As to the idea that archetypes can solo, albeit slowly, is it really enough just to make them more desireable in groups? Do you realize just how much more slowly they DO level?
At L30 I calculated that at my current rate of killing even con minions on my empathy defender, it would take me 200 hours of solo play to finish up the level I was over halfway through. I then walked around a blind corner into a boss, died, and got far more debt than xp I had earned in the last two hours of xping. At that point I realized it was pointless to play the character anymore, and started up a blaster.
Excelling in a group, as your strength, is fine. It sucks, though, when your two best powers aren't self-castable, and soloing just isn't an option anymore. Like it or not, you just will never ALWAYS be able to have a group. It doesn't feel very heroic, that's for sure.
One more thing...
It's fine to say that the street hunting in cities where the spawns are small are a poor choice for group, but you need to understand that we don't always have a choice about where to fight.
I play this game with several friends I've gamed with for years. Due to starting it at different times, different schedules, wanting to start a different character, we're not all in the same level range. Sidekicking is a GODSEND for allowing us all to play together, but unfortunately, we must stick to city zones. We can't do trial or hazard zones because someone inevitably isnt' high enough level. We can only do a few missions until we get one that is somewhere someone can't go. So to play together, we're stuck with street sweeping.
--general add to thread--
Regarding Solo play.
As an MMO soloer I've become very used to being on the low end of the Exp/hour scale. I don't want to be pushed out of the scale. I don't every have a problem with being locked into groups of 3, -1,0,+1 mobs as long as there are groups of said mobs to fight. Honestly in some zones this is not the case. It's even worse when these group of 2-4 are 2 lts and 2 bosses. This is my stand on Solo vs Group, vs the perceived sweet spot. (Also I would like to be able to solo my missions, but generally they are scaled in groups of 3 -1,0,+1, so I imagine this should not be overly effected. I will gladly pull help for AVs, Monsters, or purple bosses, though timed missions often make this impossible.)
Regarding crowd control in mobs.
I also don't think there are good tools for many builds to face the degree of root/hold/stun powers encountered later in the game, even in groups of 1-3. I've had a single equal level Pariah kill me because he alpha striked me with a stun then hit me with a sword for my full health. (This was a controller) With my blasters I've seen Ritki do it even worse. The status effects are too great after a certain point and it is worse when they shift from the bosses to the lts, then to the minnons. I think disciplines need to be reactive and offer greater protection to stuns, especially stuns from multiple sources given it is not 1 stunning, mezzing, rooting, sleeping, holding mob per average group of three but 2 to 3. I think CC is the one place where this game stacks too much against the player no matter what we bring to the table. Player CC characters are very deliberately limited in the amount of damage they bring to the table, and I've seen more then enough "Justification" for this to be quite sick of it but CC enemies in the game still get to do a great deal of damage on top of being able to lock the typical hero down. Also not all defender sets have CC protection, most Defense sets are forced to chose between status resist or damage resist (but the mobs don't make a choice of inducing status or doing damage), the pool powers only have low protection from CC, but even then it almost becomes necessary to take even that small protection due to the proliferation of high damage, high CCing mobs.
Of course both of these statements are opinions. They are not fact except from my point of view playing the game.
I know there are people who like challenge, they get a kick out of living on the edge every second knowing that the next shot from the mob means they are dead. Though I would infer that these people are not the majority If they where people wouldn't have to be encourage to fight Crannies, Malta or DE.
Solution number 1 sucks. It nerfs the hell out of the players in response to a Dev created problem.
Solution number 2 would be fine with me. Overall, it isn't the xp that concerns me most. It is the complete and total lack of challenging fights. Without the ability to take on tougher mobs (+5 and up) there is no reason to team. Large teams were the most fun aspect of CoH for me.
Solution number 3 would be my ideal situation, though I understand I am likely in the small minority here. I had always found the replay value to be very high in CoH. Different ways to play between AT's as well as difference within an AT based on power set selections. I would like to be able to level up many different kinds of characters while fighting in large teams.
