Garielle

Welcome back.

The primary reason a lot of people are using the Help channel for teaming is the chat restrictions on Free players. They can't send tells in response to broadcasts so "Please Send Tell (or PST)" doesn't work well if you are trying to include them. Ideally, a LFG global channel would be nice. Of course, ideally, everyone would set their LFG flag, use the Search feature, and only blindly invite those folks who were actually marked as LFG.

No real warnings. I am assuming you have already come across the changes to how Sidekicking/Exemplaring works. In short, it's automatic, and you continue to earn experience when you exemplar down. In fact, your average XP per kill is the same regardless of if you are fighting your own level or exemplared way down.

Your best bet if you are running an MM is to enable the option that stops people from teleporting you without a prompt. In fact, even if you don't run an MM, it's still not a bad idea. Many people have a nasty habit of assuming everyone wants to be teleported to the door of the mission right away. Can be frustrating if you are busy emptying out your inventory or training.

It really depends on who is writing the guide. There are still some solid guides out there that are quite comprehensive, going over each power in the sets, explaining the benefits and drawbacks of each, and perhaps giving examples of good ways to make use of them.

Other guides are just builds, perhaps explaining why certain powers were chosen, perhaps not. Also perhaps explaining effective attack chains and/or general play advice, perhaps not.

Then, of course, there are the threads that basically just present a build and ask for advice. Those are more "build advice" threads than "guides". Not sure if this is what you were seeing.

They have done a few rounds of trying to improve server performance. They did a number of them prior to the kick off of "City of Heroes: Freedom" to try to make things as smooth and enjoyable as possible for any new faces that may wander in or old faces like you (not calling you old..really), who make their way back.

You really miss a lot by not reading the mission text. Luckily, you don't need to do it during the TF. If you have a look at http://www.paragonwiki.com, the text of all (or almost all) missions is there for you to read at your leisure.

There's also a metric ton of other great information regarding the game, particularly the lore. I highly recommend it. In fact, the developers of themselves have stated that they use it as a reference sometimes.

Yeah, the Tree is a bit of a pain. Most TFs are not quite that bad. Some of them can be a bit rough, especially at the end, but at least you see it coming. That being said, some of the Incarnate Trials can also be perilous if you aren't aware of your surroundings... orbital space stations shooting you with death rays, massive turret weapons, areas in the underground trial where you are under a constant DoT, etc.

For most of the TFs though, that's not the case.

If you drop your subscription, you will become a "Premium" player. "Premium" players include anyone who is not a current subscriber, but who has spend money on the game in the past. This can be through buying a boxed product, subscribing for at least a month, or buying at least $15 worth of goodies from the Paragon Market.

If you drop to Premium, you will have 2 "Global" character slot tokens. These are slots which allow you to unlock characters. These tokens are across all servers. So you would not have, for example, 2 on Freedom, 2 on Liberty, 2 on Virtue, etc.

You may have more than 2 slots available if you have purchased or earned extra character slots either through the current Paragon Market and Paragon Rewards program or through the old store and Veteran Rewards programs.

As for the restricted ATs. Depending on what tier you are on in the Paragon Rewards program, these may already be unlocked for you. Optionally, you can pay a one time fee to permanently unlock them. Be aware though, if you pay to unlock them, and then later you earn that unlock for free as part of the Rewards program, you don't get a refund.

Absolutely. There are really only two things which you can NEVER get access to if you aren't subscribing.

• Incarnate Content
  
  There is no way to buy or earn permanent access to the Incarnate System. This includes not only the trials, but also the Incarnate Powers. If you already have Incarnate powers and then drop to Premium, they will be grayed out, you won't be able to craft new ones, and you won't have access to Incarnate salvage drops.
  
• Base Building
  
  Fairly self-explanatory. Non-subscribers can not open the supergroup base editor.

As new systems are added that list may, of course, change. Also, of course, there may be new content added that you either need to be a VIP or purchase access to. First Ward and the Signature Story Arcs are examples of this.

Not sure what change you are referring to here. The 50 merits the first time you affirm thing is not a change. It's been like that since the alignment system was introduced.

As far as that goes, I think it may be worth noting, you do NOT need to affirm your alignment twice, and earn a merit, in order to claim a Hero Merit at the end of a SSA. As long as you have done it once, and gotten the 50 merit reward, you can immediately go claim a Hero Merit for doing a SSA.

It's actually because of SWG I wince when I see CoH make changes such as softening debt (which they thankfully haven't done for a while) too much or when they lowered the level requirement for Epic ATs from 50 to 20.

I understand the desire to want to make new players feel welcome. I also understand the desire to make games more enjoyable. It's important to remember that easier does not necessarily mean more enjoyable though. There's something to be said for the argument that having to attain level 50 to earn something makes it more of an accomplishment. Granted, getting from 1 to 50 game is not all that difficult, especially with farms, but this is all the more reason why there's very little to be gained by dropping the level requirement.

There's also no story. What is the story? "There's a Coyote who's always trying to catch a Road Runner." That's it. Nothing more. The story never moves beyond that. Something like that is good for a few chuckles and perhaps a few passing moments of entertainment, but nothing beyond that.

That's precisely what an MMO developer does NOT want. They want to keep the players engaged. They want to keep them interested. They want to keep them asking what happens next. Instead of self contained issues, where the plot lines are capsulized, they want issues and stories that end in cliff hangers and have us itching for the next issue so we can see what happens next.

Yes, they also need to go through and make sure that textural references to Galaxy City are removed or edited, as well as make sure that they don't ask you to go talk to someone in Galaxy City, as well as make sure when they introduce you to a new contact, it isn't one in Galaxy City. None of these may seem major, and they may or may not actually be very difficult. You have to remember though, a lot of the folks who work on missions were busy designing the new tutorial zone, all new starting arcs in both Atlas Park and Mercy Island, and who know how much other fresh new content.

That being said, I would expect that at some point within the next few issues we will see one or two alternate threads added to both Atlas and Mercy. Remember, when Mercy Island was first put out there, there was only Kalinda. There was no Burke at all. All you had was one story arc to run if you started off as a Villain. Burke was added an issue or two later. Right now, both Atlas and Mercy are back at that point with one single, all new, arc. There's no reason to expect that it will stay that way forever though.

There's a good reason I left out PvP. I left out PvP because, for the purposes of this topic, PvP is completely irrelevant. Nothing in PvP has any effect at all on the story. The topic you are discussing is about "story", where PvP does not (and I hope never does) play an important role.

I never said it DID have to look worse. The major flaw with your argument is that you are looking at the content introduced in a very narrow window, relatively speaking. In the vast majority of the existing content, the Heroes DO win. Plus, you don't know what the plans are for future content.

As someone else has already said, the pendulum swings back and forth. Give it time and it will come back around. If you really feel you absolutely must be on the winning side (and I get that..a lot of people feel that way), nothing is preventing from rolling a Red side character to play around with for a while. Well, nothing except yourself.

You do understand what the Hero Merits are intended to represent, right? You are being rewarded explicitly for affirming your alignment. They aren't something you earn just for staying a Hero, but for affirming that decision. If you have never met that requirement even once, then why should you be able to earn them?

That I don't know. Never tried.

Correct, though I am not sure "screws sub lvl 20 people" is the correct term. After all, sub level 20 people can't earn (and aren't intended to earn) Hero Merits anyway. Additionally, these missions are all repeatable and you can always repeat it later and get the Hero Merit. It's more or less, "You can't use this yet, so choose something else." It's no different than not allowing you to claim threads or the Astral Merit if you aren't level 50.

Exactly what I was going to point out. And since most people prefer to run in 8 man teams, the actual figure is probably closer to an 80% reduction in the number of instances. It would be higher but you have to take the instances created by MA missions being run by low level players into account. Of course, most of those are teams, but since I don't have real numbers, i want to be liberal in my estimate.

In all fairness, I can only think of one other game that offers instanced content for single player teams. Even in that case, the content is not scaled based on team size, and not every character or player is actually capable of running the content alone. In the case of that game, they have never offered the instanced content until a certain level was reached. CoX was unique in offering instanced content all the way from level 1 to the max level.

I've said before and will say again that I do not really like this change. I prefer instanced content over open world content. It's one of the reasons this is my MMO of choice.

This doesn't make the reasoning behind the change invalid though. I am willing to accept the change for low level content. I am even willing to accept the possibility of more open world content being added at other levels, but not at the expense of existing instanced content. Removing instanced content from Atlas, okay... removing it from other higher level zones...not so much. Such a move would likely push players like myself to Mission Architect, where ALL content is instanced. Most of it is plotless farms, but there are enough threads on the forums about story arcs to keep players busy for a few trips from 1 to 50.

Not really. "Pay2Win" is when a game has an item or ability which can only be gained through spending money, and then turn around and require that same ability in order to have the slightest chance in Hades of actually winning. At the very minimum, it is something that offers a clear advantage and significantly increases the odds of victory. Both IOs and Incarnate Abilities could be seen as providing such a "clear advantage", but both of these can be earned in game without spending cash. The Incarnate abilities could possibly be argued as pay to win since you need to own Going Rogue AND have an active VIP subscription to access them. IOs can't because you can earn those in game and earn the ability to permanently access them through the rewards program.

The Enhancement Boosters simply don't offer enough of an advantage, in my eyes, to be classified as "Pay2Win". Even the Premium powersets are not any more powerful than the existing powersets. They may offer some advantages in some areas, but they are still balanced with what is already there.

Probably because of that content needs to be rewritten because it points people to go to Galaxy City, which they can't do, except by going to the Echo of Galaxy City through Ouroboros, which no low level players have access to, or an SG base teleporter, which some, but not all, low level players have access to.

In this case, I don't think it is as much about server-side load as it is client side load. It doesn't seem like the non-interactive pets should really require that many server side resources. The server "should" be keeping track of simple information such as the name of the pet's model, location, direction it's facing, velocity, who it is following, and PERHAPS any animation it is running. Even the animation doesn't necessarily have to be stored server side. If you have a German Shepard pet out and it's sitting on your screen, but stretching on someone else's, what difference does it make? Very few people would even know.

The load for the pets is mostly on the client side, where they have to be rendered. The more entities that have to be rendered on screen, the more things will slow down client side. If you are running your card well below what is capable of, then this probably isn't a big deal. If you are running an older graphics card, or are pushing your card for everything you can, it is much more of a factor.

One of the things the developers have always tried to avoid doing is raising the minimum requirements of the game. They don't want to have to tell people who have been playing this game since launch that they can't any more unless they go out and buy new gear. It's just bad business, and it makes sense.

All of that being said, I can understand limiting vanity pets to one at a time. In fact, that other grossly overweight MMO that has tons of vanity pets available already does this, even for vanity pets you pay cash for. I do think it may be a mistake to lump the buff pets in with other vanity pets though. If the temp power summons (such as the Loa Bone) which summon a limited number of COMBAT pets are also lumped into this same group, that is DEFINITELY a bad move, so I hope that is not the case. Not sure if anyone can confirm or deny this yet.

Precisely my point.

Both are correct as far as what I have read on the subject. Think about when you actually do your power customization for the first time (or the first time you can at least). That is during character creation. You haven't chosen any power pools yet, so how would the system know which ones to allow you to customize. If they were to make you have to go to a tailor later after choosing them, people would gripe about having to pay the tailor or use a tailor token. Yes, I know.. many view the cost of the tailor as minuscule, but there are many who do not and would rant and rave about it.

The other option is to allow everyone to choose to customize any and all power pools during character creation. Now think about how that would look if it were simply tacked on to the existing UI. Right now, that screen is fairly uncluttered, but doing this would certainly set that back more than just a few paces. Given the current discussions over the UI becoming outdated and cluttered, do we really want the devs to clutter up the one part of the UI that is still, relatively, clean?

Hey, you're helping me out here. No need to apologize at all. I appreciate you taking a moment to post your input.

Okay. Made that change, slotted it with 5/6 Unbreakable Constraint. Was considering also moving the slot I have slotted with a generic IO recharge in Siphon Speed to Char as well so I could pick up the proc from Unbreakable Constraint. Not sure if the change for Smashing is good enough to justify the drop in recharge from 26.7s to 32.9s. Maybe I will just keep both of those slots and move something else.

Anyway, with the changes, the build now looks like...


Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.942
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Incendia of Verum: Level 50 Magic Controller
Primary Power Set: Fire Control
Secondary Power Set: Kinetics
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Teleportation
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Fighting
Ancillary Pool: Fire Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Char

• (A) Unbreakable Constraint - Hold
• (37) Unbreakable Constraint - Hold/Recharge
• (40) Unbreakable Constraint - Accuracy/Hold/Recharge
• (43) Unbreakable Constraint - Accuracy/Recharge
• (46) Unbreakable Constraint - Endurance/Hold

Level 1: Transfusion

• (A) Doctored Wounds - Heal/Endurance
• (9) Doctored Wounds - Heal/Recharge
• (11) Doctored Wounds - Heal/Endurance/Recharge
• (34) Doctored Wounds - Heal
• (34) Doctored Wounds - Recharge
• (34) Accuracy IO

Level 2: Fire Cages

• (A) Gravitational Anchor - Immobilize/Recharge
• (3) Gravitational Anchor - Accuracy/Immobilize/Recharge
• (5) Gravitational Anchor - Accuracy/Recharge
• (7) Gravitational Anchor - Immobilize/Endurance
• (15) Gravitational Anchor - Chance for Hold

Level 4: Siphon Power

• (A) Accuracy IO

Level 6: Hasten

• (A) Recharge Reduction IO
• (7) Recharge Reduction IO
• (9) Recharge Reduction IO

