FrostyBot

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While that is clearly stated, I am unaware of any change since issue 2 that has been plainly stated as a bad idea by what (at least to me) seemed a majority of posters (at least) were not in favor of and removed as a result. I'll believe it when I see it. I would believe it more if you ( or anyone) can point to a couple or recalled changes (not tweaks)

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This one's dirt simple. The patch that boosted 25+ level bosses. It was rolled back to pre-patch after squishy AT's complained en masse about the massive difficulty boost this produced (though as a slider option, maybe it'd give some of the non-squishy types a challenge). If you didn't call that a major change, you weren't one of the folks faceplanting repeatedly trying to do missions.

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I tried it on a whim, while testing a respec (which is what I use the test server for) . On live I got around 2k or so, on test I got around 600 ( all per tentacle) with less teams around ( it was just ours). Perhaps it was the amount of damage I did was less (and maybe then less xp) but it seems capped at like 655.

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If that's true, it's a Bad Thing. You can't "farm" the octopus for experience- it's a random event, with attacks that can drop people easily (including Toxic damage, a truly joyous type for SO many powersets). You're not going to powerlevel people whacking the thing. Sweet rewards (excellent exp) should be coming from things that aren't easily repeated. If Krakens got a big dose of exp from -finishing- it rather than putting the reward in where it was easily repeated over and over again...it's not broken or abuseable.

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In any case, I think the leash is a poor control on what the devs want to control. I also feel that it'd be better to go after the root of the problems, rather than trimming them at the top where they'll just grow up in other cracks like a weed.

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I think at the root of the problem is the fact that this is not an issue. At best there is a minority complaining about broadcasting tells for PL. The jerks that hit me with SB off the train annoy me far worse than broadcasts. I think that the supposed "lag" reason is nonsense since the "fix" is to have the inactive players active (and my thinking is an inactive players causes less stress on the system then an active one). If the reason was risk vs reward, controllers blasters and defenders would be getting larger xpshares since it's far riskier for them out there then for the averager tanker and scrapper.

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As far as Tankers/Scrappers go, the way mobs work now make scaling for them tougher (and at least now, scaling in favor of those AT's) than for squishy types. I'd wonder about saying pet-level powersets being at higher risk (though pre-32, certainly).

I think powerleveling is a problem from my experiences elsewhere on MMORPG's. I've been "uber". I've done my share of the big stuff on other games- raiding, camping the uber mobs, keying for areas. I've seen what happens when a playerbase shoves their way to the top and then expects everything new to show up there. It creates immense pressure to focus all development on the top levels of the game and "benign neglect" of the lower level ones. The game becomes intensely top-heavy, and PLing stops being a choice, but a need if you want to "escape" to the fun part of the game.

That demand kills games. But likewise, a game that makes it's trademark "tough" encounters lack a decent reward bogs it down into a grindfest...and that hurts a game too. Right now, I think both the leash and blind-cutting monster exp on a random, non-farmable encounter (if it is indeed so)...sucks. I think simply cutting Kraken exp instead of changing the reward to reflect completing the trial is a bad idea, too. Tough stuff should be rewarded. One-time exceptional rewards for them are good. That makes you WANT to go after the tough stuff, to dig into the content instead of powerleveling.

It's like the Nemesis Staff. Sweet deal for 5 days. Abuseable if you can farm it repeatedly and have a staff constantly.

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The #1 reason a change should be made is because it makes the game more fun. I haven't seen anyone argue that somehow this change makes the game more fun.

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Agreed. This change makes the game -less- fun. That's why I suggested an alternative myself. I'd rather see exp absorption (which worked well in other games I played in) introduced than a constant stream of manipulating exp in encounters as fast as players turn them into farming exercises, rather than something to play on the way up and have fun. I'd like to see mobs made challenging for the powersets/AT's that aren't being challenged at all. I -don't- want to see powersets being nerfed. I think the environment is what needs work far more than the powersets from a balance perspective, though there are flaws there too (Blaster secondaries? DA end costs?).

Otherwise, I vote we make a zone of nothing but giant, demonic cows you can mow (moo?) down for super-uber exp all the way to 50th. I'd feel right at home with people PLing there. :P

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Your logic is flawed. If the devs are going to do this (and I have to agree that is will happen, since I believe the devs have no interest in any playtesting other than seeing if the code works as they plan). There is no point in attempting to find the "holes" since the entire concept is far worse than whatever holes are created.

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I disagree with you. This statement on the Regen thread is why.

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I don't know about babbage but octo XP seems to have been nerfed on test to the point of not being worthwhile on test so I'm not too concerned about that. Since you are under the impression that the devs are going to push towards more missions, then do what the devs are obviously (as you have pointed out) pushing towards and stop playing defenders or controllers. MAYBE when the datamining shows that there are no defenders or controllers left they might change it back ( like so many of issue 3's "features")

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I'd heard nothing about the octopus exp being changed. Where, when how? The only change to exp I'd seen noted was Hatched Krakens.

In any case, I think the leash is a poor control on what the devs want to control. I also feel that it'd be better to go after the root of the problems, rather than trimming them at the top where they'll just grow up in other cracks like a weed.

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But nevertheless, keep "tweaking" the game in the directon it's going, and I'll simply cancel both my accounts. It's getting as difficult to deal with the time wasted in trying to level as it is in having to deal with some of the effette snobs running around preaching their "gospel" about how the game should be played.

I play to level and try out new builds. The content essentially sucks and the animation for everything from firing a shot to slotting enhancements just wastes more time. How many times does someone need to do Frostfire before they "get it"? I've already run it at least a dozen times. Put something else in the zones to increase the interest level.

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It sounds like it's tough to put out good content at a rate that satisfies someone with those appetites. What kind of new content would increase your interests?

You sound a lot like me after I beat Diablo II- what interested me at that point was build experiments, and anything that prevented this became a "grind". All I wanted to do was get the exp to experiment with my build-of-the-moment. Anything else was frustration. I'd spend a lot of time on the cows level (later on, whereever I could mow down huge numbers of large-exp mobs) and found everything else an annoyance.

It sounds like you're at that point with CoH. Even the animations for attacks and such are getting under your skin and you're still playing? Wow.

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I've noticed the zones less active, too. I came to the game in January and had the most fun I've ever had in it hunting and fighting Winter Lord with a bunch of other people, and leveling at an excellent clip: leveling means new powers, better bad guys and more overall fun. It's simply more fun killing monsters than slogging through missions or street hunts.

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This would be the same Winter Lords regarded as a "mistake" by the devs and cursed by most of the board population? :P

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Level 25's and above have Octo and Ghost Ship, 36's and above have Krakens, and 45's and above have Hamidon, but the newbies and lowbies have nothing equivalent to help them gain xp and other rewards the way higher levels do. It's a shame because leveling is what the game is all about: make it harder to do that, and you take away the greatest (not the only, the greatest) incentive someone has to play.