Solution 4 is fat nerf if not implemented correctly. Basicly it would require shifting all the mobs down in level without changing their HP or powers or xp rewarded. That wouldn't bother me (if combined with the removal of the purple patch) because it would allow for decent xp combined with challenging fights. The Con of the mob is meaningless in this case.
After reading Statesmans posts on this subject I am convinced he doesn't have the foggiest idea about how CoH works. It isn't really his fault, he doesn't have the hours to play that other players do. The scary thing is that he does or will not recognize this shortcoming. He seems hell bent for leather to push forward with all these nerfs to solve problems he created with the purple patch. It would be a good thing for CoH if he woke up and realized the purple patch is the root cause of most of the problems. Roll that infernal patch out and let the good times roll in!
28 pages... don't blame me for not reading all of it, just been hitting the dev posts.
One thing I wanted to point out about the whole "what groups should take on" argument is that I see devs in several places saying that players need to find bigger groups of mobs.
I -think- a number was given around 24 minions for an 8 person group (think this was Geko, correct me if I have the numbers or the quotee wrong)
Where do you find 24 minions in a single spawn in the game outside of missions? You don't. We keep being told to hunt bigger groups of non-purples, and that fighting small amounts of much higher level enemies isn't the intended playstyle.
At the same time, we're being told that herding is also not the intended playstyle.
So which is it? In order to get 24 minions for an 8 person group, you have to herd. Otherwise, to get any exp that's at all worth considering when in a big team, you have to hunt things way above your level.
What I'm seeing (correct me if I'm wrong) is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation when it comes to upcoming patches regarding herding and purples. As it is, those are the only two options of getting good exp, and apparently both are not intended playstyles and will be "fixed" in upcoming patches.
Where does this leave players? Are the 30s going to be even more excruciatingly slow than they already are, or will even level enemy exp be significantly improved so that removing the ability to herd or fight groups of reds/purples will not otherwise hinder a player's experience progress?
Oh, on a similiar subject, I saw a red name say that players don't (but should) fight things between contacts and mission doors to help make [mission] exp on par with street fighting. No. BS. If my level 36 gets a mission from someone in northern Founder's to kill a warehouse full of guys in Kings Row, (this is something that happens rather disturbingly often, those crazy Rikti love Paragon's slums...) how much exp you think I'm getting if I stopped to fight everything on the way? Yeah... None.
EDIT -- Just wanted to add, I'm all for making the game more challenging; I'm all for risk vs. reward. Slowing exp gain (either directly or indirectly), thus extending the treadmill, is not an acceptable way to accomplish this.
On this note, make enemy groups that suck to fight give more exp. If a fungoid Lt. or a lesser devoured gave substantially more exp than an equal-level unteroffizer or oberst, I'd be much more inclined to fight them. As it is, I just walk on by the plantlife to cut me some Nazis -- there's no incentive not to.
Stateman,
I may be misunderstanding, but it sounds like you're talking about making the game basically an issue of -1, 0, +1 lvls (the way missions are now). It seems that you are saying that mobs should get much harder quickly so that a group of 8 should possibly have a difficult time with even one +4 mob. The problem is that once again that ignores the level spread in groups the way the first iteration of the "purple patch" did (and the second iteration still did to a lesser degree).
In a level-compressed environment, if a group has a level spread of say 5 levels, then the low-levels will be useless or the high levels will be bored--there is seldom an acceptable medium. If you go by colors, then there is an 8 level spread between gray and purple mobs. Personally, I think that would be a sufficient spread if done correctly, but currently (for some builds at least) everything below yellow might as well be considered gray because you have little more difficulty with white than you do with grays. If taking on several whites was difficult (the way it is for say a controller at lower levels) then the spread might work okay. But, there is such a great disparity between some blasters (for example) and some controllers or defenders that to some of them yellows are trivial while to others even blues can occasionally be a challenge. Frankly, I don't envy you having to fix the problem.
