Soloability and End Game

This is pretty much how I read that.

I have a little boy who takes up most of my evenings and weekends. I also work slightly off normal hours. I have other family obligations on weekends, in addition to just generally doing things around the home. My normal total of play time for a week? If I'm lucky, 6-8 hours on the weekend between Friday night, Saturday/Sunday while my son naps. During the week? Maybe an hour or two 1-2 days a week.

Also keep in mind that some of that little time I have online is used up with SG duties and other activities. The majority of my teaming? 3 friends and myself. I mix that in with teaming within Repeat Offenders and the occasional TF with them.

All that being said, the direction Incarnate content is going is incredibly worrisome to me and to my small group of friends. We can handle most of the game's content with just the 4 of us (STF/LRSF/LGTF are no go, ITF is rough. Apex/Tin Mage? Hell no). With the way it's looking right now, we'll pretty much be locked out of even more content, which burns the hell out of the completist in me.

I was excited that we could still gain Incarnate abilities just the 4 of us, but now it's not looking like that. It's really disappointing because even just the common slot makes a world of difference on the few I've earned it on thus far (a whopping 3! out of 14 50s). The whole "investigating" thing is not lessening my disappointment, but making it worse. Anytime the word "investigating" comes into play with the Devs, it gives false hope. It's become the new "Soon"... it is not what it implies.

I've attempted the CoP and really despised it. Apex is definitely not my idea of fun and I haven't even been able to get a team for Tin Mage because it is that reviled in RO (my only good source for TF teams). If these new trials are more of the same (tedious, gimmicky, and lame), I'm not looking forward to the year and am starting to regret taking the Christmas subscription deal.

I know. Geeze. I'm getting to the point where I can't even stand to read the forums with all of this. I feel like just saying "Do you want some cheese with your whine?" and moving on.

Really people. We live in enough of an entitlement society as it is, do we need to bring it into our fun, too? Just because you pay $15/month doesn't entitle you to "maxed out" "top tier" "purpled out Warshades" with little to no effort and/or modifying your own personal (possibly anti-social) playstyles. Either:

1)Get better at playing

2) Find more time by sacrificing something else

3) Deal with teaming with other people. Just do.

4) Quit, and save the rest of us the drama.

or the best one for most

5) Deal with not having a "top tier" "maxed out" uber character, and just move on. Play the same as always, do what you always do, and accept the fact you can't be a god in an MMO (that's what SPRPGs are for). Just learn to deal. It's a useful skill for real life too :P

Yes, it's a rant, yes, it's probably unfair, but I'm sick of reading it, which tells me it's likely time to unsub from the thread, before I actually get angry.

Just *my* opinion on all this (everyone is entitled to one, even the rabid anti-teamers).

There's actually something in the game Repeat Offenders has trouble such that they'd choose not to do it? That surprises me. I thought RO specialised in breaking the game more than anyone else.

Because we can't have nice things even in our pretendy-fun imaginary world. I'm struggling to remember why I started playing games in the first place, if that's the case.

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.

At the risk of being modsmacked, you absolutely MUST group and raid in the most recent of those much newer competitors at the end-game. In fact for some rewards you must PvP.

I normally wouldn't even dignify this crap, but this goes over the line. I suspect there's a good chance I know more about "medical issues" that almost anyone in this thread, and I'll leave it at that. Everyone has their reasons for playing this game, and things that brought us here in the first place. Let's just say that my daily life is surrounded with quite a few "medical issues". Never once in any post I've made in this thread or any other have I said that "soloists" didn't deserve to have things to do on their own, nor have I advocated for anyone to "not have access to anything" all I have said is that the second "M" in the title of the genre of this game means something specific, and generally, to some degree, teaming is expected. I spend the majority of my game time playing with exactly 2 other people (for those who have counting issues, that's a 3 person team). I'm no longer in a large-scale SG like I used to be. I have however, managed to unlock and slot my Alpha just fine, and with enough notice (a few weeks) can put together an 8 man team to run a full TF if I get lucky. I'm also NOT complaining because I may not be able to field a team or group to run the BAF when it comes out, them's just the breaks if that's how it goes. I'll probably never in a blue moon get enough people together to run one CoP trial (not that I care that much, but doing it once would be fun) I've also never run (either version--old or new) of a Hamidon Raid. I'm also not going to sit here and complain and struggle to change the very nature of the game I play, or throw things at the devs and wine like a petulent child, and/or old person with Depends about how "this game needs to do x" or "back in the day when I joined before the Invention system this game was more fun". If they produce solo ways to get Incarate stuff, that's great, it will help me out as well, as I likely will take advantage of it myself. If the produce solo Incarnate Content that's great, I will play it. If they don't, and/or it takes a few months (maybe even a year) I will not get bent up over it, I will continue to play the way I always have.

What really sickens me is the pure level of "entitlement" some people feel for their $15 bucks a month.

For the record, our small group of 3 has taken most of the AVs in the game with just the 3 of us. Tank, Scrapper, and Controller. Sometimes it's just a matter of playing better.

This is pretty much the last I'm going to say on this issue, unless some idiot tries to "call me out" again. Have a nice day, people. You'll all do better to remember that, for the most part, you play this game at the whims of the Developers, and if you don't like it, you can go elsewhere. It's their yard, all you brought was the ball. Expressing concern or offering suggestions is great, and many have done that, but beyond that many more have simply drawn a line in the sand like Picard, and said "this will stop, or I will quit/whine/explode etc." No, it won't, in the end, it comes down to what they can and will do. BS has indicated they are looking at soloable ways to do things. What that means is...they are looking at soloable ways to do things. This isn't the Cryptic Era, and that wasn't Jack Emmert speaking. Some of you should know better by now.

Hush now - you're spoiling the surprise

I think I mentioned something along the same lines as EG did in an earlier post to someone about said competition. For the record, that's not the fun kind of surprise, GG. :P

If anybody's "medical issues" stem from eating what's in your avatar pic, I think they could probably make some changes.

Okay, so that was probably in poor taste... but so is the Double Down. >_>

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

I agree with this totally. It is beyond stupid for the Devs to shoot themselves in the foot with this (apparent) decision.

And you get to the end game very, very quickly.

I think it was about 10 days for me, averaging an hour or two a day (some days I played 5 hours, then didn't play for 2-3 days, some days I played an hour or so a day etc.) I would guess 15-24 hours, tops, and I was solo the entire time, sans "beat up big famous named mob" mish's. Team max was 4, and so I'd pick up 3 other random people of the appropriate level, and finish that. I ran one or two "mini raids" that were ok, then I hit cap, then I quit. To be fair beta ended a few weeks later, and stuff was going on with CoH so...

Not so much can't, but don't want to. It's tough to find Khan and Barracuda teams too. Tedious and lame TFs aren't high on the fun list and tend to be not run as often. I've run 3 Apex with RO so far (2 successful, 1 not), so hard isn't the issue.

be glad they tell us anything, majority of MMO Devs don't say a thing to their subscribers till they release something.

unlockable content and micro-transactions aren't exactly groundbreaking news

I can understand that. Director 11 is way more of a pain than BM, and I say that having taken on Director 11 as an Incarnate, and BM as not one. And I don't think I've ever heard anyone claim Reichsman was fun (my VG beat him to prove we could and we've never looked back.)

I log on and do some soloing... twice a week maybe? I team every chance I get, but it's like 4 people on my SG a few times a month if I'm lucky. I recently got enough shards to just craft an uncommon with nothing but. I ran maybe a single TF since I19 started.

I think your luck is just terrible.

That's true. The problem is, you cannot drop the mission, to restart it with another difficult setting. I was starting it with my usual +X setting (because I did not thought, it would be so problematic). And I did not know, that you cannot drop the mission! What the... ?!? It must be a bug. You can drop everything, why not restarting this one.

Honestly: There are forces and builds where it is no problem to solo it. But we do not have only tanks in that game, that game lives from different forces and classes. A lot of classes with specific forces CAN NOT solo it. Simply a fact.

To solve the problem
(actually I did not read inside that thread any ideas how to solve it)
I would like to make the following proposal:

Why not offering "Heros to rent".

Part1:
What I mean?
Just look into Guildwars. If you're solo you take 7 NPCs to fill up your group with forces you like and will fit your own playing style. That way everybody will continue to have fun. People who like big TF-Parties can simply continue to fight together with real players (I love both, big parties and soloplay) and if one has not enough time or you cannot find enough members to fill a party (or a specific force is missing), rent a hero and take some NPCs. Although I think that idea will also be liked by teamplayers, because you can always max out your party like that to get the most out of it (esp. when you can choose a healing NPC Hero and so on). These NPCs are level connected to your character but at least always +1 level over difficult level (well if you're 50, they might be 51, similar to the enemies). If you're 20 and playing +0, the NPC will be 21. If you're 20 and playing +2 the NPC will be 23. Hope it was understandable. And... you can resurrect them like any other player, if they die (that's a major difference to other NPCs atm.). Ok that's about the idea itself. Now...

Part2:
How to get them:
"Heroes to rent" means, you must rent them. There should be some specific mission to be solved first, for getting friends with these NPC Heros. If you have a friend status, you can ask them to help you in missions, because you have their PHONE number (what the heck, how easy, hm?). And they will not help you for free (heh, these guys... can have nice stories and ask for different fees), yeah you have to pay them.

It will solve a lot of things:
1st: Get more badges (ROTFL). Yes really! Every new friend gives a badge. What else you thought?
2nd: You have to pay a certain amount of money, depending on difficult level and level of your mission (a level 10 should not pay the amount of a level 50, because their income is very different...).
COH is still an MMO and not a single player game. I think finding other players should be always come first, before using NPCs. On the other hand if you (we continue with my example) have a healing NPC to take into your missions, this is a big advantage, so you have to give something for it. It will also deduct the billions of money laying around for nothing (old/longtime players are not poor). I would like to spend my money for something really useful (no joke) like that.
3th: Some servers are not filled up with hundreds of online gamers and we have times, where you simply cannot find somebody or where you cannot fill up a group. I mean, you all know, what I'm talking about. It might be a nice issue (don't misunderstand me now) to fill up a group with low level chars, but we all know, hitting and damage is something else with new chars than the big ones (esp. too less forces available), even they jumped to level 49 due to group level. I think that way everybody can have max. fun, by renting Heroes, doesn't matter what time you'll play and what server.

And now the most funny thing about my proposal: It would be very easy to implement it, because all basic stuff exist already. Phone contact, mission system, Heroes helping you exist too (we have a lot of missions already, where designed Heroes are helping you to finish the mission). So staff would need only to design the new "how to get my Hero NPC as friend-missions" and "Heroes to rent" (force design). It would be also possible to exclude help from "Heroes to rent" on specific missions, so there is basically nothing against it...

So think about it.

Ooohkay. I'm guessing you don't know you can reset difficulty without dropping the mission. (There was a time not too long ago when the game didn't HAVE mission drops). Just change the difficulty, "set task" to another mission (even someone else's) and then "set task" back. If you don't HAVE other missions in your list, and are too anti-social to team to use someone else's for a reset, log out, and back in. Anything that "resets" the mission changes the difficulty. Has been true since the game had difficulty settings. Most of your argument is now deflated. Thank you, have a nice day.

As much as I don't agree with the "extreme soloer's" POV, this is incorrect (at least starting with the strike pack, which is now on test).

To create Rare and Very Rare Alpha abilities, you need a "Notice of the Well" and "Favor of the Well" respectively. Notice requires you (at least until i20, after that we do not know) to run the new "Weekly TF" to get one. Which means to get a Rare you must team at least once, and to get a Very Rare you must team at least three times (as a Favor takes 3 Notices). In that, no, it cannot all be done solo. Also, birdy told me it's 32 shards to convert "notice" into "favor" also. Though I would bet at the very least in i20 there will be ways to get Favors directly as well.

First: I did not read anywhere, where I did offend you, because I never wrote to you. So please, calm down.

2nd: You did not say anything about my proposal, you just directly started to annoy me with "most of your argument is now deflated". That looks for me like a troll is talking to me (somehow your answer is very arrogant).

3th: Thanks for your suggestion, I was trying this, it was not working. I'm a german player and playing on Zukunft. My char with that problem is on villain side, there is not much people playing villains there. But I will try again today, maybe something changed with last patch (did not try since), this is possible, so I must check first and let you know.

It is very difficult to find a team, because: empty. It might be different on US server (the only one with yellow button shown if you login), but it is always the same thing, that people who answers, do not think about the fact, that others are not telling things because they have enought time for nothing or want to write a senseless story or are just idiots.

Just answer me the question how to find a party or fill it up for the endgame content, if there is nobody online (ah ehr, ok, 2-3 level 10-30). Thank you!