Tannim222 wrote:

Radiac, to use your example of the BAF, what if the solo player had to still stop escapiees, but it was only from one door or one door at a time. And there were less of them (let's not talk of their practical immunity to mez though). Goliaths could still be there, and special boss rules, only these NPCs adapt their strategies (read the powers they use and their special rules of the encounter) based on the team size.
*edit*
I should mention that even with the "scaled down" scenario above, it would be to the "minimum difficulty of the tf / raid" setting not the minimum difficulty of standard content. Even if the solo-BAF had one or more doors to run to / from and spawns running out, a solo-est should feel just as hectic and busy as a full team or multiple teams would feel.
The important part is the systems all scale with the players appropriately. Soloists and small teams still get access, but not the "full experience". Full teams / multiple teams get their more unique stylized encounters. Reward rates should be commensurate with the number of players.

Makes the completion less impressive. And may even make it harder to get people together to complete the full team experience.

Darth Fez wrote:

As I already argued in the "Teaming and Soloability" thread, this is the worst of both worlds in that it means that TFs are basically like normal missions: they scale with team size. It also removes the possibility that people can attempt to try to solo team content because, if they're not in a team, it becomes solo content. Which leads back to the original question, will there be team specific content?

The scenario I posted dictates that not just the spawn size scale with the team size like normal content, but also the content - side objectives, coordinated effort, and unique NPC encounter strategies. It is not just a normal mission scaled down or up. The mission changes dynamically.

Brand X wrote:

Makes the completion less impressive. And may even make it harder to get people together to complete the full team experience.

Care to elaborate? If the mission content itself scales with the team size to become more difficult, providing additional rewards comensurate with the increased team size and activities therein, would this not provide incentive for wanting to complete the full team experience - after all the full experience is only there when the full size of the designed content is there to engage it.

Brand X wrote:

Tannim222 wrote:
Radiac, to use your example of the BAF, what if the solo player had to still stop escapiees, but it was only from one door or one door at a time. And there were less of them (let's not talk of their practical immunity to mez though). Goliaths could still be there, and special boss rules, only these NPCs adapt their strategies (read the powers they use and their special rules of the encounter) based on the team size.
*edit*
I should mention that even with the "scaled down" scenario above, it would be to the "minimum difficulty of the tf / raid" setting not the minimum difficulty of standard content. Even if the solo-BAF had one or more doors to run to / from and spawns running out, a solo-est should feel just as hectic and busy as a full team or multiple teams would feel.
The important part is the systems all scale with the players appropriately. Soloists and small teams still get access, but not the "full experience". Full teams / multiple teams get their more unique stylized encounters. Reward rates should be commensurate with the number of players.

Makes the completion less impressive. And may even make it harder to get people together to complete the full team experience.

This is exactly it. For one thing, this DOES NOT allow the soloists to try to impress the pants off of everyone by doing harder team content by themselves, and in the process of taking away THAT mountain to climb, we're left with a game wherein a lot fewer 3-8 person team TFs ever actually happen.

You do the "solo BAF" and nobody's impressed, and what's worse, those of us what want to team up to do the team BAF will find it that much harder to actually form that team now because everyone's reaction to "wanna do the BAF?" will be "NO, go do it yourself, why do you need other people? NOOB"

The fact that you had mandated minimum team sizes in CoX actually added legitimacy to the act of looking for team mates. People KNEW you needed other people to be allowed to start the TF so they could immediately understand reason for LFT requests. Without that everything is harder to form, and TFs were hard to form in CoX to begin with at times, depending on the TF in question and the server you were on.

Assuming big raids like the Hami, Mothership, Underground Trial, etc that required like 20-50 people are still going to be a thing, why is it that soloists are being required to do that stuff in large crowd-sized groups (or not at all)? That is, why are we exempting the Hami Raid from the rule of making everything palatable to the soloist by scaling it down? And whatever that reason is, why is it that NONE of the 3-to-8-person TFs get the same exemption as the Hami and Mothership type stuff?

My personal preference is to allow the creation of SOME TFs that actually require some specific number of people to start them, do them, and finish them (i.e. "The Citadel TF requires a team of 5 to start, and you'll probably need about that to finish off the end boss, plus there are some tasks to perform in the middle that require at least 5 people to be in different places doing things in an orchestrated way."). In these TFs, if enough people drop out that you can't finish, then you (the leader) can invite replacements. If those replacements cannot be found or never show up for some reason, you fail the TF when you get to the part where you needed that given team size, and that part where you fail may very well be the end boss. I'm personally all for giving these things added difficulty and rewards commensurate with that. This gives all the players a mountain to climb in the sense that soloists can still try to get past the group parts then try to solo the end boss after enough power creep makes it borderline possible. It doesn't bother me in the slightest that the dedicated soloist needs to form a fake team to get started and to get past the "levers" parts, it really doesn't.

When a soloist says "I wish they'd make it more convenient for me to try to do 5-person content by myself." and you accommodate that to too large an extent, you end up basically making it solo content and totally removing some of the reasons for wanting to do it in the first place.