The only way I see this working is if you move the bar some but don't ignore the lower colors (gray, green, blue, white). However, that still doesn't account for the AT disparity, so that must be fixed too. I just don't think there should be such a broad difference between what differing ATs can handle. I'm an alt junkie and find that with some blasters I can reliably take down oranges and some reds by myself (at even lower and mid-levels), but with most "support class" builds at those levels it's often tough to face groups with even one or two yellows in it. That's a 2 to 3 level difference in what different classes can face (not to mention the different speeds at which they do it). I think that's too wide. I don't think there should EVER be above a two level disparity, and even two should be only when a few of the strongest builds are compared to a few of the weakest. There just shouldn't be that great a difference between classes.
If what ATs could handle was a little closer together, then people would have a closer perception of the game's difficulty and things might improve. If a white or yellow is challenging to some builds then at best some other builds should find a yellow to orange of an equal challenge.
I just don't think it is as simple as making mobs harder, because that would make them a challenge for some but IMPOSSIBLE for others unless the classes are moved closer together.
Thanks for your dedication, but again, I don't envy you the job of having to fix it.
Dwimble
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Oh - and one other thing. The vast, vast majority of players at any given time are on missions. XP or not - it's the most popular part of the game.
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I believe that because it's the way I wish I could play 100% of the time, I absolutely loathe street sweeping yet inevitably I am doomed to 2 of 3 levels of boredom before every level multiple of 5. Please for the love of all that is holy make more missions, enough so that I never have to street sweep again! Other than that I love this game. 
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Here are the cliff notes. The xp gained per mob defeated goes down as you add players. At 4 players, you have capped the difficulty of mobs you can face (+4 your level) and have found the largest concentration of mobs you can face. THE XP LOST DUE TO ADDITIONAL PLAYERS CAN NO LONGER BE MADE UP BY FIGHTING HIGHER LEVEL MOBS OR MORE MOBS BECAUSE OF THE PURPLE PATCH
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Just so that I'm clear - the larger the group, the larger the spawn. The problem is not the "purple patch" - the problem is that players are approaching MOB spawns that are simply too small for their group.
Oh - low level trials - Sewers (upper). Faultline.
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I'd venture to say that one of the main reasons Faultline is avoided as a lower level trial zone is maneuverability. It's just too easy to fall to your death.
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In my opinion Status effects are not the answer to making thegam emore challenging. Doing something to help reduce the Alpha strike syndrome would be better. Honestly Alpha strikes seem to trivialize much of the content in my opinion.
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As a blaster who is not normally a powergamer I will tell you that I feel forced into powergaming and massive preplanning to make sure that I can alpha strike. Want to know why? If I can't alpha that group or mob, chances are I am going to die.
Raise my hit points or give me access to more defense, otherwise leave my damn alpha strike alone. 
Don't people group for fun any more? Seriously I group up because it's good to chat and have fun instead of playing solo all the time.
What is the rush to get to lvl 50 anyway?
Seems to me that alot of the nerfheads out there and the dev's themselfs, have failed to a couple of magor things into account, with there force teaming. 1) is that not all severs are equaly populated, and the on other is that there is not as many 30's-50's running around out there as there are 2-20'2. So finiding teams is alot easier said then done on other severs then others. But what the hell do they care as long as they get the nerf they'er calling for.
When you up the difficulty of above lvl 25 mobs, will you compensate the XP gained or lower the level xp reqs then?
Atm with the possibility of soloing purples the lvl 30-40 is still the slowest levels ingame with fast scaling xp reqs to level up and way to few missions to do. Even increasing the mission reward wont even come close to balancing this when the mob difficulty goes up.
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Psychic is extremely difficult to resist (I think only Stone Armor gives any real resistance...anyone know of any others?) and since they are the only villian group that is based on psychic, it seems right that it's even harder to resist them since they're so good at it.
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Dark Miasma defenders offer resistance to psychic. It's the PBAoE Shadow Fall buff, which means people need to stay close to benefit, & until Issue #2 goes live we can't actually slot it with resistance enhancements, but reports from Test are that, properly slotted, it's a great resistance buff.
******
On another note: Statesman, are you saying that one hero equals three white-con minions for all ATs? What about scrappers, who are "best suited" for soloing & can expect to be "overshadowed" by blasters & tankers in groups? Seems to me if there's an AT who will be second-class in a group, it ought to be better than the average at soloing to make up for it - say, one scrapper should equal three yellow-con minions, or whatever. (That's the case so far, I just don't want to see that change.)