Level 8: Ring of Fire

• (A) Recharge Reduction IO

Level 10: Siphon Speed

• (A) Tempered Readiness - Accuracy/Slow
• (11) Tempered Readiness - Accuracy/Endurance
• (13) Tempered Readiness - Endurance/Recharge/Slow
• (17) Tempered Readiness - Range/Slow
• (19) Tempered Readiness - Accuracy/Damage/Slow
• (33) Recharge Reduction IO

Level 12: Flashfire

• (A) Absolute Amazement - Stun/Recharge
• (13) Absolute Amazement - Accuracy/Stun/Recharge
• (15) Absolute Amazement - Accuracy/Recharge
• (17) Absolute Amazement - Endurance/Stun
• (21) Absolute Amazement - Chance for ToHit Debuff

Level 14: Super Speed

• (A) Run Speed IO

Level 16: Hot Feet

• (A) HamiO:Nucleolus Exposure
• (23) HamiO:Nucleolus Exposure
• (23) Endurance Reduction IO
• (25) Endurance Reduction IO
• (46) Scirocco's Dervish - Chance of Damage(Lethal)

Level 18: Cinders

• (A) Accuracy IO
• (19) Accuracy IO
• (21) Hold Duration IO
• (25) Recharge Reduction IO
• (31) Recharge Reduction IO

Level 20: Speed Boost

• (A) Run Speed IO

Level 22: Recall Friend

• (A) Interrupt Reduction IO

Level 24: Super Jump

• (A) Jumping IO

Level 26: Boxing

• (A) Stupefy - Accuracy/Recharge
• (27) Stupefy - Endurance/Stun
• (27) Stupefy - Accuracy/Endurance
• (31) Stupefy - Accuracy/Stun/Recharge
• (31) Stupefy - Stun/Range

Level 28: Tough

• (A) Steadfast Protection - Resistance/Endurance
• (29) Steadfast Protection - Resistance/+Def 3%
• (29) Steadfast Protection - Knockback Protection

Level 30: Smoke

• (A) Recharge Reduction IO

Level 32: Fire Imps

• (A) HamiO:Nucleolus Exposure
• (33) HamiO:Nucleolus Exposure
• (33) HamiO:Nucleolus Exposure

Level 35: Transference

• (A) Efficacy Adaptor - EndMod
• (36) Efficacy Adaptor - EndMod/Recharge
• (36) Efficacy Adaptor - EndMod/Accuracy/Recharge
• (36) Efficacy Adaptor - Accuracy/Recharge
• (37) Efficacy Adaptor - EndMod/Accuracy
• (37) Efficacy Adaptor - EndMod/Endurance

Level 38: Fulcrum Shift

• (A) Accuracy IO
• (39) Recharge Reduction IO
• (39) Accuracy IO
• (39) Recharge Reduction IO
• (40) Accuracy IO
• (40) Recharge Reduction IO

Level 41: Fire Ball

• (A) Positron's Blast - Accuracy/Damage
• (42) Positron's Blast - Damage/Endurance
• (42) Positron's Blast - Damage/Recharge
• (42) Positron's Blast - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance
• (43) Positron's Blast - Damage/Range
• (43) Ragnarok - Chance for Knockdown

Level 44: Fire Blast

• (A) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage
• (45) Thunderstrike - Damage/Endurance
• (45) Thunderstrike - Damage/Recharge
• (45) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
• (46) HamiO:Nucleolus Exposure

Level 47: Consume

• (A) Efficacy Adaptor - EndMod
• (48) Efficacy Adaptor - EndMod/Recharge
• (48) Efficacy Adaptor - EndMod/Accuracy/Recharge
• (48) Efficacy Adaptor - Accuracy/Recharge
• (50) Efficacy Adaptor - EndMod/Accuracy
• (50) Efficacy Adaptor - EndMod/Endurance

Level 49: Fire Shield

• (A) Resist Damage IO
• (50) Resist Damage IO

------------
Level 1: Brawl

• (A) Damage Increase IO

Level 1: Containment
Level 1: Sprint

• (A) Empty

Level 2: Rest

• (A) Healing IO

Level 2: Swift

• (A) Run Speed IO

Level 2: Health

• (A) Healing IO

Level 2: Hurdle

• (A) Jumping IO

Level 2: Stamina

• (A) Endurance Modification IO
• (3) Endurance Modification IO
• (5) Endurance Modification IO

Level 4: Ninja Run

Yes, rereading I can see that. For some reason, I was thinking of the VIP tier 9 costume parts (reward tokens).

Everyone here is absolutely correct. Don't prepay for months to get the points to spend in the store, just buy the points you want. You will also get extra paragon reward tokens (for the rewards program) at same time.