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Erm...you think those are sources of large amounts of exp? Trust me, no. The Kraken is about the only one of the lot, and that ends with I4- the exp value on the Hatched Krakens will drop, and the Kraken itself wasn't high exp to start with. They ARE fun events, though.

Not to mention, none of those save the Kraken Trial give you temp powers, Hamidon is endgame and the only "loot" on the game. Not that this is going over well now that he's become "farmable" content.

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Personally, I don't care about the story arcs or badges or clues. If I want to read a comic book, I'll buy one and read it, not try to get that kind of content here. You want the game to be more appealing? Make it easier to level. Encourage teaming by putting more monsters on the streets. Bring back level-appropriate monsters for all levels and in all zones and let people team and level like that. And for people who think leveling that way is "cheating" or "immoral", they can still do their missions.

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Actually, it was the lack of teamwork and cluelessness that the Winter Lord event produced, including the rude and nasty behavior that makes me pray nothing quite like it ever, ever happens again.

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It's ironic that the zone with the greatest number of monsters is the one that allows the fewest number of participants based on level. And I see as many 50's die in the Hive as I saw 5's die at the hands of Winter Lord, so what's the difference?

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Months later, I was still dealing with the people who leveled up that way and their lack of game knowledge- people who had 10-20 levels on my newbieness at first but had no clue how to actually play the game. A lack of Influence to buy enhancements. In many cases, no idea how the character worked, since all they had to do was 1) Find WL and 2) Hit WL for exp, repeat 1) and 2). Now, the Halloween stuff...that was fun and didn't produce a case of the stupids, either.

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Make PL'ing a valid part of the game concept by creating more monsters and let all players earn their xp by having fun killing something big.

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Erm....you apparently gauge your exp gain from giant monsters by WL's. Once-ever experience, not going to happen again after the negative effects it produced. You're not going to rake it phat exp dropping the ghosts off the ship or smacking the squid around.


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One more thing about monsters: If the rumors about lowering Kraken xp from 50-80k to 5k per kill are true, especially given the debt incurred just getting into and out of that mission, then you're creating yet another empty zone. I would never take another toon into the ASN to kill Krakens as it would simply not be worth it.

IMHO.

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The rumors are quite true, the change is already on Test, and my hopes are that the Kraken exp was shifted to the completion of the event, since the Hatched Krakens no longer are farmable for unholy levels of experience.

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Why not just put a level limit on PI? 90 % of you power level occurs theres.

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That just treats a symptom, but it doesn't stop the underlying reasons. It'd keep the PLing out of PI, at which point it'd be moving to somewhere else...missions being farmed.

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1) Instead of the first five levels being debt free, the first TEN levels will be debt free.

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meh. I havn't seen much of an issue as to require this, but you have the numbers.

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XP debt will be halved on mission maps (that includes outdoor mission maps, too).

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So...now you're going to make Hazard and Trial zones even less populated? I can see using less debt as a carrot for missions, but there are 6 Zones that are extremely baren, three of which that see less people than Hellen Keller ever did.

The real question is, did the mapper of Faultline get any recognition? Because the map sure as heck doesn't.

Cyclone Jack

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As it stands, I think the main people I find wandering around hazard zones are....herders.

And me with my psychotic alt AR sniper. But that's because I can snipe and run and never, ever run out of things to one-shot. I'd do better on missions, but hazard zones are rather AE-friendly places with bit fat spawns packed close together.

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The problem is that of course we, as human beings, would always do that when it's possible. Everytime. Guaranteed. It would take a good bit of ignorance or alot of willpower to not see the advantages and utilize them to accel. And it *is* possible, so here I am doing it.

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Which is the nature of all game playing. You do what the rules allow. That in itself is not a bad thing- but in doing it, it may point out a signficant skew to gameplay.

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I originally hated the boredom of farming, but as a player who has been here since beta, there became a higher level of boredom associated with not doing it, mostly a feeling of nearly endless timesink and travel, with a pittance of a reward coming in for your troubles. I am limited to the amount of time I have to play, and because I am stubborn, I am also self-limited to doing whatever I believe is the most valuable action for my time. Whether it's Taunting old ladies to death, killing Paragon's policemen, etc. I'm all for it, if I can get my pink bar chuggin' along a little faster. Not heroic at all, but neither is blazing past the old ladies and cops in trouble, only because they are being troubled by greys. I'm not a hero, I just play one in a game.

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If there was a way to get more experience and difficulty out of a mission (in other words, higher settings) would you do fewer missions if the total yield per mission was higher?

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I don't have enough interest in the story I already read or the TFs I've already done, to read/do them over again and pretend they're something new and great. They're not. Not for the umpteenth time. The only new and great thing left for me to do is play with different characters, and I'm not just blindly leveling them, I am playing with them. I am learning the limits of my own builds and also leveling at a speed I feel is more on par with what the game should offer to all players all the time. I cannot see how I could possibly be hurting or offending other players who don't even know I'm there. I'm in my missions, and I *do not* send tells looking for other people to farm them with me. Most people aren't interested anyway, for whatever reason, so why should I even bother them with the offer.

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This is true- heck, I solo my own missions-at Heroic or one-up from there. As a Blaster, Invincible is likely doable....but it'd take till half-past forever. And certainly not 10-30 minutes.

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No. I am a tank. I am doing what a well-built tank *should* be able to do. I am sure as I get into the higher-level missions, this will become harder and harder to pull off. Perhaps some reworking of the combat AI could help, but changing the basics, like the damage/acc/HP/power tables for mobs, would hurt everyone else to the extreme just to make it slightly more challenging for herders. The mobs are balanced so that all the ATs can still manage to do their most of their missions solo, at least on heroic. Changing the mobs around to make me less effective at my only role, and making it stunningly difficult for others is not, IMHO, a good idea. Combat AI improvements maybe, but...

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Yes, you're a tank. You handle hits well. Being able to deliver enough damage on top of that to destroy the entire mission in 10 minutes at that difficulty level is well....kinda impressive.

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None taken. The same can be said about any AT though, depending on their gameplay methods. I am a tank, taking hits effectively is what I have been gifted with and when I am doing my job the rest of the team should be relatively safe. I am not the only one who is useful to a farming team, but a good tanker is definitely the base requirement. A controller can hold my herd all at once, negating the damage for a good portion of the time, and they might just have some buffs too. A blaster can AoE them in a few shots. A scrapper can effectively herd a smaller area of the map and bring them to me and "hand" them off, and then also help out alot in the final battle and most have a few AoEs as well. A defender can help me herd without using insps, and might bring some blaster-like AoEs to the table. Everyone is useful in a herding session to some degree, does that make everyone too powerful? Or is it just herding in and of itself that you don't like?

