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OPEN FORUM: Teaming and Soloability

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GhostHack
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OPEN FORUM: Teaming and Soloability

as the title suggests, this is intended to be an open forum (discussion) on solo and team play.
that said, for now... I'm hoping we can focus on ways to make BOTH playstyles viable and popular in Titans.

so....
if you have any suggestions for how to encourage team play and/or solo play.... Post them up here

(I think we can skip any discussion as to the 'value' of team and solo play, as it's well established that both are desirable to a portion of the playerbase.)

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To promote solo play, first

To promote solo play, first thing is to make more of the content solo-able. I don't mean easier, I mean reduce the minimum team size to 1. Lots of people (myself included) didn't do a lot of TFs and such because we played on low-pop servers or at odd hours when finding a team could be tough. Plenty of people soloed before so I don't know if any more promotion is needed.

To promote team play, reward clever teams and courage over the tank and spank techniques. CoH used to have an xp bonus for teams but I think that was unnecessary. The speed the teams could achieve plowing through content should be reward enough IMHO. As for rewarding clever teams, design some missions where the team CAN plow through the enemy in the traditional way OR they could split into 2 groups and pull two levers at the same time or whatever and win that way. The second way could be marginally faster for the same xp (the reward) but it'll be riskier with the team split (the risk).

Oooh! Another way to promote teams: Variable endings! Design a story arc just like normal but there will be different endings based on how many players are on the team! That way soloists can still do it but you'll have to run it seven times (I think we were saying seven on a team right?) to see every possible ending!

I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...

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Alternative mission goals

Alternative mission goals besides "hurt these guys" are very welcome.
Escort missions for healers/crowd controllers
Interact missions (Disarm the bomb getting hit Interrupts disarming) for stealthers and crowd controllers
Timed Missions for DPS
Survival Missions for healers/tanks
Recon missions for speeders
If there's a combat mechanic there should be a way for that mechanic to be more useful in teams

many times in games having a stealth character with the ability to sneak past guards is useless in teams. The ability for these characters to do this as a PART of the mission objective but not the whole mission objective would be great too.

I will add that I love it when teams are forced to split up to achieve goals.. so more missions where two intractable items need to be used simultaneously encourages communication in teams (communication is the best part of teaming).

- -

TL;DR
1) Encourage build diversity via mission goal diversity.
2) Don't penalize builds with solo mechanics in groups.
3) Encourage individuals the ability to shine even in teams via requiring individualized team goals.

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Oh no! someone said that

Oh no! someone said that which shall not be named!!!!111!1 (e****t missions) em shudder.

Solo: Really compelling lore was the main reason I used to solo. A chance to go back and experience the immersion in the tale that I missed while leading steamrollers.

Teaming: Well its a MMO and CoX was a community driven game anyway so it should not need much help. A fully functional SK system should do the trick. Allowing de/buffs to stack beyond what is personally achievable would also help since it would give that "super" feel.

I would prefer to avoid solo/teaming being tied to a particular reward since it sets up a nasty case of Have/Have Nots where someone may feel penalized for a play style choice.

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For myself, I liked the idea

For myself, I liked the idea of rewards for play style, but wanted to see rewards for both that are both viable....

sort of like the Shades/bringers team buff, but going in both directions.... or like a Defense bonus that increases as you team with more people Vs. a End bonus that decreases as you team with more people....
so as a soloist, you have a little bit better damage output (helpful for survivability on slower damage sets (tanks and buffers generally))
but, when you're on a team, you're a little tougher.
at this point, it's purely a hypothetical dynamic, so don't pick at my choices of buff too harshly.... it's more the idea of something that encourages/enhances both styles of play.

Downside, is that if the buffs are both good, they won't really matter.... just background noise.... that wouldn't encourage one choice or the other..... and if one is viewed as "better" than the other, it will encourage one but detract the other...
...I'm not quite sure how to reconcile that...

maybe that incremental population buff for one side of the coin.... and a different quirky benefit for the other play style...
Like.... more inspirations drops as a solo player?
I dont know... I feel like the best way to encourage each playstyle is to provide QoL bonuses for them.... but it's a tenuous thing, because you HAVE TO play one or the other...

...so it's important to provide something that encourages the "other" style of play without penalizing or punishing the preferred one. :-/

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As someone who likes playing

As someone who likes playing both solo and on teams, I hope they will aim for a point where folks who might be interested in teaming will be teaming, while folks who are interested in soloing won't feel like they are suckers for going it alone.
- Regular mission content should be able to scale from 1 to <maxteamsize> (instanced missions are great for this since it makes scaling more manageable)
- Mission goals that require things like simultaneous glowie clicking should be adjustable so that they don't exceed the team size (including team sizes of one). While it isn't a huge deal for someone to invite someone to click an extra glowie, it is also not fun gameplay to have to work around some mechanic like that, so I think of it as better (even if you just look at it as a QoL feature) to handle it automagically.
- Mission arc design should always consider if a given activity is likely to bust up a PuG or not. Sticking solo instances into regular arcs (e.g. as The Secret World does) or having a string of multi-zone "go see this contact" non-missions (as the CoH origin arcs did) would be examples of things that would put stress on a PuG.
- sidekicking the team to the mission-holder's level
- There should be team size xp multiplier ala the one CoX had (http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/xp_division.php) that let people feel like playing on a team was a good deal for them xp-wise, while an efficient soloer could still manage better rates than they would get on some random team.
- avoid 'need or greed'-style rewards in regular content, or slowing things down by having loot popups that people will have to stop to interact with. Don't announce drops that team members get. CoX had a reasonably low angst method of sharing rewards and drops.
- Try to share open-world non-teamed rewards in a way that will not encourage folks to look at someone who jumps in to share a fight as a "kill stealer".
- They should have difficulty sliders as CoX did, but make them accessible via the game menu, rather than requiring folks to trek off to a vendor to make adjustments while the team cools its heels.

For things like TFs, I think having content that is designed with a team in mind, and with a more limited bottom range for scaling based on team size (e.g. saying that scaling every aspect of a particular TF below 4 players would be beyond the scope of the design), can give them an opportunity to create some more complicated content within the TF. As long as the TF is optional (I considered the CoX TFs optional... others may disagree), I don't think they need to design a different solo version, but they should let people start it (with a warning) even if they don't have the minimum for which it was designed. In addition to folks who like the challenge of soling a TF, there were folks who enjoyed doing content on teams that were below the expected minimum size as well.

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Encourage teaming by not

Encourage teaming by not making the big named NPCs (AVs in CoH terms) weaker versions of themselves, while at the same time, make it so people can build to solo them!

Encourage teaming by putting in sidekicking, and sharing of mission completion XP.

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That brings up a thought....

That brings up a thought.... It would be nice to see the AV type characters be "static and transient"..... that is to say... while they don't always have the same stats, their power and strength cycles from low to high and back randomly... and have them show up in town.

sort of like the rikti invasion, but smaller scale, more frequent, and less pomp and circumstance....
something like the public missions that Champs had, but not so complicated...

Dr. Doom trying to summon a demon using the baxter building's super antenas.... or Rhino trying to escape an armored car robbery...

Something that puts these AVs into the physical world, outside of the normal missions.... and in such a way that, sometimes you can tackle them, and sometimes you cant....

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For soloing, I think simply

For soloing, I think simply getting rid of the team requirement would work. There have been times where teams were hard to find whether for that day, at that particular time, lack of interest, or simple time zone on many servers. There were lot of TFs/Trials I wanted to do more often and found enjoyable for me, but been stymied by the team size requirement.

And of course also do not make the leveling rate or too great of a bonus between soloing and teaming for teaming so great that it seems as if soloing is the super slow hampered inefficient way and teaming is the way that the devs really want you to play.

For teaming, there should be a true round robin drop rate. There shouldn't be one team mate getting all the goods while another keeps getting pure crap. That is worse than need or greed because in that case the only difference is the RNG picking one person for greed and the rest lose out.

But while not giving too much, give something for it and don't forget to scale up the number of mobs with the number of players. COX did it but CO seemed to missed the memo.

For both, let the player themselves decide which path to follow without blatantly or subliminally nudging them in either direction. Those that find teaming fun, let them team. Those that find soloing fun or easy or their cup of tea, let them solo without either way feeling like a handicap for choosing one way or another. Because if a game is truly about the player finding something to do and have fun, let them choose what they think is fun. Those that find teaming fun, will team, there is no need to force it or gate stuff, or nudge players into teaming. That kind of make for a situation that is as awkward as being forced to share a room with a person that one don't know. Maybe eventually they will becomes friend maybe not. But if it was meant got them to be friends, they can do it on their own without being locked into a room together. And those that have no will, patience, or simple enjoy playing by themselves at that time, or mixture of both can without feeling forced into a room and creating a tense situation of "I really don't want to team with you all. Lets speed through this, get it over with so I can get my badge and leave."

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Don't do something like CO's

Don't do something like CO's Alerts. Try to stick with missions and taskforces!

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Brand X wrote:
Brand X wrote:

Don't do something like CO

The only things to take from Champions Online are pre 2010

seriously tho.. alerts are horrible. Instanced content is cool.

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JayBezz wrote:
JayBezz wrote:

Brand X wrote:
Don't do something like CO
The only things to take from Champions Online are pre 2010
seriously tho.. alerts are horrible. Instanced content is cool.

