Yeah it's not the first time they've done that together. It's generally after a play-changing issue where they want people to come try it out. In this case, the new SK system makes teaming easier and Exemplaring down less painful. It's worth experiencing.

However, it probably does say something about populations. If they were majorly worried about full server lockouts, they could have done the two promotions on separate weekends. However, if the concern is that people will come back and not find teammates, then you want to pack as many people in as possible to make the servers busy. They chose Plan B, so...

To the original issue, heavier dl periods cause slower speeds. If a lot of people are DLing, it will slow down for all. I've seen a full DL and patch take 4-5 hours during quiet periods, so I can only imagine how much worse it gets at a busy time. But that's easily the worst I've ever seen (for any game) and what I say is no excuse, just an explanation.

The Positron quote is a good one.

It has been stated or implied several times that they have an idea for how they might go about adding levels, adding a new dimension without simply extending the present system with more powers and slots.

However, that doesn't mean it's being put into effect, it's just an idea. That a new level cap might come with Going Rogue is a reasonable guess. But it's just a guess, they've said pretty much nothing about the new expansion yet.

(Actually it's so hard to imagine what this expansion contains for actual content that it would pretty much have to contain 10 levels of play to be worth it as a serious expansion. Consider everything City of Villains contained, and how much Going Rogue would need to have to even remotely approach that.

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Originally posted by Beatnik59
I think it would be a very wise decision for the level cap to increase from 50-60 in the next year or so.  Now I understand the argument that merely increasing the level cap isn't content.  That said, increasing the level cap makes the problems of content less severe.

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All of the things that function as endgame content now would no longer do. Level 50 inventions would have to be surpassed. Hamidon-enhancements would be near-worthless. The Hamidon raid, mothership raid, ITF, LGTF, STF, RSF, Barracuda, Kahn - all of this becomes obsolete. Also character builds were never designed to go above 50. They are at a good point where you can't have everything (forcing some decisions) but there are more than enough power choices available to perform whatever role you have effectively.

Most importantly, increasing the level is, as you say, not content in itself. What you want is more content - which is fine - but you're asking for totally the wrong thing. If they made it the goal to increase the cap, that would force 50s to go get which would take practically no time at all, and then we'd be in the exact same position but with zero endgame content instead of the limited amount now.

Increasing level cap has one purpose, and it's not what you think it is. Moving it up doesn't create content. What it does is force people to try the new content. Consider this: They add the Kahn TF, and players try it a bit, but then they go back to the more farmable ITF. Why not? They already know how to do it quickly, and you fight 50 enemies with 50 powers and get 50 drops. It's all the same.

Instead, what if they pushed the level cap to 60 and made Kahn a 60 TF instead of a 50 one? Then you can still run ITF in exemplar mode, but you only get 50 drops from 50 enemies using 50 powers. You'd have to do Kahn to get 60 IO drops.

See the difference? Raising the level cap doesn't create new content, it lets them maneuver new content to make people use it. Blizzard knows this, which is why they keep pushing the cap with their new expansions. It makes all the old raids and old equipment obsolete, forcing people to run the new stuff.

NC is working on a "Going Rogue" expansion, and I have no idea what's in it so it might actually push the level cap. I'm sure it will contain some new content, which I look forward to. But make no mistake, a level raise is not a necessary part of that and wouldn't be doing us any favors.

To be honest, population across the board has been drifting down. That's not a fault of Champions Online though. To be honest, word is that CO is not doing well and less than a month in people are already drifting away. In the words of one person I teamed with last night "I wish I waited for i16 to come out before I wasted money trying CO."

No, the population decay has been slow but steady for months now, and I think it's because there hasn't been anything to really enhance gameplay since the invention system came out.

This month's issue 16 is "Power Spectrum" and if you've always wanted to customize the color of your powers, you can. They even have some more interesting changes, like how you can mix up Martial Arts by changing kick animations to punches. So if you're a person who loves to spend hours trying out different costumes for each of your many characters (and you could, it's that deep) then you'll love it. But those of us focused more on the gameplay haven't really seen anything new.

