Something i wish we could do with Primary or Secondary sets

[Rudra]

5 hours ago, CactusBat said:

Gonna revive this.

Cause it's 2025. And it's about time for this modern MMO convenience to enter the game.

If they are gonna continue to release new power sets, they need to provide a way to use those sets without needing to completely remake a character.

Cause to head off the "Just make a new character" crowd, the gameplay loop is not varied or engaging enough to support a grind to full build every time a new power that works more interestingly for your character concept comes out, not after the 10th or 11th time. You know it, I know it. You spend most of your time playing the same content with a group of friends or hanging in the D, go sit down. The game will survive a bit of modernizing.

You'll still have to farm out new Enhancements for each change anyway, there's plenty of build in user retention without needing to make a whole new character.

It's just good UX. It's time for this feature to exist.

The game can't do a respec for AT, origin, primary power set, or secondary power set. All those are set before your character is even in/part of the game. If you are worried about not liking how a character will feel or play at late levels, then make the character on the test server, use the provided means on that server to instantly get your character to level 50 with all the enhancements slotted, and run around playing that character to see how it goes. And if you don't like the character? Delete and try again with something else. The test server is very helpful for testing things.

[Frozen Burn]

5 hours ago, CactusBat said:

Gonna revive this.

Cause it's 2025. And it's about time for this modern MMO convenience to enter the game.

If they are gonna continue to release new power sets, they need to provide a way to use those sets without needing to completely remake a character.

Cause to head off the "Just make a new character" crowd, the gameplay loop is not varied or engaging enough to support a grind to full build every time a new power that works more interestingly for your character concept comes out, not after the 10th or 11th time. You know it, I know it. You spend most of your time playing the same content with a group of friends or hanging in the D, go sit down. The game will survive a bit of modernizing.

You'll still have to farm out new Enhancements for each change anyway, there's plenty of build in user retention without needing to make a whole new character.

It's just good UX. It's time for this feature to exist.

 

While yes, this is the modern era, this is an old game and the old platform will not support such a feature.  This was asked for even back when the game was live.  The Devs would have to completely rebuild/rewrite the game to do this and that is years' worth of work - and given our small team of volunteer Devs - it would take decades to implement.  

 

But to your other point - yes, there is plenty of content to rotate a new character through, whether Hero, Villain, or Praetorian.  I too have been in the situation where I thought a better secondary would go with a primary so I made a "Praetorian" version of my character - new arcs, new content, and you can then focus on other content once Hero/Villain-side than what you did before.  Leveling to 50 is so easy and there is enough alternate content to rotate around so that it will be a while before you repeat it again with a new character.

 

[Rylas]

5 hours ago, CactusBat said:

Cause to head off the "Just make a new character" crowd, the gameplay loop is not varied or engaging enough to support a grind to full build every time a new power that works more interestingly for your character concept comes out, not after the 10th or 11th time. You know it, I know it. You spend most of your time playing the same content with a group of friends or hanging in the D, go sit down. The game will survive a bit of modernizing.

So you want us to believe that 10 to 11 powersets have come out that just happen to “work better for your character’s concept” and therefore the limited resources of the dev team should be more focused on changing game mechanics to allow rerolling primaries and secondaries?

 

I only wish the devs had the time or resources to have rolled out that many new sets. I find it hard to believe you’ve run into this issue on your toon that many times. Even if your talking about different toons, then clearly you don’t have issues making new toons and getting them up and running if you’ve already done it nearly a dozen times. 
 

I’d much rather see more new sets than waste time on a function that may or may not be possible with how the game is already set up. 

[Seed22]

9 hours ago, CactusBat said:

Gonna revive this.

Cause it's 2025. And it's about time for this modern MMO convenience to enter the game.

If they are gonna continue to release new power sets, they need to provide a way to use those sets without needing to completely remake a character.

Cause to head off the "Just make a new character" crowd, the gameplay loop is not varied or engaging enough to support a grind to full build every time a new power that works more interestingly for your character concept comes out, not after the 10th or 11th time. You know it, I know it. You spend most of your time playing the same content with a group of friends or hanging in the D, go sit down. The game will survive a bit of modernizing.

You'll still have to farm out new Enhancements for each change anyway, there's plenty of build in user retention without needing to make a whole new character.

It's just good UX. It's time for this feature to exist.

You can’t tell these people that CoH’s gameplay loop is D-tier at best effectively, by the 4th 50 onward(I look past it because of the end result being a new neat powerset) and expect a positive response to your comment. 
 

I still disagree with your suggestion. Ignoring the imo subpar leveling experience, it can take roughly 5 painful hours to farm to 50. It sucks, horribly, but it is still 5 hours vs a week organically. Not that bad in comparison. 
 

I haven’t made an alt in roughly 6+ months, but when I wanted to test a new powerset this was what I did. Saved hours in the longrun

[CactusBat]

On 1/13/2025 at 12:04 PM, Frozen Burn said:

 

While yes, this is the modern era, this is an old game and the old platform will not support such a feature.  This was asked for even back when the game was live.  The Devs would have to completely rebuild/rewrite the game to do this and that is years' worth of work - and given our small team of volunteer Devs - it would take decades to implement. 

On 1/13/2025 at 11:16 AM, Rudra said:

The game can't do a respec for AT, origin, primary power set, or secondary power set. All those are set before your character is even in/part of the game.

 

Do you realize how, from a game development and coding standard, how absolutely improbable that all sounds?

But really look at your arguments here.

You are telling me, that a game with eight years of development put into it live (and all the private server development) had no coded debug menu to swap character features in engine that whole time? And that that menu couldn't be constrained and expanded to make this feature, and access to it slapped onto Null the Gull or the existing body type costume changer in the D?

I find myself hard pressed to believe that.

[biostem]

5 minutes ago, CactusBat said:

Do you realize how, from a game development and coding standard, how absolutely improbable that all sounds?

But really look at your arguments here.

You are telling me, that a game with eight years of development put into it live (and all the private server development) had no coded debug menu to swap character features in engine that whole time? And that that menu couldn't be constrained and expanded to make this feature, and access to it slapped onto Null the Gull or the existing body type costume changer in the D?

I find myself hard pressed to believe that.

From a developer standpoint, why bother implementing that, though?  They didn't even have flapping capes or cloth at launch.  Heck, they didn't have power tinting, either - All those things were cludged together later.  Since they could just create a new character and insta-level them to whatever level they wanted, along with giving that character whatever enhancements they wanted, they could just reroll anything they needed for their purposes, so why bother implementing AT and powerset change commands?

Edited yesterday at 01:24 AM by biostem

[Rudra]

20 minutes ago, CactusBat said:

Do you realize how, from a game development and coding standard, how absolutely improbable that all sounds?

But really look at your arguments here.

You are telling me, that a game with eight years of development put into it live (and all the private server development) had no coded debug menu to swap character features in engine that whole time? And that that menu couldn't be constrained and expanded to make this feature, and access to it slapped onto Null the Gull or the existing body type costume changer in the D?

I find myself hard pressed to believe that.

Whether you believe it or not isn't relevant. That is what the testing server is for. That is why the test server lets devs and players instantly make fully kitted out level 50+3 characters whenever they want in any configuration they want. When you have that capability, then why would there be a need to go back and change how the underlying game engine works to facilitate being able to change a character's AT, origin, primary power set, or secondary power set? And what you are asking for would require the underlying game engine to be changed according to the Live devs. Using the tools in the test server, anyone at any time can immediately put together any character of any type using any combinations of power sets, powers, and enhancements across all the ATs to do whatever they want.

 

So in a way, you are absolutely correct. The devs did/do have a means of constantly changing what is being fielded/tested on a given character (s)he/they tosses together to test various functions. And that means is also already available to players to use. On the test server. Where things the devs want tested get tested. (Edit: Though what you are asking for also does not exist even on the test server. Because to change AT, origin, primary power set, and/or secondary power set, they still have to make a new character. They can just immediately make said new character level 50+3 with all slotted enhancements.)

 

Edited yesterday at 01:40 AM by Rudra

[Rylas]

4 hours ago, CactusBat said:

I find myself hard pressed to believe that.

[srmalloy]

15 hours ago, biostem said:

From a developer standpoint, why bother implementing that, though? 

Not just that, it implements a known exploit category, where a player creates a character with an AT/powerset combination known to be easy to level, gets them to level cap, and 'respecs' into an AT/powerset combination that's difficult to play well before level cap. With the ready availability of leveling tools, including AE farms, and the 1000-character-per-server pool, you can make the arguement that the ability to do complete AT/powerset changes is already in the game; it just costs you all your levels, so you start off as a new level 1 character with the AT and powersets you want.

[Greycat]

On 1/14/2025 at 7:18 PM, CactusBat said:

I find myself hard pressed to believe that.

 

What you believe is irrelevant.

 

You think it's something easy to change, volunteer to be part of the dev team and do it. Or download everything from Ourodev, set up your own private server (takes maybe an hour, depending on the speed of the system and how fast you get other stuff needed to do so) and poke around. See how easy something that wasn't done on live, during the secret server years, or done here or on any other private server is despite people asking about it *since* live.

 

So, yes, Virginia,

 

Quote

You are telling me, that a game with eight years of development put into it live (and all the private server development) had no coded debug menu to swap character features in engine that whole time? And that that menu couldn't be constrained and expanded to make this feature, and access to it slapped onto Null the Gull or the existing body type costume changer in the D?

 

I and several others *are* telling you that, and perhaps the fact that *nobody has done that,* despite this not being an original request, should make you stop and think about why that might be.

[Oubliette_Red]