I like alerts but I think a feature like that should have been more of a solo endeavor.

It was a pretty poor attempt IMO at trying to advertise PuG and it seems to have backfired.

Although after the change not so much blaming the lowbie 10 for failure anymore much going on. What is the new excuse for failure now? :p

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JayBezz wrote:
JayBezz wrote:

Brand X wrote:
Don't do something like CO
The only things to take from Champions Online are pre 2010
seriously tho.. alerts are horrible. Instanced content is cool.

I'd actually like to see some open world events!

But I'd like the open world events to be on a grand scale. Not..."Rhino attacks downtown!" While we can have that, it's more of a hero versus villain PvE event.

I want to see giant Robots attack! Godziilla attacks! Galactus attacks! Or that cosmic level villain...not giant like the previous mentioned ones, but the lore villain who you know IS THAT POWERFUL!

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I agree. I love open world

I agree. I love open world events MORE than instanced content. I'll add that open world content has to be many and varied or people will just spawn camp it. (Champions Online)

I would love there to be 5 or 6 public super crimes / public ceremonies events (for villains) going on by super-villains at any given time in one zone.

(The Avengers sure have a lot of press conferences) http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2011/07/18/drawing-crazy-patterns-press-conferences-announcing-new-avenger-rosters/

- -

I also welcome big world affecting open world (Godzilla and the likes) but I personally tend to hate that they turn into Framerate killing button mash fests where game mechanics don't matter anymore and there are like 30 heroes just casting powers without real discretion. So I would ilke to see more "Rallying Call (EQN)" and less "Takofanes is up.. lets all go there now. Map #X"

PS Devs:
PLEEEEEASE look into perpetual AI (a la Everquest Next) where enemies don't live in spawn camps but rather have their own behavioral patterns that adjust with the events of the open world.

I know it's not by any means an easy means but the notion that transforms a map from elastic to dynamic. Where the player experience is not predictable.

I was going to write a whole thread about this but alas I need to work in the morning. So.. you know.. design goals.

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perpetual AI got me kind of

perpetual AI got me kind of Intrigued. From what I seen so far it's good stuff, different,.

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I feel that there should be

I feel that there should be team-oriented content. Teaming should not be reduced to "doing solo content more quickly". I feel for those people who have trouble finding teams for certain content (been there, done that) but that's hardly a compelling reason to remove such content from the game.

One thought I had was to have instances with both team content and solo content. Take an aether pirate base. The team of supers has the task of going into the "main keep" to neutralize the main bad guys, steal back their death ray, or whatever. Any individual super would act as a diversion or to weaken any response to the attack on the "main keep", such as causing havoc in the motor pool, attacking the barracks, stealing that day's freshly baked donuts, going after some data, freeing prisoners, etc. They're still part of the "attack the aether pirate base" story, they still get to see (much or most) of the instance, but their involvement does not require them to teamed up with anyone else.

Depending on how the cards fall for loot and crafting, this could also play into the factor of such solo content providing crafting materials for IOs/boosts while the team content provides the IOs/boosts themselves. I also played with the thought of somehow making such instances level-less (beyond requiring a minimum level, anyway) so that they will not be out-leveled and become trivial for higher level characters.

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Darth Fez wrote:
Darth Fez wrote:

I feel that there should be team-oriented content. Teaming should not be reduced to "doing solo content more quickly". I feel for those people who have trouble finding teams for certain content (been there, done that) but that's hardly a compelling reason to remove such content from the game.

I assume you are talking about things like (to use CoX terminology) task forces, as opposed to regular missions? I didn't cover that in my earlier comment, so I should edit that to put my $0.02 on that in there. :)

Quote:

I also played with the thought of somehow making such instances level-less (beyond requiring a minimum level, anyway) so that they will not be out-leveled and become trivial for higher level characters.

Yeah, I think it would be a huge amount-of-content-available win if the regular instanced content was designed so it could scale by level for whatever range makes story-sense. I think, for most instances, that will mean there is some minimum level or story arc completion gate before you'd get a mission for the content, but that an upper bound would be a lot less common. That tutorialish Twishot arc that CoX added toward the end is one that you'd think would have an upper bound (since the story assumed you were new), for example.

If they go that route, CoT should definitely have sliders for scaling mission difficulty, though, so people can use that to adjust missions that they would otherwise have left to mellow in a static-mission-level game (so they could "gray them out").

Having a mission scale by level would also need to involve changing the powers the enemies have available at different levels. Since the CoH AE provided ways for you to design enemies that could scale that way by level, I expect that CoT's mission designer will be able to do that at least as well. I hope they will also add the ability to tag certain members of enemy groups by level range, as well, so that you could have the option of having a different combination of opponents appear if the mission was being scaled above a certain level. Anyway, that is getting into the mission designer more than the team/solo question, so I'll rein myself in with that. :/

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In that same vein... what if

In that same vein... what if there was 'level-less' content that required a team separate but alongside normal content?
so most content (from level 1-30) consisted of arcs that could be soloed or completed with a team....
but there was also 'team exclusive arches' that could be done at the mission owner's level at any time throughout leveling (ccan't be outleveld)

these would have a dual function:
first, it would be a non-perk based incentive for teaming
and, second, it would function as a series of 'super group archs'

also....sort of like how alerts or newspaper missions allowed you to level up 'outside' the normal story archs, these team archs (to be clear, i'm talking normal archs, not one shot missions or taskforces) would function as an 'alternate leveling path'

so, you can attempt to solo through most of the content (even TF's if you are so bold), but there is also a collection of story archs (could be as few as one per district, but would be nice to see more) that are 'exclusive' to teaming

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Bookmarking this. Good stuff

Bookmarking this. Good stuff here.

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"but there is also a

"but there is also a collection of story archs (could be as few as one per district, but would be nice to see more) that are 'exclusive' to teaming"

I'm a big fan of zone related backstory arcs. One of many teaming projects I ran in years past, a handful of us mapped out all the "zone arcs" on red tomax in advance and leveled a trio to 50 while soaking up the ambiance.
Making content like that teaming exclusive would not be well received, unless I am very much mistaken. Several players I have encountered imagined their character as a sort of patron hero for a particular zone. They tended to stay there and solo a lot, while teams went through the content and moved on. It would be a shame to block a player like that from his or her favorite content unless they can wrangle a team for it.

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Wanders wrote:
Wanders wrote:

Darth Fez wrote:
I feel that there should be team-oriented content. Teaming should not be reduced to "doing solo content more quickly". I feel for those people who have trouble finding teams for certain content (been there, done that) but that's hardly a compelling reason to remove such content from the game.

I assume you are talking about things like (to use CoX terminology) task forces, as opposed to regular missions? I didn't cover that in my earlier comment, so I should edit that to put my $0.02 on that in there. :)

Correctamundo. My comment was meant to indicate that there should be content specifically aimed at - or, if you prefer, require - teams. Which is by no means an indication that I have any problem with people being able to attempt to solo such content.*

* Heck, even in WoW there has been at least one person who has managed to defeat instance/group bosses (heroic, at that, IIRC) on their own. In one video it was two bosses at once. If someone wants to try pull off such feats, leave them to it.

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Abnormal Joe wrote:
Abnormal Joe wrote:

"but there is also a collection of story archs (could be as few as one per district, but would be nice to see more) that are 'exclusive' to teaming"
I'm a big fan of zone related backstory arcs. One of many teaming projects I ran in years past, a handful of us mapped out all the "zone arcs" on red tomax in advance and leveled a trio to 50 while soaking up the ambiance.
Making content like that teaming exclusive would not be well received, unless I am very much mistaken. Several players I have encountered imagined their character as a sort of patron hero for a particular zone. They tended to stay there and solo a lot, while teams went through the content and moved on. It would be a shame to block a player like that from his or her favorite content unless they can wrangle a team for it.
-joe

I myself would love to be a patron-hero, and love the idea of having district-themed content...
...but I was referring to quantity, not thematics when i suggested "at least one arc per district"

so this would NOT be a situation of "the district arcs are team only"
rather "there are 8 districts, and each one has a team-only arch"

Now, again.... this is ancillary content... not core content that I'm suggestion. Basically here's where I'm coming from:
In past MMOs, you would chug along in solo or team as was convenient or desirable to you, when all of a sudden the arc of the story would send you to a DUNGEON.... and this dungeon would be a way for developers to "encourage teaming" by making it very difficult to complete. In my experience, it generally only just forced me to find something else to do... my "quest" ended, when I needed to form a team to complete the capstone dungeon at the end of an arc of missions.
this is also how developers often deal with "End Game" content... raids and such are ways of encouraging(re: forcing) players to manage the playtimes of several people(not to mention the time spent to acquire gear and skills) to extend the length of time players engage with the game....
but, the end result is that I just never did raids.

So... here we are, in a situation where "teaming" has been essentially reserved for really hard, often heavily micro-managed "events" (TFs, Raids, etc)....
meanwhile all other content is completely soloable.

