New idea: Squads

A little background: I played CoH before there were bases, and one thing I miss about the good ol' days is how Supergroups were back then. There was no such thing as Prestige, no worries about base upkeep and having all the l33t3st base equipment. Supergroups were just groups of people who liked to play together. If you played often enough with the same people, maybe you'd form a group or be invited to a group. But now it's people making random "join my SG" announcements, trolling for people to bump up Prestige, and in a single SG there might be 75 members but only 10 actual active players -- heaven forbid you kick out a placeholder and lose the Prestige bonus (if I understand this correctly).

So I was thinking, what if we had an option to create Squads instead of Supergroups? Squads would be just like the old-style SGs. No bases, no prestige, just a group of people having fun together. Have the same basic SG functionality for Squads that existed back in the old days, including "squad costumes" and titles. But don't make SG and Squad membership mutually exclusive. (Wolverine is in both New Avengers and X-Men, after all.) Don't have Squad mode interfere with SG mode. Allow the user to wear either squad colors or SG colors at will. (And while you're at it, please make playing in SG mode and wearing the SG colors two different options -- same for Squads.)

Or do people already go low-rent on some SGs already? Seems to me it would be hard to do a low-rent SG today given all the l33t SGs already in existence.

Simple solution:

Don't worry about what anyone else does. Set up a SG if you want, with the people you enjoy playing with. If you're in SG mode, you'll make prestige anyway and, when you finally get around to wanting to make a base... you'll have it.

None of my SGs care about having "the l33t3st" anything. We play because we enjoy playing with each other. And yet we still get bases made (for the functionality.)

Someone else having the biggest base, etc, etc, etc has *zero* effect on yours. Don't worry about it.

See my Guides and Tutorials

You could always go to the server section of these forums and see what sg's are looking for players. You could even ask questions in game as to what these sg's recruiting are actually looking for. Not everybody recruits the same way or uses the same schpiel in broadcast. Or as Bill said, you could always start your own sg and do your own recruiting.

Honestly, I would say that Global Channels form the same basic niche you are referring to with squads. you can join them freely and find people to talk/team with. You don't need to worry about prestige and bases and they don't prevent you from joining a SG. If people want to have a "Squad" like you describe then a Global channel would seem the obvious option with the added bonus that you can see it no matter what character you are on.

Yes, most current global channels are teaming-focused but there's nothing to stop people from making more social oriented global channels.

I ran into a similar issue with the Civil Society. I had an idea for a theme and wanted to recruit players in my time zone, which I find fairly rare. But the truth is, as a supergroup, I have nothing to offer.

I'm not an experienced player. I'm not looking to lead teams of end-game incarnate trials, but would like it if someone joined that could do that. We have a nice looking warehouse -- you could hardly call it a superbase. We have no teleporters. No members. I have forums setup but they are empty.

Bascially, I felt as a supergroup, I had nothing to offer but theme and a desire to team up with others for mission play. I'm not really eager to recruit players when I feel they could get a better experience joining another group, or worse yet, ask people to leave their current group to come and join mine.

So my friend suggested I start a global channel instead. It's called "West Coast Heroes", and the idea is that any heroes in the pacific time zone can use it to socialize and arrange mission teams. As people join, maybe I might meet some people I would like to invite to join The Civil Society forums. Or maybe not -- but at least I'll have met my goal of getting together with other Pacific time zone heroes.

So currently I'm trying out the channel idea as my attempt at creating a "superhero social club" that doesn't need an awesome base, doesn't ask members for prestige, doesn't require people to leave their current supergroup, etc.

Gotta agree with Bill. Having the devs design, code, and implement Squads would be a waste of resources when you could just be in an SG that doesn't care about all that stuff.