Shadow Maul has always been 5. (Homecoming increased the target cap in Issue 26 Page 5, when the arc was increased, but reverted the target cap increase in Issue 27 Page 1.)

 

You are correct on both counts. I was specifically talking about both of those instances. I like the wider cone they added in issue 26, but it doesn't come close to being as useful as the higher hit cap.

[Jacke]

On 4/25/2025 at 5:32 PM, Uun said:

I did find the debt changes. Debt was reduced in I5 (in-mission debt cut in half) and I6 (debt cap cut in half).

 

So that's how Red Tomax used massive debt to get all those details on all the Blue-side arcs.  (Can't remember if Red-side was covered on the original City of Data site.)

 

 

[TeeTee]

I too was there back in the day doing my fair share of herding and nuking. The novelty wore off very fast and it became a torturously boring way to play CoH. I'm glad for the caps but I do think they need reviewed in places, because as mentioned, some powers become nigh-on useless and just feel bad to use.

 

So no, no removing of the caps.

Edited Wednesday at 12:09 AM by TeeTee

[Ghost]

No to removing aggro caps.

 

However, I would like to see mob sizes increased