Lothic

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Why not just require a play ticket. Each play ticket is earned by doing a non-radio mission.

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Another severe suggestion but again one that might have some use in stemming the tide of the "AE baby" outbreak.

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I'd like to see a max xp cap on AE. That is to say, you can only get 125k to 1 million xp from it. That would place you at levels 20 to 30 if you started in AE. After that your character caps out and cannot earn any more xp from AE.

This would fix the AE baby problem and stop total powerleveling in AE completely. You have to go out and actually find full missions and learn to play your character.

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Yeah, but that wouldn't be fair to the people who have been playing this game for a long time and only do the AE missions to enjoy new content.

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People who have been playing this game "for a long time" probably don't -need- the MA for XP earning.

While that's a fairly draconian suggestion it's also a relatively sensible one all things considered.

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Old way => Go to PI (heroes) or Grandville (villains) and get PLed to 50.

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Sidekicked?

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Yes they would have to be to earn XP there.
People have discovered how to use specific missions and specfic "farming" builds to maximize these efforts.

But as I said all of that pales in comparsion to what you can get away with in the MA now.

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I think after you hit about level 40 without leaving Atlas Park, your character should turn around and say "Come on, man. What are you doing? We're missing the whole game. There's more to do than Architect. Look, let me show you," and then start walking toward the Yellow Line station and take you on a tour of all the zones.

If you still opt to continue to 50, the character can get a restraining order placed on you and look for a new player. "Level 45 Scrapper LF owner. Only played in Atlas Park, but willing to try new things! Please adopt me!"

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Along the same lines the game could require a character to zone into every zone in the game at least once before it let's them become a level 50.

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People would have just PLed the old fashioned way to their first 50. I don't think it would have changed many of the problems people are having other than the people would know how to get to PI/Grandville.

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As someone who skipped out right when the 40 level went to 50, missed a year and a half to two years, and then played super casually until recently...
...what was the old way? Just curious, as even I am dismayed at the lack of knowledge in AE folks who should know more, of the folks I team with (a few exceptions in that).

That being said, I spent a day experimenting with it on my two fifties (I have one heroic and one villian), and found it to be... excessive.

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Sadly there are plenty of ways to PL in this game that don't involve the MA. It's just that the MA has made doing it SOOOOO much easier that many people are abandoning the old drugs for the new one...

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Alright...this might sound crazy but it could work...potentially.

Make AE require a level 50.
The same way EATs and VEATs are aquired.

After you reach level 50 with a character you can now make missions and you can do AE missions with any level character.

Therefore the only people doing the AE missions are people that have went through the game the original way 1-50.

This makes sense to me because I always thought of AE missions to be missions you do because you have done all the original content over and over.
Also, as a side perc...you can potentially level faster now since you have already leveled a character to 50.

I see no problem with that...I mean you have to level to 35 to get into RWZ.

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I actually agree with the idea that the MA -should- have been limited to people who had level 50s already, despite the general whining and bickering that would have caused.

But I think the idea of forcing that kind of restriction on the thing -now- would be amazingly unlikely. The backlash would be apocalyptic...

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People would have just PLed the old fashioned way to their first 50. I don't think it would have changed many of the problems people are having other than the people would know how to get to PI/Grandville.

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Yes I realize it might not have prevented the MA debacle we have now.
But at least it would force people to leave AP/MI for whatever that's worth...

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Alright...this might sound crazy but it could work...potentially.

Make AE require a level 50.
The same way EATs and VEATs are aquired.

After you reach level 50 with a character you can now make missions and you can do AE missions with any level character.

Therefore the only people doing the AE missions are people that have went through the game the original way 1-50.

This makes sense to me because I always thought of AE missions to be missions you do because you have done all the original content over and over.
Also, as a side perc...you can potentially level faster now since you have already leveled a character to 50.

I see no problem with that...I mean you have to level to 35 to get into RWZ.

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I actually agree with the idea that the MA -should- have been limited to people who had level 50s already, despite the general whining and bickering that would have caused.

But I think the idea of forcing that kind of restriction on the thing -now- would be amazingly unlikely.
The backlash at this point would be apocalyptic...

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Then you don't team with those people.

Don't deliberately make the game non-fun for yourself.
Do what you need to do to have fun in this game and let others do what they need to do to have fun.

