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This is not necessarily true. This also causes lag issues at the trams. The Devs didnt' "just" decide to do this, they had data we don't that prompted them to do so.
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Lag? That's why we are going to have to put up with this crap? Because of "lag at the trams"? Oh good grief...
And I would love to see some data that explained to me how pwlvlers effect my gameplay. I got my Blaster to lvl 29 before I even heard the term "powerlvling". Guess where I heard it? That's right...on this board. From someone complaining about it. I didn't understand then and I don't understand now why it is important to anyone how fast someone else progresses through the game. The "fun police" seem to be intent on forcing everyone to have fun the "right way".
Thank god I have a Tanker to play... Good lord what a pain to be a support class with this "solution" to the fake problem.
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I've had a similar experience. Indeed the times for me that powerleveling seems in any small way consequential to me is when I come to these boards and see someone whining about it, or worse, I see a proposed change as inane as this.
So, I trade a little less lag at the trams for a very tempermental XP gain on my characters in teams, one that gets progressively worse as you step away from the more conventional (read: damage) forms of team contribution.
Sadly I have no tank in any severe degree of development. My Defender is my pride and joy, built well for teaming... Just the shifts in team attitudes and behavior this new framework will likely encourage is quite depressing for me to consider.
I team with people because I find it fun to add a bit of socializing to my gameplay. It makes the grind seem less apparent. What better way to bring it back to the fore than by complicating the issue of advancement even more?
Yeah, I think I've earned the right to say that any possible gain I might benefit from on behalf of this solution is quite infentessimal compared to the inconvenience I'll be suffering. The cure is far worse than the disease.
In short: NO, States. Just NO.
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Meaning? THIS DOES NOT AFFECT YOU ONE LITTLE BIT IF YOU ARE HUNTING LIKE YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE!
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Sorry I guess my copy of the game was missing the "hunting rules" Here I was thinking I purchased a game where I get to figure out how to make progress...
JuppaCo, you're right. But that's a different issue that the devs need to take up. However, based on Task Forces I have done, you can easily give an eight-member team a good workout by taking on enemies several levels above you. Most task forces don't give you mobs of sixty. They give you the average ten to twenty mob and just up the levels by two or three.
That said, the Rikti Crash Site, Shadow Shard, Striga Isle, and Crey's Folly have pretty large mobs. Simply go there and take on the purples you see.
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I have to agree with you; this is a kick in the groin to the regular players and not the true targeted audience
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I disagree to an exent. I feel that in the current incarnation, that is, within 300 feet / 100 yards and/or hurting a mob outside of missions is allright.
That's not the point of our complaints, though. As far as I can tell, what people really have problems with is that Developers are making this kind of change in the first place.
Stopping PL'ing, specifically? I don't care. I don't really think it's needed, but PLing doesn't affect me...either way.
Devs making game changes based on player habits / playstyle? I couldn't care more! This has to stop and it has to stop now. The job of the Developers is to...
1. Add new content.
2. Balance new content against old content.
3. Address Player concerns.
I sure hope that the Devs can justify this change by using "job #3, lots of people are complaining". If this is the case, majority rules say that PL'ing is fine.
If they are making changes because they feel like it, then they are telling me how to play. If I need that there are many other MMO's I can subscribe to.
Statesman, if you take away anything from this post, it should be "Don't ruin CoH on a whim, and don't ruin CoH for whiners."
Thanks.
Currently playing:
Infaerna Who knew Fire/Fire Brutes were fun to play?
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Meaning? THIS DOES NOT AFFECT YOU ONE LITTLE BIT IF YOU ARE HUNTING LIKE YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE!
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Sorry I guess my copy of the game was missing the "hunting rules" Here I was thinking I purchased a game where I get to figure out how to make progress...
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What rules? What the hell are you talking about? Did you even READ the rest of the post? As long as [censored] #1 is killing monsters, and [censored] #2 is on his team draining xp, he'll get the same amount of xp regardless of whether he's on Live without these changes or on test WITH them. The difference is that now [censored] #2 isn't rewarded for doing nothing. [censored] #1 is not hindered at all.
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Wrong, powerlevelling is gaining exp at no risk to yourself. Having someone else do all the work while your character benefits, thats powerlevelling.
