TonyV

I can honestly say that I don't remember ever quitting a task force that everyone didn't agree to abandon. Not one single time. Belle did once a while back because they didn't tell her ahead of time that it was a speed run, and it was the first time she had ever tried running Dr. Kahn. She begged them for 10 or 15 minutes to slow down so that she could figure out what was going on, and after two or three missions of them ignoring her, she wished them well and left. (Followed by five minutes of obnoxious tells. It was idiotic.)

I always make sure I have plenty of time to finish a task force. I don't base it on how long an "average" player takes, and I sure as hell don't base it on how fast a team does it that is familiar with the task force and goes along at a fair clip. I remember one night waaay back, I worked literally all friggin' night long on a Synapse task force. Seriously, we spent hours after two or three other people bailed on us doggedly determined to take down the Clockwork King, and it was literally daylight outside before we finally agreed that it just couldn't be done. (This was probably in 2005, well before the days of super inspirations, mega IOs, 5000 temp powers, etc.) The first time I did a Dr. Quaterfield task force, we got whittled down to three people and encountered the mission waaay in to the task force where there are four simulclickies. We all logged off and I sent the one guy whose e-mail address I knew a desperate plea to log in the next day at some pre-arranged time. Surprisingly, he did and we finished it--over 24 hours after it started.

I feel for you being tired and probably bit frustrated and/or irate. And I have a day job, too. I hate to admit this, but I've probably actually called in sick a couple of times over the years specifically because I get into these kinds of situations. But that's how I roll. I DO NOT leave task forces. If I ever do, it will probably because either the police or an ambulance is taking me away. Yes, I know that might sounds a bit neurotic. But no one will ever say, "That damn Tony bailed on us!"

In my opinion, there is no "nice" way to leave a task force. There are only bad ways and worse ways, and I almost always one-star and put a comment on any player who does so. If you're going to run up against a hard stop that could even begin to be a factor, just pass it up. There will always be others you can join when you do have time.

I've never done this, but the only exception I would make is if someone makes a point of informing me when asking to join, "I have to leave at X o'clock, and I have no leeway." At that point, if I invite you and at X o'clock you leave, I had fair warning and an opportunity to find someone else to join instead, and that would be my fault, not yours.

So wait, you're saying that you're going to be level pacted IRL? Okay, now I understand.

If you have a more difficult path to something and a less difficult path to something, people will flock to the less difficult path.

However, if you have a solo path to something and a team-based path to something, people will more often than not flock to the solo path to it even if it's more "difficult" or time-consuming. This is because social interaction is a factor in determining the final gauge of difficulty in accomplishing the task. The difficulty isn't in actually carrying out the task at hand, it's generally in all of the stuff around getting to the task at hand, such as recruiting people, explaining to people what to do, managing them once whatever it is you're doing starts (heading off drama, herding the cats, etc.). Yes, a solo path may be more "difficult" or time-consuming, but at least it's a known quantity of difficulty and time consumption, which is more often perceived as easier, even if strictly speaking, it's not really easier.

And that's a HUGE problem if you're developing a game in which the multi-player experience is a key factor. The $64,000 question (literally, if that's in the ballpark of your salary) is: How do I get people to want to team up? The obvious answer is to gate some sweet rewards behind teaming up. Players will want to team up in order to get to those rewards. Contrary to your OP, City of Heroes has always used this mechanism. Remember back before all of the inflation, when if you have a million influence, you were really rich? Task forces used to award SO enhancements. I remember even as a level 40 (originally) and 50 (after Issue 1), I would run task forces to earn those because of how friggin' expensive they were to buy.

Since then, we've had various rewards tied to completing team-based content. Things like Hamidon and Hydra enhancements, badges, costume pieces, Incarnate experience and salvage, huge gobs of experience and prestige, etc. Many rewards were available exclusively to people who teamed up for a while. And teaming was most emphatically not an easy thing to do to get them. Who here has begged in chat channels for someone to have pity on them and allow their level 50 to tag along on a fortuneteller mission? *raises hand... Who here has been accidentally kicked off a task force one or two missions before the end because you were exemplared to a lower-level person in the level range or a task force that got disconnected? *raises hand...

It's not rocket science to know that an average person in an MMO spends, I would guess, around 80% of their time in the game solo. Possibly even more. So any MMO that doesn't have solo content is going to be doomed to failure, because I can't imagine a game that is sustainable only on its team-based gameplay. However, there is a point at which without team-based gameplay, the game starts getting less and less fun as an MMO. Or to be more precise, it gets more and more like a single-player game with a few multi-player features tacked on as an afterthought. Now, I don't have a problem with single-player RPGs. I've played them almost all of my life and some of them have been brilliant. However, when your average schmo buys an MMO, they're not looking for a single-player game with multi-player features tacked on as an afterthought.

