Make the early game fun: Remove TOs/DOs.

[justicebeliever]

6 minutes ago, nihilii said:

Not to belittle anyone who feels differently. But as someone who believes the modern early game is perfectly fine... I wonder how things would play out if developers ran a sneak experiment.

Removing TOs and DOs, replacing them with SOs as soon as level 1. But only in appearance.

You'd see a +33% boost on your enhancement bar, and on your power totals once slotted; while behind the scenes it'd give you only the bonus of a TO/DO appropriate for your level.

Would people start thinking the early game is fine thanks to a perception trick?

For that matter, how many of the people who believe the early game is a slog feel that way because they have years of accumulated experience before origin powers, temp powers, veteran powers, increased lowbie tohit, praetorian enhancements, amplifiers, increased XP curves, and so on.

🤔

I think deception is seldom the right answer, unless it's an april fools prank, surprise party, or labeled as an experiment...

 

I do agree that between DFB, Beginner's Luck, Origin Powers, P2W Powers, and everything else you mentioned the game is balanced just fine for the lower levels...

[nihilii]

It's more of a thought experiment than a suggestion. I'm confident our devs have far more sense than to actually listen to me. 😁

[DSorrow]

10 minutes ago, nihilii said:

Not to belittle anyone who feels differently. But as someone who believes the modern early game is perfectly fine... I wonder how things would play out if developers ran a sneak experiment.

Removing TOs and DOs, replacing them with SOs as soon as level 1. But only in appearance.

You'd see a +33% boost on your enhancement bar, and on your power totals once slotted; while behind the scenes it'd give you only the bonus of a TO/DO appropriate for your level.

Would people start thinking the early game is fine thanks to a perception trick?

For that matter, how many of the people who believe the early game is a slog feel that way because they have years of accumulated experience before origin powers, temp powers, veteran powers, increased lowbie tohit, praetorian enhancements, amplifiers, increased XP curves, and so on.

🤔

It could work. That said, even with SOs available from lvl 1 I probably wouldn't buy any because the 1-22 part of the game lasts for 2-2.5 hours so redoing SOs 4 times would probably end up slowing me down. Anecdotally, though, I did play with a new player in the 40s who had no enhancements slotted because his only experience with TOs had taught him "enhancements don't really seem to do much" and "DOs/SOs seemed too complicated with their different names to be worth the effort", to paraphrase.

[_NOPE_]

Placebos actually do work.

[justicebeliever]

3 hours ago, kenlon said:

. . . wait, seriously? This is your actual argument?

 

Why on god's green and fuzzy earth would anything need to be done to IOs if low level characters got access to SOs? 

I mean with sarcasm or condescension, but only naivety or insincerity would have someone state that there wouldn't be a long thread on the very 1st day this change took place that would say, "we need to rebalance IO's to make them more like SO's at the lower levels"...The promise of the IO is that is a.) more expensive than a DO or SO at the same level, b.) doesn't need to be replaced every level, and c.) about as effective as as the normal enhancement you would get at that same level...There wouldn't be debate back and forth like this thread, just a bunch of mad people, and they would be right...

 

So seriously, that is part of my argument.  Feel free to read my entire posts for the rest of it...

 

Note:  I am not claiming you have said these things...but there is little point in further discussing this unless you are going to take into account IO's

[justicebeliever]

6 minutes ago, The Philotic Knight said:

Placebos actually do work.

Yes, but apart from an experiment, it would be unethical (like, you would lose your license to practice medicine, and/or sued) to prescribe one...I'm not suggesting it would or wouldn't work (it wouldn't, and you know it, because you've met the min/max'ers on these boards).  Just that it would be unethical...

[justicebeliever]

1 hour ago, ShardWarrior said:

You're already more than halfway there and in the examples given, you're not just getting 1 drop to sell, so its not just a 1 to 1 thing.  DFB rewards around 5 or 6 per run, not to mention any salvage you can sell. 

