Soloability and End Game

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...31#post3476231

Just sayin'

Because you couldn't be bothered to read the top most post in the Dev Digest you are depriving yourself of content?

Whoo, I guess I do win.

"A way no matter how slow, to progress their character.." Was there a poll on that I missed, where soloers voted overwhelmingly to ask be permitted to spend 60 hours killing moss snakes to get what a team can in 2 hours doing a raid? Most I know are willing to compromise some, but not to the point of being treated like 3rd class subscribers, being treated not like paying customers but like stage props for lazy or cheap developers to use to enhance the gameplay of team players.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds almost like you resent the idea of solo players getting the same reward for the same risk/time investment of a group. (Did soloers start paying a lower monthly fee than team players, and nobody told me?)

Now, the more I think of it, the less I like the idea of having to spend more time to get the same rewards as when teamed. After all, why should solo players have to play longer to enjoy the same rewards?

Would knowing that a solo player spent the same number of hours playing and got the same rewards in some way have a negative impact on your gaming experience? Do you have trouble getting people to team with you unless a developer strongarms them into it? Unless one of those two conditions applies, then you're not losing anything by solo players getting the same rewards for the same time/risk investment. If those conditions don't apply to you, then you've got nothing to lose.

Because you are solo. You don't have the risk of a trial falling apart because your teammates quit or don't have the right AT/Powersets or just suck at the game. You can go at your own pace. You don't have to worry about your tank deciding he needs to walk the dog and leaving your team standing around for 15 minutes doing nothing.

If you really have to ask why teaming should net better rewards than soloers, then you really shouldn't be playing an MMO. Might I recommend a nice single player console game for you?

No, I resent whining soloers who think they are entitled to everything in the game if they raise their voices and threaten to quit. I'm glad the devs added a way solo players can craft things with shards. But I also pointed out that some people will then complain that, after being given a way to solo Incarnate abilities, that it wouldn't be enough and that they'd want it faster and easier. Which you are proving right.

I resent solo players thinking this entire game can and should be based around them. There are only so many encounters the developers can program for solo players and they pretty much consist of the standard EB/AV fight. You can't do same-time defeats or glowie clicks if everything is solo orientated. You can't have a fight with actual strategy because every fight has to be just as balanced for one AT as it is for all of them if everything is geared towards soloers.

I'd rather the devs be given to actually, you know, develop something other than your standard "target Purple thing, queue attacks until dead" encounter. Gearing the entire game towards soloers gives the developers an unnecessary crutch that just can't be overcome in a multiplayer game. And when I say multiplayer game, I mean a game where there are multiple ways to play, not forced teaming.

If you want to keep paying the same amount of money as I do for the same AV encounter over and over and over again with no growth and no depth and no challenge added, I can only pity you.

There's more leeway for a sub-optimum build or mistakes when you're grouped. A solo player without the right AT/Powerset, or who just sucks, dies, do they not? There's more leeway for mistakes or bad luck when you're grouped with others, in that you have someone else there who can save your butt, buff you, debuff your enemies, etc.

A solo player has nobody else to rely upon to compensate for their mistakes, and dies just like a teamed player when they screw up. If anything, a solo player has to be more precise in their build, planning, and power use because they're on their own. The claim that team players somehow "risk" more than solo players is bogus.

And I always love the standard old "You should go play a single player game if you don't want to team to get anywhere!" It's always an amusing, if tired fallback by people who just can't accept that there other players who enjoy a different playstyle, or who feel deep down that they need the developers to hang a pork chop around their neck to get the dog to play with them.

Again, how is your personal gameplay experience negatively affected by me playing the same hours and getting the same rewards? I pay the same money, I play the same number of hours, what do I take away from you if I get the same rewards? Is there a finite amount of fun in the Incarnate system, and you're afraid soloers will use it all up and not leave you any?

If therey's anyone who should be pitied, it's those players who resent that others can have fun and get the same rewards without being forced to come play with them, who say "I can't have fun if the devs don't make people team! make them have to play 10 times as long to get stuff if they don't play with me!!!!"

It's like this smelly fat kid I remember from high school who's parents tried to have the teachers make someone dance with him at Homecoming.

I don't begrudge group fans their content, I group myself when people I know and like are on. What I donot hold with is being strongarmed by an artificial scarcity into joining that content to advance at a comparable rate.

If a solo player is capable of doing what an entire team of players is capable of doing, they are not going to have any problems accumulating the resources necessary to craft Incarnate abilities at almost any cost.

Except I never said anywhere in this or any thread that the devs should force people to team. It doesn't stop people like from making that assumption, though, which only proves my initial assumption that the solo-friendly crowd will never ever be satisfied.

I'm pointing out the logical problem with developing a game with multiple powerset and AT combination for solo players. If something can only be solo'd by an IO'd out scrapper and a defender complains, should that piece of content be dumbed down even more so even the most gimped of powersets can beat it? And should the entire game stay mired in stagnant "point, click, die" gameplay because some people refuse to team... and they are the minority?

I have never said all players should be forced to team. But some solo players have said that they should be able to solo all content. Like it or not, if the devs listened to them, making all content solo friendly will lead to a game with absolutely no difficulty curve or variety to it, simply because of the needless limitations it puts on their resources.

A change to make everything 100% solo-friendly in this game would be the thing that kills it. Even more than ED or any nerf in the history of the game. Because we would have absolutely no reason to continue playing it.

From what I understand the current setting by design is that the Incarnate bits drop at a more favorable rate when grouped. (I'd like to see some actual data comparing how long it takes to slot XYZ solo versus teamed. Maybe I just had some bad rolls last weekend, but so far it seems that the time/drop ratio solo is pretty wretched. Actually, come to think of it I got absolutely nothing Incarnate killing 50's and higher last time I played my 50 solo.)

Now, just to play devil's advocate....

As for teams having increased capability, then since teams can accomplish more, then perhaps they should risk more? After all, even with the risk of getting stuck with an idiot in your group, it's generally safer than going out alone. Perhaps it would be more fair to have a lower exp/inf/drop reward for those who play in the safety of teams, who enjoy or, I daresay, ... rely... on having other players with them... rather than relying on their own skills...

That would be fair, wouldn't it?

Haven't actually seen that - except from people such as you claiming it. What I have seen is objection to gating character progression behind large team-/horde-only content as it is in certain other games.

This more than anything else explains why I gave up on teaming a few years ago. I found that there was so much "afk", "brb", "bio", "door" etc that I spent more time between missions, or inside missions standing around waiting for people to get back than playing the game. Ya...I get it...ppl have lives, and the real world invades and they have to react. But hey...I'm here to fight evil NOW...not wait for your dog to take a leak! lol.

Overall, the reward/time became equal or less to what I could do on my own, so off I went. I've never really looked back either because I do have the characters now to take on practically anything the dev's can throw at me on a +0x8 up to +4x8 difficulty.

They could make the conversion rate of shards/NoTW at 100:1, and I'd have it in a few days. I could live with that. I'm farming stuff anyways - either for xp for my alts, normal shards, or purple drops.

I did do two Khan TFs the other day to get my level shift with two characters, and it wasn't a horrible experience like I remembered. Still though, I felt ridiculously out of place, since I'm used to never being on a team, and of course hadn't done that TF before. But if it was a choice between doing the TF and getting a notice in 32 mins for Khan, or farming for a few days for enough shard to convert, I would still choose farming. It's something I am good at. :P

No, you didn't say you wanted them to not be able to advance, but I got them impression you wanted them only to be able to do so at a much slower rate than those who team. Which still boils down to developers coercing players into grouping when it's character advancement and not, say, an alternate but equivalent reward arrangement.

I don't expect or want to be able to solo all critters and content. I simply want to be able to advance at a comparable rate to players who do group content, to have comparable solo friendly content to enjoy. Since the Incarnate system is the only way to advance at lvl 50, I want to be able to be able to advance in that in a similar rate to group players, not have to spend 15 times the hours farming things. I hate grinding at least as much as I hate PuGs.

Frankly, I think developers should consistantly provide both group and solo content, keeping each faction of players fat and happy while providing a veritable banquet for that majority of players who like to do both. I want them to make more content and make it better rather than cut the legs out of something else to lower the common denominator. I'm not into the "give me mine and screw them other guys." I'm more a "give me mine, and go give them what they want to." (Unless what they want screws with my own personal gameplay, like nonconsentual PvP or forcing me to group with them.)

For example, they have an AV scrappers can solo? Cool! Don't dumb it down for defenders... make another AV that defenders can solo. Made some Epic Content for groups to get their Incarnate on? I'm cool with that, just make some Epic Content for solo players too.

I get mine. You get yours. And the people who like both solo and team play are just rolling around giggling.

I refuse to be pitied by anyone because I want to play the game the way I want to, and not the way you want to. I enjoy "no depth and no challenge added" - it's the prime reason I play this game and not many of the other games I am offered. The wonderful thing about an MMO is that I very often can get the same game play I enjoy, over and over and over again, without having to endure the same story leading to that game play over and over again. From a game play stand-point, destroying a bunch of Nemesis troops to save Television is the exact same thing as destroying a bunch of Nemesis troops to prevent a Rikti war - but from a story stand point, they are very different things.

The game play is what keeps me coming back for more, and the ever-changing story that drives it is what keeps it from getting stale. That's why I'm playing an MMO and not a single-player game, that's why I pay my subscription fee. And getting tools so there are more "same old AV" fights that I can actually overcome (because a tweak of a few numbers here and there on an AV make a big difference, regardless of what you espouse) is why I want Incarnate powers.

Your pity is misplaced, and I refuse to be talked down to by you because I like something different from you.

Not really. We don't reward voluntary risk that doesn't parallel the game's reward system thresholds. Nor do we reward perceived risk. Its more correct to say that we base rewards partially on threat not risk. Threat is how strong the foes are, risk is how well we can mitigate that risk. Blasters don't get more rewards than Scrappers do per kill. Solo players do not get a bonus for not having help.

Most of the "risk/reward" arguments proceed from a false assumption: namely that rewards should always be proportional to the perceived threat of failure, and that proper game design always includes this as a rule. In fact, both beliefs are false. Its not a rule that this game does or has ever followed, and its not a good design practice in any case. When game designers talk about "risk/reward" they are using extreme short hand to refer to an extremely complex subject, almost none of which deals in an actual direct relationship between "risk" and "reward."

The simple truth is that teaming generally has rewards because its a promoted activity. Combat has rewards because this game promotes combat. Travel generally has no rewards associated with it (exploration, on the other hand, does - to a very small degree) because the devs have no interest or desire to promote travel in and of itself. Teaming bonuses nevertheless influence the upper limit of acceptable reward earning, and the higher the teaming bonus, the lower non-teamed reward earning ends up automatically being.

You could argue that makes all teaming bonuses also soloing penalties. However, that semantic argument goes nowhere. It doesn't change the functional reason for their existence, which means calling it that doesn't change whether it will happen or not. We don't do things or avoid doing things just because someone can figure out how to call it something bad. We can do that for everything. We can say, and someone actually did not long ago, that improving the graphics in the game is a deliberate penalty levied on players with weaker computer systems. For everything, there is a way to give it a bad name.

Incidentally, the argument "what other people see or do shouldn't matter if it doesn't affect you" is a null argument in MMO design. Its a design axiom that everyone has to follow the same set of global rules, particularly when it comes to rewards. You can't say since soloers don't interact with anyone else, they can have whatever they want. They're bound by the combined constraints of the interrelationships between all reward earning by all players collectively. I say this is a design axiom to say this: you can argue against this rule, but all such arguments will fall on deaf ears, not just for the developers of this game, but for all MMOs. People have all sorts of reasons for playing MMOs, but there's only one reason anyone decides to make one: to make consistent collective shared realities. That's why this axiom is written in ink on page one of everyone's design manual, and why its one of the few rules no one, not even our development team, ever breaks, or ever contemplates breaking.

This is an awfully extensive and wordy way to say "We want to promote team play at the expense of solo players rather than embrace and support both play styles equally, deal with it or go play something else."

The question is "how much longer." If anyone has some solid data on comparative drop rates, comparative time for a solo player to slot XYZ compared to a teaming player, I would be delighted to chew on it and decide if I think it's fair. Spending somewhat longer I can tolerate. Hours and hours of grinding to progress at 1/16th the rate of team players I won't. I don't want an "I Win Button." Or a Shard Dispensing Clickey. But I don't want to spend whole weekends killing moss snakes to collect enough goblin toenails to equal what a team player got in one mission.

Any idea what that boils down time-wise?

In other words, as I expected, excessively punitive.

Well from personal experience of bad luck, it took me a month to get 3 shard drops. But that was at least a month ago when i gave up on my incarnate so unless something changed since then, i'd say that's just long enough for me to completely give up on that system.

Maybe need to have an opinion of others that are more persistent than i heh.

Thanks for providing what info you've got there. I realize these numbers are going to be subject to change as things get tweaked too. I guess now it comes down to the shard drop rate solo vs. grouped. (Good thing I've got about whompteen gigillion alt's to hopefully keep me amused for a while.)

Do you happen to recall what difficulty/ X Heroes setting you were playing at?