Excitment... and FEAR.. about new "End Game" content..

Well bugger that. The main reason I want Rogue status on all of my characters is from being damn sick of "Sorry, we're all leveling toons on the opposite side you are tonight. No, we're too low to do RWZ content and we're working on badges/merits/etc that AE doesn't give."

I expect you're going to be 100% disappointed. In the Q&A part of one of the Herocon panel discussions, the devs were very specifically asked about a Shard revamp. The devs made it very clear in the Herocon panel discussion that since it's almost as much work to completely revamp an old zone as to create a new one, they'd much rather create a new one. It's a little frustrating that they seem to never discuss things like shortening the Shard TFs without embedding that in the context of completely redoing the whole zone. What they seem to have firmly in their minds is that either the Shard remains completely untouched or gets a Faultline-like revamp. Nothing in between.

So unless War Witch takes things in a very new direction (and given that they've been working GR for over a year it'd have a disastrous schedule impact to do a 90 degree turn), I don't expect any changes to the Shard at all for GR.

Really? It is one game. Most of us (if not all) have characters on red and blue. I have multiple 50s on either side. Win, win. Co-op has the greatest chance of reaching the most people. This has been pointed out over and over and over, yet the argument is still popping up.

It also goes back to quality and quantity. Blue side has more, but a bunch of it is crap. Th red side may have less, but it is all good and well written stuff.

Meh, not the place for this argument.

I am sure GR, and issues coming down the pipe will be a mix of both.

We've been specifically told by BaB to not take that survey as a guide to what's coming, anyway.

Which is very annoying as piling new content on top of old content that is really showing it's age doesn't make the old stuff look any more appetizing.

Agreed. It would do a lot just to go back to the old Freedom Phalanx TFs and shorten them down, remove redundant missions, change many of the defeat all missions to have actual objectives, etc. The same goes for a lot of old story arcs, in which case just having the damn content give us their cell number by the 2nd mission would work wonders on making them seem much less tedious.

Maybe then teams would be more willing to run blueside story arcs instead of scanners all the time, it's much easier to get an arc team running redside despite having less players around just because the arcs are shorter and have much less fedex-ing and zone hopping.

Haha, yeah, that's why now I always put in disclaimers whenever I bring up the survey and Universal Enhancement Slots. That was my post BaBs was responding to and quoting there.

That's actually not true. While no current end game content *specifically* requires things like purple IOs, its never been true that level 50 content was content literally *all* level 50s could accomplish successfully. When the LRSF came out, the devs explicitly stated that while it wasn't intentionally designed to require any specific magic combination of capabilities, it was designed to require *high* levels of capabilities in general. Just because a random group of uncoordinated players couldn't finish it, even if they could *prove* it was mathematically impossible to complete in theory that didn't mean there was a problem with the strike force. It might have simply meant that the team in question was not sufficiently capable to overcome that particular challenge.

It is fairer to say that in City of Heroes, "challenging content" which includes level 50ish end game content has always been designed to not require any specific thing, but often requires some general level of power and ability to overcome. This basic premise of design was even considered to be true for things like Maria's AV-ladened arc. Those missions didn't require a tank, or require a healer, or require a debuffer, but it might have been either difficult or impossible for a team to complete if they literally lacked *all* of those types of tools. And that was considered working as intended.

The fact that some players have figured out how to do these things with increasingly less capability (but more skill) doesn't change that basic equation.



I'd be careful about overgeneralizing the "level 60" statement, especially if it was a colloquialism written by someone that didn't understand the full ramifications of what a hypothetical level 60 would actually be. But extrapolating from the current game system rules, a level 60 would, relative to a level 50, have about four more powers, 18 more slots, 8% more health, and 9% more base damage.


Now here you're implying something more than just the capability intrinsic in leveling. Level 40s are a little weaker than Level 50s, but the primary source of Level 40s being weaker than Level 50s against level 50 content is the purple patch. At -10, they are functioning at only 3% of their intrinsic strength. Or, another way of putting that is that Level 50s are more than 33 *times* stronger than Level 40s at taking on intrinsic Level 50 content.

I think its within the bounds of reasonable speculation to think that end game progression opportunities might make us 10% stronger in raw numbers and perhaps much stronger than that in certain very specific areas (for example, the Invention system practically oozes recharge buffs). But I doubt Castle is working on an endgame system in which we will eventually become 33 times better than base level 50s.


I believe that the best way to create end game character progress opportunities is to leverage the existing invention system and allow players to create better ways of using it. For example, the universal slots themselves could allow for all new types of universal inventions that allow for character progression capabilities that make more sense for level 50s than other characters. For example, level 50s don't level any more. So any balance constraint targeted primarily on leveling could be significantly relaxed for level 50s. I'm thinking here specifically about travel and endurance. Perhaps we'll have ways to buff our max travel caps (flight?). Perhaps we'll get access to powers with huge endurance costs, but with the ability to buff our endurance recovery to make them credible to use.

Personally, I'm thinking the best opportunities for end game challenges are to put a lot of the game effects into play that are "too annoying" to use prolifically at lower levels, and provide end game progression tools to defend against them or overcome them. Perhaps we'll see significant mez protection for squishies, but more mez in general. Perhaps we'll see more friendly fire problems with rescue missions, but also more powers to manipulate and protect friendly NPCs.


