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Once at softcap FF doesn't do much for the team.
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You do realize that FF has more then just 3 powers correct? 
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The statement was relative to cold. and it is accurate in that regard. It is also pretty accurate just in general too.
Once you take the 'good' powers that contribute to softcapping everyone you are left with:
pff
forebolt
deten field
repulsion field
repulsion bomb
force bubble
imo sleet > all those combined 
QR
FF for PuGs and generally crappy teams.
Cold for even remotely competent teams.
If you need to keep a group of idiots alive against their will, FF will do the job far, far better than Cold ever could.
If you want to help cruise through missions, TFs, etc faster & smoother (faster damage, faster killing speeds, mucho end recovery) while keeping a decent-to-good team very safe, Cold has few peers.
An Offensive Guide to Ice Melee
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The statement was relative to cold. and it is accurate in that regard. It is also pretty accurate just in general too.
Once you take the 'good' powers that contribute to softcapping everyone you are left with:
pff
forebolt
deten field
repulsion field
repulsion bomb
force bubble
imo sleet > all those combined
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In my opinion, the powers in cold are easier to use because you just use them whenever they are recharged. They are useful in a generic situation. Once you are familiar with the set, you just throw your powers out to every mob group.
The powers in FF need some thought. For the powers that you listed, you don't keep on using them except for repulsion bomb. To be fair, powers like detention field and force bubble need the game to present a situation that necessitates the use of such powers. With the game biased towards killing faster and aggressive in nature, it's not a surprise that players think these powers are useless in general. (for example, there are few contents in this game that ask you to defend a room or an entrance against enemy assault, the assault has to be massive enough that killing them faster won't be sufficient.)
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In my opinion, the powers in cold are easier to use because you just use them whenever they are recharged. ....The powers in FF need some thought.
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So, in short, FF is for thinkers, and Cold is for idiots. I like where you're going with that, but isn't it a little harsh? 
Both sets have their strengths...but on any usual team I'm on, I'd prefer a well played FF before a well played Cold.
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In my opinion, the powers in cold are easier to use because you just use them whenever they are recharged. ....The powers in FF need some thought.
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So, in short, FF is for thinkers, and Cold is for idiots. I like where you're going with that, but isn't it a little harsh?
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here I was playing my FF and I just toggled up and buffed everyone and never need to touch my secondary other than every 4 min.
My brain hurts from all that thinking
Is this the same FF set that everyone says things like: "if you roll a /ff MM prepare to set up a pillow by your keyboard, it is so boring you'll need it".
Then ur doin it rong! 
Or you're a Fulmens Apostate.
Same thing. 
Stay away from my prostate.
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I prefer a power set that does 1 thing very very well.
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Really? Because Cold has unparalleled -Rech, -Spd AND -Res, while providing the largest +Recovery bonus in the game. It doesn't just do them "very, very well", they're THE BEST. Seems like it would be right up your alley. By contrast Rad/ doesn't do anything really well. It's a toolkit set with a little bit of everything thrown in. It's a potent combination, but it doesn't do any single thing very well.
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I prefer a power set that does 1 thing very very well.
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Really? Because Cold has unparalleled -Rech, -Spd AND -Res, while providing the largest +Recovery bonus in the game. It doesn't just do them "very, very well", they're THE BEST. Seems like it would be right up your alley. By contrast Rad/ doesn't do anything really well. It's a toolkit set with a little bit of everything thrown in. It's a potent combination, but it doesn't do any single thing very well.
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It does various shades of puke green better than any other set!
Or at least until i16: I can sing a rainbow
Yet another thing Cold does very, very well! Filling the screen with spammy blue crap!
I still love my cold defender!
Bring back view blocking snowstorm plz.
Heh. Snowstorm was worse before the bugfix, but better before the bug.
I team with the Repeat Offenders.
YES! I must decide to bubble all of my team or not! That makes FF auto winz! 
I dunno about anyone else but I can tell you this: A good Cold is playing actively and using some sense. Theyre not going to waste thier Benumb on a Lt. because it just recharged, or Sleet on a spawn with 3 critters left or HL when theres an AV around the corner or anchor snow-storm on the minion closest to you. Your right, no skill at all.
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FF auto winz!
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See, now you're getting it! 
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I dunno about anyone else but I can tell you this: A good Cold is playing actively and using some sense.
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This statment is also true for FF. FF is practically a master at preventing DMG period. Anyone that is just doing the fields every 4 min isnt playing a FF defender.
Both of these sets have + and -
But regardless of what they are, the sets are going to shine in the hands of someone who knows how to use them.
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I dunno about anyone else but I can tell you this: A good Cold is playing actively and using some sense.
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This statment is also true for FF. FF is practically a master at preventing DMG period. Anyone that is just doing the fields every 4 min isnt playing a FF defender.
