Stronger lvl 50's thread

So, I read in another thread that during hero con Posi mentioned something about being able to make stronger lvl 50's, by completing difficult tasks. This got me to thinking about a suggestion I had made a looong time ago. Into the way back machine! all the way back to before inventions!

Anyway, way back when the university build areas were still big dirt holes with guys with shovels in them, I made a suggestion about a system to give players small permanant buffs to their characters using the (at that time) apparently useless university. Where in, a character could go to the university and see an instructor. This instructor would give the character tasks- missions essentially, but missions that would give no XP, or bonus. The trade off would be at the end, the instructor would award a minor permanant increase to the character. Perhaps recovery, or regen, or acc. or dmg. The class could be repeated X amount of times, where X would perttain to the characters lvl. For instance, Steel Canyon could enroll at lvl 10, run the class 5 times. Talos would enroll at lvl 20, run the class 10 times, etc. At the time, I had suggested the buff be something like say, 1% for a dmg buff. five times through the class in steel canyon would give a 5% buff, with no more abvailable till talos island. 5% dmg buff at lvl 10 did not seem overpowered to me, and the amount of time needed to run the class five times would seem fair for the buff. 10% more from talos, maybe 10% more at lvl 30, and 10% at lvl 40 would be roughly an SO worth of dmg buff at lvl 40, but you would have run that class 35 times also.

These buffs would then be granted to the character in the form of an inherent power, which at the time I had suggested would be coded as a lvl 51 power so the auto exemp systems in PvP would automatically disable it. Nowdays, it could likely just be disabled for PvP by other means.

Now, as for how this relates to this statement from hero con, my idea suggested that once a character reaches lvl 50, there would be no limit to the number of times a class could be run. in effect, this would give players a reason to play 50's besides PvP or farming. with Xp not an issue, influence would not be awarded for the classes instead. This would allow players to continue growing a character past lvl 50, making them stronger.


So, I found it curious that Posi had mentioned something of a stronger lvl 50's system, as I had figured this whole concept had been largely dropped when inventions were introduced.

Not to say this idea is what is coming down the pipe, I am purely speculating and strolling down memory lane.


So,

speculation number 1: the above, or something along those lines.

speculation number 2: forget all of that, they are writing up some standard issue common MMO blah blah raid stuff with "gear" (or this games version of it) associated etc, like everyone else and their brother has.

Myself, i hope for a system like what I describe above, so solo players, casual players, any player can participate in the system, rather then writing up a few giant raids that take hours to complete and make a giant lag fest etc. The whole "difficulty by requiring huge numbers of players to defeat" concept is old hat.


So, I invite you to speculate with me! what is the new system Posi hints at, what do you hope it will bring for you? What would you like to see it do for your characters?

Holy cow... all those damage buffs would completely eliminate the need for teams! Soloing anything up to and including GM's and AV's would become commonplace for any build. If the numbers were watered down some more I could see it working perhaps.

Having said that I can see your intrigue for going through tasks or trials to get permanent buffs. And personally I'd much rather have that as an alternative to IO set bonuses.

Wasn't something about "universal slots" mentioned in the marketing survey? I'd taken it as level 50s would do something to unlock enhancement slots that enhance the overall character as opposed to a single power.

Allegedly, there will be universal slots enabling you to reach a "theoretical" level 60. Meaning there will be 10 slots, but you remain level 50.

Still just a rumor as far as I know though.

There isn't even that much information to speculate on. I'm just going to post my wishful thinking.

Ideally, it'd be a major new game mechanic a la the Invention System - something that improves performance by orders of magnitude, provides complexity and long-term (months, years) goals for characters, and offers rare, powerful and costly rewards not attainable by casual players.

I think the new system should not offer an alternative to the IO system for improving characters. Players should not be given the option of going "Oh, I can't afford a -KB IO. Maybe I'll do X content and get a -KB bonus instead!" That just diminishes the value of IOs without adding anything really new or desirable. Rather, the new content should be complementary with and improve upon what you can already achieve with IOs. The majority of top-end IO builds focus on recharge and/or defense. I'd like to see the expansion offer feasible ways to build for, say, massive amounts of +Dmg and +Reistance. How about building for high mez resistance? What about massive amounts of +HP?

Anything that's as simple and easy as doing a thinly-disguised paper mission and getting a bonus would be a huge disappointment. If i9, a free issue, can completely change the face of the powergaming metagame I expect more from a paid expansion than glorified base empowerment buffs.

Regardless of what new systems the expansion offers I would like to see improvements to existing systems. New IO mechanics, new ultra-rare recipes and an extension of the invention system's capabilities would be great. We got some of these with the i13 sets and later on with PvPIOs. I've been waiting for a TAoE set with decent bonuses that's not Position's Blast for a long time now.

