New efforts!

[worldweary]

Did anyone else feel like the Devs kept splitting the player base every time they made changes?You had Red Side,Blue Side,Gold Side,AE and Incarnate content that divided players depending on if you were lvl shifted.I know many of you were in Super Groups and others were invited to certain channels so you had no trouble getting teams for most content but it felt like if you didn't keep up with lvl shift's you were left behind.

[pinballdave]

Not necessarily make a fortune, but it was certainly the best way to give a new character a start without having to rely on shifting inf from another character. What I would wind up doing with a new character was hitting the AH as soon as I'd built up a couple thousand inf and bid a pittance on low-level rare salvage, then take it to a vendor to sell back, repeating until I'd built up enough of a base where I could troll the high-end SOs the same way -- initially just Mutation, because the store in Steel Canyon could be run to fairly safely at low level, expanding to the other origins. A relatively small amount of work could net a character their first million or so inf, at which point they were pretty well self-supporting.

There were folks that would 'dump' level 35-level 45 Fly or Intangible recipes on the AH. Vend those at a NPC store and your rate of return was quite good.

[pinballdave]

Did anyone else feel like the Devs kept splitting the player base every time they made changes?You had Red Side,Blue Side,Gold Side,AE and Incarnate content that divided players depending on if you were lvl shifted.I know many of you were in Super Groups and others were invited to certain channels so you had no trouble getting teams for most content but it felt like if you didn't keep up with lvl shift's you were left behind.

A good global channel was what most needed to get in good groups for task forces or trials. If you wanted in a PuG radio group, most people used broadcast.

[Auroxis]

Did anyone else feel like the Devs kept splitting the player base every time they made changes?You had Red Side,Blue Side,Gold Side,AE and Incarnate content that divided players depending on if you were lvl shifted.I know many of you were in Super Groups and others were invited to certain channels so you had no trouble getting teams for most content but it felt like if you didn't keep up with lvl shift's you were left behind.

They also added vigilante/rogue, multiple sidekicks and the team teleport vet power(assemble the team).

So while communities were further split, Devs gave us tools to bridge the gaps (outside of incarnate content)

[Ankhammon]

Not necessarily make a fortune, but it was certainly the best way to give a new character a start without having to rely on shifting inf from another character. What I would wind up doing with a new character was hitting the AH as soon as I'd built up a couple thousand inf and bid a pittance on low-level rare salvage, then take it to a vendor to sell back, repeating until I'd built up enough of a base where I could troll the high-end SOs the same way -- initially just Mutation, because the store in Steel Canyon could be run to fairly safely at low level, expanding to the other origins. A relatively small amount of work could net a character their first million or so inf, at which point they were pretty well self-supporting.

Someone in the forums once remarked that you could make enough cash for a new char by simply selling off the original inspirations you got when first logging in.
I tried it and got about 100k.

Could always have farmed the character creation menus. :-)

[Abraxus]

Anybody else feeling just a twinge of excitement about the possibility that 2016 has to be the year that we know IF our beloved game will return?  Not necessarily exactly when it might return, but a "stand or fall", "yea or nay" ruling has got to be somewhere in the foreseeable future.  Even things in the Korean business culture cannot possibly drag out for another year without an answer.  As I measure time, The Force Awakens has already been made, and hit the big screen during this waiting period.  If Rogue One comes out, and we still don't know, then even I would have to admit that this is a fools errand.  :-\ :o :(

[LaughingAlex]

I wouldn't say the community was really split, compared to some other games.  We didn't all play on the same server or side but we weren't at each other's throats trolling one another trying to permanently ruin each other experience either.  I think it was more we didn't have as much communication between players as we likely would have if we were on a single server.

But at the same time, I think it probably helped because some servers had larger numbers of toxic players.  The isolation may have helped us more in the long run.  Simply put, players had a refugee to get away from undesirables.  I know, I am sounding a bit elitistic but, when you play a game for a while with one server where the entire zone chat is flooded with "I want this nerfed cause I hate it" or general personal attacks it gets off putting and you end up wanting to leave the game.  CoH allowed for more refuge from that in the game besides just using a generic ignore feature.

[Mistress Urd]

Did anyone else feel like the Devs kept splitting the player base every time they made changes?You had Red Side,Blue Side,Gold Side,AE and Incarnate content that divided players depending on if you were lvl shifted.I know many of you were in Super Groups and others were invited to certain channels so you had no trouble getting teams for most content but it felt like if you didn't keep up with lvl shift's you were left behind.

Of course if you said anything about consolidating servers you would get a nasty shout down and threats against you. The game probably needed it but that ship sailed a long time ago now.

[Mistress Urd]

Back then, I Didn't like how only VIP's (subscribers) had access to Incarnate content and that it wasn't a Premium option/Veteran reward.

I understand now that since the incarnate trials themselves were also VIP only, and that incarnates weren't required for non-incarnate content, that it was more like an expansion which divided the community a bit rather than a "pay for power" kind of thing.

And since Incarnate content was still in development, giving it a set price would be difficult.

Well it was almost at the point where paying for the game didn't really get me much. There wasn't that much reason for a new player to pay until they hit 50.

Rather than making a VIP only server, I would have made a free player server that was open for all players.

[Arcana]

I don't understand this at all. I used to sell a ton of level 30 and level 35 accuracy, damage, endurance, and recharge generic IOs on Wentworths. It was very valuable to for a crafter to be a master crafter so they didn't have to buy recipes, and it saved in base, wentworth, and personal storage.