To me, soloists complaining that they're not able/allowed to do a 5-man TF on their own is like a guy saying "I'm a dyed-in-the-wool BMW driver, I will never drive anything that's not a BMW. So therefore BMW needs to make a Mustang because I feel excluded from the experience of driving a Ford Mustang by my own flat refusal to ever drive anything that's not made by BMW." You have two options, drive the Ford Mustang, or don't. BMW doesn't make a Mustang, and even if they did, it wouldn't be the same thing, not really.

Brand X wrote:

Tannim222 wrote:
Darth Fez wrote:
As I already argued in the "Teaming and Soloability" thread, this is the worst of both worlds in that it means that TFs are basically like normal missions: they scale with team size. It also removes the possibility that people can attempt to try to solo team content because, if they're not in a team, it becomes solo content. Which leads back to the original question, will there be team specific content?

The scenario I posted dictates that not just the spawn size scale with the team size like normal content, but also the content - side objectives, coordinated effort, and unique NPC encounter strategies. It is not just a normal mission scaled down or up. The mission changes dynamically.

Brand X wrote:

Makes the completion less impressive. And may even make it harder to get people together to complete the full team experience.

Care to elaborate? If the mission content itself scales with the team size to become more difficult, providing additional rewards comensurate with the increased team size and activities therein, would this not provide incentive for wanting to complete the full team experience - after all the full experience is only there when the full size of the designed content is there to engage it.

The fun thing about attempting and completing a TF was that it wasn't powered down for a solo player. It was still you versus an AV.
It's why taking on an EB was never as awesome as taking on an AV. EB's was CoH's was of weakening NPCs that were suppossed to be strong, just so the SOed character can solo it. Hearing "I soloed the EB Baracuda." was not impressive. Hearing "I soloed Baracuda as an AV!" was impressive. Someone soloing a GM was something to congratulate them on!
Now admittedly, part of it really came down to right IOs, right build (though more builds could do it than not) with the right IOs and all it took was doing some MIDS work and some math then patience on the players part.

I agree. Climbing Mount Everest is impressive. Climbing some mole hill everyone knows is a lot easier won't impress anyone.

Radiac wrote:

but I dislike the idea {snippity}

I don't like trying {snippity}

You know, it's considered to be ... unsporting ... to first say you want something and then turn around and say you don't want it when it's given to you straight up.

So I'm going to turn this right back onto you.

What DO you want?
What DO you like trying?

I know you've been spending lots of keystrokes talking up [b]Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt[/b] about the "power" of soloists to complain that they aren't able to monopolize the game's development and/or the attention (love?) of the Devs. But you've kind of taken those fears beyond reason and into self-parody (of the notion you're worried about, as opposed to of the poster) at this point, Radiac.

Empyrean wrote:

Then build TF-level group content NOT to have mechanics that forcefully require a team, but rather that is just so hard that it should not reasonably be completable without a team. And people like me will bang our brains out against that wall and understand if we can't get through (because it's working as intended) and GLORY if we do.

That's the gist of it. As I pointed out, I don't believe that there's nothing wrong with having one or two examples of content which mechanically require a minimum number of players, but it certainly should not be the norm. Team content should not [i]reasonably[/i] be able to be completed by a single player, but they needn't be prevented from attempting to do so. Certainly not to the point that one either need a full team to even enter the content or that the content is "downsized" to give the player what the devs think the player wants.

whiteperegrine wrote:

^^^ This.
this is, after all an MMO...I would think that the goal is to develop game play that promotes team play. if this is not the goal of the game then just make a simple offline single player game.
I think there definitely SHOULD be TF's/Raids that have a minimum required number of players. as mentioned, if someone wants to try an solo it, let them put a temp group together so they can get in the door of said TF/Raid and godspeed to em....but they should have the understanding that they more than likely will NOT be able to complete said TF/Raid and they shouldn't then cry that they can't solo said TF/Raid.
again, it's an MMO and should promote teaming vs soloing.

Usually agree with you, not sure I agree with some of this.

I never liked the "this is an MMO so soloers can just suck it" argument. I mostly solo and I don't like offline single player games. I think "this is an MMO, but soloers are welcome too and we'll accommodate them as far as it does't screw up group play" attitude makes more sense.

I can see making them raise a group just to make sure they get the point that they're trying to solo non-solo content and so that others don't get the impression that it should be solable.

And I agree that if you try to solo group content (which I personally enjoy the metagameish challenge of) , don't whine if you can't. It's no solo content.

But mostly soloing MMORPG's is a thing. It always has been. No need to try to "combat" it. It's not spamming or griefing.

Rather than do a thread necro, here's one of my [url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/spawn-size-scaling-forumla-team-play]original posts on team size scaling[/url] for City of Titans in which I advocate for running things on a Minion Budget.

Quote:

Team Scaling Formula:
(Team Leader Difficulty Level * 3) + (Players on Team) - 1 = Minion Budget per spawn group

Limitations:
Difficulty Level as used by the Team Scaling Formula can never be lower than the number of Players (actually) on the Team.