That said, the population is by no means hurting. What I do recommend though is that whatever server you go to, find that server's main Badge Channel and join it. Not only are they home to the most knowledgeable players, but they are the best place to find Task Force teams, which are some of the best teaming experiences possible.

On Pinnacle it's "PinnBadges"
On Liberty it's "LB"
On Infinity it's "Inf Badge Seeker"
On Protector it's "Protector Watch"
and I don't know the others, but ask around (use help chat "/hc <message>") and you'll find out.

And they are working on a boxed expansion, with no announcement date yet so I'd expect early next year. That will probably push up populations at least for a bit, as it provides an excuse for a new marketing campaign.

With i16 set and out now, I will say yes, it absolutely did.

The AE is still useable (the original i16 approach would have killed it I think, but they refined), and I'm sure there are people farming on it. But there were 3 key changes:

1) Gimped custom-characters or boss-only (or minion-only for that matter) AE stories have reduced rewards, removing that incentive for using AE farms.
2) Sidekicking/Exemplaring is changed. AE used to be the only way to make a team work if the levels were spread all over. Now every team can work like that - you exemplar down to the level of the mission (or sk up to 1 below it) and everyone gets xp up to 50 even when exemplared.
3) Mission difficulty changed. If you want your mission set for 8 people, you don't need teammates or padders. Just go to the Fortunata and change your difficult to 8 people's worth.

The result is that when picking what enemies to fight, you get no benefit from custom-made groups in AE. If you just want a team, you can do any content anywhere with the same formation benefits as the AE teams had (and better rewards). And if you want to farm or challenge yourself, you don't need to recruit players to get the count up.

So if a farmer is still going, he's soloing a contact's mission in PI, rather than grabbing everyone availble for team in Atlas. And that's not just theory, we've been seeing that happen.

(There are still a few people of any level who go to Atlas to find a team, which is a bad habit they'll shake eventually, but bad habits die hard.)

If anything, Taskforces are the new farms. A lot of people are running Manticores and LGTFs since you can get 30-40 merits in under an hour. I personally am trying to get the 66-merit Positron down to 90 minutes. But those aren't so bad, certainly they're better than AE farming to 50 and never leaving Atlas.

I change my mind from day-to-day.

It's interesting that you say "I didn't figure out the tank-healer-dps concept" since it's that rigid line of thinking I prefer to get away from. There's nothing wrong with having that, until people start insisting you always have exactly that. I prefer to take a good team, see what you have, and find ways to make those tools work.

So to that end, for the likelihood of non-rigid teams, villains gets the nod. Sure sometimes you find people who absolutely postively have to have 1-2 brutes and a couple corruptors. But I frequently play the "tank" role with my Mastermind (as it was largely designed to do). And I was on a team earlier tonight with 2 Brutes, 2 Masterminds, and me on a Dominator. And guess who was always the first into combat? (Hint, not the brutes or MMs.) Because playing is looking at my tools, looking at the situation, and figuring out how to make it work.

Villains, by not being as clear-cut as actually naming ATs "Tank" and "Blaster", leads you to that flexible team situation more easily.

However, all Villains have an attack powerset - melee, ranged, or combined. Because of that, they're all somewhat "centralized". Oh not compared to other games, but compared to Heroes.

In Heroes, I can have big fun with a team of 8 Controllers. In theory that should be a horrible team - no Tank, no DPS, and potentially no healer. But with good players it's a great experience for exactly the reasons I described - because you're not just following the formula.

So if I were to casually hop-on and form a pickup group, I'd prefer Villains I think. But if I were able to play the game the way I want to play it, I'd prefer the more role-focused characters of Heroes, but with the team not so role-centered.

----

As for content, at first I thought villainous stories would bother me. That hasn't been an issue, mostly because they're so hard to find! So many of the CoV stories start with "I wouldn't ordinarily ask you to rescue someone, but ..." And you do stuff like "get this item of power and hand deliver it to me." Or worse, "get this item of power and destroy it to keep it away from bad guy X".

Or the favorite for shared content like RWZ or ITF: "A new danger appears so threatening that the Heroes and Villains must band together to stop it." Yeah, every time. Where's the new prize so tempting that the heroes and villains must band together to steal it? Yeah I didn't think so.

There are some decent villainous missions, in that you do evil stuff. But the essential problem with villains, as I noted immediately when CoV came out, is that a villain is proactive.

What is Batman's day like? Find out what Joker, Penguin, Riddler, or any other bad guy is up to. Then go find them and stop it. Works perfect for a mission-based MMORPG.

What is The Joker's day like? Invent your own plan and put it into action. Pretty unlikely to come up with my own evil scheme to take over the world, and then go find some Arachnos agent who just happens to want to give me missions to do exactly that. So Villains ends up feeling like you are running errands for the real villains, with them occasionally telling you how evil you are. Insulting, really.

So story-wise Heroes gets the edge too. But I feel like Villains deserve a shot. The ATs are well-designed and although the population V-side is smaller, I feel like there's a slightly higher caliber there.

But of course the real answer is that most people have both.

City of Heroes and Champions Online should not be compared.

I mean ok, obviously they're both hero MMORPGs and that invites the comparison. But they are pretty different. Or rather I should say City of Heroes is different from the sea of sameness that is modern MMOs.

CoH had the benefit of being created before WoW. Almost every game going into development since then has taken 98% of what WoW did and innovated with that 2% to consider themselves new. And some of these innovations are good (I like CO's single-server setup, for example) but you'll never get a radically new game experience that way.

You said you like WoW. If you like that most content is designed for soloing, that you run around looking for guys with gold ? over their heads, that you hunt specific mobs in shared space for the proper drops, that acquire components which fit into crafted bags that you can use to craft more equipment... If you like the way that plays, but want a new Superhero look, you should definitely give CO a shot.

I hated WoW. I won't be playing CO. It's that simple for me. But you say you liked it. So you certainly know the difference in play experience between that and CoX. Gameplay here is far more like WoW, but with nice superhero stuff like travel powers and more heroic-sounding mission text that nobody reads because you're just counting how many of the baddie you have to kill.

Now as to your specifics: Endgame and PVP in CO are both worse than CoH. But are they worse than CoH was when it was new? No I don't think so. For one thing, CO PVP exists, whereas it was i4 before CoH added it. And at launch, CoH went to 40 with Sewers Trial and Eden Trial as the endgame. So CO beats those.

(Character creation is comparable, but different. In some ways it's better in CO, like how you can choose stances, but CoX has a ton of choices for it's models and a less cartoony look.)

But a lot of what you want are things you really can't determine at the start, they'll depend on how Cryptic carries themselves over time. So you can pick it up and maybe it'll be another "leave and come back" game, or you can do as another poster said and wait a year. We can pretty much guarantee there are going to be power nerfs, as the classless system is just asking for abuse. And Endgame could possibly go in a couple different directions, so you might want to wait and see there too.

But based on what you like, I think you should probably give CO a shot at some point.

The i16 rules for AE basically sum up like this:

If your map doesn't have all 3 enemy levels, reduced rewards.
If you have custom mobs and they are Normal difficulty, reduced rewards. (High and Extreme difficulty get regular xp.)

And one big reason people favored AE aside from farming was that it was easier to form teams by pushing everyone to the same level instead of SKing. Now that happens on any mission, so AE isn't an advantage.

However, farms won't stop, they'll just move somewhere else. The problem with AE was that it pushed farms right in our faces. They were the easiest thing to join, so everyone did. But farming didn't start with i14 and it won't end with i16. And in a sense I can't blame people. The "endgame content" is inventions, which require money or recipes, both of which are easiest to get by farming. There's nothing else to do, really.

So they've used the game to point people in a direction, then spent all this effort to keep them from heading there in a straight line. I'll be happy to see regular mission teams back, certainly. But I'm unhappy that they've spent so many issues doing things that don't add to the play experience, and now they much of another issue going backwards.

People point to Freedom as the most populated server (a self-fulfilling prophecy) but I don't think that's necessarily what you want. All servers have a decent population, and it's long been referred to as "FreeDumb" for a reason. (The reason it's the most populated is simply because it was the first one created. Virtue was second, then they added the rest at the same time.)

Right now I have to give the nod for "friendliest server" to Infinity. Teams I find - villain or heroside - are casual yet competent, and generally fun to be on. Other servers are ok too, most of the jerks have moved on to other games. But that's the one I think I would recommend the most.

It's the title, man. Scared people away!

(Actually I never saw it. I think your timing was just such that it ended up getting buried.)

I didn't play that long, but it didn't feel that buggy to me. I mean I know there were things like "Regen always/never crits", but that's not a showstopper that would justify delaying the game. Maybe I just didn't see the really bad stuff. I did notice the bad pet AI and it didn't feel like it had sufficient customization to me, though I didn't really try to pull the wiring out in the time I had. And PvP is a turnoff for me anwyay, so I'll shrug on thta.

I agree that combat was pretty busy. Surprisingly so actually, as I have a natural dislike of any "auto-attack button." In this case though they made it so auto-attack has a definite purpose and yet doesn't get the job done alone, so that really matters. And blocking is quite relevant. I feel like it would have grown old on me before long though. (Which, to be fair, is what console games do. I think Halo actually gave me ADD as I never played that game for more than 10 minutes at a time. Start it, either die or fight to the next autosave point, quit.)

I largely disagree with you on the "terrain" issue. I mean yes you can pick up a barrel and throw it at someone, but that didn't strike me as a generally sound strategy. And I found that when I tried to pull someoen through a doorway to another room since I liked the angles better there, they completely forgot I existed. And healed back to full. That could be the bad AI again, but it took away from using terrain as a resource the way I wanted to. Although at least it didn't have the WoW problem of enemies seeing you - and shooting you - though a solid wall. How did anyone ever put up with that?

I agree that the customization is tremendous. Well, in terms of look. The way you choose your powers, well I covered that in a different thread but I feel that the mixing & matching style makes them look good but act similar.

I didn't really feel any more heroic here than CoH though. Actually, I never got that "Gah! I'm so powerful I can take on a dozen of you at once!" feeling that
CoH creates (and that some say - fairly - was reduced from CoH's start.) I felt sluggish and weak even when using a travel power or taking down a Supervillain. But it did look good. And I'll give thumbs up to the way the tutorial was done. A little long, but starting by saving the city was actually a pretty heroic beginning. And I liked the voicework in cutscenes and trigger points. I've been saying for a while that more games should be willing to try that.

Though I disagree with parts I think your review is fair. My take in short is that it's yet another WoW clone in a long line of WoW clones, and they dressed it up nicely, fixed some easy nigglies, and innovated a tiny bit. But it still follows a path that I didn't like from the start. If every game just follows this same "99% the same" pattern, maybe that's the safer way to market success but it will just leave you susceptible to the next clone, and eventually people will get tired of it all when someone tosses out the cliched styles and takes a different direction.

Well I poked my head into Dr. Destroyer's Factory, one of three (that I know of) 5-person instances. I was 40 and it was 28, so it was solo-able except for the part that strictly wasn't (need to do 2-3 things at once). Had I found it sooner I would have recruited a team to try it, but I just didn't have the energy to care that much.

Assuming there's more in the closed-off zones of Monster Island and Lemuria, I suppose there's stuff to do. But it bothers me that teaming doesn't fit into the reat of the game, like at all.

It seems to me that in CO (and all WoW clones, and thus apparently MMO from now on), teaming goes like this

"Hi, I see 3 of us are all waiting for this guy to respawn. Want to team up to share credit"?
20 seconds later
"That was easy. Thanks for the team."

And that excludes the many times when they're actually in the area for something else, and either just did that quest or aren't qualified to get it yet.

It's pathetic. The only time you really team up is to do some limited content designed specifically to force a team up. I don't think there's enough of that, and it isn't that special.

p.s. Apparently the enemies in these instances drop loot at the same rate as ones outside, so fulfilling quests and experiencing the content are really the reasons to do it. They therefore aren't farm-worthy, though whether that's good or bad is up to you.

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Originally posted by kikinchaz
Yep, instanced and split into zones with loading screens between each. Total immersion breaker, makes it feel more like a set of levels than a world.

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How immersed do you get, really? I don't recall ever wincing in pain when a character of mine ever ate a fireball. I've never spent an hour poking elves with my pointy sticks and then been shocked to discover I live in on 21st century earth.

Some games (Half-Life, e.g.) may come close to attaining a level of immersion sufficient to make you momentarily forget that you're a fat guy in a chair pushing buttons. But no MMO gets remotely there. And I'm not even sure I want it to, because immersion-breaking things like chat windows and stats details are the kind of things that make me want to play the game at all.

Genetically speaking, each generation is virtually identical to the last one, with only minor (usually cosmetic) differences. Since this is Yet Another WoW Clone, sure it can be the next generation.

Actually if people think a game where steps:
(1) Crowd Control
(2) Auto attack on
(3) Sword to the throat
Repeat (3) until dead
Optionally skipping step 1 for easier fights

is an entertaining way to spend months of playtime, then it absolutely should go to the console for a more comfortable interface. The only reason to favor a mouse/keyboard is when you need the flexibilty of a hundred buttons on a moment's notice.

I however will continue to hope for genetic divergence.

The explanations are really lacking. Stats took a lot of effort to figure out. And how many people take how long to understand those "add this to a power", "works in certain circumstances" things that drop into your inventory? At least they use real numbers, which is something Emmert had specifically tried to avoid with early City of Heroes.

But to the OP's point, "everyone does everything" definitely is a problem and it was one of my big complaints against World of Warcraft (which I never liked), and Champions goes worlds beyond that.

Objectively they have this "you can be anything you want!" attitude and think it will lead to such unique and diverse characters. But in reality, just the opposite. OK, so I have:
a ranged Energy Blast,
a melee single sword,
an ice shield,
regeneration passive,
a force Crowd Control,
a spirit pet,
a force shield buff,
and an empathic heal.

Then I make another character with:
a ranged fire blast,
a melee claws attack,
an earth shield,
invulnerability passive,
a mystic crowd control,
a wolf pet,
a mind buff
and a telepathic heal.

Wow, how different!

Then I team up with a guy with a ranged archery attack, melee martial arts, personal force field passive, a ... oh wait, who am I kidding? Who ever teams long enough to even know what your teammates have?

It's a problem. Teaming up is about adding bodies, which always helps, but everyone does everything so it's not all that interesting. I can summon pets to take the alpha, or pop my shield and stroll in. I can hang back and buff/heal whoever's "the tank", or just be dps. Variety, right? Not really. When I'm soloing, sure that's fine because it lets me apply different methods in different situations. But it means all teams are the same, so it gets old fast. And worse, alts offer no alternative play - just different colors.

Yes I know you can build your stats a certain way, and use equipment that favors those chosen stats. But so I favored Strength, Constitution, and Presence, and you favored Endurance, Recovery, and Intelligence, and he kept everything even across the board. What's the real difference anyway, 5%? Maybe 10% tops?

I compare this to City of Heroes (not a perfect game, but the only one I've ever stuck with) where a Tank, Blaster, Controller have NOTHING in common. Where even within an Archetype the differences stand out. Playing an alt is a completely different experience, and teaming can change up the experience dramatically based on what archeytpes you have.

Maybe this will lure people in who think it encourages great diversity. But I suspect as they get to the end they'll all sense this sameness, and that it will hurt long-term play.

You haven't seen anything yet. :)

Atlas Park should last you until about level 5. During that time you might also go to Galaxy City, which is pretty similar. (Both are starting zones. Atlas is busier - maybe too busy.)

King's Row will probably be your next stop. It should cover you from 5-10. It's sort of the slums of paragon city, and you'll see that it's dirtier and rundown, with industry mixed against the residential areas. Not as bright and shiny as Atlas park.

10-20 are covered by Skyway City and Steel Canyon. Skyway City is on the surface a network of highways, with more cheaper businesses and homes underneath (as you'd expect to find under a highway). Steel Canyon is where most of the Skyscrapers are, sort of the business center of the city.

20-30 are appropriate to Talos Island (I'd consider it sort of a "downtown" in that there's a lot compressed in a small area) and Independance Port (a 3-mile-long zone that serves as the city's port, with the nuclear power plant on an island in the middle).

30-40 you see Brickstown, another more industrial area not because it's beaten up but because the prison is in the middle. There is also Founders Falls, a wealthy venice-like area with canals for streets and victorian architecture.

And then the main 40-50 zone is Peregrine Island, a mix of several feels with the all-important Portal Corporation headquarters in the north. (It also has islands populated just by giant Monsters or taken over by alien monkeys.)

That's the main zones. You could enter any of them now if you could get there safely. There are also "Hazard Zones" that require a minimum level to enter:

The Hollows (5-20) - used to be a beautiful rural area until a catastrophic excavation by the Trolls gang left it hollowed out.

Perez Park (7-15) is the Central Park of the city, but it's been overrun.

Boomtown (12-20) used to be like Steel Canyon but was destroyed. (To be honest nothing to do there.)

Faultline (15-25) is the home of the city dam. An Earthquake occurred years ago under mysterious circumstances, but it's now being rebuilt by a massive city project.

Striga Island (20-30) is one of the best zones in the game with a progressive story as you move back toward the military base.

Dark Astoria (22-30) was another Steel Canyon like city, except a fog has invaded and daylight never comes. (Again, nothing to do there, but sometimes contacts will send you in.)

Croatoa (25-35) is very rural, home to a university, but infested by witches and spirits.

Crey's Folly (30-40) used to be home of the largest corporation, until the alien invasion years ago destroyed and flooded it.

Eden (32-40) was a beautiful nature area with a few scientific businesses and lots of parkland, until it was taken over by the Devouring Earth.

Cimerora (35-50) is a town in the ancient Roman empire. You can only get there through a special club that permits time travel.

Rikti War Zone (35-50) is the sight of an ongoing war against the aforementioned aliens. Their mothership crashed at the north end.

And I'm forgetting some small ones used just for access, like the "social club" Pocket D or the special time-travel zone Oroboros.

------------------

So you can see there's a TON of places to go after Atlas. Not only that, the missions will really improve too. Until at least level 10 you're really only getting simple, introductory missions against basic gang-like enemies. And there's not much story to them besides getting back stolen jewelery or something. That improves until you have more copmlex missions and connected mission arcs about saving the world.

Where it really takes off is with travel powers at level 14. When you can fly, jump, or run across huge zones in a minute, you really get around more and see a lot more of the game. But ultimately a lot of it takes place in instances like you've probably already seen, where you go into a building and that's where the enemies are. (The benfit of that is that any mission can handle 1-8 people, you don't have to find the "right" one.)

"Shelf-Life" varies. I'd say if you like what you see by the teens you could be entertained for 6 months. Those of us who stay tend to create many different characters since they can really play very differently. (One of my gripes against other games is similar everything is, how melee guys still get ranged attacks and everyone wears armor. None of that here!) You definitely should try to get on teams besides the two of you, though it's hard with the limits of a trial account.

And stay out of the Architect Entertainment building! It's a very new addition for user-created content, but also a blackhole that keeps people from experiencing the real game.

Hope that helps, feel free to ask any followup questions you have.

Thanks for answering that. I'm a little surprised and disappointed that they seem to have dropped the ball on teaming.

