Rumor Control: Stores aren't going anywhere
By
anachrodragon,
Posted on: 2005-07-05 17:10 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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I was better- but I seriously learned and went after my optimal drops. As Icy, that was Freakshow. Sweet, Tech-dropping Freakshows.
It wasn't everything I needed, but it sure did wonders for patching up Enhancements into that + or ++ range.
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Except that it seems (for example) that almost every magic-dropping enemy is resistant to dark attacks making fighting them with a Dark Melee scrapper or Dark Blast defender (especially) somewhat tedious compared to other enemy types.
The big problem with buying enhancements from contacts is that if you team up a lot it can be very easy to level up to the point that their best enhancements are barely useful by the time you unlock them. The last couple of alts i've played into the 30's have very often had their contact's enhancements be yellow 2 hours from the time they unlocked the "good stuff". Perhaps if contacts had a larger range of enhancement levels having them as your primary source would be useful. Otherwise you're effectively punished for teaming up a lot unless the Devs implement a system of forcing teams to cycle through each member's missions, which would still not fix the problem while being even worse. i also have to agree with the poster that pointed out that spending your time yelling over broadcast trying to trade with people who have access to the enhancements you need doesn't seem very superheroic.
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I did say one other thing - that dropped Enhancements are useful only for what you can sell them for - because everyone purchases their Enhancements at the store (or at least most of them).
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And how hard would that be to fix?
If the drop rate has been set at (to pick a number) 20% chance of training and 10% chance of DO for lvl 25 mobs, why not just divide those by the proportional value of an SO, so instead of having a 30% chance of a Lt. dropping something I dont want, I have a 2.5% chance of a Lt. dropping something that I MIGHT actually want, and if I dont, it averages the same value as all those craptastic DOs and training enchancements I will NEVER USE AT 25.
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I did say one other thing - that dropped Enhancements are useful only for what you can sell them for - because everyone purchases their Enhancements at the store (or at least most of them).
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When people get useful enhancements they use them. The problem is it doesn't happen often enough.
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Until some other system comes along, stores are here for now. So Stores will be here for I5, CoV and beyond.
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So, when the second wave of Rikti hit Paragon and the stores are out of supplies we'll have to beg Contacts (and each other) for Enhancments? So you mean, there'd be an actual drop system worth paying attention to? There might be a really good reason to have skills?
Whoa. 
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I was better- but I seriously learned and went after my optimal drops. As Icy, that was Freakshow. Sweet, Tech-dropping Freakshows.
It wasn't everything I needed, but it sure did wonders for patching up Enhancements into that + or ++ range.
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Except that it seems (for example) that almost every magic-dropping enemy is resistant to dark attacks making fighting them with a Dark Melee scrapper or Dark Blast defender (especially) somewhat tedious compared to other enemy types.
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Well, for the CoT, after 30, the Spectral's dissapear(replaced by Behemoths), and they're the most common Dark resistant CoT mob. The 20s can be rough though, since BP are a nightmare for Dark resistance, and the CoT spectrals are annoying too. After level 30, I didnt find Dark resistance to be a big issue.
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I did say one other thing - that dropped Enhancements are useful only for what you can sell them for - because everyone purchases their Enhancements at the store (or at least most of them).
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When people get useful enhancements they use them. The problem is it doesn't happen often enough.
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True. So very true.
Moreover no one could imagine just running on dropped enhancements (except for toons <12). Therefore the stop at the shops is mandatory to sell & buy. IMO it is one part of CoH that is not fun from a game design point of view. There is no subtility in selling enhancements. Just hop to Talos Island and move from one shop to another. It was challenging the first time, after a few months it's a burden. Sometimes I just go to a close vendor and just sell everything to him because I couldn't care less for the lower buying price.
