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I don't mean to be negative or stir up controversy, but I'm curious why the change is happening at all.
It's obvious these changes are directed at Powerleveling. Since PLing happens primarily in instanced missions, yet these changes aren't going to have any effect in these missions... then why implement them at all?
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one, it's a drag on team xp.
two, it's a cosmetic fix that will make it LOOK like fewer people are being PL'ed since they'll be sitting somewhere else instead of on the train station roof.
IMHO it will just lead to team friction and disharmony in a game that is trying to encourage grouping- I hope it never makes live.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Maybe you should look at WHY people are PLing .... these guys (PLers) state they have several L50s and are waiting around to see what PvP will be like because there is nothing left for thier hero(s) to do.
"All that crap is grey to me ... no xp" -- Positron
Gah! Pilcrow and Dwimble! Would you stop posting reasonable, well thought out ideas that contain logic and common sense??!! Damn that's irritating. Bad enough Chrondeath has me mad as hell at the pizza guy who is trying to shaft me... My response to you? VERY LOUD NOISES!!!
There, that's better. All jokes aside, I do hope that we'll get a post from Statesman in the near future with some more info. This is an awesome game hence the emotions attached to subjects like this 
Hmm, I like some of the direction this is going in, but I think it does hamper team unity in some cases. I've never been much of a fan of team separation, since I prefer to hunt reds and up with large teams rather than going after lesser villains in smaller groups. I just find it a lot more fun that way.
But, I recognize that splitting up is a very viable way to tackle some of those defeat X missions, and i think that there still needs to be room to do this. I also think that those who have mentioned shopping and levelling have a point. How likely is it that teams will allow people to go level as soon as they can now? The whole team will want to make the run at the same time to avoid XP loss. Same goes for shopping. I just see it causing friction when people are really set on levelling immediately because there's a power at their next level that they want ASAP.
Here are my suggestions:
1. Allow the team leader to exclude team members from XP calculations, setting them to "non-combatant" or something. The team member should obviously be informed in some easily noticeable way. To be clear on this before people point out exploits, I just mean in terms of dividing it up based on range. This should not work for characters who are outside acceptable level ranges.
2. Allow teams to split up in some officially recognized way. Maybe let the leader assign players to a secondary group, and then apply these rules to each group seperately as if they were still the same group. If the two groups end up fighting within range of each other, I suppose it would be good to apply the rule across the whole team in that situation.
This would allow teams to maintain the unity and not have to drop out of the team if they felt it was best to split up and complete a mission. This still doesn't allow people to get XP for battles they didn't fight in.
I agree with the people that have said the death timer needs to be extended. 1 minute is much shorter than I am usually dead in a large battle. you can be lying there for a few minutes easily if you're doing an 8 person door mission and something goes wrong. 5 minutes is not long enough to even put a dent in the debt of dying in the first place, so I think that would be an effective limit.
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Powerleveling effects me because its widespread practice means that higher-level characters' players simply PRESUME that I want to powerlevel if I'm on a team with them unless told otherwise, and when I do say otherwise, they're surprised--or even insulted that I'd not want their "generousity" and wish to actually be USEFUL as a sidekick.
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Noted. But that doesn't seem any different than anything else that happens that I don't want to do. I get blind invites when I don't want them. I get tells when I don't want them. I get offers to be a "mid" when I don't want them. I get offers to be pwlvled when I don't want them. I'll have teams decide to do a task force when I don't want to do one.
Does that seem like a big deal? If a team I am on is doing missions or other things that I don't feel like doing at that time, I just politely excuse myself. I'm certainly not going to get upset that they won't play the way I want to play. As a matter of fact, an offer to be pwlvled is a person trying to be nice to you. Hard to get mad at someone for doing something generous. (And they are being generous...even if you don't like what they are offering you.)
This is a spiffy keen way to punish the non-PLing people out there for what the PLers are doing.
Will it slow down the PLers? No, the will find a way to cheat the system. They always do.
Will it hurt the normal players? Yes, at times it can.
I really don't like being 'punished' for what someone else is doing.