Minion Budget equivalencies (uses x! mathematical function except for Underlings):
[list][*]3 Underlings = 1 Minion
[*]1 Minion = 1 Minion (duh…)
[*]1 Lieutenant = 2 Minions
[*]1 Boss = 6 Minions
[*]1 Elite Boss = 24 Minions
[*]1 Arch Villain = 120 Minions
[*]1 Monster = 720 Minions
[*]1 Giant Monster = 5040 Minions[/list]
These equivalencies can be used as a guideline for raw Hit Point totals for each rank of Foe NPC.

Now, obviously I was thinking in terms of a 3:1 rather than a 4:1 [url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/gearing-ratios]Gearing Ratio[/url] baseline assumption, but "fixing" that part of the equation is simple enough. Just do this:

(Team Leader Difficulty Level * 4) + (Players on Team) - 1 = Minion Budget per spawn group

At a 3:1 Gearing Ratio, the formula tops out at a 31 Minion Budget for standard spawn groups for a full Team of 8 Players.
At a 4:1 Gearing Ratio, the formula tops out at a 39 Minion Budget for standard spawn groups for a full Team of 8 Players.

But the important thing is that a Team of 1 (ie. a soloist) wouldn't be facing the exact same degree of Minion Budget per spawn group as a full Team of 8.

hey, you already have a Gearing Ration thread over there! stop putting your chocolate in my peanut butter! :p

Radiac wrote:

Makes the completion less impressive. And may even make it harder to get people together to complete the full team experience.

This is exactly it. For one thing, this DOES NOT allow the soloists to try to impress the pants off of everyone by doing harder team content by themselves

Brand X wrote:

The fun thing about attempting and completing a TF was that it wasn't powered down for a solo player. It was still you versus an AV.
It's why taking on an EB was never as awesome as taking on an AV. EB's was CoH's was of weakening NPCs that were suppossed to be strong, just so the SOed character can solo it. Hearing "I soloed the EB Baracuda." was not impressive. Hearing "I soloed Baracuda as an AV!" was impressive. Someone soloing a GM was something to congratulate them on!
Now admittedly, part of it really came down to right IOs, right build (though more builds could do it than not) with the right IOs and all it took was doing some MIDS work and some math then patience on the players part.

Ok, a couple of things are definitely lost in translation here.

The thing about difficulty of a TF / Raid and the Solo player is that the solo player is not playing through the content as if it were scalled down to 1 player [b]like it was regular content. It is still starting off at a higher base difficulty setting/b].

It is the same thing with an AV. This isn't "AV scaled down to an EB scenario I am talking about here. The AV - which will be designed as a base to take on a group of players - will still be difficult for someone to solo. The only changes that would occur in the AV fight is the tactics the AV uses. This could make the solo fight just as hard for the soloist as much as a difficult fight for a group of players or even multiple groups. It doesn't change the fact that it is still an accomplishment to take on a class pawn that is designed for group-sized encounters solo.

Empyrean wrote:

whiteperegrine wrote:

I am saying that I believe there should be a few TF's that require a certain number of players to complete. not all need to be this way, but there should be at least a few that are bigger than the individual hero. we are playing a superhero MMO after all and on occasion there is that big crossover type event that occurs that needs all heroes on deck to be able to win the day.

Like BAF and Hami, sure! As long as you can also get everything you get from these through solo play (even if it takes longer through solo play), I completely agree.
AND I'll do them once in a while when I'm in the mood.

There are two parts to this I need to really stress:
The first part here is the concept of content that requires at large teams to accomplish - the term used was cross over events.

Events being key here. Typically in an MMO an Event is something that is distinctly different from a "raid" or "task force". Events should exist and they should certainly require multiple teams to accomplish.

The other part here is "Like BAF and Hami, sure! As long as you can also get everything you get from these through solo play (even if it takes longer through solo play),".

This places a requirement that solo versions of content be made that is completely separate from the task-force versions that provide rewards. Even on decent sized dev teams this is a tough order. On smaller teams, like we are, it will put off one or the other for a long time before one or the other becomes available, if ever. The problem then becomes players are upset because they feel either forced to play a different way than they want - and remember our stance is that solo play and multiple team play are both viable desires - to stand by that word we have to pull through.

The option then is to provide one set type of content with higher than normal base difficulty settings and modularlize the encounters systems for group sizes. One type of content, multiple variations of play.

whiteperegrine wrote:

was mentioned earlier, but I wouldn't have an issue on allowing a solo player into one of these larger TF's but, imo, they should not be able to complete it as they will not be powerful enough to complete it alone...or they can't be in two places at once in order flp the power switches to turn off the Dohicky-o-Doom.

Actually, the easiest way to "enforce" the failure of soloing is either a DPS check (you must do at least this much damage to get off this ride) or a Survival check (Big Bad pulverizes you way too easily/quickly when you don't have help) ... or both ... and simply set these parameters beyond the reach/range of an single solo PC.

So even if your PC can generate enough DPS to "make it" and defeat the Big Bad™, there's no build that can combine that with the ability to survive the incoming damage long enough to grind it out and achieve victory.

Alternatively, if you do have enough Survival to last an infinite amount of time against the Big Bad™, you still can't win because there's no build available with that feature which can dish out enough DPS on its own to succeed.

And then there are the "Squishy" Archetypes ...

I just want to reiterate that I'm all for having "scalable" content (and by that I mean content that can scale down to the 1-person team if needed), even "scalable" TFs and trials. I just DON'T want that to be the ONE AND ONLY type of TF/trial we ever get. Give us scalable stuff where your challenge is adjusted for your team size in various ways (and maybe kept up to higher standards in other ways), but ALSO give us TFs that require 4 people to pull levers in different rooms at the same time and have end bosses that cannot be defeated by less than maybe three REALLY well prepared toons, etc.

If a developer wants to design a TF that requires a team of at least 4 to be able to perform some of the tasks in the TF and then defeat Mag-BEAT-o at the end, then let them make that a "4-person TF" which doesn't scale down below 4. Have the scalable kind, but have the RIGID, non-scalable kind too, that's all I ask. Heck, if you can make a scalable TF, you ought to EASILY be able to make one where it always spawns for a team of 4 if the team size is less than 4. In places where the story line kind of screams "FOUR PEOPLE! One for each direction of the compass, get it?" then maybe you really do need 4 people to start, do, and finish the end boss for that one. A few examples of this type of TF sprinkled into the game is not a bad thing, I feel. That's all I'm saying.

Edit: As far as the rewards, I feel that the in-game player free market system should take care of that. Assuming the soloists that don't want to team up to do the Mag-BEAT-o TF want the Magnetic Widget you get at the end, I would hope the economy is such that some of those will be for sale by the players who got them. I would hope that anything one get's from the Mag-BEAT-o TF that is bound on pick up and cannot be traded is temporary or of finite number of uses, like a temp jetpack, a jelloman pet summon power, warburg nuke, etc. That is the stuff you'd get that makes you want to go redo the TF again to refill your jellomen, etc. Assunimg stuff like that isn't BAH-ROKEN powerful, it should be fine.

Crazy thought...

What if missions had maximum team sizes? Then it would depend on where you're going, and logically how many team members could go along.
Like, taking 7 friends in to a stealthy mission doesn't make much sense... but 2-4? Just about right.
Going through an evil lair with 8-10 where there's likely to be a horde of killer robots and death rays? Good idea.
Going to another dimension? You're likely to need closer to 15-20 people to handle the amount of mobs that are waiting on the other side of the portal...

Darth Fez wrote:

It is not an issue if the boss may be "smart" enough to use different tactics versus an individual opponent than against a full team (or perhaps even against four people). I'm all for a TF or such being a slightly different experience if I go in as a part of a team or solo. The key point is that the TF should not become "relatively easy" to make certain that a single player can complete the content. If the boss changing its tactics allows a single hero to beat it, when otherwise it requires a full team to beat it, then that change in tactics begins to look like anything but "smart".
The point remains that I would rather not see everything in the game be solo-able. Soloing a TF is not impressive if it is tuned to be solo-able. Nor is it team content if it is tuned to be solo-able. I'd like to have team content, meaning it is for teams only. Even if a single person can access that content their chances for success may very well be nil.

Agreed.

FFXIV may allow me to go into a dungeon solo, that does not mean I will succeed solo.

I don't think some people are quite catching on to what Tannim is suggesting. He's saying that the AV will only change it's tactics as to how it will handle the fight at the end of the TF. Not that it will be any easier to defeat the AV. I'm sure the AV will still have the same amount of HP, the same Defenses or Resistances, the same Regen rate, the same End Recov rate, and all the same powers. It will just switch it's tactics from fighting a large group of people to fighting just a single person. The question then becomes, "Do I have the right build to solo this AV?". Will the solo person be able to overcome the Regen rate? Will the solo person be able to overcome the Defenses or Resistances? Will the solo person be able to withstand all the amount of damage being dealt by the AV?

Basically it would be just like CoH where people had to build very specific builds in order to solo an AV or GM. It would also take an extremely long time to take down the AV and complete the TF. Where a group of people with the right ATs and powers could blitz through the ITF in about 30 minutes, it might take the soloist 4 and a half hours to complete. Furthermore, the soloist may need specific temporary powers and lots of inspirations in order to be able to complete it. Those temp powers may be powers that you'd have to earn from doing other content outside of the TF and could possibly have a timer as to how long you can keep that power.

I like the idea Tannim is suggesting. It breaks up the rule of having X people in order to just start the TF. It allows people from 1 to max team size to be able to go in and try to finish the TF, while still being difficult enough that you might find out that you need more people in order to complete it after all. Also allowing you to be able to invite people to the TF at any time during the TF, so if someone drops you can look for another to replace them or if your friend happens to log in after the second mission of the TF you can still invite them to the TF to join you.

AoE's or VoE's had a broader range of hitting multiple targets, but did less damage. Single Target Damage was much greater. So instead of a soloist being hit with a less damaging AoE/VoE attacks, they are now being targeted with more Single Target powers that will do greater damage to them. How does this make it more easy for the Soloist? If anything it would make it harder as they are taking more damage per second than they would be if there were AoE/VoE powers being thrown about. Not to mention any Debuff powers that will be associated with the Single Target attacks. Also this will not be a Twitch mechanic style of combat where we can dodge attacks. It will be similar to CoH's attack style which means you will have to roll a die against whether or not you dodge the attack.

Also, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, I believe AoE/VoE attacks will work differently in CoT. I believe there is talk about the damage being greater at the epicenter of the AoE/VoE attack and diminishing as it radiates outwards to the edges of the attack. So that could have an affect on the battle between the soloist and the AV. I'm guessing that the Devs will design the AV to react differently to the situations it's up against. Soloist means it has a chain of attacks of Single Target Damage that does the maximum amount of damage over a specific amount of time to annihilate the threat as quickly as possible. Team means the AV is more prone to try to toss around more AoE/VoE attacks to try to do as much damage to the entire team as it possibly can while also trying to single out the most damaging threat to eliminate.

I would point out that the community of City of Heroes found value in stupidly hard to solo objectives ... such as the Rikti Pylons in the War Zone. Quite often, those Pylons were used for benchmarking tests of DPS Output and Survival Potential.

obviously, I am not a fan of all TFs being soloable, just seems off as it promotes solo play versus team play. that being said, I will back off the subject for the time being until more is known. thank you all for this lively discussion as I thoroughly enjoyed it. :)

Allowing for someone to enter content alone that mandates a team for completion eve if it I stated will harbor nothing but I'll will toward developers. It is basically allowing someone to shoot themselves in the foot. Especially I'd the devs go on record stating that the desire to play solo through difficult content is just as viable as the desire to have teams play through difficult content.

That being said, allowing people to join in the TF after it is started can alleviate certain problems. As will being on a single server to minimize low population times in finding other players willing to join. However the mandate that multiple,e people is required can still leave people out of participating in content and saying that it is a must can be viewed just as poorly as go solo it noob as is go get a team noob,

If the rewards given for soling a TF vs 1 team or 3 teams completing it are commensurate for each, then there is always incentive to get a group going for the greater rewards.

People said the that players being able to ramp up difficulty of standard missions would promote solo play over teams. Teams still happened. The game rewarded teaming appropriately. TF requiring a minimum team size resulted in players working around it anyway and resulted in more complaints over the restrictions being mandatory at all. The devs admitted as much but it was part of old design that wasn't something that could be ripped out.

So, what is better, a player starting a team to only get rid of them and complete a TF solo and get many of the rewards a team would get (like they did in the old game so far as merits and certain drops, even if not at the same rate)? Or a a player being able to start a TF solo, have it be at a higher difficulty than stand missions, get rewarded for the greater effort of play, but the same content scale up to even greater difficulties for teams and reward teaming appropriately? And allowing the second to happen saves dev time in creating additional comparative content that players can solo for special rewards and avoid the complaints when said content is delayed, or never happens at all.

Look at the difficulty this way (using the old game)
Standard content can scale from 1 to 8 players, from -1 to + 5 levels of difficulty.
TF difficulty scale from 4 (just going with this for ease of example) to 8 players from -1 to + 5 levels of difficulty.

New system (using old numbers for examples sake):
Standard content - no change
TF : can be started solo but actual difficulty is at x4 use of the player difficulty adjustments can be increased to full team, -1 to + 5 levels
However TF can scale beyond full team to multiple teams
Objectives adjust to actual number of players
Rewards scale with actual number of players
Npcs adjust tactics based on number of players (if the AI is designed like it is intended this can happen anyway even for standard content!)

Okay, what about this angle: The Katie Hannon Effect

If you design a TF such that it could be soloed, assuming some outrageously well-tweaked build, but in solo spawn mode still takes like 6 hours to solo it. But if you get a team of like 4 it takes a lot less time (say 1 hour), then if you scale up to 8 you don't really save any time, as it still spawns to the point where it still takes about 1 hour, but maybe the thing generates enough extra bosses or whatever in the mobs that that everybody walks out at the end with that much more INF, XP, etc.

I mean, People LOVE LOVE LOVE the "efficient" team size, whatever that is. If these TFs take a really long time to do with only 1-2 people but a more reasonable amount of time (say an hour or less) to do with the "optimal team size it was designed for", whatever that is on a TF by TF basis (4 for this one, 6 for that one, maybe 8 for the other one, etc), I think people will tend to self-select the optimal team size eventually, probably without any prompting by the devs.

