Son_Of_Liberty
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Posts
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Joined
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Look at the patch notes. The following items were fixes that ended the easy mode Power Leveling.
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"# Improved performance on custom critters with the Dual Blades power set. Changes were made to make it much easier for AI-controlled critters to get combos.
# Extensively revamped the Custom Critters powers Rank and Difficulty settings. Power selection for custom critters should be better standardized, more flexible and provide finer control over the difficulty of custom critters.
* All melee power sets have an additional ranged power added. Any ranged attack normally in a melee set will now be available at all levels, difficulties and ranks.
The rewards for defeating Rikti Communications Officers in Mission Architect has been decreased to match other minion level critters. Missions using earlier versions of the Rikti Communications Officer will be invalidated, and will need to be republished.
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These were bug fixes. They didn't Nerf farming, they simply fixed bugs in the AE that were being massively abused. You can still farm, but don't expect to go into missions and have level 54 Bosses that can't hit you. Or level 41 minions giving level 50 experience.
The AE is fine and will continue to provide content. -
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Oh, so your Batman character could stay in Gotham, or he could advance into bigger 'leagues' and eventually compete toe to toe with Martian Manhunter and the like?
Interesting.
That means there would be 50 'levels' of content for each 'league', which is daunting, but with an AE-like system might be doable. Of course, it wouldn't actually be levels per se, per your preference.
And you speak of choices 'altering' the character. So if you pick up Body Armor, would you have to give something else up? Or would there be some kind of preference, such as normal<tough<body armor at the Gotham level? Would aquiring Acrobatics lock you out of Quick McRunfast, or would you be able to aquire both during play?
You probably haven't thought it out to this extent, but just curious.
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Think of it like aspects of preferences. You can complete stories that give you access to new aspects which would overwrite old ones. In a system like this though no choice is permanent so given the right time frame like a cool-down you can go into "training" and change them out. This would be represented of choices that are made in developmental comics. A good example was Spider-Man. There was a mini arc about him building body armor. The original Iron spider. Wearing it made him slower but he was near invincible to anything his normal cadre of bad guys could dish out. He quickly discarded it when he realized, that while making him more powerful, sacrificing the agility the effectiveness of his Spider-Sense was too much. Plus while wearing it he tended to be meaner. But that's all character development.
In this type of system swapping out Agility based defense for Armor would alter your characters later stages. He would never have a chance to develop his agility to its finer points. This causes him to rely on the Armor more automatically advancing it upward.
Now this doesn't change what you can do in later levels as far as swapping. But it does causes your choices to be a bit more limited. You can swap out of Body armor at a higher tier but only by replacing it with technology or gadgets. If you stuck with Agility you may have super agility or acrobatic style options. -
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So there would be x amount of content for "street level' heroes, 'cosmic' heroes, and every level in between.
Interesting idea.
I'm not sure it would work without something to provide regular improvements in combat effectiveness, It's a game, not a comic, so it has to have some game elements. You have to get more hp, more damage, etc IMHO, not just a more complex backstory and some optional costumes.
I think in an MMO, you want an MMO that works and feels a lot like a comic, not just an interactive online comic.
Of course, YMMV.
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Well thats simple enough, as you complete the content in each branch you gain the ability to alter your character. Each alteration while making your character play slightly different at lower end content could drastically change how he ends up in later content. So you get your options to tweak your hero and preview what will happen to him later. Adding body armor in early content could make your character Iron Man in later content. Advancement would also be controllable in this method. Players doing street level stuff don't ever have to leave. They can stop muggers, kidnappers, and thugs without a cosmic level hero swooping in and taking them all down without breaking a sweet. The middle ground would be area of the game were Heroes of all settings can meet mingle and tackle challenges together in dynamic fashion. Cosmic level hero battles the baddies while the steet level guy disables the computer controlling the doomsday device. Tie in a AE style builder that is setting specific and you got yourself a limitless content style game. -
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<QR> To all:
What would be the perfect levelling speed in gameplay hours to the cap, in your opinion?
Slow enough that you feel accomplishment, fast enough that it doesn't feel like forever?
I am a 60 month vet with one level 50 (and over 100 alts), so the speed doesn't matter to me, but I'm curious.
For bonus points, how many purple IOs should you acquire in that same amount of time from drops?
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The perfect game in my opinion and would forgo level based advancement. Players commonly only feel a sense a growth in level base games by acquiring new abilities or gear. In a system that only has skills with caps and no levels the toon will grow as the player learns about their abilities.
Since CoH doesn't have gear persay that leaves abilities. Here is the problem, the most potent of the abilities aren't accessible till you achieve a higher level. So players wanting to play a full scale Super hero feel the need to level just to be what the game promises on a box. City of falls into a crevice between Super Hero setting and MMO Mechanics.
Players who access Super Hero content want it to resemble comic book progression. But the problem is that rarely in comic books do the heroes powers change. Unless the comic is built around a development premise, the stories focus on the characters changing and the world around them, not their powers. In the first comic featuring Wolverine you see him stand toe to toe with the Incredible Hulk. A brand new character is fighting one of the most destructive characters in that universe and holding his own. In City of Heroes you can pick the powers you want, take the powers you want, then log in and realize that you can't reproduce feats from comic books because you are level 1. This to me has always been City of's biggest issue. You play the game subdue some minions and realize you have a long and repetitive road ahead of you to get that shiny new power.
If you are going to keep levels in a Super Hero themed game then levels should simply be used for new costumes, power increases, swapping, or content access.
As a side note in the perfect game, you would start by making the character maximum strength and choosing which type of setting you would like to play. Like if you wanted simple short time paced content you good choose development which would be like COH level 1 - 10. If you wanted longer time paced content you choose a different setting and voila higher level. -
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CoX is the only MMO I couldn't ever stick it out to reach 50. Everquest, DAoC, LoTRO, WoW all capped out toons.
CoH I peeter out at about 43. Thats pretty wierd.
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Sorry, you lost all credability when you effectively stated in your post Everquest leveling is LESS of a grind than CoH. The term 'jevel grind' was COINED by the player of EQ. (EQ was my second MMO after Meridian 59) and if there was RVER an MMO that is a shining example of purposely DEV created player timesinks to slow leveling in an MMO, EQ was it. Played it for 5 years before finally coming to my senses.
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You beat me to it. Any EQ player would find that statment laughable.
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If we are talking about EQ orignally then yes this is a laughable statement. After plane of powers were released Guilds were PLing members to max level in a few hours. Besides that the new content in general allowed people to level allot faster than at release. -
Power Leveling and its effects on a game really differ from game to game. City of Heroes being 5 years into its life span and setting competition is on the horizon, quick leveling will bring players back and keep them here. With the ability to level a character to any benchmark allows players to access the game content dynamically. This is important as it can breathe new life into forgotten old Arcs. Anyone who believes I am incorrect I can site two sources.
Dark Age of Camelot the one feature player heralded as the reason they stayed with the game was /level command. This allowed players who had hit the level cap to create a new character of higher level allowing them to jump into the middle of mid to higher level content and RvR combat without weeks of grinding.
Everquest has just announced that they are releasing a new server ruleset which automatically set all new character to level 50/51.
Both features were added at the request of the players. Being able to to access the content they want, when they want is important for a game not actively releasing full content expansions.