Session 1
First thing we overlooked ... getting cash to change the difficulty. Oops. Four invince missions took us to L8. We'd start out against +2's and finish against even con. We had one complete wipe and two close calls.
Session 2
A couple missions took us to L11.
Session 3-5
Ran Spelunker and started Positron at L12 with DO's. The TF was spawning L16-18. With effort, we managed to get upto
L14 and started sailing. We reached L16, and so were auto-exemplered back to 15 with two missions for no xp.
Session 6
Bloody Bay missions against +2 Arachnos to get L17.
Session 7-9
Started Synapse at L17 having forgotten that Clocks cap at L20. If we had remembered, then we wouldve started at L16 instead. Two missions got us to L18, and we were L20 by the time we got to Babbage and the AV. Being even con, neither put up much fight. This predates the AV buff.
Session 10-13
By now we've realized that we can only get better than +3 by starting a TF at minimum level. We start Sister Psyche at L20 against L26. That was grueling with just DO's, resulted in incredibly long fights. Second night of the TF we made L22 and SO's which kicked the pace up. When we reached Clamor, the new AV buff patch was on live. First attempt vs a +3 Clamor was fought to a standstill. She couldnt touch us, and we couldnt sustain enough dps to bring her down. We dropped down a notch and reset the mission. Completed against a +2 Clamor ... again this is with the huge AV buff before it was reduced.
Session 14
Moonfire TF spawned L27-L29 against our roughly L25. At this point we've been doing about a level every 2 hours.
Session 15-16
Citadel TF. Nothing noteworthy.
Session 17-18
First night ran Striga contacts to unlock the Hess TF. Second night ran the Tf against +3's.
Session 19-22
Ran Croatoa contacts against +2's. Individually, did costume, aura, and L30 store missions. Completed the Sky Raider TF against +3's.
Session 23-24
Katie Hannon TF on Invince with a team of L31-33. Mary spawned 35, 35, 35, 36, 36, 36, 37, 37, 37, and finally 38.
Wha?
L35 and L36 were trivial 3-5 minute affairs with no defeats. L37 was usually a team wipe on spawn because of the instant aggro (despite stealth+ss, a long standing gripe of mine about ambushes). Regroup and take 10 mins to seperate the bosses from the AV, which actually took a little skill and made things interesting. Then 20 minutes of repetitive button mashing to kill the AV. Lastly, the L38 ... BAM! BAM! BAM! Thats the sound of hitting your head against the purple patch 'brick wall'. Once the AV was alone, it was a draw.
TF not completed as a result of an artificial limit imposed by the devs that penalizes skilled players. Every combat has become either trivial or impossible. We bumped down a notch and ran it against a max L37 AV with the team mostly at L33 at this point.
Session 25-27
Started Manticore at L33 against mostly L35-37. Finished at L33.9. Some 'street sweeping' in Eden of +4, +5 DE to get everyone to L34
Session 29
Freakshow respec. Slotted L32 powers really kick in. The tank tanks, the controllers control ... Fulcrum Shift, Inferno, Transference ... every other group. We ran it twice, to get it for a guy who couldnt make it the first night.
Session 30-32
More 'street sweeping', this time in Creys against to get everyone to L35 for Numina. Started Numina with half the team at L36 and fought L41-L42. For two sessions we had trouble with disconnects during the last mission. We had to keep aborting and restarting to insure that we all received the TF award and hence the accolade.
This was a great idea, but I think less corroborating AT's and more perma-experienced team that has played together forever that made things easy.
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This was a great idea, but I think less corroborating AT's and more perma-experienced team that has played together forever that made things easy.
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A Kinetics defender and an Empath? Ice controller with radiation secondary? Helped out with Earth control and an ice blaster? Of course you need to go up against +5s, or else where's the challenge?
This is true for just about any team of eight -- eight defenders (excepting empaths), eight scrappers, eight tanks, eight controllers (those are fun teams), eight blasters ... well, okay, eight blasters would live right on the edge, but the point still remains.