While the enhancements system is not *that* bad... I believe we could do without the enhancements drop/sell routine. Someone told an interesting idea about making filters to accept enhancements drops. That would be very nice, even if we can only filter out TO/DO/SO. Because getting TOs at lvl 35+ is just showing flaws in the game design of enhancements plus it doesn't help with carpal syndrom.
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I did say one other thing - that dropped Enhancements are useful only for what you can sell them for - because everyone purchases their Enhancements at the store (or at least most of them).
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Not true, I often slot enhancement I have gotten from a drop. I would rather run lots of missions and spend time playing the game than shopping and making sure my enh are always green.
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Ditto. Also, aside from normal missions, doing TFs is a goldmine for drops that I can use. Between what I get and what I can trade with my teammates, sometimes I don't need to shop at the store for quite awhile.
The only issue I have with dropped enhancments is that you recieve way too many training enhancments at high levels. Those typically wind up as "influence only" enhancements since I usually can't use them, and nobody wants them.
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You guys seem to be luckier than me then. It is extremely rare I get a drop that is useful. I was doing a TF last night against mobs that drop my origin and still only managed to get one drop I could slot (which was passed to me by a mate).
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Besides, the stores are nice. We need more buildings we can go into and use. Not less.
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Quoted for truth 
This is a song about a super hero named Tony. Its called Tony's theme.
Jagged Reged: 23/01/04
As I said in my PM, if there's ever a COH 2.0, I'd suggest doing away with enhancements.
Stopping after a fight to see what loot you got is something that dungeon crawlers do, not superheroes. Dropped enhancements are ho-hum, finding temp powers is what's cool. I've always viewed Talos as the dev's gift to players who prefer not to fiddle with enhancements, it's so fast and easy to unload and get back to the fight for truth, justice, and the paragon city way.
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Moreover no one could imagine just running on dropped enhancements
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Thus the reason for the major freak out that forced Statesman to make his own post(wow.. are we good or what?). Anyone who has played this game up to a reasonably high level knows the drop system is completely borked. We all know that contacts aren't that helpfull either.
Getting rid of stores without a major revamp? Red alert time.
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As I said in my PM, if there's ever a COH 2.0, I'd suggest doing away with enhancements.
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I want them gone NOW.. but that is just me.
I recall waaay back in the early days that there was talk of having Super Group "Vaults" where members could store all of the Enhancements they didn't want/need for other SG members (or lower-level alts they get in the SG, etc.). I think that would cut back on the rush to sell. Vaults would also fit in with the new SG bases coming out with COV/COH I5+.
I do like stores though as it makes the city feel more "alive" by being able to actually enter certain buildings.
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I did say one other thing - that dropped Enhancements are useful only for what you can sell them for - because everyone purchases their Enhancements at the store (or at least most of them).
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There's a reason for that States. 90% or more of the drops you get over the course of the game are useless to you. TOs are only desired when they're all you can use and plenty of the drops you get won't be useable just because you lack a power that can use the enhancment type you got. Once you can use DOs, TOs only have value as something you can sell to get the inf you need to buy DOs. Nobody wants TOs when they can use DOs and get a better boost that way. Heck, the effect TOs have is so small they're hardly worth bothering with at all really. And once SOs are available, DOs fall to the wayside too. Once you do finally make it into SO-land, the frequency at which you get useable drops is pretty small since it has to be both of your origin and of a type of enhancement that you actually need. So it's no suprise to me at all that most enhancement that folks really use originate from a store or contact. Relying on drops for what you need is highly inefficient.
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We all buy the lvl 5 at lvl 2, the lvl 10's at 7 and so on.
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some of us don't: i don't buy TOs -- ever. pre-12 i slot drops and sell
everything else. the benefit provided by TOs just isn't worth the effort.
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but in a group, those get deleted right away (or given to other heroes... like Go_Sabres =^_^=).
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Oh, you'll all regret it. I'm following the Hunt brothers lead, and hoarding all the training enhancements to corner the market. 
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I did say one other thing - that dropped Enhancements are useful only for what you can sell them for - because everyone purchases their Enhancements at the store (or at least most of them).
