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Since I found Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series to be incredibly boring and repetitious after about book 4 or 5, I've stopped buying those as well.
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<hugs Dasha_Blade>
Thank you! I'm the only one in my group of friends who thinks this way. I'm not crazy!
<runs off cackling wildly>
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Me too! He should have just finished it off after book three. Then written a different series to "finish" off his vision.
Still here, even after all this time!
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Lets face facts here. In the long run a subscription based MMO cannot survive catering to a solo audience because it offers nothing that you cant have in a standalone game. This means team play needs to come first and have greater scope then solo play. This isnt to say a degree, even a large degree of solo play is not a nice addition, but it cannot outweigh team play.
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That's funny. WoW seems to cater to solo play and do quite well for itself. It's good for CoH that I don't have a lot of interest in the WoW universe or in PvP.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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This is a strawman. No one has suggested solo play be reduced to an insignificant part of the overall experience. This is entirely different then suggesting team play is the first focus.
It is becoming more and more apparent that the real source of much of the discontent is coming from solo players who have appropriated 99% of the games content as their own despite the consistent position of the dev team that this was a team game first and foremost. These people then become outraged when told that not all the content in the game was aimed at them.
Clearly given very consistent message from cryptic and the dev team this is a misconception on the part of these solo players, nothing more.
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Um, no. If I'm "hammered" into grouping for everything, that is directly impacting my need to solo at times. As one of the lower level people in my SG, when people team, they *want* to do the higher level peoples stuff for the challenge (and many people hate to "lose" their uberness so don't want to exemplar down.)
So if I want to try to get my souvenirs, I have to solo sometimes. Soloing with a lot of bosses (I think I've had one out of ten mission without a boss in this last arc.)
A +60% boss means that I CAN NOT even think to use the difficulty slider at all. Which is odd, because I think the bosses are too insane and make the fights *boring* while the minions are a waste of time.
Still here, even after all this time!
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If you can't solo everythign your contacts give you then they shouldn't stop giving you stuff when you come up against somethign you can't solo, forcing you to either get a team or to not do any more missions. IMO, THAT, is what is horribly broken.
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I agree there are times when the contacts are not clear about what you can solo what you may be able to solo and what you cant solo. I would even go as far as suggesting there be a way to give missions back to contacts if they contain tasks you cant perform solo.
But
Its obvious that even when people are given hints that they need a team they simply ignore them. If you go back a few pages you will see complaints from a fire tanker that he has three missions he cant solo.
One said outright that it had an AV, and he apparently just assumed he could solo it until he found out it resisted fire.
One told him outright that he should bring along teammates.
He said the third gave him a follow up mission with an AV with no warning. My recollection of this arc is that the AV was hinted at.
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AS for solo versus team difficulty, they had a very nice system in place already where the difficulty of a mission ramped up considerably based on the number of people entering it.
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My experience was that unless you were dragging along 3-5 team members that were well below the level of the group most of the missions were still very easy.
Just remember: "Encourage team play" should mean encouraging team play, NOT forcing it, or discouraging solo play.
"oh, and I almost forgot: you'll need a couple of teammates for this timed mission to simultaneously disarm bombs." is not encouraging teamwork. it's forcing it in a very bad way.
having different missions, and a better xp bonus for helping someone clear a mission than for clearing one of your own, that's encouraging. [for once it really is 'not a bug, it's a feature'!]
giving everyone on the team the temp power to be gained during that mission? that's VERY encouraging.
giving a special reward for sticking through an entire story-arc with someone should DEFINITELY warrant a bonus.
Failing that, at least clearing such missions for those other than the mission owner in regards to contact advancement, etc, should count. That would allow people to team up even more, as they help each-other through entire story-arcs.
Such things make people WANT to team up, and reward doing so, but do not punish you for wanting to play solo. Sometimes we just want to chat a bit, then do some solo missions. that's part of multiplayer too.
One thing: Played a mission [on hard-boiled] just a few hours ago with a single teammate of my level. I counted roughly 6 of each lost boss [Abberant Ermites and Rectors], all of which conned orange [level 15 as we were].
in two cases, they were found in pairs, one instance of which had one clipped behind some crates [he popped through and began attacking us]. needless to say, two sleeping blasters does not a good fight make. we'd already run through our break-frees from the earlier couple of bosses, but managed to take them out eventually. roughly 3 deaths each for a simple "kill the leader" mission; who's named boss... was an LT(headman swordsman) flanked by two Rectors.
I shudder to think what would've happened if we were on rugged difficulty, or post level 25, or more than 2...
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If you can't solo everythign your contacts give you then they shouldn't stop giving you stuff when you come up against somethign you can't solo, forcing you to either get a team or to not do any more missions. IMO, THAT, is what is horribly broken.
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I agree there are times when the contacts are not clear about what you can solo what you may be able to solo and what you cant solo. I would even go as far as suggesting there be a way to give missions back to contacts if they contain tasks you cant perform solo.
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But even when the contact is clear, suppose you really want to do this game soloing all the way, no teaming at all. Plenty of people like to do that. Now, you are willing to avoid, let's say, 50% of the content, if that much is team-based. That seems fair to you. If you can just do half the content entirely soloing you are happy.
Now, street-sweeping, and, frankly, street-sweeping missions, count as a negligible degree of content. they tend to be repetitive, boring, with identical plots. So you want only instanced missions.
So let's say all content is clearly indicated as team or non-team. You go up to a contact, the first instanced missions is indicated to be doable solo. Great, you take it, you do it. The next one is indicated as requiring a team. Can you skip it and go to the next solo instanced mission? Nope. You either do it with a team or go look for other contacts. So you go look up another contact. You get a solo mission from him. You have fun with it, but then he offers a team-based mission as the next choice. Ok, on to the next contact. The next contact starts out offering a team-based mission, so you pass him up, and visit the fourth of the five contacts you have during this set of levels. He offers you two solo missions in a row, but the next one is team-required. Fine, we head for the fifth and last contact. We manage to get one solo mission there done before he also only offers team-based missions. In total I managed to do five of the, what, 75 or so missions that I could have gotten from these contacts? That's only about 7% of the content. After that it's street sweeping for me. Whoopee! Now, this assumes that, supposedly, 50% of the missions are set to allow solo play and 50% are for teaming. You can set it to 80/20 or even 90/10, but the problem is that that ratio isn't really reflective of how much content you will actually be able to do if you are dedicated to solo play. If you are perfectly happy doing team play and solo play then yes, you can do that percentage of your missions solo, but so what. The point is to try to accomodate those who really do want to solo everything, or almost everything.
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AS for solo versus team difficulty, they had a very nice system in place already where the difficulty of a mission ramped up considerably based on the number of people entering it.
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My experience was that unless you were dragging along 3-5 team members that were well below the level of the group most of the missions were still very easy.
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AS I said, this may well have been the case, in which case you incr4ease the differential difficulty. Make it so that if you have two people it gets a LOT harder then it did before, but the fact is that many peopel who wanted to solo did not find their missions too easy. Many people did. But it varied a lot on the person, and, frankoly, with the difficulty slider, I think those who found their solo missions to easy were already being accommodated.
Infinity:
Ellen, 50 MA/Inv Scr
February Night, 14 Ice/Ice Blstr
Guardian:
SilverSwordmaid, 29 Kat/Rgn Scr
Vicious Killer, 33 Emp/Enrgy Def
Electromagness, 40 Rad/Rad Def
Sense of Humor, 50 Fire/En Tank
Virtue:
Kickfest, 50 MA/SR Scr
Freedom:
Glorious Ending, 29 EM/DA Bru
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Since I found Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series to be incredibly boring and repetitious after about book 4 or 5, I've stopped buying those as well.
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<hugs Dasha_Blade>
Thank you! I'm the only one in my group of friends who thinks this way. I'm not crazy!
<runs off cackling wildly>
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You mean you actually know someone who doesnt think this? I have never seen a single one myself. There are at least 3 books after book 5 where the story line does not advance at all, not to mention new characters being dropped in out of the blue. 
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If you can't solo everythign your contacts give you then they shouldn't stop giving you stuff when you come up against somethign you can't solo, forcing you to either get a team or to not do any more missions. IMO, THAT, is what is horribly broken.
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I agree there are times when the contacts are not clear about what you can solo what you may be able to solo and what you cant solo. I would even go as far as suggesting there be a way to give missions back to contacts if they contain tasks you cant perform solo.
But
Its obvious that even when people are given hints that they need a team they simply ignore them. If you go back a few pages you will see complaints from a fire tanker that he has three missions he cant solo.
One said outright that it had an AV, and he apparently just assumed he could solo it until he found out it resisted fire.
One told him outright that he should bring along teammates.
He said the third gave him a follow up mission with an AV with no warning. My recollection of this arc is that the AV was hinted at.
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Yeah, that was me. And, yes, I was told in one of those cases that there would definitely be an AV in it. I just checked the other one, and it basically says, "You need to do this hostage rescue mission for the Carnival of Light (Praetorians CoS) and they'll give you some info about one of Neuron's schemes." Nowhere in there does it then say that you will have to immediately go fight him after you finish the hostage mission without stopping to talk to the contact again.
The Infernal thing? That's my mistake. I had soloed several AVs without much trouble, and, frankly, figured the guy would do lethal and fire damage with maybe some shadow. Maybe he'd be resistant to fire damage, but not 100%, since, you know, I'm not allowed to be anymore, even tho I picked up more than 100% resistance to it through my shields. Okay, my mistake, I can't touch him. I'll get a team for that.
On Neuron? I made the mistake of assuming that I'd get a chance to rescue the CoL, then maybe get a break before I had to go fight Neuron, as happened in almost every pre-AV fight up til that point. Nemesis Rex? Multiple missions before I faced him, each separated by a trip to the contact. Same thing with Dr. Vazh (it said flat out: He'll be there) and the Envoy of Shadows. Then when it's time to fight the Praetorians? All of that goes right out the window. Antimatter, you get a cryptic, "There's a HUGE surge in this dimension!" Adamastor, while a monster, also doesn't even show up in the mission briefing when you're supposed to rescue the hostages from that dimension. Infernal was named, thankfully, but then you've got the Neuron one, which I just mentioned.
And then there's the AV mission I picked up last night, fighting Nemesis (maybe, he's listed as Nemesis? when you get to him). That's the one where I was told to "bring some friends" and that I would be facing Nemesis, but when it said that, it used it in the context of the Nemesis faction, NOT Nemesis himself, particularly since they said explicitly several times during the arc leading up to it that Nemesis was dead. I thought that was probably incorrect, and that I would eventually have to fight him, but you know what? I should have had the option of NOT fighting him, instead of playing Russian Roulette with my mission choices. "Bring some friends! *whirrrr**click* "Yay! It's only a boss!" "Bring a team!" *whirrr* *click* "Yay! Just a couple bosses!" "Bring some other heroes!" *whirrrr* *bang* "Augh! Another AV!"
In short, it's not the AVs I mind, it's that trying to interpret the different writers attempts at letting you know there's going to be an AV that sucks. There needs to be a better way than trying to guess from the text what's involved in the mission, and the symbols idea I posted earlier is the best way I can come up with, expecially since it'll fix, "You've gotta hurry!" not actually leading to a timed mission and then another mission with "You've gotta hurry!" leading to a timed one, and having no real way to tell which is which.
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It was marketed as a team game that was solo friendly. Notice the emphasis was still on team play
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Really? The following quote is taken directly from an NCP soft press release about the european launch put out yesterday.
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Since its release in 2004, Cryptic Studios' groundbreaking massively multiplayer online game has swooped in and seized the public's attention like few others. With its non-traditional setting, a first for an MMO title, and its casual-player-friendly structure, City of Heroes has attracted gamers from across the spectrum and won two prestigious Billboard Digital Entertainment Awards.
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Given that many of the previous generation of MMOs often required you to commit 10+ hours at a stretch to accomplish anything of significance I think its clear this simply means you dont need to play 80 hours a week to enjoy the game. This is not a comment on either team or solo focus, its a comment on fact you dont need to commit large amounts of time to accomplish anything. Certainly allowing solo play is part of this, but that is very different from saying the emphasis of the game is solo play.
Allow me to run an idea up the flag pole. Maybe the issue with bosses is also relative to your own level. I'm not having any real problems with the new bosses with my lvl 48 Blaster. That said I haven't played my lower levels since I3 came out. So maybe the fix should be to make the bosses harder depending on the lvl of the boss. A lvl 1 boss is what he always was. A lvl 5 boss is 5% harder than he used to be and a lvl 50 boss is 50% harder than he used to be in I2.
After all they should get better too as they lvl shouldn't they?
My 50's
Prickly Darkness - Spines Dark
Flame of Enforcement - Fire/Fire Blaster
Lady Vahalla - Illusion/Storm
(plus 27 others)
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It is becoming more and more apparent that the real source of much of the discontent is coming from solo players who have appropriated 99% of the games content as their own despite the consistent position of the dev team that this was a team game first and foremost. These people then become outraged when told that not all the content in the game was aimed at them.
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You are horribly misuinterpreting most of the posts in this thread.
What people want and incredibly appreciated about CoH was that solo play was an option.
I am convinced that most CoH players group when they can. They are either virtual extroverts and like to team up with others or they are playing with real-life friends (my scenario).
What people want is the option we've had so far of playing alone when a) we are not extroverted, b) on with none of our friends or c) on only briefly. That's the part in the quoted description above about "casual friendly".
Finding a team is not casual. Playing with a team of strangers is almost never casual. Being the team leader of strangers is often stressful if you're responsible about it. I have had leadership online competitive teams. I don't want that stress in CoH. I want the casual part to be there. I'll group with my friends often. But I want the chance to run around and read all the story I can find on my own, at my own pace and at my own schedule. If that's hard, that's fine with me. I just want it to be possible.
The people in this thread who think this is about having everything handed to them are idiots. This thread is about a stated direction that soloing a boss would not be possible. For anyone. And compounding this, despite a statement it should not be so the game puts bosses in missions constantly. Those two things mean you cannot count on ever being able to solo anything. That != casual.
This is not about what we have now. It's not about hard bosses. About possible to defeat bosses. About bosses that are possible to defeat, in theory, for all ATs. (Note I do not say all builds - just as an example many team-oriented Defenders lack offensive punch).
Actually, it occurs to me that making a boss butt-hard but possible for an offensively built Defender to take might make a useful benchmark.
For those of you who couldn't find challenge before the boss change, I'm sorry but you weren't trying. Try pulling 5 groups and figting them all. Try that with the Slider. If you can't get someone on your team killed without these bosses you just aren't pushing your characters. I found the limits that would kill my pre-nerf Regen and Invul Scrappers, and I did nothing from then on but play there whenever I could. That was fun.
Edit: broken italics
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
Realistically, it doesn't seem like most of the people posting solo exclusively, even if they solo most of the time. Virtually all of them say they team when they can -- which is only a small fraction of their gameplay.
Pick-up teams just aren't that popular. I happen to enjoy pick-up teams a lot, but I also realize that they tend to lead to my dying a whole lot, and that I'm trading story immersion for more exciting combat. And many people can't count on enough SG members being on, or friends of the right level available (although the devs deserve major kudos for the sidekick and exemplar systems).
If you want to make progress through your story arc, or, as you go up in levels, unlock your Enhancements from the appropriate contact, you will end up having to solo. At the moment, for instance, I'd prefer to be teaming up -- but because I need to complete a sequence of missions from particular contacts (for good placement to run for inspirations, and for my next set of SOs), and a team isn't going to necessarily do my missions, I have to do them solo. This is a design problem.
It'd be better to address the core reasons that people solo by choice. (People who solo by necessity are going to keep soloing no matter what, or they'll find some other game.) That includes things like "I get better XP when I'm solo", "It's hard to find a good pick-up team", "It's hard to enjoy the story in a team", "It's hard to complete my missions / story arcs when I'm in a team", and the like.
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If you want to make progress through your story arc, or, as you go up in levels, unlock your Enhancements from the appropriate contact, you will end up having to solo.
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The bolded problem would be solved by getting rid of the Power Ten/non-Power Ten distinction & putting all enhancements in the origin-specific stores, starting in Steel/Skyway.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled debate.
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It'd be better to address the core reasons that people solo by choice. (People who solo by necessity are going to keep soloing no matter what, or they'll find some other game.) That includes things like "I get better XP when I'm solo", "It's hard to find a good pick-up team", "It's hard to enjoy the story in a team", "It's hard to complete my missions / story arcs when I'm in a team", and the like.
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Or even, I can't read all the mission text due to the tim pressure of being in a team.
What if they simply put all mission text, everything the contact mentioned about missions, both before and after, everythign friendly NPCs you ahd to talk to mentioned, everything in a souvenir at the end of a story arc, everything the major bad guys said in missions, everything, into some kind of text file or system of text files you could read whenever you wanted to. It's still nto as good as being able to read it at the time it happens, but it's better then nothing.
In a similar vein, I remember at one point using Phase Shift on a character whenever I talked to a contact. The idea was that if I got ambushed, I could still merrily enjoy the mission text and ignore the ambushers until I wanted to deal with them.
Frankly though, I think something should be done to help the peope who solo by necessity too. Why lock yourself out of that market by not catering to these folks? Why have them go to different games?