Disclaimer: I'm totally spitballing. I have no information about the endgame content being worked on and haven't asked the dev team about it at all. And honestly, the reason why I haven't is that if I do, I'm immediately prevented from publicly speculating on it or really offering public suggestions about it. Sometimes, its better not to know.

Villains are getting 7 new ATs in GR

Well, that might not be for everyone - not all players enjoy or want the same things

However it's received by the players, with War Witch as lead designer, you'll be safe now - you can fall back on the oldest excuse in the book - "the woman made me do it"

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Honestly, it seems a really round-a-bout way to to give characters the perception of being more powerful and keep in mind, the Devs still believe that one should be able to play all the content without being dependant on the market to do so. Me personally, I could see our Epic/Patron power pools become something more akin to a third Power Set. With a few more powers, you would already have a full set and being the third set, it would be the least effective of the three. The trick is incorporating it without raising the level cap, but even that could be overcome simply by rewarding them like slottable temp powers.

While I see where you coming from, I tend to see my characters as "Heroes-in-Training" and when they finally hit 50 they are the type of comic hero that would get their own comic, because they have come into their own. The only problem is that here, that's where the story ends (TFs and Badging excluded).

Virtually all MMOs are based on that illusion. You get more powerful, but you're confronted by even more powerful opponents. Keep in mind the most powerful level 49 probably levels slower than the average level 14.


All the core content, yes. But the notion that the devs are working on an endgame system that doesn't involve character power progression is something I believe has essentially zero probability of happening.

Plus, players always seem to assume that when the devs say that X is not "needed" that they have to mean "not needed to accomplish to your individual liking." If it takes twelve minutes for someone with IOs to do, and twelve hours for someone with SOs to do, its still doable. It could still be working as intended. People forget that while the devs have said the invention system is not necessary they have also said it provides an opportunity for tangible, material improvements in performance over what you could get without it by design. That additional level of performance is considered optional, because the game isn't balanced around requiring it overall. But "balanced" in this context doesn't mean the extra capability in the invention system is redundant. Invention system participants almost certainly level faster on average, have higher combat capability on average, and can accomplish more for a given skill level of the player on average. That's intentional.

Even if you aren't mathematically exempted from being able to accomplish the end game content without the end game progression options, it'll almost certainly be orders of magnitude easier. Keep in mind it was theoretically possible to complete the original +5 LRSF without inventions, temp powers, or inspirations. That doesn't mean any but a handful of players and builds could actually do so. Does that mean it was "balanced" around temp powers and inspirations (it couldn't have been balanced around inventions for obvious reasons)? No: it was designed to be extremely difficult to complete, and failure simply demonstrated its difficulty.

It was downscaled not because it was too difficult alone, but because it was encouraging magic combinations of builds that made it far easier to accomplish than most combinations of builds.

Endgame content could and almost certainly *will* be balanced around players possessing a certain level of offense, a certain level of protection, a certain level of utility, or rather some combination of all of those, and its mathematically impossible that such capabilities won't be far easier to achieve with a team of IOed players than SOed players, and virtually certainly easier to achieve for endgame-achievement players than generic IOed players.

I'm not excited about End Game content.

I'm certainly not going to delete all my characters that are under level 25 tonight.

I've nothing against more content to do at level 50. In fact, I have a habit of bringing up my old level 50s from time to time to brush up on all the content that has sprung up since they were last active. I very much welcome more to do that isn't just grinding scanners or papers, but I honestly enjoy PROGRESS halting at level 50. I treat this like I treat the "end game" of Carmageddon 2: Carpocalyse Now - the game is over, I can replay all the old stages, do free runs and I own all the cars now. I could possibly brush up on all the engine upgrades I missed out on, too. But I can't expect that a brand new game will open up with ever newer races and ever more upgrades and pickus and ever-newer cars. The game's done. I've seen what I'm going to see. I can just stick around and play it some more, or start over.

At level 50 currently, the game pretty much ends. You can stick around and play, and you can keep on collecting Inventions if you really wanted to, but the character is done. There aren't any more levels, there aren't any more levels by a different name, there aren't any more levels by another different name, and there aren't any more levels presented in such a way that it's not clear that they're just more levels. And there aren't any more levels, either. I'm not half-way towards getting that next major upgrade that has three more major upgrades behind it. I'm done. And I like being done, because I have around 30 other characters waiting in line.

I very much doubt that will be the case when this hits.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

The fact is that CoH is now only limited by our own creative input.
The AE has seen to that.

If you truly want your character to live in their own comic, then we have the tools to write it to be exactly the kind of adventures that you think your character should be having.

I'm pretty sure that AVs and scenarios can be created that will be a challenge to any character that can be build in this game.

If this were the case, we would simply call AE the End-Game-Content, but the Devs apparently don't see it that way.

AE is all game content but it doesn't mean the devs can stop producing other content because of it. Why some of you hating on the end game content that is coming they already said other content specifically for 1-20 is also coming and my guess all level ranges will get new content so why so down on end game content.

I think this is an extreme minority position. Most people expect infinite progress in MMOs. UO, EQ, WoW, EQ2... games with longevity tend to always be adding content and increasing the level cap. CoX has bucked that trend, but it has cost them subscribers in the long run. I know people who left because there was no chance of advancement beyond lvl 50. If Paragon offers some new way to advance "finished" characters, they may retain more subscribers as well as add new ones.