It's easy to power level in City of Heroes, but it's not something I'd do.
It's always been possible to power level in CoH. In 2008 when I first played the game one of my early experiences on a team was a sewer run - a frenetic dash through a low level hazard zone that would raise a new chararcter up to about level 8 in under an hour. At higher levels players would obtain certain missions - usually involving easy enemies (at that level) like the Freakshow - and run them over and over without ever completing them. They'd do this either solo - to farm inf., or with others who would often be paying (more inf.) for a spot on the team. Often those others weren't even expected to do anything but sit at the entrance of the instance and rack up XP. Not my idea of fun, but each to their own.
That changed with the advent of Architect Entertainent in Issue 14. I've never talked about AE before for one simple reason - I think it's the worst thing (short of the shutdown) that ever happened to the game.
AE gave the players the tools to create their own missions and story arcs, including custom mobs, and while it was used for this it was also, and mostly, used to create farms. This vastly increased the opportunities for power levelling, and a lot of the player base grabbed those opportunities with both hands.
Like I said PLing isn't my idea of fun, but I don't care if others do it. What Architect did do though was decimate the player population outside of AE, drastically reducing the amount of casual teaming that had always been one of the strengths of the game. "No AE" became a common notation in character bios, signifying that they would not accept invites to farms, and the AE/No AE divide also led to some unusually heated exchanges in zone chat.*
*Unusual for this game, which has, most of the time, a fairly relaxed and friendly playerbase.
To be honest I was also somewhat baffled - then and now - that this of all MMOs should see a rush to endgame when realistically there's never been much of an endgame, and especially then since the Incarnate endgame system was still far in the future. Still, I have seen one explanation for it that makes a degree of sense, and that's that AE, or PLing of any kind, is a good way to get a character past those levels where the experience of playing them is... less than optimal.
Like now, on my Warshade.
At level 12 I've just acquired my fourth attack power. Of those four powers one does minor damage (and a small debuff) which makes it barely better than a ranged brawl, and the other three all do moderate damage. Only the latest has any AoE.
I'm definitely feeling that lack of DPS, and find myself yearning for even just one high damage attack for those times when I need to put a foe down fast - i.e. every time I run into a Quantum Gunner, which is often. They're only minion level mobs, but I'm still relying on red inspirations to drop them before they take half my health, and I'd as soon not be using my insps on a regular basis on minions.
Hopefully the latest addition to my attack chain, along with the slightly better enhancements I can start slotting at this level, will make these encounters a bit less painful. Either way I won't - I definitely won't - be entering the AE building any time soon.
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