For Me, this was the single most important successful part of COH.
The entire social interface exactly as it was, made it so you could play for an indefinite amount of time with a full well balanced team whether you were in a super group or not. including the size of the teams. (8 Man Teams)
1. You could find or make a team easily.
2. you could see what the Arch types other players were.
3. You could see what level the players were.
(The "Filters" for searches were perfect)
4. You could Mentor others players if need to fill a gap if none were to be found for a specific role at you level.
(I might suggest a level restriction on "Mentoring" to help prevent too much "Farming or Power Leveling" perhaps 3-5 levels) (below the Mentors level (above is not an issue)
5. You could see all players server wide.
6. You could mark Your own status as to what your were interested in doing. (or not to be bothered at all)
7. Considering I rarely used voice chat, It seemed remarkably easy to communicate with your team or other players in text chat.
8. Everyone on the team received Experience points during the missions and also mission bonus as well. (whether they had that mission from a contact or not)
There are several other games currently available that I might play but the social interface is terrible and make it difficult to just jump in and have fun.
I hope that the duplication of the social interface is of a high priority for City of Titans.
Thanks for you time.
Cappy
I think part of that is due to the nature of the game. City of Heroes was an anomoly because it had no "end game" for a large part of the games life, so people were "forced" to reroll alts, so you ended up with players at all level spreads.
Anyway, lets go through this point by point because I think some of these are not directly linked to an "interface".
Not really. Not unless you resorted to asking each player if you could join them, or if you started one up via the global chat system. The "teaming" interface was bit of a sham to be honest.
Always handy, although I would have said that this would have been essential in City of Heroes, because of the cross roles that players could play in each AT. I would have preferred a better part when you could mark youself according to roles actually (Tank, DPS, Ranged DPS, Healer, Support, Control) with each being limited more or less to what Powersets you chose at the start (so a Fire/Emp Controller could mark the Support, Control, Heal boxes accordingly)
The levels (for me) were not essential, but they were nice though.
Your fix actually does nothing. All it does it change who is doing the "mentoring". If they go for the Super Side Kicking route, then this point is moot (and to be honest, SSK did help smooth out problems like this to a greater/lesser extent)
Unless they were hidden
I kept this set up as "no blind invites". I still got them on a regular basis. It appears that no one who was on my friends list could read properly. And yes, they were using the LFG interface in City of Heroes, so I know that it should have been viewable.
This is a chat box setup problem. And I have to admit, the CoX *layout* was handy, and because of that, I tend to prefer the ones where I can split the tabs apart, have multiple filtered windows open at the same time. Even then, the CoX one had some niggles that I wasn't too keen on. But that is another problem.
However, I mainly use text chat for in most of the games that I play with the exception of some specific circumstances, where I might not be talking, but instead *listening* to what I need to do. Eve Online is well known for this, but that is when you start getting 50+ players into a fleet and trying some tactics/calling specific targets/aligning.
The bonus XP for quest completion was nice, and yes... with the exception of that bonus, it was nice. Interestingly though, most games do the "share" quest thing, so those who are not on it, can do it. Also, depending on setting, you don't have to return to the contact to hand them in (or pick up the next one in the chain), unless it made *storyline* sense.
From my own personal experience though, the "teaming windows" in CoX needed improvements, some extra filters/options for the player (auto decline team invites for example would have been nice, unless they were in a common chat channel/guild/whatever). Also I found that I rarely used the "teaming window" interface to find people. I generally ended up resorting to global chat channels for teams.
On top of that, there were other unique problems in City of Heroes and the *incarnate* LFG window. I mean, who seriously thought it would have been a good idea to release it in a state where you couldn't queue up for an iTrial and also be in a mission at the same time?
I often tried to do content whilst waiting for other stuff to start up. However, this forced me to NOT do mission content whilst waiting for it to pop. So in the end it was a case of "wait in pocket D" for a group to form.
I have to agree with this. The interface was sensible in theory but mostly useless in practice. Most teams were formed by players periodically shouting LFG or LFM in broadcast chat, or even just by sending tells or blind invites to other players. The interface wasn't really useful for much of anything, in my opinion.
I feel that Dungeons and Dragons Online did it right. In their group interface, you could see available groups as whole units complete with a description of the group's ambitions and what kind of players they were looking for. You could request to join a group from this interface rather than having to ask anyone for an invite. It beautifully and effectively defined the discovery and formation of groups as an inherent game function.
Ideally, I'd like to see CoT have a similar interface to DDO that allows players to form and discover teams as a fundamental game function without resorting to spamming chat with their intentions.
Gosh, I am perplexed by the troubles you described here,
If I wanted to form a team or replace a team member that had to leave, I sent tells using the social interface, perhaps with the exception perhaps if someone shouted LFG, Then I would send an invite directly, Also LFM-lvl xx in shout worked well also. And of course using the search interface filters sending tells worked really well.
The other part of that that made it real easy was that you could "Right Click" on someones name in chat and do a variety of Tells, invites and other things.
Of course it is considered good manners to send a tell first. If someone didn't send me a tell I usually declined the invite. ( unless of course they were a friend perhaps)
Also you could see the team size of an individual and location of a player which allowed you to request to be on the team. You might do this where there wasn't any actual LFM shouts. For me a couple of tells and I was on a team.
It Never took more than a few minutes to get on a team or make a team.
Also the idea that Missions adjusted to your team size and level was great!
Starting of with a 2 or 4 man team sometimes was the way to go.
From level 1-50 getting on teams or making teams for regular missions..... Easy Breezy
Task force and End Game "sometimes" did take more effort.
Perhaps setting up the "Que system for Special events, Raids ETC.would be a great idea.
I have no Problems with Showing teams LFM as well This also is a good Idea. It works fairly well in Planetside2.
For most MMORPG you need a balanced team really. The open teams/Squads in PS2 doesn't always work in the favor of balance. The saving Grace perhaps is that members can change classes on the fly. Problem there is that it takes a long time to build up a class to be more useful. ( your on the map with lvl 1-100)
The Biggest job of the team leader is to form a well balanced team. So there would have to be some rejection. I hate to do that, after someone has joined a team.
(Of course the other big job of a team leader is to "Pace" your team according to it's members.)
Iv'e played D&D Online and it is far more complicated to get on a team for a lengthy round "regular quests".
Special door Quests do work well, But the team usually breaks up afterwords because everyone has different things that they have to go and do in the game, that is not "Team Friendly"
These games are NOT JUST for hardcore players, There is a big portion of the population that would simply like to come home from work and play for a couple of hours. And they will just as gladly pay a Monthly fee so they can get on, join a team and have fun for a while, without having to wait in a Que for a special door mission then to have to find a team again.
Quite honestly a good team leader could keep it fast paced and exciting for hours especially for folks that were new to the game, or didn't have much time to play.
Cappy