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Agree. And Statesman's definition agrees with this analysis.
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The Scooby Doo tactic is simply maximizing your teams exp gain / time. Its hardly a huge increase in levelling time, it simply gives everyone a good fight instead of 8 people going after one group and everyone maybe getting a shot in while the defenders and controllers who perfer debuffing and buffing or healing have nothing to do b/c no one is getting hurt.
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Agree
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Well you'll never get rid of the lag, either their going to find a place to stand on top of a building or they're going to stand near the team they're hunting with. Its not like they'll ever disappear.
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Disagree. This does help lag. If they're spread through the zone, it is going to greatly improve the issues that come from too many people in a concentrated spot, which can be unnoticed by people with high speed connections and good graphics cards while completely borking others.
If we're going to give the devs legitimate feedback, we have to acknowledge the few holes this solution actually plugs. Less lag is very much one of those.
Re-post of a re-quote (if you've been following this at all in the other thread, you can probably ignore this)
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Re-Quote from the other thread
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Just to put a few starting points out there for my post...
1) Statesman, in his own post has already stated that this XP leash will not even be a guaranteed fix to the one type of PL it targets. BUT, it WILL certainly be a hindrance for EVERY other type of player out there in EVERY situation and tactic from level 1 to 50.
2) Also, the 'lost to the void' exp has been stated as a bug in review (in that exp which would normally have gone to teammates in the split now goes nowhere) so we can know that it is not meant for xp to be lost to those outside 200'.
So, as if roleplaying a time traveling AR/DEV blaster here to save your world, I will explain to you how this will IMPROVE things for PLers of the singular variety it is aimed at prohibiting (namely, street sweepers with a bridge and SK).
Place the hunter on whatever target he wishes, place the SKed character within 200' of the target, place the bridge 50' from the SK and in the opposite direction of the hunter. You can put the SK and bridge in any combination of distance (since SK range is 9 yards longer than the XP leash) as long as the bridge is +200' from the target and SK is between them. It'll look like this:
(MINION) Hunter <------190'----->SK<----------50'-------->Bridge
You have now placed the SK within level range of the target AND within leash range of exp while removing the bridge as an XP leech from the scenario. Now the 3 man team xp boost is split among two, the hunter and the SK this whole setup was built for anyway. VOILA!! Better PLing without exploiting and all thanks to this 'limitation' on PLing.
If all that comes out of this is, 'at least the PLers are working harder', realize how much more inconvenient and convoluted it is for EVERY OTHER GAMER in CoH and drop it from the code altogether. Please.
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Quoted for genius.
If the Devs are dead set on releasing this code, please, PLEASE put additional code in there for debuffers and buffers to get xp from doing their jobs (while on teams anyways).
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once again re-quoted:
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You have now placed the SK within level range of the target AND within leash range of exp while removing the bridge as an XP leech from the scenario. Now the 3 man team xp boost is split among two, the hunter and the SK this whole setup was built for anyway. VOILA!! Better PLing without exploiting and all thanks to this 'limitation' on PLing.
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You are a deviously brilliant individual.
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Seconded! I would never have come up with this brilliant twist on using XP range to your advantage.
Finding bridges is a pain because they level up as you use them...this could eliminate that. The only problem is getting the distances consistently right, which would be hard to automate.
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Actually it would be painfully easy to automate. Have the SK mark the PL'er and the mentor mark the SK. The SK stays 55-60 Yards from the PL'er (who would have to be a melee fighter) and have the mentor stay at least 20 yards further back from the SK. Actually you wouldn't even have to have the mentor mark the SK, just have him mark the PL'er and stay more than 70 yards back from the PL'er.
Simple.
(btw, lvl 32 and I've been playing since before the Rikti invasion)
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Change the math on these slightly and you have a new power leveling technique that is at least twice as effective as the one that is currently used on live. And 100 yards is much easier to check up on than 67 in any case. If you make it double SK distance, then you wouldn't inconvenience much of anyone, and you'd keep the PL'ers away from the station. Not much better, but a little.
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Just in case a dev missed this earlier... I'll do the math now.