So that leaves me with the question: are we scaling the TFs to the soloist AND scaling them such that the soloist will finish in about the same amount of time as the team of 4 or 6 or 8? And will the soloist end up acquiring as much INF, XP, and swag at the end as he would have were he on a larger team? If you do that, I predict us teamer-uppers will find it very difficult to get a team of 4 together for a TF most of the time, because we'll all be soloing them instead. Because waiting 10-30 min to get everyone together to form a TF is a boring tedious logistical drag that most people don't want to deal with when just starting the thing on their own is the always-available path of least resistance.

Radiac wrote:

So that leaves me with the question: are we scaling the TFs to the soloist AND scaling them such that the soloist will finish in about the same amount of time as the team of 4 or 6 or 8?

Possible, if we are using the old game as an example, Some TFs were completed by solo players in as much time as teams did because the difficulty slider scaled up to a full team. With the system I'm proposing, its possible, but not probable in every scenario.

Radiac wrote:

And will the soloist end up acquiring as much INF, XP, and swag at the end as he would have were he on a larger team?

Up to a certain point, the xp gains may be similar from spawn to spawn. After a certain point it won't because the solo player wouldn't be able to adjust their difficulty beyond a single team where as I'm envisioning TFs that are scalable up to multiple teams - TF are adhoc 'raids'.

However, remember, the rewards are weighted toward completion and increase based on achievements. If the TF missions provide increased difficulty in main / side objectives based on the actual number of players - the ending rewards will be much greater than solo players can achieve on their own regardless of their personal difficulty setting. So too can we scale the tangible rewards (drops) appropriately based on actual number of players. The larget the number of actual number of players, the more there can be to do, the more there will be rewards.

Even if the solo player somehow completed 'faster' because they did less than 3 teams of people playing through did, the solo players rewards won't match the investment of time for those 3 teams worth of people. But the ideal scenario is that the solo version of the TF is just as difficult for the solo player as it is for teams to complete (time wise), but players always seem to find a way of doing the unexpected. This isn't bad per se, ingenuity should be rewarded after all.

Radiac, I understand your concerns, and the description of a "threat so big that..." probably falls within the realm of an Event. Events would certainly mandate up to an entire instanced 'zone' woth of players to fully complete, whether this is an escalating encounter or a single ginormous threat. And for this type of content, teaming may not be a necessity - it may be possible to use ad-hoc teaming by location of the encounter for everyone to automatically be considered a 'team' who is involved with a given encounter of such magnitude.

The opposite side of the your argument - anyone can play alone and do practically most content alone, but everyone is forced to team to do X to get Y. Why should everyone beforced to do X to get Y? It defeats the purpose that a single character can become the 'super man' of his own story if that type of play is so desired.

Remember, just because the TF can be started solo doesn't mean that everyone can automatically play through it solo, it would still take players using particular tacticsand probably (I would say most definitely) specialized builds and the TF would be clearly be marked as more difficult and recommended to have a team. Then if the player still goes through the warnings and finds themselves hitting a brick wall, they can use the LFG tool to find some help (including the Help Line if we get one in!).

Tannim222 wrote:

Why should everyone be forced to do X to get Y?

It's called [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality][b]Cause And Effect[/b][/url].

It's one of those things that people are assumed to understand when they play online games. You know, stuff like [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_permanence][b]Object Permanence[/b][/url] and other "difficult to grasp" concepts.

Seriously. If people can't figure out why they have to do X to get Y they should just go "play" [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_Quest]Progress Quest[/url] and have done with it.

Radiac wrote:

Of course, on an immersion level, some badguys (e.g. Galactus) should be so powerful and tough that you can't solo them, like ever. I still feel like the game needs mountains to climb like that. I mean Galactuis isn;t going to feel like Galactus if your basic punch and kick karate toon can defeat him solo. That's just bad Galactus design right there, I feel.

Well, if you have to give Galactus stats to beat up on, you could do this:

Redlynne wrote:

1 Giant Monster = 5040 Minions

If that's not enough, there's always ...

1 Galactus = 40,320 Minions

... which would be the next step up on the scale I posted up-thread (1*2*3*4*5*6*7*8=40320).

Idiot Soloist: But I should be able to solo Galactus!

Galactus: [url=http://www.thefump.com/lyrics.php?id=1046][b][size=36]* CHOMP! *[/size][/b][/url]

Revive at Hospital? (Y/N)

If I'm interpreting you correctly, and this "Y" we're talking about is some reward for doing some TF, like a Synthetic HamiO for instance, then nobody's being forced to do anything to "get Y" as you put it. Not if "Y" is a commodity that can be traded on the market like the Synthetic HamiOs were. The soloist that cannot defeat the Fab 4 and then Lord Recluse solo can just grind for INF (or whatever it's called) and buy that Synthetic HamiO on the market. The ones that dropped at the end were random anyway, so chances were that even doing the content didn't get you the exact thing you wanted, like ever. Let's say you like to solo and you do that. I think the rare IO recipes or whatever you get from doing that might not be off of the same reward table that the TFs use, but even if they're not, there should still be the ability to trade commodities earned through solo play for others earned through team play on the market. If that's not the case, the market isn't doing it's job.

That said, I would like to have three levels of threat in the game, A) soloable (e.g. The Scorpion, Electro, etc), B) non-soloable but still not Galactus (e.g. The Sinister Six taken in it's entirety, The Masters of Evil, etc), and then C) non-soloable and HUGE, like Galactgus, or the Kree Empire invading Earth etc. You can scale up any of these, but please don't ever scale any of them down to the point where they drop into a lower bracket.

I want to live in a fake world where I can say "You might think you're good because you defeated Mysterio, and we all agree that nobody's going to solo Gaalctus, but nobody can defeat the Sinister Six solo either, can't be done. Not happening." And be right, at first. Then after like 8 years of power creep later a soloist actually figures out a way to finally do it, maybe, if at all.

What I don't want is to have to dicker about "Wait, do you mean the Sinister Six that spawns for an 8-person team, or the 2-person version?" While they may change their tactics based on the team facing them, they should still have the same stats, etc, as discussed, and if those stats make them unbeatable by the soloist, or even a team of three, GOOD. As long as they're THAT tuff, as they probably should be, being "THE Sinister Six", then I personally don't care anymore whether you let soloists frustrate themselves trying to do the impossible or gate it behind a "team size X needed to start TF" wall. The inherent minimum difficulty level, which the players will quickly find out and discuss on boards, will take care of the team-building needs, I hope. And of course in any event the description of the thing by the NPC that gives it ought to indicate a suggested number of people, if nothing else.

I'm absolutely fine with letting people invite more people during the TF if they need to. I now think CoX should have allowed that, as it would have made life easier. No idea how to equitably distribute rewards at the end, but I'll let the devs handle that.

In the final analysis, though everyone has their own likes and dislikes among the stuff there is to do in a game, the fact is, nobody's holding a gun to anyone' head and saying "You must do all of the content there is to do." If a player decides not to do some stuff because it requires a team and they don't want to roll like that, that decision rests on that person, I feel. This is an MMO, there will be other people. Let's not act like that isn't going to happen.

I mean, a soloist demanding that everything be soloable in an MMO is like a guy who walks into a crowded restaurant, get's a table for 4 all to himself, orders nothing to eat, spends no money, drinks the free water, then leaves after an hour. That guy came to the wrong place for whatever it was that he was trying to get out of life there. It is not the restaurant that has inappropriate demands when it expects the guy to move to a smaller table, or the bar, and/or actually buy something or else give up the table to someone who will.

Tannim, I get what you are saying. I like it. I'm not sure others are getting it though. I'm also not sure just how you or I could really explain it any differently. I tend to think that people are just seeing this as you want to make everything soloable, when that's not really what you are trying to do. Instead you are just leaving it open for people to "attempt" to solo the content if they so desire, but not guaranteeing any success in doing so. Although if one does succeed, "YAY! Bragging rights!".

I think we're on the same page now, Tannim.

Also, the Reward Merits were another "level the playing field" factor in CoX. Those and Hero Merits. I did that a LOT of soloing for Hero Merits right after the game went F2P actually. That was one of the perks of being a VIP to me, I got to take advantage of tip missions and get Hero Merits to get rares I wanted.

Reward Merits and Hero/Villain Merits. I remember farming those on my Level 50 characters on Virtue whenever I decided I wanted to respec and had to build something like 40 new Invention Set Enhancements. Luck of the Gambler? Far cheaper to spend a couple of days running Tips to get the Merits. I could put my PCs onto a rotation and after a couple of weeks scrape together enough resources to outfit myself in just about anything short of purples (which I had no inclination to use anyway). I think the longest time I had to wait to complete out a new build was like 3-4 weeks for an extremely extensive makeover that was almost a complete replacement.

That solo player who pays to play everything can play everything, the only thing keeping them from playing everything is themself.

This is an MMO some content should be team level difficult and stay there. This goes double for the solo players who may actually want the bragging rights to say they built themselves up to the point to solo it.

For example...CoH's ITF. The only thing it was lacking, was a way for a soloist to enter the TF solo. It however should never scale to make the end AVs easier for the soloist to beat.

The option shouldn't even be there. The option to try and run and possibly fail but also possibly succeed should be there, by allowing the soloist to enter the TF.

If you make it easier, then you may as well just give them the reward with a run down of the storyline. There is nothing wrong with hard even impossible to solo content. This does not limit the soloist pay to play player...they soloist limits themself.

I will probably be one of those unlucky few stuck playing solo. Time constraints (I will be going through college by the time the game comes out and wrings out the launch hiccups), lack of IRL friends playing the game (only one of my friends is aware of CoH's existence and this game, the rest play World of Warcraft), and not wanting to go through pugs to find the rare interesting people (although from what I recall this occurred more often in CoH).

Unless some supergroup with some really friendly people picks me up like it occurred in the past with CoH (a supergroup built out of a family and friends picked me up and taught me how to play the game) or some friendly forumites do I will likely be playing solo...

oOStaticOo wrote:

Tannim, I get what you are saying. I like it. I'm not sure others are getting it though. I'm also not sure just how you or I could really explain it any differently. I tend to think that people are just seeing this as you want to make everything soloable, when that's not really what you are trying to do. Instead you are just leaving it open for people to "attempt" to solo the content if they so desire, but not guaranteeing any success in doing so. Although if one does succeed, "YAY! Bragging rights!".