At the Player Summit last November, I had the pleasure of sitting next to Ross "Giant Monster" Borden and across from Brian Clayton at dinner. At one point, they asked the people around them what we thought would make the game better. I immediately told them that I really appreciate all of the hard work they've put into making teaming up in the game easy, especially the new-at-the-time LFG queuing system, but I think they should still keep hammering away on it.

I told them that if they could have just a button that you could push that says, "Find me something to do," that would be the Holy Grail. I think that's basically what the LFG queue is for, but our existing players are in such a mindset right now that they have to have such-and-such and archetype or such-and-such a level-shifted character make-up on the team, or that teaming with strangers is always a disaster, that no one is using it. I've tried myself here on these very forums to push the player base into using the LFG queue more, but such suggestions have generally been met by people saying, "Team up with the unwashed masses? Ew, no way." Or, "And risk getting people who don't know how to play? These missions are too hard and we'll fail." Which is a shame, because I couldn't disagree more. Most of the content of this game--including most task forces and trials--is so easy that trained monkeys could win by pounding random keys on a keyboard. (And yes, I've been on enough PUGs to know that sometimes, that's precisely what happens; yet still, I love being on PUGs.)

I guess today that I would have to addend the "Find me something to do" button idea with, "Find me something to do that doesn't require a leader to coordinate things," because I think that's the biggest obstacle to teaming--having those people who are willing to do the grunt work of recruiting people and herding the cats during the mission. Perhaps that's part of the answer--to develop medium- to large- team-required missions that are composed of simpler tasks that don't require a lot of coordination.

So given that most people join this game for a rich multi-player experience, and don't argue with me on this point because you are not going to convince me otherwise and I will reject without consideration whatever lame excuse you throw out there, how do you suggest delivering that experience while also appeasing the "make everything solo-only accessible!!!" crowd? I contend that just giving people solo options for everything that can be accomplished on a team isn't an option, because people will almost always choose the solo path simply because of inertia. I also contend that "a rich multi-player experience" means actually sharing missions, not just chatting with people or other players being background decorations as you move from solo mission to solo mission. Gating something--anything--behind teaming always causes an uproar, but the fact is that it works. The latest uproar was over Incarnate content, and a bunch of people contended that it was okay to gate other stuff behind team-oriented content, but I remember similar uproars over other rewards, such as HO enhancements, badges, costume pieces, etc. Every time the arguments were the same, every time there was rumbling for a while that eventually died down, and then that very thing was later used as an example of what was "okay" to gate behind team content when the next thing came along.

So seriously, because I'm sure the devs would love an answer to the question themselves. How would you deliver on that rich multi-player experience? How do you make people want to team up without gating stuff behind team-oriented content? How do you keep City of Heroes from becoming a single-player game with a few multi-player features tacked on as an afterthought?

Like.

I do not have, and never will have, any sympathy at all for people who gripe because an obvious exploit is fixed. I don't care how much of what you think is a "slog" that it lets you bypass.

It's like everything else in the game. You want access to the reward? Then quitchyerbellyachin' and do the mission.

A lot of you are completely missing my point. I'm not asking for special content in addition to what we've been getting. I'm not asking that the devs spend more time on hero-side content than villain-side content. All I'm asking that is instead of the content being focused on how things are going yet further to hell in a handbasket, a little bit of it be focused on how things aren't. Some things are even getting a little better.

There is precedent for this. Really, the first five issues didn't have any "The World Is Getting Destroyed!™" tone to it. For example, in Issue 3, sure, we had some giant monsters show up in some zones, but hey, we also had helpful aliens (Kheldians) show up, woot! And heroes got some cool new epic power pools, woot! The arrival of the Council was mitigated a bit by the Fifth Column getting their a**es kicked. Even issue 6--the launch of City of Villains--was based on the premise that the Rogue Isles have actually been there all along, presumably always the nuisance that it is today, but we're just now getting to explore it. Ever since, I don't know, Issue 10 ("Invasion!") or so, though, it just seems that Paragon City has taken beating after beating without anything significant to prove that the heroes can actually make a positive difference in the city.

That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. Some good mixed in with the bad. And when I say "good," I'm not talking about the mechanics or gameplay. I don't dispute that I'm looking forward to all of this fun world-ending stuff in the pipeline. I'm talking about "good" in the sense that Maggie Greene has something to report on besides, "RUN FOR YOUR LIVES BECAUSE YET MORE S*** IS HITTING THE FAN!"