PL'er fights while SK stands 95 yards away from the PL'er. Bridge stands 110-120 yards from PL'er. To make this easy for everyone, both the Bridge and SK mark the PL'er as a way point. SK gets uber xp while the Bridge gets nada. Works better than the current PL system because SG's that PL all their new toons only need one or two bridges at lvl 43-44, as the Bridge never gains xp and never needs to be replaced.
Edit: Or better yet, let the bridge die. The SK can TP friend the dead bridge around. It doesn't matter if he's in range to gain xp, because of the death timer, he gets no xp anyways. He just has to type something occasionally to his friends or SG mates to stay logged in, heck, I think that would even work in missions with the current system.
JuppaCo...
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You just said that powerleveling is getting experience at no risk to yourself. How are you at risk from the mobs that the OTHER half of the team is killing? If you were in two separate teams getting two separate bonuses, you are at risk from every single villain you attack and get xp from. If you are in ONE team SPLITTING the effort, you are only at risk from HALF the villains. You are STILL getting a free ride from the other half of the team.
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Okay, for some reason many people are having a hard time understanding the details of this change, and many are assuming that it is meant to stop powerleveling. So, here's a combination of some stuff I posted earlier. Maybe that will help clear it up for some of you...
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CHANGES TO THE XP RANGE SYSTEM:
1. Missions are now completely exempt from all of these rules. None of them apply to missions, including Outdoor Missions (i.e. "Board Train" missions). Mission haven't changed at all in regards to XP division and eligibility.
2. When in normal zones (i.e. City and Hazard Zones) you must have done damage (actual hit points damage) to the mob OR be within 300 feet of the it when it is defeated in order to get any XPs for it.
3. If you are killed (i.e. "defeated"), and have been dead for more than one minute, you will not get any XPs for the mob, regardless of your distance from it, UNLESS you did damage to it before you were defeated.
4. All of the previous rules still apply to "Defeat X" missions, but only for the purpose of XP distribution. Even if you get no XPs from a defeated mob, you will still get credit toward the mission as long as at least ONE PERSON on your team was within 200 feet of it when it was defeated.
5. Everything in #4 also applies to Badges awarded for defeating X number of villains.
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REASON XPs AREN'T INCREASED WHEN SOMEONE IS OUT OF RANGE:
If you are on a team of three but the other two are out of range when you defeat something, you will get the same XPs that you always have. It will not be increased as if you were solo...the other two just won't get any. This is necessary, because if XPs were calculated based upon who's in range, that would create a brand new powerleveling expliot. Teammate #1 sidekicks Teammate #2. Teammate #3 fights a mob. Teammate #1 backs away so that he is still within sidekick range of #2 but NOT within range of the mob being fought. XPs would then be divided by #2 and #3 as if they were the only ones on the team. That would give the sidekick more XPs than he would have gotten if the change had never been made. Increased XPs could also introduce a new form of "griefing" or "kill stealing" from your own team. Run ahead of them and fight something so that you could get more XPs than you would have if you'd stuck by them. However, I think the powerleveling exploit is probably the main reason why they are leaving it as it is.
Unfortunately, all of this has the side effect of causing people who for one reason or another like to divide up and fight, sharing their XPs across the zone, to no longer be able to play that way. Even though they aren't engaging in the targeted form of powerleveling, they will still be affected by this change. Maybe the devs will eventually figure out a more elegant solution to that limitation.
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PURPOSE OF THIS CHANGE:
This change is not about making XP division more realistic or immersive, nor is it meant to stop powerleveling in general. It is directed at only one very narrow but visible form of powerleveling that many people FREQUENTLY complain about on the forums and in-game. It has one clear purpose, which it will succeed at to some degree. It is meant purely to hinder those who wish to gain XPs while standing at the tram, in the store, at the zone line, and so on while their team runs around the zone fighting things. That is the only form of powerleveling it is directed at, and the only one it will hinder. Those exact same people can still PL the same character in the same zone, but now he will have to follow along with the group, always staying within 300' of the mobs being defeated. If they want to use the standing-in-one-spot-soaking-up-XPs technique that this hinders, they will have to move it to a mission.
It has a very narrow purpose, but it will probably be pretty good at accomplishing it. The only "workarounds" I can see are herding things to the tram, store, etc. OR getting the player to /follow you while Phase Shifted. But of course the former would probably get people in trouble and the latter would require the person to be at least 20th level and have Phase Shift (actually probably higher because PS uses so much endurance), and he still wouldn't be standing idle at the tram.
This is sort of like some cities that pass an ordinance to get panhandlers or bums off the streets. It doesn't solve the homeless problem or stop panhandling, but it DOES stop people from having to see it. And, ultimately, it appears that's what most people want. They just don't want to have to SEE the powerlevelers...regardless of whether or not they continue to exist.
Think of it as the Paragon City Beautification Project. 
Dwimble
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Why would you even bother with this? If you are going to be in two sperate groups on two seperate sides of PP then you ARE in effect two seperate teams. Seriously why not just hunt in the same group or near each other.
This is an extremely minor hit to gameplay well worth teh price of admission.
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Because spliting up or 'scooby doo'ing as some of us call it is faster xp. We do it all the time mainly in brickstown. It makes no sence for a team of 8 to be beating down the small street mob size. However 2 teams of 4 or 2 teams of 3, hunting on diffrent spots in brickstown can effectively double the amount of xp you get. I have done this sort of thing since week one of game with several teams, PP and in Brickstown are big for this at least with some of the people I team with. heck in PI I was on a team of 4, 2 tanks, me a scrapper and a PB we split up and each hunted in a diffrent part of the map, it makes for fast xp that adds up over time.
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All you're doing is powerleveling. You're saying right out that you split up to gain experience faster by taking advantage of the team bonus while killing lots of mobs. If you want to street hunt, bring only a team of four, not eight. But what you're saying is that you powerlevel a bit each and every day. This is the kind of thing that the devs are trying to stop. It's nice to gain lots of experience fast, but that IS powerleveling. Guess what? These changes were directed AT powerleveling.
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Omigod!!! Powerleveling! BURN the powerlevelers! Burn them! (Because they weigh the same as a duck)
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Re-post of a re-quote (if you've been following this at all in the other thread, you can probably ignore this)
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Re-Quote from the other thread
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Just to put a few starting points out there for my post...
1) Statesman, in his own post has already stated that this XP leash will not even be a guaranteed fix to the one type of PL it targets. BUT, it WILL certainly be a hindrance for EVERY other type of player out there in EVERY situation and tactic from level 1 to 50.
2) Also, the 'lost to the void' exp has been stated as a bug in review (in that exp which would normally have gone to teammates in the split now goes nowhere) so we can know that it is not meant for xp to be lost to those outside 200'.
So, as if roleplaying a time traveling AR/DEV blaster here to save your world, I will explain to you how this will IMPROVE things for PLers of the singular variety it is aimed at prohibiting (namely, street sweepers with a bridge and SK).
Place the hunter on whatever target he wishes, place the SKed character within 200' of the target, place the bridge 50' from the SK and in the opposite direction of the hunter. You can put the SK and bridge in any combination of distance (since SK range is 9 yards longer than the XP leash) as long as the bridge is +200' from the target and SK is between them. It'll look like this:
(MINION) Hunter <------190'----->SK<----------50'-------->Bridge
You have now placed the SK within level range of the target AND within leash range of exp while removing the bridge as an XP leech from the scenario. Now the 3 man team xp boost is split among two, the hunter and the SK this whole setup was built for anyway. VOILA!! Better PLing without exploiting and all thanks to this 'limitation' on PLing.
If all that comes out of this is, 'at least the PLers are working harder', realize how much more inconvenient and convoluted it is for EVERY OTHER GAMER in CoH and drop it from the code altogether. Please.
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Quoted for genius.
If the Devs are dead set on releasing this code, please, PLEASE put additional code in there for debuffers and buffers to get xp from doing their jobs (while on teams anyways).
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once again re-quoted:
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You have now placed the SK within level range of the target AND within leash range of exp while removing the bridge as an XP leech from the scenario. Now the 3 man team xp boost is split among two, the hunter and the SK this whole setup was built for anyway. VOILA!! Better PLing without exploiting and all thanks to this 'limitation' on PLing.
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You are a deviously brilliant individual.