For me, I want to team and yet there is little reason to, unless it's something really intense that is more mechanic (stat numbers, builds, team structure) then Thematic (cool story, clever or unusual objectives, etc)

So... this suggestion. a "low threat" version of what CoX would have called Taskforce missions.. but really it's just a normal story arch geared specifically to teams...
THIS would be the place to have multi-switch locks or divergent paths that require teams to split up.... because you know, walking in, that you NEED a team (and the game "requires" it)...
...These missions don't necessarily need AVs at the end of them, or anything.. that isn't their primary intent... but they'll likely have bosses of some sort.

normal (in terms of length, difficulty, story) story archs that add in features that require teams (having to complete multiple objectives at the same time, multi-switch locks, multi-instanced sycronized missions (having one part of the team "sneak into a base"(instance 1) while the other portion must cause a distraction out front instance 2)))

they should be self contained stories (ex: "Maguffin Villain is trying to make his name in Ironport, over the course of the arch he ropes in several b-list villains from around South bay, but your team eventually brings him to justice") and remain separate from the normal story arch of the districts and the character...

Basically, they should appeal to Super Groups and those who particularly want to experience the advantages of teaming.
They should never be forced on players, and regular pathing (missions leading to new archs or districts) should not lead players to them.

If you only solo, essentially, you shouldn't even know they exist. (i.e. they shouldn't interfere with your experience, not that they are "secrets" reserved for the cool teamer kids.)

Basically, I'd really like to level the playing field a little, and tone down the "teaming is for boss fights" mentality (which many solo players already don't agree with/like)

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*Personally* I disliked how

*Personally* I disliked how CoX did it,because not only did they make it so that you had to have a certain number of people in your team, they *also* made it so that you *had* to be no more than X level to take part.

WoW, to be fair, had it done (semi) right. If you wanted to attempt it solo, you *could*. Sure, you had to be above the minimum level but if you could get to the dungeon/raid entrance, you were able to try to complete it.

Now granted, with the exception of stuff that is *at* the level cap of the game (at that point in time), you could also out level the content and return to attempt to do it at a later date. Does this mean that you *can* do it? Sometimes no. You might not be able to do it easily (if at all), due to one thing or another (not enough damage going out on your end, not enough healing/CC coming in... ). But you can still *try* to do it.

Slight aside: This is how I managed to do the raids in WoW solo... To wrap stuff up, I returned at a later date, older (ie levelled up more), and then just ran through doing it. Sure, it was a cake walk for me (doing level 20 stuff at level 90 is *sleepy easy*), but I remember 3 manning Scarlet Monastary back when in Vanilla, because we could do it quickly (only 4-5 levels over the "level limit").

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GhostHack wrote:
GhostHack wrote:

Basically here's where I'm coming from:
In past MMOs, you would chug along in solo or team as was convenient or desirable to you, when all of a sudden the arc of the story would send you to a DUNGEON.... and this dungeon would be a way for developers to "encourage teaming" by making it very difficult to complete. In my experience, it generally only just forced me to find something else to do... my "quest" ended, when I needed to form a team to complete the capstone dungeon at the end of an arc of missions.
this is also how developers often deal with "End Game" content... raids and such are ways of encouraging(re: forcing) players to manage the playtimes of several people(not to mention the time spent to acquire gear and skills) to extend the length of time players engage with the game....
but, the end result is that I just never did raids.
So... here we are, in a situation where "teaming" has been essentially reserved for really hard, often heavily micro-managed "events" (TFs, Raids, etc)....
meanwhile all other content is completely soloable.

I think you describe that situation well. If a game is in a place where people who are not adverse to teaming are not already teaming for that content that is also completely soloable (and I would think it would be fair say that lots and lots of MMOs are in that place when it comes to leveling content), then the designers of that game either didn't have encouraging casual teaming as a primary goal, or they failed at it. In the case of CoX, though, folks generally did like teaming the leveling content... not just RL friends or guildies... pickup groups of strangers were common. So, I'd expect a spiritual successor of that game to have fostering casual teaming as a primary design goal.

When it comes to encouraging teaming, I do think it takes some positive reward. The process of building and maintaining a PuG to run a series of missions has a cost (as anyone who has run them probably knows), so there should be enough "mechanical" reward built in to create the impression that it more than covers that cost. It doesn't have to be huge, though... the XP multiplier that CoH used was not very dramatic, but it was enough that people accepted that casual teaming was more than worth the costs of forming and being on teams during leveling. The mission structure will also have to allow for scaling (which pretty much requires instancing mission content, in some form) so that it isn't two people blitzing the exact same spawn that a soloer would get. With that in place, though, the real ongoing work starts, which is making sure you avoid adding things to storyarcs that make teaming cost more (I ran though some of what I feel falls into that criteria in my earlier post, so I won't repeat those here).

And, obviously, you'd want to have a combat system where various ways that players will experiment, using interactions between the powers of multiple characters, will produce interesting results... again, I am hoping that a "spiritual successor" to CoX won't do a worse job at that than CoX did.

With the above baked into the game, I think you'll have returned to that kind of unusual-for-MMOs space that CoX was in, and will have positively encouraged teaming enough that casual teaming (and not just teaming for TFs and Raids) will go on in the game, much as it did in CoX. With an infrastructure like that, also having a hard team-size gate on content (IOW, you have to have a team of a particular size to even start the content) is probably going to end up bugging more people than it would encourage, on balance.

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First of all, just let me say

First of all, just let me say that I find it amusing to label an open forum an OPEN FORUM.

Much of this has been discussed elsewhere, I think. But here goes...

- I enjoy teaming with some characters and soloing with others. I'd like at least MOST of the content to scale in both directions.

- I generally prefer instanced missions, but I think the occasional Giant Monster/Really Big Bad Guy attack on the city can be fun. Keep them contained to a radius so that those players trying to get across a zone can avoid them and don't include random spawns of their minions popping up all over the place.

- I worry about suggestions requiring teams to split up during missions. It's a staple of the genre, but if the team is too dependent on communication, a technical bug could easily break the mission.

- I would not like to have solo instances built WITHIN the team mission.

- Sidekicking is the best mechanism I've seen to encourage teaming without gating. Please keep it.

- Love Story Arcs. Missions leading to other missions. Let me learn something in one that will help me in the next, or the one after that.

- If there is information imparted to the person accepting the mission, please let the rest of the team read it, too. Even if it goes into some kind of journal that can be accessed later.

- Echo concerns about XP balance between soloing and teaming.

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I just had an idea about solo

I just had an idea about solo/team bonus balance. This is a rough concept without any real numbers to give as examples, but let me float it out here:

Let's assume that completing a mission nets you a base line of 1,000 xp and 1,000 inf. Plus, there are 10 Random item drops and 3 Specific-to-Mission item drops.

If you do the mission solo, you will typically get 800xp, 800 inf. Plus 5 Random drops and 2 of the Specific to Mission Drops.

Running with a team, you will typically get 1200-1500xp, 1200-1500 inf (proportional to size of team, more people=more loot), But, you share out all the drops among the team.

As always, balance is key. Someone wiser than I can propose a better algorithm. But how does that sound as a general principle? Basically, soloing gets you more stuff but you level a bit slower. Teaming allows you to level quickly, but you will have to find another way to get crafting items.

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hah, yeah.. I just called it

hah, yeah.. I just called it "open" in the title because I didn't have a particular stance or agenda I was rooting for (like i'm not in a Pro-team or Pro-solo camp or anything) and Was hopeful that calling it, and keeping it open would promote an info-dump of suggestions, thoughts, and ideas without necessarily "debating" their merits.

....so far, it's worked, i think :D

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JayBezz wrote:
JayBezz wrote:

Alternative mission goals besides "hurt these guys" are very welcome. Escort missions, Interact missions (Disarm the bomb getting hit Interrupts disarming)
many times in games having a stealth character with the ability to sneak past guards is useless in teams. The ability for these characters to do this as a PART of the mission objective but not the whole mission objective would be great too.

And that's the primary problem with stealth in teams; unless you could stealth the entire team, a lone stealth-based character would either be able to complete the mission goal without opposition, or could get to the mission goal but be unable to do anything because of an inability to take the nearby spawn solo. Sometimes it was an 'easy button' for part of the mission -- a character with Invisibility and Recall Friend could skip everyone past most of the fight in the last mission of the Kahn TF to reach Reichsman, for example.

Something I would like to see is giving stealth characters more utility that leverages the ability to slip past mobs to put them in positions to affect -- but not complete -- a mission. For example, in a mission that takes players into a villain group's base, a large room might have a particular console designated as an alarm trigger; one of the mobs in the room can run to the console and activate it, triggering the alarm, which causes an ambush of more mobs and/or raising the alert status of the rest of the base. A stealth character, then, would be able to head to the console either to disable it (a protracted, interruptible process) or to be in position to fight off the mobs trying to reach the alarm switch.

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WarBird wrote:
WarBird wrote:

As always, balance is key. Someone wiser than I can propose a better algorithm. But how does that sound as a general principle? Basically, soloing gets you more stuff but you level a bit slower. Teaming allows you to level quickly, but you will have to find another way to get crafting items.

My personal opinion on the approach to the balance is that it should less about "the house" favoring certain activities for certain returns (or, at least, without so obvious a favoritism that the players will think that way, as well), and should be more about providing an environment where playstyle will impact the nature of player's returns. So, think in terms of the general returns an average player with a reasonably solo-friendly build would get solo, or on a random team with other average players. I think, for that particular comparison, the balance should be tipped in favor of the team (both in terms of XP and drops). That is not unfair (imo) since folks who prefer to solo tend to (again, imo, but based on my experience) get a better return than an average player with a reasonably solo-friendly build would when soloing. This is because they tend to take advantage of the fact that they have much more control over their play environment. Not only can their build choices be more dedicated to assisting in their progress, but they are the decisionmaker on what they fight, what the difficulty sliders are set to, the strategy for fighting the groups, the rate of progress through the groups, and so on.

I knew such folks in CoX who had decided they could see a faster rate of return, in terms of drops and XP, when they soloed than they would on some random team. Since the ranks of casual teams are not generally drawn from the folks who prefer to solo, though, they would not, so the rewards of teaming worked better for that group. Neither felt like they were giving anything up, in terms of their relative rates of XP/drops, by not doing the other thing. That is a pretty sweet player-perception spot to hit, if you can manage it.

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srmalloy wrote:
srmalloy wrote:

And that's the primary problem with stealth in teams; unless you could stealth the entire team, a lone stealth-based character would either be able to complete the mission goal without opposition, or could get to the mission goal but be unable to do anything because of an inability to take the nearby spawn solo. Sometimes it was an 'easy button' for part of the mission -- a character with Invisibility and Recall Friend could skip everyone past most of the fight in the last mission of the Kahn TF to reach Reichsman, for example.
Something I would like to see is giving stealth characters more utility that leverages the ability to slip past mobs to put them in positions to affect -- but not complete -- a mission. For example, in a mission that takes players into a villain group's base, a large room might have a particular console designated as an alarm trigger; one of the mobs in the room can run to the console and activate it, triggering the alarm, which causes an ambush of more mobs and/or raising the alert status of the rest of the base. A stealth character, then, would be able to head to the console either to disable it (a protracted, interruptible process) or to be in position to fight off the mobs trying to reach the alarm switch.

Precicely the type of mechanics I was speaking to in my statement. I am glad to be of common understanding. Also players COULD fight their way to the same interact node OR they can "do it the hard way". Even Champions Online had many "optional" mission completion options. And just because you could stealth your way there doesn't mean you have the option to stealth your way back to the team. Dynamic storylines.. maybe there's a suprise.. your best friend (A player made NPC) is locked up back there and you have to escort them back. YES! MORE ESCORT MISSIONS! It'd be easy if you defeated the enemies on your way in.. but harder if you hadn't

Also any "leave mission" button is great but sometimes should be disabled. Fighting your way into a stronghold without needing to fight your way out might be (and often is) part of the mission design. I say the same for "teleporting away" or "stealthing out of combat" .. force players to actually play the content you spent so many hours creating for them. Not saying a hero can't quit a mission.. they just shouldn't be able to COMPLETE the mission by quitting.

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GhostHack wrote:
GhostHack wrote:

Abnormal Joe wrote:
"but there is also a collection of story archs (could be as few as one per district, but would be nice to see more) that are 'exclusive' to teaming"
I'm a big fan of zone related backstory arcs. One of many teaming projects I ran in years past, a handful of us mapped out all the "zone arcs" on red tomax in advance and leveled a trio to 50 while soaking up the ambiance.
Making content like that teaming exclusive would not be well received, unless I am very much mistaken. Several players I have encountered imagined their character as a sort of patron hero for a particular zone. They tended to stay there and solo a lot, while teams went through the content and moved on. It would be a shame to block a player like that from his or her favorite content unless they can wrangle a team for it.
-joe

I myself would love to be a patron-hero, and love the idea of having district-themed content...
...but I was referring to quantity, not thematics when i suggested "at least one arc per district"
so this would NOT be a situation of "the district arcs are team only"
rather "there are 8 districts, and each one has a team-only arch"
Now, again.... this is ancillary content... not core content that I'm suggestion. Basically here's where I'm coming from:
In past MMOs, you would chug along in solo or team as was convenient or desirable to you, when all of a sudden the arc of the story would send you to a DUNGEON.... and this dungeon would be a way for developers to "encourage teaming" by making it very difficult to complete. In my experience, it generally only just forced me to find something else to do... my "quest" ended, when I needed to form a team to complete the capstone dungeon at the end of an arc of missions.
this is also how developers often deal with "End Game" content... raids and such are ways of encouraging(re: forcing) players to manage the playtimes of several people(not to mention the time spent to acquire gear and skills) to extend the length of time players engage with the game....
but, the end result is that I just never did raids.
So... here we are, in a situation where "teaming" has been essentially reserved for really hard, often heavily micro-managed "events" (TFs, Raids, etc)....
meanwhile all other content is completely soloable.
For me, I want to team and yet there is little reason to, unless it's something really intense that is more mechanic (stat numbers, builds, team structure) then Thematic (cool story, clever or unusual objectives, etc)
So... this suggestion. a "low threat" version of what CoX would have called Taskforce missions.. but really it's just a normal story arch geared specifically to teams...
THIS would be the place to have multi-switch locks or divergent paths that require teams to split up.... because you know, walking in, that you NEED a team (and the game "requires" it)...
...These missions don't necessarily need AVs at the end of them, or anything.. that isn't their primary intent... but they'll likely have bosses of some sort.
normal (in terms of length, difficulty, story) story archs that add in features that require teams (having to complete multiple objectives at the same time, multi-switch locks, multi-instanced sycronized missions (having one part of the team "sneak into a base"(instance 1) while the other portion must cause a distraction out front instance 2)))
they should be self contained stories (ex: "Maguffin Villain is trying to make his name in Ironport, over the course of the arch he ropes in several b-list villains from around South bay, but your team eventually brings him to justice") and remain separate from the normal story arch of the districts and the character...
Basically, they should appeal to Super Groups and those who particularly want to experience the advantages of teaming.
They should never be forced on players, and regular pathing (missions leading to new archs or districts) should not lead players to them.
If you only solo, essentially, you shouldn't even know they exist. (i.e. they shouldn't interfere with your experience, not that they are "secrets" reserved for the cool teamer kids.)
Basically, I'd really like to level the playing field a little, and tone down the "teaming is for boss fights" mentality (which many solo players already don't agree with/like)

Yeah that sounds like a neat concept. But where some games mess up is that the arcs that are team gated start off with intention of being ancillary but end up not. While by storyline, it's remains a side mission, but the stuff that goes along with it, make it a wanted to needed item and thus can feel forced depending on the goal. For example the TFs in COX. While by definition the TFs didn't even have to be done for the main story line, but if one wanted that accolade they must do the TFs, which means they must team. Thus to get what they want they are forced to team and interfere with their experience.

Or having certain drops especially desirable drops locked behind team gated stuffs. Then someone wants that time, but now to get what they want or need or for bragging rights, they must team and thus feel forced to team because they are not doing it because they want to they are doing it because they have to get that drop. Which then kills the feeling of it being an ancillary and thus can interfere with the experience.
For a couple of examples.

I think teaming should be a fun activity and there should be some stuff for it but it shouldn't be there and interfere with the experience of other players that may not want to or cannot find a team or may simply not yet be social bugs yet. A player should be able to experience the game without team requirements standing in their way to where and how they want to be. And oh yeah, the team number requirement hopefully even with team required content is can be at least duo. because when the team number requirement is there, it makes it black and white with no fun winner. Ya can have group that want to team and do this particular thing but they cant because they are one short. And thus even though they are teamers and love to team their activities of what they can and cannot do is still limited by their online popularity, who they know that is on, and other player's interest and when other players play.

Because for fun, usually people don't ever have to be forced to have fun, at least not that I seen. Give it an even keel, teaming and soloing, and let the players have fun.

But those arcs you mentioned can be good stuff, hell I would team up to do some stuff like that, if I can find a team that happen to be on at the same time and interested in that same arc at that same moment.

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I love the idea of Taskforces

I love the idea of Taskforces! Content made for a team. I also like the idea of allowing a solo character to try and complete it on their own as long as the content isn't made easier for being solo. Want to try to solo team TF go for it! Just don't ask for the end AV to be an EB and some such.

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Brand X wrote:
Brand X wrote:

I love the idea of Taskforces! Content made for a team. I also like the idea of allowing a solo character to try and complete it on their own as long as the content isn't made easier for being solo. Want to try to solo team TF go for it! Just don't ask for the end AV to be an EB and some such.

Indeed.

Me personally, speaking for me only, not sure actually how others feel about this, didn't notice too much to make an opinion on it, I would have loved to take on and test my mettle in those TFs against AVs but alas it was team gated to get started and usually not even enough people I could get to even build up enough to simply start the it and get to work.

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"Me personally, speaking for

"Me personally, speaking for me only, not sure actually how others feel about this, didn't notice too much to make an opinion on it, I would have loved to take on and test my mettle in those TFs against AVs but alas it was team gated to get started and usually not even enough people I could get to even build up enough to simply start the it and get to work."

http://cityoftitans.com/forum/minimum-team-size

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I think that's why I would

I think that's why I would like to see the "team-gated" stuff not be "special".... just unique to teams. no accolades, no bonus powers or respec tokens.... no special difficulty.
something CASUAL... something intended just as a fun activity for teams to do.... the mission equivalent of a campfire story.... not a team building exercise or obstacle course

It falls into the same sort of category as PvP "zones".... where people in CoX complained that there were things to do in PvP zones that they couldn't do, unless they were willing to PvP....
...I'm sorry, but I have zero sympathy for that attitude. Yes, you might not get to see it.... but I never saw much of WoW, never saw half the worlds in SWTOR.... because I wasnt willing to engage in those games. It's not the games fault I'm not willing to play them.

that aside, and as Ive said before, I do NOT approve of the mentality that "teaming=special challenges and rewards"
and hated it when COX or other games lead solo players through an arch and culminated with a mission that "needed" teaming.

as a balance, there could be "solo only" archs, I suppose... but i have a feeling that the vast majority of players solo because its easier/more available already... not because they have something particular against teams/teaming (there will be some that do, but I think that is likely a very small minority.)

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GhostHack wrote:
GhostHack wrote:

I think that's why I would like to see the "team-gated" stuff not be "special".... just unique to teams. no accolades, no bonus powers or respec tokens.... no special difficulty.
something CASUAL... something intended just as a fun activity for teams to do.... the mission equivalent of a campfire story.... not a team building exercise or obstacle course
It falls into the same sort of category as PvP "zones".... where people in CoX complained that there were things to do in PvP zones that they couldn't do, unless they were willing to PvP....
...I'm sorry, but I have zero sympathy for that attitude. Yes, you might not get to see it.... but I never saw much of WoW, never saw half the worlds in SWTOR.... because I wasnt willing to engage in those games. It's not the games fault I'm not willing to play them.
that aside, and as Ive said before, I do NOT approve of the mentality that "teaming=special challenges and rewards"
and hated it when COX or other games lead solo players through an arch and culminated with a mission that "needed" teaming.
as a balance, there could be "solo only" archs, I suppose... but i have a feeling that the vast majority of players solo because its easier/more available already... not because they have something particular against teams/teaming (there will be some that do, but I think that is likely a very small minority.)

You might be onto something there with the solo arcs. Get to that in a sec.

Yeah with the team, I like where you are going with that.

Now solo arcs. Wouldn't be nice to have some sort of arc that is specifically about the player, power origin, mower set or something. Like at some point in time, there is something that a hero must simply do on their own. And of course same thing with those solo only arcs nothing special, no special badges, no extra rewards nor less rewards.

Sometimes people solo because it's not that tha tthey are against teaming per se, sometimes many of them are regular teamers but sometimes just want ot take a break and simply actually relax from the hustle and bustle. Like some people love to and can party with hundreds of people day in and day out every single day of the year and it never gets old. While some it's gets overwhelming and draining after the first 4 hours. And some just don't like large group of people.

And I think you're right, the last group is probably a minority but on the same token it's hard to say because most MMOs were never set up with the solo player in mind to begin with so no telling how many people would solo if they knew there are games out there with them in mind. COX was in a way, but no advertising (fricken corporation). Probably one the greatest most unknown gems in the MMO world.

I know some people that actively avoid MMOs because they think MMO means must play with people all day every day every log in session. And others feel like they are merely a side effect of the game and really don't have a voice. And a few are simply got tired of being called anti social simply because they don't enjoy teaming with a bunch for people all the time, even though they use the chat channels and other social stuff and costume contests. And sure some team players detest solo players and wrinkle their nose at the very idea of solo players in an MMO, but in reality, I think many mmo games are cutting themselves out of a decent sized market segment and forgetting that teaming isn't the only way to be social and even many solo players that like to do missions alone don't mind attending events and interacting with people, but of course most wont go where they feel they are not welcomed. Not to mention on a side note, console and other single player games been encroaching into MMO territory for a long time and it about time to encroach back? :p

Sometimes the small minority turn out to be bigger than ever expected. Look it here. MMO and fantasy MMORPG was at one point nearly the same. Now three coming out, three in existence ( of various quality depending on who is asked) and one underground speak easy type deal milling about. All within ten years since the first one when a game company went up against the grain and built a MMO, not fantasy, but super hero. Aimed at a "minority" of MMO players. And thus the COX community was born 2004

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GhostHack wrote:
GhostHack wrote:

as a balance, there could be "solo only" archs, I suppose... but i have a feeling that the vast majority of players solo because its easier/more available already... not because they have something particular against teams/teaming (there will be some that do, but I think that is likely a very small minority.)

CoH had Solo only content.It was introduced with Going Rogue. If I recall correctly, people weren't all that happy about it.

I don't mind teaming. I just don't like PuGs. That's probably part of the reason I didn't like the raids.

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Let me see if I can pull some

Let me see if I can pull some of this together. It sounds like we're talking about the possibility of three distinct types of instanced missions.

The large majority of missions would be scalable, 1-?, (I think some manageable number would need to be decided upon.) This can be for PuG, or SG or solo. This is also where the majority of lore and story arcs reside. Playing these missions will allow you to get the full range of XP and Item Drops to satisfy most everyon'e need for level advancement.

Then, there could be a healthy handful of missions that are particularly aimed at solo play. No particularly special rewards, but play is geared toward the idea that a single person is doing everything necessary to complete it. This could be reflected in numerous ways including pace, environment scale, puzzle-solving, etc.
(Edit: An alternative look at this might be that if there IS a unique reward, you can only run it once per character?)

And, of course, a similar proportion of "Team Based" content that requires a minimum number of players. It sounds like the required number should have more to do with general mechanics of the mission, i.e. buttons that need to be pressed, synchronized actions, or maybe strategy necessitates taking divergent paths, NOT with how difficult the Big Boss is to kill. (Although I'd expect that to be tougher than average, and also scaled to the team) How the team is made up, as far AT's, should not be a necessary factor for completion. You shouldn't NEED someone with Stealth, or Psionics, or Flight for instance. Likewise, these missions shouldn't yield any unique or extra-valuable rewards.

I would have a problem with, in fact I'd rather expect, that the Solo/Team exclusive stuff would deliver some unique badges. So badge hunters also have something to do. this doesn't usually affect normal game play or progression, but might give you a goody if you did ALL of either one, and ALL of both.

Would this type of set-up satisfy? It's a lot of content to create. IF having to choose, I'd recommend the Scalable 1-? stuff come out at launch and roll out the others with updates.

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Typo: above should say "I

Typo: above should say "I WOULDN'T have a problem with the exclusive stuff delivering unique badges."

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WarBird wrote:
WarBird wrote:

Would this type of set-up satisfy? It's a lot of content to create. IF having to choose, I'd recommend the Scalable 1-? stuff come out at launch and roll out the others with updates.

I would definitely suggest that approach, since I think getting their mission system and scalable content engineered correctly will be a big deal, in and of itself. If they get that right, I doubt there would end up being much call for basically normal content that is hard-gated for solo or teams. If it turns out I am wrong, they can add it with updates and be heroes. If it turns out I am right, then they have dodged a bullet of having a lightly-used system they would still be expected to maintain.

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One thing that I would

One thing that I would recommend City of Titans do is something that City of Heroes did with Dark Astoria, which is to have Solo Missions as the "capstone" event for a particular Story Arc ... such as Heather Townsend's Personal Story, for example. These were Solo Missions where you weren't even playing as your own character, but were instead acting as the NPC so as to gain additional insight and understanding of the storyline, and for the most part were pretty much non-combat affairs. This is something that I would strongly encourage the developers for City of Titans to consider doing for ALL of their PvE Story Arcs, and potentially even include it as something for Team Leaders at the end of a Task Force that requires a Team so as to create a Badge Hunter incentive for leading a Task Force that goes above and beyond "I did this Task Force."

Giving NPCs a piece of Personal Story is additional content creation, but it is also something that can make NPCs "live" in the sense of being people who don't have their feet nailed to the ground in a spot they never leave. Along the same lines, I thought that making the Alignment Missions in Praetoria a uniformly Soloist experience, which often involved the NPC you'd been working with, such as the confrontation between Cleopatra and Chief Interrogator Washington, particularly involving ... because the outcome decided Who Would Stay in the world at large.


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I'm definitely in favor of

I'm definitely in favor of side missions, like Red suggests, that fill and expand the back story of the City itself. I'm unclear of your use of "capstone", though. I wouldn't want to play the culminating mission as an NPC. But if some of my solo missions had me first experience some back story as an NPC, that might be diverting. Heck, occasionally playing a historic moment in the City as one of the Original Big Names would be great, too.

This whole alternate character play could spin off into its own thing, actually. Some of my favorite comic book issues have been written through the eyes of the villain. How about experiencing the AV's origin, from THEIR perspective, before you are introduced to the story arc where you must track them down and ultimately thwart them. Not only could it give you an insight into the character's psyche, but maybe give you a clue to their weakness!

In another thread somewhere there was talk about having side missions for your Secret Identity/Alter Ego (If we get to have such a thing.) This would be a great way to experience some of the lore, too.

I don't see any of this as being "Core Content", or available at launch. But man, some great fodder for future updates.

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WarBird, a LOT of the Story

WarBird, a LOT of the Story Arcs in the Dark Astoria revamp featured a Solo As The NPC Mission at the end of the Story Arc for particular NPC Contacts. It basically put "the finishing touches" on that particular Story Arc and your involvement with that particular NPC Contact ... hence "capstone" event on everything involving them. These Personal Stories didn't change or influence the story being told, but rather gave you additional backstory to understand and orient around the events you'd fought your way through.


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I must have missed a lot of

I must have missed a lot of that new content, Red. Not having seen it, I can't comment on how effective it was. It just seems wierd to play the climax of the story as the NPC. Would you classify it as something like an Epilogue? Where you get to see how your actions might affect the future of some of the characters? I could see something like that played out in cut scenes, too.

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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

Heather Townsend's Personal Story, for example.

I created a link there for a reason ...


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For soloing, I think

For soloing, I think storyline missions, story arcs, and repeatable daily missions all work, as well as things like being able to tweak the difficulty level. Any type of story where the hero has to stand alone and solve the puzzle or defeat the badguy. I don't think that all missions everywhere should be intended to be soloable, but the ones a player get's from his or her contact should be. That said, there's room for team-oriented content too. In the Jack Emmert days of COH there were missions that you had to find a buddy to do, and I think that's bad. NPCs shopuld give individual heroes missions that can be completed by individual heroes (and if you want to form a team, great, that's an option, never a requirement). One problem I think people had with CoH in terms of swag was that you could get much better stuff teamed up than you could solo, in some cases. I mean, you could solo missions in Dark Astoria for incarnate swag, but you'd get WAY more of it doing a trial, even a small quick one. Another example was the Vanguard Merits. you could get way more of them doing one Mothership raid than you could if you did the entire vanguard story arc from all the contacts solo. I'm not sure if that needs to be the case or not. I think some people would NEVER bother to even try to team up if the swag drop rates were comparable both ways, and I think there should probably be a reward for actually getting 20 people together on the same game at the same time to do a task force, or what have you, otherwise why do it at all? I think it's silly for soloers to want to solo every badge available. The badges shouldn't all be easy to get after all. I think one should be able to level up one's characters totally solo if they want to. I think there should be soloable content post level cap too. But I think there should be team content as well. Taskforces etc that require coordination and teamwork are fun, and if you can defeat the entire TF using some shortcut or other solo, that's a failure on the part of the Taskforce in my opinion. Team content should require a team, and should bring commensurate rewards for actually pulling enough people together to successfully pull it off.

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Hm. Sorry I missed the link

Hm. Sorry I missed the link in the first post. After reading through it, I would have been disappointed if I'd gone through that to find it was just a bridge to another mission. I think I would have rather played her trying to help all those people make it to the warehouse somehow, only to see them slaughtered. Y'know, kind of re-living the experience as she related it to me, before my character took on the mission. It would have given me more empathy towards her BEFORE I agree to help her. More dramatic than going there after the fact, sifting through empty crates looking for a clue that isn't there.

That whole thing, including the meeting with Ajax, could've been a cut-scene after the player's mission. ::shrug:: Different styles, I guess.

Still, I'm in for the side missions. But if you're making me play an NPC, at least let me PLAY. Give me an objective. Even if its easy and the whole scenario waits until I finally get it. I don't just want to trudge through someone else's experience like I'm on rails, just to be given a piece of revealing dialog. Give me the revealing dialog as a reward for what MY character did.

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I hope to play every mission

I hope to play every mission in the game without EVER being forced to solo. In fact if I can't form a team of 9 other people to run missions with (in character) I will be sad.

Also please be sure to keep some kind of bonus for all the work I'll have to do herding cats. XP buff is cool but not too relevant to endgame teaming.

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I love to solo, duo and team,

I love to solo, duo and team, depending on mood. (I think two-player teams (duos) should be especially well workable in the superhero genre.)

A big thing for me that made it more difficult for me to team in CoH were the level restrictions on some mission arcs. That is, once you reached a certain level, you could no longer do a story arc. In practice, that meant I needed to keep myself in xp debt and avoid teams in order to do as many story arcs as possible.

Please don't put level caps on stories or missions. I don't care if I'm getting no xp, I want to do the story.

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WarBird, I linked Heather's

WarBird, I linked Heather's Townsend's Personal Story not because I'm saying "do it ONLY like this!" but because it's an example of what COULD be done. As you say, what happens in that Mission is nothing that couldn't have been done with a FMV cut-scene ... but the thing is that cut-scenes are passive experiences for the Player where you don't have to *DO* anything besides watch (or get up and go and make a sandwich). But actually putting the Player into the position of PLAYING through those moments makes the event more active and interactive.

Furthermore, there's nothing which says that such a Mission can only come at the end of a Story Arc. It could potentially happen at the beginning, or at the end, and might even be used as a storytelling device for having one Contact hand your character off to another Contact as you progress through the game. I mean, one of the more interesting Contact handoffs that I would have liked to have seen done would be from Indigo to Crimson.

Broaden your horizons just a little bit more, and the Personal Story Mission doesn't even have to be something limited to NPCs ... since they could be just as relevant to your Secret Identity. Consider the possibilities that would open up if you had access to Personal Story Missions for your own Secret Identity. This would then fall into the Branching Paths mentality of designing arc chains, such that if someone on your Team has the right "flavor" of Secret Identity then they can do a Personal Story Mission (solo!) that allows the Team to bypass a branch in the story arc.

For example ... my Mind Controller, Ms Givings ($battlecry: "Trust your Ms Givings!"), has a Secret Identity (think Day Job if it helps) of being an Executive Secretary. During a Story Arc against Crey, there's an option for a Personal Story Mission in which Ms Givings (in her Secret Identity as an Executive Secretary) walks right into a Crey lab facility, openly, is cleared through security and gets the Secret Document that is needed to advance the Story Arc ... and then walks right back out of the building, openly, and isn't stopped by security ... all because her Secret Identity is of a type that allows her to bypass needing to fight her way and fight her way out of the building in order to get that particular incriminating piece of evidence. MISSION COMPLETE ... advance the Story Arc, using my Secret Identity ... and take a small "hit" on my reputation with Crey (because I betrayed their trust using my Secret Identity).

In other words, there's LOTS of ways that a Personal Story Mission, which doesn't feature any combat, could be a compelling piece of storytelling and opportunity for all sorts of alternative gameplay ... either as your own Secret Identity or as an NPC that you're interacting with.


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In City of Heroes i preferred

In City of Heroes i preferred medium sized teams. 3-6 players were my preferred size. Or soloing. Especially on characters that shouldn't really be able to solo.

One thing that would encourage me to team more would be to have a story log feature. That is once you've completed a story arc mission on a team, or a Task Force equivalent, you get a full log of all clues, contact information, in-mission NPC chatter, and if there's a cutscene, the ability to watch it at your leisure. All too often PuGs would just rush through things without giving time to catch up on what was going on. Like why alien nazis were building giant robots to take over ancient Rome.

And, yeah, I liked the personal stories, too. Too bad Tyrant's never got fixed properly, but it was a great way to see the world from the eyes of a different character.

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McNum wrote:
McNum wrote:

That is once you've completed a story arc mission on a team, or a Task Force equivalent, you get a full log of all clues, contact information, in-mission NPC chatter, and if there's a cutscene, the ability to watch it at your leisure.

That would be nifty!

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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

WarBird, I linked Heather's Townsend's Personal Story not because I'm saying "do it ONLY like this!" but because it's an example of what COULD be done. As you say, what happens in that Mission is nothing that couldn't have been done with a FMV cut-scene ... but the thing is that cut-scenes are passive experiences for the Player where you don't have to *DO* anything besides watch (or get up and go and make a sandwich). But actually putting the Player into the position of PLAYING through those moments makes the event more active and interactive.
Furthermore, there's nothing which says that such a Mission can only come at the end of a Story Arc. It could potentially happen at the beginning, or at the end, and might even be used as a storytelling device for having one Contact hand your character off to another Contact as you progress through the game. I mean, one of the more interesting Contact handoffs that I would have liked to have seen done would be from Indigo to Crimson.
Broaden your horizons just a little bit more, and the Personal Story Mission doesn't even have to be something limited to NPCs ... since they could be just as relevant to your Secret Identity. Consider the possibilities that would open up if you had access to Personal Story Missions for your own Secret Identity. This would then fall into the Branching Paths mentality of designing arc chains, such that if someone on your Team has the right "flavor" of Secret Identity then they can do a Personal Story Mission (solo!) that allows the Team to bypass a branch in the story arc.
For example ... my Mind Controller, Ms Givings ($battlecry: "Trust your Ms Givings!"), has a Secret Identity (think Day Job if it helps) of being an Executive Secretary. During a Story Arc against Crey, there's an option for a Personal Story Mission in which Ms Givings (in her Secret Identity as an Executive Secretary) walks right into a Crey lab facility, openly, is cleared through security and gets the Secret Document that is needed to advance the Story Arc ... and then walks right back out of the building, openly, and isn't stopped by security ... all because her Secret Identity is of a type that allows her to bypass needing to fight her way and fight her way out of the building in order to get that particular incriminating piece of evidence. MISSION COMPLETE ... advance the Story Arc, using my Secret Identity ... and take a small "hit" on my reputation with Crey (because I betrayed their trust using my Secret Identity).
In other words, there's LOTS of ways that a Personal Story Mission, which doesn't feature any combat, could be a compelling piece of storytelling and opportunity for all sorts of alternative gameplay ... either as your own Secret Identity or as an NPC that you're interacting with.

Indeed.

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McNum wrote:
McNum wrote:

In City of Heroes i preferred medium sized teams. 3-6 players were my preferred size. Or soloing. Especially on characters that shouldn't really be able to solo.
One thing that would encourage me to team more would be to have a story log feature. That is once you've completed a story arc mission on a team, or a Task Force equivalent, you get a full log of all clues, contact information, in-mission NPC chatter, and if there's a cutscene, the ability to watch it at your leisure. All too often PuGs would just rush through things without giving time to catch up on what was going on. Like why alien nazis were building giant robots to take over ancient Rome.
And, yeah, I liked the personal stories, too. Too bad Tyrant's never got fixed properly, but it was a great way to see the world from the eyes of a different character.

Yeah that would be a nice feature. Sometimes with team gated stuff, the choice is either join the speed run crowd or don't do it at all. Which sucks. But hey, so ya get a glimpse of it, but outvoted usually and it's not about the story or what is going on with the team, but more so get to the end brag about speed record, if one is set, and collect glowie at the end rinse repeat.

That is one of the reasons why I simply preferred soling. Not for anti-social reasons although people have been and can be anti-social and team many times but still act like anti-social towards other people and sometimes straight sociopathic in a clinical sense not the popular view" of what sociopathic tendencies are.

Solo I can actually enjoy the story easy with no hassle. There probably were some teams that felt the same and did arcs for the story but I had no luck coming across such team often at all. Thus sometimes the only way to see what the story was about and actually experience it was to play solo. But it was annoying things that looked like it had a good back story I couldn't do due to it being team gated and since it wasn't "efficient for speed runs, not many people I seen was interested in doing it. Thus meaning because they didn't want to do it, I couldn't do it because it was team gated. Thus which ended up full circle again. To team either I had to not team or join the farm//speed run brigade. Even building a team was tough because it ended up "Is this a farm/speed run?" No. *so and so have left the team*. Then the few that do join get tired of waiting or run out of play times after a couple of hours trying to reach the team requirement and end up having to call it a day. Which ended up, even though as a paying customer and putting thousands into the game still involuntarily not being able to experience the entire game even though I paid to experience the entire game.

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Yeah, it would actually be

Yeah, it would actually be really neat (I know I've seen it done before) that as you progressed through an arch, you followed snippets and dialogue and notes to the culmination....

and then once it was completed, you 'unlocked' the narrative version of what you'd experienced (like the 'lore' version of your own adventure) so you could read events as a third person, experiencing your moment in history from multiple angles... discovering motivations of the players and the 'fall out' of the actions you took...

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A nice bit for RPers for this

A nice bit for RPers for this log feature is if they can snip out bits for their own RP pieces. Fanfic can be very well done and being able to quote actual Lore would be cool. Like a personal journal of what the character has accomplished.

I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...

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I know I'm only speaking for

I know I'm only speaking for myself. But - that being said, on servers, I really enjoyed teaming because it seemed the players there were more suited to my play style. On my home server, I really didn't enjoy teaming until the last year when incarnate stuff came out. I found that after having run so many characters through various arcs, I got bored with it. I mainly did task forces for the accolade powers (and to a lesser degree, the badges)
If you want to encourage those who prefer soloing for no specific reason, tying an accolade power to a given task would work. As for encouraging those who'd rather team to go solo..make the story specific to that person.

Now...to simply make soloing a viable alternative to teaming, I think NPC allies would certainly help, just don't make them Statesman strong where they clear the map for the squishy emp defenders. (or for the tank, either)
A badge for soloing a certain mission or arc would also do it.
A badge for teaming a given mission would work also.

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I don't think you need do

I don't think you need do much more than CoX did, make radio/newspaper/street sweeping/tips something you can do solo. There was more than enough of that available that you could solo to the end if you so wished. You didn't *need* a companion. A non-stupid companion is also probably asking a lot.
Those things can also be done with a group if the missions scale and have a difficulty slider.

TFs could (maybe) have been a bit less gated but for the majority of people this wasn't an issue so I don't think it *needs* changing.
I'm a big fan of world events that you don't need to be in a team to join as well as the "join or start a random team" feature that CO has for events.

Level capping areas I'm fine with, I'm not a fan of the GW2 feature that keeps you level with whatever map you are on. If I've hit 60 and want to run through the level 10 area, don't make me a level 10 so I have to fight my way from one side to the other to hit that dungeon door, click a link, meet a mate.

I'm fine with level capped missions as well, SSK will let you run old missions at a reduced level, old missions auto-levelling you would be fine too (like TFs), Oro was also a way to revisit old missions and I loved soloing Oro for the badges.

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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

WarBird, I linked Heather's Townsend's Personal Story not because I'm saying "do it ONLY like this!" but because it's an example of what COULD be done. As you say, what happens in that Mission is nothing that couldn't have been done with a FMV cut-scene ... but the thing is that cut-scenes are passive experiences for the Player where you don't have to *DO* anything besides watch (or get up and go and make a sandwich). But actually putting the Player into the position of PLAYING through those moments makes the event more active and interactive.
Furthermore, there's nothing which says that such a Mission can only come at the end of a Story Arc. It could potentially happen at the beginning, or at the end, and might even be used as a storytelling device for having one Contact hand your character off to another Contact as you progress through the game. I mean, one of the more interesting Contact handoffs that I would have liked to have seen done would be from Indigo to Crimson.
Broaden your horizons just a little bit more, and the Personal Story Mission doesn't even have to be something limited to NPCs ... since they could be just as relevant to your Secret Identity. Consider the possibilities that would open up if you had access to Personal Story Missions for your own Secret Identity. This would then fall into the Branching Paths mentality of designing arc chains, such that if someone on your Team has the right "flavor" of Secret Identity then they can do a Personal Story Mission (solo!) that allows the Team to bypass a branch in the story arc.
For example ... my Mind Controller, Ms Givings ($battlecry: "Trust your Ms Givings!"), has a Secret Identity (think Day Job if it helps) of being an Executive Secretary. During a Story Arc against Crey, there's an option for a Personal Story Mission in which Ms Givings (in her Secret Identity as an Executive Secretary) walks right into a Crey lab facility, openly, is cleared through security and gets the Secret Document that is needed to advance the Story Arc ... and then walks right back out of the building, openly, and isn't stopped by security ... all because her Secret Identity is of a type that allows her to bypass needing to fight her way and fight her way out of the building in order to get that particular incriminating piece of evidence. MISSION COMPLETE ... advance the Story Arc, using my Secret Identity ... and take a small "hit" on my reputation with Crey (because I betrayed their trust using my Secret Identity).
In other words, there's LOTS of ways that a Personal Story Mission, which doesn't feature any combat, could be a compelling piece of storytelling and opportunity for all sorts of alternative gameplay ... either as your own Secret Identity or as an NPC that you're interacting with.

I completely agree with your last bit, there. But I will maintain that if it's merely passive or inconsequential action then it will not sufficiently engage most players to justify the time or attention spent. I'm all for good story telling. Gimme more. I was pointing out that the example you gave did not seem engaging. That's all. I tried to briefly illustrate that if I'm being required to "play out" the story myself, make it a dramatic moment in the story, not a meaningless trudge through the aftermath. Otherwise, get a good writer and editor to give me a 15 second cut scene that gives me the insight I need to move forward.

My horizons ARE pretty broad, thank you very much. I don't care where in the story arc it is; beginning, middle or end. It should be something that makes me think about what I'm doing and that my actions (genuinely or not) are having an effect on the outcome.

Your example of a personal mission is more what I'm talking about. Though I'm not clear how the content gets created for your personal Secret Identity. I'd think it would need to be a bit more generic somehow to justify its creation. But let's use it as an example. If it's just a matter of walking into a building, following a stripe on the floor to "my" office, picking up an item on the desk, and walking out again. ::shrug:: I'd rather have saved the time.

Now, if there was a (small) chance of getting caught, and escorted out by security, that would be engaging. For instance, I can get into the Crey Facility with my ID, no problem. But, to get the thing I need I have to enter a part of the building that's restricted to me. So we skip the part where I walk through the front gate and we go right to the door that has the card reader I need to bypass. If I go to the door and click on it, I get a message that says "INVALID KEY CARD" But I notice that when someone else opens the door with their card, it stays open for a second or two, and I can slip past. Now I'm in. BUT, I have to be careful not to be noticed by the occasional guard because I don't have the right color badge (or whatever). So, being careful not to walk right in front of a guard, I make my way through a (simple) maze of corridors to the office I need. I repeat the "slip in behind someone" procedure and enter the lab. Then, going to a computer terminal I start the hack. (Now we couild even have a little hacking puzzle or minigame here, or not) I get the files I need and reverse my path back out. Ah! but perhaps the guards have moved around some and I need a new route. Eventually, I get back to the door and slip back out without getting caught. //Cutscene: 5 seconds - me walking out the Security Gate of the Crey Facility, scott free. MIssion Accomplished//

This whole operation could take less that 5 minutes. No combat, but a little bit of pressure. Do you see what I mean?

The Heather Townsend mission just has you open some empty crates in an empty warehouse. Then you get a canned dialog with an NPC. What was the point? What made that fun? Why did I spend my time?

Yes, I get it. There are lots of possibilities for this kind of thing. But keep me engaged.

I'd also like to mention, in the role of devil's advocate, that the most common complaint I heard about SW:TOR when it first came out was having to wade through all the cinematics that were trying to give you the story.

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I'd also like to mention, in

I'd also like to mention, in the role of devil's advocate, that the most common complaint I heard about SW:TOR when it first came out was having to wade through all the cinematics that were trying to give you the story.

I only heard complaints about this when it came to often repeated content (like CoH's TFs...forgot what TOR called them).

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Flashpoints.

Flashpoints.

I don't find it tooo much of a burden to 'spacebar' my way through cinematics that I'm already thoroughly familiar with.

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On the Save City of Heroes

On the Save City of Heroes Facebook page a gent asked the question what game update would you have liked to have seen from City Of heroes. I responded with an abbreviated version of this: I would have like to see a future COH issue introduce the idea of a tournament (or other backstory) where Supergroup members individually fight their way thru stages to the final stage. Each stage could be set with a time limit and consist of a clone, robot or possessed version of one of the other team members at the boss or elite level depending on difficulty. Influence could be awarded by depleting the opponent’s health with max reward with a knockout. And perhaps there are other minions/obstacles to overcome if you can take down your opponent with time left. At the final stage the members would reunite to confront the mastermind who has been secretly siphoning their powers. Now they must take on the elite boss or AV who now has (transferred or copied) powers from all of the contestants. To end the cloning, body snatching, impersonations, power stealing etc. the team must defeat this menace. IT would be sort of PVP without the PVP. And it would add an element of player input by allowing solo players to create the minimum team or allow short-handed team leaders to flush\max out their team by adding additional NPCs from a selectable database.

Obvious it would need the story flushed out, but I believe it includes a mission/TF or possible AE (team build/plus-up) feature that levels the playing field of Solo vs Team play.

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Just some drive-by commentary

Just some drive-by commentary on this one for now:

I enjoy both solo and team content. That said, I really enjoyed STO's bridge crew technique of giving you some highly customizable NPCs to let you take on content "balanced" for a full team. I know the concept doesn't translate anywhere near as well in the super hero genre, but I would love if the game were designed to accommodate it when possible. Maybe a hybrid of that and ToR's Companion system is closer to the appropriate scale... being able to make your own custom sidekick/minion to help out when you need an extra body on the team but it doesn't need to be "warm."

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There are a lot of good

There are a lot of good comments here.

I think one of the best ways to improve Teaming is not to have an "Unholy Trinity" based game which we are not :)
As there will be one single Server having issues with finding teams to do team content with should be greatly reduced. Even with different time zones I'd like to think that for the most part there will be people on all the time although I can see instances where you cant find many people in that area.
And include a similar system to Super-Side Kick (SSK) - this was the BOMB!!!! and made teaming fantastic.
Also don't make TF/Raids/Etc provide a bonus based on time of completion - at least not most of them. In FFXIV they have this and when joining pugs most people RUSH through the cinematics which can often give a hint of what to do as they had done this Raid time and time and time again. While I can stand there and watch the game continues and the others can still progress the Raid. So A) don't include Cinematics that can occur during combat. B) Don't reward speed play in this manner.

Also the idea of making solo content not reward-gimped vs team content yes please. If I team I can get more XP as the team is killing more things quicker, but it shouldn't be that I can go from level 25-26 after running 3 1hr "Dungeons" vs 4 days of quests.
Repeatable missions or random missions that are not limited to X per day so if I run out of story content for my level I can still do missions to gain XP and not just griiiiinnnnnddddd...zzzzzzz

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Gangrel
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cybermitheral wrote:
cybermitheral wrote:

There are a lot of good comments here.
I think one of the best ways to improve Teaming is not to have an "Unholy Trinity" based game which we are not :)

I think that as more games become more "solo friendly" I think you will find less of an issue with it. CoX also avoided the "holy trinity" setup, not just because of the diversity of character builds, but also because if you die and you are fast enough back to the combat you can just zerg the encounter.

Quote:

As there will be one single Server having issues with finding teams to do team content with should be greatly reduced. Even with different time zones I'd like to think that for the most part there will be people on all the time although I can see instances where you cant find many people in that area.

Although this is an advantage of the "mega server"/"single server" setup, this does also depend on how the city is laid out. If the game has all of the major facilities in a single area, you will find the players congregating there. To spread the playerbase about you need to spread these things about the place.

Obviously this is going on the games that I have played, but the areas that have close access to bank, Auction houses and crafting area's and you will find the players (Thayd/Illium in Wildstar, Stormwind/Ogrimaar in WoW, Steel Canyon/Cap Au Diable).

And yes, there are other area's that might have one or two of these facilities near by, but in general I found that the ones that have all 3 will be where the players meet ;)

For example, in Thayd (Wildstar) there is one part of the city that has access to all 3 of the "major" needs (Crafting/Bank/Auction house) and one that just has Auction House and Bank access.... The 2nd location is FAR FAR FAR quieter than the first.

Quote:

And include a similar system to Super-Side Kick (SSK) - this was the BOMB!!!! and made teaming fantastic.

No argument from me here

Quote:

Also don't make TF/Raids/Etc provide a bonus based on time of completion - at least not most of them. In FFXIV they have this and when joining pugs most people RUSH through the cinematics which can often give a hint of what to do as they had done this Raid time and time and time again. While I can stand there and watch the game continues and the others can still progress the Raid. So A) don't include Cinematics that can occur during combat. B) Don't reward speed play in this manner.

There is an option for this: Don't make it skippable if there is someone who hasn't done it before ;) Timer starts when cinematic ends.

The thing is, I actually like having a *bonus* reward system being present for doing challenges with the dungeon. Sure they don't have to be time based, but that doesn't mean that you cannot do them.

An option would be to *NOT* allow the challenges in "LFG Dungeon" teams (ie those who queue up with an incomplete team for the dungeon). If you queue up with a complete team, you get the challenge rules.

So that is a possible solution whilst still letting it be present.

Quote:

Also the idea of making solo content not reward-gimped vs team content yes please. If I team I can get more XP as the team is killing more things quicker, but it shouldn't be that I can go from level 25-26 after running 3 1hr "Dungeons" vs 4 days of quests.
Repeatable missions or random missions that are not limited to X per day so if I run out of story content for my level I can still do missions to gain XP and not just griiiiinnnnnddddd...zzzzzzz

This is why more and more games (or at least the ones I play) are generally being balanced around the "solo experience" and then the *group* content (PvP/Dungeons/Raids) experience tends to be balanced around the solo gain rate.

This of doesnt mean that the XP gain is always going to be in the "group" favour. But that is a separate balance point

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Radiac
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I was a huge fan of Task

I was a huge fan of Task Forces in CoX and as such I spent most of the early half of that game's lifespan teaming for them. The guy who ran my SG was pretty much the opposite, he basically soloed every mission he could possibly get and became a victim of the "no more missions to do " gap that they rolled out he Abandoned Sewers to try to fix. I think teaming up, since it requires organization and teamwork, and requires people to get along with each other, etc, ought to have some added tangible benefits, because I think soloing is the default many of us would revert to otherwise. I'm not talking about massive bonuses, just enough that people in general might be willing to drop a solo mission to go do a TF or something as often as not. Even people who WANT to do group activities deserve some added rewards for doing all the legwork to form and maintain a team. Often you're doing someone else's missions, or some repeatable thing that you don't need the badge for, or whatever. And some TFs and trials rrequire a game plan to actually succeed at. Some soloists in CoX I know used to look very carefully at the XP and Inf rewards and wouldn't do any teaming up if it was not as good a deal for them as soloing. And even then sometimes their counting method is bad, like they might just look at the XP and INF from a single minion defeat and say "that's les than I was getting solo, I'm out" despite the fact that the mision has a LOT more mobs in it and will be over somewhat faster, etc.

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Fireheart
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I would hope that rewards for

I would hope that rewards for teaming would apply beyond the TF, to 'ordinary' missions performed by even small teams. Frankly, that's where _I_ had the most fun. TFs always seemed to have more people than I could keep track of in them.

TF Chat: Are we ready?
TF Chat: Yeah.
TF Chat: Okay.
TF Chat: Woops, that guy isn't ready.
TF Chat: Umm, okay, hurry up and get ready, 'cause we've already started the next part...
TF Chat: What part is this?
TF Chat: The part with that GM.
TF Chat: The GM? Heck, I'm not ready for Him!
TF Chat: Umm, better hurry up and Get ready, because he's about to do that Thing and we need your stuff to survive it.
TF Chat: Argh!

Be Well!
Fireheart

Radiac
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Fireheart wrote:
Fireheart wrote:

I would hope that rewards for teaming would apply beyond the TF, to 'ordinary' missions performed by even small teams. Frankly, that's where _I_ had the most fun. TFs always seemed to have more people than I could keep track of in them.
TF Chat: Are we ready?
TF Chat: Yeah.
TF Chat: Okay.
TF Chat: Woops, that guy isn't ready.
TF Chat: Umm, okay, hurry up and get ready, 'cause we've already started the next part...
TF Chat: What part is this?
TF Chat: The part with that GM.
TF Chat: The GM? Heck, I'm not ready for Him!
TF Chat: Umm, better hurry up and Get ready, because he's about to do that Thing and we need your stuff to survive it.
TF Chat: Argh!
Be Well!
Fireheart

This reminds me of the time I did the Ernesto Hess TF for the first time and nobody told me about the "everybody out, it's gunna blow!" ending. Good times....

R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising