Four player teams are great!

The Summer Event really drives home how fun four-player teams can be and serves as a good test case for developing more four player-oriented trials and task forces.

With eight player teams, enough damage output is often able to overcome a deficiency in support or control. Enemies that buff, debuff, and control are dangerous to solo players, but in large teams become far less dangerous and can often be defeated before they've had a chance to present any type of challenge.

On one hand, that's how things should be: heroes back each other up and the work become a little easier. On the other hand, the game's reward for maximize each archetype around damage output belittles the individual contribution of each player. This effects every archetype! Defenders and controllers have little to do in order to keep the team moving forward--maybe a heal here, a debuff on a mob there. Damage classes like scrappers and blasters are less distinguished in their roles because other archetypes are optimizing for damage.

The Summer Event, and particularly the arena portion, produces an environment where archetypes really matter. Defenders must alternate support powers with attacks, controllers really have a purpose separating or locking down opponents, and damage ATs have challenging targets to defeat.

Can all supports teams or all damage teams still successfully run the Summer Event? Of course, but of the twenty-odd times I've run the event, the best teams consistently have two hitters and a mix of support (including tanks). My experience will full support is that it takes a long time to take down AVs, and full damage ATs suffer from excessive deaths, or else lack the AoE to meet objectives like the Ninja Monkey badge.

I'd love to see an entire future issue focused on four-player content. Imagine Borea or Levantera passing out a four player squad mission in Rikti War Zone! Or a small-scale Incarnate trial tracking down leads on the Well of the Furies? What about an alternative to the DFB? The smaller team size could really help new players grow into the roles of their archetypes.

The bottom line is that the four player nature of the Summer Event really makes my characters feel a lot more like individuals. I love it! I hope to see more content like it.

Agree wholeheartedly.

It's much easier to get a handle on what your whole team is doing when that team is smaller. Even an 8-player team can just get too 'busy' with effects to really understand what's going on.

I've actually participated in a few 4-person DfB runs, and they can be extremely fun with the right group, which pretty much matches the ideal group you note for the Summer Event -- two DPS-types, a tank, and a defender.

--
Pauper

Much like the Dr Kane event, its great as long as everyone is pulling their weight.


Heh, 4 fire/rads controllers make the event a joke.

Agree.

It seems a lot of newer MMOs are going with smaller "normal" (i.e., non-raid) teaming design. CO, STO, SWTOR, DCUO all have 4-5 person "normal" team size caps. I like it, myself: more role impact, more consequences for good or bad player performance, less particle effects.

However, one bad apple has a lot more impact on the team, which is a big downside for PUGs. One of the advantages of being able to build 8-man teams here in CoX for normal content is that almost any combination of ATs is gonna faceroll the map, and you can endure a bad player or two much more easily. And the beauty of it is you can choose which size team you want to build (TFs excepted), so everybody's happy.

I have really liked the 4 player teams

* faster to get a team
* you quickly learn everyone on the team because each person counts
* you have more effect on the outcome

I would be very happy to have more 4 player team content

I still wish we could see who is in the queues for trials. That way if I see 3 scrappers (tankers, etc...) in the queue I know I should swap and get a debuffer/buffer


I did the SE once with a stalker, brute (me), tanker and scrapper. We did it but it was painfully slow (darn Sylvia Roxeman (sp?) AV took forever).

Absolutely.
The incarnate trials should have been 4-8 for the small ones and 6-12 for the large.
Not the "I'm a tiny part of a mob and my contribution could be ignored entirely." crap that they are.

Agreed, 4 person teams are great to have.

Fourbies are pretty good, unless you have an idiot in a pivotal role. Then it gets royally farked up very quickly.

Four person teams are lots of fun - but they also require simpler content to avoid the team being given a task they can't complete because they're the "wrong" ATs or power sets.

Before this event, I had used the Queue ONCE to join an incarnate trial...and only really got in cause I was semi afk and didnt mind waiting.

With the four player teams Qing for the event..it seems to actually make the Q useful. Faster to reach 4 people that 8, less of a problem if one declines..just go again.

Disagreed, I have more than 3 friends. It's a nice try at a new system, but I would like to see it changed so that you can have a minimum of 4 players but still go with 8. Maybe add a badge for only completing with 4 so you can retain the closer gameplay aspect, but I find it quite frustrating to have enough friends for a full 8 (or 7, or 6) team but it's locked out at only allowing 4 at a time, especially considering how useful the rewards are and that (as far as I'm aware) this event is only temporary.

Yeah cause with 8..it wouldnt be easy or anything. And having to add 4 more roles..unless you double up on them. Adding further to the chance some will get mucked up.
How about..since they are, you know, friends..you simply work out who is going for each run? Odds are, at least a few could/would/may have something else to do.

I'd rather be able to play it with my friends. It's kinda fun, y'know?

Of course a happy compromise would be to add seperate trials of The Casino Heist and Time Gladiator. Keep the Heist 4 player, Gladiator bumped to 8. I don't expect anything to change this year for this event, but hopefully future ones can have more options for more players to take part at once. Don't have to take away the 4 player dynamic.

There's a lot of fun in the four person team, but it also shows the flaw in the team up teleporter - I've got a corrupter who has had terrible luck with the TUT, getting on teams without any aggro control at all. If we were playing at 40-50, there would be more ability to compensate, but instead lots of deaths against the Minotaur AV and the crowd turns against you and there isn't even an opportunity to turn it around.

I completely agree. When they took the emphasis away from the four member team and put it on making every AT and powerset combo solo well, and then put it on massive raid content, I started to lose interest in the game. I really miss the early days of COH when each player on a four player team had a specific niche to fill. If blasters can all heal themselves and are self sufficient, what need is there for a defender specializing in keeping the team going? If controllers can pump out as much damage as blasters, then my blaster I bring won't be the king of damage he should be. Everything becomes way too much the same and everything loses what made it special. And on a giant team where my contribution could just as well be ignored and the screen is awash in so much effects I have no clue what is going on, what is the point of playing the game?

At what point was CoH ever based around 4-person teams?

I am going to stand in contrast.

This game is much more fun for me with a range of 1-8 players. When it's forced to exactly four, it feels really constrained to me and like a very, very weak version of WoW. Being forced to only play with 4, versus having an option of how many to bring, plays against the strengths of this game in my opinion.

The recent trend of focusing on every group size except for 8-ish is one of my least favorite things about modern CoX. By that I mean trials, events like this one, and the extremely literal interpretation of "solo content" in Dark Astoria. At least Death from Blow is targeted at this game's traditional event team size.

Although I "get" what Corinna is saying, I really don't like minimum or maximum sizes. I really don't get why they have them. Sometimes I feel like a team, and sometimes I don't.

I suppose, in the case of iTrials, that if one could solo them, they'd get farmed like crazy and it would be that much harder to get folks together for a trial on lower population servers.

I find it odd that when Sister Psyche was still "alive" and in IP, I couldn't solo that tf,(not without having folks pad for me and then quit the tf) but now that she's dead, I can solo it through ouroboros.

I don't like a team that is a pre-defined size. Either someone is left out, or you're short one or two. I suppose that's what the lfg queue is for - and it does seem to work much better for this summer event than anything else to date.

I have been on small teams before - and I've been on teams of 8 - and I like teams of 8 because the mission generally ends faster. And faster is always better for me. I'm not one who gets into the lore and story lines - I play for the effects, and well, out of habit, really.
But, that's just me and my two inf.