Fraktal

I like it. At least I'd be willing to try it and see how it plays.

What you're basically saying is that we should get the resistance BEFORE the blow lands, rather than after it has landed and we are (in all likelihood) hitting the "go to hospital" button. That in fact plays in very well with SR in general, kind of like a "Spidey Sense" or how Dove from the old Hawk and Dove comics used to avoid sudden lethal blows.

I like it. It could be fairly decent resistance because it would only kick in for those special cases, and not generally. And it would make a lot of sense and fit within the set.

Nice idea.

F

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I have to agree that this is a peculiar predicament. Exacerbated by the fact that the best +RES inspirations aren't as good as /inv at its best.

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Yes and here is my stand: if they're gonna nerf our defenses then they should nerf luck. Fair is fair. Drop Luck to 10% or something. Oh wait, they can't do that -- everyone but the SR scrappers and Ice tankers would scream bloody murder. That's because what everyone ELSE can do is have the resistance of a tanker (or near it) from their primary or secondary, and then STACK THAT with Luck. Now they are not, say, an Inv/SS tanker, but an Inv/SR/SS tanker... they are not a Claw/Regen scrapper but a Claw/Regen/SR scrapper.

The flip is not true. An SR scrapper cannot become a */SR/Inv tanker, because (a) we cannot duplicate the best powers in the set with an inspiration (Invincibility, Unstoppable), and (b) the powers we can duplicate cap WAY above where you could get unless you sucked down an entire TRAY full of resist insps all at once. Meanwhile, you can replicate 6 full powers all at once with a single basic luck inspiration, and you can even replicate elude by just stacking a couple of Lucks.

Now, I'm not really saying "nerf everyone" here. What I'm saying is -- fair is fair. I can't think of a single other power set I could duplicate with inspirations. I can heal but I can't come close to what an Empathy healer can do. I can gain End but I can't come close to what things like Fortitude can do. It's not that adding "some defense" is a problem in terms of Luck, but that you can add as much as a level 40+ SR scrapper with a full set of SOs by chewing on a purple pill available to you for 50 influence from any contact starting at level 2. I cannot see how this is remotely justifiable.

SR scrappers either need more defense, or they need something else. It's OK to make us a one-trick pony (as they have) if that trick is REALLY good. If the trick is not any better than what everyone else in the game can have, then we need more tricks. So... defense either needs to go back up, or they need to change our powers around and give us some healing and resistance. If resistance sets can get a lower level dodge (Inv with Invince) then Defense sets should get a constant (not "emergency only") resistance. Indeed, I'd suggest: buff the toggles back to their old levels, and change the passives to resistance powers at whatever level is appropriate 10% base, 20% cap maybe). SR needs something, clearly.

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But, at the same time, we gain the most benefit from Lucks, though at the low levels, it's probably difficult to notice.

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At low levels, you could say instead, "Our defenses add a slight bonus to Luck, which is our mainstay." Because think about it... 12% defense with no real slots and only trainers = 12% defense. That's nothing... we get hit 4 out of 10 instead of 5 out of 10. Pop a luck... and now you have some actual defense.

Think about it another way. I do not carry many inspirations for my characters for things they can do. I do not generally carry damage insps for my scrappers because they already do damage. When I had a healing defender (I don't anymore) I did not carry heals on him because he could heal himself. When I get my regen scrapper slotted right so reconstruction is ready more often (it will be a few levels) I probably won't carry any heal insps for her either. If I have a to-hit buff like build up, I use that instead of accuracy so I can carry more End for my tanker. I don't bother with resistance for my tanker because she already has it.

But my SR? I have *always* had to carry Luck for her, and until I got Elude, I basically carried a full TRAY of Luck (with one or two heal or end insps just for emergencies). Because she was not playable without it.

This strikes me as incorrect behavior for the game. What you are good at, you should not have to carry whole trays of inspirations for. One or two for the odd boss or AV, sure. But a whole TRAY of Lucks for a character who is already supposed to have amongst the best dodging defense in the game? That's just silly. And yet I learned the hard way that if I didn't pop Luck a lot at the lower levels, I ate a lot of pavement.

It should not be this way. Of anyone, SR scrappers should need luck the least. But it doesn't work this way.

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I think this buff is a recognition by the devs of the difficulty in balancing an all +DEF set. I think it was Arcana who pointed out that the point at which +DEF is too good is not very far from the point at which it's not good enough.

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The problem is that it's unpredictable and the devs do NOT factor that unpredictability in. Something that hits me 1 out of 10 and one-shots me is viewed (by the devs) as being the same danger to me as something that hits the invuln guy 10 out of 10 but only does 10% damage to him. IT'S NOT. Because the slow gradual change is predictable and the one-shot is not. I'm not hit every 10th time, but one out of 10... it could be the 3rd, or the 8th -- or even the 1st. Yes I have had it happen where even with Elude running, I get one-shotted at the start of a battle against an AV. This is not avoidable entirely with SR, and shouldn't be -- but it very much needs to be factored in as a cost. If 10 shots against invuln is acceptable as a difficulty level, then a 10% chance to hit an SR is NOT... because of the unpredictability. This needs to be factored in, somehow. I'm not sure how but they do need to factor it in. Otherwise, SR just ends up going straight from green to dead over and over again and it becomes very frustrating.

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Make us feel like super heroes versus making the game a challenge.

With the exception of Kyptonite or Magic wielding villians, Superman was never challenged by anything less than an AV...which he solo's. It's hard to maintain a game from 1-50 when you start out fighting AV's at lvl 1....or even at lvl 20 as is the case with some builds.

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Agreed, but Superman's main challenges usually weren't fights. After all look at the old 1950s TV show. Most of those were not fisticuffs. He often didn't raise his hand. They were mental challenges, having to out-wit the crook or save the hostage etc. Part of the problem COH suffers from is that straight mindless battle is all you can do. There's no "hostage negotiation" where you have to use your brains instead of your brawn. There are no puzzles or any of that. So some of the problem is, Superman was uber, but he often faced challenges that his uberness did not help him with, so it was OK that in the fisticuff part, he was uber. To be honest, I'm not sure what can be done about this in COH, because they only chose to adapt the fisticuff part of the hero and not all the other stuff.

However that said, I think SR is a special case. I think the devs blindly and inappropriately consider the "statistical odds that you will die in X hits" as the yardstick, when it should not be, because for resistance and regen it means "you will die AFTER X hits", whereas for SR it means "you will die on any one of the next X hits" and those two conditionals play VERY VERY differently. The devs first need to understand this, before we can make any progress -- and as far as I can tell, with geko's stats obsession, he never HAS recognized it, nor has States.

F

I think that the main problem with SR, the main thing that is really unacceptable about it, is that 6 3-SO slotted powers out of the 9, all on at the same time (3 toggles and 3 passives), combined, will after ED barely equal a single luck inspiration.

This is tantamount to giving players a "Ranged Energy Blast" inspiration that lets them fire not just a ranged attack, but the best, fully slotted, built up attack an energy blaster can fire. And since that clearly is not reasonable, I don't understand why it is reasonable that the whole population has access an inspiration as good as 2/3rds of our power set at its BEST. Indeed, until the late 30s when you've got your slots all set, Luck is far BETTER than anything the best SR scrapper can do. And that is just not right... extra resistance or not.

F

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One of the best features I saw in CoV beta was Mission complete sharing. Basicly, if players in a group have the same mission then they all have the option to have that mission completed at the end. A group of 8 could all go through Frostfire once and everyone could have it count as completed. This is a great improvement and hope this is carried into CoH in issue 6

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Oh nice! This is one of the things I pushed for long ago... It works very well in GW (everyone gets the same mission and then off we go and do it once). It's nice because if you play consistently with the same people you don't have to experience the same story arcs over and over again (straining the limits of in-character consistency to the breaking point).

This is a great idea and I am glad they're doing it.

F

I believe that's about what you end up with assuming 3 +def enhancers toggle and passive. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

I think I'm gonna work on my SR scrapper and get her as close to 50 as I can before this hits... LOL... And after that I guess I will be chewing purple pills a lot again, just like I did before I got SOs.

F

I think the problem with SR is that it goes south too fast even for this damage mitigation effect to help much. If something can 2-shot you, it will still be able to 2-shot you,odds are. Shot 1 knocks you to say 35% hp and a slight resistance kicks in, then shot 2 knocks you WAY below 0... So instead of dying at -150 hp you die at -75. Oh that's a help.

The fundamental problem with SR post-ED is that it caps out around 28% (ish). That means the entire SR powerset except for Elude and Quickness, can be replicated by popping a SINGLE basic Luck inspiration.

How this is not clearly viewed as a problem, I do not understand.

F

MTT -- what a great post. I hope someone on the dev team actually reads it...

F

I guess one question Helmkat is, what makes you feel like you are a hero? What's your level 46 doing that your level 9 can't?

Not being sarcastic here. Let's actually analyze it. Aside from the 46 having more (in total number) powers, what can he do that the level 9 can't? Is he taking on a greater number of mobs? In missions, at least, I think the mob # is basically constant from level 1 to 45. Usually each spawn point has on the order of 2-4 mobs for a solo mission, with 3 being average. I just returned so I might wonder if they have changed this, but I played my level 4, 18, 30, and 45 on 3 or so missions each the last few days and it still seems the rule. But maybe I'm wrong. Is he going up against more (numbers of) mobs? Is that the difference?

Or is it that he's going up against harder mobs? That is, the level 9 has trouble vs. yellows, and the level 46 mops up against reds... is that it?

Or is it a combination of some or all of these?

Again I am not trying to be sarcastic or asking rhetorical questions. I think if the devs are going to do this right, in terms of balancing powers, ED, and mob strengths, we need to get at what exactly makes people feel "more powerful" at level 46 than at level 9. Because you're right, my higher level characters feel that way too... but why? I'm not sure myself.

I think we need to answer that question.

Any comments?

F

I agree with people who have mixed feelings. I'm glad the devs realize they need to do something with SR. But I'm not clear on how this is going to help that much. The scrapper is your one-on-one fighter. When there's a boss in the room, the scrapper is in there tangling toe-to-toe with him (scrapper as boss killer). When the big nasty guy breaks through the ranks to go after the squishies, the scrapper runs him down and stops him (scrapper as bodyguard). And of course the scrapper is (theoretically) the primary "soloing" class (scrapper as loner).

In such a context, there is often some serious damage coming the scrapper's way. SR's main vulnerability is, if you get unlucky, you die really fast. That big nasty boss who does 75% of your hit points per blow can whiff you 20 times, and then *bang*bang* dead, before you can even react.

So let's play with some admittedly entirely fake (easy to round off numbers). Let's say my scrapper, SR, has 1,000 hp (again, nice round numbers). Let's say she is boss-killing for the team and the boss does 750 damage a shot (unmitigated). Obviously, she's dead in 2 hits. After the first hit lands, she has 250/1,000 hp left, and gets her "res" boost. Is this going to be enough to let her survive the next (750 damage) hit? If not, then what good did it do?

Something like a 1-2-3% resistance boost progression, in other words, isn't going to help much. When my scrapper gets killed, it's rarely by *just* a tiny number of hit points. Usually it's by a lot, because she's fighting something powerful and it hits so fast and so hard I do not have time to click a heal insp or engage elude. In such a context, is a small resistance boost going to help? I don't see how it could.

On the other hand, a serious resistance boost (10-20-30% or something) which *might* help, seems out of the scope of the SR powerset. Besides which, resistances like that (as a base) aren't even allowed to resist-based tankers any more, so I can't see how you'd give them to a defense-based scrapper.

I'm really not sure what to do about this though. SR's concept makes it want to be defense-based, but in terms of playability, pure defense-based characters have serious trouble against anything with even mild to-hit buffs or defense de-buffs (dunno if it's still true but back in the day, even GREY con DEs could shred my SR scrapper because of their buffs/debuffs). Short of re-thinking the entire powerset and mixing powers around, which is clearly outside the scope of what can be done in the immediate or even near term, I'm not sure what you can do about this.

The one idea I have really liked is the "reflection" idea. That's kind of cool. An ability to reflect attacks back at the other guy (for HTH, it might be an over-the-shoulder throw, re-directing an enemy's force at him, perhaps doing little damage but acheiving an auto-knockdown), where the chance of reflection (thereby not only doing zero damage to you but doing some damage to your enemy) goes up as your HP goes down. The idea is that your agility and dodging kicks into "panic" mode and you start being more defensive.... That might be cool. I'm not sure how it would fit in with animations of course (if you're in the middle of an Eagle's Claw animation it's hard to see how you could throw someone over your shoulder or catch an arrow out of the air and hurl it back at the bowman). But it's at least worth thinking about.

F

Well I haven't read the 10 or so pages of posts (it'll probably be up to 12 by the time I post this) but I wanted to chime in here and say, I think these changes are good. The idea of the player knowing ahead of team if a mission is solo or "team only" is a very good thing (tm).

I don't think many of us have ever had a problem with there existing certain missions that can ONLY be done with teams. The problem's always been that you don't know it until you are 20 minutes into the mission. The proposed changes will fix that and I'm up for it.

The one thing I would suggest is to make it be much harder at the +3 and +4 mission difficulty settings. For soloists those might be OK but we've done some of these with teams of 3 and 4 and they are cake-walks. A +4 mission should not be a cake-walk, even for teams. But this has NOTHING to do with missions on the default setting or with soloing, and is really a post-level-30 issue... so you should look into it some day but it's not an immediate issue.

F

Amberyl...

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Many players come to MMOGs not for the social interaction, but for the dynamic nature of the world. They don't need to make friends. They have friends. You'll note that when many people talk about teaming, they talk about teaming up with a spouse or a significant other, or their kids, or their real-life friends. They're looking to CoH for a way to do something fun with people they already know, when it's mutually convenient -- and to solo when their friends aren't on.

Yes, it's fun to chat with people online. But CoH actually doesn't support chat terribly well, although this is improving with the addition of global chat. But CoH is also a fast-paced, high-attention game. I can't carry on a conversation while in the midst of combat. And lots of teams are pretty silent -- a lot of times, the only things said are "pull", "wait", "end", and "Ready!". Indeed, the bigger the team, the less random chatter happens. I think most of my "it was cool to meet you" interactions have occurred in duos, and the occasional team of 3 or 4.

As others have already mentioned, teams also don't really let you savor the content at your own pace, or get immersed in a storyline. They are also unworkable for a lot of people who don't have a lot of time to play, or need to spend unpredictable amounts of time AFK. A lot of missions are completable in 20 minutes, solo; looking for a team sucks up time that could readily be spent in enjoyable play.

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BINGO.

I couldn't have said this better myself. In fact I've tried to say it many times but never said it this well. This is exactly right.

F

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Let's look. It took that player:
Swift (One run enhancement)
Sprint (Default Power, one run enhancement)
Quickness (One run enhancement).
Elude (No run enhancments)


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This is a misrepresentation. Elude would take no run enhancements but to make it permanent (and thus usable for a viable travel power) it would require another power (Hasten) 5-slotted and Elude to be 4-slotted with recharge. It'd also require micro-management (since only one power can be made auto) of one of those 2 powers while you are running.

Elude lasts 100 seconds, folks, and it has a 5-minute downtime unenhanced. So unless you want to consign yourself to fast running only 100 out of every 600 seconds, and sprint-speed running the other 83% of the time, you're going to have to put a LOT of slots into Elude to use it as a travel power.

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So he gets all the defensive benefits of Elude and the recharge speed boost of Quickness, as well as more than the speed of a fully slotted flight while he travels.

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Again he's only gonna get that with 11 more enhancements you have conveniently neglected to mention.

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Compared to the flier:
Sprint (he has it too, with no choice. It's worthless to him though)
Hover or Air Superiority (either is pretty much worthless while he's flying)
Flight (6 enhancements - but he could probably only use four).

So for 3 powers and at least 6 slots (at least three of which are extra), he gets vertical movement, but he also gets a minus to accuracy.


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How many of those slots have to go into making Flight "perma"?

Oh wait, it's permanent by default since it's a toggle.

Elude is not a toggle. It takes an extra power and 11 slots to turn it into what basically is one (a toggle). He also looses 100% of his endurance every 100 seconds or so as it wears off, which turns off any other toggle he might happen to have on at the moment. Does flight do that to you?

You're pretending here that Elude has no drawbacks and comes "out of the box" being a permanent travel power. That's completely false.

F

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No matter how you slice it, flying is ultimately safer than super speed, and offer an undeniable vertical advantage over super speed (or in this case, 4 other speed powers). If flyspeed had the same max as runspeed, why would anyone ever take superspeed?

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Maybe they'd take superspeed because it FIT their character? Gee imagine that!

This argument about speed can be made for SS only, Geko. SJ can get you vertical and is fast. It's nearly as fast as SS, has absolutely no drawbacks, and only pulls aggro if you're not careful (I haven't accidentally drawn aggro with SJ in probably 20 levels, now that I know what I am doing). And even if it does pull aggro unless something mezzes you or one-shots you, you're out of its range almost instantly (fast enough it will not get off a 2nd shot). Most of my SG would agree with me that SJ is the most effective travel power in the game, combining very fast speed with no significant end drain (unlike flight and TP) and vertical movement that allows you to get anywhere (though for very high places you might have to do a bit of geometry till you put a jump SO on it). Yet even though most people on my SG would tell you SJ is the best travel power, almost NONE of them have it (most of them have flight). Why do you think that is? Because flight fits for their character.

It seems to me that the problem here is what you guys decided to make the 'drawback' of the SS power -- lack of vertical movement. So why not get rid of that? Let people with SS run up walls, and cut the end cost and bump the speed of flight. Let all movement powers be EQUAL (approximately) and then people will take (gasp) what they WANT instead of what's most efficient.

F

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Eighth - you've hit the nail on the head! Positron and I were just talking about this; part of the beauty of the game is that you don't need to wait in order to get to fun. I don't want to lose that in the rush to encourage grouping. Like I've said, I'm going to review the missions this week and see how many have bosses at the different level ranges.

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The main difficulty, IMO, is that un-soloable missions are not always made clear ahead of time. Some do, to be sure, especially ones that require multiple heroes to click a glowie at the same time. So it is often the case that one takes a mission having no earthly idea that it's un-soloable, only to find out in the midst of it that one can't. If -- for whatever reason -- you don't want to group up at that point, you're basically hosed. Not only that but now that mission is stuck on your mission board until it's done. Which means it takes up one of only 3 mission "slots"... It is conceivable (and I have had this happen) that you could have all THREE of your slots taken up by un-soloable missions, and now you have to group whether you want to or not (or are stuck street sweeping, which is not the issue here because we are talking about missions).

I'd never suggest that all missions should be soloable, BUT, if we get one that is too hard to solo for whatever reason, and we don't want to group at that point for whatever reason (not in the mood, prefer to group with SG mates instead of strangers, etc), how about letting us trade the mission BACK to the contact and say, "I'll take care of it later." I realize in some cases this may not be very "in character" but heck if you're solo who's there to see it anyway? And if as a player you are not in the mood to do a given mission and would rather do something else what is the big deal?

To me this would solve the MAIN problem with missions that require groups, which is, not that they require groups at all, but that they require you to group right NOW whether you want to or not, or else be stuck with an unfinishable mission on your list potentially for a very long time.

Right now, I can reset the mission by logging out but there is no way to get rid of it. If you give us a way to get rid of missions that require a group, then we can just go choose another one that doesn't, and everyone's happy... grouping is still encouraged but it's not being forced RIGHT NOW on THIS MISSION on someone who at that particular moment may not be "in the mood" to group. Because frankly I think that's true of most of us at one time or another... sometimes we are in a 'groupy' mood and sometimes we just want to sit down for a bit and solo a few good missions. Right now, the GAME is telling us when we get to do one or the other. I'm suggesting here that the PLAYER be allowed to make that choice. Because frankly I can't fathom how your GAME can tell when I am in the mood to group (which to be honest is most of the time) or not.

F

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Shadow Shard - Shadow Shard is probably one of the biggest areas I read complaints about, and it's sad to see such a creative area going to waste, especially since it makes up four hazard zones. The biggest complaint is probably how difficult it is to get around.

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I have a love/hate relationship with this zone. It looks great and the geysers are fun for a few minutes, BUT, if you have a mission all the way across the zone and no Flight or TP (my main has SJ for instance) it is a real hassle. The problem is, you can get 90% of the way across the zone, screw up, fall, and you are ALL the way back at the beginning. That might be funny the first time, but one night I literally spent 25 minutes trying (and failing) to get across the zone... not fighting anything, just trying to get across the zone... it was like some perverse, reverse-version of Asteriods (where you are trying to hit the rocks instead of avoid them). Some people may like this, but the devs need to allow for the possibility that a person may (a) not find all the geysering fun and (b) not have flight/TP. Why should everyone with SS or SJ be essentially punished? If people with Flight can get around the geysers, they EVERYONE should be able to get around them.

Personally I favor the following solution: give a setting (they can easily find a story reason behind it) of 2 options. Option 1 is 'when I fall teleport me back to the base'. Option 2 is 'when I fall teleport me to the last rock I jumped off of'. I wouldn't mind falling occasionally and having to do THAT jump over. But falling after 12 straight successful jumps out of 14, and having to start ALL over again (and then falling on jump 11... and then on 13... and then on 12 again... etc, etc) is just teeth-grindingly frustrating, at least for me.

After that awful 25 minutes in the zone of just going back to square one over and over again, I gave up and have never been back into the shard... and probably won't with the SJ-based character. My alt has flight... I'll let her do those mission I guess, unless they change how the zone works.

It's cute for the first 10 minutes, but IMO, if you get sick of all the geysering there should be a way to get around without it.

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Fraktal, but you said you've never been in a successful pickup group. Something is wrong there. I get in successful pickup groups all the time! It's hard to find a group that fails in this game.

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How do you define success? Again, did you READ my example or Amberyl's? Actually READ them rather than just the first sentence?

Note in my example, we beat nemesis and the villains. We got "mission completed". The mission could thus be considered "successful." I never said I was on groups that FAILED missions. I said the missions were "disasters." The first time I said this, I admit I did not explain, but I then did subsequently, as I patiently explained the "disaster" was not in failing but in not having fun as I went along. To me, gain of XP + beating up villains + mission complete is NOT SUFFICIENT for fun. I need to have people I enjoy chatting with, socializing with, and (gasp) RPing with, as I go along. I do not care about the levelling/mission-running grind. I enjoy being with friends and that is why I prefer to play WITH FRIENDS.

Also note that...

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You say you group all the time, but 100% of your pickup groups are not successful. Does that seem a little odd? Who else has that sort of abysimally bad odds?

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The odds ain't so bad considering I only tried pickup groups 4-5 times and then gave up because those 4 or 5 were not pleasurable. I readily admit I didn't spend hours and hours trying to do pickup groups. Why the hell should I? Almost any time of day except early morning when I get on, my SG-mates are on. I know I will have fun with them. Why should I take the 80% chance (Amberyl's guess) that a pickup group will be mediocre to poor when I know I will have an awesome time with existing friends?

If you accept even a 50-50 chance of a bad group in a pickup situation, then my experience is the equivalent of getting 4 heads in a row in a coin toss. You don't assume an unfair coin in 4 flips that happen to come up the same. Maybe it was bad luck, and the probability is 50-50... (Amberyl by the way would not agree with you). So what? I have two choices: 100% chance of NOT having a lousy time either solo or with existing friends, or 50% chance of not having a lousy time with strangers. I play the odds. By limiting my choice to (1) group with existing friends or (2) solo if no friends are online, I guarantee my play-time never, ever sucks. Doing pickup groups, I can't guarantee it.

Maybe you don't want a guarantee of fun every time you log in. I do. So I take action to ensure it. That's my choice, and you are in no position to second-guess it, any more than I would second-guess yours to play in pickup groups.

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If you want me to believe you - you need to post something credible. Otherwise I have to believe there is something wrong with you, because you've never ever ever been in a successful pickup group. I don't know how a SG would even know you're a good player in order to recruit you.

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Um. Again READ MY POST. My SG was started by me and 2 existing real-life friends. Nobody recruited me. And you're right, no one would know to recruit me otherwise. So what? I do not play COH to play COH... in a sense. I play COH to play a roleplaying game with old friends who now live in all parts of the world (we grew up in the same town). COH lets me do that. I don't need random pickup people to randomly invite me to a random SG. I started out with a group of existing friends and we all said, "Let's play COH." So why, given that I have that, would I ditch it and go play pickup COH?

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What happened the first time you grouped with them? Utter failure?

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No, again READ WHAT I POSTED. I told you I grouped with existing friends. The two guys I group with and I played NWN together for 1.5 years. Then we played SWG for almost 9 months. Then they shifted to COH, and I came along with them. Other people in our group are almost entirely RL friends of one of the three of us. I don't need pickup groups to get into a group. So why would I bother with a random group?

My point was, I *have* a group of very good friends, and it annoys not just me but the whole entire team, that certain things like the respec trial are just not friendly to friend-groups, that our friends list is too small and uninformative, that it is harder than it should be to keep tabs on each other. That, in a sense, the game is much friendlier to pickup groups than SGs. That was my point. You've managed to latch onto one thing -- my lack of succes 4 or 5 times in a row with pickup groups -- and totally missed every point I made.

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But then, I don't even believe that you've never EVER EVER EVER been in a successful pickup group. Really. Not with the characters I see in your sig, not to mention any others you probably dabbled in from time to time. By no means are you an inexperienced player.

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Let me be clear one final time. I went 0 for 5 (or maybe 4, I didn't track it) in pickup missions during the spring and summer when my SG-mates weren't on and after that I gave up. Note that the "0 for" is 0 fun in 5 attempts, NOT 0 mission successes. We succeeded in every mission. Try to understand that mission success is NOT how I determine having fun.

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But the fact is there are some missions, I'd guess about 5% in my experience, that are too hard for most AT's alone. That's the exception, not the rule.

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Did you actually read the posts in this thread? We are discussing standard, mission-ending, orange-con bosses having been boosted so much on the training server that nobody without an uber-build can solo them now. These bosses occur in almost every mission starting with Marrowsnap at level 11. An orange-con boss, a single one, is your level (he cons orange because he is a boss). So what we are saying is that if they make it so that most non-uber players can't solo even-level, orange-con bosses, that'll hose not 5% of missions for soloists but probably 80% of missions. And since you can only have 3 missions at a time, and there is no way to tell whether you're going to accept a mission with an orange-con boss in it, you could conceivably, and rather easily, find yourself with 3 missions you HAVE to team to win at, during a period when you just are not in the mood to be sociable. Why is it so hard for people to understand that this kind of circumstance (a) will become extremely common if the boss buffs go in as they are and (b) is not desirable in a game?

[ QUOTE ]

If 100% of all your pickup groups have not been successful, how have they been fun?

[/ QUOTE ]

Clearly you are not reading what I said. I judge success as follows:

success = fun = success

In other words, if I die 10 times and fail the mission but had a lot of fun doing it (as is generally true with my SG mates even when we all die in things like the respec trial), then I'm good. If I "complete" the mission but had no fun at all, then I consider it "not worth it."

My pickup missions haven't been failures of doing missions, they've been failures of having fun. They've been me teamed up with 3-5 nice people and 1-2 absolute idiots who ruin the entire experience for me and make me want to log out. That happened to me 4 or 5 times in a few weeks in May-June and I gave up on pickup groups. And since I don't NEED pickup groups because I have an SG, they were the easiest thing in the world to give up.

Are we, finally, clear here? Yeesh.

[ QUOTE ]

I've failed a few respec trials to be honest. But I've done the first one 40-50 times so far, and I figure I've failed it a dozen times, all told. Done the second one twice, both successes.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good for you. Glad you could beat your chest and tell us how great you are.

I've done the respec once. With friends and fellow SG-mates. One of them messed up, and he was the highest level of us, so the rest of us were fighting +3 enemies, and then he levelled during the first mission (oops) so then we were all fighting +4s but him. So we failed the respec and everyone died and got lots of debt. We also didn't know you could heal the reactor, LOL.

Despite that it was fun. We had a blast because we were roleplaying and one guy who has a great sense of humor made it funny. I enjoyed doing it with those 3, and would do it with them again if they asked. We FAILED the mission, but I don't consider that group a failure or "disaster" because, for the 2 hours or so we were on the mission I had fun.

FUN is the yardstick I use in any game, because it is the only thing that matters... not how much XP I got, how many respec badges I have, how fast I levelled, or any of that crap. FUN... that's it.

Pickup groups (the 4 or 5 I've tried) have been NOT FUN (not NOT SUCCESSFUL... NOT FUN), and thus I don't do them any more.

Again, if YOU have fun doing them, go ahead. That doesn't change the fact that not everyone ELSE has fun doing them, that I don't, or that the game is much friendlier to pickup groups than to permanent groups of friends.

F

[ QUOTE ]
I have had a tiny number of superb pickup groups, and I have had many mediocre pickup groups, and I routinely have awful pickup groups. These groups tend to be awful because of just one or two people in the group, as a side note. But I'd say that the percentage of awful runs at least 20-25% of the groups that I end up in.

[/ QUOTE ]

Very well said.

This is what I am talking about (and Amberyl's examples) in terms of pickup groups and why I avoid them. Because I can echo every ONE of the examples she gave with "I have seen the exact same thing myself in pickup groups."

Why do I team with friends instead of pickup groups? Exactly why Amberyl said... because with pickup groups I have a very high chance of either a mediocre or a sucky group, and with my friends, I have a 100% chance of an excellent group. Why should I preferentially choose "mediocre to sucky" over "excellent? That would be stupid.

F

[ QUOTE ]
Lets see....when we have people who claim they enjoy soloing because other people dont "roleplay" enough -or- all their "pickup" groups suck, then yes they are anti-social people. They are making a prejediced judgement about other people they do not know in order to justify their beliefs on why its best to not play with them.

[/ QUOTE ]

OK. One. Last. Time.

I don't generally solo, again except for early in the morning, which represents perhaps 10% of my total play time. I prefer grouping. Just because I am sticking up for the hardcore soloists does not mean I am one. I am able to see what they would want/need/prefer and agree with them even if I don't want/need/prefer it myself. I am making an argument based on concept, not necessarily personal preference. I prefer grouping.

OK, that's enough. I won't say it over again, as clearly a couple of people are just dead set on pretending I am some hard-core, anti-social soloist.

[ QUOTE ]
If that isnt anti-social behavior, then what is?

[/ QUOTE ]

Did you even READ the example of what I was talking about in terms of a "disaster" for a pickup group? It may not be what you're thinking when I say "disaster." Try reading it next time. It does not indicate I was being anti-social.

[ QUOTE ]
The social interactions between players is what keeps players involved with their games. Being apart of a community, even a small one, is what keeps the MMORPG player sticking with their game.

[/ QUOTE ]

I completely agree with you. What I *don't* agree with is that the ideal way to achieve this is to force those players who don't want to team up, to do so. And again, I am talking on behalf of other people, NOT myself. I prefer to team.

[ QUOTE ]
But thats a choice you made, just as it is a choice your making here to not be apart of this one by making generalized claims that others arent good enough to team up with you.

[/ QUOTE ]

So now I'm supposed to game in a way that's not fun (pickup groups) because YOU think it's the right way to play the game?

Sorry... I don't play the game for you. I play it for me. It's fun for me or I bail. Period. Just because YOU think I should have fun playing the game a certain way doesn't mean I will actually have fun playing it that way.

There are 3 ways to play this game, essentially:

1. Solo
2. Grouped with friends and people you know
3. Grouped with strangers

Everyone here has fun playing the game ONE of those ways. Some people have fun playing TWO of those ways. Some have fun all THREE of those ways. I happen to like #2 the best, and find #1 tolerable in small doses, usually to kill time before going to work or something. I happen not to like #3. That doesn't mean I "don't like to group" or am "anti-social."

I happen to like grouping with other roleplayers. Most random pickup people don't roleplay. I don't think roleplaying makes me better than they are, but I happen to not have as much fun if I am on a team that doesn't roleplay. Again what should I do, engage in charity playing the game in a style I don't enjoy because YOU think that's the best way for me to play? Um, sorry, no, I am not going to do that.

Remember these facts: (a) The point of a game is to have fun. (b) You cannot, possibly, force someone to have fun doing things they hate just because it's YOUR way to do them. Fun doesn't work like that.

[ QUOTE ]
Everyone in your SG was a stranger to you once. Your deceiving yourself if you really think claiming the only people who you have fun with are going to exist in that SG and your robbing yourself from new and fun experiences you could be having with other people too.

[/ QUOTE ]

Again just because YOU have fun in pickup groups doesn't mean I will. I have had definite non-fun in the 4 or 5 I have tried, so I swore off them. I think that's my call, and I honestly don't think you're in a position to second-guess me on that. Since you can't possibly have any say in what I enjoy.

As for my SG... well, heheh. It was started by me and 2 friends I've had for 25 years. One guy's wife, brother-in-law, and brother-in-law's fiancee joined. Another guy's 2 friends from work joined. Then some of THEIR friends joined (I call these people, affectionately, my "friends-in-law" since they are friends-of-friends, or were, though now they are my friends too in the SG). Those who do not fit that category generally found us because they were looking for a roleplay-oriented team (which we are). So I have a 100% guarantee that everyone on my SG is a roleplayer... and a near-100% guarantee that no one in the pickup group pool is (I've never met a roleplayer in a pickup group yet). Given that I am a roleplayer who has more fun roleplaying in between battles than running missions, is it really still your assertion that I'm going to have more luck with pickup groups than sticking with my SG? How silly.

As I said, there are lots of ways to play this game. I happen to think it's a good idea if the game is open to ALL of them, rather than saying, "Pickup groups are supported and all other forms of play are essentially play-at-your-own-risk." I don't need to be a soloist myself (I am NOT, for the last time) to think it's a good idea if those who want to solo are allowed to.

Because ask yourself this: if I really were the anti-social, hardcoe soloist boor you seem to think I am, would you *really* want me forced onto your team? How is that going to do either of us any good?

F

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Perhaps because it is so true... Pickup groups... every one I've ever been in has been a disaster. So "I don't do pickup groups" anymore, thanks.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's pretty sad, really. Do you just not function well in a group, Fraktal? Most of the pickup groups I've been in have been successful. Or certainly, a far better success rate than 0% which you apparently have.

You're the first person I've ever heard to have no success _ever_ when grouping. That's quite an abberation. I'm impressed.


[/ QUOTE ]

That is a completely false re-wording of what I said. I am on a SG. I group most of the time.Just not with a bunch of total strangers. I have only done pickup groups (where I didn't know anyone no the group) a handful of times and every one has been a regrettable experience. And no it's not because "I don't group well." Let me repeat so it is clear, since saying it 10 times already hasn't got through yet: I GROUP ALL THE TIME.

Don't take the fact that I am sticking up for people who want to solo to mean that *I* preferentially solo. I don't. I preferentially group. I group most nights. I group with FRIENDS though, not a bunch of total strangers. My point is to GROUP, not to "get through the mission" which is all any pickup group I've ever been on has ever wanted to do. I am a ROLEPLAYER. No pickup group I've ever been on has been even slightly receptive to roleplaying. Again I am talking about PICKUP GROUPS here, not ALL groups.

[ QUOTE ]
I've read your arguements in this thread, and although compelling, your arguement is flawed by your inability to be successful when being part of a group. This should be a warning sign for those who might not know what they're about to get into, having you on their team.

[/ QUOTE ]

You clearly HAVEN'T read my posts at all if you think I can't successfully be part of a group. In fact most of the time I haven't died or anything on pickup groups, and the groups haven't failed missions. But they aren't FUN. I play the game to have fun.

[ QUOTE ]
I can only imagine what you do in pickup groups, which cause every single one of them in your experience, to fail completely.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nope, never failed a mission completely. Failed the respec trial once... Failed the sewer once when paired with one controller and we were too low. Neither was a pickup group and both had other mitigating factors. I am actually quite GOOD on a team. That doesn't mean I enjoy pickup groups.


[ QUOTE ]
Mind you, I'm only taking you at your word here. So I might be wrong, based on something you've omitted, but certainly your constant failure to acheive success in just ONE single pickup group HAS to be a factor somehow.

[/ QUOTE ]

I am not talking about mission success. I am talking about having FUN. They're different for me. So let's not try reading more into what I've said than I actually said.

"Disaster" means things like the time when I was paired with an idiot who wanted to do the nem mission. He got 4 of us together and then proceeded to just run from encounter to encounter looking for Nem, without telling the rest of us he would do that. We had an SKed controller on the team who kept going into the yellow and I, "with no group skills" as you say, kept hanging back protecting her, along with the tank; which meant the team leader (inv scrapper with perma-unstop) ended up charging ahead by himself. He just kept running forward, aggroing mobs, and then dying. Must've had a lot of rez insps. Meanwhile the rest of us had to work our way through a mission (2 of us SKed and one 'proper' level for it) that was meant for 4 (higher level) people because this guy wouldn't stick with it. The rest of us were pretty good so we didn't die, but Mr. Run-Ahead never learned his lesson (I and the tank twice on group chat asked him to slow down, but he ignored us), we never had time to even catch our breath between encounters, and he died a couple of more times against Nemesis himself. After it was over the controller thanked me for protecting her and the tank sent me a tell apologizing for 'what a disaster' it turned out to be because of the charge-ahead scrapper. This doesn't indicate *I* can't figure out how to group... but the entire mission was annoying and non-fun in the extreme and is a great example of the kinds of pickups I've had... after 4 or 5 of those I just swore off them entirely.

Now that's not _me_ ruining the group... Mr. Run-Ahead did that. But that doesn't change the fact that the experience was not fun at all and I have no desire to repeat such things.

So let's not go putting words in my keyboard shall we? I group MOST of the time (except early in the morning when no one on my SG is on). I prefer grouping. I prefer missions that challenge a group. Just not random pickup groups.

However, just because that is MY preference (being grouped), doesn't mean I can't see the side of the soloists and agree with them.

F

[ QUOTE ]

I don't like pickup groups. If there is ANYONE here who can tell me that they have never once had a single bad experience in pickup grouping, I will eat one of my CoH manuals. (I'll top it with a bunch of other stuff, but I will eat it.) Pickup groups invite idiocy.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hahah that made me laugh (the part about eating the COH manuals). Perhaps because it is so true... Pickup groups... every one I've ever been in has been a disaster. So "I don't do pickup groups" anymore, thanks.

Herein lies the MAIN problem with COH. We have (1) a miniscule friends list, (2) a rather restrictive (in terms of size) SG list, and (3) curently, no other ways to stay in contact with our friends. They've in fact made it quite hard to keep track of friends, especially those who like alts (4 friends with 6 alts each will fill up your friends list completely). On the other hand they have a TON of great tools for pickup groups (LFG system, broadcast, etc). So they make it really hard to keep things together with a group of known friends but really easy to do pickup groups. COH thus is very "pickup group" friendly but very "large, stable group of friends" un-friendly, as it were. And THAT is the real problem.

Getting a mission sprung on you, e.g. timed, with a boss you can't solo, in a zone you can't travel throug solo such as a low level in Perez, not only encourages but almost DEMANDS that you do pickup groups. So COH actually isn't encouraging group play; they're encouraging pickup group play. That is very VERY different from merely being a "multiplayer" experience or even "encouraging grouping."

Don't think so? Look at how they do the respec trial or TFs for instance. You need seven or eight people on some TFs, *all* within a very narrow level range, and SKs are not allowed in if they are outside of that. Thus you not only have to (1) have 7 in-game friends, but (2) they must all be online at once, (3) they must all have time to do the TF in one shot (odds of you all getting together in later days are very small with that many people's schedules to juggle), and (4) they must all be within 8 or 9 levels of each other (or whatever the limit is for the given mission/trial/TF). It took us like 4 weeks when the respec first came out for the high-level group to get a shot at it, and that was just 4 of us, because of scheduling. After failing once we gave up. Why? NOT because the mission was too hard, but because our schedules didn't match up and the only alternative was pickup groups.

See where this is going? There's nothing inherently "social" or groupy about the 4-man respec trial. But absolutely everyone I know who's finished it has had to do it with a pickup group because even a small spread in levels really is not workable (for most normal builds) on the respec. Our team has also never done the higher level TFs, because we never get 7 people online, together, at one time, all with the time to do something long like that. Again, this is UN-friendly to an actual group of friends, but highly workable by a bunch of random people who just want to grind through the TF.

So what exactly are they encouraging here? Certainly NOT sociality or friend-making (given the small size of the friends list and the rigid nature of how the TFs, trials, etc, work). The ONLY type of grouping/collaboration they are encouraging, and they are doing it so strongly that they are DIScouraging other forms, is that of the random pickup group.

Now maybe that's what they want, but this is NOT the only way to have a multiplayer experience. In fact most people find it the most inferior type of experience and far perfer to game with FRIENDS than strangers. I know about 50 players in game, mostly on my SG but some on "allied" groups. Not a single one I can think of, prefers random groups to teaming up with friends. So why is the game so pickup-group-centric? You can't use the "it's multiplayer" argument. There's nothing to suggest a multiplayer game should consist of a bunch of strangers playing together.

This, then, is the crux of the problem with "unsoloable" standard missions. Usually when people are trying to solo them it is because none of their friends are on right now. For most of us the preferred method is to group -- with friends, mind! -- and we are soloing because "no one else is on." Getting a mission we can't do forces us to (1) quit playing or (2) form a pickup group.

So this really isn't about the game encouraging GROUPING... but about it encouraging PICKUP GROUPS... which is something everyone I know in-game objects to.

F

[ QUOTE ]

Synonymous, no. However, MMORPG does imply that some in-game goals will require the assitance of other players. The heart of multiplayer game design is the ability to expand gameplay into new areas because of the added possibilities of teamwork, cooperation, communication, competition, etc. It's one of the founding philosophies of the genre, "Hey, this game is great, wouldn't it be cool if my friends could be right here alongside me fighting these monsters too?"

[/ QUOTE ]

Nobody has a problem with that as far as I can tell. The problem is when all 3 of your mission slots are full of un-solo-able missions and you -- for whatever reason, be it time constraints, in a solo mood, no friends online, whatever -- feel like doing a solo mission. You flat-out can't. And that is a problem.

You can laud game design philosophy all you want... but the fact remains, a game is about having fun. If the devs force people to do un-fun things, those people log out. If that happens enough, they ask why they are playing the game and quit playing (and paying). It's easy as a player to say "good riddance." Trust me, unless this is a "problem" player we are talking about (people who violate the EULA, etc) the devs and NCSoft are never going to say "good riddance" to any player.

The key to a successful MMO is to allow as many people as possible to have fun, but fun can only be had in whatever way is fun to you. If soloing is fun and grouping with random strangers is not, then a game model that forces pickup groups isn't going to make me have fun... it's just going to make me quit.

Since there doesn't seem to be (as far as I can tell) any appreciable HARM That could possibly come from, for example, reserving one "mission slot" for solo-only missions if the person so chooses (the could easily add something like this), there's no good reason why they couldn't do it other than being stubborn.

[ QUOTE ]
The game is clearly not "group-only" gameplay. What I'm "sick of seeing" is an army of whiners every time there is content added which requires cooperation.

[/ QUOTE ]

From what I can tell people are not upset about new group-only content. What they are unhappy about is that MOST of the mission content (with the new boss changes) becomes unsoloable. Meaning now you HAVE to basically street sweep if you aren't in a social mood. Again remember... most people like to group some of the time, but few people are in the mood to group ALL of the time. Not being in a grouping mood shouldn't consign you to street sweeping and nothing else. We all know how boring that can be.

[ QUOTE ]
All you have to do is come to terms with the fact that the game will have BOTH solo content and team content, and no there will not be "solo alternative" versions of every single task and mission in the game implemented just to appease the 2% of the people out there who outright refuse to break down and find a team now and again.

[/ QUOTE ]

Who the heck is talking about ANY of that? Every example I gave was of people who 'aren't in the mood to group' at the moment or whose 'friends are not online just now' and want to do a little soloing before work, dinner, bed, whatever. Add to that most people prefer to do missions and you have a problem if 99% of missions are unsoloable (as, with the boss buffs, they very well may become). This is not about trials, TFs, hazard zone raids, or end-of-story-arc missions. It's about the regular, run-of-the-mill missions that you take on a daily basis with your character, and how those should be (on principle) soloable if you so choose. We're talking about the OLD content here, not the new.

[ QUOTE ]
You just got done explaining that it's a design philosophy. You don't need an "excuse" to implement a particular design philosophy.

[/ QUOTE ]

You misunderstand. I agree that "no soloing" is design philosophy, but I am asserting that "it's an MMO" is a lousy reason for HAVING that design philosophy. If they have some other, better, reason, then fine. But just "it's an MMO" is weak and not even logical (since as I showed above, and you did not even try to refute, multiplayer != group mission-based).

[ QUOTE ]
That said, "this is an MMO" is, in fact, a perfectly reasonable response, because that is the driving force behind the design philosophy. As I said above, one of the core tenets of the MMO genre is content which emphasizes cooperation.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's fine but again, cooperation can be had in many ways. If we are on SG chat and I am talking you through a mission you are soloing, we are cooperating. The fact that people think only if our toons are "grouped" (which is a UI convenience and nothing more) and in the same physical "space" (which is an illusion anyway because they are just database items) can we be cooperating. That's narrow-minded and clearly does not encompass all the possible ways I could cooperate with you.

Or turn it on its head. If you are level 40 and group with a level 2, and he goes AFK and you powerlevel him for 5 hours, you are GROUPED. Were you having a Multiplayer Experience? I'll leave the answer to the reader.

[ QUOTE ]
The designers of the game have chosen, as 99.9% of persistent online game designers do, to include content which not only encourages but requires the participation of more than a single player.

[/ QUOTE ]

Including content and "giving it to you as the only possible missions you can take" are two different things.

[ QUOTE ]
Actually, no. Just wanting to do something is not reason enough to do it. For example, I often want to leave work early and go home to sleep. However, I don't have a good reason to do so and have plenty of reasons to not do so.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's a bad analogy. If you went home and slept in the afternoo you would (presumably) be fired. You're proving my point. MOST people, if they got paid whether they worked or not, wouldn't go into work. Which means rules have to be in place (by your employer) forcing you to work for the pay. Otherwise you wouldn't do it. So you've just proved my point: without rules, you'd do something else, something you really wanted. So the rules are there to make you do something you wouldn't otherwise do. This is the same thing. Without rules making you group, a lot of people wouldn't. This MUST be the case, because if people would group anyway, if they prefer it, you'd need no rules to force it (or "incentives" to encourage it).

[ QUOTE ]
Again, no. Just "wanting" to do something is not reason enough to do it. There has to be some manner of challenge and reward involved.

[/ QUOTE ]

That explains why group content should be challenging. It doesn't explain why grouping has to be forced (or near-forced).

[ QUOTE ]
Players don't "want to group," they "want content that requires cooperation."

[/ QUOTE ]

That's fine. What bearing does that have on soloable content?

[ QUOTE ]
Unfortunate for them. However, the ability to group with "random" people and still manage to form an effective and well balanced group is one of the skills it takes to excel and succeed in CoH. If players don't wish to develop this skill, then they will simply have to understand that not all content will be accessible conveniently.

[/ QUOTE ]

Again we're talking about your run-of-the-mill missions you get from contacts here. Nobody ever said "all content should be soloable." But when I feel like doing a solo mission for whatever reason I should be able to, without going through contortions or being forced to street sweep.

[ QUOTE ]
Nothing about how the game works is your choice. The only choice you have is "play or don't."

[/ QUOTE ]

And while YOU may not care of the rest of us choose "don't" because of forced grouping, CRYPTIC will care, rest assured. They don't want to lose customers. So saying "there's the door if you don't like it" is kind of silly. The point of a game is to have fun. If the designers are making hunks of the player base not have fun, they need to re-think things.

[ QUOTE ]
How often do you find yourself with 3 mission slots filled with missions that cannot be solo'd?

[/ QUOTE ]

I've had it happen, though not too often for this reason: I try not to fill all 3 mission slots any more... for exactly that reason. I've had 3 "unsoloable" missions before and had to just log out until I could get group-mates together. The Envoy of Shadows arc, where you fight the same AV like 4 times, took me about 3 weeks to get through (and it was only a handful of missions) because for each one we needed to assemble a team of 4+ people to take him out. At the same time I had 2 others I couldn't solo (can't recall which). Especially over level 40, this sort of thing happens a lot.

[ QUOTE ]
I suspect, however, that it would be a relatively minor inconvenience to LFT for 90 seconds in order to find one other person to help you clear up a few slots and then thank them for their time and continue on with the solo content.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not everyone is in the game just for the "grind." I like to enjoy playing (or I don't). I find the idea of just teaming up for people to 'get it over with' unappealing and a poor way to have to play a game. I shouldn't be 'getting it over with.' I should be having fun. If they're going to make it not-fun, then I will think about spending my money elsewhere. Again you can say "good riddance" but I doubt Cryptic would, especially if a lot of people had the same reaction.

As I have said, I prefer grouping... but forcing it is not a good idea.

F

[ QUOTE ]


City of Heroes is a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game. Thats "Massively Multiplayer".

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a complete red herring and I'm sick of seeing it. Massively Multiplayer != Group-only game play. I can be chatting with 10 other members of my supergroup while I solo a mission. That's still a "multiplayer" experience. So don't pretend that "multiplayer" = "group-based missions" because it does NOT. They are not synonymous.

And I say this as someone who doesn't actually like soloing. In fact I think the solo game is boring. After 25th level or so, the missions are too easy, they are all copies of earlier missions you've seen before with different enemy names but the same goals. The stories are not enough to hold the game up in the solo experience at all, at least not to me. The only reason I keep subscribing to this game is the FRIENDS that I have in it and the multiplayer experience of being in a good supergroup. However, even though that is my preferred playstyle, I still recognize that you can have a "multiplayer" experience without doing grouped missions.

Additionally, arguments about what other MMOs allow or don't allow are silly. I can name MMOs that make soloing possible from start to finish, also. That doesn't make it right, or wrong. Each MMO has its own design philosophy.

If Cryptic's design philosophy is supposed to be that some missions are soloable and some are not, that's fine. It's their philosophy. But neither they, nor you, nor anyone else, should use "this is an MMO" as an excuse to make a mission be un-soloable. It's not a viable excuse. LOTS of other things can give you a multiplayer experience that have nothing to do with missions, and soloable or non-soloable missions do not make a game an "MMO." In fact I submit that a set of "grouped" players who silently go through a mission together, without saying a word other than, "pull", "wait", "ready" and never chat with each other, are having a much LESS multiplayer experience than the guy who is chattering non-stop over broadcast or the SG channel while he solo tanks things in Talos Island or Dark Astoria or something.

Don't confuse all the characters being in the same place at the same time (or not) as having anything to do with a "multiplayer" experience, because they don't. Heck with global chat coming I can chatter away with people not even on my server, thereby having a multiplayer experience without ever seeing anyone else's toon. I don't judge this an "inferior" multiplayer experience to one where everyone is grouped in the same mission, and in fact, in many ways, it can be a superior one if the people in the mission are not sociable.

[ QUOTE ]
Now, the devs here have made great attempts to make sure that the players have enough missions to do so they dont have to do "hunting", which here is called "street sweeping". You dont have to mindlessly kill enemies for hours on end with no clear agenda in this game.

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Actually, at various points in you character's lifespan, you do. Level 33.5, my contacts all 100% dried up. Not even random "throwaway" missions were left. My new set wasn't available until 35th level. This represetned roughly 30 hours of game play that consisted of nothing but 'street grinding' (usually with a friend of mine -- see? Multiplayer -- who was in the same predicament). It took me forever to get to 35 because I could only stomach mindless street grinding in short bursts. The same thing happened at level 39 or so (a full level with no contacts), and given that at 41.5 I have already finished all but one contact's story arcs I expect it to happen again by level 43 or so before hitting the final set of contacts at 45. So it's untrue that you don't have to street sweep. You do have to.

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You think this is done so you can solo your way through the game? I dont get why you'd even want to, the entire point of playing an online game is to play with other people.

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Actually the point of playing an online game is to be able to socialize with other people. That may, or may not, including actually going through missions with them ("playing" with them), but that's a sub-set of the more general purpose, which is to be able to "hang" with other players -- which can be easily accomplished via broadcast, SG chat, and the like, without running missions together. Again I prefer running missions with my friends, but I also recognize that this is not the only means of Multiplayer experience offered by an MMO.

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Your interaction with other people is the foundation of the game structure

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Yes notice you said INTERACTION, here. Interacting and running missions are not exact synonyms. There are lots of ways to interact with other players outside the auspices of running a mission. I can trade an enhancement that I don't need to you. I can send you a tell. I can talk to you in broadcast or over SG chat. We're not in the same mission but we are interacting. That at its heart is an MMO experience.

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Think clearly about this; if you designed a game which fundementally is based around the fact the majority who play online games do so because they want to interact with other real live players, you do not want to make it as beneficial to solo as it is to interact with those other players. If you did, then you'd be encouraging people to not interact with other players and you would have a game world which does not provide the player to player interaction which is desired.

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You've just contradicted yourself. If you're right and "majority who play online games do so because they want to interact with other real live players", then why do they need any mechanism at all to encourage grouping? Won't it automatically happen since by your claim most of the players want it in the first place? It's not clear why the devs should need to reward a behavior "the majority" wants to engage in... they just... will. Won't they?

It seems to me that the necessity of forced or even encouraged grouping gives the lie to your claim that the majority of players want to hang with other players. In fact they very well may want to be on a multiplayer game... but just not run missions with them. As an example I was in a guild for a while in SWG where one of the players who joind characterized himself as a "soloist." Why then did he join a guild? Well he wanted people to hang with when he wasn't out running missions/taking down lairs. He wanted a group of friendly merchants to sell items to him at decent prices and who he would be sure wouldn't "rip him off." He wanted people to chat with in guild chat when he was bored waiting for a planetary transport shuttle to pick him up at the space port. So even though he did "soloist" activities, he still had a multiplayer experience, and HE sought the guild out (not vice-versa) for that very reason.

Again I ask, if the "majority" want to do group activities, why does it need to be pushed by the devs at all? Won't what the majority want to do just happen naturally? And if it isn't happening naturally, and has to be 'forced' (as it were), then can you really make the claim that the majority wants it?

Again note: I am a roleplayer, a socializer, and I love grouping up. But I don't see the 'grouped mission' as the only way to engage in social/multiplayer activities.

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This will become even more important when PvP is introduced. Wandering around solo in a PvP enviroment will probally be a very bad idea when you run into a team of people who all can PvP you.

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And if they make the game a free-for-all PVP environment they will lose me and probably 3/4ths of their customers. Which means they probably won't do that -- they will make it consent-based PVP (in fact they have already pretty much said they will in some way). Which means this is totally irrelevent, since a soloist just won't (a) turn on his PVP flag, (b) go into the PVP zone, or (c) join a PVP server -- whichever means they chose in the end for making it be consentual.

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If you travel in teams in a game like CoH, you'll be a great deal safer from the solo pker

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And if we have to form posses to get from point A to point B just to avoid PKer-griefers, it will signal the end of this game, almost assuredly. Unrestricted PVP does not work and almost nobody wants unrestricted PVP except the small knot of hardcore griefers who like making people miserable. I can almost guarantee the devs will not (delibrately, at least, though maybe there will be holes/bugs/exploits) allow people to grief each other like that. So your premise -- "you need groups to avoid griefing" -- doesn't hold much water. We have to assume that griefing will not be allowed and will be prevented by some means like having PVP+ and PVP- zones or whatnot. You can avoid the zone to avoid the griefing. Etc.

Fundamentally the problem with "group only missions" is this: missions can't be "given up" or aborted (unless timed), and you can only have 3 at a time. If they didn't do that... if they'd let you "give back" a mission and try something else for the time being, I'd not mind it. I'd have no problem with "saving" my group-only missions for when my friends are online, and doing my 'soloable' ones when I get up at 5 AM and can't sleep, and no one else is on (no this usually doesn't happen since I don't get up at 5, but just as an example). The problem is you can have all 3 of your missions on your board be AV missions that you can't solo, and none of your friends are on and so... now what? If you could abort them or trade them back to the contact (postpone them) to get something different, then I'd have no problem with it. But since you can't always tell before taking them that they are group-based, if you are in the mood to just do a little soloing before work... why shouldn't you be able to? And should you HAVE to street hunt as the only means of doing that? This doesn't mean you never group up... but maybe once in a while you feel like soloing. Why can't you?

As it stands now what potentially stops you is that missions, once given, cannot be given up... and you can only have 3 at a time. If they just gave you say a "solo contact" or something, so you'd know ahead of time, then I'd have no problem with how the missions work. I don't mind that I can't solo an AV. What I mind is being forced to street hunt when none of my friends are on, because all my missions have an AV in them and I can't get new missions because you can't delete the old ones.

You may say, "Well find a random group." If you want to do that go ahead. I do not. I am a roleplayer. I want to group with other roleplayers when I group. Not random strangers who talk in leetspeak or what have you. The chances of finding a roleplayer doing an LFG are so small that it is not worth it.

The main problem is that COH doesn't encourage grouping... it encourages grouping with random people. And a lot of folks who want to group, may not necessarily want to do random pickup gruops. Many members of my SG will group ONLY with other members of the SG due to bad pickup group experiences. And yet, if your SG-mates are not on and you have a bunch of AV missions what choice do you have but a pickup group -- which may be decidedly non-fun for you. So even though you want a group experience, you may not necessarily enjoy a pickup group experience. Shouldn't that me MY choice, not Cryptics?

The reality is this, despite your claims of what the "majority" want: I am on a roleplay-oriented SG with about 18 members, all of whom prefer grouping and like being sociable, but, all of whom sometimes are in the mood to solo and want to be able to do that if they feel like it. And again that some missions are not solo-able is not the problem -- but rather, that you can have all 3 of your "mission slots" filled with un-solo-able missions on a day when you just feel like soloing today. And THAT is the problem. If players could choose or trade missions back in or something, it would be a LOT less of an issue.

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Yep, I'm still perplexed by people who don't have 2 hours. Heck, that's just going from 6 hours sleep to 4 hours sleep in a night, and there's this magic drug called "Caffeine" that I'm still addicted to from my 60 hours work + 50 hours EQ weeks...

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First of all I regularly play games for more than 2 hours so I am not defending myself here, but..

Just because you are able to get by on caffeine and 4 hr of sleep does not make it reasonable for someone to have to do it for a game.

Just because YOU like to play in 2 hour blocks does not mean everyone does.

Just because YOU can play in 2 hour blocks doesn't mean that people who want to respec should have to do so.

This is just another way for the leet kiddies who have no lives or don't know how to prioritize their lives (and thus put a GAME first) to lord it over the people who have lives, families, and priorities they put over 2 hours of straight nonstop gaming.

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Now that's funny, when this was discussed in beta, states thought it was a bad idea and unheroic.

I'm glad he changed his mind.

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Reality has a way of catching up with you. They've changed (or plan to change) a LOT of things we said needed changing in beta and they insisted (then) were fine as is. A short list:

1. "We need a social area. Fighting crime is all well and good but even heroes need down time." Their initial answer -- "You're playing a hero. You sould go out and fight crime. And besides nobody uses social areas in other MMOs anyway." However, after seeing the train stations turn into the default social hangouts (and causing lag for people trying to use the train), they realized that the beta-testers were right and put those in.

2. "You need to be able to re-spec." The initial answer was "No that can be abused." But now they have put that into the game as well.

3. "You need a mission difficulty slider. Some builds can do things others can't and this makes missions impossible." Their original answer: "Get a group. Sliders are too exploitable." Their current answer is they have made putting this in a priority.

4. "We should be able to have secret identities." Their initial answer: "Your'e a hero 24/7. No secret ID needed." The current answer is that you have 4 costume choices (ultimately) one or more of which can be "secret ID" looking. Not *quite* the same (since a secret ID would also include a name change) but satisfactory to most people who wanted one.

5. "You need to be able to abort bugged or impossible missions." Initial answer: "Too easy to exploit." Current answer is they are looking into it and planning on allowing it.

This brings up a fun point... if the devs had just listened to the beta testers in the first place all of these situations could have been avoided from the get-go. These were not (unless the devs were lying when they gave us their reasons) due to lack of time before release, but rather, due to a set of flawed assumptions about what players would want (or in some cases, need, such as how to deal themselves with bugged missions).

It also brings up the moral to this story: you can't force players to have fun YOUR way. They either will have fun THEIR way, or they won't play.

For the future, I hope the devs of this game realize that they shouldn't be doing things like opening up beta and then almost immediately announcing, "We are in feature freeze; stop asking for new features." The whole POINT of beta should be not to just shakedown the game for bugs but also to figure out what the players want or need that never occurred to you or your alpha testers. Maybe we will have learned some things for City of Villains next year, hmmm? I hope so.

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Goodbye Perez Park at 7th level!
Goodbye Vahz missions of death!
Goodbye high level, "Why don't you just go to Atlas Park, won't that be fun? missions!"
Goodbye "Just killed 40 xxx?" "Why don't you go kill them again?"

Goodbye TAKING MISSIONS THAT MY SIDEKICK CAN'T GET TO!!!!

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I'll second most of these. And add... nevermind level 7... Goodbye to Perez Park missions EVER AGAIN at any level. I utterly hate Perez Park.

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