CoH: a game for Introverts, too

Yes, it is solo-friendly.

But all those features that you listed are not only Quality of Life features and/or solo-friendly features, most of them are also also team-friendly features, since they also increases your ability to help the team. They weren't only added for us "solo players" (which, by the way, mostly really aren't solo players - quite a lot like teaming, just not raids) but also for you "team players".

At the same time, the game is the most team-friendly MMORPG out there, thanks to among other things...

• max team size of 8 (industry standard is 4 or 5)
• mostly instanced missions (industry standard is mostly zone missions, which means that there is competition for the mission objectives - very team-hostile if there isn't mission collaboration too)
• mission collaboration - your progress in a mission counts towards your team mates progression if they too have the mission (there isn't a standard here - many games have collaboration in some missions but not in others)
• sidekick and later super sidekick (industry standard is no sidekick whatsoever, screw you if you're at the wrong level)
• active mission selection and tracking (industry standard is "mind your own business")
• rewards to team members even if they don't have the mission (industry standard is a share button that doesn't work more often than not, but besides that, no reward if you don't have the mission)
• enemy group scaling (industry standard is "maybe, but only in instanced dungeons")

...et cetera et cetera.

The conclusion is that although this game is solo-friendly, it is also the most team-friendly game on the market, in sharp contrast to the rest of the industry which is bloody team-hostile except for the raids.

The game wouldn't have been less team-friendly if the iTrials had used the regular team features rather than a new raid feature. However, by excluding "solo players" from content - and not only powers and mission content - by using the raid mechanics, it has become a little less solo-friendly.

It probably will, but if history has taught me anything, it will because we're prepared to fight for that by tooth and nail. We just happen to have a development team that actually DOES pay attention to what players want, which is great. But that really does put the onus on us to make our desires known.

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.

Conversely, by giving individual players so much power relative to most MMOs so that virtually everything can be soloed, they have made the game a little less team friendly, as many people have observed even in this thread that the same power strength that makes it possible for solo players to never need to call for help in content even in highly suboptimal builds also allows players to blitz content to such an extent it nullifies much of the feeling that you ever needed to be there in the first place.

Its easy to see the problems you care about and even easier to miss the ones that don't even seem like problems in other circumstances.

Of all the misconceptions and exaggerations that surround this particular issue, the most pernicious is the one that suggests that if only the game was optimized for solo players, the people who want to team could team anyway so that's the most inclusive position to take. This is just as false as the notion that people who want to solo can just multibox teamed content. It fails to acknowledge that this is not about teaming or soloing, but about the experiences the players achieve within those contexts. Teaming is not about having human beings control a few more percent of the pixels on the screen, or people wouldn't complain about being redundant on teams.

This is a problem without a solution: you can only be important on a team if it needs you, and it can only need you if failing to have you caused a negative outcome of some kind. You can pick a spot on the dial from A to B, but whatever spot you pick you will annoy a large number of people who will think your selection is obviously stupid.

Personally, I'd compare it to a particularly rough prostate exam.

Or maybe it's just we're all tired of each other on some level as players. That is the question that the Devs have no idea how to solve. A lot of the posts on here all read the same each week: older players anticipating arguments that have happened already on other people's crises, vets starting arguments when someone rubs them the wrong way, players bickering about the .010% increase in animation time on "insert FOTM build nova power here" with a slew of short responses that make new players feel like they don't belong in the forums let alone the game, or in my case just being on full hide for way too long for my friends list to count me as a living human anymore from saying no to too many requests for teaming in Trials or Exalted, when I don't pay anymore. Is that alright as a reply? Or does there have to be a 6 page answer about how terrible of a person I am for being honest? (Not being sarcastic, just weary.)

I get the "stop whining" and "play happy or go home" aesthetic, really, I do. But at some point one has to be honest to how they feel. Ignoring that is a huge symptom of mental illness. Of course, it doesn't mean you have to solve my problems, because I never asked you to. They're still my problems, with or without your interest or help. I'm not looking for an answer from you or others reading this, heck, I'm still not sure what the right question to ask is. Teaming, or the necessity to team isn't as big of a problem as we all are.

