I am curious what people think about an option to solo a trial or TF. I personally never understood why a TF or trial had to be a team affair.
Before I get into the heart of what I am asking about, I do not mean the same difficulty or get the same rewards, drops or even badges as you would with the full team. Heck I wouldn't care if the trial offered no rewards unless you had the full team.
I am the type of player who prefers to solo or be on small teams of personal friends. The reason isn't antisocial, its exploration and experience. While solo or with a small group of like minded friends its so much easier (please note the 'easier') to drink in the game content. It's easier to read the mission descriptions, explore the location, marvel at the foes or whatever else. While on a large team of mild strangers or people you barely know you are constantly running into the hurry up and go attitude or worse yet the hurry up and wait. Its most evident on trials and TFs
There are ALOT of other reason why teaming in large groups can be fun or frustrating but this is about exploration and experiencing content not teaming in general.
I really honestly cannot come up with a logical reason why you are forced to team to do content. The best I can come up with for a reason against is it would allow people to find exploits easier for when on that large team with full rewards. And even that isn't exactly bad as it means exploits are found quicker and closed quicker.
I have no idea how many others share my preference for smaller groups in general (Again the operative part is 'in general' I will team with and have enjoyed large stranger type teams). I just want to know what others think of this idea.
Looking back at CoH, most of the content was readily soloable. IMO part of the reason for team content (and you could always start a TF with multiple people then have them log or quit so long as 2 remained on the team) was so that you could make a particularly nasty badguy with some interesting mechanics that required more than one person unless you had a character really set up for it (Lady Grey Hami as an example).
I used to enjoy a mix of solo and team content and used to farm old posi thru ouro for merits when friends weren't on.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
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ohhh.. i recall doing a Positron Task force Part Two, with a Full team at start, and most of the team dropped off by the 3rd mission. :/
I also logged off too. but when i logged back in, i was still on the TF, and all alone i proceeded to finish the rest of the TF. It took a very long time.. since as i recall the enemies didnt scale down then, so i was fighting enemies set for 8 people. :/ Honestly, i cant remember if this was before or after the Posi TF was split into two separate TF's. :P
And just as i was about to face off with Dr Vahzilok, another TF member logged back in. And just me and him defeated the AV.
That was when i just started to play my energy/energy baster too. or was it my Thugs mastermind. I recall dying close to 40 times or more. :)
But i wouldnt back down, i kept at it... and until this very day, im more proud of that experience than even one INCARNATE super duper powered 50 of mine. :/
Ahh, i miss my energy/energy blaster right about now... The Adrenalin Rush!!! It was intoxicating.
Rushing in with my blaster even before the Tank could aggro and wipeing the Floor with the whole group, and barely making it out alive with just a sliver of health remaining. No other powerset made me feel like that... not even my Fire/Kin controller Farmer. Good old days. ;D
Actually, looking back... i though the incarnate stuff would make me feel more special... but i quickly realized that everyone else was just as special. (translation: i wasnt really any more special)
The only thing that really made me feel special (ubber) were picking the right combinations of primary/secondary power-sets. Once i found a powerset combo i liked, i would play that character to 50 with just SO's... and if that toon seemed good, i would spend 3 Billion or more on IO's on that toon.
I liked my scrapper.. Dark Melee/Fiery Aura.. which I IO'ed out to be just as good as any Fire/Kin 'troller.
I also adored my corruptor.. Fire Blast / Kinetics..
[img]http://i.imgur.com/B3GGZNz.png[/img]
I could finish off a whole Group before any of the scrappers could finish off 2 leuts. And he didnt even have any of the Incarnate powers. He did have Spring Attack though! ;D
And he did surprisingly well tanking ITF's. ;D
But i cant forget my squishy tank. :D
[img]http://faces.cohtitan.com/render/image/large/0/77242.jpg[/img]
That much defense was unheard of for a willpower toon. I remember doing TFs with the Rularuu, and my tank had Darkest Night from Soul Mastery. He would just sit in the middle of the Rularuu mobs without dropping in HP no more than 10%. It was like being a Stone tank going up against multiple groups of Nemesis Snipers all at once. I was the only one that wouldnt be eating dirt every few minutes. ;)
If there was a badge for not dying even once on a Rularuu TF, he would get it easy. ;D
But the last year before the game was shutdown, i ran on my brute "Blue Gem" on Virtue.
[img]http://faces.cohtitan.com/render/image/large/0/77130.jpg[/img]
I liked him because i could switch up from being a Tank to a scrapper at a moments notice.
Did you know Ghost Falcon (Dev) would accompany us on Apex TF's? :)
[img]http://faces.cohtitan.com/render/image/large/0/69142.jpg[/img]
Just for giggles:
[img]http://faces.cohtitan.com/render/image/large/0/52560.jpg[/img]
:)
Here's a question to think about. If the TFs can be started and completed solo, what sets them apart from just running an ordinary mission arc?
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I never set anything on fire accidentally!
The Titan Legacy - Defender of the Inner Flame
CoH had Missions and sets of missions that formed story arcs that you could get from contacts. This was soloable content.
CoH had open public areas you could street sweep for XP and swag. This too was essentially soloable content, but with the added plus that and there were some areas where the mobs that spawned were bigger and more challenging, so you often wanted to have a team for them (Hazard Zones like Boomtown as opposed to easily soloable zones like Steel Canyon).
CoH also had some missions that specifically warned you that the badguys were going to be a little more difficult than one person could reasonably be expected to handle solo and so they TOLD you to form a team and get help. People HATED this, because it meant that you had to go out and recruit some nice person to help YOU with YOUR mission.
CoH also had Task Forces, which you HAD to have a team formed to even start, which people liked better because now it was OUR task force, not just one guy's mission that he wanted to complete.
I think the whole purpose of TFs and Trials was group ownership of them. You weren't just doing some other guy's mission with him/for him you were doing the TEAM'S task force missions, and you were a member of the TEAM and you wanted to complete that task Force as much as any other member of the TEAM.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I always just took that as "Warning! EB ahead!" and it was up to the individual whether to get help or just go for it. Either way, I appreciated the fact it gave us the heads up. But yeah, I agree with you post otherwise.
CoH was a game that was really rewarding to play as a team. I'm not bashing the soloists here, but the game play did encourage and reward forming teams. Having missions that highlighted this aspect were not a bad thing.
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I never set anything on fire accidentally!
The Titan Legacy - Defender of the Inner Flame
That is interesting. I hadn't considered the foe mechanic requiring a team aspect. I can't think of any in CoX that were set up this way other than the very occasional 'click glowy at the same time'. If you can please remind me. Most trials required teams because the foe or foes were tuffer. Av's and EB's verses Bosses and luets, but regular mission had ways to lower the difficulty An AV becomes an EB....an EB becomes a Boss. Even something like Hami didn't really have a dedicated mechanic that required teaming. Sure having a blaster meant a node went down faster but wasn't required. If Hami was an Eb, the nodes Luets and the adds minions then its a soloable mission.
If there was a mechanic to a TF or trial that required a team then I could understand requiring a team. If that mechanic was so simple as 'click glowy at the same time' or 'Foe is too strong' I would be disappointed in that mechanic.
The story, the location and the foes, just like what sets one 'ordinary mission arc' from another.
This is another interesting point. I'm not exactly sure how being able to solo that TF would change the fact a TEAM would have ownership over the mission too. But still it is something to consider.
But that's just it. A TF didn't highlight a team it required it. If the TF had (as Minotaur pointed out) an interesting team required mechanic other than a heavy hitting bag of hit points it would. I have no idea what that mechanic might be so as it stands I still don't understand why not solo a TF.
There were team-oriented TFs and trials that required more than one person in CoH. Some had glowwies in different places that you had to click within like 10 sec of each other, so you had to have one person on each thing and synchronize over chat. IIRC The Quarterfield TF had something like this, and I distinctly remember the one Incarnate Trial had these towers you had to destroy at the same time. It was the horror one that came out with the new Dark Astoria, I can't remember the name of it. Before those, the Abandoned Sewer Hydra trial basically couldn't be done by a solo, as far as I know. Nor could the Cavern of Transcendence Trial. Beyond that there were other Incarnate Trials that a single TEAM couldn't realistically hope to finish. The BAF had two AVs you had to defeat at the same time. While it was true you could kite them both into the same area, I still say it was basically impossible for a single soloer to do that, given the AVs and the nature of the "Great Escape" phase. There's no way one person manages to stop enough prisoners from escaping.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
The hami required melee damage for the yellow mitos, ranged for the blues and holds for the greens, not many characters could do enough of all 3 (yes you could get past the greens without holds, but not solo). Also the villain Reichsman would be tricky solo, the hero one wouldn't be a walk in the park either, the badguy is meant to be ridiculously hard, making him soloable by more than 0.01% of the population would ruin the story.
Final encounter of the STF was also clearly designed for a team, distract LR, heal the distractor, kill the towers being 3 roles..
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
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You misunderstood. What would make running a TF in [i]concept[/i] different from running an arc? What set a TF apart from story arcs was the fact that it required a team of 3-8 to do. It was meant to be team content regardless of whether or not it was possible to solo.
I'm all for designing mechanical challenges that would require multiple people (as latter TFs did). But still having group gated content in a spiritual successor is a good thing.
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I never set anything on fire accidentally!
The Titan Legacy - Defender of the Inner Flame
If I recall correctly the mechanic for the mitos wasn't that they were immune to anything just highly resistant and resistance can be debuffed. Plus, by the time you were high enough level to face hami a character tended to have access to all means off attacking solo.... ranged, mez or melee, be it Powersets or temps. Heck Dominators alone got em all. But I do see your point. The intended effect was a diverse team. I just personally didn't find CoH's mechanics that interesting I guess.
The idea of story is another that I had considered. World shaking event requiring heroes to team....Its how the Avengers, Justice League or The Defenders were formed. Bit for every team fighting to stop world event in comics there is another where the same type of world event is defeated by a lone individual.
Needless to say I think I got an answer to my question. Being able to solo a TF or Trial means it would have to be limited in scope and mechanics.
You're right I don't understand what you mean by concept
If the biggest thing that set a TF apart from a story arc was requiring a team then I don't see that as a good thing.
As I said, scope and mechanics, those are good reasons to set the TF apart.
Teaming for TFs, trials, etc was fun. For me, the MOST fun actually. Your mileage may vary, but please don't try to insist on "everything should be soloable because I like to solo" as a rule. There are many of us who like group content, and frankly in order to get a group together you pretty much have to have a thing that ONLY a group can do and be like "Hey everybody, anyone wanna get together and do that group thing which is awesome? Come talk to me in standing next to " on chat otherwise you're basically just asking people to help you with your own personal missions, which is less appealing to other people for various reasons.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
And syntaxerror37's main point, if I may, was that if you had originally designed, say, the Manticore Task Force to be a thing that a single loner could start and finish on his or her own, what then would make that "Task Force" anything other than just another mission story arc given by a contact? To me they seem like they would be EXACTLY the same thing in that case, so what then makes a Task Force a Task Force and a mission arc a mission arc? Why have different names for these things which are, in this version or alternate reality, virtually indistinguishable from each other now?
CoH HAD mission arcs for soloists. It had LOTS of them. It had SO many in fact that you had to go to Ouroboros and go back in time if you wanted to do all of them on any one toon because you would out-level them the normal way. So the only real difference, in design, that actually set Task Forces apart from mission arcs was that the Task Forces told you UP FRONT that you couldn't even begin the TF until you had a big enough team to attempt it. This was, as I see it, an INTENTIONAL thing, and one that caused more people to do more content on teams than would have otherwise ever deigned to even talk to anybody else, much less team up.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
IIRC they had huge defence to the wrong sorts of attacks (not sure what their debuff res was) and you needed to stack 6 or 9 mags of hold, temps didn't really cut it. Then you had to survive what was coming back, bear in mind all the hami damage from mitos and the blob itself was untyped, ignored defences and resists and prevented healing. It would 2 shot a dom.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
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I wasn't insisting anything. I asked why it wasn't. I also made it clear that I do enjoy teaming under my terms and why I felt a desire to solo that content. You've made an argument to something not in this conversation.
I'm gonna ramble a bit here.
This type of argument confuses and frustrates me. On one hand you say don't force your playstyle on me while on the other you say you can't have your playstyle. Please tell me you see how that's frustrating to hear. There is no game mechanic to stop you from teaming but there is a game mechanic to stop you from soloing. Please someone say they understand. You say you like group content.....the entire game was group content. You can't say every thing was soloable. Someone has GOT to see my point. Again I will say I do enjoy teaming with everything from 8 complete strangers to a single personal friend as well as soloing.
This is another argument that irks me. On one hand you say many like to team yet on the other you say finding a team is tough. If many like to team then shouldn't they be able to find one another and team? Or maybe another factor is at work here. Maybe the reason you can't find a team is what you want to do isn't what someone else wants to do a trial for example. Trials could be difficult to form not because people were soloing, but because of the time invested in doing one. This doesn't even touch on the inherent idea of a team mechanic that doesn't allow replacements for dropped players or substitutions for those that are ruining your experience (griefers, know it alls, know nothings or any other style that bothers the group on a whole).
If you want to talk about a TF honestly then you have to consider the reasons why people do that TF on the whole. Some for the team, some for the content, some for the rewards or any combination. Once you put any one reason over another there are going to be those that feel cheated. That goes for any aspect of the game.
But again will say I do see a point to a required team in a TF or trial. As Minotaur said, the trial can have a unique mechanic and a scope that's requires a team.
I'm sorry if this came across as hostile, its not my intent.
This pretty much nails it, was very good for the social element of the game. Many of my long time CoH friends I met for the first time on PuG TFs.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
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Yes but what I was trying to get across was that in non-TF arcs you could run into an AV which with the mission slider would become an EB or missions where and EB would become a boss. If that same mechanic was applied to a TF then solos or small teams could go through them. Or to put it another way if the only reason a TF needs a team is based on damage (giving and getting) then saying you need a team isn't a reason I enjoy. I'd much prefer to see a mechanic like splitting the team up in two instances than to see a bag or resists and damage.
And my counter point is that requiring a team should not be the sole reason to make Manticore TF unique.
And each and every one of those missions were also TEAM missions. Teaming had more options than soloing. It's very simple math.
This is such a dismissive and elitist comment.
Let me try and explain why what you are saying is frustrating. A TF or Trial was touted as the epic most interesting content. When I hear that I want to see it. Then you come along and say the only way you can see it is if you change how you play the game. If I was prone to hyperbolic statements I would compare this to you telling me to play in the dirt while you reach for the stars.
I have no doubt it was intentionally forcing teaming. That begs the response, if teaming needs to be forced then why are people not teaming. In other words lack of teaming desire is a larger issue than soloing TF's.
Okay two things:
1. Previous posts have pointed to the properties that some (admittedly not all) TFs had which really did require multiple toons to be able to do. Clicking different glowwies in different places at the same time, etc. So right there it's a true statement to say that not all mission content ideas are physically possible to solo, per se. There does exist some content that, by its very nature, can only be done by a team.
2. After accepting premise 1 above, it should be clear that if we, as game developers, decide "we're going to make all content soloable" this decision definitely limits the types of things we will allow ourselves to create. In other words, the fact that you want to make all things soloable PREVENTS and EXCLUDES the creation of "physically unsoloable" mission objectives. That becomes a tool you won't allow yourself to ever take out of the toolbox at that point. So therefore in order to explore as many different and varied types and styles of content, there must be unsoloable content. If there is not unsoloable content in the game, then there is definitely content that you COULD have in the game, but that you CHOSE not to do. Thus, the decision to make all content soloable is a synthetic limitation, and a pretty worthless one at that. All it does is cause some types of content not to be used.
Don't get me wrong, there are types of content I would agree should be avoided. Ultra-explicit content, over sexualized content, racist content, content that shows illegal drug use in a positive light, etc are all examples of things I'd gladly limit myself to NOT doing. Unsoloable content, in and of itself, doesn't bother me. I mean, sure, the fact that it's there and that you might not like teaming up might make it feel frustrating, but it's perfectly fine in that. You're not forced to do it and you're not any worse off than you were before it existed. It's a thing that exists as an option that you don't maybe want to do. Fine. Personally, I don't really want or care about PVP, but I don't begrudge the devs that they might want to offer that to people who want it.
To me, it seems like for a person to look at a TF and say "gee I wish I could solo that, why do they only make TFs that can't be soloed?" is like saying "I think I would like bicycling, but I really LOVE my unicycle. Why can't they make a bicycle with only one wheel so I can have the same fun that the bicyclers are having while still actually unicycling."
Now, did CoH devs make absolutely sure that every TF could only be finished by a team in terms of the actual properties of the missions, not in all cases no, so maybe not the best execution there, but the fact that you generally had to fight an AV at the end was close enough for most people, at least early on. At least for me.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
This is particularly true, at least until IO set bonuses came along.... I am sure that there were *some* builds around before hand that were "godly" in comparison to the vast majority of the general content. but as the developers (if I remember correctly that is) balanced the game around the TO's, DO's and SO's, any builds that used IO's were a good step or 12 above what the "non IO" user could use.
Which kind of broke the balancing for the TF's and SF's overall (and pretty much all other content as well).
But then again, it was a good thing to balance around the "basic" enhancements, because when it went F2P, it meant that the F2P players were *not* at a disadvantage for content that they had available to them
One another point, going back to the issue of "why do you have to have team-only content to get people to team up when the people doing it CLAIM they really like teaming up for its own sake, shouldn't they just team up if and when they want to team up?" My answer to that is "That's human nature for you."
You can't fight psychology, you can only accept it and develop games with it in mind.
Why, specifically, do people really need "Team Only" content to exist in order to get them to actually form teams? The answer lies in people's comfort level in interacting with each other on a personal level. If you and I don't know each other at all, and there's no hard and fast rule forcing the formation of teams, ever, for any reason, then we both know that we don't really need to team up if we don't want to. At that point, asking someone to team up becomes a daunting task, because you usually think you're being a pest when you innocently ask someone if they want to form a team just for fun. The request to form a team, one would assume, will be met with a bunch of challenge questions: Why me, why this teamup?, why now? What's the point? Why should I? Why WOULD anybody?
But if there exists some tangible, well known thing that ONLY teams can do, then all of those questions immediately have implicit answers: You're a Tanker, Our team could use a Tanker, we want to do the Synapse TF, we need to start soon so we'll be done by the time we all want to go to sleep, the point is you get a badge and some good swag at the end, and it's fun getting there too, people do it for faster levelups, good conversation during missions, better swag drop rates, etc.
I mean, trying to form a team in a game that has no Team-Only content is like walking up to a perfect stranger and asking her out on a date, completely out of the blue. You know it's going to get you nowhere and it always feels uncomfortable for both people. On the other hand, asking a girl out when you both happen to be in the same college English class is WAY easier. For one thing, the two of you already have something in common, you're both in English 101, for another, you both definitely have a good reason to be in that environment, the fact that you paid tuition to attend this English class. It adds context of legitimacy and comfort to the whole process.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
This statement implies I have not responded to those posts and offered a counter point. I in fact was the first to point out the synchronised glowie clicking to say I didn't think it was not a good mechanic. I also say that damage is another poor mechanic to seperate a TF, be it giving or receiving. I spoke about how the mission slider was already in the game and by using that mission slider on pretty much any TF would result in a solo or small team mission.
This argument was made by Minotaur a long was back and I agreed with him just as I agree with you when you say it. The only counter point I make is I want actual required team mechanics not a big bag of HP or a few moments where you need someone to click a glowie with you.
I want to experience the content. That's the point. I'm not in any way saying I'm forced to do it. I'm saying I'm forced to do it by someone elses rules.
There is just no point us discussing this. Aside from the fact that I have already agreed that an interesting team mechanic answered my question I just don't see me making you understand my points or vice versa.
We had different experiences in this regard. I found that random team requests came in often enough that I used some of the block features CoX implemented in the later years. And I never had trouble getting into most TF's the ones I couldn't get easily were the ones no one wanted to do.
A robust team finder system (not the small one CoX had) would be a good option for people who have a harder time to find a team.
Okay first off, I agree wholeheartedly that a good set of LFT controls is a must.
That said, what I'm hearing you say here is "People who tried to PM me looking for teams often got the cold shoulder, but I was often able to form TFs when I wanted to." which to my ears lends credence to the point I was making, that people didn't like getting random team requests to do random stuff and that people would generally have done less teaming up overall if TFs weren't Team Only content. I mean, as a Rad/rad debuff defender, I got frequent requests to do Archvillain missions (especially Infernal and the Clockwork King from another Dimension Portal mission) which I, teamy guy that I am, still refused a fair amount of the time because I didn't know the person, or didn't want to do THAT mission AGAIN, or didn't have the time, or whatever.
Implied in your statement that I quoted above there is the idea that it wasn't even always easy to get a TF going either, which I agree with, but the fact that even the TFs didn't always get people to team up is indicative of the problem that people don't always want to pull the trigger on the teamup, for any number of reasons, even those of us who LIKED it in general.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
There were a few other mechanical / lore differences between regular content and taskforces in CoH, many of which affected the desires of players to team or solo that content. Apologies for the mass of text as I attempt to summarize the contrasts and enter them in our "public record".
Single Missions:
~Rewards - all players received the reward for completion. The reward never (or almost never) went beyond XP and basic currency (inf).
~Objectives - multiple simultaneous objectives were never present, and most objectives were simple and linear.
~Completion Speed - fast and simple, with low travel time required and less dialog
~Time Commitment - little to none, as a team would not be significantly hurt by the early departure of a player or could find a replacement without system-imposed limits.
~Difficulty and Soloability - almost all were soloable, but reward gain rate and subjective fun could entice players to team. Difficulty could be adjusted almost at will by soloer and team.
Story Arc:
~Rewards - all players received mission completion rewards, but only mission holders received certain lore pieces, badges, and arc bonus rewards (merits and extra XP & inf).
~Objectives - multiple simultaneous objectives were seldom present, and a warning was typically given in pre-mission dialog. Occasional complexity in the form of unusual objectives, branching decisions, or non-linear maps could be found in a mission.
~Completion Speed - moderate and under the player's control; expect multi-zone travel time and more dialog with delivery missions that provided no benefit to some team members.
~Time Commitment - little to none, as a team would not be significantly hurt by the early departure of a player or could find a replacement without system-imposed limits. However, there was a danger of outleveling arc contacts or arc segments, so there was pressure to complete arc missions before starting other activities which might grant high XP.
~Difficulty and Soloability - almost all were soloable, but reward gain rate and subjective fun could entice players to team. Difficulty could be adjusted almost at will by soloer and team. Elite bosses likely to appear but not in every mission.
Task Forces:
~Rewards - all players who complete the TF receive the TF reward. Rewards tended to special or greater than those for Story Arcs; badges provided to everyone, but lore sometimes not visible to anyone but the team leader or the team member who turned in a mission.
~Objectives - multiple simultaneous objectives were occasionally present, without a warning since minimum team size was enforced. Occasional complexity in the form of unusual objectives or non-linear maps could be found in a mission.
~Completion Speed - moderate to long, NOT under the player's control unless soloing; expect multi-zone travel time tempered by the fact that many delivery and chat missions could be completed by anyone, not just the mission holder / team leader.
~Time Commitment - high, since a team could be significantly hurt by the early departure of a player and could not find a replacement due to system-imposed limits. Cannot be outleveled and can be repeated any time (with some cooldown on full reward).
~Difficulty and Soloability - difficulty based on team size including all team members whether logged in or not, and usually (always?) would not recalculate below the TF's minimum required team size, even if most players quit the team. Archvillains common and not typically adjustable to Elite Boss rank. Occasionally included combat against multiple archvillains or special mechanics, usually as part of a final mission. Soloing almost never endorsed and occasionally prevented by mechanics internal to the TF, but usually feasible through messy workarounds and the kindness of "anchor" players used to bypass the minimum-team-size-to-start requirement. All team members had to meet a minimum level requirement.
Incarnate Trials (also generally applies to zonewide late-game Raids; I did not note the exceptions):
~Rewards - all players who complete the trial receive a partly random and partly deterministic reward, if they met a minimum threshold for participation as calculated by an undisclosed system. Rewards were the highest in value of any content and often available nowhere else; badges provided to everyone if badge conditions were met. Lore provided to everyone, usually as cutscenes.
~Objectives - multiple simultaneous objectives were prevalent, without a warning since minimum team size was enforced. Complexity in the form of unusual objectives, competing objectives, objectives designed to prefer certain archetypes, and non-linear maps were found in most trials.
~Completion Speed - moderate to long, NOT under the player's control; minimal travel time.
~Time Commitment - high, since a team could be significantly hurt by the early departure of a player and could not reliably add replacements due to system-imposed limits and the potential lack of reward for any player who was invited late to backfill a shrinking / failing team. Cannot be outleveled and can be repeated any time (with some cooldown on full reward). Time limit on certain phases and escalating enemy buff levels could quickly lead to cascading failure and loss of nearly all reward unless players could quickly recover from a brief loss of momentum.
~Difficulty and Soloability - Not soloable with very few exceptions. Difficulty based on team size, and would not recalculate below the minimum required team size. All enemies significantly buffed in comparison to normal content. Archvillains common and given extraordinary buffs and abilities not found elsewhere, and never adjustable to lower rank, but would adjust health to team size. Occasionally included combat against multiple archvillains or special mechanics, usually as part of a final objective. All team members had to meet a minimum level requirement and complete enough lower-tier trials (or pay a special currency) to unlock the higher-tier trials.
[edited to correct duplicate text and note the gated features]
I played CoH for 5 years but for the first 2 I didn't do any TFs at all because my schedule was challenging. I had trouble getting TF teams together, staying until we were done and so forth so I just didn't bother. I really feel that I missed out on a lot of content because of this.
To me, forcing players to team to see part of the content is wrong. What if I want to solo something just because I like to take my time and read all the fluff instead of racing around just trying to get done? So what if I CAN'T finish it because the end boss is too tough...that's my worry. At least let me try it. Getting through something like that solo would give me a greater sense of accomplishment than being of of 8 players trying to get done in the next 30 minutes before half of us have to leave for work or school.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
This is why I like how WoW does it.
If you use the Looking for Team interface, even if you are in a "not full group", you are forced to wait for the missing spaces to be filled up.
HOWEVER, if you walk right up to the dungeon entrance, you are able to enter it Solo/smaller than normal group size and attempt it yourself. (This is how I managed to at least *get a look* into most of the low level raids in WoW, but walking up to the entrance and going in solo).
I understand this concern and I agree that no content should have a virtual door man who enforces some kind of attendance policy. As Gangrel pointed out, if you can get to the entrance you ought to be free to go in. This is a rather different topic to demanding that all content be solo-able.
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Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
I thought colleges even teach classes just on Teamwork. There should be threats that a single individual Just Cant Handle Alone. I always respected this notion and that it was in CoH. It made the experience seem like I was part of a group, that i was Needed. (oh crud, i sound like Max, i cant remember his name now, from SpiderMan 2, the irony.. yikes :P)
Solo'ing is great, but just like in the real world, you cant achieve the Impossible if you dont work together with someone else. Unless you're an evil A.I. or have a bagillion I.Q. :/
Quite. Heroes teaming up - not to mention superhero teams - are very much a staple of the superhero genre.
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Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
Speaking of the "virtual doorman" complaint, I personally never felt like content which was designed to be done by a Team, and thus publicly advertized as such and gated for teams only to be some sort of exclusive cool kids room that I was being denied access to. It was just a mission or set of missions that the devs felt wouldn't be possible for the average solo act to actually succeed at, so they put up a sign saying "you need a team for this, really". They were giving us fair warning. And let's not forget that you COULD form a team just to get started then proceed to let everyone else off the hook and try to finish on your own. So that was possible, for people who wanted to tilt at windmills and try it (or later for tricked out Incarnates with maxxed IOs and so forth).
I mean, when the game gives you a mission, you tend to assume that the mission CAN BE DONE. It would have been MORE frustrating, to me, if they gave us Task Forces and Trials and SAID NOTHING about how large a team it was designed for, keeping us completely in the dark until we all figured out for ourselves who could do it and who couldn't. There were some TEAMS that failed these things, after all. I feel that if they had just put things in like simultaneous glowwies to click on or giant monsters that were nigh impossible to solo, and didn't warn you ahead of time, THAT would have been FAR more frustrating to people than just making it a Teams-Only thing for the outset. Personally I would have felt profoundly ripped off if I got to the end of what I thought was a perfectly soloable Trial only to discover that I had no possibility of actually succeeding, thus making the whole process to get there a "waste fo time" because I wasn't going to get the completion reward. Thatt would have felt like a bad practical joke on the soloer, to me. I would have felt like they intentionally gave me an unsolvable problem had said, with a straight face "Here, if you're really good at this game, you should be able to do this, good luck..." and then proceeded to laugh at me while I struggled with it ad nauseam.
Also, there were level ranges for a lot of stuff. You weren't allowed to try to solo Infernal when you were level 5. Was that some kind of frustrating BS that bothered anyone? I didn't think it was. I thought it was very appropriate. You couldn't do villain missions if you weren't a villian. Did people complain in large numbers about that, not that I recall.
Some content was VIP only, or you had to pay for it in pieces. That was a form of content gating as well. They did this in like every conceivable way as it turns out. By level, by alignment, by VIP status, by team size, everything.
And on the subject of the Task Force time sink factor, they originally intended for people to form TF teams, and then proceed to do a few missions a day or whatever and finish some time, maybe a few days, after they started. This is why you could log out and still be in the TF, assuming you didn't quit or get kicked. Turns out like 99% of actual Task Forces that ever finished did so by starting and then playing continuously until they were done a few hours later. People just couldn't be trusted to reform the same team tomorrow, or the next day, or the same time next week, or whatever. Maybe if you had a tight group of RL friends in your SG you could accomplish that, but it was far less common than the devs though it would be when they first rolled TFs out. And to some extent this was an important lesson earned and they made later trials and TFs shorter on purpose. So the time thing was definitely a learning curve problem, and we have hindsight for that now.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
This became a giant post.....sorry.....I can't really give a TLDR so read it if you want.
If that's what you got out of it then I either didn't make my point well or you missed it. I was simply trying to express that my experience was different than yours in that I got too many team invitations and never felt the need for a forced team mechanic. And, small points of contention, I didn't say I gave them the cold shoulder. If I got a PM asking for a team I would reply, if it was a simple pop up with no PM I just clicked no. Later I used the auto refuse for unsolicited team invites. And I never said I would FORM the tf's or trial, I was careful to say 'getting into'.
What I had hoped to express was that I didn't agree with your statement that teams were had to find.
Again I think we are having trouble communicating. When I said 'those were the ones no one wanted to do' I was talking about those Trial or TF's that people just did not enjoy or avoided....not because of teaming but for the simple reason the TF was not fun/rewarding/took too long or any other reason. In essence I blamed the TF itself not the players.
I'm glad you can see the point of 'no vitural doorman' ...I don't completely agree, a TF or Trial should have some way to unlock it. It could be level or the completion of other missions.. or something completely new to MMO's. I just don't think a min team size is a good reason on it own. But I don't think anyone, myself included, is making demands for all content to be soloable. If you go back and look at my original post I asked why they had to be team affairs not to make them soloable. All of my arguments have been with that in mind. I specifically pointed out that I did not agree with either the circular argument of 'Only teams for a TF because a TF is only for teams' and the very uninspired mechanics of "Big bag of HP' or 'click at same time'.
So Comicsluvr's comments are actually in line with the discussion while you are discussing a different topic.
There is no mechanic stopping you from having your super team. But solo heroes fighting cosmic foes is a staple of comics too and the mechanic of requiring a team does hinder that. I haven't said it before but I would hate to see solo only content too.
I don't really see it as that either. My complaint wasn't that there was team only content but in that I don't agree/understand why. And aside from possible future mechanics (as I have said I think the ones CoX used were very boring) and to a lesser extent the story aspect no other reason has convinced me.
This wasn't an intended mechanic and was only left in because the players were vocal about it. I remember posts and posts about this on the CoX forums about this and the (very) few comments the devs made on the subject. Sadly I have no way to prove this so you can either take me at my word or ignore this. This isn't really an argument as it just shows me that there is a desire for more options in how to experience content.
Level, alignment, vip and team size all have no relation to HOW you play in regards to solo, small team or large team. In my original post I was clear in the reason I found solo or small teams more interesting but I will repeat it here.
I tend to prefer a solo or small team of close personal friends because I / we can enjoy the content at my / our pace. A large team tends to have a much different dynamic than a small team or solo player. Unless you find that perfect match in players the team tends to gravitate towards a common playstyle...the hurry up and go or the hurry up and wait (if you want I can explain these playstyles further but I think they are self explanatory). This is most evident in a TF setting due to the fact that they offer rare or powerful loot. This breeds the 'do it fast to get the most reward' type of play. This further hinders a player like me who wants to enjoy the setting or marvel at the content which in a TF setting tends to be the most interesting of the game (or at the very least is intended to be). I have nothing against gear grinding players, or those who just want to click buttons, or those what like the team dynamic for whatever reason.
Another way to look at this is to see how the devs responded to player desires and found a way to give it to them. Players wanted shorter TF's so they made shorter TF's. Going back to what you said earlier about how teams were uncommon (for whatever reason) would this not imply that the devs should consider that as well? If the reason teams are uncommon is people are shy (for lack of a better term) then give them a faceless way to form teams, a LFG system of some sort. If people are not teaming because they don't need to then maybe the combat system needs to be looked at.
