Time to retire TOs?

I'm thinking that TOs may serve more of a purpose once the initial frenzy has abated a touch and players totally new to the game (and some returnees) join. Not everyone will run the new sewer trials all the time - there's still other stuff that can be done - so I'd be very reluctant to see any changes to the system while it's still new and shiny.

But that said some simplification to the whole Enhancement system would be good. Personally I'd love to see a drop down for SOs/DOs based on Origin so that only those available can be selected - that would make life a lot easier. (And changing ambiguous colours would help a lot especially when the symbol's the same... Defence/Resistance is especially true here.)

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

The confusing enhancement names drive me nuts. I never role play origins for my characters. I make them all Mutant because of the easy to understand enhancement names.

I like this combination of ideas from this thread:

1) Drop DOs entirely.

2) Make TOs as strong as DOs, which simplifies the game for newcomers.

3) Rename all enhancements so that they include their function in the name, e.g. "Smite of Hermes (Knockback)"

Playing a free member in beta, I was made painfully aware of the fact that pretty much all of the points made in this thread apply only to VIP's and people renting an invention license.

The reason is that salvage replaced most DO/SO drops. If you do not have an inventions license then you do not receive salvage.

Until I hit level 20 and started getting tip missions, which are reasonably lucrative, my freem hero was living hand-to-mouth most of the time. Even then, I had to supplement my inf by, essentially, farming the sewer trial and I still did not have enough info to fully slot out at level 27.

Yes, freems and preems will be very concerned with taking their handful of loot drops to the right store to get top dollar for them, though that is mitigated a bit by making Mender Roebuck available at level 14 (provided you become entrusted with the secret).

I WAS able to send email with attachments from my VIP to my freem. I filed it as a bug, but I'm unsure that it was actually considered a bug rather than working as intended. If you have friends that are freems/preems then you may find that you can email inf to them and be their sugar daddy, so to speak.

Otherwise, yeah; enhancement drops will be extremely valuable and there are far too few of them to make up for the salvage and recipe drops that we vets take for granted nowadays.

Personally, since their inception I've thought the basic IOs (sans the crafting process) should have replaced the TO/DO/SO system.

i personally dont slot anything until lvl 22 when i can get SOs, if we got SOs earlier i might actually buy them

as for the odd naming and different origin stuff, i think its fine, but what helped me make it easier was Neo Shadowdreams enhancement standardization icon pack, with that the only thing i have to worry about is the picture and what origin it is which simplifies the whole process (for those interested, the thread he started about it is here)

I wouldn't get rid of TOs, however, I would like to see them take a page from the IO system and be made levelless, equivalent to an even-con TO. This would mean that anyone who bought them would at least get benefit from them from 1 until whenever they chose to upgrade to DOs/SOs/IOs. This would let the player buy a set to get some basic functionality, run through the DFB sewer trial, and not have to worry about zipping past the point when they break on you.

Frankly, that's something I'd like to see implemented through all tiers of enhancements, but I think because it treads so closely to territory claimed by the IO system, TOs are likely the only place where the devs are likely to risk implementing, given that they provide such a weak enhancement and are obsoleted fairly quickly. Honestly, I've always found CoH's system of making you weaker as you level up to be fairly wrongheaded.

I'll also second (eighth/ninth?) the call for a standardization of DO and SO names. There's tricks to find your way through the menus, like remembering colours or realizing that they're ordered alphabetically by function, but it's a layer of unnecessary obfuscation and doesn't add enough verisimilitude to make up for the loss of functionality. (I'm wearing 15 gauntlets, 3 helmets and 10 earrings, huh? Serge must be having a fit!)

I'd be for getting rid of DOs, if SOs could be slotted by any character but at 50% effectiveness (the effectiveness of a DO) when slotted by a character other than the matching origin.

I think training enhancements should actually be used for training in the workings of the enhancement system; they should be extremely cheap, so that players can experiment and see how their character performs with different aspects enhanced. Another idea I've had is that from levels 1 through 10 you should be able to right-click an enhancement slot and buy/upgrade a training enhancement for that slot, right there on the enhancement screen.

My Enhancement Simplification for Dummies would be this...

- Get rid of TOs/DOs/SOs.
- Let F2P/Premium players use common IOs.
- Let crafted common IOs drop when a TO/DO/SO would drop instead.
- IOs from sets are only usable for players with access to them.

No I use TOs and DOs on my characters. Some don't recognize their value, but I do. And I don't want to be stuck doing several DFBs on each character just to get them enhanced. One time on one character is more than enough.

If a secondary source of low-level SOs is desired, there's always the market which should be filling up with low level SOs people would rather sell than use and the AE could be modified to sell low-level SOs for Tickets (like it did on its launch).

TOs and DOs are highly undervalued.

WARNING: I bold names.

Devs do this:

Make TOs numerically identical to SOs.

Replace SOs and DOs with TOs.

Voila. Suddenly the enhancement system is simple. This removes:

-TO/DO/SO/IO/Purple/PVPIO/etc confusions. It just becomes TO/IO/Rare

-Removes all the complicated stupid names of SOs/DOs.

-Removes the complication of SOs/DOs being origin specific.

-Is easier to implement than renaming EVERY DO AND SO IN THE GAME. All you're doing is giving TOs the value of SOs and selling them everywhere. It will make the enhancement system VERY SIMPLE, which will compliment the VERY COMPLICATED invention system.

As for what you can use the SO stores for - use them as vendors for costumes/places for contacts. It makes much more sense for magical contacts to be in a magic shop...than it does for them to be chilling in the street 24/7.