This is what I'm saying, and sometimes I think it's what Tannim is saying, but then it sounds like Tannim is arguing against that point and saying that such content will be scaled down for solo players. Perhaps the miscommunication stems from the fact that we're starting from the premise that a TF is tuned to require a full team while Tannim's premise, apparently, is that TFs will be tuned to require less than a full team (4 people or half a full team, to go with CoH's 8-person teams). While TFs will never scale below requiring four people, they will scale up if a team has more than four people.

In other words, the difficulty won't start at "8" and be reduced to "4" for a solo player. The difficulty starts at "4" and increases from there depending on the size of the team. (Keeping in mind that a CoT "4" might be more challenging than a CoH "8".) The higher the difficulty the greater the rewards, with a higher difficulty setting being available for a team (or teams) than it is for a solo player.

To make what Tannim is saying even more (painfully?) obvious ...

You remember those [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Difficulty]Difficulty Settings[/url]? The ones that ranged from -1x1 all the way up to +4x8?
The ones that let you decide on the Level scaling of the Foes you'd face, so they could be -1 to +4 of your Level?
The ones that let you decide how "big" the size of your "Team" was even when Soloing ... so that you could be anything from Team Size 1 to Team Size 8 when Solo?

Yeah ... THAT. Remember?

Tannim is saying that even if a Task Force [i]can be started by a Soloist[/i] the Task Force content would be designed with a Minimum Team Size scaling [b]above 1[/b] even if there's only one PC undertaking the Task Force. This would effectively and functionally be NO DIFFERENT from moving the Difficulty Slider on Team Size from 1 through 8.

To make this even more obvious for those who this is flying over the heads of ...

[url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Old_Positron_Task_Force]Positron Task Force[/url]: Minimum Team Size 3
In the context of this thread, this would mean that even when played Solo, the content scales itself to no lower than a Team Size of 3, regardless of PC Difficulty Settings.

[url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Synapse_Task_Force]Synapse Task Force[/url]: Minimum Team Size 4
In the context of this thread, this would mean that even when played Solo, the content scales itself to no lower than a Team Size of 4, regardless of PC Difficulty Settings.

[url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Sister_Psyche_Task_Force]Sister Psyche Task Force[/url]: Minimum Team Size 5
In the context of this thread, this would mean that even when played Solo, the content scales itself to no lower than a Team Size of 5, regardless of PC Difficulty Settings.

[url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Citadel_Task_Force]Citadel Task Force[/url]: Minimum Team Size 6
In the context of this thread, this would mean that even when played Solo, the content scales itself to no lower than a Team Size of 6, regardless of PC Difficulty Settings.

[url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Manticore_Task_Force]Manticore Task Force[/url]: Minimum Team Size 7
In the context of this thread, this would mean that even when played Solo, the content scales itself to no lower than a Team Size of 7, regardless of PC Difficulty Settings.

[url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Dr._Quaterfield_Task_Force]Dr. Quaterfield Task Force[/url]: Minimum Team Size 8
In the context of this thread, this would mean that even when played Solo, the content scales itself to no lower than a Team Size of 8, regardless of PC Difficulty Settings.

The [b]difference[/b] between City of Heroes and City of Titans would be ...

In City of Heroes, the Minimum Team Size was required to even be allowed to START the Task Force.
In City of Titans, a Soloist could START any Task Force on their own, but the content of that Task Force would only [i]scale down towards[/i] "Solo Difficulty Settings" [b][i]but so far[/i][/b] ... and that would be determined by the Minimum Team Size STANDARD set for the Task Force [b]as designed[/b].

So rather than "dragging everything DOWN to Soloist Standards" ... instead ... in order to complete that content [i]Soloists would need to UP THEIR GAME to meet Group Standards[/i].

Why this is such a difficult concept for people to grasp is really quite beyond me.

You don't devolve the content DOWN to the Soloist level. Instead you FORCE the Soloists to [i]rise to the challenge[/i] of meeting a specified minimum level of Group Intended Content.

And if the Soloists whine and complain and kick and cry while waving their puny widdle fists in the air over not being [b]able[/b] to Solo group content [i]even when they're ALLOWED TO[/i], it is entirely right and proper to point at them, laugh and mock them resoundingly for being the spoiled brats that they are ... and then move on to matters that can possibly be taken seriously.

This is one of those "I murdered my parents and now expect to get sympathy/leniency because I'm an orphan!" kinds of easy decisions, people. C'mon, this is nowhere NEAR as difficult as you're all making it out to be.

Agreed on it rarely being a problem to fill out a Task Force on Virtue. Oh there were times when it wasn't possible to get enough people together for some of the lesser played Task Forces ... Positron, Sister Psyche, Manticore, