CoH: a game for Introverts, too

MMORPG does mean teaming.* Not 100% of the time, not even most of the time, or even frequently, if that's your preference. But I don't know how to say it any clearer. There is a difference between asking the developers to cater to people who like to solo (which is reasonable) and asking the developers to cater to people who only solo (which is not).

Contrary to how others wish to redefine the genre, it does not mean, "A single-player game in which other players are merely background decorations to see between missions." In order to fully experience the game, including perks that from time to time you're probably going to think you have to have, you are going to have to team up. I'm sorry if you think this is a terrible thing, but again, it's an MMORPG. You should have known.

If you're able to enjoy the game without the perks that come through teaming, then by gummy, you have my blessing. Because City of Heroes is a solo-friendly game, it's very possible to do so. But yeah, it does bother me when people come here and constantly post requests to destroy one of the main draws of the game, the team-oriented experience.



*Or at least, interacting with other players at a high level. City of Heroes implements this primarily through teaming.

MM means massively multiplayer, not massive multiplayer teams. One of the earliest MMORPGs didn't even have the concept of teams.

How is adding an alternate path 'destroying' anything? I've never seen anyone ask to have teaming removed from the game. And I might have missed it, but I haven't even seen anyone in this thread ask to have the I-trials removed. What I've seen is people asking for *options*. I simply cannot find any downside to people having multiple paths to reach their goals.

Look, you really enjoy teaming. I get that, and I wouldn't take that away from you for a minute. But for me, pugging is the worst part of the game. When I do it, I look at it as an ugly necessity, not the 'main draw' of CoH. Personally, I'm not asking for solo options for every single thing. I'll hold my nose and run a taskforce for the badge. But for something as huge and game-changing as the Incarnate System, is it really that unreasonable to ask that a massive new part of the game be open to more than one playstyle?

I mean, the team part came first. The soloists have been waiting, some patiently, some not, for our turn. You still have your teams. Run the I-Trials. Run old-style Posi every day. Have a blast. You can still do that while I am over in Dark Astoria. What's wrong with that?

As I said earlier, the "massive" part just means people are on at the same TIME, not on the same TEAM.

The only person saying that is you. Vilifying people who solo by putting words into their mouths does you no favors.

As has been pointed out earlier, the entire industry is moving away from the forced teaming model. Even the newer Korean games are doing this. WoW, the king of raiding, is getting away from this model. Two of CoH's corporate siblings, Guild Wars 2 and Wildstar, are intentionally designing the idea of "team if you want, solo if you want" into the core mechanics of their games.

The hyperbole you throw out with your imaginary strawmen is truly amazing. I have to hand it to you for sticking to your talking points even when you've been shown to be factually wrong time and time again.

Teaming is a preference; nothing more, nothing less. As mentioned upthread, in the entirety of these three games (City of Heroes, City of Villains and Going Rogue) there is but one, solitary mission that is solo-only. Everything else -- EVERYthing -- is designed for teams. There are even side missions such as Task Forces, Strike Forces, Respec Trials, Hamidon Raids and Mothership Raids which can be completed ONLY through teaming. Plus, you get more rewards much faster when you team than when you solo.

And that's fine.

What is NOT fine is the major new end-game stuff being gated by team-only mechanics. THAT goes against the spirit of he game, by locking the cool shiny stuff that paying customers have been waiting for YEARS to be added behind a giant gate marked "Teams Only."

Raiding is on the way out. Forced teaming is on the way out. CoH suddenly adopting these moronic practices is a backward step that leaves money on the table.

I unsubscribed because my computer physically can't play these giant slideshows and because they simply aren't fun. Even people who like them the first time don't like them the hundredth time. The solution is not, "buy a better computer," because I have that money earmarked for other things, and I have expenses most of you don't. But I would gladly pay $15 a month if I could play the Incarnate stuff solo, and I'm willing to bet there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others who feel that way, too.

So catering to people who think like you is bad business and bad community spirit.

Nope.

"Muhmorpuger" means that you run out about 200 meters into the dangerous wilderness and kill fifteen sparklebunnies and then return to the guy with the big golden "!" over his head and trade the sparklebunny pelts for a broken wooden sword, so that you can return to the forest to kill fiften old sparklebunnies and then return to the guy with the big golden "!" over his head, so that you can trade the old sparklebunny pelts for a paper jacket so that you can get bitten three times more by the next batch of superior sparklebunnies that you have to kill.

And there are lots of other people killing your sparklebunnies before you even get the chance, stealing your loot so that you have to kill even more sparklebunnies to get the broken sword. Sometimes they also kill you, just because you chose a server marked "PvP" or you did something stupid like turning "PvP" on.

There's no teaming required at all. At best, teaming is a way for the other players not having to go to the guy with the golden "?" above his head to get the quest to kill sparklebunnies. In worst case, teaming is just showing the other players on the map where to kill your sparklebunnies and steal your loot.

Just so you know: all the other muhmorpugers out there are basically a single player game with a chat and a "share mission" button attached to it.

There isn't. What people mean by "solo content" is mostly "soloable content that scales for teams just like everything in the game that is not raids or task forces".

But for some reason team Team ignores that. Team Team also ignores the fact that the scalable instanced "solo" missions that the team leader picks and automatically is available for all the other team members, regardless off whether they are eligible for it or not, and that rewards the players for participating and helping other players completing each others' missions regardless of level difference, makes this game's "solo content" several orders of magnitude more team friendly than all of the competition combined.

Fortunately for all of us, your understanding isn't a requirement. Feel free to enjoy the game the way you want, and the rest of us will do the same. M'kay?

I realize I'm stating the obvious, but there isn't a single player version of COh available for us to buy. Therefore to play COH we have to take part in an MMO. Enjoying this game is not predicated on any desire to play with strangers.

I agree. I don't necessarily agree that teaming must mean 16 to 24 players. That's something that the 800 lb gorrilla and more traditional mmos have kept around in the genre. However I like the fact that COH has always been pretty non-traditional. Correct me if I'm wrong, but prior to COH there was no such thing as the SK type system in mmos, no?

I'd like to see more smaller raids for 10-12 or even 8-10 players.

As I've said before if this game had been single player I would have bought it in a heart beat. In fact the fact that it was an MMO almost PREVENTED me from buying way back when.

That fact that I can team with 7 (or more now :P) other strangers is 100% irrelevant to why I like this game.

No. MMORPG means Role Playing Game.
Not 100% of the time, not even most of the time, but it needs to be enforced for the good of the game at some times.

That may be true, but that's like saying City of Heroes being about superheroes and comic culture almost made you not buy it, and if it was just a generic RPG you would have bought it in a heartbeat. I'm sure there are such people, but there exists nothing they could do, neither complain, protest, or quit, that would cause the developers to decide to make City of Heroes no longer about superheroes or the superhero comics genre. That's what they wanted to do, and while details are negotiable, some things are not.

The fact that this is an MMO, and people decide to make MMOs specifically to include aspects of gaming that don't exist in single player games, is another axiomatic decision a development team makes. The details might be negotiable, but no amount of suggesting, complaining, or quitting will convince the devs to cease completely developing the parts of the game that are incompatible with being a single player game.

People aren't wrong to want a game that segregates all teamed activity into completely ignorable segments of the game without exception. They are wrong to ask MMO developers specifically for it.

It's wrong to request the ability to reach the same level of power/performance as one's teaming counterparts in a reasonable amount of time if the game in question is an MMO? You really believe this? You believe that those of us that requested/demanded/begged for the solo incarnate path were wrong to do so because this is an MMO?

Or am I reading your post incorrectly? I mean... by requesting a reasonable solo path I was, indeed, requesting of this MMO what you've described... and we got it. (Mostly.) Were they wrong to deliver it?

Did you specifically ask for a game that segregates all teamed activity into completely ignorable segments of the game without exception? If so, yes you were wrong. If not, that's not what I said.

What you specifically mentioned up above gets into a long discussion of what is "reasonable." That's a completely different subject.

They could have said "no." If you objected to them saying no because there should be no exceptions to the rule that everything must be soloable in this MMO, I would once again say you were wrong to not acknowledge that MMOs are going to have some teamed content with either exclusive rewards or extremely advantageous rewards somewhere. Whether that's in the iTrials or somewhere else is not a matter of principle.

One way to deal with the teaming issue and the solo player issue in an MMO is to temporize. Which is to say introduce teamed-specific content with exclusive rewards, and then significantly later introduce solo content with a path to those rewards and more teamed-specific content with exclusive rewards in leap-frog fashion. So long as the delay is significant but not immense, people who want team-focused events with content-tied rewards are satisfied, and solo players eventually get a path to almost everything without intruding on the temporary content-tied team rewards. In that sense, asking for an eventual solo path for anything and everything still cuts the devs some slack to make multiplayer-specific content and associated rewards without permanently shutting out solo and small-team players. If I was running an MMO, I would consider that the best of all possible worlds.

But I would be violating the philosophy of players who believe that solo players should *never* have any disadvantages over players who team, even temporarily. And I would be doing so willingly, and openly, because I believe that to be a better compromise overall. You could argue the solo incarnate path follows that philosophy, although its probably not doing so by deliberate design.

YMMV, but I'm of the opinion that happened. The devs sold out the superhero genre and play it down in a lot of ways. Now, IMO, the game is a fairly generic "modern/urban fantasy" that only claims to be about superheroes on the box.

I can point out dozens of ways the mechanics and design of the game betray important superhero tropes in favor of ones that seem to me better suited to a dungeon hack n' slash or fantasy RPG setting.


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Yet another way to deal with it is to make the teaming method of progression faster, easier, and "flashier" in terms of storyline/special effects, etc. without artificially staggering (delaying the release of) the slower, more grindy solo alternative. That way, no one feels alienated by "forced teaming" even though the teaming method obviously yields faster results (which makes those who believe teaming to be the "superior" playstyle in an MMO happy). In other words...handle it the way most MMOs are starting to handle it.

I have no idea what a generic "modern/urban fantasy" even means

The problem is that you want to enjoy the game in a way that is not designed to be. Maybe while you are at it you can ask for God Mode, then you can beat the entire game by yourself any you want.

But it is part of the game. Its like complaining that there is no CTF multiplayer in Skyrim.

Now that you mention it, Skyrim would make an AWESOME MMO...

True that they could have said no but they like money and mine is as green as everyone else's.

As for your design philosophy, I fail to see the point of it. Why piss off X% of your paying population with a "we'll throw yall a bone later" content plan? What's the goal, the purpose, of team-locked content/rewards? How is that compromise?

The majority of the people playing this game are doing so because they like the social aspect of it. Most of these people are going to team most of the time. So what's the *real* reason for the apparent need of developers to push/poke/prod their players into content instead of simply providing it and allowing them to choose the content most appealing to them?