My entire contention is that using CoX as a basis the reasons and mechanics that were used were not that good and would like to see CoT either find a way to do it better or just drop it entirely.
"And on the subject of the Task Force time sink factor, they originally intended for people to form TF teams, and then proceed to do a few missions a day or whatever and finish some time, maybe a few days, after they started. This is why you could log out and still be in the TF, assuming you didn't quit or get kicked. Turns out like 99% of actual Task Forces that ever finished did so by starting and then playing continuously until they were done a few hours later. People just couldn't be trusted to reform the same team tomorrow, or the next day, or the same time next week, or whatever. Maybe if you had a tight group of RL friends in your SG you could accomplish that, but it was far less common than the devs though it would be when they first rolled TFs out. And to some extent this was an important lesson earned and they made later trials and TFs shorter on purpose. So the time thing was definitely a learning curve problem, and we have hindsight for that now."
And this is another perfect example of trying to think like your players. There is NO WAY that a group of Devs, no matter how clever, can out-think 100,000 players. There were several examples (the above is a good one) of the Devs thinking 'most players will do this' only to be proven wrong. As you said, hindsight. But now that we HAVE that experience, and the hindsight that comes with it, why fall into the same traps? Don't design the game so that it HAS to be played only one of a few narrow choices. Design a playground with a few safety rules and let the kids make up their OWN games.
Remember the original Hamidon raids? I read somewhere that the Devs never beat Hami in Beta, not once. They got close enough that they felt it could be done with the right tactics but they didn't really have time to flog it to death. Once they were sure it wasn't totally impossible they launched and let the players figure it out. And they did, with several strategies including the amazing Resurrection Oil Slick trick (pat. pending).
There were MANY missions that the player would get that strongly suggested bringing a team. Ok, it's dangerous...bring help. You did your job and informed me that this is not a typical mission arc. Now...step aside and let me try., If I win, I get bragging rights. If I lose...hey, you warned me.
I don't want to see anyone have to 'workaround' anything this time out. Not gleemail, not self-invites to SGs, and certainly not the old 'join my team for 3 minutes then quit' gag. Lame. As long as there are ample warnings telling us to turn back, I see no reason not to let the kids wander into the cave alone.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
All very well said, especially this.
I believe you should be allowed to [i]attempt[/i] such content, no matter what your group status is.
You should be prompted before opening the mission that it is highly recommended that you team up with other players. I would expect the mission to be [s]nearly[/s] impossible to resolve alone anyway. There should be limitations to soloing, it is an MMO after all, interact with others. If everything was solo-able it may as well be a 1-Player game.
Slightly Offtopic: Thinking about it, I think I would like to see "guild" dedicated versions of these tasks. Where guildmates may enter/exit at anytime if they have one in progress.
Why has no one pointed out yet that this is a MMORPG (Massive MULTIPLAYER Online Role Playing Game) and not a MSORPG (Massive SOLO Online Role Playing Game)? I thought the whole idea behind MMO's were to get lots of people together to play a game together as a team. If I wanted to play solo games, I'd go pick out a game for my Xbox, PS3, Wii, etc. These games are designed with the intent to get people together to socialize and team up to play games together and have fun together.
Even comic book heroes needed to team together to defeat a stronger foe. There is a reason there are the Avengers, X-Men, X-Factor, Teen Titans, Justice League, etc. Sometimes there are forces that overpower a single individual and a team effort is needed to rise above the situation. This is the way I always viewed TF's. Sure you can go solo street sweep or solo a mission if you like, but for some overwhelming event you'll need a team to overcome it. So no, I do not believe that TF's should be soloable events. If you happen to be able to find some way to solo the event, then more power to you and congrats on the bragging rights.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
I agree with that, but I don't think I could go as far as requiring "nearly". I would think of TFs as an opportunity for mission designers to design for a group. For all the rest of the content, it needs to be able to scale properly from one to 'max', along with whatever difficulty sliders they add atop that (I hope they will add some tricky additions ones over what CoH had, such as AI difficulty). That kind of versatility imposes some limits on what you can do on the design, so having some content where you can tell a designer, "For this you can assume there will be from 5 to 'max' characters" will let them do things with the map and enemy designs that would only make sense if you knew you had multiple characters in there. In essence, it is content where the absolute requirement of scaling properly to one is removed, with the goal that this will result in some non-gratuitous design choices.
I am definitely 100% in favor of letting a group of whatever size (iow, including "one") start on one of these, with appropriate warnings. I'm just not in favor of guaranteeing they could even be possible for one character to complete. The designer's story may result in some kind of coordination being required that might require activities in separate areas to be completed at the same time, say. I think that the folks who review these designs should be hardasses about making the designer justify things features like that... they'd should have to explain why it couldn't be accomplished another way, or why there couldn't be a single location alternative (which would presumably have to have, just for design purposes, other factors that made it less attractive if you had the option for going multiple), etc. There could even be multiple levels of approval for a feature like that. But if the designer can make the case, I think they should be able to put it in, and that fact that there is a part of the TF that would require simultaneous action in two (or three or whatever) locations should be called out in the warnings.
I think there should me more options for folks to join and leave a TF. For one thing, it would give a soloer a possible way to work around the TFs that did involve points where they needed some additional people. Limiting that to SG members is not a thing I had considered before, but its an interesting idea. I was thinking it could be managed through the rewards. People who participated would obviously get whatever XP and mission rewards (including mission- or map/location-specific badges) they were there for, but only characters who were on the team for the whole thing would get the TF completion recognition (in whatever form that ends up taking). The folks who came and/or went would be like 'guest stars' in the story that was mainly about the characters who were there the whole time. The invite dialog should make it clear that they are starting an in-progress TF, and should call out what kinds of rewards they can and cannot expect to receive, as a result.
Global: @Second Chances
SG: Fusion Force
"And it's not what I wanted
Oh no, it's not what I planned
See it's not where I thought I'd be
It's just where I am"
I think part of what made TFs unique was that you couldn't change the team, that was a strength and a weakness. It meant that you couldn't replace a team member that was AFK for most of it if you kicked them or a ragequitter, but it fostered a sense of team that other content didn't, particularly on some of the longer ones.
You could always get round the simultaneous clickies, you just needed some extra free accounts.
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If you guys can come up with another way to encourage that, I am all for it, but surely having a complete restart as the [b]only[/b] method to add friends (for an SG or RL friends one), or to replace ditchers (on a PuG one) can't be the only way to manage it. I am perfectly okay with the bar for doing it being somewhat high, but there should be a way to do it.
For some definition of "always" and "just", anyway. :) Speaking as someone who did have extra accounts, even when they weren't free, and who had the extra computers that would be required to form the team and start the TF, yes, I could always get around it. I could also add those characters to the personal SGs I had to have on various servers so that I could have some personal storage and some spaces where I could get to fiddle with designs. I am just hoping that part of the "spiritual successor" plan isn't keeping [b]all[/b] the design limitations I had to work around in the old game. :3
Global: @Second Chances
SG: Fusion Force
"And it's not what I wanted
Oh no, it's not what I planned
See it's not where I thought I'd be
It's just where I am"
I was going to reply to a lot of stuff today but just ended up with another wall of text.
So instead let me ask a specific question to oOStaticOo , Minotaur, Radiac and Darth Fez.
Given that I already have agreed that mechanics requiring a team and to a lesser extent story are reasons to keep the min level team, what would you or the game in general lose in a limited or no reward and easier difficulty TF option to solo, have a smaller team or a large team.
Edit: I have no such reservations about writing walls of text, so here you go :)
As has been said before, if you take away the minimum team size requirement from any Task Force, it loses most of the essential parts that differentiate a Task Force from a Mission Arc. At that point, to me, it basically ceases to be a Task Force at all. I mean, the bad guys and contacts will refer to you as "Task Force Morituri" when it's obvious that it's just you, one guy. Why are we calling ourselves "Task Force Morituri" when there's exactly ONE person in that "Task Force"? It's even sounds silly when you read it. So to that end, you're really NOT experiencing that same content as a solo, you're experiencing something else, which is a toned down version of it and isn't really that different from just doing a Mission Arc. The fact that the Task Force was designed and written with a team in mind kind of means that if you solo it, you're not really experiencing it for what it is, you're controverting it into something else that you personally like better, but isn't what it was intended to be. And the thing you're turning it into already exists, basically. And let's be honest, in CoH, the Task Forces were really just a set of missions which were just like any other missions anyway, at least until you got to part that was supposed to require a team (the AV, the part where you had to drop the shield generators at the same time, etc). If you want some way to try to solo AVs, I'm all for that, and CoH had mission arcs where you had to defeat AVs like Tyrant, Infernal, etc. For a person to say "It bothers me that I can't experience the Citadel TF solo, I would like to be able to experienced that." is kind of a weak argument when you consider that most of the TF is clearing out caves full of Council goons, which is something anyone can do solo in any number of missions from contacts. The only real differences are the parts that are intended to require a team, those being mechanics that require proper placement and timing, AVs and Giant Monsters that were intended to be so tough as to be unsoloable, etc.
IMHO the fact that some solo heroes could actually take down a giant monster or archvillain on their own was a result of power creep and the fact that they made a decision not to beef up the PVE content difficulty when they rolled out IOs. If the AVs and monsters were really as difficult as to require a team to beat them in all cases, your experience of doing a TF solo would always end in frustration when you got to the end and couldn't win. That was the intention of the TF in the first place, give people a fight that no single hero can handle on their own so that they MUST team up to accomplish the goals and win. That WAS the content, by design. To experience it solo SHOULD have meant utter failure, and why would the devs offer that to people? From the dev's point of view, they have to ask themselves which is more frustrating, giving someone a task that we, the devs, KNOW can't be done, or telling people "you have to have a certain size team to do this task force". I feel like the former is way more frustrating, and thus something they avoided, for good reason.
Beyond that, as I have said, the fact that some content absolutely requires a team (and preferably a good team with a decent plan) legitimizes and encourages teaming in the first place, and so I would lose the legitimacy of being able to say "Hey, wanna join a TF team, we're doing the Citadel TF". In a world where everything has been pre-designed for the solo option, people will question the need for teaming up at all, in a world where some things require a team, the reasons for that team to form are obvious and tacitly implied.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I guess I just don't get why any mission must be soloable. If there is content that is gated behind team-size, but you are solo, why force the Devs to make an exception for your solo self, when you can simply go do solo content? There was nothing in the Positron TF that you couldn't find elsewhere - except the TF badges.
Be Well!
Fireheart
There were locations, foes, stories you couldn't see elsewhere. I wanted to explore those without a team getting in my way.
Everything before this had no relation to my question.
While I see how a required teaming format can encourage teaming (Im not sure about legitimacy) I don't think limiting content is the best way to encourage teaming. I would prefer an overall aspect in the game that encouraged teaming. Much like how on teams your xp, drops and difficulty all were raised on teams (not saying this is the only way to do it, just one way it could be done.)
We probably wont see eye to eye on this part, but if a TF is primarily team required to encourage teams then I would be disappointed.
I soloed CoX most of the time, but I also have some vivid memories of teaming experiences, both good and bad. I think both sides have made some good points here, leaving me somewhat in the middle on the main issue of this thread.
One point made several times above that does resonate with me is that feeling of being rushed when doing team-only content; most of the time I had no idea what was going on plot-wise because there was no time to read the story. If team-only content is implemented, one thing I would really appreciate is some sort of replay that lets me go back through a TF once completed to wander through the map, read all the text, and re-watch any cutscenes that might have been skipped. Not exactly sure how this would work, but I'd prefer something of this sort to having to read it on TitanWiki. I'm picturing something similar to those extra solo story missions at the end of an arc in New Dark Astoria.
I disagree strongly with this idea. While I enjoy teaming at times, the value of an MMO when I'm in a solo mood is encountering other live players in between missions for a little bit of chat, to see interesting costumes and bios, to watch clever combinations of emotes, or just seeing other characters fly past, fighting some mobs, etc -- little stuff that makes the world seem alive to me. When I'm playing Skyrim, I don't miss other players when I'm in a dungeon, but I do miss them when I get back to town. Nothing wrong with playing together as a team, but it's not the only value in having multiple players in a game for everyone.
Spurn all ye kindle.
I don't consider content to be limited in this case, merely your ability to solo it. One of the purposes of TFs is to provide content that is a challenge to a team. Let's face it, a good team can already handle ordinary content. Your soloable missions are not a challenge. TFs are intended to be harder. Yet, the fact is, a good team can handle TF content without breaking a sweat. too.
I don't understand your insistence on a solo path to TF content.
Be Well!
Fireheart
If you consider content to be just the fighting then I would agree with you. But I have stated right from the beginning that location, story, and foe design is also content to me. I also explained why it was difficult to explore those in a team.
I hated not being able to read the story because I wasn't team leader for example (not the only example, just one of many). I also hated how you could miss some cut scenes simply because someone else was faster than you. It wasn't until my umpteenth go at LRSF that I saw the future freedom phalanx cut scene for the first time. I didn't even know it was there till then.
Kind of an aside but, as a general thing I'd like to see, it would be nice if the content was organized in such a way that they could provide access to the dialogs and cutscenes for completed missions (TF or not) via whatever mission UI they have. IOW, the content is already sitting there in the game, but organizing in a way that simplified such 'historical' access, as well, would be a nice to have, if it could be done.
Global: @Second Chances
SG: Fusion Force
"And it's not what I wanted
Oh no, it's not what I planned
See it's not where I thought I'd be
It's just where I am"
Okay, I absolutely agree that each player should be able to read all the NPC dialog, "read aloud text" and see all the cutscenes. I've got no problem with making sure that happens. I'm feel sure that can be accomplished by simply reworking the code to let everyone read all there is to read during the TF (at their own pace) instead of just the leader, and showing everyone the cutscenes (unless you have "no cutscenes" checked on you own personal control panel which doesn't affect anyone else).
As for experiencing all there is to experience, you weren't missing much. The maps, for most of most TFs were the same maps you got in other missions. The badguys were the same too. In most cases it was just another cave full of Nazis or warehouse full of bots or office full of Freaks, or whatever. Usually, the only new thing was the AV or giant monster, and many of THEM appeared elsewhere in solo content too. Off the top of my head, there were definitely ways to interact solo with Jurassik, Babbage, Doctor Vahzilok, The Clockwork King, and all of the Praetorians in various ways. In cases where certain TF things weren't open to soloists, it was almost always because a soloist didn't stand a chance in hell of succeeding at whatever it was (the Hydra Head with the 4 shield generators, the jailbreak in the BAF, the grenade and acid maps in the Lambda, etc).
And let's not forget, the NPC giving you the mission is supposed to be able to assume you could handle it. What do you want Maren MacGregor to do, tell people "You can try this mission if you want to, but you're going to have zero chance of succeeding unless you have X people of Y level, but hey, if you want to go commit suicide by Rikti, who am I to stop you. Good luck, sucker."
It seems clear that the CoH devs tried to gate everything appropriately so that people wouldn't get frustrated by getting defeated 99% of the time they ever tried to do anything. I can't fault them for that.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
That is one thing that I have noticed that Wildstar does. You can actually go back through the Mission Log (not necessarily the *chat* that happens, because some of that crops up when you hit certain areas), for quests that you have already completed.
If I remember correctly, Final Fantasy 14: ARR you can view cutscenes that you have already "met" before (not sure on the completed mission text though.... Not subscribed to FF14 at the moment)
Based on this philosophy, why have ANY solo content? Change ALL of the content so the minimum team size is at least two. I mean it's supposed to be MULTIPLAYER right? I mean we NEVER have off-peak times when a team is tough to find, off-beat missions nobody else wants to do, players that are jerks that we'd rather not team with right? None of these things EVER happens...
It's an old song but I'll sing it again: You play your way and let me play mine. I pay the same sub as you so what makes your idea of what's good or right any better than mine? I and others have already gone down the laundry list of why we want to be able to at least TRY to solo TFs. Now, other than the (very old) 'but it's an MMO!' argument you got any reasons not to?
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
I just want to say I have no problem with soloing in general. I just feel there needs to be SOME content that mandates teams in order to create the expectation that teaming up is, in some cases, absolutely necessary. Otherwise the overwhelming response you get out of teamup requests is "What? No. Why should anyone ever team up? There's no need for that, as everbody knows, so just leave me alone."
That said, I still think TFs were by their inherent nature intended for teams and wouldn't have been TFs if you could have soloed them. If you weren't on a team then doing the TF wasn't really doing the TF. You were, at best, abusing the TF code for your own weird thing, but you weren't doing a TF at that point. The desire to make TFs soloable, to my ears, sounds like a guy saying "I wish steak didn't exist, because I'm a vegan and don't eat meat, thus the existence of steak on the menu represents a thing that is right in front of me which seems enjoyable, but I am somehow prevented from eating it. This frustrates me so much. If there's going to be steak in the world, they should make a vegan form of steak that's still 100% steak in every way, just make it one that vegans can eat so I can eat steak too." The very words "Solo Task Force" is, like "Vegan Steak", a contradiction in terms, to me. It's basically an oxymoron.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Depending on what is meant by soloing a TF, I might have a reason. There are a couple of notions of soloing TFs in the thread. The OP, I think, was asking for a way to solo the TF that would be scaled for one player. When you say "at least TRY to solo TFs", on the other hand, it sounds more like you don't want the design changes to accommodate teams smaller than the designed-for minimum (though the more generic-type missions in a TF mission chain would probably happen to scale like any generic-type mission would). I may be misrepresenting who has what position (sorry, if I did), but the main point is: my answer would differ for each.
As I've said above, I definitely would like people to be able to start a TF even if they didn't have the minimum, so I am perfectly fine with solo-type-b. It isn't any skin off the nose of people who like to team for TFs since it doesn't impact the design of the TF at all. I do have a problem with solo-type-a, though, since guaranteeing it would properly scale down to one is going to impact the design of the TF itself.
Global: @Second Chances
SG: Fusion Force
"And it's not what I wanted
Oh no, it's not what I planned
See it's not where I thought I'd be
It's just where I am"
hmmm... so... you want to see a log of the missions you completed.. and have a way to save a Best Moments of the mission from a Demo Recorder? I'm guessing that could include a cut scene!?! :)
I'm not saying to not have anything in the game soloable. Street sweeping, solo. Regular missions, solo. Task Forces though, team oriented. I guess look at it like the Marvel movies. Iron Man, solo missions. Hulk, solo missions. Captain America, solo missions. Thor, solo missions. The Avengers, Task Force. That's the way Task Forces are meant to be. They are supposed to be overwhelming dangers that no single person should be able to take on and defeat. Now that is not to say that it can't be done. I've witnessed a SG mate solo the Romulus Task Force by themselves at +4x8. It took them several hours to do it, and many, many, many defeats as well, but they still managed to do it on their own. That is the driving force behind a Task Force though, to team up to defeat an Arch Enemy that you can't defeat on your own.
I understand that the way you want to play a game is not the same way I want to play a game. I understand that it is your $15.00 and I shouldn't be trying to tell you how to play a game. I'm just saying that it is a Multi-player game and that is what is in mind when it's being made. People teaming up and playing together to play a game. Otherwise it would just be another console game designed for a single person to purchase and play at their leisure. As someone else has pointed out, if you want to start a TF and then have everybody quit or sit at the door and do nothing while you solo the TF by all means go for it.
I guess I just don't understand the desire to have a game that is filled with hundreds of people and never team with any of them. I find the teaming to be the best part of playing a game. I get bored playing a game by myself. I usually tend to turn a game off after about 30 minutes of playing it all by myself. Whereas when I'm teaming with people I can lose myself in the game for hours on end. Perhaps some of you have just been burned too much by idiotic players that have ruined teaming for you. Maybe I was just lucky enough to find the right group of people that made it insanely fun to play teamed with all the time.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
You got it pretty much right. The OP (me) wanted know why they were not able to be scaled down to either a solo or small team difficulty. .
To anyone who cares,
I suggested the trial or TF to use the same difficulty slider that was already in the game to scale down the difficulty of the foes the same way it did in non-TF or trial missions when faced by a foe to strong to face solo or on a small team (AV to EB for example). I was also specific in saying that a lower difficulty TF or Trial would not include the same rewards as a full team version.
I further went on to agree that some future TF might include a mechanic that required a team in an interesting way. I also agreed to a lesser extent that story could be a factor in requiring a team. I disagreed with the opinion that TF soloing resulted in less teaming in general.
Lastly I said that if CoT did not include a mechanic that required a team to defeat that were better than the ones in CoX I would be disappointed and would prefer the mechanic not be used in favor of allowing people options in how to experience the TF.
Others are asking to keep the trial the same and let us attempt it. To which I do not agree, of the two I prefer to keep the TF or trail a team affair
That's my personal stand on the topic right now.
I think part of the reason you don't understand is you are thinking of solo players and team players as a binary choice. It's not that someone who likes soloing hates teaming anymore than someone who likes teaming hate soloing. Sure there are extremes, the player who never teams or the player who never solos and those are ones who cannot be satisfied by a compromise. I am proposing compromise not absolutes.
Well you have solved two problems I have with experiencing content in a team setting I guess that's that.
Or wait, maybe there are more reason....maybe there are ones that are less tangible that can't solved by simply coding something. Scroll up you might find a few.
So to you the TF or Trials were just regular missions with a tough boss that required a team? Sounds like you actually missed out on a lot. The TF's were by and large the culmination of a story that is hinted at in the regular mission arcs. It was in those TF's where you saw all the little clues that had been dropped come together to finish the story you were already involved in. To discover this I had to play through these TF's a great many times as well as read external sources like wiki's. This was because a great many people on teams either did not care to discover this, already knew this or didn't even know this was there. If I had been allowed to do these TF's solo or with a small group of personal friends it would not have been required for me to seek outside sources and would have enjoyed these TF's on another level in future playthroughs.
If you want to draw an comparison its not a vegan steak (which actually do exist). It's watching a movie alone then at the climax 7 other people come in who may or may not make you miss parts.
The best reasons for teaming are missed if forcing, rather than choice and motivation, is used for a significant block of content. I understand that you support a mix of content designed to allow soloing and teaming (and so do I), but we've hardly exhausted the appeal of the carrot when it comes to teaming - let's not resort to the stick without good cause.
"What? Sure, I'd like to join because teaming is fun."
"What? Sure, count me in, I've never tried those missions before."
"What? Sure, I can help you defeat that tough AV."
"What? Sure, I always need more of those [reward XYZ]."
I heard these often in CoH as teams formed. I'd like to hear them again in CoT.
Short version - Teaming can be "fun", "different", "easier", "rewarding" - even if it's never forced...perhaps *especially* when it isn't forced.
Something seems at odds with my reading so far...
1) I haven't heard anyone say or imply "make TFs soloable by altering the content and eliminating team-sized challenges as a design tool". All I heard was "allow a player to make a solo attempt, same as in CoH, but without hassling people to join / anchor / drop."
2) Thus the analogy becomes "I like steak. This particular steak is huge and was intended to serve multiple people. Please allow me to try to eat it myself. The experience may be challenging and I might learn something. I will probably bring friends and order this steak again in the future, as I have in the past. I will pay for the steak, even if I fail to eat the whole serving."
*******
To poke at the logic behind this whole question and make it easier to agree, we should consider the scenario of the team of 4 who wants to try a TF that was designed and intended for 5 or more based on difficulty but which at most requires 2 simultaneous clicks (a mechanical limitation). Is there any reason to forbid them from making the attempt, as long as fair warnings are given for difficulty and mechanical limitations they may face if too many team members quit?
So far, I've seen valid reasons for setting a hard minimum based on (sensible and lore-driven) mechanical limits, but not on difficulty.
Actually I am almost saying this exactly. If you want to know exactly what I am asking you can scroll up a few or drop me a message and I can give you a summary of my position. I mean the thread is getting long enough that sorting through it all isn't easy.
i idea come to me have the same types of missions available, but the nature of each mission will differ, as will the story behind it. The primary contacts will all be available to you automatically after a certain point, and can be contacted via your cell phone. or There are also NPCs that you must find out in the City. These Heroes Villains have individual agendas and goals and won't hesitate to use you to achieve them. NPCs aren't out in the open; you may have to search around the given location a bit and Non-combat oriented players can choose missions that may not require much fighting, whereas combat types can go all out with Assassination missions. The missions here have a story as well, but it may or may not be critical in nature.
sorry i not want make new topic
whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster and when you look into the abyss, the abyss also look into you, -Friedrich
[img]http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm106/hinata1032/Kitsune.jpg[/img]
If a mission is designed so that one player can successfully complete it, it is a solo mission. Create a team and the mission will have more, and tougher, enemies. Add more people to the team and the enemies become more numerous and tougher still. Remove any rewards unless the team has 5+ people, make the mission repeatable, and then sell it as a task force? There is evidence enough in this thread that such a "poor man's TF" will not be received with universal acclaim.
The entire reason for the existence of task forces is that a team is required in order to successfully complete that content.[color=red]*[/color] I don't much care for all this challenge in video games stuff, but it does make a difference to me if my SG and I manage to complete a TF. It matters because we needed everyone to be there and do their part. Because it is a team effort. Because it is a task force. If a team is not necessary then it is not a TF. This is a question of psychology and perception more than anything else.
If those who really want to see that content can't jump over their shadow to team up with others, to see a few task forces, that's on them.
[br]
[color=red]*[/color] I have no problem with allowing people to attempt to solo TFs. Whether or not such a person expects to succeed at this task is, of course, not something to which I can speak. To me, soloing a TF falls into the category of attempting the impossible so I would expect nobody could successfully do so unless, as Radiac has pointed out, some power creep has taken place.
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Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
or make missions like dark soul or demon's souls?
whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster and when you look into the abyss, the abyss also look into you, -Friedrich
[img]http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm106/hinata1032/Kitsune.jpg[/img]
Just so I am clear.... you are saying a TF requires a team so those doing the TF feel a sense of accomplishment? I am not being rude, I really want to know if that's what you meant.
I definitely shared in this experience. And while I didn't mind the existence of team-only content in CoX, I did get annoyed that much of the game's metastory was relegated to this type of content, thus prejudicing the plot development against solo play while creating the irony of having some of the most significant text presented in content that was most likely to be rushed through. I got the feeling that in later years the devs realised this and began to make up for it by giving us the SSAs, which allowed VERY significant story developments to be played either solo or teamed.
This was especially egregious with the iTrials, where I was never able to experience the end of the Praetorian story -- not, in this case, through lack of desire to team, but through lack of available teams interested in running the final couple iTrials when I was available. I spent many hours doing nothing but waiting around in the queue and yet was never able to participate in a full Magi, only the part 1 farms -- which got me my Hybrid slot, but didn't help me proceed with the story. It didn't help that, whether because of the shutdown or some other reason, no one ever added the full dialogue to ParagonWiki, so I wasn't even able to read it there. Luckily, some of the nice folks over on Titan Network filled me in after the lights went out on CoX.
Spurn all ye kindle.
The question is, in part, one of how the content that is delivered is perceived. As I explained, I consider missions and task forces to be different types of content. I can complete missions - solo content - on my own, of course, or I can join a team to do it. I believe that we all recognize that being on a team does not make a task force. To answer your question in a roundabout way, yes, accomplishment plays an important role. Players can (and should) feel a sense of accomplishment when they successfully finish a mission. The same holds true for TFs. It is a different sense of accomplishment because the players know that they had to work together to complete the task force. They know that, on their own, they would not have stood a chance.
Here's an idea I presented in [url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/open-forum-teaming-and-soloability]this thread on this topic[/url], which may appeal to you or at least provide a middle ground:
One thought I had was to have instances with both team [task force] content and solo content. Take an aether pirate base. The [task force] 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.
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I'm unfamiliar with those games so I can't address this question. You'd need to explain how they designed their missions.
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Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
I'm liking this idea...!
Spurn all ye kindle.
sorry if u do solo team mission lvl 50 make Enemies hp and level same u but stats high 2% and make Enemies small group for boss will like it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNxXcwcVvdo
whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster and when you look into the abyss, the abyss also look into you, -Friedrich
[img]http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm106/hinata1032/Kitsune.jpg[/img]
Sounds good to me. From a resource standpoint, it would be a great practice to always look for other opportunities to make a valid use of the assets they created for a TF like that, as well.
Global: @Second Chances
SG: Fusion Force
"And it's not what I wanted
Oh no, it's not what I planned
See it's not where I thought I'd be
It's just where I am"
Starfire is Vegan. You just described breakfast for her.
This is an interesting point. I touched upon the basics of it in this thread before but you have described it best.
Most specifically when I stated mechanics can be a factor in required teaming content and that given the two choices of the mechanics CoX used to require teaming or the options of soloing I prefer the option.
The problem is as you said before 'perception of accomplishment'. One player may see his contribution as important another may realize any player could be contributing just as much, maybe not the same way but just as much.(before anyone thinks I fall on one side or the other and argues that point....I do not....I am discussing a broader idea here) As you said it is perception. There are many reason why a player will find themselves perceiving things one way or another but it largely boils down to how one indentifies with the character they are playing. It could be how immersed they are with the character, how much they enjoy playing the character or any other reason.
Getting back to the point, if CoT uses the same 'holy trinity' concept that almost any MMO uses then yes I fully agree that a TF is the best place to foster that sense of accomplishment. To explain on this further, the holy trinity is the idea of tank, dps, heals, which is to say some way to ensure the foes are where you want, some way to hurt the foes and some way to limit the foes hurting you. If CoT can get away from the holy trinity enough (as they have said they hope to) then that sense of accomplishment should come no matter the content. If CoT decides to use only the TF's to explore this then I again would be fine with that. But if CoT just puts the biggest baddest foes in a TF and say you need a team to fight them I will be disappointed with that aspect of the game just as I was with CoX's version and would prefer the option to choose my team size and difficulty level.
I actually expressed a similar option earlier in the thread, while yours said within the same instance mine said separate instances. Both boil down to a division of resources that require the team to make a conscious choice of how to divide the team. This is a much more interesting and engaging concept that Hami's 'need a blaster a controller and a melee' idea.
Of course we are now getting into a completely separate topic, how to make a TF better so as to remove the need or desire for a solo option. Perhaps someone might pose that question to explore this idea further.
All right, thanks for making it clear, and I'm sorry for missing your point. I must have started my reply before yours and then failed to check what you'd posted (quoted in part below). Somehow, up until that post, I was still left with a different impression of what you wanted. I retract my overly-broad critique of Radiac's analogy, since not quite everyone is asking merely for the chance to try the extra-large steak. Heh.
I thought about such a system for greatly reduced difficulty or "solo story mode" for CoH trials and taskforces before, but never settled on a satisfactory way to handle it after level 40 (Numina TF) - every idea either broke immersion through loss of epicness, or left the content still too tough for standard builds / enhancements.
The taskforce AV -> EB replacement is the simple first step that such a system would need to take, but there were enough cases in CoH (beyond level 40) of other TF mechanics such as all-boss spawns, rapid ambushing, and simultaneous AVs. These features wouldn't smoothly scale down from the TF's difficulty to average soloing difficulty (+0x1), so would need redesign to work within what you're requesting. We'd either need a much more robust and smart spawn control system in CoT than what CoH had, or a manually-adjusted copy of the TF specifically meant for solo / story mode.
Trials present more considerations if designing a solo mode for average builds, since they turn up the usage of those not-very-scalable mechanics and add others such as time limits, large area-denial attacks, and multiple simultaneous objectives. Paragon devs made a valiant attempt at trial scaling, but whether intended or not, it seemed to rapidly break down below an 8-person league. Ultimately, I think a trial in solo / story mode that lets an average player complete it will feel sadly non-epic, and we'd get better results with other approaches, such as improving the way lore is delivered to everyone on a team, and that "parallel solo and team instances" idea.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'loss of epicness'. If you mean the way you feel epic is joining someone else to complete a goal then ok I can respect that even if I don't agree. If there is another meaning I missed then please let me know.
As for content 'still too tough for standard builds', well I just don't see that as an issue. Or rather not one for this discussion. Remember I am proposing the use of the same mission slider, not changing the mission makeup to ensure anyone can do it.
My desire was to experience content in its entirety and at my own pace and people have tried to respond to that. At best they offer 'fixes' to specific issues at worst they say 'step over your own shadow and team'. The 'fixes' are a case by case and do not cover the heart of my issue (choice in how to experience content in case you still have missed it). The other is just rude. Neither answer my question of why not with any satisfaction.
Even the fact that future mechanics or current ones that require teams (such as co-operative glowy clicking) does not take into account the many more instances where no such feature exists. So my response to that could be 'if the mechanic is there fine... team content, if its not then it can scale down'.
The truth is a lot of people seem to be looking at this just from a personal standpoint. Aside from Radiac (I may not agree with him but he had a valid point) and Minotaur (who I agreed with), no one can actually give me a reason why the option for choosing the difficulty and the team size in a TF is bad that speaks beyond perception.
I am seeing arguments based on how it makes that person feel. If its solo I don't feel a sense of accomplishment... I enjoy team content... It isn't epic unless its difficult.
While I can respect that's how you feel I think very few are looking at what I am asking for and thinking 'how does this change my enjoyment' aside from a convoluted 'if anther person can do it this way it makes my doing it another less valuable' (which speaks volumes on how those people base their self worth on anothers actions) Or if they are looking at it that way they have not been able to express it.
As a result I'm left with the same question of why not.
I think it's pretty clear that there are differences of opinion on this, and that's fine. I think we can agree that we have differing points of view.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
My problem is that you are basically advocating to have team oriented content removed from the game. You ask why this should not be done without providing any compelling argument to support why it should be done. That you consider teams to be a bother is scarcely a valid reason to do away with an entire aspect of the game.
I have to agree with Radiac. It is clear that the only answer is that we will have to agree to disagree.
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In an attempt to not start a flame war here, I want to preface my question for the OP by saying that I never much liked or wanted to do PVP of any kind, I really avoided it actually, and given that I feel curious as to what islandtrevor72 feels about the following, all of which is a true story form my point of view:
In Warburg, which was a PVP "hot zone", you could go there and when you arrived, you knew you could get PVPed by someone. In my case this usually meant getting totally ganked by some invisible stalker. Now, I had a toon named "Capt. Supernova" whose theme was "space guy" and for this toon I REALLY wanted to get the "Rocketman" badge, which is the badge you get for launching the Warburg rocket 10 times. So to experience this content, and to actually get the thing I wanted, I used to get up early on Saturday mornings, when there was usually nobody in Warburg and just solo the rocket launch content as much as possible before the zone started to get busy. I made sure to stay as invisible as possible, I used the /hide command, etc. Luckily I was on the Triumph server, which was not the most well-populated. In that sense I lucked out, because I was able to basically cheat and do Warburg without getting PVPed much at all. Had that not been the case, I might never have gotten the Rocketman badge on my "space guy" toon, or I might have had to form a team to actually plow through it the way the devs intended and actually fight the PVP fights to get the badge.
In this situation, do you think it would have been within the realm of reasonable expectation to try to get the devs to make all the PVP zones and all their PVE content available to me all the time with the safety of being able to PVE there without the threat of PVP deaths from predatory other players? Because to be honest, the thought never crossed my mind to complain to anyone at Paragon Studios and say "I choose to do PVE content only, and I think I should be able to experience Warburg as a totally PVP-free zone if I want to. Why are you forcing me to agree to PVP to be able to experience the Warburg content?" At that time, as now, I saw it as the intention of the devs that one would have to somehow put up with PVP in order to get that badge (not to mention all the nukes!). I felt like I was cheating. I felt that the intended purpose of the extra cool PVP zone swag (all the temp powers and badges) was that you couldn't get that stuff without having to fight other players to get it. More risk, more deaths, more PVPing brings with it more swag, that seemed to be the deal they were trying to cut with me the player. It never even dawned on me that I should ask the devs to code up a backdoor that I could use get all that good stuff without having to work through the PVP for it.
Do you think they should have had a non-PVP option for all zones like Warburg? Because I have to tell you, as much as I hated PVP, I still didn't ever expect them to give me that.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I didn't think it had to be said but I am not advocating removal of any content. I am trying to discuss the question I posed in the first post to gain a better understanding of anyones position. I tended to have to take up a contrary position to further the discussion. Or in the case of your extremely misrepresented second quote of mine, answer a question. I even asked a specific question (the 'how does it affect you' one) to try and go deeper into the reasons behind required teaming.
The dismissive way you say I 'think teams are a bother' does not take into account the many things I say in contrary to this. It also ignores the reason why I can finding teaming to hinder my goals that relate specifically to this thread.
If you have nothing further to add to the discussion beyond what you have already that's fine. We don't agree and there is nothing wrong with that. But don't take cheap parting shots.
This is a tough one to answer in the context of the thread but I will try.
When it came to actual content then yes I do think the PVP zones should have had a no PVP flag. Please keep in mind that when I say content I do not mean rewards or simple combat with npc, I mean story, original foes, location. Now I don't think any of the PvP zones had much in the way of story or original foes which means that all a PvP zone had for content was the location. I see no reason not to offer a non-PvP flag to those who want to just run around the zone to check out the scenery other than possible exploits in the actually PvP combat (a non-targetable spy for example). The reason why this is hard to answer in context of this thread is CoX's PvP system was almost completely divorced from the PvE game in terms of logic or design so always thought PvP should be considered a purely optional experience that did not include any actual content...including location. I don't really want to derail the thread with a PvP discussion but if you want me to I will go into more detail in messages.
In regards to the badge you wanted I would classify that as a reward not content. So no I don't think you should get it without the PvP aspect.
Part of your statement has me a bit confused so I am going to isolate it and ask you to expand upon it in relation to the thread.
If I understand you correctly you are saying that the devs included the cool rewards in PvP zones to encourage you to engage in PvP and you thought this was a deal they made with the player base. (If I don't understand correctly then please explain so I can understand)
Why is a cool reward (like the special ingredients or enhancements) not enough to encourage teaming on a TF? Please understand I am not trying to twist your words around and if I have I apologize. I am trying to understand your position on the topic as you have said that encouraging teams was one of the reasons you felt a TF should be team only.
I don't wish to hijack the thread, but to answer your question, PVP zone swag (e.g. nukes) was NOT enough, in my case, to get me to actually do PVP. I can't speak for EVERYBODY else, but I don't think it was a big draw really. For one thing, there were far fewer redsiders to begin with, which caused problems right away. As for me, if it meant having to actually do PVP to get something valuable, I still didn't do it. I went to Bloody Bay and Warburg in times of low population to get the stuff I wanted WITHOUT having to PVP. I didn't even do PVP for the purpose of trying to get PVP recipes, even though some of them fetched like 2 billion infl on the market and could have paid for like everything I wanted for my toons. The fact that zones like Brickstown, Crey's Folly etc didn't have such things but Warburg did makes me believe that the devs added these things as a way to try to reward those people who chose to take the added risk of running missions in the PVP zones, which were clearly more dangerous than Brixtown, given the PVPers that were presumably going to be lurking there. That stuff was, I felt, supposed to be the bait that was intended to bring fish like me into the zone so that the PVP sharks could prey upon us. That seemed like the idea behind it to me, but I personally don't think it worked. It didn't bring me into the zone enough to get ganked a lot and it didn't provide the PVPers with enough targets to keep them entertained. Those zones were often empty in years 6-8, at least on Triumph in my memory. There I could usually ASSUME I'd be the only person in the zone. In that sense a "non-PVP button" was actually unnecessary anyway.
So to try to answer your question succinctly, I think the swag rewards for every kind of content they had in the game were usually not enough to actually get people to do it, assuming the people we're talking about had any aversion to that kind of content to begin with. Soloing missions, teaming for TFs, paying VIP money for Incarnate Trials, doing Arena PVP matches, Zone games like the Warburg thing, etc. None of that stuff was rewarding enough to get people to do it if there was the option not to. The fact that the incarnate content (the trials) was itself gated by VIP status (paying a monthly fee) arguably got me to pay a monthly fee (I really wanted to pay for VIP just to support the game at that point, but I really liked the trials a lot too), the actual incarnate powers and whatnot alone would probably not have done that. It took me a long time to pull the trigger on buying some of the power sets that you had to buy. There were things all over the game that I chose not to do or unlock because I didn't want to do the content.
Going back to the thread proper, there's this question of "carrot or stick" that's been brought up. I personally disagree with the premise that making a Task Force have a minimum number of heroes to start is a "stick". The "carrot" is a reward for exhibiting desired behavior. The "stick" is a punishment for not exhibiting the desired behavior. Making a product (Task Forces) that is intended for teams only and gating it for teams only is not punishing anyone, it's offering something to those people who want to participate in it in the way that the designers intended for it to be enjoyed. CoX did have some "sticks" in it. XP debt for getting defeated was a stick, SG base rent was a stick (and one I never really understood or saw a needs for), but Task Forces with minimum team sizes were not a stick, as far as I understand the term. The soloist's frustration with and jealousy of those people who liked do Task Forces should not be confused with a "stick" or with a form of punishment. They weren't punishing soloists when they make Task forces have minimum team sizes, in my opinion.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Ok I can respect that opinion. I personally did find the TF rewards enough to get me to do the TF's, at least until I came to the realization that the rewards only made it easier to get the next reward. (Which is an entirely different conversation). I would also like to say that the reward was enough to get many people to run TF's on a fairly regular schedule (purely based on observation with no numbered data to back it up.... so you can choose to believe it or not.).
(it took me forever to find that post with 'carrot and stick' in it Would love it if you quoted those things)
The carrot/stick was Scott Jacksons statement so he should respond to this. I will say however I do agree team required TF is not a punishment or a 'stick' if you want. It is however a restriction. A restriction that I think is not needed (Based on all the reason I have said in the thread).
I apologize fro not quoting, but the hypertext tags confuse me to no end. I agree that gating content is a restriction. I think it's clear that I don't object to such restrictions as some other do.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Games are about perception, especially a game where we become extraordinarily attached to the characters we create, so I'd expect the discussion to fit that pattern.
I should have gone into more detail on that "epicness" point. By epicness I wasn't describing my own feelings, but those of players in general when they encounter something that is visually impressive (such as ITF mission 3 full of huge spawns) or impressive in lore / narration (the enemy you're about to fight has crushed the best fighters of the world). That ITF hill would be far less epic if a player saw only small, scaled groups of low rank Cimeroran minions and lieutenants. There's a huge space for an army, but no army; immersion broken. The lore's description of an epic, tough fight would seem out of place when immediately after the TF, the game sends normal enemies against the player in regular missions - and they are too similar in difficulty to that world-beating threat. It either makes the TF-lore enemy appear weak, or the normal enemies appear much stronger than lore implies - breaking immersion.
Switching briefly over to my personal feelings, I don't feel epic when joining a team; that does detract from whatever epicness the content is about to deliver. However, I accept it as a generally necessary thing for an online game, where PC powers are balanced against NPC powers, and the game lore doesn't logically support 10000 concurrent players with permanent Superman-level abilities. There may be lore-driven exceptions (the incarnate intro arc's mission where you solo all of the AVs), but that worked because it was unusual and in obvious contrast to the rest of the game.
I'm feel like I'm getting a mixed signal on this point. Your request is for taskforces to scale down to solo via the slider, and you're fine with it being more difficult than normal content. I'm not seeing how that mechanically works, because in CoH it would have made some spawns very small and easy and left the (for lack of a better term) "hardcoded spawns" at full taskforce difficulty. I don't see any benefit to applying the difficulty slider's scaling without also scaling those hardcoded spawns. If a player needs the scaler to help them with normal spawns, the hardcoded ones will crush them. If they can handle the hardcoded spawns, they can already crush normal spawns and thus don't need the slider's help.
Could you take an example, such as the ITF, and describe game mechanics (enemy count and rank, difficulty, and how the slider would affect it) that you envision experiencing while solo in each mission? Good examples might include the mission 3 hill with cyclops/minotaur generals and ambushes, or the final fight against Romulus and his 3 helpers and ambushes.
I mentioned the carrot / stick, since you mentioned a particular behavior, and indicated that requiring some teaming would create pressure to reduce it:
I was only noting that we have other more pleasant and more effective methods to encourage teaming and direct people toward fun multiplayer content. We should design around them and only resort to artificial limits / restrictions if all else fails. Sensible lore-driven restrictions are fine: the reactor needs multiple people at the controls, or we need a whole league with some holding back waves of IDF while others take supplies.
Artificially high minimum team sizes turn into a stick - punishing any players who cannot recruit enough, through no fault of their own - if used to force larger teams where a smaller team could suffice, or force teaming where soloing would still be reasonable in lore and mechanics. Thus, I'd call the Citadel TF's artificially-high minimum team size a stick, but the BAF trial minimum was not...or at least it wasn't so obviously artificial as to feel like one.
I support allowing the TF / trial mechanisms to determine minimum team size, and do not recommend using minimums as a way to shape player attitudes toward team invites.
Please forgive the minor divergence from the topic, and my response to the PVP example that otherwise wasn't directed at me...
We should conclude that the CoH developers did intend for Radiac and others to be able to get that badge despite avoiding PvP:
1) The badge name "Rocketman" doesn't imply that it is specific to PvP. Unlike a badge called "PvP Winner", there is no clear intent to reward it to PvPers only.
2) The reward was granted (and designed to be granted) by meeting certain conditions. Fighting was not one of those conditions. The badge wasn't bugged.
2b) There is no evidence of a developer comment that describes intent to restrict the badge to players who have fought and/or won [n] PvP fights.
3) Developers provided numerous ways to avoid PvP while in PvP zones - temp powers, /hide, travel powers which made evasion easier, etc.
4) The environment did not force PvP, and the developers did not alter it. Low population servers and times - plus the sheer number of zones - made fighting even more optional in PvP zones.
5) The developers backed away from early stances on exclusive PvP rewards - recipes became available through PvE means. They decided that exclusivity wasn't always the right answer.
6) Attempting to get the badge still required the player to face the risk of PvP, whether or not it materialized.
So no, Rocketman badge holders didn't cheat in any way. PvP isn't about scripted forced fighting anyway; it is more about choosing your battles and taking every fair advantage to get the desired outcome. If that desired outcome is a badge with a PvE-appropriate name like Rocketman, or a shivan temp power clearly designed to help in PvE missions, then using the developer-provided tools, in the developer-provided environment, to obtain a reward that by design didn't require a PvP fight, is playing by the rules of CoH open zone PvP.
Should the developers have provided a completely non-PvP means to obtain that badge? Maybe. It relates back to the Taskforce ideas and nearly every decision they have to make while designing. How can the developers deliver a game experience that is sufficiently satisfying to enough players to keep it running? How easy is it to satisfy a new request and thus expand the playerbase? Is it worth the extra effort? Is there any danger of harming a segment of their target audience by meeting the desires of another segment?
Minor point of contention, I'm not asking for the mission to scale to solo, I'm saying use the mission slider to adjust the difficulty to any where from a -1/1 to a +4/8 and include the option to turn bosses to luets and AV's to Elites. I had previously stated that the notoriety system would turn an EB to a boss but it would appear as that only happened in AE with player created EBs so I apologize for that..
As for the 'hardcoded' spawns I am not sure what this means. So would need it explained further to comment on it. Unless you are talking about the 'monster' classification to which the only places you saw those was in TF's, trials or as zone mobs. This makes it difficult to know if the notoriety system would have influence over them as TF's , Trials and zone mobs were largely unaffected by notoriety. As they are similar to an AV I would assume they would also scale down elite.
Ok, this is something I did agree with (to a lesser extent). You call it epicness I called it scope. I did not explain myself fully on this point because it is an argument that cannot be quantified on a meaningful level. Its a personal viewpoint that can be different from person to person. I have tried to keep this kind of perception based statement out of the thread except in direct response to anothers perception based statement. For example player A says 'I like to team' so I respond with 'I like to solo'. Neither is right or wrong.
You have given a reason for using 'epicness' though....Immersion. Which I can respect.
As I cannot remember the specifics of the ITF how about I instead show you this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fN4tXIzgi4&list=PL8B2DCCDDE5A07080
(part 3 is the third mission you asked about)
Now before anyone brings it up, yes I agree his build made this a walk in the park and I am not exactly in favor of that level of ease. Nor do I believe that lower level difficulty should expect the same rewards (loot, gear, drops or whatever else you wanna call it.) But that is a topic for another thread. This video is to show what a solo ITF might look like, not how tough it should be.
The individual in this used the 'join team and log out' workaround a few mentioned.
As you can see all the foes are even level (they con blue because the player was an incarnate), the spawns were smaller, the ambushes had less foes and there were fewer elites. As far as it feeling 'epic' in terms of scope well that's not something I would like to decide for you. To me it was epic enough to fit the lore.
To me, knowing someone can do the ITF with foes scaled down like that does not affect the enjoyment, sense of accomplishment or even immersion I felt when I did the ITF with a full team. If knowing someone can do the ITF with scaled down foes changes your enjoyment, sense of accomplishment or immersion I can respect that's how you feel. I just ask you to try and explain why it does.
Locations would be easy to see without doing TFs if they were available in the player made content, not all CoH's were. The dialog I'm sure will be in the ParagonWiki equivalent in no time flat.
On the PvP, I also hated PvP but got my Warburg nukes and turrets badges (and the tutorial badge from killing the one infected in the station as my badger went through the tutorial before the badge existed) by simply going into the zone on the US servers when Americans were asleep. This would be a lot more difficult with one super server.
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I appreciate the linked video, islandtrevor, and the extra details you gave on how your idea differs from CoH's difficulty adjustment options (beyond just the slider). I agree that soloing the TF as shown was sufficiently epic to maintain immersion for nearly all players, and if CoT duplicated that I'd have no issues. I did complete a duo ITF before incarnates, and it also felt epic despite our violation of the minimum team size. However, the foe scaling did very little to help us, since only the ordinary fights were scaled down (as the video series depicts).
The tough calls begin as we try to keep it epic while also making it work for a wider audience as an intended option for accessing the lore at one's own pace, rather than a rare convergence of skill + knowledge gained from prior teamed runs + brute rage damage boost + defensive powerset with good DDR + offensive powerset with strong single target attacks + IO sets + incarnate level boost and powers. Appealing to that wider audience is, to me, the only way to justify the development effort to design the solo-achievable versions (or to make the difficulty system handle it automatically). Otherwise we'd just leave it unchanged from CoH (where scaling only helped in the already easier parts of the TFs) while choosing a low-cost improvement - replace the enforced minimum with a warning, as seen in Neverwinter dungeons and other games.
My "hardcoded spawns" term referred to anything combat-related in CoH that the player couldn't downgrade via with the slider and AV -> EB switch. So examples included:
- AVs in task forces, which didn't degrade to EBs under any conditions of which I am aware, unlike AVs in story arcs,
- Numina TF's final fight against "monster" Jurassic (which was a downgrade of the open zone Jurassic, even for a full team),
- Synapse TF's zone spawn of Babbage (which was optional, but immersion was best maintained by fighting it),
- ITF mission 2's "EB-grade" cyst crystals' HP and explosive strength,
- ITF mission 2's ambushes, since they contained EBs regardless of team size,
- ITF mission 3's special spawns (such as the EB cyclops/minotaur spawn seen at 3:40 in the 3rd video of that series),
- ITF mission 3's computer with massive hitpoints and boss robot activations triggered by HP thresholds (4:05 in 4th video),
- ITF mission 4's Romulus + triple Nictus fight (I didn't see MastaFlipp's video for this, perhaps it is private),
- the strength and frequency of mechanics in the incarnate trials that singled out one player (e.g. sequestration) or placed an area-denial field in melee range.
If the developers think it's worth the effort to provide rank-downgraded versions of any EBs and bosses that could appear in TFs/trials, I wouldn't oppose it. Providing it for AVs to EBs is justifiable to allow them to appear in non-TF content without causing a difficulty problem there. Your proposed options for difficulty settings to downgrade EB -> Boss and Boss -> Lieutenant rank would solve the solo TF difficulty hurdle of some "hardcoded spawns", but we'd have to decide on the exact method - would a boss (e.g. Praefactus Castrorum) be replaced by a deranked version (same appearance but with Lieut stats) or by a normal Lieut from the same faction (Centurion). Either has pros & cons. One would maintain an impressive look but risks an immersion break whenever a deranked boss dies very easily, the other simply looks less epic (as seen by the oddly weak ambushes in video 3).
If the remaining hurdles (the hardcoded spawns & mechanics still not adjusted via your expanded slider/options proposal) can be dealt with, then letting a wider audience experience the still-epic story of the TF at their own pace (not just skillful incarnates with IO sets) would be within our reach. I'm just not sure which approach is the better one for delivering to the wider audience - yours, or the alternatives mentioned earlier (parallel missions, better lore delivery on teams, AE versions of TF maps that allow lore delivery through a "solo TF"). Which is easier to develop and provides the most satisfying experience to the average player is not something I'm able to conclude.
I would like to see your ideas remain on the table as a possible solution, at least until we hear an initial update from the devs on their plans for the difficulty adjustment system. I feel I should apologize for my word count on this thread, but game design gets gritty and with the exception of Minotaur, we're only at its fringes so far. I've given enough input / feedback and will now wait to see what MWM reveals.
I don't want to belabor this too much, because I feel this thread has gone to good places far beyond my little ODC-induced language issues, but I have to get this off my chest. Call me crazy if you want to, but have a strong objection, on a purely philosophical level, with calling the gating of content based on team size a "punishment" to anyone. I grant you, it feels frustrating when you can't seem to be able to form a team when you want to. I grant that you may REALLY want to be able to try to solo a TF and they're not letting you. This is not a form of punishment, but rather it is a restriction.
Offering extra special free candy to the best GROUP of trick-or-treaters that show up to your door on Halloween as a reward for having the best group-themed set of costumes is not PUNISHING all the kids who showed up alone dressed as Chewbacca. It's rewarding someone else. You may feel jilted and ripped off when your brother gets get's to borrow the car and you don't, but they're not punishing you, they're rewarding him. There's a difference.
Offering purely optional content to those people willing to jump through whatever hoops they put in place as a form of gating is not punishment. Giving you XP debt when you get defeated is.
I apologize again for the rant.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I am glad that overall you see my point (please note I said see my point not agreed with it), but to maybe alleviate some of the concerns you had you can read the following before bowing out of the conversation.
and
In my previous post I described how the difficulty slider worked in CoX just to explain the system for those unfamiliar with it. I didn't actually change anything and in fact corrected a mistake I had made in thinking an EB would go to a boss....hence the apology.
Here a description of the difficulty slider (or notoriety system as it was called).
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Notoriety
In there you will find not only that it will downgrade bosses but show you how it does it.
Ok I understand now. Yes I will concede your point that there are a rare few times CoX had an encounter (like your computer example) or foes they added code/never added code to so it would ignore the mission slider (AV's in TF's) simply because they were in a TF. In those instances applying the notoriety system would not apply, so yes time would need to be spent on it by the devs if they wanted to correct that. I guess its a good thing I'm not asking the devs of CoX to go back and fix everything to make my idea possible and MWM can consider my suggestion BEFORE something is hardcoded. (please everyone do not hyper focus on that one sentence).
As I have maintained in many many many posts, if the encounter/mechanic is an interesting way to involve a team then I am all for it, if that mechanic is as simple as 'click at same time' or 'massive ball of HP/damage output' then its not interesting to me and would prefer those ideas be dropped in favor of more option to experience the content.
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