I think there are way, way too many people completely skimming over Statesman's main point here.
All future calculations based on what a group can or cannot do should be under the assumption that the devs are doing SOMETHING that makes orange/red/purple enemies a good deal more difficult than they are right now. Once you've established that, and you know that a group of 2 or 3 isn't going to be taking on large groups of purples, then you can see that a larger group would be more useful XP-wise.
There are, of course, inherent complications with this, but I trust the devs. I trust that Statesman is planning on changing gameplay to make it MORE fun, and not less. When I see him say, "even con MOBs will be harder in later levels than they are now" I don't assume that's all he's planning on doing. The reason why changes to this game are slow is because (their own words) they "don't want to break the game".
I would consider increasing difficulty without increasing reward to be breaking the game. Thus, I forsee something to counteract this. I don't know what it could be, and I don't presume to know how it's going to work out. But once again, I have faith in developers to give people a good, fun time.
Good luck on the changes, States. I look forward to seeing what you have to offer.
Oh, and one side note: Obsidian Shield from the Dark Armor set provides some killer Psychic resistance.
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I believe that because it's the way I wish I could play 100% of the time, I absolutely loathe street sweeping yet inevitably I am doomed to 2 of 3 levels of boredom before every level multiple of 5. Please for the love of all that is holy make more missions, enough so that I never have to street sweep again! Other than that I love this game.
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2 levels? /diabolical laugh
Starting at level 40, I finished five of six Arcs, finished all but the last mission of the remaining Arc, did a good portion of the non-Arc missions that my contacts will give out, and I still didn't quite break 41. The only way I pushed up to 41 and a half was from chimney sweeping in PI while helping a friend hit level 42.
Great ruin soloing at 30+. Its very difficult to find small groups of white mobs. They are there, but take a lot longer to find. Take a look in bricks. The groups there often have +2 or +3 lts or bosses with white mobs. Looks like I will have to rely on missions. I hope they fixed the exp well enough that I won't run out of missions after a level. I also hope they fix finding purple bosses at the end of missions. Leveling is slow for me already. Its going to take forever now. 
I agree they are breaking the game if the increase the risk without the reward. Silver lining is that if they screw up the game, WoW is almost here.
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Couple that with the enormous penalty for grouping beyond the 4rth person and you just don't see large teams anymore.
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Penalty for more than 4 people? Certainly not XP wise; players get an XP bonus for having larger and larger groups. What are you referring to?
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I want to address this one States.
From experience across any level XP over Time has shown that 4 person teams are about the optimum grouping for max xp.
This isn't a 'penalty' per say just a fact of gaming. You get 4 people together who know what they are doing (i.e. highly skilled players) and they can tear apart spawns that you designed for 8 players in the time it would take an average 8 player group.
As such 4 players becomes the natural evolution. As you grow both in skill and in power you learn how to maximize this 4 person grouping.
It's as simple as this:
When it takes 40 seconds to defeat a spawn of 12-24 villians regardless of the number of heroes from 4 to 8 what number of heroes gives the best xp rate?
Obviously the 4.
It's as simple as that. 4 players kill way to fast in this game. It's a factor of life.
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In other words if you are not an AT or build with resistance to status effects you are not allowed to solo at high lvl?
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That's what the Inspirations are for! To help the solo player!
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No inspiration gives Sleep resistance 
That is one issue I've always had 
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Mobs don't drop Disciplines as often as they use holds. If you're not hunting right next to a contact, you can't get enough inspirations to solo. Are we supposed to run to a contact after every 5th fight?
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We're going to be increasing drop rates. Sorry I didn't mention that.
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This doesn't make any sense to me.
Lets say have a 5 person group in a hazard zone fighting Rikittis.
You're going to have to pop a Disipline every minute. 5 x 60 = 300 disp.
That means you're are going to have to kill 1 mob nearly every second to keep the insp stocked. Heck even with a 3 person group, you need to either kill a mob ever 2 second and have a disp drop every time, or 1 every second and have a disp drop 50% of the time.
This really looks to penalize the large groups.
You're going to have to dedicate a large portion of your insp tray to hold them. So very few dmg, acc, heals etc.
Are you
1) Planning on having a Dispincle insp drop at least 50% of the time on a status using mobs like rikitti?
2) are you planning on increasing the time of a Disp to a longer period like 3-5 minutes?
3) will you allow stack of insp?
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Mobs don't drop Disciplines as often as they use holds. If you're not hunting right next to a contact, you can't get enough inspirations to solo. Are we supposed to run to a contact after every 5th fight?
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We're going to be increasing drop rates. Sorry I didn't mention that.
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This doesn't make any sense to me.
Lets say have a 5 person group in a hazard zone fighting Rikittis.
You're going to have to pop a Disipline every minute. 5 x 60 = 300 disp.
That means you're are going to have to kill 1 mob nearly every second to keep the insp stocked. Heck even with a 3 person group, you need to either kill a mob ever 2 second and have a disp drop every time, or 1 every second and have a disp drop 50% of the time.
This really looks to penalize the large groups.
You're going to have to dedicate a large portion of your insp tray to hold them. So very few dmg, acc, heals etc.
Are you
1) Planning on having a Dispincle insp drop at least 50% of the time on a status using mobs like rikitti?
2) are you planning on increasing the time of a Disp to a longer period like 3-5 minutes?
3) will you allow stack of insp?
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For a group, I'd think you'd have at least one defender &/or controller with some form of status protection or alleviation, which should help the situation; if you've got more than four people, you really ought to have two. Although two lines (Empathy & Kinetics, I think) offer only an after-the-fact effect, Storm's is single-target only, & Dark Miasma has nothing.
(And Statesman, if you're going to be increasing the use of status effects by mobs as drastically as Issue #2 seems, then please go back & review the reasoning for excluding this powerset from status protection, or all the fixes in the world won't make us more groupable.)
What zones provide spawns that large? Certainly none that I've scene.
I see less people complaining about finding a group after Issue 2 goes live. They have the awesome new feature to find tons of people near your level.
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So, it seems the plan is to make it such that you must group to take on white con mobs and get even LESS xp than you get today. Thus the future of this game seems to be forced grouping with terrible XP. Soloing will be possible, but your XP will be next to nothing. Missions will become impossible as the even con mobs and bosses won't be doable by a solo player at all.
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That's not what I got at all. He seemed to be pretty clear that a player should be able to solo three even con minions. The difficulty of many enemies 30+ is simply too easy, and taking out 3 of them is very easy for a solo player. The plan is to boost the difficulty of those 30+ enemies, but still keeping the balance of approximately three minions to one player.
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The whole "3 white cons per hero" garbage has me choked. Please explain to me how my lvl 27 Fire/Energy Blaster, who can take down an entire group of orange minions in two shots, is going to be effected by this.
Are they going to make the mobs so much harder to kill that I'll have no choice but to fight lower level mobs? (Thereby nerfing EVERYONE.) Or are they going to nerf my "Build Up - Aim - AoE - AoE" combo so that it does less damage? (Thereby nerfing Blasters (and probably everyone else who uses Build Up)).
I'm curious to hear what your (and others') opinion is. Many people on this thread are simply gushing all over Statesman's comments on this thread. I just want to know if ANY of you have even given his comments any real thought.
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"Just find a Group" or "Include such and such in your group."
As long as this game is advertised as one that can be played solo, those are not answers to problems/complaints people post in the forums. Please, if your tempted to make one of those responses, think twice. Your not helping and just adding noise that makes it harder to see the serious rsponses, especially in regards to update 2 which is coming.
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Every MMOG should be group based at some point (read as group nessecary).
Otherwise it should be a LAN or single player title.
And why on Earth would you pay a monthly fee for a game that you could solo 100% of the content?
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There are an awful, awful lot of good posts on this thread.
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So very true, it's impressive to see well thought out ideas and theories and opinions in a manner that isn't confrontational but informative.