I hope they work this into a story about the city council creating a special HeroCare Fund that subsidizes half of all emergency care for heroes in Paragon. HeroCare is a program designed to entice the greatest up-and-coming hero talent to Rhode Island to ensure a thriving hero community. It's also cheaper than building a bunch of those costly Police Drones. 
The changes themselves are great for several reasons:
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1) Instead of the first five levels being debt free, the first TEN levels will be debt free.
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You can get your friends to start a character and get them further along before they hit any frustration from debt. By the time they have a level 10 character, they are invested and enjoying 3 more powers.
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2) XP debt will be halved on mission maps (that includes outdoor mission maps, too).
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The only time I ever racked up a significant amount of debt was when I was leading a task force that had a tanker and scrapper bail right before the AV mission. We tried it anyway with two empathy defenders a FF controller two scrappers and my blaster. As team leader, I probably tried to take the AV down for longer than I should have. After 70K debt around lvl 30, I was miserable and soured on CoH for a week. If 70K were actually 35K, now that wouldn't sound so bad. 
I do worry that this will just make it easier for people to miss the great story content as characters will be able to level faster, but an unlimited amount of debt can still be racked up, if desired. I'd be more worried if they put a cap on debt.
If they really want to encourage doing missions, maybe they could reduce the number of mobs that crowd every corner in the "safe" zones?
[b]Frost Lightning - lvl 50 Ele/Ice[/b]
Kick Asterisk - lvl 43 MA/SR
Frigid Bridget- lvl 20 Ice/Cold
GrammaRadiation lvl 20 Rad/Rad
Helena Ann Baskett lvl 29 Necro/Poisen
The Very Bad Seed lvl 6 Plant/Thorn
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I'd be more worried if they put a cap on debt.
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I thought debt was capped at half of the xp required for next level?
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You must have trained too far then. Because you outlevel no contacts if you keep your security level low enough. In fact, your contacts will start giving you other contacts of their level range to move you along.
My peacebringers did just about every contact in King's Row and Atlas for instance. I was still getting "Kill 10 Hellion" missions at combat level 12.
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Actually, I didn't train at all. At one point, I was behind four levels in my training, precisely to try to keep accessing those contacts. Still didn't work. Once I surpassed the boundary in my combat level, even though I hadn't trained for several levels, she would not offer me missions.
Links to my Virtueverse crap
Statesman,
While the changes you've proposed are obviously beneficial to players, I can't help but scratch my head and wonder, "Why?"
NewScrapper
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You are losing time though. I'd argue thats the most important resource you have to lose - actual real world time to commit to playing the game.
that IS a fact. In some MMOs you lose stuff (and yes, that is some invested time "gone") but it has been my experience that it takes about five seconds to repair my gear (more if I'm in say, Laggrimar or Lagforge) but my XP gain is not hindered.
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You must not have played UO pre-trammel. In UO it used to be you died, ran to a healer, and tried to get back to your corpse wearing nothing but a loincloth before everything decayed. People never went out with the best stuff in the game because the chance was too high that you'd lose it (to other players if not to monsters). So yeah, they used equipment that could be replaced relatively quickly... assuming you had the cash and could find a player vendor that was properly stocked.
But they'd also still use good magic items, because you had to to beat the high end monsters. And if you lost one of those, well you'd be out a good chunk of money or looking for a long time to find another.
Imagine this: You have a level 50 COH char. Instead of powers like we have them now, the powers are items and you can lose them. You never use your 9th primary power because it's too flashy and everyone wants to take it from you, so you leave that at home. When going to places you know not many players are going to be you take your 8th primary with you. But you die and lose it and need to spend 6 months getting it again.
XP debt is nothing.
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Nope. never played UO. From the (horror) stories I have heard I'm not missing much :P I was using WoW as an example since that's the other MMOG I've played a lot of. Yeah, comparatively XP-debt is nothing in that case. Though I think it was EQ (2?)that you can actually go DOWN in levels for dying too much.
We're already "better off" than UO since we're largely not an item based game and certainly I can't stomp into Atlas with my big bad lvl 43 dark defender, Fear all the lowbies around Ms. Liberty and steal their stuff 
(although the image is rather amusing)
An aside, it took us nearly a month to convince our Tank to play hero with us. He'd sworn off MMOs after playing UO for just the example you mentioned. He'd lost items it'd taken him YEARS to get, to the PK guilds. CoH is so different from other MMOGs it took him awhile to be convinced that the same thing wouldn't happen and couldn't happen. He's fine with PvE and isn't planning on going into the arena because of his time in UO.
I'm not saying Nerf debt, just that a slight penalty reduction isn't going to hurt anyone and will encourage more people to play longer I havent played UO, but again with the whole "Lots of first time MMOGers"(me too) this is all they will know first hand - (except if they grab a copy of WoW and see "debt...no debt...hmmm" )a reduction of a clear deterrant = good thing.
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Not that I'm complaining really, but why?
Debt is hardly even a penalty, and now it's being mitigated further? Perhaps I'm alone here, but I don't get it.
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I agree with you, but a fair portion of the community does not. This looks like COH appealing to the masses.
There was never a debt problem, far as I'm concerned....and I've seen all levels. Oh well. Not like the change will hurt me, so I'll just up and be happy
Don't understand that debt was that much of an issue.
I'm betting I can guess this one:
1) Debt has been reduced till level 10 because not all characters are created equal nor are all players created equal. The devs want to make it easy for new players coming to learn the system that we long ago mastered. The first 10 levels come quick enough but probably have a high death % so trim it out and let them learn until level 10.
2) The reduced Death Debt in missions is to add additional incentive to do missions over street sweeping. Players are missing entire story lines, challenging encounters, etc. because they Street Sweep right past those encounters. This is to encourage them to do missions without nerfing anyone nor giving a rediculous boost to IM. Really it's better then upping the XP boost from missions because the skilled players rarely die in missions anyway
Problem is I outlevelled most of the Hollows and Striga content only doing missions. I made another character just to go through all the hollows stuff and found it difficult to stay within the level restrictions to finish Hollows storylines. Halving the debt in missions means I need to spend more time dying outside of missions. 
I'd like to see missions scale to your security level clearance more. I suppose a Flashback system is the alternative to this, but if the missions scaled then the enemies inside would always be around your level so we wouldn't need level restrictions.
Sounds good!
Will make the new AT's alittle eaisier but it will make all the new guys have to work 2x as hard to earn the debt bades we got so easily (Got all 3 debt badges in 1 day on 1 mission. 3 words. Bugged Rikti Respec.)
I'm loving these posts saying things like "what? I'm confused. What's the reason for this?!"; acting like they've never been miffed at debt ever in their lives.
But anyways, one of the many things to look forward to in I5. And glad to hear that I5 is underway already.
Personally, I don't like it. I feel the current debt system is quite fair, and I don't feel the need to "dumb it down" as it were. There is hopefully a deeper reason to this change than appeasing the whiners, I'd just like to know what it is.
How... sudden.
The first one has me perplexed. The begining of the game is not difficult and rather carefree as far as debt. Cool change but, in a word... huh?
The second one...
Cool! Now TFs won't be huge debt fests in the 20s and pickup teams won't be as dangerous.
Nice changes. Not sure why they happened, but nice changes.
They're trying to get more people to do missions instead of street sweeping and herding.
This may be another incentive: Have a mission counter in the bio window like the badge thing. MTD (missions to date) or something, with the number completed next to it. Just entering and exiting a mission wouldn't count.
You know there's gotta be people that would like that just for bragging rights.
*Had to edit this to include the possible suggestion of some type of accolade for completing a certain amount of missions. If you could get +5 base end. or +5 base hp for every X missions completed, you'd see more people doing missions.
Yes, I can now lvl to lvl 6 and make it to PI faster to get PLed without being worried about debt. /end of sarcasm
But I do like the idea, but many will take advantage of this.
Leave xp alone, I only get time to play a "certain" amount time. sigh ....guess we will have to wait and see.
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Um... baiting people to play missions? Why?
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Because that's where the game is, I'm just guessing.
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I understand why people like the reduced debt, and why it's being seen as an encouragement to run missions rather than street sweep.
Personally, I no longer mind debt. As a blaster, I've tasted my share of it. I used to get all bent out of shape over it, but recently I've come to accept it as a way of life and embrace the additional influence you build as a result. Besides, it seems that since I've made it into the 30s, debt doesn't last very long anyway. Get a good team, set your slider to "Invulnerable" and the debt just melts off. (get a bad team and it piles up, but I digress)
Since I only do street sweeps as a part of a "defeat X villains" mission, I'll almost always get the reduced debt. I'll like the faster leveling, but miss the additional inf per level.
States sorry to do it, but I got to use your own words against you. If you're going to halve debt, then it should be across the board. The ability to do missions solo varies by AT. Street sweeping was supposed to be there for the people who have problems soloing missions. It's supposed to give them something to do. Now you want to punish that behavior.
You said:
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I've stated before - I don't want FORCED grouping.
All Archetypes CAN solo. Some do it slowly, some do it quickly. Some can solo most missions, some can solo fewer missions. And worse comes to worse - a hero can always hunt the streets and stop some crime there. That was always the intent of city zones.
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Your post
Has this changed? What this is going to do is further widen the solo gap among the ATs. It seems to run contrary to your stated goals. Perhaps those goals have changed.
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
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States sorry to do it, but I got to use your own words against you. If you're going to halve debt, then it should be across the board. The ability to do missions solo varies by AT. Street sweeping was supposed to be there for the people who have problems soloing missions. It's supposed to give them something to do. Now you want to punish that behavior.
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That's what teams are for. And I could be wrong, but the premise of the game is to team and do missions. Guess they're just trying to get that back on track.
You know, this isn't a bad idea even though I don't think debt is that noticable with the difficulty slider. I'll tell you why I like it: my tank dies a lot less (since Unstoppable went away) than my blaster. It's goint to be hard for you to ever make my blaster much more surviveable fighting +3 mobs in the post 30 game. But you CAN mitigate blaster debt--or better yet everyone's debt--when doing missions.
So I give you thumbs up.
But about Energy Absorption and Ice tanks...
So will anything be done to even the scales for those who have been playing longer, say have toons in the 30's and 40's who are in a world of debt?
And does this mean that Issue 4 will be going live very soon since you're now talking about Issue 5?
Suicide travel will be more common. I know I'll use it on early alts. On the wrong side of the zone, or need to get to some spot closer to the hospital than where you are? Kill yourself and you get a free port to the other side of the zone.
This isn't game breaking, but pushing the debt free levels up to 10 means that people will have more opportunity and reason to exploit a game mechanic for an unintended side effect.
I personally support the reduction of the Rest refresh timer. It has enough disadvantages to keep it from being abused, lower the timer so that it's usable more often to reduce downtime....
I think this is a postive change. While I don't hear the masses asking for this, no one is going to say no to an upgrade.
Not like the xp leash that most of us didn't want.
H: Blaster 50, Defender 50, Tank 50, Scrapper 50, Controller 50, PB 50, WS 50
V: Brute 50, Corruptor 50, MM 50, Dominator 50, Stalker 50, AW 50, AS 50
Top 4: Controller, Brute, Scrapper, Corruptor
Bottom 4: (Peacebringer) way below everything else, Mastermind, Dominator, Blaster
CoH in WQHD
Nice. Especailly about Mission map debt being halved.
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