Infinity:
Ellen, 50 MA/Inv Scr
February Night, 14 Ice/Ice Blstr
Guardian:
SilverSwordmaid, 29 Kat/Rgn Scr
Vicious Killer, 33 Emp/Enrgy Def
Electromagness, 40 Rad/Rad Def
Sense of Humor, 50 Fire/En Tank
Virtue:
Kickfest, 50 MA/SR Scr
Freedom:
Glorious Ending, 29 EM/DA Bru
My quick Chandler impression: "Could you BE more smug?"
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You go dude. I am a casual player and a soloist 80+% of the time and I love the changes. My Ice/FF Controller plays in Unyielding and having a blast....
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Glad that's working out for you there. As one of the AT builds that everyone has been saying has no problem with the boss buff changes you are in an enviable position. If we all wanted to play cookie-cutters we could all have the same dozen or so builds and wouldn't that be lovely and diverse.
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As for those who think they should be able to play without strategy, well that is again the problem with the debt system.......
There is a lot of strategy possible in this game but if they make it too easy there is no point to strategy it just becomes brute force with little point........I want to be a hero but "without all that messy thinking" just don't cut it.
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There seems to be an assumption in play here that those of us who are complaining are doing so because we just want to be able to go toe to toe with all baddies we encounter and succeed, strategy be damned. Nice easy explanation anyway. Except it's bunk.
Whether playing FPS, RPG, or MMOG I have always placed an emphasis on strategy. I'm constantly chastising other players I know for doing the mad dog rush into the fray. You're right, there are plenty of opportunities for strategy in this game and I enjoy that a great deal. And I like it when I encounter something that presents a change, a challenge that makes me puzzle it out or mix things up.
My main is a lvl 26 auto/elec blaster significantly SO slotted. I never run around corners, I edge around and scope out what's ahead. I listen to the speakers for audio clues for what's ahead (feak juicers anyone?). If I encounter a clot of mobs I plan out how I will strip them out before my first shot is fired, who to pull, wait for the "sentry walker" to get isolated, who to neutralize (beanbags are fun), what angle to come from for best pick offs, etc. If I encounter a boss surrounded by lt's or minions I work to strip them off before going after the boss himself. If the boss isn't necessary to completion of the mission I will avoid him if possible and I don't think I can take him. Encountered a red boss post I3 in an office hallway I had to get through and learned that a Skyraider jumpbot, after enough damage, runs for a bit. So ate inspirations and some damage till he ran and then went through the hallway and ignored him for anything further. Believe me, I strategize and use tactics.
But sometimes you can't ignore or avoid the bosses. Post I3, if the boss conns orange I can still usually take him if I have enough inspirations on hand and he's not a rezzing Freakshow. But if they're red, and I have to take them to complete the mission (which is more often than not), then I might as well call ahead for the ambulance to come pick up the pieces of my rear that will be left when the boss is done mopping up the floor with me. I simply won't have the endurance (and I have the Stamina power slotted), the damage output, or enough healing insp to last him out. The combination of the increases to bosses HP, plus regeneration, plus damage output is just too overwhelming. Not a chance. And I've even got a pair of beanbag powers (1 temp) to stun him from time to time but that, of course, uses some of the endurance and doesn't last all that long against the buffed bosses.
So to complete such a mission I have to give a call out and beg a scrapper/tanker/specific controller to come in and help me finish the mission. And the good samaritan who responds doesn't even need me to help (tho I do) because it's more than apparent they can finish him off very nicely and in short order without any of my help at all, thank you very much. Wheeeee, how fun and how heroic.
Had a mission last night, the mission text gave no warning about any bosses or need to bring friends. It had two orange conn (died once, used half dozen or so insp on each take down) and two red conn bosses not counting the expected boss at the end room (red) (story arc mission). Simply suicide solo.
Statesman himself has made the comment that his core consideration for this game is fun, and that he intended it to be fun for the solo player as well as the team player. The roadblocks represented by those multiple red bosses was not fun.
So enough of this dreck about how the rest of us are just whining because we can't run around in god mode like we used to (when was that exactly?) or don't know how to use tactics or strategize. It's an arrogant assumption, it's smug, it's insulting and you don't know what the hell you're talking about.
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No, it wasn't. It was marketed as a MMOG that was solo friendly, unlike most MMOGs that ARE team games.
Most of the ads I've seen say something to the effect of "Prowl the streets as a lone wolf hero, or join a supergroup to combat evil."
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I have never seen a single statement by anyone form NCsoft or Cryptic indicating the intention of placing solo play before team play in City of Heroes. BTW, even an average character can still prowl the streets solo and do a large number of missions solo so even the current situation far exceeds what they have promised in terms of solo play.
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Every time somebody says to you that the Devs promised solo AND team play, you keep replying as if people are demanding solo play to take priority. That isn't the case, so rebutting that notion is a waste of your time.
Just to clear it up for you:
Solo Friendly is one trait.
Group Friendly is another.
Most MMOGs are Group Friendly but not Solo Friendly.
CoH was advertised as being a departure from most MMOG's, because it was also Solo Friendly. That means it's Solo Friendly and Group Friendly.
What people like you are trying to do is minimize the solo component of the game to scraps. You can do SOME streetsweeping solo. You can do SOME missions solo, but god help you if you get one of the hidden team missions or missions with an unannounced boss. You can't do any TFs/Trials solo. So some streetsweeping, some missions, and all TFs/Trials are exclusively group designed right now... AFAIK, there's NOTHING that's designed exclusively with soloers in mind, and only fragmented content that's soloable ("ooh, you can do half a story arc solo before you run into a boss. maybe"). That's a far cry from the solo viability we were promised by the ads.
Our version, with missions defaulting to be solo friendly, still allows groups to enjoy every single bit of the solo content while grouping. Your version, however, leaves only fragmented participation for soloists. Don't expect everybody to be happy with the table scraps of "some missions and some streetsweeping," especially when there are tools already in place to give both soloers AND groupers access to the mission experience.
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This is your opinion. Please don't state it as fact. In my opinion, there wasn't ENOUGH emphasis on solo play, and there still isn't.
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Yes it is my opinion but its an opinion consistent with every post Statesman has made on the topic. He has said outright on several occasions that people were soloing things that rightly should have required team, and that he considered it a serious problem.
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Which is all entirely beside the point... solo players want, at the very least, missions that can be soloed. If you have content not designed to be soloed, I'd gather most people are fine with that... just don't stick it in a single player mission.
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If you want a solo game there are much better ways to go then an MMO, the fact that few exists simply indicates the market demand is small.
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That's your conclusion. The fact that the overwhelming number of games for PC are solo games (or solo games, with an afterthough MP component to it), to me at least, indicates that there's a huge market for soloable content. I'm not in favor of introducing a product into the market, claiming it's innovative for offering feature X which no other similar game has, and then eliminating feature X because no other similar game has it.
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Your premise was wrong, and so is this conclusion drawn from it. I can tell you that this game would lose many, many players if solo play was reduced to a insignificant "degree" of the overall gaming experience.
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This is a strawman. No one has suggested solo play be reduced to an insignificant part of the overall experience. This is entirely different then suggesting team play is the first focus.
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You're the one insisting team play is the "first focus." I don't necessarily agree... I think they should be co-equal focuses.
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It is becoming more and more apparent that the real source of much of the discontent is coming from solo players who have appropriated 99% of the games content...
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99% would entail a whole lot more than "some missions" and "some streetsweeping." But nice try.
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...as their own despite the consistent position of the dev team that this was a team game first and foremost.
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Not true, and repeating something doesn't magically make it true.
For example, from an interview in August 2004:
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Question: The team dynamic plays a big role in earning experience points, but the lone wolf approach still works. Some like partnering up while others take the solo route. Was it difficult getting the balance right between the two?
Statesman: Definitely! Its a challenge to make a game experience challenging for both; groups can obviously hide their weaknesses easier than a solo player can and are thus far more effective than just the sum of their individual parts. Our solution for that was to create areas that are tuned for groups (certain zones, Task Forces, Trials, etc.), but make everyday tasks, such as missions, work for groups AND solo players.
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These people then become outraged when told that not all the content in the game was aimed at them.
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No, they became outraged when the one area (missions) that everybody should 100% be able to participate in (soloists AND groupers) was unneccesarily changed so that only groups could do all of it. It was bad enough with the missions that have AVs showing up. It's even worse with bosses now.
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Clearly given very consistent message from cryptic and the dev team this is a misconception on the part of these solo players, nothing more.
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Repetition on your part doesn't make it so.
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having different missions, and a better xp bonus for helping someone clear a mission than for clearing one of your own, that's encouraging.
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First off there are different missions, its just that the solo players have been doing team missions like they were solo ones.
Since when is bribing people with xp in order to get them to undertake an overly simple unchallenging task an acceptable way to promote group play? If all you care about is xp then perhaps, but if you dont find something beyond that you are not going to stay in the game very long anyway.
Promoting team play means providing people with a source of good challenging content to undertake as a team. If that means that you cant do some of it solo, it is not a big loss as there are always other solo tasks available.
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Such things make people WANT to team up, and reward doing so, but do not punish you for wanting to play solo.
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The way to do this is to provide content of suitable difficulty for a team. The only reason you perceive yourself as being punished for not teaming is that you have appropriated the team content for solo play when it was never intended to be.
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One thing: Played a mission [on hard-boiled] just a few hours ago with a single teammate of my level. I counted roughly 6 of each lost boss [Abberant Ermites and Rectors], all of which conned orange [level 15 as we were].
in two cases, they were found in pairs, one instance of which had one clipped behind some crates [he popped through and began attacking us]. needless to say, two sleeping blasters does not a good fight make. we'd already run through our break-frees from the earlier couple of bosses, but managed to take them out eventually. roughly 3 deaths each for a simple "kill the leader" mission; who's named boss... was an LT(headman swordsman) flanked by two Rectors.
I shudder to think what would've happened if we were on rugged difficulty, or post level 25, or more than 2...
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As previously posted there is no real need for greater mission difficulty prior to level 20. In fact at that point things work out very well with the defaults. Go much past level 22 and every fight becomes a quick wipe out for the heroes unless the mobs are using certain
Polar Knight, I bestow unto you stars!
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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Just remember: "Encourage team play" should mean encouraging team play, NOT forcing it, or discouraging solo play....
having different missions, and a better xp bonus for helping someone clear a mission than for clearing one of your own, that's encouraging. [for once it really is 'not a bug, it's a feature'!
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That reminds me of a recent frustration my friends had. One of us had the Wheel of Destruction storyline and, with my hyping of how cool the final mission is, she saved it until we could all get on together and play it together. When we finished it, all but one of us got mission XP. (Of course, the mission holder also got her DO for mission completion.)
The guy who didn't get mission XP petitioned it. He got a response that only the mission holder was supposed to get mission XP (what I got wasn't more than usual for mission XP, BTW) and the rest of us should petition to get the XP taken back.
I mean, WTH? We don't get mission XP for helping a teammate if it's the final mission in a story arc? That makes little sense and doesn't make us more eager to coordinate our schedules to play together. I mean it's like we team and get the stick and we solo and we get the stick.
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You are horribly misuinterpreting most of the posts in this thread.
What people want and incredibly appreciated about CoH was that solo play was an option.
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Solo play as an option does not mean being able to solo 100% or even 90% of all missions. It means there are always things you can do solo. There are and even if no one could ever solo a boss there will continue to be.
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This thread is about a stated direction that soloing a boss would not be possible. For anyone.
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I have never seen this as a stated direction and it isnt even close to being true. My understanding is that the devs want bosses to be tough fights that perhaps not everyone can do alone. In fact this has always been the case up until about level 20.
Even with the new bosses almost every single combination of power sets can solo a boss, they are simply no longer pushovers that anyone can take with no real skill or effort.
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Solo play as an option does not mean being able to solo 100% or even 90% of all missions. It means there are always things you can do solo. There are and even if no one could ever solo a boss there will continue to be.
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If all people can do solo is street grind, and they want / need to solo, they will leave the game.
Honestly, the game lacks mission content. If there were enough missions to solo 90% of the time, most soloists would be happy. There could be 200% times that amount of content for teams - that wouldn't matter because the soloists could always do something.
Again I reference WoW. There is more content in WoW than any one person could ever see with one character.
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This thread is about a stated direction that soloing a boss would not be possible. For anyone.
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I have never seen this as a stated direction and it isnt even close to being true. My understanding is that the devs want bosses to be tough fights that perhaps not everyone can do alone. In fact this has always been the case up until about level 20.
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Go read Statesman's quotes in this very thread. He states in one that even a Scrapper should not be able to solo a boss. If the "boss killer" AT can't, who do you expect can?
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Even with the new bosses almost every single combination of power sets can solo a boss, they are simply no longer pushovers that anyone can take with no real skill or effort.
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You sir, are full of a soft brown substance. Please go build me one of every AT / powerset combination, level it to 35, and solo a red boss for me. Then solo 5 in a row in a mission. Get back to me when you're done. Thanks.
Edit: borked quotes
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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Since I found Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series to be incredibly boring and repetitious after about book 4 or 5, I've stopped buying those as well.
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<hugs Dasha_Blade>
Thank you! I'm the only one in my group of friends who thinks this way. I'm not crazy!
<runs off cackling wildly>
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Heck, I'm surprised he hung on 'til Book 4. I made it one chapter into Book 3 and said to myself, "Why am I torturing myself? There are much better things to read." Haven't looked back since. 
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The only changes I've found so far in the Hollows is some graphical changes to the Outcasts, some badges, and the caverns trial now has a level cap. In fact, one of the Hollows cave missions has even been made easier. There used to be a mission with two named bosses fighting in the last room, Greased Lightning and Redrum. Now poor Redrum has gone AWOL and Greased Lightning is forced to fight a lowly Gardvord. Go figure.
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Ha ha ha ... Rundum, not Redrum.
Did they seriously make that even easier? The last two times I ran that with alts, the minions were all white/yellow, and then poor Rundum and Greased Lightning were green. It was ridiculously easy already.
STOP NERFING TEH RUNDUM!!!1!!!
Go Greased Lightning!
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What they have changed in the Hollows is an increase to ambushes once you get to Flux. You have to be very careful coming out of his back alley when he asks you to hunt down outcasts or you can be dead in short order.
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Really? But a between Issues patch did away with all ambushes in Hazard Zones. I've seen nothing that said they were reinstated. You might want to bug it.
One of the most miserable defeats I've ever had in the game was when a duo I was in and another solo player generated simultaneous ambushes at Flux.
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Solo play as an option does not mean being able to solo 100% or even 90% of all missions. It means there are always things you can do solo. There are and even if no one could ever solo a boss there will continue to be.
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Solo play doesn't necessarily mean being able to solo 90%/100% of the missions, but I have yet to see a compelling reason why it shouldn't mean that.
Even if we followed your hypothesis that the game is primarily intended for teaming, let's look at a list of what exclusively team players can do versus exclusively solo players:
Content available people who exclusively play on teams:
100% of Task forces
100% of Trials
Street sweeping
100% of Missions
Giant Monster encounters
And if those are too easy for a group, there's a difficulty slider to allow the group to play with a greater challenge.
Here's a list of what exclusively solo players can do now:
Content available to people who exclusively solo:
Some street sweeping
Some missions
Now tell me: why can't you change that list to:
Content available to people who exclusively solo:
Some street sweeping
100% of missions
Compare the Team list versus the Solo list; even if you made the change, allowing soloability of 100% of missions wouldn't endanger the "team emphasis" one bit. What are the reasons for the reluctance, other than you disliking soloability?
If the concern is "players are killing things they shouldn't", that can easily be fixed by keeping the things they shouldn't kill out of a single player's mission. If the solo player finds it too easy to not fight bosses, he can raise the difficulty slider.
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No, it wasn't. It was marketed as a MMOG that was solo friendly, unlike most MMOGs that ARE team games.
Most of the ads I've seen say something to the effect of "Prowl the streets as a lone wolf hero, or join a supergroup to combat evil."
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I have never seen a single statement by anyone form NCsoft or Cryptic indicating the intention of placing solo play before team play in City of Heroes. BTW, even an average character can still prowl the streets solo and do a large number of missions solo so even the current situation far exceeds what they have promised in terms of solo play.
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This is your opinion. Please don't state it as fact. In my opinion, there wasn't ENOUGH emphasis on solo play, and there still isn't.
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Yes it is my opinion but its an opinion consistent with every post Statesman has made on the topic. He has said outright on several occasions that people were soloing things that rightly should have required team, and that he considered it a serious problem. If you want a solo game there are much better ways to go then an MMO, the fact that few exists simply indicates the market demand is small.
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Your premise was wrong, and so is this conclusion drawn from it. I can tell you that this game would lose many, many players if solo play was reduced to a insignificant "degree" of the overall gaming experience.
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This is a strawman. No one has suggested solo play be reduced to an insignificant part of the overall experience. This is entirely different then suggesting team play is the first focus.
It is becoming more and more apparent that the real source of much of the discontent is coming from solo players who have appropriated 99% of the games content as their own despite the consistent position of the dev team that this was a team game first and foremost. These people then become outraged when told that not all the content in the game was aimed at them.
Clearly given very consistent message from cryptic and the dev team this is a misconception on the part of these solo players, nothing more.