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Seconded! I would never have come up with this brilliant twist on using XP range to your advantage.
Finding bridges is a pain because they level up as you use them...this could eliminate that. The only problem is getting the distances consistently right, which would be hard to automate.
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Actually it would be painfully easy to automate. Have the SK mark the PL'er and the mentor mark the SK. The SK stays 55-60 Yards from the PL'er (who would have to be a melee fighter) and have the mentor stay at least 20 yards further back from the SK. Actually you wouldn't even have to have the mentor mark the SK, just have him mark the PL'er and stay more than 70 yards back from the PL'er.
Simple.
(btw, lvl 32 and I've been playing since before the Rikti invasion)
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Change the math on these slightly and you have a new power leveling technique that is at least twice as effective as the one that is currently used on live. And 100 yards is much easier to check up on than 67 in any case. If you make it double SK distance, then you wouldn't inconvenience much of anyone, and you'd keep the PL'ers away from the station. Not much better, but a little.
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Just in case a dev missed this earlier... I'll do the math now.
PL'er fights while SK stands 95 yards away from the PL'er. Bridge stands 110-120 yards from PL'er. To make this easy for everyone, both the Bridge and SK mark the PL'er as a way point. SK gets uber xp while the Bridge gets nada. Works better than the current PL system because SG's that PL all their new toons only need one or two bridges at lvl 43-44, as the Bridge never gains xp and never needs to be replaced.
Edit: Or better yet, let the bridge die. The SK can TP friend the dead bridge around. It doesn't matter if he's in range to gain xp, because of the death timer, he gets no xp anyways. He just has to type something occasionally to his friends or SG mates to stay logged in, heck, I think that would even work in missions with the current system.
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Wow.. that is truely genius.. Score one for the power levellers.
w00t Radio
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All you're doing is powerleveling. You're saying right out that you split up to gain experience faster by taking advantage of the team bonus while killing lots of mobs. If you want to street hunt, bring only a team of four, not eight. But what you're saying is that you powerlevel a bit each and every day. This is the kind of thing that the devs are trying to stop. It's nice to gain lots of experience fast, but that IS powerleveling. Guess what? These changes were directed AT powerleveling.
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Wrong, powerlevelling is gaining exp at no risk to yourself. Having someone else do all the work while your character benefits, thats powerlevelling.
The Scooby Doo tactic is simply maximizing your teams exp gain / time. Its hardly a huge increase in levelling time, it simply gives everyone a good fight instead of 8 people going after one group and everyone maybe getting a shot in while the defenders and controllers who perfer debuffing and buffing or healing have nothing to do b/c no one is getting hurt.
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But...you are forgetting one important point. You are not playing the way some people think you should. That is not allowed, I'm afraid. You also might be leveling "too fast". Tsk, tsk...
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JuppaCo...
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You just said that powerleveling is getting experience at no risk to yourself. How are you at risk from the mobs that the OTHER half of the team is killing? If you were in two separate teams getting two separate bonuses, you are at risk from every single villain you attack and get xp from. If you are in ONE team SPLITTING the effort, you are only at risk from HALF the villains. You are STILL getting a free ride from the other half of the team.
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LordA:
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Correction. The activity he descibes is NOT PLing. All the teammates are taking risk and getting rewards. They are giving up a share of the XP they would have earned directly to participate in a share of the XP their teammates earn. Since in zones spawn size is NOT effected by team size the ONLY upside they get is the team bonus, which is relatively negligible.
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The PLing is the no-risk for reward activity that occurs when one or more of this team sits at the tram and racks up XP while at no risk whatsoever. Just as Statesman said in the first thread on this topic:
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The reasoning behind this change was that the typical power-leveling tactic was to park the low-level heroes in the Safe Areas of zones, while the rest of the group hunts in the most dangerous places brings a lot of XP to the safe low-level guy. Forcing the low-level guy to actually move WITH the group (staying within 200) prevents the most common power-levelling tactic in the game....You need to be ALIVE for this credit to be given however (or very recently dead). This is to circumvent Recall Friending a dead low-level player around (completely safe) and getting him XP credit when not participating in the battle.
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... stuff... more stuff...