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Ah, yes, because everyone who goes 1-50 in AE has a glowing icon next to their name that says "AE Baby." How silly of us all to miss that!

Oh, wait, there's not?

So, pray tell, short of being psychic....

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You can usually tell by the badges they have.

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Which I can tell from multiple zones away how, again? They dont' show up that way. They don't show up in team search. /info doesn't work on them unless they're targeted.

So, again, short of being psychic...

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As an avid badger myself even I don't believe badges can tell the whole story behind the person playing a character. Badges can be an indicator, but they should not be relied upon to judge people completely.

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This isn't a cry of 'Doooooom'. I'm generally optimistic about CoH's future. Nevertheless, I don't see most players staying in one zone for their entire career being good for the game. It's likely I'm wrong (and I hope so), but it's like watching a good friend of yours smoke too much - you worry a bit...

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Smoking too much? No, to me it's more like watching a friend hold their hand in a fire and realizing that for some reason they seem to like the searing pain. The whole "AE baby" thing is almost creepy.

I don't outright hate the MA and I'm not strictly against anyone doing what they like to do in a MMO. I just can't for the life of me see how this kind of dead-end zombie-like behavior is ever going to end up being a net positive thing for the future of this game. *shrugs*

I think it's sad there are so many people who seem to think MA farming in Atlas is the only point to this game. On the other hand who are we to judge what someone else seems to think is fun about playing?

I understand your intent behind level gating the MA to "force" people to realize that it's not the entire game. But at this point I think all that would do is slow down the MA farmers, not stop them.

All things considered it might have made some sense to limit the MA only to level 50s. Sure people might have had problems with that idea, but at least it would've forced people to play the actual game -before- they played the MA.

What? Do what needs to be done? *sigh*

The Devs already wasted a lot of time and effort to provide many systems to mitigate this situation. Just like the Internet itself the only way they could ever stop email spamming completely in this game would be to remove the entire email system. That's just not going to happen.

Sorry the spammers annoy you so much but since it's a fact of modern MMO life you might as well do what I do and not let it bother you anymore. Spam emails only annoy you if -you- let them.

Good luck to you...

I understand the idea of charging people for the "privilege" of submitting items for review from the point of view of motivating the Devs to consider the idea and pay for their time and effort. But I honestly don't see any player so excited about wanting to submit items for review that they'd be willing to pay for it, especially when there's the implied possibility of rejection. Maybe if the act of paying for it would 'guarantee' that the Devs would add these things to the game it'd be worth it to players, but of course we know that'd run counter to the whole premise of getting these things approved in the first place.

I think it would be awesome if the Devs allowed player submissions for review. But I think the only way it would work is if instead of charging players they imposed a limit of say one submission per person per week or some such. This would keep the Devs from getting overwhelmed with submissions and encourage players to only submit what they consider to be their best work. With that control on player submissions in place then the Devs would be free to handle the items anyway they want like American_Angel's "Player-created Content Contest" idea.

Sounds like you just found another bug to report...

As I understand it getting Gladiator badges were originally meant to be like secret "Easter Eggs". Players were supposed to be unaware of them and be "surprised" to get them. Of course the irony of that is that the annoyance of not having progress bars for them usually outweighs any sense of "pleasant surprise" I was supposed to enjoy by eventually getting them.

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Lothic, are you just copy+pasting that reply?

[/ QUOTE ]I know I've read it word for word in at least 3 threads. If you can't type something new . . . don't.

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If people stopped bringing up the same exact points/questions in multiple threads where the same exact reply is appropriate and justified I might consider your suggestion.

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Dispari: 1
Lothic: 0



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At least I said a few things differently to add to what you said so it wasn't a total waste.

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Yeah, expect PVP'ers to cry foul at this, what's left of them anyways. Super-powered level 50 enters PVP zone and own all the regular level 50. I don't see why the devs are so afraid to raise the level cap.

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[EDIT: Looks like Dispari's post beat mine by a few minutes so I guess this post basically supports it.]

I don't think it's a matter of being "afraid" to raise the level cap in this game. I think it's more a matter that they would have to redesign a majority of the game from the ground up to accommodate it.