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SWG and FFXI are simply too grindy to attract new players easily and the only people even playing them are the ones who have already dedicated hours to them. Boy, are they wishing they had their time back.
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I wouldn't play SWG much if you paid me to, but FFXI? Sure. Different kind of satisfaction there, sorta what I got out of EQ only with devs that actually work on the game and work well.
If it's anything you can give FFXI, it's their ability to code tight and adjust the game as needed.
Which is actually a good time for an example of how to fix an abuse in a game and make it fun at the same time. A big problem in FFXI was "fish botting"- automated 3rd party scripts that took a simple action (fishing) and used it essentially as a money generating script.
So what'd S-E do? They turned fishing into an actual minigame. The scripters got hosed, the real fishers got entertained and fishing got to be more interactive than "wait for line to twitch, hit space bar".
XP code changes as they stand? It's like fishing up nothin' but rusty buckets that keep breaking your pole. A change is needed, but it's a tough one to do- you have to make a change that improves the game for everyone while stopping the PLing. Personally, I think that lies in adjusting the ability to gain unlimited exp per hour, not in yanking people around with ranges.
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Ya know, I often get together with SG mates in PI or the RCS & we just split up & hunt the zone for xp. This tactic completely eliminates that opportunity
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Exactly. That "opportunity" is your team powerlevelling each other. You're not hunting together when you do this, you're soloing. The difference is a private channel and the xp you get for someone across the zone's kill. The point of teaming is to work together, not to just share xp.
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How exactly is this powerleveling? What about those who are casual gamers and do not have a lot of playtime? Splitting up into smaller teams for missions/hunting is an effective and necessary tactic to complete objectives in less time. This is not someone standing at a distance in safety while being bridged. This range limit thing is the worst idea yet.
As many have said, this will not deter or stop powerleveling. It's only going to hurt the majority of players who don't pl.
Shard Warrior - 50 MA/Regen/BM Scrapper
Founding Member and Leader : Shadow-Force
Co-Leader: Council of Heroes
"Whatever evils come this way... we will be there to stop them."
I would add to this:
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Powerleveling effects me because its widespread practice means that higher-level characters' players simply PRESUME that I want to powerlevel if I'm on a team with them unless told otherwise, and when I do say otherwise, they're surprised--or even insulted that I'd not want their "generousity" and wish to actually be USEFUL as a sidekick.
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Noted. But that doesn't seem any different than anything else that happens that I don't want to do. I get blind invites when I don't want them. I get tells when I don't want them. I get offers to be a "mid" when I don't want them. I get offers to be pwlvled when I don't want them. I'll have teams decide to do a task force when I don't want to do one.
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I get invites to TFs when I don't want them. I get invited to respecs when I don't want to be. I get invted to Trials when I don't wish to be. I get invited to street hunt when I'd rather be doing door missions. I get invited to be a sidekick when I don't want to be. I get invited to exemplar when I don't want to. I get invited to trade when I don't want to. I get Invited to SG's I don't wish to be in...
....Surprisingly, the same, simple strategy works just as well on all of these, I just say:
"Thanks, but no."
Problem solved. Simple choice really. You can choose to fume on about it for five minutes or ten minutes or twenty minutes, ot you can choose to enjoy the game.
Same thing with Powerlevelers: you can choose to let it bother you or choose not to. Either way the only problem it causes is in your own head.
Me? I choose to enjoy my game, and not let the behavior of others impede it. But yeah, I know, I'm funny like that. I choose to take control of my own destiny rather than whine about where others are steering it.
Go fig.
From my tests on the test server.
a lvl 50 scrapper (myself) got 305 feet away from a lvl 48 tanker.
I received ZERO experience for his arrests.
This was in the Install Pychic dampers on the Pychic Babbage mission. Which is as we all know, and outdoor instanced mission.
We bugged it as we beleive anywhere in the zone we should have been getting shared XP.
IF I would have been a support class and not able to do attacks as I would have been buffing/debuffing/healing whatever. Then I would be getting no XP for being on that mission.
Member of Team Awesome���
Justice Server
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From my tests on the test server.
a lvl 50 scrapper (myself) got 305 feet away from a lvl 48 tanker.
