Soloability and End Game

Interesting thread.

I recently played another MMO. I got to a certain point, then my character was totally destroyed by the enemies in a "mission". I wondered what the heck was going on, then was told that mission was a "raid" and impossible to complete solo.

Not "difficult" to solo. Completely impossible. Like each minion does 1000% more damage than minions in regular missions and confronting even the first mob is suicide.

I found that weird, since doing that mission is the only way to get certain high-end items which are *required* to do other, even more difficult content. Items that look really great and have the best stats.

That was my first experience of proper "raid" content, proper "end-game" stuff. Coming from a start in CoH, then trying out other MMOs afterwards, this concept seemed really stupid to me. I suddenly felt really happy about the years before when people protested asking for "end game content" but didn't get what they wanted, because if they meant this sort of thing I'm glad it never emerged.

"Raids" where you can only attempt them once a day or once a week, with each raid *possibly* giving you a raid reward, and you needing 800 rewards to buy the top gear.

Now I'm a "sad" MMO-er, but when you boil repetition down to such a basic cynical level and literally force players down rails (imagine if vill/hero merits and the PVP IOs were *necessary* for certain TFs) then I have to duck out and say no. I'm not quite *that* sad.


Now, we know (yes, we *do* know) that the next releases of incarnate content will involve team challenges. Honestly that doesn't bother me unless the rewards for this content are *necessary* for gaining badges and/or costume pieces. Which of course it will be, so damn.

What to do now? Well, I just hope (like a lot of peeps here) that there will be soloable methods to earn the same rewards that you get from the upcoming team "raids" or Trials, TFs, etc. Not necessarily as fast, but still reasonable.

I left two other MMOs after reaching max level on my first character solely because after that point the game seemed to reduce to "pay $15 a month and spend 2 hours every day of the month in this game and after 3 months you will have all the top tier gear on one character". That was it. No more story, no arcs or sense to anything. No my thing.

If this game had originally been developed such that every time you were in a Hami raid you had a 60% chance to get a special token, 50 tokens bought a Hami-O, and you *literally* couldn't do the LRSF without 10 Hami-Os slotted, I would have been gone back in April 2006. There are more than enough fun and easier console games out there to play.

I take my hat off to Arcana, because this was beautifully stated and nicely encapsulates how I feel about the game.

I've often said that City of Heroes is the only game where my characters feel like they are truly my own, like something I came up with, designed, though of and "own," even if I don't own it legally. I'm not entirely sure of the processes that lead to this, but our characters here rarely feel like "toons," in the sense of mathematical constructs that we design just to serve as our tools for interaction with a virtual world.

You'll note that a lot of people, even devout non-roleplayers, will often talk about their characters as "he can do this" or "she just got that" or "I made him whenever" and so on. Even subconsciously, a lot of people see their characters as characters, possessing at least enough personality to be referred to as a separate entities, rather than the player always saying "I did, I got, I beat" and so on.

The game is constantly nudging us ever so slightly into making a deeper connection with our character. "Pick an origin. But pick carefully!" "What do you want to look like?" "What's your backstory? Well, whenever you think of one is OK." "Did you make a good costume yet? That's OK, here's another slot in case you think of something else." City of Heroes gives you many character slots and deluges you in constant inspiration and ideas, always offering more and more ways to personalise your own characters, to the point where they feel interesting enough to use somewhere else, be it in another game or in another context entirely.

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I also have to agree on the communication angle. I remember the horrible old days when Team Search only looked in the same zone you were and where Local Friends were all we ever had. We didn't even have server-wide chat channels like Help is nowadays. Now, with all the options we have, even anti-social dicks like me end up as part of the larger community, for no effort more than just being member of a few channels and having a long-ish Global friends list.

I've often joked around with people I mostly only chat via global that "this is how I do the bulk of my teaming," and it's actually true. People like Nuclear Toast, Serevus and the Vulpish One I have NEVER teamed with for a single mission, yet I chat them up every time I catch them on, and while I did team with the Mental Giant for one Lady Grey TF, most of our interaction has been over global tells. The game's proliferation of communication means that I don't have to be on a team with people and we don't have to be attacking the same enemy in order for me to both be part of the community and to be social.

If the goal of teaming in an MMO is to create friendships and familiar bonds between players and thus retain people longer, then that has been a huge success on me despite the fact that I almost never team. Why? Because THE FIRST thing I do when logging in is to check my Global Friends screen to see if there isn't someone on I can chat up.

This is where the "MMO = teaming" mentality fails for me. Yes, multiple players occupying the same persistent world is more or less build on the assumption that these people will interact with each other, but that interaction does not have to be teaming.

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.

(Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill in the Strike Pack! thread...)
Dear Positron, et al;

City of Heroes has been a game in which solo and team content has existed quite well side by side. Neither has been required to advance your character - levels and abilities haven't been locked out. The vision of "Bite size gaming" has been met and maintained right alongside trials and larger raids for years.

The recent announcements regarding the direction of the Incarnate system, however, have those of us who - for whatever reason - find ourselves less able to partake in task forces, raids and the like concerned.

Some clarification as to the Incarnate system's content, namely the upcoming availability of Incarnate-level, Incarnate-appropriate, solo and small team content, would be appreciated to alleviate our worries.

Thank you,

The COH soloist/small team playerbase.

Two things that I'd be interested in seeing is something like:

1. Flexible team TF/SFs. For example, permit players to add other players into an TF when someone Quits (as opposed to just logging off or disconnecting). It may even permit you to reinvite the same person, who might've accidentally Quit.

It could be exploited, I'm sure, players switching to specific characters for specific missions in a TF. But in the bigger scheme of things, I don't think it will matter much.

Maybe the merit rewards could be reduced (but Components I guess can't) for swapped out TFs based on how much of the TF the character was present for (not just time, but based on x of y missions, or something).

Edit: Also, I'm not sure I like the idea of even the Alpha slot having two very different schemes for acquiring the Very Rare Alpha. It seems like every 6 months, there's some new loot added to the game, Tickets, Vanguard Merits, Reward Merits, Alignment Merits, Shards and before those, Invention Salvage, Invention Recipes, Purple Recipes, PVP Recipes, and before those, Prestige, Base Salvage. I like that they are there now, but it seems like the goal posts keep moving. I find that frustrating, particularly when playing my less frequently played toons. One solution to that is global account management (the ability to use these rewards on any character, regardless of who earned them).

2. More TF/SFs for higher level content designed like 1-2 mission runs (maybe even 1 mission runs ideally). The mission can be longer, more complicated, and more difficult, but something that could arguably be done in 20-60 minutes with a competent team of 8 Incarnates.

For a few years, I hardly ever ran in any TFs. With the new incarnate content, I started participating and leading them again, including Master Of runs, back to back TFs, etc, but almost all L50 range. I enjoy being able to play TFs again, but it is a sacrifice in my personal life sometimes, and I would prefer the feeling of a PUGs for shorter durations while still being able to participate in ALL of the Incarnate system, even if it's at a slower pace (like the early Alpha stuff is right now).