Soloability and End Game

Team and solo, yes.

But teaming should always allow you to earn rewards faster.

Why are the Team Only Camp, so against us Solo/Small Teamers getting a little love on this?

Anyway, I came to this thread to announce that I finally got a shard drop. I was in the lady Winter Map on my Spines/Elc. Difficulty was not set as difficult as yesterday. I went only 1/2 with Bosses today.

Within 10 minutes, I snagged me a shard!!!!

That made my morning

Lisa.

On the topic of a suggestion that:

A) Addresses the principle, if not the facts, of the problem of "I haven't gotten a shard drop in a month"
B) Does so without violating the requirements that Arcana laid out for any shard drop system.

Theoretically speaking, drop rates are set so that players earn, on average, X drops for every Y kills. That is the design intent of random drops. The amount of variation from this average that exists is intentional too, because, let's face it, breaking the average on the positive side, getting more drops than you "expect to", is a good feeling and creates cool moments. For example: Getting 5 purple drops on a TF. Getting one of every possible drop type off of the same mob. Etcetera, and so on.

Deviation on the negative side is a neccessary evil, because it's inherent to a system that deviates. There is no way for everyone to do "average or better", someone is on the low side of that average, weighing it down. That poor sap. Of course, that's how averages work.

But what the developers CAN do, is limit how far down that deviation can fall.

How so? The same way they did for hit-rolls against enemy targets: The developers could introduce a drop streakbreaker

Your % chance of drop creates an "average number of kills to get X drop".
Your streakbreaker can define "After X number of kills without a drop, a player deserves a break."

One requirement of this number is that it would still have to be quite a ways below the "intended average", or it would skew the "actual average" a signifigant amount above the "intended average". How far below? I honestly don't know, but it would be a lot. 2 times as many kills? 5 times? Maybe less, but my gut says that's unlikely. But, getting a drop of a certain kind no longer is a "near statistical certainty", it becomes a "absolute eventuality".

Someone, out there, is the unluckiest player in City of X. SOMEONE, though we'll never know who, is clocking the lowest drop rates out of anyone in the game.

This suggestion goes out to that guy.

I can see the content becoming less solo and small team friendly and I think that's a bad thing.

The reason I am still here after nearly three years and long after the people who introduced me to this game are gone is because of the community it has. That community is directly effected by the type of gameplay that this game has and has fostered over the course of the game.

Unlike Blizzard's monster I never felt that I HAD to have X gear or be involved in Y Guild or play for Z amount of hours to be a worthwhile contributer to a team.

This game has variety and fosters ALL of the options
- teams lowbie and high levels
- taskforces (although some need a spruce up and redside needs more)
- costume making
- base editing
- badging
- altitus

That variety and the feeling that you never have to 'keep up' made me stay in this game after I tried and gave up on other MMOs.

My concern is that someone in NC is trying to clone WoW and that to me is NOT what this game is. If I wanted to play *o* or anything else team-forced, gear-focused, Raid-focused, grind-fest then I would. I don't.

Examples of that:

Team forced - Praetoria sucks if you're a squishy. It's City of Ambushes and I never make chars there now. Well-written but far too irritating on anything other than a tank/scrapper/stalker.

Gear focused - The necessity of Apex/Tin having the Alpha slotted (or be useless) isn't a welcome one but at least the shards will drop when solo. Very slowly. Level-restricted TFs/content is one thing but gear restricted is an unwelcome change.

Raid-focused/forced - I'm looking right at you Cathedral of Pain. This is EXACTLY what I would hate CoX's end game content to become. Bigger isn't necessarily better. Of all the TFs in the game I will run this last. Is it hard? Not always? Is it a gigantic pain in the rear? Yes and that is why I won't run it. I do not want to sit around for an hour coordinating three teams. It's a waste of my (paying playing) time. This Trial stinks of other MMO's and I hope it is the absolutely the last time we see something like that. We have three Raids which exclude a good number of people who either don't have large SGs or whose computers can't handle them (CoP, Hami and Mothership), that's enough. All other content should be one team/solo friendly.

Grind-fest - Just looking at the start of the Incarnate and doing a bit of guesswork makes me think I'm not going to be getting very rare on all of my 50s. That's bad.

The community I've met in this game generally play whatever alt the team needs and not their main. You force X gear to play Y content and that goes out of the window. That isn't what this game is, that isn't who these players are in my experience.

I can understand that somethings cannot be solo'd. GMs for instance but it seems like the current focus is shifting from casual to hardcore players/grinders and that's bad.

I really want more TFs/SFs which I can run with my small group of friends. But I also want to be able to solo practically everything if they aren't online or don't fancy something. You take that away from me and that is not the game I want.

EDIT:
Special note to the increased difficulty which started with Praet and continues through Tip missions. If Tips can tear my setted out MM apart (who is fine on content at +1 x8 but can't handle Tips with the diff down) then I don't fancy the chances of a solo'er. That's a bad thing. You spent years encouraging odd builds and altitus and now you change to must have x gear. There's a definite shift in focus and it is off putting to those who have played this game for years. Unless you think getting other MMO players here replaces those of us who will get irritated and tired of this new direction.

a few side issues, First while having incarnate teams for the end is fine if you are on one of the more populated servers, My home server(Pinnacle) is a bit of a ghost town,other than 2 ship raids a week, not much is done large group wise, can not remember the last Hami that was done.

second on the battle maiden, it seems to me that certain power sets make it much easier than others. A MM has a bit of a problem keeping pets in line, a stalker our most powerful attack is a bit slow to do,making the hit and run to keep getting blasted from space sometimes hard to do,a willpower toon, if you can't stand next to the mobs has a harder time getting healing to kick in.

also introducing the incarnate at lvl 50 has re-enforced the power leveling to get the char to 50 to unlock it, almost as bad as when the epics were added,and yes some teams only want incarnates to do the tf(itf/lg/statesman/lr)

also the running of lower tfs by 50s have slowed down,due to everyone salvage/shard hunting.

the adding of large raid type events, also has the problem of people getting locked out, zone full messages are a pain. and if the event is needed to get the XYZZY salvage to make a ultra rare, more disappointment will follow(yes i know you MIGHT be able to make it with shards,but has any RED name said that you could?)

just a few thoughts

As a hardcore soloist, I find that the Shard drop rate is just fine. Keeping my difficulty settings to +0 for level and x4-8 players gives me a drop rate that I find more than sufficient. I find the drop rates to be a bit too generous, in fact, given the extreme amount of power you can get out of the Incarnate system.

I don't view it as the only avenue of my characters' progression though. I see Shards in the overall context of many rewards I'm generating in my playtime: Inf, recipes, Alignment Merits, etc. So I keep Shards in perspective and if none drop in a particular play session, it doesn't frustrate me because my character is still getting stronger with all the other rewards.

I absolutely agree the Incarnate system should be kept solo-friendly, and soloable Incarnate content should absolutely be added in the near future (heck, I think there should be solo-friendly versions of all the TFs in the game, just with storyarc-level rewards). But the Shards are dropping at a rate that is commensurate, maybe even too generously so, with the level of power you can gain from them. IMHO it's well-balanced.

P.S. Heck, I've even been temped to play the Apex TF. Not for the components but just because it sounds like something so completely different. And I've been wanting to see Apex in the game for a long time. Too bad they messed up his costume, though.

WARNING: I bold names.

Snippet:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville First, what do you think the difference should be between a slow soloer and a reasonably fast one. Next, independent of kill speed, do you think a team of two should get a bonus in terms of earning faster than the two would separately? Now the question is do you think its reasonable for high end task forces to award components, something single player arcs will not do? That is an additional four shard bonus, in effect. And when all of this is done, we then have to place a limit on the rate at which a reasonably fast team of eight will earn stuff, and set that to be the upper limit of the shard drop rate. And then we have to come up with a lower limit for the single slow player case. And these two numbers have to be in the same rough ballpark or there's no way to make the drops work. So you have to compromise on both ends. But if we calculate a very high spread above for what is fair, and we end up with a number that is a factor of ten or more, its unlikely that no matter how you design the system, random or deterministic, you won't either make it too trivial for teamed players (which is bad) or too slow for solo players (which is problematic). You will have to pick your poison.

Ok to preface...First: since i'm a player and not a dev, i'm going from a customer's perspective and have the luxury of thinking in abstract. I want to participate in the incarnate system if it's the primary content for the near future i have to or i will most likely get bored and i don't want that.

Now, i have been participating in that system for over a month with i would think is not an unreasonably low amount of in-game time to expect progress. As i stand now, i haven't progressed or not much. If incarnate levels are to be considered a proxy to the normal character level progression then my situation is akin to creating a new character, doing missions for about 6 weeks and the xp bar hasn't moved since i left the costume editor.

That is not a good thing. It serves to discourage further particaption. In fact, it already has...i started playing a new praetorian last night instead of continuing with my incarnate.


[ Disclaimer: Shards should NEVER be tradeable ]

Second: Since (right now) incarnate progression is tied to the RNG, let's look at it as loot instead of leveling.

Let's say things like SOs, insp and invention recipes and salvage are all non-tradeable with no other means of acquisition (no vendors or wentworths)...how do you think people's progression through the levels would go when most of your enhancement slots is not filled because it didn't drop for you yet? Would most people be invested in slotting IOs in that environment? I would wager that for most, they would just as well give up on the invention system and at the least be frustrated with the level up process without a properly filled enhancements.

Now those things are countered because while SOs, insp etc are random drops...there's something that is not random...inf...and they can go to npc vendors or the market where progression (accumulating loot) is more stable.


Saying all of that, i don't know what the answer would be...will leave that for the creative minds of the devs but i do know that the RNG is not working as a reasonable delivery method and we need some out-of-the-box thinking here.

However you adjust the drop rate, minmaxed soloers, people who constantly farm TFs or play over 60 hours a week will ALWAYS be on good graces with the RNG. But that shouldn't mean to leave out (i would define average but not sure) users, those who play with SOs only, uses the DEFAULT difficulty of +0/x0, play reasonable times and either solo or in small (3 or less) teams and expect them to just keep plugging away with what could quite possibly amount to years for a single character...assuming all 10 incarnate levels are done like the alpha except with more shard requirements.




Tin-foil hat time: Regarding the extra bonus in TFs (component)...i don't know if the devs purposely or unintentionally done this but this gave me the impression this might be some passive-aggressive method of "forcing" people into doing team-required content like TFs without actually "forcing" them.

Sort of reminiscent of what they did with door missions when they didn't want people streetsweeping all the time. Instead of removing street mob xp, which is a direct way to do it...they instead made door missions MUCH more appealing by increasing its rewards. End result is the same but they didn't technically remove options.

If the devs truly want the game to go in this direction, i'll have to accept that but it still wouldn't make me like it and will have to re-evaluate my options.

If it's not their intended direction, then something other than the RNG is needed.