Psychoti

MARTy stands for "Metric Activated Rewards Throttle"....yoke.

http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/MARTy

It was introduced as a method the devs can use to curb exploits without having to take the servers down immediately.

When it was first knowingly tested by players it was broken immediately. Since fixes were put into place it runs entirely in the background and you should never, ever see it in game unless there's a hideous bug or exploit. Something along the lines of you entering Perez Park, clicking on the map tab and that killing every mob on the map and giving you credit for the kills.

Nobody is saying it should replace the in-world contacts. At least, I don't think people are saying that.

As I said, "for some of the content, anyway". And yes, single-AT teams can be fun, but some of the content would be extremely frustrating for the average player to go through with say, 8 blasters, or 8 tankers, or something like that. Keep in mind I'm saying that the random grouping of players should have a method of balancing teams, but that in itself might not be a good way to do it because of all the categories you'd have to employ and let players have input into it as to their own preferred playstyle.

For example, in a game released earlier this year they have a queuing system for their dungeons. There are only 4 different 'roles' that you can choose to describe yourself as: Tank, DPS, Support, Healer. There are requirements you must meet before you could describe yourself as any of them. And that didn't even account for 'ranged dps' or 'melee dps', or what type of support (buffs, debuffs, control, etc).

In CoH, there would have to be more categories for it. Tanks are self-explanatory, really. But when you get into other types of characters... say you have two blasters. One is Fire/NRG, the other Rad/Fire. Your Fire/NRG is designed to fight only at extended range, so you might flag him for ranged dps. Your Rad/Fire can fight both at range, but is purposely designed for PBAE attacks - would that count for melee DPS or ranged DPS?

The more I think about it the more I think the system would be complicated and not as user-friendly as one would hope without sacrificing something.

That's almost exactly what I expect, though I expect more story content than just tips. I'm hoping for more, anyway.

In my mind, the first things that should get the treatment are the various respec trials.

I asked about this sort of thing on a UStream sometime in the past month, and Zwillinger had apparently forgotten about the Respecs, the Hollows, CoP, and the Abandoned Sewer Trial as well as the Eden Trial when he said, "All trials are in the LFG queue," in response to it. The error was pointed out but I don't remember what the amended answer to the question was. I shall have to activate my VK-signal and search for it, I presume. (Also, don't think I'm blaming Zwill here, he's a community manager and not a game designer. You don't have to remember every last detail 24/7.)

I would definitely like it to be easier to find teams, though. Really, is there any valid argument against making teaming easier?

Edit: Seconds after asking the question, I came up with an answer: A queuing system would almost have to involve a way to identify characters' powers/etc so that you wouldn't just have 8 random blasters on a team or something along those lines - for some of the content, anyway.... and I'm pretty sure that having an arbitrary system deciding how you should play is wrong,Wrong,WRONG for City of Heroes.

Remember, it's a hybrid system, not a microtransaction system. That means they can gouge worse than the in-game market ever did. Because it's hybrid.

I disagree a little bit here, with the changes to Keyes it's entirely feasible to run it in rotation with BAF/Lambda before you get a single level shift. It was much more difficult to do so before, but still doable when everyone did what they were supposed to (which rarely happened in my experience).

*snicker*

Is that what she told you?