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Everyone is useful- but none of them seem to be needed. And by herding, it means a single tank becomes a catalyst no other AT could be for anyone whose abilities cover more than single targets. I've been on missions where the tank herded- the simple fact that I could hit a dozen, or two dozen targets at once with Frost Breath means my normal effectiveness went up about 400-800% at the least. And I'm an Ice Blaster- my AE ability is minor at best compared to most Blasters, or even Defenders in some cases. If those mobs scattered even a bit, it'd make that multiplier lower considerably. Should herding really be that powerful?

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If there were a finite limit to how many I can keep aggro'd at once, I would most likely not be able to challenge myself at that limit, and would continue on doing two, three, or more herds instead of one big one, but at no risk to my tank. I'm pretty flexible, and as long as I'm still herding I'm still having fun.

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Would you have fun if you were doing smaller herds that still involved risk? Would they have to have significantly higher exp value to do it?

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Actually, making mob responses to taunting more unpredicatable once the number aggroed gets too high would be wonderful. Making hordes of mobs a threat over time to a Tanker like yourself would be better.

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Some mobs are indeed a threat, any with stun/hold/disorent effects often drop your toggles after a bombardment of such attacks. Once my toggles drop, I might as well be a squishy, because I go down like one. A defender with CM can rid me of that fear of toggledrop though. There is always risk involved in herding, it just takes a huge number of mobs to put me beyond what I can safely handle.

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Logically then, when large numbers of status-inducing mobs are involved, you're not herding the map- you're taking smaller groups...and I'm guessing the rewards are lower, too. Not quite as bad as Vahziloks or Banished Pantheon, but bad?

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Notice he still isn't 50? Getting to 50 is not my goal with any of my toons, having fun playing them is. That goal is virtually unattainable if I just solo all my missions and disregard farming and herding altogether. That is simply not good enough after what I have witnessed in this game. The most challenging things I have done are arguably undesirable. Being PLed isn't the answer for me either, as my ego doesn't really allow me to just sit there for very long. I wouldn't mind a boost up to 22 on most of them, but after that I wouldn't dream of PLing them any further. I like to be the one doing the PLing, if involved in PLing at all.

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Just out of curiousity- how much playtime did it take you going from say, 22-28 with your Tanker? How was your exp/hour? It strikes me as being about as high as the bar would need to be, considering it does sound like the highest reward-for-risk that's "clean" in the game.

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I think we're all missing the bigger picture here. What if COV goes live like this? Suddenly, every hero's powers go gray except for sprint and brawl...Imagine the knott in everyone's guts when Spider/Arachnos villains start attacking as well as player villains (on the Spider/Arachnos side at least) filter into what zones they can to pvp the now powerless heroes. Even if it was debt free deaths for the duration, tell me you wouldn't plotz when all powers just simply cut off.

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Don't forget losing most of your hit points. I'm sure States would have enough hp that even without defenses he could take a few bullets from obviously lower level bad guys.

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Now THAT would be scary. Imagine an Archvillain whose attacks make your powers go haywire at random.

*BZAK*

Me: "Team,My ranged attacks just shut down. Closing to melee range..."

Team: "YOU'RE THE BLASTER!"

Me: "Well, right now I have more defenses than the Tank. He just got cut off from everything in Invulnerability and the Scrapper can't regen. :P"

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Top Corner. Right hand side. The Shocker, floating above the gunners, firing a blue bolt. After The Spell has gone off.


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I'm still inclined to think its a mistake on the part of the artist rather than the writer. Every other gang member we see is using either a gun or a sledge hammer. And we're explicitly told that when the spell goes off it messes with the Clockworks as well as the heroes which would make me seriously question why it wouldn't do anything to the Outcasts. I'm really inclined to think that the script called for a group of Hellions to be drawn in but it didn't get explicit and the artist drew Outcasts instead. It wouldn't be the first time something like that happened in a comic book.

I do have to wonder about the guy with the sledge on this page since he appears to be flying. Then again I also wonder why Synapse isn't in a running posture in the next panel.

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It's notable that the Spell doesn't seem to hit everyone equally- and it does seem to take some time to drain Statesman. Sure did a good job of detoggling most of his defenses from the wallop those guns laid in on his noggin. :P

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Who says challenge is necessary for fun? This all comes down to what people personally find fun, not what others think should be fun. I am the kind of person who doesn't like a challenge in the games I play. I'm the one who goes out and buys a gameshark and finds all the good codes, even before I play a game once normally. I like the feeling of being invincible and running through levels with complete ease. Maybe to someone else I'm cheapening the experience, but to me it's fun and I enjoy my time with the game.

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He's taking the highest difficulty setting in the game. Is that supposed to be "easy mode"? Nope. That's Heroic. I believe someone's sig says being a Tanker on Heroic is like taking your sister to the school dance. That's "easy mode". Your Tanker should run through there, minions and bosses alike burning to a crisp as you laugh and giggle.

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While it's not possible, as far as I know, to cheat or hack this game (which I wouldn't do anyway because I enjoy it as is), I think the ability for him to tank an entire map on invincible is fine. Not because its fair or balanced, but because he is having fun doing it. Just because you would rather be on the verge of death, or taking more time killing mobs, doesn't mean he feels that way or necessarily even wants to play that way.

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Why not just push the button and hit 50, then? The mission slider was put in to give people who wanted a challenge a bigger challenge.

I'm guessing if there was an Invincible+ (Indominatable?) setting, AncientOne's Tank would be all over it. Why? I'd hope a challenge for him. Like I said, if the nastiest setting in the game isn't a challenge for his build, something is wrong with the ability of the game to provide that challenge.

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I can't speak for anyone else, but I personally just rolled a fire tank so I could experience that ease of play for once. I got all the way to 50 being a support character (emp/rad defender), and while things DID get easier as I reached the very end game, I was always on my toes making sure people weren't getting wiped out by an AV or whatever we were fighting. I think I deserve a little mindless fun with a tanker, and I'm really looking forward to herding up a map full of enemies and watching them burn in my dumpster. Sure the challenge may be lower than with most powersets, but that is why I rolled a tank in the first place. Perhaps that is why he made one too, I don't know.

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Considering he had a Blaster up there, yes. Quite possibly. The point is, there's a difference between "low challenge" and "no challenge". What was stated was "no challenge". Zero risk, maximum experience.

Is your sister ready for the dance?

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Personally, I think the ability to dump 60+ mobs in a dumpster is a problem.

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I constantly use that tactic when teaming, specifically to get all the mobs within a tightly-packed area so I can keep them all aggro'd with Taunt. Once aggro'd in that area, the team may open fire, but until then I really can't be a proper meatshield nor can I guarantee anyone's safety. I do this with a few mobs or many, depending on the team's overall level of competence, sometimes the whole mission's worth.

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There's the problem. You can do that with the entire mission's worth. You can lock an entire mission's worth of mobs on you at once. You can then Burn Patch/AE them to death in one easy application. Zero risk. Maximum reward.