Actually, a team made up of only one archetype at least has a weakness shared across all -- a team of mixed archetypes, even in a pickup group, has a sort of built-in survival mechanism. Tank is covered by defender is covered by controller is covered by scrapper is covered by blaster is covered by tank. Remove one archetype, things get slightly more difficult. Remove two, and things get even harder. Remove three, and the mission requires a bit of handling. Remove four, and you've got yourself a challenge.
(You could even remove five, but then you'd have either no team or eight Kheldians, which has its own interesting dilemmas)
Still, it's an interesting look at what happens when a team that knows each other well tries to mimic real life 
. Try an a single-archetype team ... I've always wanted to try a team of eight scrappers. Sure, you've got the defenses and the damage, but no outside help. Set on invincible, the question of who drops first, them or you, becomes an interesting contest ...
"We are looking into the possiblity of maybe someday thinking about maybe implementing something similar to this, in the future."
- Positron
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This is true for just about any team of eight -- eight defenders (excepting empaths), eight scrappers, eight tanks, eight controllers (those are fun teams), eight blasters ... well, okay, eight blasters would live right on the edge, but the point still remains.
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I've tried to talk some people into a team with nothing but pool powers and no enhancements, but that idea wasn't as 'well received'. 
I guess what I'd like to see is a broadening of the range of enemies for which its worth the effort to engage. In conjunction, a significant increase in the number of difficulty settings for missions. A much larger breadth inorder to accommodate team size/makeup, player experience, and team experience.
sounds like fun what server you on I'd like to join. Is your Kin fender any good I like playing kinetics
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...Try an a single-archetype team ... I've always wanted to try a team of eight scrappers. Sure, you've got the defenses and the damage, but no outside help. Set on invincible, the question of who drops first, them or you, becomes an interesting contest ...
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There ya go OC, our next project.....
A team of 8 Mind/Empathy controllers!!
We'll call it Team DNA
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sounds like fun what server you on I'd like to join. Is your Kin fender any good I like playing kinetics
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He's a little slow with FS sometimes, and a bit of a control freak.
Fine then no more Speed Boost for you Over Board
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Try an a single-archetype team ... I've always wanted to try a team of eight scrappers. Sure, you've got the defenses and the damage, but no outside help. Set on invincible, the question of who drops first, them or you, becomes an interesting contest ...
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I bet a team of 8 corruptors would be awesome but thats a COV thing
Do you want awesomeness or challenge? If you want the second, I'd say un min-max a bit. One tank and 7 fire blasters running on invincible could be interesting. A lot of defenders or trollers will make things easy.
Heck, one tank, 6 fire blasters and a TA/A on invincible sounds like my kind of fun.
A human-form Kheld would've been interesting in place of one of the Blasters or something. With a "perma" 8-man team, they'd always have the inherent buffs.
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Do you want awesomeness or challenge? If you want the second, I'd say un min-max a bit. One tank and 7 fire blasters running on invincible could be interesting. A lot of defenders or trollers will make things easy.
Heck, one tank, 6 fire blasters and a TA/A on invincible sounds like my kind of fun.
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Why bother with the Tank or the Defender? Everything would die within the first few seconds.
I remember running a team with two or three Fire Blasters and two other Blasters. As a Scrapper, all I really did was mop up the bosses. Everything else was on the floor before I could even jump into the spawn.
This was very cool. Thanks for posting it. I this idea. Kind of like a league night.
8 Mind/Emps.... Mmmmmm. That would be amazing to watch.
Everyone triple-forted for capped defense, high damage and accuracy, super regen and recovery across the board, though practically no enemy would ever harm the team since they'd all be fighting each other amidst stacked Confusion.
It'd be an invincible team that probably wouldn't even need the defense. And done right they could probably lock down an AV even with triangles up.
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Do you want awesomeness or challenge? If you want the second, I'd say un min-max a bit
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Point taken, but we want -both- to be honest. Imho, the game itself should be able to present a challenge to the most awesomeness of teams. We did carefully min/max the first 11 levels. Having only Trainings and very few powers made each team members choice of powers important. After that point, it became less crucial. In fact, there's a number of things we could change to improve the combo ... for instance, we all took the fitness pool but with all the +end recovery buffs on this team, its really unnecessary. In other words, there's room for improvement, but why bother? We're rolling over +5's. We're half tempted (or at least I am) to rip out our enhancers and see how we do.
(edit to add: Forgot to mention that most of us did push Stamina back into the mid 20's to make room for more necessary powers earlier.)
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A human-form Kheld would've been interesting in place of one of the Blasters or something. With a "perma" 8-man team, they'd always have the inherent buffs.
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We strongly considered that team build. Figuring it would be one of the few opportunities to really exercise the human form, plus it would generate the Quantums, etc. Ultimately, we scrapped it because of the knockback. In retrospect, it might have been worth it just for the variety.
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This was very cool. Thanks for posting it. I this idea. Kind of like a league night.
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Start a team up with your SG, or post on the Freedom boards (or whatever server you're playing on now). Despite the problems I've cited, this is hands down the -most fun- I've had playing CoH. I just think they should loosen things up, and it'd be even better.
Greetings, all!
Try a team of all AR/Dev blasters. I have an SG on Virtue that has nothing in it but that AT. The sight and sound of a full team of AR/Dev letting loose is...impressive.
You can also go the "concept" route. You sort of mentioned it earlier with the no enhancers thing, but one of my favorite characters is a Scrapper I have on Justice who is Dark/INV and has only the passive defenses. He's still fun at level 18, in fact he's almost like a CoH Stalker really. I also have a Dominator with only the secondary powers, but he's not much past lvl 7 yet so its hard to say if it'll stay fun.
Getting your friends to come up with the wackiest concepts they can think of and then seeing how hard you can pump up their missions sounds like a lot of fun.
This has been a fun project. Some other interesting things that have happened besides what Overboard has listed from the missions, is the selection and slotting of some powers, the risk vs reward design of the game, and the lack of challenging content post 40.
As a team we chose the power sets we thought would be best, and then we picked the characters we wanted to play. For most of us it was to try something different, for example this is my first tank, overboards first blaster, our scrappers first DA scrapper, etc.
Power selections were chosen more because they would help the team, rather than the more common, I need this power for my build, or I will take this power to make me more desired on teams. Not that there is anything wrong with choosing powers that way, its just having the guaranteed support from the team, makes your power selections and slotting a bit different. Once we have all hit 50, I am sure most of us will respec into a more traditional type of build.
With a kinetic and an empath on the team, many of us have little use for Stamina from the fitness pool, and could probably skip that pool altogether. I still have not taken stamina, and many of those that did, took it much later in the build than normal. As the tank I have Invincibility slotted with defense and taunt enhancers, because the team provides the end recovery and to-hit buffs. Some of the builds that would traditionally take hasten have skipped it or taken it late because of +recharge buffs. New powers that are normally slotted with an accuracy SO first, are sometimes slotted with damage instead because of the to-hit buffs on the team.
Some of us were disappointed; when they rolled the AV buff back, lol, since the +3 AV was more of a challenge. We can take +6s, but it is not worth the time involved due to the purple patch way back around Issue 1. The Katie Hannon TF was a huge waste of time with the AV spawning at +7 to most of the team and no SO drops for the 9 AVs we did defeat, which is to bad, as that use to be one of my favorite TFs to run. The Numina TF is weak on XP, with all the hunt missions in the lowbie zones for a small mission bonus and has left us having to grind levels before we get to the next challenge.
Fighting +5s are the best for us, but we have no way of getting those types of spawns consistently unless we start street sweeping, which means ignoring the content of the rest of the game, which is something I dont think the devs really want. Regular missions offer so little in the way of rewards, that when we do need some quick XP to get to that next level, PvP missions have been the way to go, and again we bypass the normal mission content of the game.
Possibly the most interesting thing is that now that the team have all hit 36, and the regular mission content, even on invincible, offers us little challenge, we are already hurting for things to do.
Last night we ran a badge mission in Creys, then hunted lvl39 Freakshow who offer better XP than most other groups, but the XP was not worthwhile and we grew bored quickly. It felt like we were going nowhere. So we proceeded to Warburg to run PvP missions, as we believed it would be faster than trying to find lvl41 mobs in PI. Still not a great challenge, but the XP was very fast, and of course the mission bonuses help a lot and five of us hit 37. This would have been a great time for us to move to the Rikti Crash Site, but that is restricted to us until level 40.
