In the teamed versus solo, any tweak would have to be carefully done.
Right now, teams are faster XP/INF/prestige, but poorer drops.
Solo is better drops, but generally slower advancement. It is good design to avoid having a single method be best for everything. Otherwise gamers being what they are, that rapidly becomes 'required' or 'the norm'.
Going way back to the discussion over purple drops originally. I was very keen on having 1-2 from each set be Pool B drops rather than pool A. Such that people who ran and finished missions fast (such as say a defeat boss room only stalker), would have a better chance at those ones, and be able to use the market to sell them and buy others.
It was easy to see that a method (say fire/kin farming) that produced the fastest kills, plus the largest inf, plus the largest other drops and add the best way to get purples was not a balanced design choice.
That horse is long since bolted, but the lesson should be remembered. Make drops on large teams too good, and the perception will be that soloist or small teams are being 'penalized'. This would not be a good thing.
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co-sign on Cat's points.
Teams have areas where they shine, soloing has areas where it shines.
The game has players who enjoy both and everyone can get whatever they want with some effort.
And I had a discussion in the general forum with someone who was notably poor and blamed it partially on soloing most of the time, which prevented them from hopping on what they perceived as the TF/SF gravy train to wealth.
And they have a point- piles of merits are a great way to make a ton of inf, and TFs are still the most efficient way to earn them (well, unless recent changes really supercharged story arcs- I haven't completed one since I16, so please correct me if I'm wrong).
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Quote:
Mostly agreed. A tweak to team drop rates would have to be big enough to notice, but not big enough that it feels like a penalty for soloing. I advocated using the XP modifier for team drop rates as well: on an 8-person team, the drop rate would be 2.5x what it would be soloing, and then those drops get split among all team members. I -think- this would be a good number: high enough to notice, but still far lower than a solo players drops.|
Originally Posted by Catwhoorg
In the teamed versus solo, any tweak would have to be carefully done.
Right now, teams are faster XP/INF/prestige, but poorer drops. Solo is better drops, but generally slower advancement. It is good design to avoid having a single method be best for everything. Otherwise gamers being what they are, that rapidly becomes 'required' or 'the norm'. Going way back to the discussion over purple drops originally. I was very keen on having 1-2 from each set be Pool B drops rather than pool A. Such that people who ran and finished missions fast (such as say a defeat boss room only stalker), would have a better chance at those ones, and be able to use the market to sell them and buy others. It was easy to see that a method (say fire/kin farming) that produced the fastest kills, plus the largest inf, plus the largest other drops and add the best way to get purples was not a balanced design choice. That horse is long since bolted, but the lesson should be remembered. Make drops on large teams too good, and the perception will be that soloist or small teams are being 'penalized'. This would not be a good thing. |
Also, with the new difficulty settings, sol is generally faster XP and INF as well. The only time teaming has a real advantage in tangible rewards is doing TF's for merits. The merits are he reward, and I see teams all the time wanting to do a "quick TF" where INF, XP, and drops are all just bonus. People are speeding through the TF, getting their merits as fast as possible, then going back to more rewarding solo content. I don't know if there's anything wrong with that, but it's certainly a noticeable way that things have changed.
Seems to me that people don't just form teams as much anymore. they form a team for a specific goal, and disband as soon as possible afterwards. Mostly. I know I personally solo most of the time, I join TF's once in a while, and run with a small group of friends. Runnign in a PUG can be fun and rewarding personally, but running solo is what you do if you want to see the rewards that make a difference in your character's performance.
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I agree that a team is not better XP for a solo-capable character unless the team is rather focused. I won't say that focused teams are a minority phenomenon, as I've experienced them in relatively laid back environments like my own SGs. However, most of my SG-mates were at least mildly concerned about things like XP/hour, even if it wasn't their main focus.
The solo vs. team XP rate thing was something I picked up a very, very long time ago, long before there were ever any other rewards to be had. I still feel its generally true. A lot of teams spend a lot of time "thrashing", waiting for people, looking for people, etc. and so on. It's a broad generalization, but it was true enough in my experience that I went back to soloing more, which I had first been driven to do by the original purple patch.
However, I have a sneaking suspicion that the devs would be leery of tying increased drop rates to team size. There's something about how they've reacted to "speed runs" of TFs and the like, which are significantly enabled by high-order buffs and debuffs (which are usually stronger on bigger teams), that makes me think they'd have a kind of allergic reaction to the idea of more drops for big teams. Maybe that's my imagination though.
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That's a good point, but it only applies to efficient characters who can deal with larger numbers in a timely manner. The devs don't seem to mind hyper-efficiency as long as access is limited and it doesn't become 'the way' to play (as noted by Cat). The # of ATs that can push the solo envelope that far may be small enough that they aren't concerned.|
Originally Posted by Lakanna
Also, with the new difficulty settings, sol is generally faster XP and INF as well.
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/edit
And, a thought occurs to me given the way changes in one issue have been predicting changes in later issues lately- what if at some point in the future teams are given a way to increase spawn sizes beyond 8 players?
Said without giving a thought to any balance issues it might present, but as an off the cuff counterbalance to the big boost they just gave soloists it makes sense.
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You know, even as someone who rarely teams, and is almost never on a team of 8, raising the drop rates for teams wouldn't really bother me. I don't mind the game using faster advancement AND faster drops to encourage teaming. It is, after all, an MMO. I just want to be ABLE to solo without SEVERE penalty. And I certainly can.
Granted, part of me would be upset by raising the drop rate. Why should there be more total XP and more total drops for the same number of bad guys just because a group beat them instead of little old me? In particular, aren't teams supposed to be a force multiplier, allowing a team of 8 to kill MORE than 8x faster? But I can certainly accept what appears to be the consensus that no, a team of 8 does NOT kill 8x faster ON AVERAGE. I'm sure some do, but if most don't, plus add in the time finding a team and so on, and I can see how it could cut very quickly into your drops. So yeah, I'm OK with the drop rate being adjusted upwards based on data-mined facts about average team size vs. speed, which is what I'm assuming they did for the team XP rates.
Or if they want to keep total supply the same, lowering the drop rates for solo and small teams, and only raising it for large teams.
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If our devs increased drop rates for teams, I have a pretty good feeling they would, indeed, base it on data mining.|
Originally Posted by Werner
So yeah, I'm OK with the drop rate being adjusted upwards based on data-mined facts about average team size vs. speed, which is what I'm assuming they did for the team XP rates.
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However, I have very little faith that the XP/inf modifiers we have now were based on any hard data.
The game was very different at the time the devs implemented them. People in general didn't have the grasp of force multipliers we have today. Only the most obvious power functions had known well values, and even then a lot was misunderstood. We had no ED, but we had no inventions, obviously. Far fewer people had level-capped characters. It was a world of different playstyles because it was pre-ED, pre-GDN, and even pre-I4 buffs.
Back then, I rather suspect the idea that teaming hurt XP rates may have held more validity. Most teams just didn't know how to have the synergies they do today. So players complained, and the devs listened on this particular point.
Maybe the change was based on something besides player feedback, but I am not sure how much XP data mining capability the devs had that early on. In any case, I think the numbers we got are a bit too "round" to suggest they were the derived from any calculations on team size vs. speed. I think the devs were mostly just very eager to promote teaming. My feeling is that the devs used to do a lot of balance by throwing things at the wall and seeing what stuck. If so, I think they may have done a decent job of that in this particular case. I certainly wouldn't recommend the same technique for balancing drops. (Throwing ideas at the wall, I mean.)
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Given the early returns from CO, we seem to have deported that particular problem to another franchise. =P
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Originally Posted by UberGuy
My feeling is that the devs used to do a lot of balance by throwing things at the wall and seeing what stuck.
|
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Quote:
Well honestly its not just purple drops. You do have to take into account that all the drops of salvage, recipies etc are spread out amongst teammates when running on a team. So the more teammates you have the less likely it is to get any one reward when it comes due. |
Originally Posted by UberGuy
But what I'm saying is, the game is what it is. It's not some other game. (By the way, CoH is far from unique among MMOs in having "support" characters who blow chunks at gaining XP or other rewards on their own.) And in this game, being better at combat reaps you better rewards / time because fighting is what we do. I just don't see the return on investment in trying to end-run around that just for purples, or any other "drop-style" reward.
Edit: I'm talking about solo play there, not teamed. I'm not defending (or strongly attacking) the way drops work on teams. |
So when people say they play the game and hit the auction house at the end of the night and sell, someone that spent all night teamed has still likely also gotten less to sell, limiting further his ability to earn for what he might want to buy that isnt dropping.
Quote:
But depending on the character solo is not slower anymore. At one point you could say it was because a team spawned more enemies, however iwth the new slider, if i can handle it, a solo player can spawn a map for 5-6 teammates size team, and reap all the xp. And solo xp in every case per kill is higher then teammed xp even with the wieghts they put into the xp system. Then you figure that now iwth SSK there is only a 1 level split to any team and even teaming xp from pre-i16 is actually lower then it was before by about 5-10 percent depending on where on the team you would have fallen in the level range before.|
Originally Posted by Catwhoorg
In the teamed versus solo, any tweak would have to be carefully done.
Right now, teams are faster XP/INF/prestige, but poorer drops. Solo is better drops, but generally slower advancement. It is good design to avoid having a single method be best for everything. Otherwise gamers being what they are, that rapidly becomes 'required' or 'the norm'. Going way back to the discussion over purple drops originally. I was very keen on having 1-2 from each set be Pool B drops rather than pool A. Such that people who ran and finished missions fast (such as say a defeat boss room only stalker), would have a better chance at those ones, and be able to use the market to sell them and buy others. It was easy to see that a method (say fire/kin farming) that produced the fastest kills, plus the largest inf, plus the largest other drops and add the best way to get purples was not a balanced design choice. That horse is long since bolted, but the lesson should be remembered. Make drops on large teams too good, and the perception will be that soloist or small teams are being 'penalized'. This would not be a good thing. |
So honestly i16 IMO created a system that for most people if they can is much more favorable to solo then to team. Couple that now with characters that dont have the option to solo effectively, its no longer a play style choice. Teamming since i16 is basicly slower in every reguard to soloing.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
co-sign on Cat's points.
Teams have areas where they shine, soloing has areas where it shines. The game has players who enjoy both and everyone can get whatever they want with some effort. And I had a discussion in the general forum with someone who was notably poor and blamed it partially on soloing most of the time, which prevented them from hopping on what they perceived as the TF/SF gravy train to wealth. And they have a point- piles of merits are a great way to make a ton of inf, and TFs are still the most efficient way to earn them (well, unless recent changes really supercharged story arcs- I haven't completed one since I16, so please correct me if I'm wrong). |
Ok ill correct you. A solo player can make tons of tickets in the MA at just about the same rate of gains that it would take to complete a TF and earn a random roll. He can solo buy salvage, which if you play it right can earn maybe even faster then off recipies. I can take two accounts into a mission, my level 50 earns about 2 million killing the mission and 1500 tickets per account. (lowbies make less money but same tickets) so now i got 3000 tickets to spend, i buy say magical consps, i get about 5-6 of them every 30 minutes off that run. So in 2 hours i have basicly made about 20+ million once i sell.
The question becomes do i want to have toplay this way every night to outfit a toon. Which is no, i dont.
Quote:
A team of 8 has a 2.5x XP multiplier, right? So... you're saying that despite all the possible force multipliers, your team of 8 not only can't kill enemies 8 times faster than I can (for drop parity), they can't even kill enemies 8/2.5 = 3.2 times faster than I can (for XP parity)? I mean, I don't know, like I said, I don't team. I know pick up groups suck. I just didn't realize how BAD they sucked.|
Originally Posted by QuiJon
Teamming since i16 is basicly slower in every reguard to soloing.
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Seriously, someone tell me that teams don't suck THAT badly.
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That depends. Let's say you can take down the majority of a spawn in ten seconds. Now buff you, debuff the enemies. You can now take down the majority of the spawn in three seconds. Is it really going to help your kill rate to add two more yous? You still have to give the spawn a chance to cluster for AoEs, you still spend the same amount of time running to the next spawn.|
Originally Posted by Werner
A team of 8 has a 2.5x XP multiplier, right? So... you're saying that despite all the possible force multipliers, your team of 8 not only can't kill enemies 8 times faster than I can (for drop parity), they can't even kill enemies 8/2.5 = 3.2 times faster than I can (for XP parity)? I mean, I don't know, like I said, I don't team. I know pick up groups suck. I just didn't realize how BAD they sucked.
Seriously, someone tell me that teams don't suck THAT badly. |
At some point, adding more team members just becomes overkill. Of course the higher difficulties offset that somewhat, but only IF you can gather up a bunch of people who are on par with you in their builds and playing ability. Otherwise they are just dead weight, and the time you spend peeling them off the pavement or the more careful playstyle they have to adopt to stay alive cuts into your reward rate.
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That's kind of ridiculous. Of course it's a choice. You're acting like soloing is the only way to get purples. It's not. In fact, I've gotten most of my purples funded by the most fundamentally team-oriented content in the game - Task Forces.|
Originally Posted by QuiJon
Couple that now with characters that dont have the option to solo effectively, its no longer a play style choice.
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Above and beyond that, not everyone is in this game for the shinies. I've met any number of players in the game who play it because it's fun, because they enjoy using their powers, watching the animations and seeing stuff go boom. They enjoy chatting with people in an MMO. They don't need IOs of any sort to do any of those things. And, you know what? If they want a lot of the same benefits as IOs without having to spend the time to buy them, they just get on a team with a few buffers around and go to town.
You're drilling down into this one aspect of the game and casting it as though it's this immense, gameplay bending flaw. I might agree isn't as good as it could be, but I simply don't accept that it makes teamplay versus solo "not a choice". It may make it a more attractive choice for some people, but not for everyone, and it's not the only choice in any case.
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Same here.
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Originally Posted by UberGuy
That's kind of ridiculous. Of course it's a choice. You're acting like soloing is the only way to get purples. It's not. In fact, I've gotten most of my purples funded by the most fundamentally team-oriented content in the game - Task Forces.
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QuiJon said
Quote:
Good thing you don't have to, huh?
| The question becomes do i want to have toplay this way every night to outfit a toon. Which is no, i dont. |
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This was a thread about purple recipies i thought. I might be drilling into only that one aspect yes, but i thought that is because its what the thread was intended to discuss.| You're drilling down into this one aspect of the game and casting it as though it's this immense, gameplay bending flaw. I might agree isn't as good as it could be, but I simply don't accept that it makes teamplay versus solo "not a choice". It may make it a more attractive choice for some people, but not for everyone, and it's not the only choice in any case. |
But since people are saying that the parity comes into play when you figure that a team can earn xp faster then a solo character, let me also post over this little quote from another post from a thread on SSKing.
Quote:
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Now when you look at a team spread that covers the same level range.... an 8 man team of 1 45, 2x44, 2x43, 42, 41,40... 45 earns 480 per kill 44s earn 535 per kill 43s earn 602 per kill 42 earns 660 per kill 41 earns 660 per kill 40 earns 591 per kill Now SK all the toons to atleast 44 and you get 45 earns 449 per kill 44s all earn 499 per kill. |
So you figure with the new SSK system and the new difficulty sliders that benefit solo players missions, and detract from team xp respectively, the gap between what a solo player and acheive and what a team player achieves is ever widening.
No figure in that the enemies a team fights, now the same for a full team v. a solo player still have the same chances of dropping loot, but that loot is devided between 8 players randomly means that a team focused player WILL recieve over all less drops then a solo player as well as possibly less xp, less influence depending on the over all effectivness of his team. But the drop ratio is definately lower.
Now we can all say we funded our characters in any way we wanted. I funded my perma dom because i got really really lucky with my first 10 or so ticket rolls and got like 7 recipies that all sold for 100 million plus. But that pattern didnt keep up. Eventually the streak broke and i was getting less valuable merchandise. So same thing, i have run TFs with people weekly that seem to every week say they got a purple of this or that. I have never on a TF or SF gotten a purple drop, since they added them into the game. I have gotten a few running a solo farm mission when leveling a character, with only my two accounts on the team.
So yes i know its random, and i know its possible to earn purples on a team, and i know i dont need purples to play effectively. I know that there are players that just log in and dont look at rewards and leveling, i know there are players that log in and only look at rewards and leveling, but there are alot of players falling somewhere in the middle. And those players should have an expectation to not be left out simply because they choose to make a defender, or a blaster or whatever.
The solution of "make a new character if that is what you want to do" also doenst really solve the problem and probably contrinutes more to the farming/PLing going on in game then almost anything else. I know when i decided to make a toon to farm when the MA first came out, i wasnt gonna spend the time to play that character up to level when my only expectation was to farm with him.
Atleast what i would like to see is an increase in the modifiers that regulate what drops for teams. Maybe something like since every enemy has basicly the same chance to drop something add like 4 percent to that for each team mate on the team. So a full team's enemies would be dropping roughly 32 percent more then a solo player. When you guage that against the drops being spread out among a full team, that isnt a huge increase, but it helps to balance the playing feild, wouldnt say that the drop would be something great, but increases what you get and its chances of being better then avgerage.
go back and read the OP. this is a thread that should have been stickied and locked and all replies deleted. all it was was a bunch of answers to help everyone who is whining that they can't afford purples for all their toons understand the idea behind purples.
Quote:
Not only did I LOL, I read this out over ventrilllo to my SG and they cracked up as well.
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
Given the early returns from CO, we seem to have deported that particular problem to another franchise. =P
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Quote:
So, 449-499 xp each on your big team vs. 1376 xp solo, or about 3 times less XP. That's about what I already said, but actually slightly better (I figured 3.2 times less XP). |
Originally Posted by QuiJon
So again now with a difficutly slider that means that a solo player can ramp up his difficulty to the +1/8 that this chart was figured at, that same level 45 character running solo fighting only +1s set for 8, something that many toons can do by level 45, would earn solo 1376 per minion. being on a team alone with 2 equal level characters knocks that immediately down to 860.
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So then the question, which I already posed, is can your team of 8 REALLY not plow through content a mere THREE TIMES faster than I can solo? It's a serious question, and from the two answers so far I'm starting to get the feeling that no, the average team can't, but that really frightens me.
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My work here is done!
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Originally Posted by Catwhoorg
Not only did I LOL, I read this out over ventrilllo to my SG and they cracked up as well.
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It's been a while since I played with an average team, I guess. The top end of team performance that I have personally experienced was a 2-minute Dominatrix on one regular team, and several 60-second AV's on another regular team. |
Originally Posted by Werner
So, 449-499 xp each on your big team vs. 1376 xp solo, or about 3 times less XP. That's about what I already said, but actually slightly better (I figured 3.2 times less XP).
So then the question, which I already posed, is can your team of 8 REALLY not plow through content a mere THREE TIMES faster than I can solo? It's a serious question, and from the two answers so far I'm starting to get the feeling that no, the average team can't, but that really frightens me. |
I've seen a three person team drop a +2 freak tank in four seconds from the time it got back up. I don't know if that's fast or not. So that's kind of high-end performance.
I'm trying to think of "normal" perfomance. I've been on PuGs in the last 6 months that failed an STF and that failed an ITF (that one was just a perfect storm of people leaving, mostly melee left, and killing Rommy with the healer Nictus out of rez range.) I don't know how fast you solo, but even those teams went through normal enemies PDQ.
May not be"pure PUG" because it's usually me and the Amazon, so that's 2 out of 8 high-end players at least.
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Well, I don't personally solo very fast because I have a playstyle preference for single-target survivability scrappers, to the point where I rarely have any AoE, and my DPS has never broken 200. Maybe I should be asking for drop rates to be increased for single-target attacks or something. I mean, why should the AoE specialists be getting all the good drops? Shouldn't all playstyles be equally rewarded? |
Originally Posted by Fulmens
I don't know how fast you solo, but even those teams went through normal enemies PDQ.
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Come on, you have to know that's not what I meant. I'm talking about obtaining purples too, and even said so in my post. Farming is not the only way to obtain purples. It's one way. There is no "best" way, because what works best depends a lot on what each of us do and do not enjoy. I enjoy playing 50s solo and running TFs with veteran teams. I don't farm in any serious way. You want to know what my best farmers are? A Dark/Dark Defender and an Ice/Dark Corruptor. Woo, look out, I'm a machine! And yet I've heavily IO'd eight level 50s, and fully purpled five of those.|
Originally Posted by QuiJon
This was a thread about purple recipies i thought. I might be drilling into only that one aspect yes, but i thought that is because its what the thread was intended to discuss.
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The single aspect I'm talking about you drilling down into is the difference in choosing to farm and choosing to team, or choosing a solo capable character and choosing one meant to buff or debuff while relying on others to deal the damage.
You're characterizing the teaming or team-centric option as a non-starter because of purples, but that's bogus on at least two levels. 1) Not everyone cares about purples. 2) Even if they do care about purples, they can still get them through team play.
I am saying this as a separate complaint from your ideas on buffing team drops, which I am largely neutral on. My complaint is with your hyperbole. You're defending your idea with exaggerated claims of the disparity and its affect on people's play choices. Anyone who decides they must not team because they want purples is foolish, ignorant or both.
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Shadowslip: 50 DDC
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Edit: I'm talking about solo play there, not teamed. I'm not defending (or strongly attacking) the way drops work on teams.
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American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
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Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
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Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA