CoX Grouping Improvement Suggestions - (Long)

CoX recently introduced Issue 16. With this change, CoX pioneered something that is completely new, but seemingly had a little ripple in the MMO community. By allowing players to be able to team together with no level restrictions, NCSoft has breathed new life into CoX.

Now that this change is live, I believe it’s the right time for the development team to focus on something it has neglected for quite a long time: teaming. This is something that’s ignored in nearly every MMO to date. Development teams neglect to insure that the players can actually find other players and communicate effectively while teaming with them.

I’m not sure what’s possible with the CoX engine, but I’d like to introduce some teaming changes that I’d think would greatly improve the game. CoX shines in a team environment and it should focus on solidifying that experience so that it can continue to be a viable MMO.

The suggestions would include: Ready Check, Team Inspiration Bar, Status Balloons, Leadership Options, Group Queuing, and Searchable Groups.

Ready Check

This is self explanatory. It’s something helpful after a large amount of your group goes Away-From-Keyboard after a mission or in between huge fights so you have some clue that the team is truly ready.


Team Inspiration Bar

The idea behind this would be a much faster delivery system for those that have inspirations and want to get them to archetypes that could make the most use of it. Instead of right clicking, selecting a player name, and getting in range of said player, the team inspiration bar would be a dumping point for these inspirations. No longer would people have to spend inordinate amounts of time asking: “Does anyone have an Awaken?” Or the ever classic: “I have a yellow, and two blues... How about you?”



This feature could be abused by players and be a point of argument if people get a little too liberal with how often then dip into it, but the overall effect should be a better team experience.

Status Balloons

When you’re thick in the middle of the fight healers do not notice those tiny icons that indicate what’s wrong with a player. Making a key that allows a player to call out what’s wrong with their character could mean the difference between a team wipe and surviving an encounter. Ensuring that the players can see the Status Balloons even if they’re not facing the affected player is also something that should be considered.



Leadership Options

CoX should have something for those that actually want to lead a group. Consistent leaders mean reliable groups for players to join. You could even make a leadership experience and have leadership levels that give you more leadership options such as:

Leadership Level 1: Team Recall – Much like the Veteran Reward of the same name. However, since this must be earned through play I would hope that it could have a considerable reduction in recharge time.

Leadership Level 2: Team Broadcast – Has your team split? Do you see them getting destroyed by Tsoo Sorcerers, or Sappers because they’re neglecting to target them? Tell them with Team Broadcast. The Team Broadcast should have priority over all other dialog boxes and messages.



Leadership Level 3: Select Mob(s) – For those times when you need some real strategy. Highlight specific mobs that you want the team to focus on.



Leadership Level 4: Command Calls – Similar to Select Mobs, except you use it on players for times when you want the team to buff, heal, or protect a specific player.




Leadership Level 5: Team Resurrect – Self Explanatory. Give it a high recharge. Its purpose is to be available for those times when you need everyone up right then and there, like during a Rikti or Hamidon Raid. This shouldn’t trivialize too much content and it will give players another option since there is not always going to be a Dark Miasma - Howling Twilight and Trick Arrow –Oil Slick combo to save everyone’s butt.

Group Queuing: Allow solo players to apply to groups.



Reason:

Searching from zone to zone with the current options is cumbersome: You can spend upwards of 15 minutes (at a minimum) trying to gather a full group on off hours. I use the search function extensively when I’m building a team. However, other than prime time, building a full group is a complete and utter pain. It’s not because there aren’t people; Players can be in missions, dialog screens, or currently zoning into a new area which causes team leaders to miss Looking-For-Group broadcasts. Even when you form the team, you still have to worry about team attrition.

If people leave in the middle of a mission due to real life emergencies, or “rage quit” because they died, and that player is a lynchpin class (such as healer or a tank) it can leave your team in a bind.

While some will say: You don’t need a Tank/Brute! or You don’t need a Healer! After leading many Pick-Up-Groups I’ve come to only one conclusion: Yes you do, unless a large majority of your team is experienced.

By allowing players to queue up to groups, team leaders will be able to keep the action rolling along.

Searchable Groups

Let leaders levels be visible in group listings along with the classes that are currently in the group (L-1 through L-5 represents the leader levels)



Players should know what they’re getting into when they group up. They should be able to see what kind of leader they have and what classes they’ll be fighting with.

This is awesome!

This is really good, but I smell the touch of CO about it.

/signed
I was just thinking about an option where you can look at current teams.
There wasn't one thing i disagreed on.

/signed

Brilliant! I love and would make use of it all!

/signed
This is good stuff! Genius!

Well first off, I will say I think you did an excellent job with the mockup screenshots, very professional looking .

General Comments:

Team inspiration bar: It's a nice idea, and I don't think it would be abusable however as with everything the devil is in the details. Specifically what happens when the team breaks up, are the inspirations lost? There are a few possible options for dealing with this, the simplest being that when you put an inspiration there is still uses up a spot in your own bar (but you can't click on it) and if you leave the team any inspirations there go back to your bar. People would have the ability to move inspirations from the team bar to their own bar (to save for later or for combining) which would cause the greyed out one to vanish from your bar.

Leadership options: This has been bought up before. The basic problem is that providing rewards to team leaders (beyond the mentoring badges we already get) is potentially very problematic. In general it's much better to have team leaders who want to lead than it is to have team leaders who are only doing it for the rewards. Here's a couple of posts from the last thread on the subject with people recounting the difficulties that other games had with similar systems:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...98&postcount=6
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...0&postcount=12

It think that this sort of idea is one that sounds good on paper but in practice it just results in people who either don't know what they are doing or don't want to do it forming teams solely for the rewards.

That being said the ability to paint a target would be nice in a few cases (for example painting the healing nictus in the ITF in case you lose track of it and need to pull it away).

Group Quequing/Searchable Group: No argument here, an overhaul of the search feature would be wonderful (at the very least letting us filter out people already on teams would help a lot).

Wow what a fantastic bunch of idea's. And a bunch of very cool looking screens too.

Oi! Before I forget, those Archetype icons were made by the talented syrusb over at:

Aim for the stars

If only more suggestion threads were like this
I...Yeah, I really like it. The 'mez bubbles' would be a godsend for my defender.
Great, great stuff. /Signed

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

You blurred Major Malevolence's badge title, but not his name in your Team Inspirations Bar pic.

Quote:

Originally Posted by War_Monk Aye, I hear what you're saying with the team inspiration bar. There would have to be something to anchor the inspiration bar. The way regular groups are handled in CoX would have to change to something similar to a Task Force/Strike Force, but with the flexibilty of adding new players.

Something to anchor the team inspirations bar already exists. It's "the team." Whenever two people join together or one player enters or selects a mission, an abstract "team" is formed, and anything selected for it remains attached to the team. In fact, the team leader selects someone else's mission, has that someone else enter his mission, then that someone else quits the team, that team will still get the quitter's "Mission Complete" message, as well as an apology that they weren't in the mission long enough (like, at all). Similarly, if a Kheldian joins the team, then Quantums will spawn for it even if the Kheldian leaves, because that team is now permanently tagged to spawn them.

The team is not attached to any one player. Players are attached to the team. Like a SG, the team will exist as long as there is at least one person attached to it, and will persist even if leadership changes and even if the original leader leaves. So, with this in mind, a team inspirations slot has something fairly permanent to be attached to.

The problem is that teams persist even for single players. In fact, a player cannot enter an instance without being on a team. When a solo player enters an instance, a team is formed with just him attached to it, and the instance is then attached to that team. Instances are attached to players in terms of their settings and rewards, but an instances' existence is only ever attached to a team. That means that every player will constantly have access to this "team" inspirations row, making it a veritable fifth row of inspirations, only one that's prone to wipe itself if you join another team.

Quote:

Yeah, I was greatly annoyed about this when I played Planetside and Battlefield. However, the main difference between those leadership systems and this one is that everything in the system is for the team. It was a bad idea to give a alpha strike to leaders in Battlefield and Planetside. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The most annoying thing I think people could do with the powers presented here is TP everyone into a quick death which is solved by by a quick one star rating, player note, and ignore.

Huh? I've not played Planetside, but I've played a LOT of Battlefield 2142, and I have to ask - why is it a bad idea to give Commanders and Squad Leaders control powers? If anything, NOT having a Commander and not having Squad Leaders worth a rat's *** is a much greater drawback than anything they may do to annoy you. The only bad things a commander can do, he can do to the handful of squad leaders, and even then it comes down to doing nothing, like most commanders do anyway, or yelling at you to "Follow orders, squad!" Well, that and give you dumb orders because God made his brain on opposite day, but that comes with the territory.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Incredible, a bunch of great ideas and even illustrated in nifty screenshots. I particularly like the team leader commands, lately for me I've been having troubles keeping teams in one group because people apparently don't read chat or check their overhead map. But big pop up text in the middle of the screen is not so hard to ignore.

I like the fist two, most especially the second one, though the first is plenty nice.

I don't really like the third one, since it could get REALLY annoying on teams with control freak leaders, or when team chat from the leader starts invading my other chat tabs.

And the last two are cool.

-Rachel-

I like that!

Nice graphics. Nice ideas. The only thing that I see wrong is the team insprations. Your idea is awesome, but the devs don't like hero-villain exchanges of insprations.

"Sorry bucko, but CoH and CoV are the same game." -BackAlleyBrawler
"Silly villain, CoX is for Heroes!" -Saicho