When CoH first came around, it was innovative in a couple different ways. Teaming was a big part of that. Since that game is instance-based, every instance can scale - and spawned mobs in non-instanced groups can also scale up if the player spawning them is teamed. The "find a teammate" interface was I believe the best in existence at the time. And they invented Sidekicking, which has caused similar systems to be created elsewhere.

For what's been called "CoH 2", I'd have expected further movement in those directions. To hear from many people that it's "fine but nothing new", and that they lost some of their strengths, that's not a good sign. Only Archenemies is innovative and that seems solo-focused. I'm glad they didn't go the opposite direction of requiring teams for everything (I think the industry grew out of that 7-8 years ago) but an MMO with too much soloing isn't much of an MMO.

Some of the stuff I hear about Champions sounds like I might be curious. Were the beta free I'd try it out and then maybe buy. But since I either have to pre-order the game or subscribe to fileplanet ($15 minimum payment) for a game that goes live in 12 days, I'll pass.

As a CoH player I'll hear TONS of feedback on CO over the next few months and can decide form that, without having to be in the shaky pre-nerf days. I know that when open beta opened and they broke the game with their patch, that was all over the global channels in CoH.

Hopefully it's finished by now! :)

But for a fresh install it can take a loooooong time. You're basically downloading 2 games (Heroes and Villains share an engine but have all different zones) plus 15 issues worth of patches. It shouldn't take 35 hours, but it can take a long time. The last time I had to install I started it then left the house for the afternoon. It also might be slightly slower because of pre-downloads for issue 16, but hopefully not too bad.

Hope you enjoy it once you're actually in!

Thank you for the well-written review.

Can you speak a bit more on grouping? I get that it reverts to traditional roles (which makes sense, there are jobs to be done). But how much does it happen? Could you go your whole life teaming if you wanted to? Solo or team based on the day's mood? Find pickup groups easily, or form your own team? Group only for certain conent or have the instances scale up? How many players per team are allowed?

I'm sure you are right on eventual nerfs. It's just inevitable with an open-ended power system like this. Champions on paper had power problems, and early days of City of Heroes were wildly imbalancd as well. So hopefully they'll have the skill to find their way through that - and will manage expectations appropriately.

This is a second-hand sotry, but an illustrative one:

Someone told me that they were in the Atlas AE and ran into a player on a Kheldian. They were doing non-farm missions, and the player thoguht it was nice with the variety, but was still sad that the game was so limited. She said "well, the AE can be like that, and it dominates the zone. Sometimes it helps to get out of Atlas Park."

The guy on the Peacebringer says "What do you mean OUTSIDE of Atlas?"

He'd been playing for 4 days, been recruited onto a farm team within minutes of joining, and gone his entire 50 levels without even knowing there were other zones - let alone TFs, regular content, anything else.

Now you could say the guy was a little dense not to notice the contact list, or the choice to start in Galaxy, or ever see all that stuff on the map like the Tram or the gateways. But to be honest, he probably never needed it! It would have taken me longer to learn stuff if I had an easy 50 levels shoved in my face too. And the guy was genuinely thrilled to find out how much more existed.

So I think the mistake was not having AE accessible from Atlas. If that's what people want, then fine. I think the mistake was having the AE actually IN the zone. Architect should have been a merged zone just like Pocket D is. That would make it easier for people to find each other, and would have kept the enticing broadcasts out of range of newbies.

But the real fault is how much of it was broken. (An issue ago) I tried to take a real team of high teens into the AE building for some interesting missions. I pick one and it doesn't start. And another, and another. Some look like they're way too high level, since 18s aren't slotted like 50s. I keep looking. Finally something that looks ok and lets us in. And it seems fine, until we eventually realize that the only way to win is to destroy a +17 destructible object.

Broken, stupid, and annoying. Meanwhile, had I wanted to farm I could pick that in seconds. You build a system that allows farming, then fine. If people want to do that, let them. But build one that discourages anything except farming, and you must be taking stupid pills.

That's the big mistake. The last issue cleared up a lot of that brokenness, but still any time I go into an issue I think it's a crap shoot if it will actually work.