Aura_Familia

Originally Posted by Smiling_Joe

I just noticed in the picture on the market that there is a section for crafting. Does that, perchance, refer to the crafting of IO's?

In other words, will you be able to buy recipes from the market?

Woot!, if so. But now that you can spend two hero points to get merits and potentially (unless I'm wrong) buy them from the ingame store, doesn't that kind of undercut the current reward merit price of 220-ish for the rares?

Originally Posted by Emberly

Feel free to let us purchase more than 12 character slots. Say, max of 144 or so? If you did that, you'd get my money for all of them on day one.

Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill

/agrees with this.

Personally, I think it's rather bad that someone wanting to run something this way would have to specifically set something up (much like someone set up what they called a "smell the roses" ... think it was ITF... a while back, since they were tired of everyone speed running it and wanted to actually see what was going on - reading off the contact dialog, etc. into the team channel, etc.)

The power, it's been a creepin' for a while. *shrug* I just wonder if it's becoming a crutch for people, even just looking at IO builds. Half want to challenge people to put out just a decent SO build for something and see what happens.

Originally Posted by Smiling_Joe

Perfect example: ITF Sybil caverns in the first mission. Incarnate with Tier 4 Ion Judgement runs to one side, Shield Scrapper runs to the other side. Ion Judgement goes off, killing THE ENTIRE ROOM before the shield scrapper can click on the ground to get the shield charge off. And we thought shield charge was overpowered.

By watching them play, I mean just that: you run in to make use of the character you've put hours into building, but whatever choices you've made are irrelevant because another player likes easy mode. I could run in completely unslotted and do just as well.

Unless I want to solo.



Well, when an incarnate player can pretty much power through everything in a mission with such speed that others don't have much opportunity to contribute, how is that NOT letting ONE person decide the difficulty of the encounter?

EDIT- and before this gets out of hand, let me reiterate - I don't believe we're at that point yet. I'm just voicing concerns in what I hope is a constructive manner about FUTURE content.

Originally Posted by Smiling_Joe

Only if I solo. If I'm on a team I'd have to convince EVERYONE to turn off their incarnate abilities, else I'm just watching them play.

And it's not THAT big of a problem. Yet.

I'd like it to stay that way, so I said something in a way that I hope isn't taken as complaining.

Originally Posted by Smiling_Joe

I was responding specifically to dual and team inspirations, which by themselves aren't that big of a deal, but in the larger context of inventions, level shifts and incarnate powers are indicative of a trend I'm beginning to find just the tiniest bit uncomfortable.

We're not at the ridiculously easy level yet, but best to give feedback now, right?

Originally Posted by Smiling_Joe

Good advice, if I want to solo. If I want to do the top level task forces or any level 50 team content nowadays, though, I'm along for the ride if I don't have an incarnate with a reactive interface and an ion judgement. It would be more correct IMHO to say that if you want a hard game, go incarnate and limit yourself to running trials and incarnate tf's.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not doomcrying or complaining (I loves my incarnates, really I do!), but I don't think I'm out of place by pointing out that many of these new additions that we (myself included) love and enjoy might just have the potential to trivialize the vast majority of teaming content. Incarnate powers are turned off when you exemplar, and I'm glad of it, but periodically I like to make my voice heard with regard to a preference for the preservation of some of the game's challenge, and when I see things like team and dual inspirations I can think of all kinds of ways to use them to abuse the current non-incarnate content. They won't be game-breaking, sure. But I do want to leave feedback.

Originally Posted by Another_Fan

Pick any 8 and see if there is a point where the meter stops counting deaths.

"COH is so easy that AT doesn't matter.', what you are in effect saying is CoH is so easy it doesn't need to balanced.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon

Oddly, I don't recall advocating that.



Charming.

--CP

Originally Posted by Forbin_Project

No they don't. What they have doesn't look anything like Iceman's Ice Slide. What they have is several travel powers that are nothing more than Hover Board with different objects to stand on. Their Ice Slide literally looks like Silver Surfers board with icicles hanging off of it.

Originally Posted by JayboH

Someone should tell Cryptic about that then... their game has it.

Originally Posted by Diellan_

Are you trying to say that being a poor performing AT is an advantage?

Originally Posted by CommunistPenguin

Praise /= actual use. Its easy to say "thanks! his is the best ever" only to have the player never actually use the power.

Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood

Ah, I see what you're getting at now, sorry for the confusion. Still, I think that can be solved by simply choosing a suitable upgrade rate. The Shards -> Threads upgrade was done at 1:1 but threads have about 1/5th the "value" of shards to the effective upgrade rate was 5:1. It should be possible to set a similar (or worse) upgrade rate for Threads -> Incarnate Whatevers to allow an upgrade path that doesn't completely invalidate the currency switch. As you note it is easier to get threads than shards so it might be necessary to go higher than 5:1.

I'd still prefer at to depreciate Threads entirely upon release of a new currency and make a combined Shard/Thread currency just to help newer players/characters gear up.

I'll also add as a general note going from Shard -> Threads they made the exchange 1:1 and devalued the new currency, for the next step I'd prefer to keep the same currency value (20 Whatevers for a common etc.) and set the conversion at 5:1 (or higher) since if we keep this up the numbers start getting silly (you'd need to earn Incarnate Whatevers at 5x the rate of Threads which are already earned at 5x the rate of shards).

Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood

I cut your post to avoid inflating the thread but I did read it and I have to say I really do not understand your point.

I do not consider Keyes to be a new tier of trial, it is an addition to the existing tiers. It was always possible to get up to Lore and Destiny running just BAF/Lambda so all Keyes does is provide a bit more variety and potentially slightly faster advancement if you run all three together. The fact that it gives both types of iXP doesn't really matter, iXP is a minor part of getting the abilities slotted and apart from that all three trials offer the same rewards.

Yes, new Lore abilities were released at the same time as Keyes but those were an expansion of an existing slot rather than a new slot. The original Lore abilities are still perfectly valid and the new ones are about variety not power (other than the fact that they aren't perfectly balanced).


I think history disagrees with you there. When the J/I/L/D slots were released from what I could see the majority of people flocked to the trials to get the new abilities. They did not, instead, opt to spend their time running level 50 TFs ad nauseum and convert shards to threads despite that being available as an upgrade path.

I think implementing a similarly punitive upgrade path on the new slots would be sufficient friction to encourage running the next round of trials (the current one is about 5:1). Yes, some people will have sufficient stockpiled stuff to get a head start on the new slots but once that is gone the new trials will likely be much more lucrative since you would need to run 5 BAFs/Lambdas to get the rewards from one tier 2 trial. Now this does not necessarily solve the issue of people running the easier/shorter trials within the existing set and I think it would be nice to see the rewards for Keyes upped a little bit to encourage running it more.

Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood

In many ways I would have liked this. I would have implemented two reward types, call them Incarnate XP (iXP) and Extreme Incarnate XP (XiXP) because I suck at naming things. The idea would be that you have two resources you spend both for opening up new slots and building abilities. The reason for having two resources is to setup a rolling depreciation. The second resource (XiXP) would be awarded for completion of the highest tier activities and could be used on any Incarnate slot. The first resource would be awarded from any level 50 activity (so TFs and maybe general level 50 missions) but could only be used on older slots.

As new content/slots were released the resource needed to buy older slots and the resource awarded for older content is downgraded to match.

For example, using the current content level 50 TFs would award iXP which could be used to create Alpha abilities. The trials would award XiXP which could be sued for anything. In the future when the next tier of slots is released the current crop of trials are downgraded to only award iXP but iXP could then be used to make any of the first five slots. Additionally all XiXP stored on characters would be downgraded to iXP (note that this does not actually devalue the currency, it can still buy exactly what it could before, it is simply a solution to hoarding).

The other advantage of this is that it makes it much easier to balance rewards amongst differnet content types. Keyes is unpopular at the moment because it's longer than BAF/Lambda, one option would be to have it drop more XiXP than the other two to make it worth running in terms of rewards/time. Similarly things like the WST could provide a slower but easier path to get XiXP for people who don't like trials.

Now the path the devs actually took is what you might call a "flavor" path. It is more complicated than a simple "currency" style path but in turn provides a collection and sorting aspect which presumably appeals to some people. The other downside is that it makes it a LOT harder to depreciate and consolidating existing currencies when moving up the curve. It's possible but more complicated.

As others have noted when new trials are released if they want to have the new slots only accessible through the new currency we'll have three Incarnate currencies instead of two. Now it is still technically possible for them to, at that time, condense Threads and Shards into a single currency but doing so in a seamless manner is going to be hard. If I were doing it I'd standardize on shards and automatically convert all existing components. Threads would become shards at a 5:1 ratio and all components would be downgraded using a standard rule for both salvage and recipes. So if, for example, all Supercharged Capacitors become Dimensional Keystones all recipes needing a Supercharged Capacitor now need a Dimensional Keystone. At this point there is only one set of components for the first five slots and since recipes and salvage use the same conversion rules everybody maintains their current progress on all existing slots (well, ok, they potentially lose a partial shard due to the 5:1 conversion). The TFs would keep their current rewards and the current crop of trials would be changed to have a Shard-based component drop. There would also need to be some housekeeping stuff such as new conversions for Astrals/Empryeans and downgrade/sidegrade recipes for Shard based components.

This would also solve the "gearing up" issue. If no one is running the older trials then level 50 TFs are a viable method of getting level shifts and such for the newer trials.

Originally Posted by ScottyB

Deprecating Hero/Villain Merits and adjusting the costs of Reward Merit items doesn't take into account the loss of alignment-specific currency for changing alignments. It also means the rogue/vigilante alignments can build currency and then change to hero/villain to spend it 1:1 on items in the alignment-specific store, which I don't think is how the system is intended to be used.

Architect Tickets are part of a practically self-contained world, so I don't see that contributing to currency proliferation. It'd probably upset people more if AE granted general-use currency other than Inf/XP. Some people would be happy if AE didn't have any rewards, but not every AE arc is a farm. Players would be less likely to try stuff in AE if there weren't any rewards for doing them. I'm also pretty sure AE tickets can only buy recipe rolls, not specific recipes (which Reward Merits can buy).

Hero/Villain Merits aren't an issue until level 20. Also, free players won't have access to the tip system. Premium players would need to buy Going Rogue.

Vanguard Merits aren't an issue until level 35.

Shards, Threads, and Incarnate Merits aren't an issue until level 50. Also, only VIPs can make use of Incarnate content. There's been no indication that you can buy Incarnate access as a Premium player.

Since the currencies are introduced gradually as you play, I doubt it would be overwhelming. Also, the new tutorial is supposed to include a section on using the new store, taking care of the Paragon Points thing; and there's a Tier 1 for Paragon Rewards that even a new account will have, so I imagine using a Reward Token will also be part of the tutorial.

Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood

Because that solves the opposite problem. The issue isn't people without the current slots running the new trials it's people using the OLD trials to fill the new slots. When the trials were first released they were somewhat tricky however now we've got them on farm mode. If the new-slot trials give the same rewards as Lambda/BAF/Keyes but are designed to only be doable by people with the current crop of slots then they will likely end up ignored in favor of farming BAF/Lambda/Keyes to open up all abilities. A new currency avoids that by limiting how far you can progress through particular content types. So currently you can progress up to Alpha slot by doing TFs and up to Destiny/Lore by doing the current crop of trials. Progression up to Omega will presumably be via a new tier of content rather than through repeating current content.

as a side note I would actually quite like it if the devs figured out a way to do a "gear reset" so that the "up to Omega" set of trials provide a similar level of challenge both to people with all of the current slots and people with no Incarnate slots at all allowing people who haven't done the current trials to run the "up to Omega" ones on almost equal footing with people who have all T4s (for example they could have those trials disable your alpha level shift and incarnate shifts so everyone is facing +4s again).

Originally Posted by Lothic

Elegant? Perhaps. But definitely practical/realistic at any rate.

As we all know it'll likely be impossible for the Devs to provide multiple new fully animated travel powers that'll cover all the suggestions that have been mentioned in this thread so far. It's just not going to happen. And even the idea of "power pool customiztion" is problematic at best because once again you're talking about having to create an entire set of animations for each customization. If that were "easy" the Devs would have done that years ago.

But it may be far more possible they'll be able to create a new batch of flypose emotes that'll handle many of these ideas. For example there's really no reason they couldn't create a flypose emote that has a character appear to be riding a broom or standing on an energy disk.

Yes the flypose emotes are a bit cumbersome to use and aren't as cool as fully dedicated powers (with all the associated animations that make them react appropriately in all situations) but as a compromise feature that already exists in-game they're probably our best bet for many of these things.

Originally Posted by Caligdoiel

This is actually a very elegant solution to that problem.



David, I think what needs to happen here is all this talk needs to get rolled under the umbrella of Pool Power Customization.
There didn't need to be a duplicate Fly power IMO and Ninja and Beast run, while they have their place as a low-game pseudotravel power, shouldn't be relegated to just the lowgame. I know plenty of folks who would rather go forth on all fours at 80+mph than with feet on fire. Flipping as you jump across rooftops shouldn't be the sole domain of the <14 crowd. A rocket board should be enhanceable. You can upgrade the kit on your car to improve performance, it seems daft that you couldn't do the same with the turbines on the board.

But, so as not to derail, here are my suggestions for other things to fly on:
Broomstick (a given.)
Magic Carpet
Some kind of disc, either a manhole cover or some kind of tech disc
Nemmy Warhorse.
Customizable rocket board.


With the advent of the market system you could gate some of these as microtransactions once you get the backend code in place for customizing pool powers. But be mindful not to nickel-and-dime us to death.

Originally Posted by starphoenix

Same as City of Villains and Issue 6 and Going Rogue and Issue 18. I assume that Freedom deals with the Paragon Rewards, Paragon Stores, and the F2P aspect of the game and I21 deals with the new trial, tutorial revamp, and new zone. Just like I6 dealt with the PvP zones and ED while City of Villains added new powersets, new contacts, new enemies, and new zones.