Soloability...The Movement Forward.

I understand the argument that the OP is making, but I don't really agree with it.

City of heroes is a multiplayer game. It's great that they've made it accessible to soloers, but at its heart, it's meant for teaming. There SHOULD be content that's only accessible to teams, and honestly we don't even have that much of it. Add up all the raids, task forces, and trials in the game, and they're still probably only 10% or less of the total amount of content. I think that's a pretty acceptable amount really. It's not going to kill anyone to join a team once in awhile.

I am soloist, Ive taken many toons 1-50 without joining teams but on rare occasions. I have been able to enjoy the journey, seeing all of the content and not rushing to beat the clock or waiting for someone to figure out that everyone is waiting for them to get in the zone (usually i am the one that everyone is waiting on cuz i'm smelling the roses). I have not participated in but a handful of TF's & I could not even begin to try to recall what most of them were about (Scrapper-lock, must destroy what every I can target). everyone wants to just rush through the content to get to the end. As a soloist, I cant take the time to enjoy the content that the devs have spent years creating & perfecting. I know that the vast majority of players like to team, no one is saying you HAVE to solo. I just think that since YOU don't HAVE to solo, I (& other soloists) shouldn't HAVE to team. We pay or monthly subscription fee just like those that team.

Sort of off topic reply.

I wish there were an option when running missions to select an "Elite Level" difficulty above and beyond the number of foes and their level. This would be designed specifically for big teams and for heavily IOed characters and cause additional, difficult enemies to appear among the ranks of normal enemy groups. Rather than have to design whole new Task Forces and enemy groups, they could create a cluster of 10-12 hardcore boss types and add them to the standard ranks. Super Stunners are good example of what adding a single difficult enemy to a group can do. Some of the groups could also have Elite Bosses staggered among them.

To incent us to actually fight them, we could have the purple drop for purples skewed toward fighting on this setting. And of course, new badges would exist for each of the new enemies.

To make this really pop, I imagine enemies with powers the developers have shielded us from so far. Enemies that mimic Dominators, for example, who can mezz at Mag 6. Enemies with Arctic Air, Shiver, Hot Feet, Sleet, or Force Bubble. Enemies with Rising Mists (two nearby each other = entire groups are invisible and have mag 6 Confusion protection). Unlike the rest of the game, they'd be specifically designed to challenge the most IOed and Incarnate among us. Not totally related to what you're talking about here, but sort of.

Dude, you are laying it on way too thick. I can understand being protective of an idea, and even protective of the right to have an idea, but calling everyone that opposes your idea an idiot is not going to win people over to your side in a debate.

Calling the Mods idiots will never help your cause. Dont piss off the lunch lady, she will **** you up. You always have the option of politely asking them to move it to Suggestions and Ideas. If that is what you did, allow the possibility that a mistake was made and ask again, laugh it off man, life is too short.

Instead of calling your fellow players idiots, I suggest a different tact. Such as asking why it would affect teaming so much? If 90% of the content is soloable, what percentage of the population consistantly teams? I'm guessing it is much more than 10%.

Ask then, if having 90% of the content soloable hasnt killed teaming, why would 95% kill it? 100%? Teaming isn't an endangered species that must be saved. People that want to team will still team, so what is the danger in allowing more content to be soloed(Especially considering that it CAN be soloed) If the devs don't want it to be soloed, make it impossible to solo(but not with simultanious clickies, that is lame). How can you know it will affect teaming that much if it is insisted that we cant possibly know that it wont affect teaming?

I don't understand how forcing people who would rather solo to team makes a better gameplay experience for everyone. It just seems selfish to me.

I'm still waiting on the link to that FRAPS footage of TheBritisher soloing The Lich King in WoW, since he said all instances can be solod there.

Sorry, firespray, but before I posted in this discussion I'm keenly interested in, I did feel it necessary to read every word on all pages, just to make sure I did actually had something to add rather than regurgitate.

First, I gotta say if I was a forum mod, my finger would be hovering over the "lock thread" button right now. Perhaps that is what some want to happen to this thread, which would be rather sad in my opinion. Maybe that's why that haven't locked it quite yet.

Alright, on to my additional "something to say." First, I am solidly on the side of "I want to play all content at my own pace, in my own way," which means I want all content soloable. The content is why I'm playing the game, pure and simple.

There are boardgames which require a group of people to play. There are boardgames which can be played solo. There are boardgames which play best with a certain number of people, but can be played by other numbers. There are boardgames which are called "multiplayer solitaire" because, while all the people playing sit at the same table (or share the same virtual interface), they're really independently racing to reach a winning goal, and not actually able to help or impeded each other. It has been proven that an MMO can include all of the above. SO, the argument of "this is an MMO, you MUST TEAM!" goes right out the window.

Especially for Torrynt, I must ask: why do you want to team with people who you feel really don't want to team with you? Why not join a SG that focuses on teaming so that you can plan and have teams available when you're ready? Why must you wish to force teaming on people who would rather solo?

I'll leave it at that for now - trying to avoid a wall of text.

I don't know if it's been said before in this thread*, but I really think that the social aspect of MMOs is served better by minimizing features that discourage or disadvantage teaming** than by putting up barriers to soloing. Scaling missions mean*** that teams get to take on bigger spawns and have theoretically more frenetic and interesting battles, which is a reward in itself****. Content where the bar is set at a certain consistent minimum difficulty that most but not all players***** will need to team up to beat it, along with content that usually takes a big ol' mass of players but might be doable by a small tight team, is good too as it gives those who enjoy working to optimize their play something to strive towards. Such content number-gates itself by its nature, if it actually has that nature, so I don't see why setting minimum team numbers to attempt something are useful at all.

*yes, yes, lazy, blah

**such as off-alignment tip missions locking you out of points in the one you're aiming for unless you do all your five first. Arg.

***except where characters that can solo x8 spawns are involved, in which case, well... I don't think this game has ever been accused of being evenly balanced, anyway.

****in addition to having more chances to hit a nice loot roll

***** see ***

******I use too many footnotes sometimes.

Well I see this topic has moved entirely in the wrong direction. Oh well so much for civility.

Wyld. I don't want to be on teams with people that don't want to team. Thankfully those people can happily set their sliders to +4/8 and tackle pretty much anything in the game. If they really want to solo a TF the ability is there, even if it is kludgy. For the most part the soloists do that and farm purples/pvp ios or whatever is in vogue. The people I team with on TFs seem for the most part happy to be on a team and happy to be there.

Thankfully CoX provides so many alternate advancement paths that no one has to do TFs to advance their character. Which is why this discussion is so pointless. You already have the ability to solo the content, yes it's annoying, but how many times do you want to run it anyway? If, that is, you are just after the content and not the merits. Having one part of the game that encourages and in some case forces people to team is a good thing. *

There are people who play because they want to team, making all content soloable does reduce the number of potential teams. It's a logical fact and has historical precedent. By having the TFs set up as they are, you make it desirable but not required to team anything. So people do and thus there is a steady flow of "Citadel starting looking for x more" tells in most zones.

As for the SG, I choose those for RP reasons. Some are better for teams than others. Some are more social and on those characters when I want to team for a session I know where I can go to do so.

This is not exactly content that people were beating down the door to do before the advent of merits. Before the random roll they were almost never run. After the random roll Eden, Kattie, and sometimes the others were done. However, getting people to do one was difficult. In fact the complaint was and is that many of the TFs are not good content. People run them for the merits.

Tell me, would you be so keen to solo them if merits were not at stake?

If so, then are you going to do it multiple times?

* I will edit in that this is my opinion only.