SpittingTrashcan

Okay, I see I skipped a few steps in showing my work.

A force multiplier is a character whose powers increase the effectiveness of everyone on their team. The more teammates they have, the more value they generate. Force multipliers are generally less effective on their own because they only have their base effectiveness to multiply, but with enough teammates they contribute massively to damage and survivability.

SSK makes it much, much easier to form teams, since instead of choosing people at or near your level you can team with almost anyone. The easier it is to form teams, the better it is for force multipliers, who greatly increase the effectiveness of teams they join and reap the benefits. So, far from turning CoX into a soloing game, I think SSK will encourage teaming for characters who benefit from teams, which includes force multipliers and other specialists who are strong in one aspect but benefit from reinforcement in others (see: blasters, tankers).

On the other hand, characters who are neither force multipliers nor require reinforcement do not benefit as much from teams. Some portion of these characters have long farmed maps set for a team. Now that this can be accomplished via a simple difficulty setting rather than by asking for fillers, this kind of play has become much more accessible.

So, in short:
* Because of SSK, characters who team well will team more.
* Because of difficulty multipliers, characters who solo well will solo more.

None of what I've said in this thread has anything to do with who is more betterer. I'm just interested in seeing who will benefit most from what. And what I've noted is that scrappers, as an AT, will benefit more from difficulty multipliers because they can solo well.

The discussion thus far has had very little to do with what various ATs contribute to a team and very much to do with which ATs have good, or consistently good, solo performance - because it is these who stand to benefit from team size multipliers. On the other hand, force multiplier ATs benefit from SSK.

Incidentally, it'll be interesting to see if the game segregates into two populations: soloists running multiplied missions alone, and force multipliers teaming up via SSK to take on TFs or +4 missions.

Every character's performance is limited by whether they can provide adequate survivability, and then by how much damage they can generate.

Just not necessarily their own survivability or damage.

Do you realize you just contradicted yourself?

When you refer to people quitting, you are referring to existing players. Prospective players cannot quit, because they have not joined! If you had said, "Being able to be emerald crystal does not attract new players, but new content will", then you'd be supporting your thesis. But what you said is "Being able to be emerald crystal won't prevent existing players from quitting, but new content will." Which is exactly the opposite of what you initially said the purpose of I16 was.

Incidentally, I agree with the second part of your statement. Existing players, who have had the chance to explore all the content available, are more interested in new content they haven't played. New players, for whom all the current content would be new content, haven't been swayed to join by the amount of content already available, so adding additional content does nothing for them - but a visual upgrade like customizable power colors might grab their attention. So, I'd say that the flagship feature of I16 is most definitely a new player attractor.

(AE, on the other hand, would have been an excellent retention measure - that it was marketed as a feature for new players is one of the many ways in which it was mishandled. But that's just my opinion.)

I think the Masters badges are an excellent example of the kind of "death penalty" that would be positive. A wholly optional challenge, that grants nothing but bragging rights. The Ouroboros badges for running arcs without dying are also good in this regard.

The balancing point for risk and reward is simply that as difficulty increases, it becomes hard to fight efficiently. In that respect, the trip to the hospital is a sufficient penalty - that's time wasted in zoning and traveling that could have been spent killing things.

I appreciate your point, but not every thread needs to have the education of new players as its purpose, and specifically the OP and associated discussion was not written with a new player audience in mind. If you don't read the forums for technical discussions of game mechanics, then some threads just aren't for you.

This more than anything else is the reason I have serious doubts about the Freedom Phalanx. They're harboring what is essentially a vampire - someone who can and does steal the bodies and lives of others to preserve and prolong her own. To say nothing of the human atomic bomb, or the second degree murderer. Our good guys aren't very, y'know, good...

For me to disprove the above, all I need to do is produce a build that is good at soloing single hard targets but poor at destroying several soft targets at once - and I can. But I think we are now agreed that the two activities are sufficiently different as to be orthogonal.

On a different point, I note that it would be silly for me to state that Masterminds are broken because of the performance of your Bots/Traps, just as it would be silly to say that Controllers are broken because of Ill/Rad or Fire/Kin. Scrappers and Brutes, however, have converged on a performance band tight enough that you can actually make reasonable statements about the performance of the AT as a whole. Scrappers may or may not be broken, but they're undoubtedly consistent.

You seem to be under the impression that I've said something I haven't. These are exactly the things I have said:

- Scrappers are well-served by the options available in IOs.
- I don't see things getting any better than they are now for Scrappers.
- GM soloing and general PvE use different tools.

At no point did I actually say that Scrappers are "the best" or that they are "broken", which is what you seem to be trying to refute. Good on your Bots/Traps, by the way - I don't see things getting any better for Masterminds than they are now, either.

Yes, because single target debuffs (especially regeneration debuffs) and damage have exactly the same value against a single AV or GM over the course of 30 minutes as they do against 16 minions, lieutenants, and bosses over the course of ten seconds.

More seriously, yes, I'm well aware that certain builds of other ATs can meet or exceed Scrapper performance in general PvE. That doesn't change the fact that Scrappers (and Brutes) collectively are well-served by the build and challenge options available. The reason I consider this the golden age of the Scrapper is not so much because I necessarily expect things to get worse as because I don't see a realistic way for things to get better. Right now is a great time for characters with good AoE damage and moderate (enhanceable to excellent) survivability.

The mitigation discrepancy between orange and purple inspirations has been a topic of note for some time, and is relevant to the current discussion.

Roll a tall character?

You're young.

Get off my lawn.