There were a few common IOs you could make money off of in theory, but "very valuable" is highly relative.  Pretty much every market activity I ever did ended being more profitable per unit time than selling those IOs, and it was easy to flood the market and make them temporarily worthless for stretches at a time.

[Arcana]

The problem was, as I saw it, was that the Defender inherent didn't give you any assistance in fixing your screwup. Had it been, say, reducing your animation time as your team took damage, you'd have the ability to exhaust yourself (or burn a pile of CaBs) to quickly put out the controls that you should have had up, allowing your team to recover. By not reducing the recharge along with this, you wouldn't be getting the ability to multi-stack anything you hadn't already slotted for extra recharge; you'd just be able to quickly restore what you'd failed to put up (or let drop). Reducing the End cost would often run you out of time as you try to put things back in place, leaving you to faceplant at at near full Endurance.

Its worth considering whether the problem you specify, the problem of having lots of things you could do but not enough time to do them, was a problem the devs determined the majority of players were having and were trying to address.

The *average* player couldn't simultaneously spam attacks and buff/debuff/heal at the same time, because there's not enough end to do that.  The defender inherent was designed to resolve that issue, and only when it became an issue. 

[HEATSTROKE]

Did anyone else feel like the Devs kept splitting the player base every time they made changes?You had Red Side,Blue Side,Gold Side,AE and Incarnate content that divided players depending on if you were lvl shifted.I know many of you were in Super Groups and others were invited to certain channels so you had no trouble getting teams for most content but it felt like if you didn't keep up with lvl shift's you were left behind.

Nope. Not one bit. The majority of people had multiple characters and it was pretty much easy to start a team or find a team for whatever you wanted to do.

I think the level shift thing was overblown. I never had any problem getting on any incarnate team.. that might because of server since I played on Virtue. I could see on less populated servers this being an issue.

[MM3squints]

Nope. Not one bit. The majority of people had multiple characters and it was pretty much easy to start a team or find a team for whatever you wanted to do.

I think the level shift thing was overblown. I never had any problem getting on any incarnate team.. that might because of server since I played on Virtue. I could see on less populated servers this being an issue.

Triumph was a very small server but getting a trial wasn't hard because once one got started, it turned into a marathon. It usually happened from 1600-2100

[brothermutant]

You all got me so in to maxing out my dmg for some of my characters I started playing around with Mids and started a rudimentary mock up of a Single Target Attack chain with a Claws brute I had made pre-closure. Was curious about something though; would I make two separate tables, one for when a buff is up (like Hasten) and one when its down? So I can calculate the best Damage per attack cycle?

[darkgob]

A good global channel was what most needed to get in good groups for task forces or trials. If you wanted in a PuG radio group, most people used broadcast.

Yeah, I'm not really sure how someone can complain about being left behind by the community when they fail to participate in it to begin with.

[Azrael]

Incarnate system.  Design disaster.

A disconnected fracture of generic and cheap powers, drill down interface and mega team super grind end game.  -level shifts.  What a botched Frankenstein idea.  A completely jarring non sequitur to the 1-50 game as we know it.  A cheap bolt on not worthy of the end game long promised.  Not a natural successor at all. 

I played the trials.  Far from feeling incarnate I felt less empowered eg. Keyes.  I wanted solo content.  Progression.  Instead, grinding and fiddling with more loot in an unfamiliar and unfriendly interface.

It all seemed to lack any cohesion or progression of the game I loved.  A design annex which seemed to sum up Paragon's limitations or its leadership.

Azrael.

[Ankhammon]

Her it is, Saturday morning. Do you guys think that there were any supermutants roaming around Skyway today?

I have forgotten what they were really named.

[Azrael]

I liked the Super Trolls.

Azrael.

[Abraxus]

Incarnate system.  Design disaster.

A disconnected fracture of generic and cheap powers, drill down interface and mega team super grind end game.  -level shifts.  What a botched Frankenstein idea.  A completely jarring non sequitur to the 1-50 game as we know it.  A cheap bolt on not worthy of the end game long promised.  Not a natural successor at all. 

I played the trials.  Far from feeling incarnate I felt less empowered eg. Keyes.  I wanted solo content.  Progression.  Instead, grinding and fiddling with more loot in an unfamiliar and unfriendly interface.

It all seemed to lack any cohesion or progression of the game I loved.  A design annex which seemed to sum up Paragon's limitations or its leadership.

Azrael.

Folks have differing views on the Incarnate system, to be sure.  However, knowing that raising the "official" level cap beyond 50 was something that they were apparently just not prepared to do, they were forced to come up with ways to grow beyond that limit, without having to do a low level re-write on major portions of the game.  So, in that respect, it was a "bolt-on" feature, and it was certainly not perfect.  That being said, when I was playing any one of my 25 level 50 characters, I was always trying to make them as powerful as I could given the system at hand, and I pursued their various Incarnate upgrades.  It was a grind at times, but then when you get right down to it, MMOs in general are all "rat bashing" at their heart, and everything else is a distraction so that you don't dwell on that fact.  For me, the distractions were adequate to keep me relatively happy, and coming back for 8 years.  Now that the only taste of it that I get is Paragon Chat, I would give anything to be doing an Incarnate Trial again!

[Azrael]

;)

Azrael.