SteelRat

No I realise those methods have no penalty, but being that they're in zones a new player may not initially be aware of yet, and have an inherent risk associated with players below say level 10 venturing in to because of the levels that these zones are set to.

If you imagine a new player arriving in Atlas and getting invites from level 50 teams doing Radios, the speed at which they level is going to give them very little incentive to want to do anything else. My point is not so much about availability of these "fast track" routes, but the visibility of them.

You know what, on this point I agree 100% with you (I know.. shock / horror!), and this in part is probably part of the reason my initial reaction was as ... strong.. as it was. Even now, teams that I find or join just seem to want to do Radios ad nauseum and I would be against any change that makes that practise more common place.

I know that CoH missions almost by definition don't generally have that much variety (especially the older content) and some players might not really notice the difference between endless radios and a normal mission arc (other than arc missions tend to be a bit longer - especially later on)

None taken. I think teh intertubez make people has a sad cos tehre are no gurlz

I give up. How many more times? It's only NOT happened because of the penalties. When the AE was introduced, it was stuffed to the gills of people wanting farm invites and the like. As soon as the XP reductions were introduced it was a ghost town - so this sudden influx of players on its introduction whilst was partly due to players playing with the new shiney, it's more than coincidence that its continued use at the same level came to an abrupt end once the XP changes had been made.


Am I right in saying that the only badges that are gained through Radio Missions are the exploration badges in Bank missions? Introducing these in Ouro might be a good idea simply because there is a pre-requisite to getting to Ouro in the first place.

You and me both.

I KNOW it's ALREADY possible, but the introduction of this idea makes it a) easier and b) more visible for newer players, thus potentially making the situation more likely. I also said that with existing mechanics, PL'ing in this way had some sort of inherent penalty, be it no access to higher powers, reduced rewards, potentially high risk travelling etc. Capische?

Did you read any of my post or just what you wanted to see?

I'm not talking about the hardcore farmers, I'm talking about the ordinary run of the mill player.

It is? I thought it was about letting a level 50 player in a lower-than-level 50 zone get Radios that were scaled to their level rather than the level of the zone. Additionally the Atlas Park / Mercy question was as a reply to another poster who suggested it, rather than you. Ouro (afaik) wasn't mentioned, except by me to illustrate how the game would be effectively reduced to three zones.

Seriously Techbot, for your continued unpleasant, condescending demeanour I would have hoped you'd have at least had some sort of understanding and comprehension of the points that I've made even if you didn't agree with them. If we are getting to the stage where we're both having to reiterate things, then it's probably best we agree to disagree and leave it there.

It's nothing to do with morality Mega, it's about how it affects the players within the game as a whole. I think it would cheapen the whole experience. I agree that there will always be a core of players that will try and look for exploits whatever the restrictions put on them - for some that is part of the challenge, and well that's up to them, I just don't like the idea of a freebie mechanic that allows everyone to do with without much effort.

Additionally, whilst trying to fight human laziness is futile, why would an idea that almost encourages it be a good one? I'm not sure that introducing real world immoralities is entirely necessary or relevant, for the record either.

I do see the conceptual niceties of the idea, but just like the when the AE was first introduced ignoring the plainly obvious potential for exploit is being rather naiive.

First of all, no I didn't say anything about putting the Radios in Ouro; I said that putting 1-50 Radios in Atlas Park would mean that players would be able to play the entire game outside of Task Forces in three zones. Level to 50 in AP doing nothing but Radios, hop over to Ouro to flashback all the content you skipped whilst levelling, then off to DA for Incarnate content. The fact we're getting new zones and zone revamps tends to make me think this is a situation the devs would rather not be in.

Granted, that same situation is possible now, but there are key differences, that make it less attractive to the masses. The AE has had changes made to the XP rewards that make this practise less than efficient, and therefore less attractive to people who want to get to 50 as quickly as possible.

The sewer trials exemplar you down to a cap of (I think) about level 12 or so. I would doubt very much people would enjoy using the same couple of powers every time all the way to 50. I'm sure there are those that do and these are the kinds of people who will seek to power level whatever the circumstances, precisely in the way you speak. And I agree; there's nothing you can do about those people because they will find exploits no matter what.

The point is that bringing 1-50 Radios to Atlas Park will be the AE pre XP nerfs all over again. Much more availability to EVERYONE simply due to increased visibility which in turn is more likely to make it the norm rather than the exception.

Alright, maybe I'm over reacting. Maybe this "nightmare scenario" as you call it (the terminology of which is also a little overblown ftwiw) won't happen. The fact of the matter is (albeit largely anecdotal) that these situations have happened in the past and the devs have taken steps to curb the attractiveness of doing so in various ways.

I think, therefore, that the implementation of this idea is unlikely without suitably implemented penalties; say a reward reduction for every level you are over the limit for a particular zone until it gets to 0 if you're more than 10 levels over. This way, all the people can still "play the game the way they want", but there are no ways of exploiting it.

So.. in a nutshell, as we already have a situation where everyone grinds out the same stuff over and over again, we might as well introduce another one. Lovely.

Goodness me. Not sure what bug crawled up your behind, but I would suggest removing it in future before replying. Giving people more choice isn't always a good thing because it fosters certain play styles that don't necessarily benefit everyone.

IN MY OPINION, this is one of those times. Just because I don't like the idea, doesn't make me incapable of imagining situations where it might be a nice conceptual idea, any more than I'm sure the obvious psuedo exploit this idea creates honestly escapes your notice either.

Source? Couple of other things to be aware of here.. firstly CoH is quite an elderly MMO and I would imagine (I'm guessing, because I don't have figures to backup my conjecture) the new shineys over the years have further thinned the playerbase.

Secondly, as CoH introduces more zones and revamps existing ones, this is further going to spread out the thinning playerbase. Given that players with level 50 characters have for such a long time been asking for end game content, have we any proof that people who still wanted to alt left at a higher rate than people who finally got the endgame content they wanted and returned?

Thirdly, now the server lists have been merged, EU players who were only limited to 4 servers (realistically 2 for English speakers) now have 15 (or so) to choose from and the facility to move existing characters to other servers made that much more available than previously. Several of the people on my global list have active characters on Freedom and Virtue who previously only had characters on Union or Defiant.

The game is past its "over populated Union / 800 concurrent user" hay day simply because of its age and the other factors I've highlighted. That situation isn't about to change, and imo the Incarnate System has very little to do with that.

Even more emphatically unsigned than my previous post. Doing this would provide no incentive for players to visit other zones and explore all the other wonderful content the game has to offer. This is not a direction I would like to see the game moving in.