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Statesman, I know that the state of the game right now probably doesn't fit your "original" model, but games evolve (usually for the better). I would hope that if changes were made to the enhancement model, that they would be made in such a way to "streamline" the process for acquiring them. Take, for example, the original model you described. While it certainly promotes more Contact interaction (a great thing in my book), the necessity to trade between players would create a cumbersome system and a "haves and have-nots" situation (worse than it is now), dependent upon who you know.
City of Heroes is still a great game. It offers a very different experience from most of the other MMOs. One of the big "draws" for me was the fact that the only "loot" in game was these enhancements which were readily available to the entire public at storefronts (this was before I realized there actually *was* loot in the form of HamiOs). Obviously, you are totally correct that the current dropped Enhancements are widely viewed as nothing but an influence earner. With the availability at storefronts (a good thing in my book), what else *could* they be?
One suggested revamp of the system that I saw was to do away with enhancements altogether, replace it with the ability to directly *buy* upgrades into your slots. Truthfully, the enhancement system seems a little ridiculous from the "realism" standpoint anyway for some of the origins (how exactly is that grenade supposed to cause my Energy Blast to do more damage again?). The idea proposed was to just charge for upgrades directly on the enhancement-slotting screen, allowing for DOs at 15, SOs at 25.
Another suggestion might be to simply reduce the likelihood of enhancement drops by an order of magnitude (or altogether), possibly increasing the influence reward to compensate a little bit. This might help to alleviate the ever-growing inflation problem that this game is encountering.
Finally, you might throw in the possibility of more "rare" drops, similar in nature to those generated by the Eden and Hydra Trials, and do away with the "normal" drops altogether. Personally, I don't like this idea, as I think it just reinforces the "have and have-not" mentality, but that's just me.
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I did say one other thing - that dropped Enhancements are useful only for what you can sell them for - because everyone purchases their Enhancements at the store (or at least most of them).
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I think there are some things that could be done to make dropped Enhancements more useful (without having any negative impact on stores) :
<ul type="square">[*]Give Contacts the ability to convert other-origin enhancements to one of that Contact's origin types, without changing the level of function of the enhancement.[/list]For example, if my level 36 Mutation hero gets a level 38 Damage Enhancement (Science), he could take it to a Mutation-based Contact, and pay to have it converted to a Mutation Enhancement (still Damage, and still level 38).
This does several things:
(1) Instead of just being a means of getting Influence, drops are now potentially useful for levels that aren't sold at the stores.
(2) Gives Contacts an important new role, and causes the Contact's Origins to matter even more.
(3) Gives us something else to use Influence for.
<ul type="square">[*]Allow heroes to slot enhancements that are higher level than they can use, but have them be permanently converted to their current max level[/list]For example, if someone gives my level 15 hero a level 22 enhancement that I could otherwise use (if it weren't too high level), I can slot it and it will be permanently reduced to level 18.
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I buy my main Enhancements from the stores, but use drops to combine them up when they start going bad. The problem is that with SO's, you can only get them from fighting the right type of bad guy. If you are with a team that is running everyones missions, you might not do any missions with your origin type the entire night if you aren't on long. And forcing people to do your missions because you need to upgrade some enhancements seems selfish.
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I did say one other thing - that dropped Enhancements are useful only for what you can sell them for - because everyone purchases their Enhancements at the store (or at least most of them).
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The big problem with dropped enhancements is that there are so many types of enhancements (first filter for TO/DO/SO, then filter for origin, then filter for something applicable to your powers, then filter for the right levels) that the chances of a drop are pretty low.
However, the advantage of them is that they come in levels that aren't multiples of 5.
A huge isse with enhancements for me is that ever since I2 (and this has been re-enforced a couple times) I worry about the game's difficulty being designed for players who get SOs at 22 and, therefore, to be able to stay in the game I have to be able to get SOs at 22... so none of my alts use TOs at all, hoarding that influence for level 22.
With contacts, part of the problem is the interface. The window doesn't scroll smoothly and DOs and SOs take an effort to figure out what's good for what... I might as well find someone who I can just expect to have it all instead of spending all that time scrolling and right-clicking just to figure out if that contact has what I need.
Perhaps one way to make contacts more relevant would be to have them sell midpoint enhancements? So a 25-30 contact would sell 25, 27 and 30 enhancements... or maybe just 22 and 27? OTOH, what would be really neat (but probably a coding nightmare) would be if contacts could re-sell enhancements... so if I sell Althea a level 22 magic damage DO because I'm natural, if another person asked what she was selling, that DO would be among the options... though such a feature would require a better store interface.
I would be much happier if the frequency of drops were decreased, but the chances that any given drop that I did receive was something I could really use.
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You guys seem to be luckier than me then. It is extremely rare I get a drop that is useful. I was doing a TF last night against mobs that drop my origin and still only managed to get one drop I could slot (which was passed to me by a mate).
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Yeah probably is a bit of luck mixed in there.
One other thing that occurred to me after reading this thread is what about the upcoming SG bases? There was talk a loong time ago (by players, not the Devs I believe) to have a "vault" or "bank system" in the SG base so people could leave enhancments, influence, inspirations for any one of their SG mates to have.
If we had a "vault"/"bank" in the SG base it would make the random drops a bit more useful. For example, instead of hoping somebody on my team can use it. I can drop it off at the "vault" and an SG teammate can use it, or one of my alts can use it, or whatever.
At least it would give you something else to do with a dropped enhancement that you can't use.
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Not sure if this was mentioned or not, but I always thought that there should be some types of enhancements that are only droppable. Something better then SOs (maybe like 40% to one attribute), but still very rare. Enough to where people wont easily be able to farm them until theyre maxed out.
Then again, this presents some problems with balance 
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Oh, hey, that's an idea. And we could make it an instanced creature, maybe in a hard to get to zone. I'm just thinking, maybe, something related to the Devouring Earth....I don't know, like a giant, single-celled organism that takes lots of heroes to defeat, but once you do, gives you an enhancement with a much bigger bonus than regular SOs!
Naaaaah. It'll never work.....
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Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
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I think the problem with making the enhancements more difficult to aquire would result in more Ebay postings, power level requests in exchange for SO's, etc. In other words, uberloot. People were already selling HO's and HO build characters on Ebay. What makes you think that making SO's more difficult to aquire wouldn't generate that off shoot?
If enhancements are to remain in the game, I like the way it's done now, as it's something available to every player, equally.
However, it also may be a good time to look at skills as a possible replacement for enhancements? Probably way too difficult to code now, but what if there were no enhancements and a player could 'train' or gain exerpeince in a skill that would behave in the same fashion as an enhancement would be? Let the player pick the training type for a slot (damage, acc, etc).
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We all buy the lvl 5 at lvl 2, the lvl 10's at 7 and so on.
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some of us don't: i don't buy TOs -- ever. pre-12 i slot drops and sell
everything else. the benefit provided by TOs just isn't worth the effort.
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Only if you can't do the math. Three TO accuracies are 75% of a DO, which means you can realistically fight a level or two above your own and expect to hit routinely. Now, most other TOs don't really do much, so you have a point.
But every time I see someone complain about accuracy before DOs, I laugh at them.
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I did say one other thing - that dropped Enhancements are useful only for what you can sell them for - because everyone purchases their Enhancements at the store (or at least most of them).
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Ditto. I always share... My SG is very good about it, we save things up for one another.
And for those levels where enhancements that are in the green range are NOT for sale, those drops are priceless.
Not true, I often slot enhancements I have gotten from a drop. I would rather run lots of missions and spend time playing the game than shopping and making sure my enh are always green.
I also give away SO's to people on my team who are the same origin all the time .
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