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It's just a yummy side effect that afterwards all you need is AoEs to kill the now completely aggro'd(on me) mobs too. I absolutely hate it when someone who is not a tank, aggro's the mobs in a mission before aggro has been properly acquired, and then expects the tank to save their hide. I will /kick or suggest it to the leader if the person does that *and* complains when they die. One or the other, but doing both is beligerance, and is behavior worthy of kickage, not our pity for them being so dumb. It is not safe to attack/hold/debuff until the tank has the mobs where he feels he can hold enough of them to save lives after the attacks/holds/debuffs commence. It is always better for all the mobs to be in one spot when trying to hold aggro throughout a battle, at least until Taunt works differently that is.

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I've played enough melee types elsewhere to understand the idea of tanking. The problem here is that packing mobs like sardines not only makes it easier for AE's, it makes it trivial to control large groups of mobs, period. They all stick nice and close, everyone's in your punchvoke aura, and once you got them locked in the sardine tin,nobody's letting them out. Not only does AE damage benefit, so does anything AE or cone-heck, a /Dev Blaster can toddle in, set a Time Bomb, and 15 seconds later you get a gibbed horde of minions. But so will the AE holds, Immobilizes, Fears...all in numbers that infinitely exceed the normal capacity of those attacks to catch without compressing them into a space the lot should suffocate in. You not only gain a massive advantage in aggro control with things as they are- you become a force multiplier. When a Scrapper can use their point-blank narrow-radius cone to drop a few zillion mobs in one shot...when normally it's 2-3...something's wrong. A herd turns my Frost Breath from a "damage one group" to "Let's pump it up to max and see if I can wipe the whole map clear in one shot".

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I regularly farm my missions with my tank(L27) when no one else is around. For the 1-out-of-5 farmables I get, I herd the entire map into one spot and crush them, wash, rinse, repeat usually until I outlevel the mission. Cheating myself? No. I am covering all my streetsweeping, on my own, inside my own missions, and still do not miss out on arcs/contacts/mishes. I am closing the xp gap left open if I'd chose to do each and every mission only for the completion bonuses.

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This tells me something's wrong on the mob side of things.

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The new leash gives me even more reason to stick to soloing inside missions, and farming missions when possible. QuadSoloing, or Scooby Dooing, *was* the only type of streetsweeping that was up to my rather high xp/hour standards. I never just get on a team and hunt "whatever", it's just not fun for me, rather frustrating, especially when I know there's something better I could be doing.

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I'm not for the leash either. Frankly, it's ineffective and annoying, and that's about all it seems to be good at.

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I have tried killing one or two mobs at a time, and besides being boring and worth 0% challenge value to a tank, it is incredibly slow to boot. My way = 10 minutes. Not my way = 30 minutes. My way only offers the xp bonus once, but I get a 3-for-1 xp:time ratio on any mobs inside the mission. The way missions are spawned presents nothing more than timesink for a solo tank. If I can handle the entire Invincible-difficulty mission's mobs in one herd, how could 2-3 ever be a challenge? The biggest challenge for me is dealing with the endurance downtime, which is a challenge of one's patience, not one's skill nor experience. In fact, I would go as far as to say the latter is a total and utter waste of *any* skill or experience one might have.

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No offense, but if that isn't a shining example of something being -wrong- with an AT vs. Environment...when the -entire population- of an Invincible-level mission at ONCE isn't a threat...that means there isn't any risk to the Tanker in question. Not that the Tanker needs to be nerfed- but the mobs need better attacks to deal with the tank. I'm guessing from the level, we're talking Fire tanking here?

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If too many targets aggro on a single target, after X number of mobs, the rest should stick to a "stand and shoot at range" tactic instead of mindlessly attempting to melee (though they should still have aggro, as long as something doesn't distract them).

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Mobs already have this mechanism built into their combat AI. It doesn't matter in the least, and here's why:

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*notes about LoS, point-blank ranged shots deleted*

Add in a loss of control. If you've got that many mobs targeting you, your ability to taunt them ALL should be impaired. They (of these, some or all at once) should scatter, back off and LOSE aggro, target other heroes in range- basically, if you're covered in too many bad guys, the other bad guys should be doing something else BUT trying to hump your leg with ranged attacks.

As it stands, you have the unlimited capacity to hold mobs on you until they are capable of overloading your defenses- and as you stated, you are capable of taking an entire Invincible mission's worth of mobs on those defenses and not blinking twice.

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Are you sure you've ever actually seen someone herding? I mean, it's obvious that it already works that way if you have. Tanks always "run and hide" while herding, not because they are in danger but because they are trying to get the mobs to gather for the AoEs. Mobs in melee mode will always close to attack, but ranged buggers need to be unable to see you for you to get them to follow. The way a tank will aggro, run and hide, aggro, run and hide pretty much negates any type of response from the mobs, save for them just all dropping their aggro at once. Even then, it would be easy enough to reacquire sufficient aggro in a few seconds, if they're already grouped in a herd.

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Yep, see it done. It's broken only because the Tank can hold so much aggro at once- his "aggro list" seems to be infinite.

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Sometimes, certain mobs will always use their ranged instead of melee, you just have to be smarter than what you're dealing with if you want to herd them. Some mobs, like Vahz Cadavres, and any of the BP husks, are notoriously horrible for herding because they can't keep up like other mobs can and you lose aggro alot easier because it takes them twice as long to get to the "spot". I call them unfarmable and missions with those mobs inside are only worth their completion bonus to me. I always let out a "doh" when I get a Banished Pantheon mission-bearing contact. Maybe all mobs should be fixed so they're just like cadavres and husks to crush my buzz altogether.

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Actually, making mob responses to taunting more unpredicatable once the number aggroed gets too high would be wonderful. Making hordes of mobs a threat over time to a Tanker like yourself would be better.

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"Bad! Bad gamer! You're affecting everyone else's gameplay by making them look like slackers! How many times do I have to tell you? Play like they do or be nerfed into submission!"

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Heck no. But if you're farming Invincible missions with zero challenge for exp, where's the fun in that? Heck, what do you do for a challenge short of AV's? Giant Monsters solo? Heck, you've played a Fire/Fire blaster to the high 40's. Would an Invincible-set mission be a challenge to him?

#1 is a head-scratcher. Debt from 5-10 is negligible, but it's the beginning of teaching people that suicide running is dumb. Keep the player IQ higher. Don't do it. People should be learning about debt once they leave the newbie zones. All this does is keep them doing the wrong things longer.

#2 is a nice way to encourage more mission play.

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From a functional standpoint that might work. The fundamental problem (as I see it) is that I believe that by and large, powerleveling is bunk: that it is the Loch Ness Monster of CoH, and that we are all delivering Sasquatch's cybernetic babies, when we try to discuss 'powerleveling'. To that end, I need to develop some testing just to see if there really is any appreciable difference in the earning of PLing vs. Powergaming (i.e. legitimate, working players who are maximizing their XP earning by playing exceptionally smart/well) and then maybe compare those to less-idealized play. Powergamers will always outperform mediocre ones, but it will be interesting to see what kind of a gap there is between them and Average Joe Player versus the 'PowerLeveler.'