The fundamental issue is that this game is based on a strict "powers earned a specific levels" model whereas other MMOs tend to be more "skill point" based. In those games it's relatively easy to balance a level cap increase because all it means for character building is that people would have a few more points to allocate to the preexisting skills everyone started with at level one. In this game if the Devs raised the cap from say 50 to 60 they'd have to worry about things like having teir 10 or 11 powers in all the powersets, what levels they would be awarded at, and rebalancing all the critters in the game to allow for them to be levels 55 to (supposedly) level 64. Then after this you'd have to worry about all the enhancements and all the complaining that would happen with everyone's HOs and Purples suddenly becoming obsolete. The list of problems they'd have to deal with would be insurmountably huge.

Basically this game's design does not lend itself to just "flipping a switch" and setting the level cap 60. *shrugs*

The alternative idea of the Universal Enhancement Slots avoids most of the problems I just described. You have to realize that a level 50 with 10 of these slots would effectively be a level 60 in all the ways it would matter for this game except for the number next to your name still being a "50" instead of a "60". People would still have to earn those 10 new slots the same way you have to earn an amount of XP to gain a level now so it would be pretty much like having to earn 10 levels of XP in any other situation. I really don't see how this could cause that much trouble for PvP because in your example it'd effectively be the same difference PvPers deal with now if a level 20 tries to fight a level 30. As far as this game would be concerned a "level 50 with 10 Universal Enhancement Slots" would be a "level 60" character for both PvP and PvE.

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I am curious as to weather we will see a level increase with this expansion. Take us to level 60.

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I agree with the others about the 'unlikeliness' of a level cap increase. The Devs have essentially told us it will never happen and I can understand why because far too much of the game would have to be redesigned to accommodate it.

But according to the infamous Market Survey of August 2008 (which has been fairly accurate with the things it has predicted so far) the Devs are already considering an alternative idea along the lines of what Silver_Gale implied where we'd have a "virtual" level cap increase to 60 without the number itself actually increasing. The following quote describes the idea:

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Accomplishments will lead to rewards that will significantly distinguish level 50 characters from one another. One such reward is the Universal Enhancement Slots. Ten Universal Enhancement Slots are available to be earned in the expansion, and each one has the potential of adding significant power to the character, essentially bringing them to a hypothetical "Level 60" once they have earned all ten slots.

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So with a system like this we'd have a new goal to play towards that would make our level 50s more powerful without actually having to change the numerical level cap value.

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Pretty sure BAB said they fixed it - but forgot to change one last bit from "0" to "1" or some such.

Kinda like filling the hot tub up, but then forgetting to re-connect the disconnect and noticing it isn't working a few hours later.

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Thanks for the helpful hot tub analogy. My nearly 20 years of professional software engineering experience had a hard time figuring this situation out otherwise.

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*Boggles* Okay, reading this after my above post, I am just baffled as to how you can't understand how little slips on non-critical issues manage to get through... They happen all the time, even in the best teams. Selective blindness and expectations that are too high, perhaps? I'm not going to call you a liar, but I don't see how someone with 20 years of experience in the field and is looking at things truly objectively can say the things you've said.

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*sigh* This whole "emotes not working while Hovering" thing really is a trivial issue regardless and I think I'll live whether it gets fixed, refixed or whatever despite my wishes for it. My point was that it's funny that someone was defending BABs as if an apparent software "slip-up" was a thing to retroactively praise him for.

Obviously things slip through the cracks and I would never disparage another software engineer if it happens occasionally. But let's just say that your definition of "occasionally" might be a bit more lenient than mine.

To keep things simple I happen to work in a field where "slip-ups" are not tolerated quite as much as they likely are in game design and I admittedly have a hard time letting others "get away" with things without comment but I actually do my best all things considered. *shrugs*

You know how they sometimes say doctors make the worst patients?
Same kind of thing applies here to some degree...

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Pretty sure BAB said they fixed it - but forgot to change one last bit from "0" to "1" or some such.

Kinda like filling the hot tub up, but then forgetting to re-connect the disconnect and noticing it isn't working a few hours later.

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Thanks for the helpful hot tub analogy. My nearly 20 years of professional software engineering experience had a hard time figuring this situation out otherwise.

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Eh I personally don't see why the Devs felt they had time to tinker with this old emote when they still haven't made it so that a person can use the juggle emotes while Hovering. *shrugs*

[/ QUOTE ]BaBs said it was supposed to work, likely some switch got flipped by mistake and no one noticed in time. But yeah, lets use the 'I don't see why X did Y when they could have been doing Z' excuse for everything!

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Well in general I'd rather the Devs "waste" their time adding functionality to the game (i.e. emotes that work while Hovering) than mucking about changing things that already work. If they really wanted a random version of the alakazamreact emote that should have been ADDED to the game as a new emote not used to REPLACE something that already worked well enough.

The Devs have a very bad habit of REPLACING things (e.g. costume items) when they should just be ADDING new versions of things.

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And it's funny how you gloss over certain facts when it doesn't fit your complaining. Like how the post you quoted said that BaBs HAD fixed the Hover Juggle emote problem, but something happened between the time he made the change and the time it went live made it broken again. And he's fixing it again right now.

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Yeah and the fact that the Devs have to apparently "refix" trivial things like this multiple times is really a stellar example of their software engineering competence isn't it? Please, it's hardly the first time -that- kind of thing has happened as well.

The fact that I now know these juggle emotes had been fixed once and are having to be refixed again almost makes the relatively minor situation that much worse as far as I'm concerned. I wasn't even technically "complaining" about the juggle emotes not working while Hovering (merely pointing something out does not equal a "complaint") but I'll definitely "complain" about our Devs showing signs of silly carelessness...

And one more time why is it that so many people around here want to see older things completely REPLACED rather than having access to multiple versions (both original versions and new versions) of something to play with? For people to think I'm JUST complaining about having new things is ridiculous.

I love to see new things in this game.
But my love of new things does not including LOSING old things at the same time.
Sorry about that...

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Eh I personally don't see why the Devs felt they had time to tinker with this old emote when they still haven't made it so that a person can use the juggle emotes while Hovering. *shrugs*

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On the bright side, my shield tank can now /e dance with his shield toggles running.

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That's cool. Making old emotes work in places where they didn't before is exactly what I'm in favor of.
That's my point with getting the juggle emotes to work while Hovering.

What I don't understand is the time spent on an emote that didn't technically "need" to be fixed.
Changing the alakazamreact emote didn't fix any deficiency in its usage.
It was a purely out-of-the-blue arbitrary change.

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The Devs have a very bad habit of REPLACING things (e.g. costume items) when they should just be ADDING new versions of things.

[/ QUOTE ]Funny, it was just a couple months ago when everyone was complaining the devs were spending too much time adding new crap to the game and not revamping the old crap to be as good as the new crap. It's always about numero uno, nothing else matters.

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Numero uno? You've got to be kidding with this one.

I'm always about having MORE things in this game. The Devs can either spend their time giving us completely BRAND NEW stuff or if they chose to rework old stuff they should allow multiple versions of things so that EVERYONE would be happy, not just me.

The only thing the Devs should -not- ever do is absolutely replace things with other versions when they are not forced to. If they want to give us new versions of emotes that'd be great. But a new version of an emote would NEVER require that an old one be removed. If they want to give us new versions of costume items that'd be great. But new versions of costume items would NEVER require that an old one be removed. Get the idea?

I'm not anti-new stuff and I'm not anti-redesigned stuff. I'm just anti-replaced stuff. The Devs are never REQUIRED to replace stuff in order to give us anything new. I've never understood why there are people out there who would want to have FEWER options available to us.

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Eh I personally don't see why the Devs felt they had time to tinker with this old emote when they still haven't made it so that a person can use the juggle emotes while Hovering. *shrugs*

[/ QUOTE ]BaBs said it was supposed to work, likely some switch got flipped by mistake and no one noticed in time. But yeah, lets use the 'I don't see why X did Y when they could have been doing Z' excuse for everything!

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Well in general I'd rather the Devs "waste" their time adding functionality to the game (i.e. emotes that work while Hovering) than mucking about changing things that already work. If they really wanted a random version of the alakazamreact emote that should have been ADDED to the game as a new emote not used to REPLACE something that already worked well enough.

The Devs have a very bad habit of REPLACING things (e.g. costume items) when they should just be ADDING new versions of things.