 

As for the dangers of having SOs become commonplace at lower levels, I would say they already are commonplace via DFB/DiB/Summer BB etc. and it hasn't destroyed the whole IO balance.

Look, we need to separate DFB from this conversation...If you are running DFB, you already ONLY get SO's and this whole exercise is just a point in you and I repeating yourself.

 

But regardless, let's say we make this change.  I run DFB for 10 lvls...I have 19 slots, and I walk away with 10 SO's...Now those 10 SO's are going to be worth less than the going rate of SO's (because know I just buy SO's at Atlas or run missions, right?)  So I can sell the 10 SO's for the equivalent of 8 SO's.  So now I have the money to buy 8 new SO's...but I have 19 slots to fill...how I am better off?  Guess I better go run DFB some more, and guess what, now I am lvl 22, and this conversation is pointless...

 

And new players can't afford SO's in the marketplace...they are hardly commonplace (there are only 23 Damage SO's on the market across all shards, under lvl 10, and zero accuracy, recharge rate, or endurace reduction...Currently all are selling on average for 10K or more)

 

The premise of DFB was to give people a way to lvl fast and get some cool rewards and avoid the low level grind...If we go this route, and SO's do become commonplace...how soon before we hear cries that we need better rewards for DFB...

26 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

That's sort of the point - the early game really isn't a slog and TOs were a help back before all the stuff you mentioned.  That is not the game anymore  and TOs don't really serve much of a purpose.

Then why are we having this discussion?  Why do we need to improve something that is NOT broken...Just a debate exercise???  That's great, but then just say so, so you don't waste other people's time with pointless discussions....

 

[ShardWarrior]

I certainly don't feel this discussion is a waste of anyone's time, nor did I say the TO system was broken.  The game has evolved and exploring possibilities to improve older content is worth merit IMO.  Revisiting older content and systems is nothing new or foreign to MMOs.

[justicebeliever]

1 minute ago, ShardWarrior said:

I certainly don't feel this discussion is a waste of anyone's time, nor did I say the TO system was broken.  The game has evolved and exploring possibilities to improve older content is worth merit IMO.  Revisiting older content and systems is nothing new or foreign to MMOs.

I slept poorly last night.  It's possible, probable even, I am carrying in some frustration from that into this discussion.  As I am really tired, I'm not sure that's the case, but I'm sure on reflection I will see that is so, so I will apologize if I have been a little too...abrupt here...

 

I want to be clear, TO/DO's are not a sacred cow to me...I joined in on this conversation because I don't think the effort's described in this thread are as limited in scope as suggested, are fixing a problem that needs correcting, and are worth the development time involved (regardless of size).

 

If we are in agreement on all 3 of those, then really, I'm finished here, and don't really want to continue this discussion...If not, help me out, and let me know what you are saying, because I feel we are going round and round here...

 

[Oubliette_Red]

The one thing that I've not seen mentioned, at least I did not see anything going through the thread, is that removing TOs and replacing them with DOs or worse, SOs would require the complete re-balance of lower level enemies and missions. Seems like a lot of work (for the devs) for very little gain (for the players).

 

 

[justicebeliever]

Just now, Oubliette_Red said:

The one thing that I've not seen mentioned, at least I did not see anything going through the thread, is that removing TOs and replacing them with DOs or worse, SOs would require the complete re-balance of lower level enemies and missions. Seems like a lot of work (for the devs) for very little gain (for the players).

I truly don't believe that anyone who has advocated for this change wants the enemies to be rebalanced...they want to feel more powerful in the lower levels...

[praxidicae]

I have to disagree with those saying that TO's don't need to exist because they're only relevant for the first 10-12 levels and you can burn through that in a session or two.

Sure you can level to 10 in a session. However, you can also choose not to. There is a wonderful option in the Menu that lets you turn off XP earning, allowing you to run through as much content at a particular level that you want.

Usually I turn this on at around level 8/9 so that I can get through the entire Hollows Arc (including Cavern of Transcendence) and various KR mission arcs without overlevelling (yes I know I could just flashback later, but I'd prefer to run related content together - I'm a little OCD like that). 

I am currently running through the setup recommended in this guide to being a Praetorian completionist, have been on this character for almost a fortnight and am only level 9, there have been a couple of days w/o playing, but overall I couldn't fathom playing the character without access to TO's.

At present I don't have the inf for SOs (or probably even DOs), but I'm having an absolute ball.

 

Most low tier enemies are balanced around TOs, even by slotting low level IOs you can see incredible improvement (fully twink out a low level character with SOs from the AH and watch them puree most similar level content and tell me that's balanced). 

 

Half the fun of a game is Risk, those moments where you misjudge a leap and land in the midst of a crowd of enemies, leading the a frenetic race away from the scene, the time times where that crucial attack whiffs and you have a frantic moment where it appears your [character's] life is on the line. Being able to steamroller the opposition isn't (at least until the upper levels) particularly fun or interesting to me

 

[_NOPE_]

I honestly feel like the game overall is fairly balanced all the way around and has a good leveling curve, except for a slog between roughly level 30ish and level 41 when you start to get your Epic Powers. After those epic powers and the more "interesting" content available level 40+, it doesn't feel like the "same old same old". If the Devs could focus on anything going forward with the game, my opinion is that rather than looking at systems that appear to be functioning "fine", they should look into new content for levels that might be a bit sluggish/uninteresting to get through. The early game is fine, with how quick you level and get powers etc, as well as Going Rogue adding TONS of early game content. The "end game" (40-50) seems just fine to me and perfect as it is, and the Incarnate system could be developed literally forever, because that's the way that it's designed. But there's that gap in the middle that just seems... lackluster.

 

Of course, all of this is just my opinion.

[Jeuraud]

TOs have always been useless, there only value was in the minuscule influence they earned by selling them, and DOs were only better in the amount of influence you could get from them. Nobody but a NewB invest in TOs/DOs.

Of course when I was a NewB I would try slotting them, after all aren't they there to make your powers better, and be frustrated by them essentially doing nothing.

The only TO I slot now is Acc, and that is to keep me at the 1 Streakbreaker, and even with a +3 TO and Beginners Luck you cannot maintain that with just 1 TO at level 10+. Now if you group then sure you don't need to slot... you have the group covering for you, but if you solo you are going to be dying or taking a knee a lot. You also do not get the benefit of many early powers, some of them Secondary T1s, until you can slot with SO level Es... again not a big deal if you group.

 

But "Just group" has never been a proper answer in CoH, and that many of you keep going to it means many of you have no real reason for not revamping the Enhancement system. It's just something you don't want the CoHH Devs to do because you group through the TO/DO pain so it does not effect you. As for the group that says it would be too difficult, the "Just Group" people have already pointed out that the system for low level SOs already exist, it just does not exist for the low level Soloable missions.

 

As for TO level IOs the only value they hold is that they do not decrease in value; a TO level Acc IO will still not keep me at the 1 Streakbreaker at level 10+. Salvage wise there is no difference between a TO and DO level IO, and the only TO level IOs worth investing in are the ones that don't add % to powers.

 

 

CoH should have never launched with the TO/DO/SO Enhancement system, but it did and now that the Salvage and AH systems exist, where I can make a Million Inf in under a week, TOs and essentially DOs are even more useless.

I'm failing to understand how fixing something that is useless, and making all of our powers useful right from the start is a bad thing.

[ShardWarrior]

2 minutes ago, Jeuraud said:

I'm failing to understand how fixing something that is useless, and making all of our powers useful right from the start is a bad thing. 

Complete speculation on my part here, but getting rid of the various non IO enhancements (TO/DO/SO) would have been an eventual outcome. 

Edited August 8, 2019 by ShardWarrior

[_NOPE_]

I always used TOs up until DOs became available, then I used those. That's when I stopped and didn't mess around with SOs as soon as IOs became reasonable to me (about level 15). Then I went ahead and just used IOs. From the money I could earn through the market just selling my drops, I NEVER had any issue affording what I want, until I hit level 50 and wanted purples, that is...

[Replacement]

This thread feels hostile but... well, here I go...

 

I think maybe part of what's missing from the OP is the idea of replacing the lower level enhancements with SOs.  Meaning we could, for example, buy level 5 SOs from the trainers flanking Ms. Liberty.  So "just ignore them" isn't the answer -- you're missing the point.

 

It's a neat idea.  DFB enhancements shows us the game doesn't break when you're given low-level SOs.  I'd still suggest something like:

Level 5 and 10 DOs

Level 15+ SOs.

 

I really really like this notion because 

a) I hate accuracy 16+

b) I hate investing the time into collecting/crafting IOs (I do not possess a Farm character to send myself money, so no more than a 500k budget) until I'm sure I like a character, which tends to be around level 24 or so.

 

Finally, I'd love to see a tweak to the enhancement price formula to make lower-level enhancements cheaper.  They're going to be outclassed by IOs anyway.  Why should they be the same price?

[justicebeliever]

4 minutes ago, Replacement said:

This thread feels hostile but... well, here I go...

 

I think maybe part of what's missing from the OP is the idea of replacing the lower level enhancements with SOs.  Meaning we could, for example, buy level 5 SOs from the trainers flanking Ms. Liberty.  So "just ignore them" isn't the answer -- you're missing the point.

 

It's a neat idea.  DFB enhancements shows us the game doesn't break when you're given low-level SOs.  I'd still suggest something like:

Level 5 and 10 DOs

Level 15+ SOs.

 

I really really like this notion because 

a) I hate accuracy 16+

b) I hate investing the time into collecting/crafting IOs (I do not possess a Farm character to send myself money, so no more than a 500k budget) until I'm sure I like a character, which tends to be around level 24 or so.

 

Finally, I'd love to see a tweak to the enhancement price formula to make lower-level enhancements cheaper.  They're going to be outclassed by IOs anyway.  Why should they be the same price?

I like most of this.  I'm all in favor of making DO's and SO's more accessible to lower level players...

• Let's allow DO's to drop starting at lvl 5 (enhancement lvl, not security level) to anyone for completing a mission
• Let's allow SO's to drop starting at lvl 5 to anyone completing a story arc
• Let's allow you to purchase SO's at any level from a merit vendor (currently you can only get them at lvl 25)

You don't have retweak the entire enhancement infrastructure to get away with this...

 

And as DO's/SO's do become more commonplace, then the prices on the market will drop considerably...

 

 

[Moonshades]

3 hours ago, Jeuraud said:

But "Just group" has never been a proper answer in CoH, and that many of you keep going to it means many of you have no real reason for not revamping the Enhancement system. It's just something you don't want the CoHH Devs to do because you group through the TO/DO pain so it does not effect you. As for the group that says it would be too difficult, the "Just Group" people have already pointed out that the system for low level SOs already exist, it just does not exist for the low level Soloable missions.

 

I stated earlier in the thread that I didn't find early game content all that difficult with or without TOs slotted. Sometimes I think others are playing a different game than I am. When I stated that I breeze through content easily enough, I didn't mean i took the team option (although sometimes I do) I meant that I could handle the bulk of it solo. I don't die an extraordinary amount  though I do faceplant occasionally, nor do I have to rest very often, though occasionally that as well.

 

My continuing point being that I don't see the burning necessity of eliminating something that is working as intended, as a teachable device for new players to learn how to slot and as loot appropriate for the level of content they are awarded at.

[Bionic_Flea]

One additional point that I don't think has been fully addressed. 

 

While some have discussed the difficulty of low level characters affording SOs, imagine having to replenish those SOs every three levels as they expire.  It's not just a one time investment.  For some, keeping their enhancements at +3 is a necessity.  For many others, keeping their enhancements out of the red is a necessity.

[ShardWarrior]

28 minutes ago, Moonshades said:

My continuing point being that I don't see the burning necessity of eliminating something that is working as intended, as a teachable device for new players to learn how to slot and as loot appropriate for the level of content they are awarded at.

I believe there is an important distinction to be made here - changing something just for the sake of changing it I think everyone would agree is not a good idea or wanted or necessary.  Changing something old and out-of-date  - regardless if it still works or not - to improve it and make it better/more appealing is entirely different.

 

"Freshening up" old content is not something alien to MMOs.  Here is just one example from Neverwinter.  Cryptic is always doing something to refresh older content to bring it up to current quality and to alter the story/systems as the game has progressed.  In fact, they are updating old "patrol" mission content in the next update to STO.

 

I don't see any game doing this at all being a bad thing.  Leaving old-useless things in an already old game makes it even more stale IMO.

Edited August 8, 2019 by ShardWarrior

[Some Random User]

11 hours ago, DSorrow said:

Because of the bucketing and attuning in the market, that "worthlessness" or price changes would only apply to lvl 10, 15 and 20 generic IOs so it's hardly a requirement to rebalance the entire IO system. Besides, I don't think it's a huge issue if there's a 10 level range where generic IOs aren't objectively the best choice to go for, especially when they still have the advantage of not needing to be replaced.

This is why D.O.s should be Attuned. If there's a reason to keep them more than three levels...

[Some Random User]

7 hours ago, DSorrow said:

Anecdotally, though, I did play with a new player in the 40s who had no enhancements slotted because his only experience with TOs had taught him "enhancements don't really seem to do much" and "DOs/SOs seemed too complicated with their different names to be worth the effort", to paraphrase.

Reading this was physically painful. This problem was a part of the reason the live devs finally added the modifier bonuses to the Enhancement tooltips on the Enhancement Management screen.

 

I hate to sound like a broken record, but this problem would also be solved if we instituted the suggestion I made earlier: Instead of the current T.O.s and D.O.s, we could just have Attuned D.O.s.

[Some Random User]

7 hours ago, justicebeliever said:

Yes, but apart from an experiment, it would be unethical (like, you would lose your license to practice medicine, and/or sued) to prescribe one...I'm not suggesting it would or wouldn't work (it wouldn't, and you know it, because you've met the min/max'ers on these boards).  Just that it would be unethical...

This is not a true statement. Physicians regularly prescribe placebos. Run a web search to confirm.

[justicebeliever]

4 minutes ago, Some Random User said:

This is not a true statement. Physicians regularly prescribe placebos. Run a web search to confirm.

It is unethical...Straight from the AMA (https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/ethics/use-placebo-clinical-practice)

Quote

Physicians may use placebos for diagnosis or treatment only if they:

(a) Enlist the patient’s cooperation. The physician should explain that it can be possible to achieve a better understanding of the medical condition by evaluating the effects of different medications, including the placebo.

(b) Obtain the patient’s general consent to administer a placebo. The physician does not need to identify precisely when the placebo will be administered. In this way, the physician respects the patient autonomy and fosters a trusting relationship, while the patient may still benefit from the placebo effect.

(c) Avoid giving a placebo merely to mollify a difficult patient. Giving a placebo for such reasons places the convenience of the physician above the welfare of the patient. Physicians can produce a placebo-like effect through the skillful use of reassurance and encouragement, thereby building respect and trust, promoting the patient-physician relationship, and improving health outcomes. 

Never said it was illegal, just unethical...apparently, you can still keep your license and do this, but I imagine you won't fair well in a lawsuit...

Edited August 8, 2019 by justicebeliever