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I'm of the belief that there are patterns in play that differ between powergaming (been there, done that) and powerleveling (which tends to be a far, far more passive deal for the PL'ed than any powergamer's).

I've sat there with alts going at a mission chain I know from experience, full bore, bang bang bang and racking up exp like mad. I've had someone try and PL an alt too while I was doing it. Two AR/Eng Blasters, started at the same time, within about an hour and a half of play time of each other.

The exp gain for the PL was superior, on the order of a few level's worth in the teens. Why? Because higher level characters have more tools for gathering experience. Using those to benefit a lower level player results in exp gain above and beyond what they could do on their own, or even with a normal team. Also, because of lower risk. I certainly had a chance of faceplanting. He never did. Thus, unless I was perfect at playing (and even then, I know I croaked once thanks to someone's L30+ Freakshow ambush running me over), I'd have debt to repay, which would slow me a bit too. Part of what makes a powerlevel so effective is, the gain is utterly without risk. Zero. Therefore, you enjoy the full rewards of more-than-optimal play without any penalty whatsoever.

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(I don't know that I've stated it here, but I assert that PLing is less a mechanical issue than one of human nature. Which is why any mechanical fix that doesn't impact exceptionally good teams/players will not show a demonstrable decrease in what people perceive as powerleveling, because the mechanics for both are very similar if not identical)

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Close. But not quite. The experience gained from powerleveling is an artificially generated optimal environment for the PL'ed, and no matter how good the powergamer is, reality usually means the powergamer cannot sustain the same results for as long a period of time.

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Is this a rate per second? Rate per hour? Day? All the talk of 'natural' rates seems very highly subjective and fuzzy at this point. Sufficient for me to feel leery of your suggestion as it stands, anyway.

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Have a bar that drains down per "tic" and fills as you gain experience. Just like Stamina and Endurance, bonuses (teaming up,TF,etc.) would decrease the time between tics. The ability to gain exp would recover constantly- and as you leveled up, each "tic" would equal a larger gulp of experience points being absorbed.

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If you're trying to break herding (which is as much a powergamer's tactic as a powerleveler's) you need to either break aggro patterns or collision, while at the same time lowering AOE spheres. That way you would never GET 60+ whites/blues in one place, and couldn't drop them all at once even if you could.

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Personally, I think the ability to dump 60+ mobs in a dumpster is a problem. Whether Statesman and the devs do would be up to them in determining how much exp someone should be gaining (with room to manuever) at any given level. If too many targets aggro on a single target, after X number of mobs, the rest should stick to a "stand and shoot at range" tactic instead of mindlessly attempting to melee (though they should still have aggro, as long as something doesn't distract them).

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Okay, first of all, as I understand it, a level 10 SKed up to 30 does not make the same amount of XP as a regular level 30. If a 30 makes, say... 200 XP off a kill, the 10 might only make 20. That XP in RELATION to their relative levels is roughly the same. Now what is different is that at low levels, the amount of XP needed to gain your next level is smaller. That's it. You will still make 1 - 5 as fast killing blue mobs your level as you would killing blue level-30 mobs. The key difference is that variety of tactics/enhancements one can employ at higher levels allows a party to be MORE EFFECTIVE overall. For instance, I would level just as crazily fast (and did) with my then level 12 FF defender and his spines-scrapper partner in Perez park with Hyrdas, as I did with my level 13 invuln Tanker who was the backbone of a level 43 Malta mission. So what are you proposing to protect that tanker who was all that was keeping that level 43 mission standing? It sounds an awful lot like you're scheming to make life harder for him just because he's 13 and not 33, and screw the SK concept overall (which is the A-1 thing I absolutely hate about most plans to 'conquer' powerleveling).

If I am misunderstanding how you intend for such a scenario to play out, by all means, correct me.

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You're gaining exp at a normal rate for your level. Great. You'll absorb that exp at the same rate. You're contributing to a mission, you're going to gain the fair share of your exp.

OTOH, if someone's herding an entire mission repeatedly to -exceed- that rate...cause odds are, your 13th level guy even SKed isn't going to coldcock 60+ blue/white mobs in seconds- you'll grind to a halt faster. Higher level players are capable of killing X mobs more effectively than lower level ones. It's only in a situation where you're exceeding what you'd be able to normally do exp-wise in the first place that you're going to end up over the limit.

If you're doing a rate of exp gain that whether SK'ed or not that's equivalent to what you'd do in a party of your "natural" level, nothing to fear. You wouldn't notice a thing.

If you're sitting there with someone SK'ed five-six levels...you'll be fine long term.

If you just bridged someone from 10th so they could be in your team instead...they won't be able to benefit as much, due to the lower ability to absorb that experience. They'll be able to take in experience at the rate they would as a normal 10th level player would, not a 30+ level one...thus, they'll get as much exp as they might max out on doing their own missions/TF's/whatever, but won't be able to go ding-ding-ding level up like a broken pinball machine.

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And I think the only way to truly stop it is to figure out a point at which we say "OK, you're now advancing at a rate you could not sustain even on a top-of-the-line team. Too much, take a break." I think the dev team has the tools to measure this and define a limit...and needs to do so.

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The problem with this is that a truly 'top-of-the-line team' supposedly advances as fast or faster than PLers. I made about a level and a half -- from 45 to almost 47 -- on a Shadow Shard TF, even being defeated multiple times (very NASTY level 52 AV at the end... his footstomps pretty much one-shotted me if I ran in too close to heal, or didn't run away fast enough if he moved my way). So, honestly, unless you're willing to punish top-of-the-line teams and players, the line between them and PLers is mighty narrow. If the devs did their jobs and avoided punishing the legit players, I suspect you wouldn't see an appreciable difference. Then again, not having done wolf-herding or whatever other PLing tactics people scream about, I can only take other people's words that the way my some of my SG mates are known for tearing through mission after mission is as good or better than what PLing gets you. <shrug>

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Adjust the rate exp gets absorbed on team members in missions, by difficulty setting of the mission, and for TF's when doing missions. Being TF'ed is a flag. Being rated anything from Heroic to Invincible is a mission flag. Team size is a mission flag. Use them for modifiers. In fact, if the worst exp absorption rate is street sweeping, you're doing a number on some PLing right there. People who tear through TF's get rewarded with a better rate of absorption. People who run through a bunch of missions on a team get better rates. Effort is rewarded. And what does this idea do for bridging?

You even have a method on sidekicking/bridging while you're at it- since the player's exp absorption rate is going to be their REAL level's worth, not their SK'ed one (though adjusted for mission rating/team bonus/TF bonus). You bridge a L10 guy in, he's going to burn out his ability to gain exp faster than a L32 one that's only going up 4 levels, rather than 20+.

Go ahead, try and PL him when he stops gaining exp at any appreciable rate after the first mission, if the differential between real and SK'ed level is too high.

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IMO, you are right FrostyBot. Cheers to you.

Having a level 50 on an account in no way assures you someone knows their way around, and it shouldn't have been made into a goal for people to attain. I don't think people getting to 50 should've become all important. More reasons to blindly PL to the end.

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One of the reasons I think L50 = Kheldian will be the only case where getting to 50th will unlock anything. The Good Stuff should come from doing something- but it shouldn't have to be "OMG DING 50 YOU KAN BE AN ALEEUN" stuff.

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I think brute force leveling is something *some* people will at least attempt to do no matter what, and I don't think it can be stopped. Some people are just like that. A greater majority of people I know that play alot would rather PL their friends than play their new alt, often hoping someone else will get their own alt through some dread in exchange. Their experience leads them to believe it will take a significant amount of time otherwise. If there is dread involved, we don't want it. So you understand what I mean by dread, I mean tutorial, timesink, and travel. The three Ts. The first time it was all just part of the show, but over and over it's enough to drive a person to feel like they're done with the game, even though they haven't seen half of it yet. Enter powerleveling.

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I don't think it can be stopped- but it can be curtailed. And as far as the three T's - the Tutorial part to me isn't tough to skip. A day or two gets me 10th level. I'm in Skyway by the early teens. A day or two of that and I've got my travel power.

As of I4, I don't have to worry about Travel. Just have to make sure the alt has some influence, and *bang* I'm airborne when I need to get somewhere fast. That they're in low-level zones makes this even easier- I can pick up a travel pack when I need one.

Timesink is the interesting one. What do we define as "timesink"? If it's leveling up the early stages, putting in the "Your account is X months old- you may start your character at Y level with debt" may be the solution to that one.

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There have been some great ideas tossed around, it's sad to see the leash got implimented first, rather than some of the other, much better ones. I like the idea of XP absorbtion myself, but still I have to wonder... What is normal leveling? Some people play 8-16 hours a day, some maybe more, some only 2-3, who knows?. I've played an entire weekend on a few hours of sleep. If you go by the average powergamer's daily xp rate+, which is the minimum you could go by without stepping on honest feet, you're still giving folks quite a bit of headroom to continue PLing, just a bit slower and more structured. This idea is much less intrusive than the leash by far, but I don't like it at all that at some point "normal leveling" will have to be defined and hardcapped. No sir, can't say that sits too well with me at all. If you take the xp averages for today from any one server, the data will be skewed horribly because a good chunk of the population are PLing or being PLed. The skewing of the data will either work against PLers, in that the devs could take the average and truncate it to account for the PLing, leaving a very painful and narrow cap, or it could work for the PLers if they base the caps on the current xp/day/server average.

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The joys of the Test server. Or any other one. Have your player-testers run characters through the low levels that they're familiar with. Check the exp rate. Toss the data from the people who play 16 hours a day or are leveling by playing the same mission over, and over, and over again.

Heck, we know what a Invincible-set story arc complete gets us for exp if we're the devs. Figure on average how many of these the average Joe can do, weight it a bit higher to give good players breathing room. Voila, we have the beginnings of a standard.

Put it on Test. Let people stress-test the bar, see how many exceed it (if they do) and if so, how they're doing it. Adjust accordingly. Get data on exp rates from PLing methods (the idea of Statesman, Geko, and Positron running around while CuppaJo is AFK at the tram is priceless). Most PLing, by it's nature, a repetitive process. Find an exp source, farm it repeatedly until no longer effective to gain exp, repeat.

Odds are, it'd only go through as many iterations as the leash ranges/rules are now. And be far better for the game in the process.

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===

An SK getting SO or DO % boosts regardless of what is slotted, if they are with SO or DO-capable mentors, would help to narrow the very wide gap between a mentor and his SK alot.
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Now there's an idea that only benefits an active SKer, rather than a sit-at-home one. Why not? It'd encourage people to be active sidekicks and effective ones, and the SK system is there so levels aren't a huge problem for the player who wants to team up with high level buddies.

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Should I be able to start at 14th? 20th?

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Yes, I believe you should. It should be up to you, if you do not enjoy a part of the game, to find a way past it. That is what I have done to keep a continued interest in playing CoH with several toons. /sarcasm I thought PLing was just an easter egg the devs put in there to make up for the 300+ hours you have to put in to get to 50 the first time. /end sarcasm

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There you go. As I don't have a L50 character here, I preferred asking to saying it myself.

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The ability to skip parts of the game would just be another carrot to leveling as fast as possible- a cure could be as bad as the disease.

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Are you suggesting that would be a worse or more intrusive cure than the ill-concieved leash? Many people who openly admit to PLing are usually willing to give some reason why.

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-Could- be. And part of the reason I poke is to get things out where they're seen and discussed. And I think the leash is at the bottom of the barrel as far as ideas to curb PLing goes.

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I'm not gonna try to convince you that free L20s is a good idea though, because I don't think it is. My opinion is that I like things just the way they are. I like that I can get PLed to where I want to be and go off and play at the level I already know I enjoy. I'd always like to be able to trust in my own judgement regarding for how long and when it ends. I do see your point and it has been well recieved here. Who's to say if I can start at 20 I won't PL to 45 to get past the next "bad" part I chose to skip? I start with max debt? A few hours at Portal Corp ought to solve that. Woohoo, free L20s and a decent reason(debt) to start getting 'em PLed right away. Where does it end, if at all? 50 obviously, which is where alot of people want PLed to anyway. PLing exists comprehensively throughout CoH, as do ways to achieve it. There is not one way to do it but many. PLing is widespread enough that I think there are some glaring gameplay issues that the desire for PLing stems from.

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So, would you think that giving a long-term player the ability to start at a higher level as a reward for being with the game long-term (to an extent) would be a bad thing? How much of the game is a "tutorial" before you get to where it isn't? Being able to skip that part due to out-of-game experience with CoH might not be a bad idea. Being able to skip further would. But it's the ability to skip large chunks of the game -without- that experience that is the problem with PLing.

And I think the only way to truly stop it is to figure out a point at which we say "OK, you're now advancing at a rate you could not sustain even on a top-of-the-line team. Too much, take a break." I think the dev team has the tools to measure this and define a limit...and needs to do so.

No more leashes and half-fixes. Kill the problem at it's source- and the one thing in common with ALL powerleveling is the abnormal rate of exp gain. That's why it's called powerleveling. Render that rate impossible to do, and the problem no longer exists. Leave an unlimited ability to gain exp in place, and it's trying to dam a river with cheesecloth.

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I have yet to monsterbate, but thanks anyway! I simply dread a hero's life before SOs, and I am not willing to play most ATs prior to their availability. I have deleted more toons in their teens than I would care to admit. Before the respec trials came along, that was how you fixed bad power/slot choices, you just rerolled 'em as soon as you figured out you f'd up. I have seen most if not all of it before, and I am not interested in seeing it again. Really though, someone shouldn't need to give a reason why they are in favor of keeping the option to PL in CoH. They're doing whatever it takes to keep themselves interested enough to pay for one or more accounts every month, isn't it bad enough they had to resort to an "undesirable" method of gameplay to accomplish it.

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Actually, yes it is. Powerleveling is essentially saying "I'm not having any fun with large portions of the game.". If you're having fun with the game- well, you're not powerleveling through the content as fast as possible. You're playing through as much of it as possible in order to experience every drop of gaming goodness, rather than skipping large chunks.

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The way I see it, CoH has already begun on it's path down that dark, lonley road that you mentioned. The further into developing high-level content the dev team goes, the more people there are that would rather be doing "the good stuff". Khelds, APPs, and Hami raids are the types of content that become a HUGE factor as to why even folks that dislike the notion of PLing would succumb to it's temptation. What you have stated as happening as a result of PLing, is in fact what is causing a great deal of the demand for it. Ham-handed attempts to remove PLing and victimize it's advocates will not remove the demand for it's presence, it will only serve to alienate the folks that figured out that there is a need for it.

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And I think the dev team here sees that. Kheldians are the only AT that takes a level 50 to open (the others will have alternate requirements instead). APP's are essentially the level 40+ powers put in since originally, there were none to have from 32nd on. I'd like to see a 10th power added to primary/secondary lists, to fill in the power gap between 32 and 41 for primaries and secondaries, if possible. 40-50 didn't have the planning that 1-40 did.

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Slight increases to leveling speed(read: major overhaul) in the L30-50 range, increased xp rewards for TFs and AV battles, temporary travel power rewards being mixed into the early missions... These and many other good ideas have been shot down or pushed aside despite the reality that they would strike an impressive blow to PLing, by removing the very reasons why people do it. I feel that when these and several other timesink-based issues are addressed, the now existent masses who PL every day will fade into a minority, and most importantly, they will do so of their own free will and not because Jack Emmert feels it devalues his creation. Until I am paying less than $14.95/mo per account, Jack 'ole boy, then the game has *not* been devalued in the least on my end.

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Temp travel powers are in I4. And we're looking at a whole stack of content for the 30-39 range with I5. There's a hole in the exp range right now, IMHO- and that's 39-42 or so (content's thinner there, and you can't do as much). But I agree- one of the solutions to choking off the desire to PL is more content. But the mirror of that is good content takes time- and powerleveling only increases the pressure on devs to provide that content, which leads to crappy content instead. We play out and enjoy good content faster than the devs can put it in to satisfy us- which IMHO is the mark of a good game.

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I am quite fond of PLing, because as the game is now, I feel it is a necessary evil in Paragon. As is avoiding it if you feel it is not for you, because once you've seen the dark side, you'll not soon be heading back towards the light. If PLing your alts is all that keeps you playing, then so frickin' be it. Why should you be unwelcome? I don't agree with it, as I PL to get past the dread, not to bypass the entire game.

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I disagree. I've seen the down side of powerleveling in other games. Anything that can be done to control that trend without destroying the game in the process (and I think this range code is damaging to the game), I'm for. Simply being able to powerlevel is itself an urge to do so, to not experience the game but to race through it as fast as possible, skipping large chunks of the content. There shouldn't BE "dreadful" parts of the game, which is why the range code stinks to me. It makes parts of the game unpleasant. Exp absorption isn't going to- 99% of the people going through at a normal rate, or even an exceptional one won't notice a high ceiling. Only the PL'ed heroes will, as they'll end up hitting it headfirst trying to outprogress any "natural" rate of exp gain.

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I don't personally think anyone should engage in PLing activities until *after* the honeymoon with CoH, so to speak, is over for them. I see no reason a fresh player should get PLed, there really is too much out there to be experienced and learnt to just bypass it all. But I believe it should be a choice left up to the individual, not (*gulp*, I know I'll get hell for this) the Lead Designer. The Lead Designer should be figuring out what makes us tick, and why we are doing this instead of enjoying what he has made for us to enjoy.

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I believe that all players should have the ability to advance at the same pace- that there shouldn't be a way to break that rate of progression. That covers a lot. But the fact that the ability to powerlevel exists, means people will do so. Often, this means the fact that good, fun lower level content exists is missed entirely. I've had folks I team up with in the 30's that didn't know what Striga Isle was, and no clue what a story arc/TF was! Why? A friend PLed them up through the usual suspects, and as a result they not only missed the honeymoon, they missed the courtship too. Every level that you can "skip" is essentially isn't there for the player.

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Friends to be made. Missions and TFs to complete. Badges to earn. Plenty of locations, travel routes, and villain groups to learn about. When you know nothing else, the early levels really are downright fun. Sadly, I've already played that part of CoH to death, and feel it should be left up to me whether I need to bypass it. I am paying. I should decide how I play.

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You just described CoH to me there, and essentially said you played it to death. That's sorta scary.

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No game developer will likely impress veteran players by forcing them down a narrow and time comsuming path, when those players have already seen the other side. Yeah, yeah... I already got it. It sucks to be a hero-in-training. I don't need to play through it all again to reaffirm my belief that it lacks any real thrill, challenge, or fun the 30th time through. I have adopted the belief that levels 3-21 are just an extended tutorial like Outbreak, and like Outbreak is now, should be optional. A level 1 sprinting to Portal Court without dying, now that's a challenge even for a long-time CoH player.

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If it's optional for you, why isn't it optional for everyone? Should I be able to start at 14th? 20th? The ability to skip parts of the game would just be another carrot to leveling as fast as possible- a cure could be as bad as the disease. Would that be a good "perk" for playing the game for a long period of time? Could it be balanced in some way- say, you can start at that higher level, but with max debt...if your account's been around for a year (or six months).

There you go. You've skipped the newbie part of the game, because you have enough game experience (by playing) to be assumed to have knowledge of the early stages of the game. It'd be a reward for playing the game, not merely leveling up to 50th by brute force, and a perk given to loyal subscribers.

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First hit 50 then talk about how power leveling sucks.

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Let's see. Did that on GSIII, EQ, and FFXI, playing the high level ubergame. Power leveling sucks.

On EQ it resulted in expansions being ubercontent alone, a cycle that's gotten 20 servers merged due to decimated population. The low levels became devoid of modern content, you see. A majority of the new and best parts of the game content became the sole province of high-level uberguilds. You don't see the Plane of Time in a pickup group, sorry. Newbies got left in the dust, and that's why newbie friendly games thrive and EQ no longer does. Low level play became not only a grind, but a BORING grind to be avoided even the first time....because the devs had no time for anyone under 50th.

FFXI, powerleveled characters got you killed. Player knowledge was and is critical, especially on the big encounters. Good HNM/God level linkshells don't take PLed characters, because the skill level of someone on Easy Street just isn't the same. It takes the kind of drive to actually DO things, rather than suck up experience, to do that kind of content and do it well.