It just boggles my mind why anyone would willingly actually live in Paragon City these days. I've always implicitly believed it was because the citizens believed in the heroes' ability to win against the forces of evil in the end. But the way things have been going lately with heroes winning little skirmishes but ultimately sucking at the war, how long will it inevitably be before the whole damn city is wiped off the face of the planet?

I'm just saying, writers, give the people some hope, some reason to believe in the heroes!

I think that one thing that is persistently lost in conversations like these is that people think that if stuff starts hitting the fan, Positron, War Witch, Zwillinger, or someone like that will step in and say, "Now come on, let's make nice..." What people need to remember is that they will NOT be dealing with the developers or reps. They will be dealing with corporate IP attorneys. Probably ones that Positron, War Witch, and Zwillinger have never even met. Probably ones that have never even played City of Heroes. Ones in Austin, Texas, not Mountain View, California.

You need to understand that every lawyer who is gainfully employed never looks at a situation and says to themselves, "What is fair here?" They look at a situation and, depending on which side they're coming at it from, think, "If some evil b****** wanted to screw us over as thoroughly as possible, what all avenues are available by which they could do this?" That is why we have the boilerplate text in there that is basically paragraph after paragraph of CYA.

Coming from the other side, the plaintiff, the lawyers operate in the mode of, "What is every possible legal recourse available to us and how can it be used to outspend, outmaneuver, or just plain beat down the defendant until they either give up or pay us truckloads of money?" You need to get it through your head that this is how lawyers operate. It's not personal. They are getting paid a LOT of money not to care one iota about you. If it weren't for at least decent lawyers, there wouldn't BE a City of Heroes, but just the same, if you do something that they feel isn't kosher, they WILL pull out every stop possible to get you.

So I know that a lot of the mechanics and stories that have been hitting lately are cool. But still, I've gotta ask, can the heroes please get some kind of win here?

I remember back when Faultline was revamped. I thought, "This is kind of cool, it's a sign that the heroes really are making a positive difference in the city. For the sake of dramatic conflict, there will always be stuff hitting the fan. Still, it just seems like the heroes have been consistently losing ground for the past several issues. Galaxy City has been destroyed. (Can we please get a statue of Galaxy Girl somewhere? Just because her zone was clobbered, have we forgotten about her completely?) Statesman is dead. Now, Dark Astoria, which was not exactly a stroll in a sunny park before, is going to basically be lost. Even Faultline has been stuck for years in a limbo of not-as-dangerous but not-quite-safe.

I guess I just think that if I really were a hero or a citizen in Paragon City, I'd be terribly depressed all the time thinking, "Why the @*#! do I bother?" Have you guys ever considered writing into the story something that basically amounts to an outright win for the heroes? There seem to be a lot of good opportunities with all that's been going on lately.

How about, I dunno, a revamp of Boomtown and revert it back to Baumton, a normal city zone like Steel Canyon or Skyway City? It doesn't have to be the functional equivalent of Pocket D; there can still be street crime like the other zones have, contacts and intrigue happening in the shiny new zone, and maybe some kind of zone event. Or have the threat of Hamidon on Primal Earth once and for all defeated, opening The Hive up to development? Maybe have it become kind of a First Ward-like mystic zone with some kind of task force to keep him from being resurrected, the reward for completing which would be the badge and enhancement that used to be rewarded for defeating Hamidon?

I don't know, those are just a couple of ideas to get the juices flowing. It just seems like life in Paragon City keeps going from bad to worse. From a gameplay perspective, I commend the devs for doing a fan-freakin'-tastic job. From a story perspective, though, how about some good news for a change? Surely after almost eight years, there are a few things that we can wrap up and call done?

The same principle can be applied to villains, I suppose, though by their chaotic nature it's hard to define exactly what a "win" would look like. Maybe something like the destabilization of the Shadow Shard that allows them to gain a foothold in one or more of the zones there? Or Longbow gets their butts decisively kicked out of Nerva Archipelago? Johnny Sonata finally prevails over the Wailers and becomes a major political force and power base to be reckoned with? Again, just tossing out ideas.

You know, a year ago, none of this stuff existed. Once every three months, you'd get your Veteran Reward. You had zero choice over what you got. You took what they gave you, and you either liked it or you lumped it. For the most part, there were also no extra costume items, powersets, temp powers, extra pets, content updates, etc. that you could get in between issues. Once every four to six months, they'd drop a big update on you. In between, you just... well, you pretty much just played the same ol' stuff, waiting for the next big monolithic issue drop.

Now, we're at the point where we've forgotten so much of what it was like to get one of these perks for every $45 spent that we're complaining about the precise day of the month that we get the perks we've spent $15 for.

I dunno, I'm not trying to shut you up or anything, and there will always be complainers, but it just seems to me that everything's amazing and yet we still have these lingering unhappy people. Man, I'm glad I'm not a game developer; you just can't win.

I wish I could say something to make you feel better, but having lost both of my parents a few years back (mom was 60, dad was 63, they died a few years apart), I know from firsthand experience that there is little consolation right now. This is probably the most gut-wrenching experience you will EVER go through, and it really will just take some time before you can get your head back on straight.

Take some time and feel your sorrow, but try not to dwell on it. Do a little something each day to try to restore some normalcy to your life. Talk to friends and loved ones about your father, because that really does help. Tell them about that time he thought you were crazy for something weird you did. Or that time he said something that was really funny.

More than anything else, though, imagine the impact that he's had on the world. This is one of the only things that kept me sane some days after I lost my parents. Sure, he had the obvious friends, family, coworkers, classmates, acquaintances, and other people that he had an indelible impact on that will last forever. Some, such as yourself, owe their very existence to him. Or even if he was a stepfather or adoptive father, you still owe your core values, much of your very essence, to him. This means that everyone's lives that you touch are indirectly linked to your father.

To my knowledge, I never met your father, yet here I am typing a message at 1:30am to a complete stranger, all the while remembering the good times I had with my own parents--something I wouldn't be doing if it weren't for your father. Someone else who lost a loved one may read it and derive some comfort from it as well, again, thanks to your father. I've always said that even the most humble of people, the vast majority of whom we don't even know their names, have a profound influence on the world around us. As your father lived his life, molding and shaping the people around him, leaving metaphorical fingerprints even on those who didn't even know him, it all adds up to a positive experience on our civilization as a whole that most people vastly underestimate. I honestly believe this; I'm not being melodramatic when I say it.

So next time I have a glass to raise, I'll raise it to your father. May he rest well, and may those who knew and loved him continue his legacy. Even as they add their own fingerprints to the world, remember that although he is gone, they are adding more of his as well. Because of that, he really will never truly be gone.

If it involves a pinball mini-game, count me in.

* In the Spotlight: When used, the last 10 seconds of the game are played back in slow motion while the camera does a 180 downward pan centered on your character. Yes, to everyone on the map. Use it in an instanced mission, it recharges in a week. Use it with a league, it recharges in a month. Use it in an entire zone, that puppy is gone for a whole year.

* The Great Temp Power Find: The entire mission pauses for 10 seconds while a large window containing an alphabetized list of all of your temporary, veteran, and other miscellaneous powers with a search-as-you-type input box appears at the top.

* You Make My Eyes Bleed: You get two or three special costume slots, but these slots are not for your character, no siree. When you activate the enhancement, the costume corresponding to the slot you pick is automatically and instantly imposed on the target player for an hour.

* Uninvinciblization: When used, if there is one and only one minion- or lieutenant-level enemy left on the map (you know, that one that's stuck in the geometry that you cannot hit), that enemy is instantly defeated. If there are zero or more than one enemy left, or the one enemy is anything above a lieutenant, it does nothing.

* The Other: When slotted, any character's name that starts with any punctuation character or three or more repeated letters is prefixed by the title "The Other" instead. That is, instead of .Flame Lad, you would see, The Other Flame Lad.

* Just Missed it: When used within two days of an event ending (Winter Event, Spring Event, Halloween Event, etc.), you get to pick one reward that you forgot about or could never round up a team to complete, and it is instantly awarded to you.

Fusionette.



If I have to, one of these days, I will fight Jim Temblor to the death for her affections. Sure, he talks a big game, but when the chips are down, who actually goes and rescues her? Jimmy boy? Of course not, he's too busy being all emo. "Rescue the love of my life? Oh wow, I'd better not. Even though I have super powers, it sounds dangerous and I might get hurt." Oh that's right, I do, I'm the guy who puts his butt on the line for her. I've come to grudgingly accept her schoolgirl crush on Temblor, but let's not kid ourselves. I'm her hero.

Besides, I like a strong, independent girl who's not afraid to charge in where angels fear to tread. If that's not Fusionette, I don't know who is.

My second choice: Paula Dempsey. Yes, I'm sure most people think she's kind of plain, but she's geeky. I like geeky, we'd get along famously. She must also have the ear of some big honchos, given that unlike a most contacts, she can actually pull some strings and get you a badge for completing one of her missions.

This news... It intrigues me. What are you people doing?