What is the philosophy/idea behind set bonus exemptions?

I for one think that Diminishing Returns is an unfair system when it comes to PvP. Why should anyone that has invested that much time in an alt be reduced to nothing and put on a par with someone who has "Just popped in for a look"

PvP as it is, whilst leveling the playing field for noobs seems to have done away with most elitism, and the PvP IO's just seem to have become the newer shinier Purples.

OP, if you want good gear, go earn it, if you want to PvP, go get in the zone, if you want Purples, go earn the inf to get them or kill the mobs to have them drop.

Do not come on here crying about this that and the other simply becasue you don't have the time or inclination to go and get it. You need to earn it in this game, no one's going to hand it to you on a plate.

And before anyone has a go, I have had a few Purple drops, but like to sell them to buy stuff for my alts, and although I pvp a little to try and get the SG stuff and the odd badge I haven't had a PvP IO drop, but don't come on here wining about it. If I spent a long time "Succesfully" PvPing I might have expected a drop or two if I had killed many players alts, but as I only have around 200 or so pvp kills across my alts I neither expect to have a PvP IO, as I would think they would have roughly the same drop rate as Superior Recipies, which means I would have to kill 1000's in PvP to get one.

Anyway, that's enough of that. To sum up, if you want the leet stuff, go earn it and put the time in, if you don't put the time in, don't cry if you get ganked in a PvP zone by someone who has.....

But that was the whole POINT of super-rares, was that they exemplar down where other IOs do not. That is exactly how they were advertised as being BETTER than standard IOs.

Attempting to change that because you aren't getting rare drops... tsk tsk.

Every game I enjoy have this, that items, powers, units, whatever have pluses and minuses to them in an attempt to balance them while giving a sense of variety. This is simply one aspect of IOs, the higher the level they are, the greater the level range where their bonuses vanish. This is on top of crafting costs or ED ringing away part of those higher than SO enhancement value.

What's happening now is buying remorse, now that SSKing is forcing pimped out 50s to play at levels where their IO bonus fail, unless they are purped out level 50s.

Few things... bonuses and IOs do help, but you can do decently with regular enhancements. There is "gear" in CoX, but not as much need for it as you see in WoW and other games.

Also, if you are planning to PvP in the lower level zones, why are you bothering with level 40 IO sets? Slot IO sets that will be in range for the zone(s) you want to hang out in. There is a reason for why level 33 recipes usually cost more than level 34 and 35 recipes, for instance.

I use the more common IO sets for all of my characters (I have had all of two purple recipes drop in all my time of playing, and only have a decent amount of cash... I'm still working on getting those more common IOs on a lot of my characters). I'm also quite happy with their performance. I could eek out just a little bit more performance out of them with Purples, but that would be a lot of cash for not a whole lot of gain. That's the great thing about this game, you don't need the l33t g34r to get the job done.

Do you really want to be trying to take down someone who's defense numbers, even with you having SCADS of +To Hit, mean you're still only hitting at 5%?

Like a defense-capped Inv/* tank sitting someplace near the 50% defense range with nobody near him?

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

That doesn't happen in-game. DR caps defense lower than that, even on a Tanker (well, you could get up to that 50% if if you had lots of external buffs, but solo you won't be anywhere near that unless you explicitly build for it). On top of that, the multitude of accuracy and tohit buffs available to attackers mean they'd be hitting that Tanker at least fairly reliably. Even with DR and elusivity at least partially implemented to make defense-based sets "not suck" in PvP, there's a reason resistance is preferred over defense in PvP.

There are/were people who kitted out their toons to fight at a specific level in PvP to get around the issue of set bonus exemptions.

If you drop the idea of the set bonus exemption you will also merely pin the value of the top level IOs of that specific type, and the lower levels will be considered less worthy (ie, junk).

Did you want top level toons to be the ones who only get maximum rewards or should lower level toons have the opportunity to be competitive as well when getting drops in the market?

This would also be power inflation and the ramifications for that wouldn't just be felt in PvP. The broad theme of not losing *anything* by exemping would mean that everyone would be encouraged to level as high as possible *before* participating in anything, whether it be Task Forces or PvP. Your idea isn't bad prima facie, but it does gut one of the significant reasons why PvP and Purple IOs are so valuable.

PvP IOs and Purple IOs break the set bonus rule and everyone understands the innate value of their ability to do so, thus making them desirable. The fact that they are rare also means that it won't break the game. Making every common IO do the same would alter the fundamental nature of leveling and game play.

Just remember that the rarity of Purples and PvP IOs are a substitute for endgame play as well. People will spend hours in order earn inf and look for those drops in order to maximize their toons. Devaluing that impetus by giving the same benefits to every other recipe would mean those players would have fewer reasons to play. Doesn't sound like a good idea to give players fewer reasons to play.

This is why it won't work for the developers and for everyone else who is talking against the idea.