Both of these sets have + and -
But regardless of what they are, the sets are going to shine in the hands of someone who knows how to use them.
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Yeah, that sounds nice in theory, but really, FF is about 3 powers (4 w/Maneuvers), and they're very, very easy to use. Sure, you can do neat things w/KB & stuff if you really want to get tricky that might actually require skill, but 95% of your job is done as long as you bubble every 4 min and keep most of your team in the big bubble. That means FF will shine in the hands of anyone willing to do the bare minimum, i.e. bubble, bubble, turn on 2 toggles.
Cold isn't exactly rocket science either, but it takes more active gameplay than FF. Every other set takes more active gameplay than FF to play well. Here, check out Fulmens' FF satanic bible. I especially liked this bit:
If you do NOTHING besides keep the team bubbled and stay close to the guy on point, you are a good Force Field Defender. If you do everything else in your power and do not bubble the team, you are a bad Force Fielder.
Edit: I just reread Fulmens' thread (cuz it's a funny guide) and noticed you'd already responded in it, and by its manner and your name, I'm assuming you're a FF devotee. So I apologize for arguing with you--please disregard this post in its entirety. For everyone else, it still stands.
An Offensive Guide to Ice Melee
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95% of your job is done as long as you bubble every 4 min and keep most of your team in the big bubble.
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I'd say no more than 90% is keeping the bubbles up, because during an average team fight I can injure one minion badly and/or prevent two guys from committing any damage to the team (knockdown, stun, whatever.)
For me Force Fields is Mr. Wolf. Three teamwipes, you've been in the mission for an hour, and half the team just quit? "Stay right here. I'll be back with S-orbital. We're going to win this one." Panicked broadcast, eleven minutes left on a timed Devo rampage? S-Orbital. Pickup group doing STF? S-Orbital.
Sometimes you NEED overkill.
(ed. to add quote. Am I arguing with myself here? I don't even know.)
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
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The powers in FF need some thought. For the powers that you listed, you don't keep on using them except for repulsion bomb.
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So you admit the FF set is a twiddle your thumbs set in between shielding and repulsion bombs.
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To be fair, powers like detention field and force bubble need the game to present a situation that necessitates the use of such powers.
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A power's use relying on the situation makes the power inferior to those powers that are useful anytime.
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With the game biased towards killing faster and aggressive in nature, it's not a surprise that players think these powers are useless in general.
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I think you're missing the point. If the team is softcapped for Defense, they will NEVER need a powers like Detention Field, Repulsion Field, Force Bolt, and Force Bubble.
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(for example, there are few contents in this game that ask you to defend a room or an entrance against enemy assault, the assault has to be massive enough that killing them faster won't be sufficient.)
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Snow Storm + Sleet > Force Bubble in that situation. Also killing stuff faster AND slowing them reduces the overall Damage attempts dealt by foes over time significantly.
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In my opinion, the powers in cold are easier to use because you just use them whenever they are recharged. They are useful in a generic situation. Once you are familiar with the set, you just throw your powers out to every mob group.
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Sounds like you don't really understand how to properly use powers like Heat Loss, Infrigidate, Benumb, and Sleet or how to maximize an enemy toggle debuff like Snow Storm. For example, no experienced Cold ever tosses a benumb on anything lower than a boss unless that enemy has a VERY specific ability or abilities you are trying to -Special debuff.
Pseudo-QR... or more accurately a quick quote and reply...
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I think you're missing the point. If the team is softcapped for Defense, they will NEVER need a powers like Detention Field, Repulsion Field, Force Bolt, and Force Bubble.
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Not true. A number of custom critters have access to Build-Up, Aim, Targeting Drone, and other methods of giving significant to-hit buffs. Some also mad significant defense debuffs that can't be avoided, like Radiation toggles. In normal foes, you have a few mobs with higher to-hit values (such as Vanguard), loads of defense debuffs that can cascade that soft-capped defense (almost every enemy group, Romans in particular), auto-hit defense debuffs (Crey Radiologists, Scirroco, etc.), massive to-hit buffs (most notably stacked Vengeance Nemesis), non-positional attacks (Mind Control), non-typed attacks (not sure any exist outside of Hami and things that are supposed to hit you anyway, like burning building explosions), and, the rarest but biggest threat, auto-hit attacks (Rommy's Pet Mire Nictus). There's other threats to high defenses too, like Streak Breaker, but I doubt I can remember them all off the top of my head. In those instances, that's where Cold throws around its slows and end drains and FF knocks enemies on their back, stuns them, and keeps them at bay. Which method is better is a subject for debate that I don't feel like getting into.