CoH, blessedly doesn't have a lot of that. And seeing people monsterbate their way into the top of the level chart only means the next step of those people demanding nothing but top level content (because all the good stuff should be uber!) and disrupting the development of the game as a whole, living thing.

No crap. Just a decade+ of MMORPGing experiences and gaming talking. Our money doesn't me we get what we demand. We give Cryptic our money because we like what we get.

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I totally agree with Frostybot's idea, of having an xp rate cap rather than a leash. The main reason? It doesn't affect HOW I play my character. It would be very easy to set a reasonable cap for this, that would be very difficult to reach, but would hit the PL'er fairly hard.

You could even design a graphical bar that shows how close I am to "xp saturation", so I can see when I am close, when my group should take a break, clear out minions, etc.

That way, we get a new feature in addition to keeping my playstyle functionally identical to how it is now, and even get a new feature on top of it!

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I like. Perhaps we could even build it into the existing exp bar as an overlay, similar to how debt shows up. Say, a bright border of some kind around each exp bubble/bar as your absorption fills- so when the whole thing's glowing, you know you're "full" (which should take a good deal- like I said, setting the bar based on Invincible play ought to be DARN tough to overdo, barring PLing!).

And while I'm at it- have the absorption rate be linked to -trained- levels. You train, part of the benefit is faster absorption. It'd mean chain-leveling in one place would slow a bit as the new character would want to train to "clear their head" faster.

Powerleveling does, in the end have a negative effect on the game- and those people getting tells whether they ignore them or not are experiencing a symptom of it.

That is, it reinforces the common mindset that in most MMORPG's, you must level to get to the "good stuff". CoH is the only MMORPG I've been in where people are unhappy they outleveled lower-level areas, TF's and story arcs! There's a thread on how many Kheldian players are getting harassed about bringing their L50 out to PL people on the Kheldian board. That worries me.

And I believe that without putting some solid, but high ceiling on exp gain that will only get worse. Powerleveling makes a game "top-heavy", and in the long run, it makes a game more and more difficult to experience for new players. That's half the reason I think sidekicking exists- to mitigate the desire/need to PL while letting people of differing play time/level enjoy the game together. Rule Number One.

New players sustain games. Old players, no matter WHAT an MMORPG does, eventually stop playing. A game should do it's best to give both measure equally IMHO.

I'm thankful this range change is only on Test. It should die there- but the fact that it was even done points to a belief by the developers that something is causing a negative effect on the game, and that something is powerleveling. I think we, the players have an idea here that will cure that problem better than the range change...now that Statesman and company have made it clear there is a problem, in their opinion. The cure should not be a bitter one. Range leaves a bad taste in too many mouths.

Heck, an absorption bar gives the achievement minded something new to brag about.

"Dude, I got my exp bar flashy every day for the past week doing invinc missions with the SG".

"Whoa."

Heck, I was the same way on Gemstone III. Getting "fried" was a point of pride as an oldskool fiter (heavy hide armor 4 life, yo!).

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I think it is far more consistent than anything we have heard so far (for what my opinion is worth). I am always leary of hard ceilings, but with the defense caps and what-not working fine I can see the player base accepting it.

The trick is always in the details though, and that would be determining the actual cap.

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That's why I ask if there's datamining to find those numbers. How many missions (not do mission/reset/do again/reset) on average get run by a soloer set to Invincible by the hour? What exp rate does this result in? What's the difference if it's a 2-man group? 3,6,8?

How does this compare to someone's exp gain if PLed? Setting the bar to not block the first but give minimal benefit to the second would be my goal, if I was a developer.

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Thanks, FrostyBot. Input is good, and funny hyperbole is even better!

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It's the rare nasty discussion that doesn't go down better with a spoonful of sugar.

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Kill the range code. It's invoking Rule Number Two*. I want to be an all-natural free-range hero, not a leashed hound.

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I was wondering about this....so does Free-Range Hero taste better? Is that why you want to be one?

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We're healthier that way. You'd have to ask the Devouring Earth or maybe Dr. Vahzilok about the other benefits. But happy heroes are healthy ones.

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*Rule Number One: Always have fun. Rule Number Two: If not having fun, see Rule Number One.

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I follow that rule everywhere I go; it scares people...

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Good. Fear will keep them in line.

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So people, what do you think? Does the idea of experience absorption strike you as an effective method of controlling PLing, without putting non-PLers through awkward hoops or denying good players legit exp?

Statesman? The rest of Team Developers? Does the datamining available possibly give you a baseline to establish a way to do something like this? Will this idea possibly kill your flock of PLing birds with one stone? If you need more sugar to brainstorm it, I got a few boxes of Girl Scout cookies in the freezer to send.

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Thanks for adding on to the idea and helping it to take better shape. I honestly thought I would read feedback like "Worst. Idea. Ever" or "That sucks". Or even "Damn you for second guessing the devs, they are great and everything they do is great, quit CoH and leave us loyal happy players". Or something to that effect.

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I don't know why you expected that. This is a good idea, one that kills "powerleveling" right at the source. Overall, most of the arguments have been over a definition of "powerleveling". Attempts at a better solution are always welcome.

It does it nondisruptively, and requires no change notice. It won't affect teaming or SKing or Exemplaring. I can't see how any plan can get better than this one.

The only Caveat that I can see is that the cap needs to be set medium-high, and extra XP needs to converted into influence, so that some powerplayers can get something from an arrest over the cap.

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Doing this would allow a reward for players that somehow manage to break the curve, but not in a bad way- they'd effectively be more able to afford DO's/SO's in the "Influence Crush" you get going into the high teens/low 20's. Sort of a meta-exemplaring of the excess, but one that gives a reward to super-OMG-play that doesn't ram level ups through like a freight train. Heck, I know at some points I'd have tried that just to build up influence in the 20's for my next rack of DO/SO purchases...and it'd be a lot more fun that the solution of sending yourself into exp debt to build influence up, if you're good enough to manage it.

Seriously, people. Exp absorption is a thousand times less kludgy than XP ranges and it pulls the heart out of PLing faster than Kano doing a fatality move on Mortal Kombat.

Or maybe the spinal cord. I was always fond of Sub-Zero, guess why my main's an Ice Blaster? :P

No "Range" kludging. No "This works on missions, it doesn't outside.". And the end to unlimited exping that defines powerleveling. It'll keep the fun in teaming up, and that means the critical Rule Number One* is not broken.

Kill the range code. It's invoking Rule Number Two*. I want to be an all-natural free-range hero, not a leashed hound.

*Rule Number One: Always have fun. Rule Number Two: If not having fun, see Rule Number One.

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Thus, "ts," by the Fujianese Theory, is pronounced like English "ch" as in "chair."

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So I could set myself up a choo-Tsoo train in Talos? Rock on!