REASON XPs AREN'T INCREASED WHEN SOMEONE IS OUT OF RANGE:
If you are on a team of three but the other two are out of range when you defeat something, you will get the same XPs that you always have. It will not be increased as if you were solo...the other two just won't get any. This is necessary, because if XPs were calculated based upon who's in range, that would create a brand new powerleveling expliot. Teammate #1 sidekicks Teammate #2. Teammate #3 fights a mob. Teammate #1 backs away so that he is still within sidekick range of #2 but NOT within range of the mob being fought. XPs would then be divided by #2 and #3 as if they were the only ones on the team. That would give the sidekick more XPs than he would have gotten if the change had never been made. Increased XPs could also introduce a new form of "griefing" or "kill stealing" from your own team. Run ahead of them and fight something so that you could get more XPs than you would have if you'd stuck by them. However, I think the powerleveling exploit is probably the main reason why they are leaving it as it is.
... more stuff... even more stuff...
Dwimble
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I really don't think that in SG's that PL new toons that this will be of any concern, as long as the bridge gets NO XP they will be happy. The part that some of them have problems with now is that the bridges outlevel their usefulness. If they don't get xp, they don't outlevel their usefulness. This would still make the whole thing more usable for PL SGs, while hurting the rest of us.
Liberty:
You've missed something. Statesman has now affirmed that THIS:
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2) Also, the 'lost to the void' exp has been stated as a bug in review (in that exp which would normally have gone to teammates in the split now goes nowhere) so we can know that it is not meant for xp to be lost to those outside 200'.
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Is NOT a bug, but is working as intended (initially he did not call it a bug, he just said he'd look into it).
With XP lost in the void, the rest of his brilliant analysis is not applicable. It doesn't HELP PLers, in fact, it does hurt them as intended.
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This is not necessarily true. This also causes lag issues at the trams.
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This is preposterously improbable.
I play this game far too much to not have noticed this if it were true on a scale that caused this.
I do not see low-level heroes parked near the train or other "safe" area more than once every couple of days. And I play 2-4 hours every day, at least. Unless this mass parking of PL toons occurs only during off peak hours, in which case I fail to see it as a justification.
Note that I'm including toons I've found in some rather novel areas, such as standing in adjacent chimneys on roofs midtown.
Qualitatively, the percentage of such PL-engaged toons is clearly vastly smaller than the number simply running around, passing through, or chatting in those places.
At least us arguments that common sense experience backs up.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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Actually as a tank it will affect your gameplay when you start getting lowbies asking you constantly to come herd wolves or to help them powerlevel. It will happen when you hit the 40's and start hanging about in Peregrine Island. Blasters, Tanks, Scrappers are all cursed with lowbies they don't know sending them random tells asking to be pl'd.
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Heck...I get bombarded with tells for teams constantly too...no problem. I found out about /hide and haven't looked back. You gotta love it. Another one I never understood....people getting uptight about some letters appearing in their chat box? Wow....talk about picky. (I never really believed that one anyway...I think it is just looking for a reason to complain about other people playing the game "wrong".)
JuppaCo, I know why Statesman issued these changes. I know what form of powerleveling it was meant to kill. However, this is still yet another form of powerleveling now stopped by the same change, possibly as attrition. Are you getting more experience doing it this way than not? Yes? Then it's powerleveling because you're taking advantage (read:exploiting) of the game mechanics to get an overall increase in your experience. Sure, they may get decreased XP for their kills, but adding up their kills PLUS the other half of the team's kills nets you more experience than just having half a team. People confirm this. They state that they do this with the very intent to get MORE experience by doing this.
Just for the record, I was pl'ing a little last night with some friends for a little while and realized that this fix only fixes one thing:
The Pleveled person may not leave his computer.
In no other way was I in any remote danger following the crew around. It's a piece of cake to avoid getting near any mobs that might aggro on me. Heck, with flight all I had to do was hover a little ways over the fight with no risk to myself at all. And that's a 14th level power, yes? So again, if the end-all-be-all goal was to keep people from pleveling while afk, then it works. But other than that, not so much.
Come to think of it, this is easily remedied too. Just have whoever is SKing you stay far enough away from the fight, but close enough for exp. Then you auto follow them with a keystroke timer thing to keep you from autologging.
So what is being fixed again?
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Actually as a tank it will affect your gameplay when you start getting lowbies asking you constantly to come herd wolves or to help them powerlevel. It will happen when you hit the 40's and start hanging about in Peregrine Island. Blasters, Tanks, Scrappers are all cursed with lowbies they don't know sending them random tells asking to be pl'd.
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As a Tank running around PI it doesnt affect my gameplay one bit, because if I get a random /tell asking to be PLed I just ignore it. It doesnt even slow me down. I dont know how a piece of text appearing in a chatbox can cause a player the inability to move, use powers, or remember basic tactics to play the game, but apparently it can? I guess I must be naturally immune to the side effect of yellow text sent by strangers asking for PLs causing this gameplay affecting syndrome.
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This is sort of like some cities that pass an ordinance to get panhandlers or bums off the streets. It doesn't solve the homeless problem or stop panhandling, but it DOES stop people from having to see it. And, ultimately, it appears that's what most people want. They just don't want to have to SEE the powerlevelers...regardless of whether or not they continue to exist.
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Yes Dwimble and if this didn't affect all of our gameplay then people wouldn't not be against this sort of change. However, any change that affects everyone should not be implemented to effect change that would only cosmetically fix a problem.
Its not JUST power levellers that sit at the trams, anyone who wants to go afk will sit there as well.
I would say quite obviously from the responses and the vast number of negative ones that more people are upset by the change than those who are looking to get rid of people standing around at the trams.
If your going to force people not to stand around at the trams gaining exp then make a change that fixes that without affecting gameplay for anything else.
w00t Radio
Before I ask my question, let me preface by saying that I haven't slogged through this entire thread. I have tried to search for Statesman's posts, here and elsewhere, but there are a gazillion of them, too (which speaks very highly for him).
In any case, has Jack, CuppaJoe, or any other official representative of CoH ever stated exactly why power-leveling hurts the game - from a planning and/or developing sense? If so, could someone link the post?
If not, Jack, perhaps an "on the record" explanation as to how PLing adversely affects data-mining (for example) - or whatever - would nip some of the nay-sayers in the bud.
If there is a valid, articulable, reason for the devs to try to minimize PLing, then I can't argue with the changes given they will affect a relatively small portion of play, all things considered.
The SOLUS Foundation - a Liberty and Pinnacle SG
"The Consequences of War" - Arcs # 227331 and 241496
Britt, that was the goal. To stop lagging at trains and tram powerleveling. That's it.
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Thing is, Liberty, many of these people never even gave the game a chance. Newbies, fresh level 1s who JUST got the game, have sent tells to me for powerleveling. Not even wanting to try the game is just sad. The devs give you all this content and all they want to do is blow through most of it. While that's fine that they do, they are going to get bored because they missed the good parts of the game. They are going to suck because they lack experience in the game. They are also going to become level 50 whiners asking for more content.
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Another one I haven't seen yet. Do pwlvlers become lvl 50 whiners asking for more content? Do they really? Every one I've met seems to be having a great time. They all seem to know their character inside and out too.
Is it "sad"? Probably...but again....so what? They are all supposed to play like I do or they are "wrong"?
This isn't like the stupid Hami farming I've seen in which the upcoming PvP is being directly tied to it and making it mandatory. I don't HAVE to pwlvl.
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If all they were worried about was people standing at the tram causing lag then the simply could have made it "No Exp" zone.. where you get no exp if you are standing within so many feet of the tram.
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Great idea, but it would only serve to shift the lag further away from the tram.
To Statesman: How about putting a hard XP cap, instead of calculating a percentage, on anyone SK'ed to a higher level hero who's +4 levels above their true level. You'd be able to nix powerleveling altogether without impacting the rest of the playerbase.
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I think if you want to put some kind of reward "cap" to stop PLers without punishing the regular player base, you should have earning above the "cap" reward you by the exemplaring scheme. It will keep people from getting from level 1-30 in a heartbeat while still rewarding people who want to team many levels above them for fun.
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A 5 level gap is how it used to be for 40-50 and it was a major nightmare finding teams. That sort of change would be very bad for teaming. We've seen that in the past.
w00t Radio