I don't expect any nerfs to IO sets as a result of the new bonuses. I expect that the way they will "challenge" heavily-IOed characters will be to implement more critters that vastly exceed or break the norms of the game. Things like Reichsman and GW with Mag 100 mezzes, Hamidon which hits through phase and ignores all defense and resistance, Winter Lord with hitpoints in the hundreds of thousands, Recluse with his 4 towers of cheat codes. Even, as a less extreme example, the final ITF mission where the Nictus Essences are immune to mezzes and have autohit attacks. IOs are a neat bonus in such encounters but they don't decide success or failure, unlike AV/GM soloing where the quality of your build can make or break the attempt, and characters without IOs can still contribute meaningfully as well.

I think you can see a trend in recent content pointing towards all this (Reichsman, Winter event). Castle has mentioned that some future enemies might have diminishing returns applied on stacking debuffs. I expect him to use this mechanism to produce more enemies that can't be quickly chewed through. I also expect to see more "scripted" encounters such as in the last mission of Barracuda's strikeforce and more Winter Event-style mini-raids.

As far as I know, the Universal Slots thing was only ever mentioned in that marketing survey NCsoft did. While a lot of features from that survey have indeed materialized, it's still not a guarantee that we're going to get everything in there.

I'm a solo, casual player. I solo as much or more than I team. And the only planning I do on my builds is to know what powers I want when. I've never had a purple (that I know of), and the sets I slot are more of a "Yeah, that bonus sounds good, I'll go for that".

I enjoy both of my 50s just as much as the rest of my characters.

Since I'm the "target" of this idea, tell me again why they need to be more powerful?

Meh, I could go along for this. As if my Claws/WP wasn't godly enough =P

Okay, maybe not orders of magnitude. That sort of stuff is reserved for superteams abusing stacking buff/debuffs. As long as it's a significant boost to performance, includes rewards that aren't casually attainable, and creates some sort of long-term advancement goal, I'll be happy.

Frankly I am unhappy to hear about any "improvements" to 50s. One of the very best things about this game is that you can realistically get a character to 50 and kit him/her out the way you want and be finished. I like finished characters, and I like unfinished characters before they become finished -- I'll make an alt to experience that.

Also, the stronger 50s thing is a trap. At 50, we're already too strong for a lot of the content, and even moreso if we use invention sets. The only way to challenge us with new content is to make it drastically harder, which will, at a stroke, render all current 50s "weak" until they gear up with the new "improvements." So no matter how the devs approach it, making such a change will feel like nerfing established, mature superheroes, who used to be the world's best.

The people they seek to please -- particularly here I refer to the vocal folks who have one 50 and don't want to make alts, but want to keep progressing -- will rapidly finish the new content...and be back in the same boat. They will quit anyway, so retention through moving the goalposts in this fashion is an illusion.

The Devs may yet pleasantly surprise me -- they've done so many times before -- but I have dark forebodings about this proposed change, so far.

I think a lot of the arguments presented here preclude the possibility of new content of increased difficulty released alongside the increased ability.

I think it would be most logical to presume that the "extremely difficult" content that is being added and the "better 50" content that is being added are responses to each other.

How do we keep the game from being stale? Adding more similar difficulty TFs and storylines? Nope.
Add different difficulty TFs and storylines, (in this case, harder), and enable the players to work to be able to achieve a level of power where they will be able to handle this new content.

Will a "level 60" find running older TFs (like, say, Numina's) easy? Yes. But, well, we already do.
Will a "level 60" be able to do things that weren't 'intended'?
We have players Soloing the ITF, Soloing GMs, Duoing the MS.
We have 17 minute ITFs, and 30 minute LGTFs being run daily.
Quite frankly, there needs to be more high-end content, and if the best way to do that is to ALSO give us a way to become yet more powerful, so be it. Sounds like it'll be fun.

As to the people who think that the possibility of increased power 50s will ruin their non-increased-50's fun, I ask this:
While running around at level 23, did you ever have less fun because you knew that somewhere out there there was a level 50 who could waltz through your most difficult of missions?
How about when you join an ITF as a level 37, and most of the rest of your team are 50s? Did that ruin your gameplay experience?
I posit that these changes will be no different.

I really like the idea of "universal slots" and of making our 50's even better! On top of that I want harder content! Perhaps could be tougher content that was only unlocked for "enhanced" characters. Maybe a special Zone that could also only be accessed by those 50+.

I like it...make it so!

I just want to add that if universal slots(US) are coming, I'd really like to see the requirment for obtaining a US be smoething other than raw farming.

I think it would be good for there to be a requirement for content requriements. Such as:

x number of badges.
Accolades x, y and z.
x number of contacts completed
Teamed x number of hours
x pvp kills
x number of oroboros.
dayjobs x y and z
Defeated AVs x, y and z.
defeated GMs x,y and z

etc.

My math is a little weak, but according to my calculations, 114% of toons are created for the purpose of farming.

Seriouslly though. Reward game content...not farming.