As for the four specifically mentioned powers I quoted, the latter four are good for herding and controlling mob positioning and useful for keeping the not-softcapped FF Defender alive. They also have other, less seen uses such as covering someone using Rest, keeping foes away from the Terra Volta Reactor Core, keeping repair men away from Lord Recluse's towers, and things of that nature. Detention Field is the trickier power to use properly, but it's great for taking out support/annoying enemies from the fight, like Sky Raider Force Field Generators, Tsoo Sorcerers, and etc. Or taking out Nemesis LTs so they don't die first and buff the entire spawn. Or for dealing with foes that like murdering defense-based protection, like that auto-hit Nictus (and stopping the healing Nictus for that matter). Whether Detention Field lasts too long or not depends on both the team and the particular fight. Though, if you're steamrolling, you're not going to need most of your powers anyway regardless of what powerset you're playing.
When the chips are down, and both Cold and FF are "asked to do more" in a sense, the way I see it is that FF has some dmg mitigation with Force Bub and Repulsion/Bolt and D-field, but none of these powers help you kill faster.
Cold has significant dmg mitigation with KD, slows and -rech and -special (I think its comparable, but this can be argued every which way), but they also pack a hefty -RES, and a -DEF, meaning the threats are killed faster.
Also, there is a fairly large element of random attached to using KB powers (having played 80+ levels of energy blasting toons). Sometimes animations link in a way that make KB recovery faster. Sometimes your bearing, or the foes bearing changes last minute causing KB to be less or more effective than you expected. And then all KB powers are on some % chance with very rare mag resistance, whereas debuffs (assuming hitting, in both cases) always apply, and are subject to whatever debuff resistances the mob has. This makes the much more certain.
There are some very-very niche applications where FF Force bubble absolutely trivializes certain encounters, mainly because its effect is not really resisted in a fair way because it is such a unique power. And, sure FF is WAY effective in those encounters. But I wouldn't really weigh those heavily. I mean, group fly is REALLY GOOD in some very specific encounters, but that doesn't make it a good power.
I've recently experienced on my FF/Archery Defender of in a mission, force bubble the entire mob into a corner within 3 seconds of starting the mob, then AoE them to death, killing all of them within 5 or so more seconds past that. It was highly amusing, and if you know what you're doing with KB, you can get great success like that a lot.
My Cold/Energy defender on the other hand, gets to debuff the crap out of the Family bosses he was going against also a few days ago. Made the entire spawns weak via Sleet and then focused my ST debuffs on the Family Bosses. Worked fairly well. However, it was a safeguard mission, so we were like normal and not all taking on the same group at the same time together. Otherwise we'd be much more successful like my FF.
It's a play style difference. If you want to be more focused on KB and the creative things you can do with that, do Force Fields. If you want more debuffs, especially ST debuffs (which I'm not really a fan of), then Cold Domination is the way to go.
The only two things between FF and Cold that is plausibly the same is the shields. One gives higher defense buff values while the other gives resistances and defense buff. One has crowd control (Stuns, KB) while the other has debuffs (slows, -regen, -recovery, -dmg, etc.). It's really up to your play style and in my opinion, neither person is wrong for saying they like FF or Cold better than the other. Both offer awesome powers that are powerful in their own right.
50s: Bla- Arch/Mental Cont- Mind/FF, Earth/Cold, Ill/Therm, Earth/Rad Dominator- Plant/Psi, Elec/Earth Corr- Fire/Storm, Arch/Sonic, Rad/Kin, Beam/Sonic, Psi/Time Stalker- Elec/SR Def- Storm/Dark, Emp/Psi, Dark/Elec, FF/Arch, TA/Ice, TA/Elec, Kin/AR, Cold/DP, Traps/Psi Scrap- Fire/Shield Tanker- Dark/Mace, Ice/Kin Brute- Claws/WP, SS/Energy, BS/Elec
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If you want more debuffs, especially ST debuffs (which I'm not really a fan of), then Cold Domination is the way to go.
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Quick note on this, mainly for clarity. Cold has Benumb and Infrigidate for ST debuffs. It has Sleet/Snow Storm/ Heatloss for AoE Debuffs. It also debuffs just about everything, -res, -def -speed -rech -fly -regen -damage -end -Special (which can cover a lot of neat things) The only thing it doesn't debuff (I think) is acc, which is covered by +defense and recovery.
Everyone talks about Heat Loss as some amazing debuff (okay, it is). Please also remember that it essentially gives you and most of your team infinite end. 90 sec up, around 30 sec down, it's as good or better than RA and recharges way faster (360 base vs 500). Granted, it's easier to say "Gather for RA" than explain to your team how HL works and where they should position themselves...
An Offensive Guide to Ice Melee
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Once at softcap FF doesn't do much for the team.
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You do realize that FF has more then just 3 powers correct?