Mission Design, Difficulty and Popularity
By
Clave_Dark_5,
Posted on: 2009-04-29 21:36 in Mission Architect
The thing is, that you're making them a certain way, but these things are also subject to the difficulty settings of Notoriety. Also included in the mix are that some ATs solo better than others. It's very difficult to balance things out (maybe better after the next patch...we'll see). But it kind of gives me a bit more sympathy for the devs.
Your best bets? Make it as soloable on a non-melee toon on Heroic as you can. Then let the chips fall where they may. Alternatively, just make it as challengeable for teams as you want, and put in you description "Challenge for teams. Not solo-friendly".
Dec out.
It's pretty agonizing for sure.
My own solution has been to provide NPC allies for soloers, mostly buffers and set to fight defensive so that they don't overshadow the player, and a tough EB or two that likes to go into melee so they 'tank' from time to time.
Groups tend to lose the allies quickly, or they become practically unnoticable in the mass chaos.
Of course, there are people who LOATHE the thought of NPC allies, so you cannot please everyone. Too bad. Ultimately, I personally like NPC allies, and I build the arc for me first, other players later. 
I test with a blaster, defender, and then a scrapper for the heck of it. I find the first two the most important as the blaster is especially vulnerable without active mitigation opportunities, and I wouldn't want any low-damage defenders bored to tears trying to kill a mob for an eternity.
Another trick for ramping up difficulty for teams that I've found is the use of mixed standard/custom mob "custom groups." I left it as random standard minion/lt of a faction, and threw in a few custom bosses. My limited playtesting has shown those bosses appearing in teams of 4+ players, and nonappearance for 1-2 players.
And not to ruin too much of my end boss surprise, but I gave him a custom group of bodyguards surrounding him that was different from his group. This scaled in a surprising manner, but worked remarkably well for my purposes.
A solo player on heroic only faces 1-3 of those bodyguards, a team of four met 9-15 of them to much initial shock&awe. None of them were set to extreme though, so they were very fightable and defeatable. 
I'm still waiting to con a team of 8 into testing the spawn rate on that last boss...
Invictus Est Level 50 Invul/Fire Tank
Malentis Level 50 Ice/Energy/Leviathan Dom (Freedom)
Black Jeremiah Level 50 Fire/Fire/Mu Dom
Sejanna Level 50 Dark/Dark/Elec Def (Virtue)
Arc #119664 - The MiniMech Cometh - Hess TF Mini-Sequel
I've been pondering this myself and it all grows more confused when you consider 50th level purpled-out monster-toons vs. my 12th level Corrupter trying to solo some mish, even the huge diff between my 30th Brute and the Corrupter.
It does help to keep in mind that many teams can pretty much steamroll anything anyways, and probably aren't there to read your boss dialog (sad but true, I always scan back over my chat log after a knock out a boss to see if I missed anything).
These days I don't worry about it so much and just focus on making what I want, labeling it with my best guess and hopefully a clear enough description of what they may find inside; "3 bosses" vs "3 AVs" should give the player(s) some clue as to what they're about to step into, so at that point the responsibility for choosing to solo it or not is up to them, not me.
I assume solo players care about stories - teams don't.
I label my arc soloable.
The devs design standard mission arcs to be soloable - TF's to not be. You can't really design for both.
Now there are players who try to solo anything (a blaster apparently soloed the ITF). But those are the exception
I think if you want to please both soloers and groups, a variant on Lycaeus' system might work: a carefully tuned custom group and minimal use of EBs and AVs.
If even the minions are somewhat challenging, a Heroic soloer still won't be taking on more than a couple at a time. They should at least be able to kite boss spawns and pare it down to a manageable "hero vs. boss only" battle. But a big group getting to that boss spawn will find an army of respectably tough opponents. The only problem with this system is that the bosses themselves won't last long, but with a big group of PCs they won't anyway, will they?
I do believe that EBs scale down to Bosses on solo/Heroic, so putting in EBs actually should be no problem. AVs scale down to EBs, which may be a bit much for a typical soloer. So actually putting EB final fights should be fine.
Lycaeus' ally suggestion is also very well taken. A single ally makes a huge difference for a soloer, but a group will scarcely notice them. The challenge here of course is to make allies that fit well into the story and add interest while, most importantly, not stealing the thunder of the solo player.
Really I think it's a mistake to try to compromise by building arcs that please all playstyles and team situations.
I've published my three ARCs now, and have noticed in my testing and in the feedback I've gotten that my AVs and EBs are on the one hand too tough for solo players, but a challenge for groups. When I've tested AVs and EBs on settings that made them challenging for solos, groups blow right by them, sometimes quickly enough that their dialogue overlapps as their health bar dropps like a stone.
I'm wondering if there is a balance somewhere in the system. And if there isn't, why have the option to set an AV's power sets at Extreme/Extreme? I'm not recommending that all minions LTs Bosses, and EBs be set to this high level. That would just be frustrating for all involved.
For those of you more steeped in the mechanics and numbers in the system than I am, could you lend some advice on how to scale those EBs and AVs. I'm looking for challenge and dramatic weight, not invincibility.