You're all tired of people like me complaining that we're not having fun yet somehow refusing to leave because we have no better alternative, and I'm tired of being told in so many words that I'm too dumb to realize nothing I've said has any merit or worth to anyone but myself, community, developer or otherwise.

Nah, that's all hot air. Introvert equal troll. Ignoring both has the same effect in the end.

I'm really getting sick of repeating myself here.

There are already games that can deliver fully soloable and fully teamable content and have both of them be satisfying experiences. And CoX is one of them. We already have this system for door missions, where bringing more people will generate more baddies, and you can even use that system to crank up the difficulty by telling the computer to treat you as being more than one person.

See, last night I wanted to do the Positron TFs. And I couldn't, because there was no one else around who was willing to help. So I logged off for the night instead. And if that keeps happening, I am not renewing my subscription come the 18th, because it won't be worth it. And the devs already have the capability to take that content and make it completely soloable even while delivering the exact same experience it currently delivers for teams. And not only are they not redesigning old content to be more accessible (which would require mucking about with legacy code and might actually constitute a whole lot of time and effort best spent elsewhere), they're actually making the exact same mistakes on the new content.

Personally, I get the feeling that the devs are just trying to be WoW. And they can't be. WoW has literally a hundred times our population. When this content is a year old, it will be impossible to run. Huge swaths of the game made for raid-size groups will never be played because it will no longer be possible to get a big enough group together for them. The whole point of WoW raids is to get massive, stable groups together that go raiding on a regular basis in order to avoid the nightmare of putting together a 40-man PuG. This manipulates people into paying for a game even though they're no longer having fun with it, because if they leave, their group will have to replace them. That is literally the only function served by requiring raid-size teams. And since they have ten million players, WoW can do that and make it work (economically, at least).

But CoX doesn't. And in case no one's noticed, Tony is kind of thoroughly outnumbered, here. And people who actually want to do raids are also thoroughly outnumbered in-game as well, as is evidenced by the fact that they are paying $15 a month to play a game with 100k subscribers instead of ten million.

Raid groups are a bad business decision.

Not to mention that CoH is the only game that seems to be moving in this direction.

WAR came up with the concept of 'public quests', which was really brilliant, but it wasn't long before it became obvious what the disadvantages were... if there wasn't people enough around, you couldn't finish the last stages, an issue exaggerated further by dwindling subscription numbers and little incentive to roll alts to keep the low-level zones populated.

Even WoW had to move away from their 40-man raids because they were simply unmanageable. Today, the most common raid is the 10-man raid, which is practically a regular CoH team.

Where everyone else seems to be reducing the reliance on other players (because time-zones, future population, etc., make the availability of other players unreliable at best), CoH has taken a step in the other direction and increased the reliance on other players. And it's not like our population numbers have been sky rocketing before of after the Incarnate raid content.

I'm sure there's some thorough business analysis behind all these changes, but I just don't get it. It seems to go against every trend out there.

Oddly, in the rest of the game they circumvented that problem by actually giving us the dial (in the form of the difficulty settings). For some reason they chose to ignore that successful aspect of the game when it came time to designing the trials.

So are you.

The vast majority of people are doing the stuff without much fuss or muss, without much thought one way or another about it. Even now, months into it, I don't have much trouble gathering a team or a league for this content because these people are pretty easy to come by, especially during peak hours. Granted, if you're trying to do a Keyes at 5:00am Eastern, you're probably going to have a problem, but shoot, even that can happen if you schedule and announce it ahead of time so that the odd-hours players can get together.

Now that you'll be able to get the same rewards solo, though, I suspect that it will be hard to get a league together to do it. That's why I keep pointing out the need for rewards for team-only content, because it is a well known fact, a fact that the devs have told me in person, that people will almost always take the path of least resistance. But I'm not too worried, because as I've said repeatedly, there will be new content to take it's place.

Of course, once it's out there, you'll have people yelling about how it's a slap in the face too, and we'll rinse and repeat these same arguments again.

I believe, and I have no doubt that she'll correct me if I'm wrong (which is why I like her,) that A is stating that by making everything easily soloable others will have an even harder time getting a team together for that Positron because people like you and me will *only* solo it. So while you didn't start it because you couldn't find the pads (something you could have gotten around by utilizing free accounts and the log off trick) someone else won't be able to because they're on a support character and they want actual teammates to run it with but since more are spending their time soloing there's even less population to team with.

If that is what she's stating, I agree. And I've been asking for minimum team size requirements to be kicked to the curb for years. The devs truly are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

That smaller population cuts both ways, it seems. So use the workarounds in place. Positron has what, a minimum 3 players to start? Crank up two free accounts, get all three on a team, start the TF. Have one quit outright, have the other log off. Solo Positron's TF at your leisure. (If you already know about this, cool, but it seemed some in this thread didn't know how this functioned.) Edit: Yes, not everyone can run multiple copies of CoH easily, yes, free accounts can't start trials, and yes, you'll also have to deal with minimum level requirements.

Indeed. I'd love to know some of the stats behind Incarnate trials and whether or not they are worth the invested development time. I have my suspicions.


Before "raid" content was delivered I was quite happy to say there should be some content for everyone and if people wanted raid content then give them some. However when I look at the iTrials it seems clear to me that they are all just Task Force missions and I think they would work better with a cap of 8.

That doesn't mean I don't want them available for people that thing 24 is great, I just wish I could do them with 8. Or 6.

A cool idea would be more incarnate task forces like Tin/Apex that give threads/merits.

Actually, you're pointing out the need for rewards for raid-only content. There is a slight difference. Teams don't have to be 24 people. 8 people is also a team. And people have been teaming for a long long time, despite the possibility to solo.

Why?

Because most people find teaming fun, social and easy. Not "easy" as in "we win all the time", but as in "it is easy to set up and handle and be part of the team". So they do it. After all, this game is the paragon of teaming in MMOs.

So why is there such a resistance to raids if people find teaming fun, easy and social?

I can only speak my mind, but this is why I don't do iTrials:

I don't think that they are social. You're supposed to run according to the raid leader's instruction and mash buttons on instruction. It's hectic and fast paced, so there's no time for chat, especially since the chat window is not adapted to 24+ people. And as soon as you get somewhere, you are hit by another set of tasks and another set of instructions, so you don't get any time for being social. There are no pauses, no natural breaks. The only time when you can be social is in that dreaded period where the league is assembled, but that time is on the other hand filled with a lot of practical requests.

Being so large, you're a statistical blip in the team. Remove yourself and you remove a few percent of the team's DPS and not much more. Whatever your unique function you have, there are at least three others that do the same. Which means that you're a redundant and replaceable cog in the machine, with some spare cogs. I'm not special, I'm not super, I'm just a faceless soldier on the battlefield. The graphics don't help: you're just drenched in effects, so you're not even visibly cool.

Compare that to the ordinary 8-man task force. It has pauses for being social and chat. I'm more than 12% of the firepower, and I often have that vital function that will cause the task force to fail if you go to sleep. I'm the cat that kills the sappers before the fight even starts. I am a face, a name, a function. I am important. I am super.

Not even the raid-only rewards at the end help. I don't get that social connection in a raid. I don't get that feeling of being important. I'm just yet another nobody that could just as well not be there.

So I'm not there.

The difficulty slider has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm talking about.

I am unclear on what you mean by this. I thought you simply set yourself to league chat mode instead of team chat mode and you have the same functionality as the team channel. Is there something that can't be done in league chat that can be done in team chat?

We had *nothing* and we added *a little*. Most games had *a lot* and are dialing downward, not just in terms of raid content but making their non-raid content more PUG-friendly and more soloable.

There's no mystery there: we were already there, they weren't, and they are heading towards us. But again: this is yet another example of people assuming that making things more solo and/or casual friendly is a sign people are starting to believe that it should *all* be that way. That's the only way you could come to the conclusion that the game that had no raid content at all putting in some is somehow bucking the trend of everyone else that had a lot moving to have a bit less.

The only way we could have followed the trend of making content that required less hardcore play and less numbers of players was for the developers to start making content that could be played by unconscious players and half of one player.

Unconscious players and half of one player or unconscious players and/or half of one player?

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@Zethustra

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We have one-armed players already. So why not?

Do we have any conjoined twins out there?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.

I know a particular trial player who might represent the bottom half of one unconscious player... >.>