Thoughts on Level 50-60 Content. . .

Either way, my stance on this is, if you want level 50-60 content, why not simply make it level 50 content? In fact, this is one of those things that GR promises.

Personally, I always insist that CoH is not an MMO that's about hitting the level-cap. I like to call it an "enjoy the ride" game. That said, it also applies to 50s, as by the the time you hit 50, you likely still have content you have yet to do. I have yet to hit 50 and do all level 45-50 arcs and T/SFs.

Sure, eventually you will have done all content, but that will happen with every MMO. Content will always be finite and it will always be quicker to play content than to make content. Raising the level-cap doesn't change that, which seems to be the major illusion behind that. Oh, we have ten more levels! That means we have ten more levels worth of content! Technically true, but you can have new zones, new contacts, new story-arcs and T/SFs, even new raids without raising the level-cap.

What this means in relative terms is that CoH will have more end-game content than MMOs that do contiously raise the level-cap, if only because the old end-game content won't become outdated.

TL;DR: I would love more content, even end-game content, but I so no reason to make it so the old end-game content simply isn't end-game anymore.

I honestly didn't really notice people complaining about level 50 until a newbie in my sg got his first 50 saying plainly. "What now?" Sure I could of told him to make a new character because when I got my first 50 I went right for the EATs. Most people never really retire their 50 because even if you make it to that level I bet that character's not even finished. So in reality your never done with your 50s. My first 50 was very noobish. He was full of SOs, so a year later I revisited him and gave him a nice respec and now he's a blank slate I can remake how ever I want. I love this game, I have never found a boring moment in it. Even when I hit 50 it never stopped fun times with my sg mates. I don't know. These are just some thoughts. A good sg can really make or break the game for newbies. It did for me. I suppose I'm saying doing stuff with my sg was my after 50 content. (I'm wondering if any of that made any sense to anyone)

aside from the fact that the devs said there would never be another level increase after 50, i will say that whoever thinks adding more levels to the game will make it more interesting have never actually watched what happens when the new levels are introduced. what happens is, people power level through them and hit cap again and then after a month or so start whining that they want more levels. or the causal gamer never has anytime to get to the max level which makes them feel alienated and they soon leave the game.

if you want to play a game where level increases are what interests you then go to the other games that do that. this game is all about the "casual" player. it has a level cap which can be reached by normal game play and not tedious grinding. it doesn't require the best loot to play. it doesn't require you to run back to your dead body 50 miles away with the hopes that no one stole your stuff.

I play my 50's all the time. I vastly prefer the post-50 game to the leveling grind. And I would not like to see the level cap raised for all of the reasons enumerated above. The only thing I would like to see are additional slot opportunities for busy 50's. I'd love to be able to get a few extra slots in all of my 50 toons. Even toons that are "set" could use an extra slot in Swift or Hurdle, or a defense slot in Combat Jumping.

WoW's grind is a lot, lot shorter than the average character's grind in Cities, actually, and with the Dungeon Finder, teams pop up a lot more frequently..

Call BS if you like, but it is what it is. Unless you're factoring PLing into the equation, at which point you're skewing your statistics so hard in Cities' favor it's not even funny (and even going so far as to compare apples to oranges - while Cities devs are great, they don't kill 1-50 in 4 hours exploits nearly as quickly as Blizzard does, because Blizzard has a habit of bringing servers down for that level of exploitation, last I checked). Of course, it could pretty easily be argued that comparing newspaper grinds to WoW questing is also apples to oranges.

And why would you call BS on the Dungeon Finder? It exists, it works, and I've found it to be handy for when I want to team, even on the legion I have sub-60.

I didn't miss the nerf. I'm pointing out that if you're applying the same standards to Cities, people hate the early and midgame just as much here as they do in WoW. I'm also adding that the Cities devs will wait for a while in order to get their own patching process done instead of bringing servers down for a hotfix, unless something is exploding the servers.

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This is exactly what you did in your first post--if you really believe this, then stop pretending your assumptions are fact rather than your opinion.

Then it was unintentional, and a response to your own hyperbole. Please do not pretend your own assumptions are fact rather than your opinion.

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You really think that having a computer program automatically pick teammates for you is better than being able to consistently pick teammates from a large list of possible choices on your own?

Oftentimes? Preference is about the same. You display the signs of a teamstarter, and you might prefer building your own. That's cool. Even with the most meticulous teambuilder, there are sometimes problems they don't account for, though.

Me, I just want the team to be going, and I don't care if I meticulously build it by hand with a bunch of random people that are thinking "phat xp/loot" or if someone else/a computer/etc builds it for me. Again, my experience is that regardless if a computer or a person builds it, that it can go just as wrong, just as frequently either way. (If you're recruiting primarily friends, it becomes apples/oranges, again, though. )

I am actually going to apologize, rereading back on the thread. I misread your post as a declaration of fiat that WoW was flatly a horrible grind at all times instead of a "This is what I experienced when I played the game" post.

My experience with both Cities and WoW was radically different. In the name of full disclosure, my first 50 (blue, obviously) was roughly in the I6 era, and I started that character during the head start. My second (a red) was after Weapon Customization. Conversely, in WoW, it took me relatively little time to go from 1 to 70 (I played during BC), especially compared to Cities - roughly 6 months real time, and that was with frequent breaks to level professions, RP (oh no I'm from Virtue run!), and the like, and at that point, I still wound up doing server firsts (our server opened with Burning Crusade). The grind showed up in spots (30, mid-50s) but never so bad that I was tempted to quit. I was foraging for quests in places, but I never had problems finding groups when I wanted them. I was also fairly well connected, though.

I find that even as Cities has improved its leveling curve, so has WoW, though in different ways and different places, but this is my opinion.

At the time I was grinding to 50 as a major thing, the Kheldian unlock was at that point and I was interested in the new AT. (Yes, I am aware it is changing.) The other time I did it as a major thing, it was the VEAT unlock. Beyond that, in general? It's the next power, the next thing to slot, the next minion, etc, or merely just the act, the zen of the unfocused grind that all MMOs can be and Cities often exemplars, especially with newspapers - achievement and socialization, mowing through critters with shiny powers, talking to compatriots and watching numbers increase.

I will object to referring to a discussion thread as a poll. It's a discussion thread, it isn't a concerted effort to garner opinions from the playerbase as a whole. Yes, the people that frequent S&I took sides against it, but that's just a very, very tiny subsection of a self-selecting group of people.