I received ZERO experience for his arrests.
This was in the Install Pychic dampers on the Pychic Babbage mission. Which is as we all know, and outdoor instanced mission.
We bugged it as we beleive anywhere in the zone we should have been getting shared XP.
IF I would have been a support class and not able to do attacks as I would have been buffing/debuffing/healing whatever. Then I would be getting no XP for being on that mission.
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The new changes aren't on Test yet. Test still has the first iteration of the XP changes from the 29th. Here's what Statesman said in the first post of this thread: "...Well be putting the distance and mission map changes up on the Training Room soon (week or so) to see how it plays out."
Dwimble
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Well wow has 5 times the amouunt or more people playing it over COH so some may disagree well about 500k to coh's peak of around 100k subs hum Time sink or not WOW is king of the hill. I had no desire to to it myself and I am not saying COH is all bad either it is a good solid game that is my view it is all subjective anways 
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To be fair this game peaked at 180K, fell to about 100K, and is back up to around 130K.
And for people who like the SuperHero Genre, or simply do not like fantasy.sci-fi, there is no comparable game on the market. Period.
Very thoughtful post. Some comments
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1. Allow the team leader to exclude team members from XP calculations, setting them to "non-combatant" or something. The team member should obviously be informed in some easily noticeable way. To be clear on this before people point out exploits, I just mean in terms of dividing it up based on range. This should not work for characters who are outside acceptable level ranges.
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They can already do this by kicking them from the team and then reinviting them. If you enable this capability within a team, peopel could bridge AND the PLers could give the bridge no XP to boot. That would make PLing better!
I get why you want this, but this is worse than the status quo. I would like to see team leaders get a "kick with prejudice" and "kick without prejudice" so that when you kick without prejudice the kicked one can type /rejoin and rejoin the team without needing a second invite. That would help a lot with the administration end of this new set of rules.
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2. Allow teams to split up in some officially recognized way. Maybe let the leader assign players to a secondary group, and then apply these rules to each group seperately as if they were still the same group. If the two groups end up fighting within range of each other, I suppose it would be good to apply the rule across the whole team in that situation.
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Well, they can do this within mission. I think for the effort of making this happen they could instead impement a timer on contributing to the team, which would solve more problems than just this one. Nevertheless, there's someinteresting thoughts here, maybe they could apply the new SG coalition stuff to teams.
All this wasted time on a method of leveling that isnt even that fast. This is seriously like an April fools joke gone to far. Stop wasting time on fixing things that dont matter and start fixing the damn game, good lord.
Anyone who thinks the sit at tram PL method is even an issue should be shot. IT COULD BE WORSE, THEY COULD BE HERDING HYUCK HYUCK
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Ya know, I often get together with SG mates in PI or the RCS & we just split up & hunt the zone for xp. This tactic completely eliminates that opportunity
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Exactly. That "opportunity" is your team powerlevelling each other. You're not hunting together when you do this, you're soloing. The difference is a private channel and the xp you get for someone across the zone's kill. The point of teaming is to work together, not to just share xp.
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How exactly is this powerleveling? What about those who are casual gamers and do not have a lot of playtime? Splitting up into smaller teams for missions/hunting is an effective and necessary tactic to complete objectives in less time. This is not someone standing at a distance in safety while being bridged. This range limit thing is the worst idea yet.
As many have said, this will not deter or stop powerleveling. It's only going to hurt the majority of players who don't pl.
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Except that very example IS powerleveling. You're not actually DOING anything to get that XP. The monsters you kill are your own xp. You get a little less by having a second person on the team, but it's made up for and more by the other person hunting. Basically, you could stop hunting altogether and still be receiving experience from your teammate's kills. That's powerleveling. How is that ANY different from standing a tram while receiving credit from another's kills?
Powerleveling doesn't have to be profitable to be powerleveling. Even gaining 1xp per hour could be considered powerleveling. In the example above, there's no difference between just standing at the tram or hunting solo. You're still getting free experience from someone else, regardless of whether or not YOU are hunting.
honestly forget about the whole xp range issue and just make more content that is high quality and people will play the game because it has fun things to do. PLing isnt an issue people ill always try to find a way to level faster if leveling is not intrinsic to story progression, which it should be but isnt in this game.
in a good RPG you dont have to grind per se because leveling happens as you progress the story and works better than gain xp for hours to move story ahead (in COH's case leveing to get more missons with new contacts or do new TFs that have level requirements). Perhaps 1-3 levels in 10 might need to be grinded to move story along but having content that levels players as they move through the game story is better. this would mean greater exp for TFs and story arcs. hmmm look an alternative to powerleveling...playing through the games supposed "lack of content"
I am an ebil markeeter and will steal your moneiz ...correction stole your moneiz. I support keeping the poor down because it is impossible to make moneiz in this game.
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Very thoughtful post. Some comments
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1. Allow the team leader to exclude team members from XP calculations, setting them to "non-combatant" or something. The team member should obviously be informed in some easily noticeable way. To be clear on this before people point out exploits, I just mean in terms of dividing it up based on range. This should not work for characters who are outside acceptable level ranges.
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They can already do this by kicking them from the team and then reinviting them. If you enable this capability within a team, peopel could bridge AND the PLers could give the bridge no XP to boot. That would make PLing better!
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The problem with kicking and reinviting is that it doesn't work on task forces and trials, it interrupts communication among the team (unless you set up a global chat channel for each team you're on and talk each member through how to join it), it still doesn't allow for splitting up to handle "kill X" missions or badge hunting, and it's just overall a lot of micromanagement for something that shouldn't to be such a hassle.
I like the idea of being able to designate subteams. If you're worried about the "bridge out of range" PL problem, just say that sidekicking doesn't work if the mentor is on a different subteam, or designated non-combatant, or whatever.
Actually, it DOES allow badge hunting and kill x missions, you just don't earn xp out of it. Which isn't the point of a kill x or badge hunting mission. TFs and Trials take place on mission maps for the most part, so the Kill X missions make up a very small part of it.
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Except that very example IS powerleveling. You're not actually DOING anything to get that XP. The monsters you kill are your own xp. You get a little less by having a second person on the team, but it's made up for and more by the other person hunting. Basically, you could stop hunting altogether and still be receiving experience from your teammate's kills. That's powerleveling. How is that ANY different from standing a tram while receiving credit from another's kills?
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So...what's the argument for why he should receive LESS experience than if he was hunting solo, if the other guy isn't helping?
The only thing I've seen is this concern that you could get faster PL'ing by keeping the bridge out of range, and I'm not entirely convinced that's a major problem...it would require a lot more coordination in the positions of the sidekick and mentor for, what, maybe 20% more XP to the sidekick at the cost of none to the bridge? And it requires finding someone to bridge who doesn't mind doing all this for zero XP--and you can't just two-box it, because auto-follow won't keep you at the right range. The bridge now has to be an actual player, performing a non-trivial task for no reward.
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Powerleveling doesn't have to be profitable to be powerleveling. Even gaining 1xp per hour could be considered powerleveling.
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I think this is an overly zealous definition of powerleveling. If your definition of powerleveling doesn't include any component about the rate of XP gain being higher than usual, the only thing left to distinguish "PL" XP gain from "non-PL" XP gain is designer intent. (You can't say it's "anything that doesn't involve combat effort on your part," because then taking a delivery mission is PL'ing. And Winter Lords involved some effort, too, it's just that the gain was far out of whack with the effort.)
And designer intent just isn't that easy to determine. I don't see any reason to think that before this change, split teams getting XP from each other was unintended by the designers. It's not like there's zero reason for it--the point of the group XP bonus was to make fighting in a team more rewarding than fighting on your own. That's only true if you get XP from others' kills. It makes sense (to me, at least) that if grouping is encouraged, then two players fighting separately, but grouped, is also encouraged.
And why should it only be "teaming where the whole team stays together" that's encouraged? It's only teammate-targetted powers that get better when the team is together. Two scrappers together aren't doing much more than they would have been doing apart. Why is it OK for them to get extra XP for killing (say) five minions each if they do it together, but not OK to get extra XP if they do it apart?
Winter Lords were a programming error.
Delivery missions require walking great distances without any reward gaining for a lump sum reward at the end of the mission.
Powerleveling requires minimal actual effort and you are constantly gaining xp without having to do much yourself. Following a person around while mooching off his kills is quite different from progressing through enemy-infested territory to perform a critical task. Also, delivery missions are non-repeatable, there's no way to actually exploit them.
In an attempt to increase range of xp, and more importantly, badge hunting, I was wondering if the range could be increased to the size of the red zone in the tutorial, that way, getting the isolator badge would become easier and it might satisfy the people who complain about PLing (which I have yet to meet).
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Powerleveling requires minimal actual effort and you are constantly gaining xp without having to do much yourself. Following a person around while mooching off his kills is quite different from progressing through enemy-infested territory to perform a critical task.
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You do realize that about four months ago Statesman himself posted on these forums that he didn't have a problem with that?
His logic - the person doing the arresting is facing more challeng for the XP gained. This was in direct reference to people doing bridge-based levelling in trams and near trainers (Brickston was rife with this at the time).
He said he wasn't nuts about it, but that it was not "exploitive".
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
Exactly. He wasn't nuts about it. In all games, there are ways to PL that aren't exploits. But they still encompass the basic principle. Trading items, for example, is not an exploit. MMOs encourage it for a prosperous economy. But giving away items to lowbies? Is that an exploit? No... but it is immoral. Just as giving items from a higher level character to one of your own lower level characters is not only immoral, it's a BANNABLE offense.
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Winter Lords were a programming error.
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No, they weren't. They were a design decision with an unintended consequence. The intentional change to Monsters (or Giant Monsters, or whatever) that said Monsters should be treated as the same con no matter what the level of the player, and give the same XP rewards, was responsible for it. It wasn't a matter of a misplaced decimal point in the reward tables.
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Delivery missions require walking great distances without any reward gaining for a lump sum reward at the end of the mission.
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So, why does this "walking of great distances" count as effort deserving of a reward, but following a level 50 around getting XP for his kills still counts as powerleveling? (I'm not saying the latter isn't PL'ing, I just want to know what the criteria is.)
Is it because the reward comes over time, instead of in one large sum at the end? Or is it because following the level 50 is much more rewarding than doing the delivery mission?
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Powerleveling requires minimal actual effort and you are constantly gaining xp without having to do much yourself.
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Minimal effort compared to what? This is my point--the characteristic of powerleveling is that the effort is minimal compared to the reward. Beating up -3 minions is minimal effort for constant XP, but it's not PL'ing.
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Following a person around while mooching off his kills is quite different from progressing through enemy-infested territory to perform a critical task.
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Oh, please. Enemy-infested territory? Jaunting through Steel Canyon and Atlas to bring yet another artifact for Azuria to lose is hardly a trip through "enemy territory," and travel through any zone without snipers (except maybe the Shard) is trivial as soon as you get a travel power.
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Also, delivery missions are non-repeatable, there's no way to actually exploit them.
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So it only counts as PL'ing if it's something you can repeat?
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Based on data from the Training Room and feedback on the forums, we will be making the following changes to how XP, Influence and other drops are divided:
If a player is in a zone, did NO damage in a combat and has dead for more than a minute, he receives no XP. If a player is more than 300 ft. away (an increase of 100 ft.) from the mob when its defeated and did NO damage, he receives no XP. Otherwise, the player receives his full share of XP.
If players are on a mission map, they always receive their full shares. Theres no distance limitation. Teams can split up in maps players can be separated by elevators everyone receives their XP.
This system does not affect Mission rewards.
Well be putting the distance and mission map changes up on the Training Room soon (week or so) to see how it plays out.
Now, let me clarify the situation with Badges and Defeat tasks. As long as you or any of your teammates are within 200 ft. of the defeated mob, EVERYONE on the team gets credit. This is not a change in Issue 4; this is the way that it currently works.
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I absolutely hate this idea in every way. No offense.