Our main goal now is to get at least one of the team to 38 so we can run the Sewer Trial, which will spawn level 42 rikti, and a 90-minute timer. Originally, we thought the sewer trial would be the best test for the team, so I am anxious to get to it, and see how we do. At 39 we can run the Eden Trial but I believe the mobs cap at lvl41 even on invincible so I dont think that will be a challenge. The Eden Trial should be good XP and could get us all to level 40.
Once we all hit Level 40, things will slow way down for content for us (which is nothing new in COH). Since Task Forces have been the only way we can generate +5s with any type of consistency, we will look to run the first two Shadow Shard TFs, which I honestly dont think will be worth the XP for the time involved. Rularuu can be a challenging group to face so that may make it worth it to us. If we do run them, it is doubtful that they will provide enough XP to get us all to lvl44 so that we can run the last two Shard TFs, and those will definitely not give us enough XP to get to level 50.
So beginning at level 36, we are forced to grind out two levels before we get to anything fun and challenging to us. We will then need to get the whole group to level 40 so we can run two TFs, then a probable grind to 44 for two more TFs and the 3rd respec trial. I know the lack of an endgame is often discussed on these forums, but I was surprised that it seems to occur so early.
If I8 hits before we are done with this team, then maybe we will have some new content to run through, but it is looking like we will have to spend a lot of time working through regular missions, which have not been much of a challenge, or just grind ourselves to 50 via Warburg missions. If we have to do regular missions, we will probably focus on fighting the Malta and Carnies and the Heros Hero arc for the AVs.
Being able to run with this team at set times, has been a lot of fun, and has made the development of the characters more interesting. The game limits the amount of risk we can encounter to +3s unless we run TFs on invincible, or get really picky while street hunting. We need at least one, but preferably two new mission difficulties to allow us to fight +4s and +5s and have decent risk vs. rewards. In addition to the lack of endgame for COH, there is a lack of interesting content in the 35+ range. Striga (Issue 3) and Croatoa (Issue 5), helped to fill out the 20-35 range nicely, but it is definitely time for a new zone or something for the 35+ characters. The 35-40 game has been a problem for casual/solo players for some time now. The Shadow Shard is there for the 40+ game, but its not enough.
I like seeing all of the concept teams that people have suggested in this thread and I hope they run with them. Our next little project will most likely be Team Relentless in COV. If people are interested, we will try and keep this thread updated.
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We need at least one, but preferably two new mission difficulties to allow us to fight +4s and +5s and have decent risk vs. rewards. In addition to the lack of endgame for COH, there is a lack of interesting content in the 35+ range. Striga (Issue 3) and Croatoa (Issue 5), helped to fill out the 20-35 range nicely, but it is definitely time for a new zone or something for the 35+ characters. The 35-40 game has been a problem for casual/solo players for some time now. The Shadow Shard is there for the 40+ game, but its not enough.
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While not really new, or as interesting as Striga and Croatoa ... the L40+ Malta and Carnie arcs might be entertaining with an expanded mission slider upto +5. I suppose we could PL one of the toons up 2-3 levels and lock one of the L40-45 arcs in at about L42. At least then we'd get +5's to 7/8 of us, but it ruins the fun for one person.
You have a team of eight experienced players who are online regularly enough to make this work. I hate you. 
</envy>
Please try MA arc ID 351455, "Shard Stories: Scavenger's Hunt." Originally created for the Dr. Aeon contest, it explores the wild potential of one of the City's most concept-rich but content-poor settings: the Shadow Shard.
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If people are interested, we will try and keep this thread updated.
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Ok please do so
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You have a team of eight experienced players who are online regularly enough to make this work. I hate you.
</envy>
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Lol, well ... initially we had maybe 12 interested and during the course of this we had to make two roster changes due to scheduling. Although, the second change brought back the guy who left in the first one.
Maybe its worth mentioning that we effectively lured two players back from DDO and WoW when we proposed this idea. Let me emphasize, two players from beta with multiple L50's were willing to come back to CoH to do the same missions merely for the anticipated challenge of an eight player invince team. Semantics aside, Cryptic could effectively create content by removing the 'purple patch' and letting us push missions far beyond +2.
So what I seem to be gathering from this thread is that with a well built, well organized team, City of Heroes is not able to provide a fitting challenge, even when you do everything you can to make it as hard as possible?
Very interesting....
The Premise
Eight players plan a hero team capable of leveling from L1-50 on Invincible missions, by collaborating on AT, powerset, and power selection. The intent is for the 8 toons selected to only play as part of the team, and the team only runs when all 8 are available.
The Background
Collectively, the Top Ten SG/VGs had accomplished nearly every aspect of CoH/CoV, but a significant portion of our veteran SG members had little interest in CoV or Issue7. At the time of Issue7's announcement, the lack of new hero content and no use for L50's had left us inventing things to do. In a game where the endgame was to re-roll, how could we make this time, the 4th 5th... 12th time, more interesting? What we came up with was a team of eight on max difficulty, start to finish.
The Team
I'm not suggesting that this is the best or only set of builds that could accomplish the goals, but it is result of the thoughts of eight experienced players. Overall, choices were made with the team in mind, but a few were the result of personal preference.
Invuln/SS Tank
Dark/Dark Scrapper
Empathy/Dark Defender
Kin/Rad Defender
Ice/Rad Controller
Earth/Sonic Controller
Fire/Energy Blaster
Ice/Ice Blaster
The tank needed to be a true tank, and we felt either Invuln or Stone would fit the bill with an HP buff being essential. Personal choice opted for Inv/SS. The scrapper secondary was chosen to fill the psi gap left by Invuln. The Dark primary was chosen to leverage the large mob sizes, but without sacrificing single target dps. Healing is a great early game buff, and we wanted one non-aggroing buffer, hence the Empath. To avoid late game obsolescence, Dark blast was chosen for its aoe immob and disorients. The early defender Kin buffs were felt to be essential, and Rad blasts pbaoe attack and -def complement the melee nature of the buffs. We would've liked a debuffing defender, but given that the essential Rad powers are available fairly early to a controller we opted to go that route. Sonic gave us a good combination of protection and -res to up damage later on. The Ice and Earth primaries were largely chosen for the knockdown patches and limited number of pets. Ice/Ice blaster to assist scrapper in boss takedowns, and pick off running targets since in most cases we'd exceed the tank aggro limit. The Fire/Energy was a pure damage build, focusing on aoe. In retrospect, I kinda wish we had gone Ice/Energy and Fire/Fire.
The Results
Typically, each session has been about 2 hours. By the third session we had started Positron and switched to DO's. Since a true Influence economy is non existant, we had no qualms about funding this project with our L50's. Plus, we had planned to run in SG mode for prestige all the way to L50. In Positron, we managed well against +3's and +4's, but outleveled the TF with two missions still remaining. At this point, just the 4th session, we realize that regular missions on Invince simply won't be difficult enough. The best we could hope for was +1 to +3 mobs. So, since TF's spawn mobs at the upper end of the TF's range, we decided to start TF's at the minimum level and adjust the slider up as we leveled. We managed +6's in Sister Psyche with just DO's, but it was grueling and not worth the xp/time, +5's were quite doable. Our main concern was that eventually we would run out of TF's. By Session 12 we were on SO's, rendering +4's trivial and +5's not much effort. The Purple Patch made the +6 brick wall quite evident. A spawn was either easy or tedious, with no appreciable gain in xp. Now, at 32 sessions and L36, with leveling rates slowing, we're running out of ways to generate missions that even come close to +5's. We will continue on to L50, but there really isn't anything that we expect will present a challenge.
As I get time, I'll try to post more of the details... problems we encountered in attempting to generate missions that presented some degree of challenge. In between trivial and hopeless is a range of combats that would be considered challenging and entertaining. For a number of reasons, we saw this 'range' diminish rather quickly, leaving just the trivial or hopeless. I've reached some conclusions, but I'm curious to know what other people see here or in their own related experiences.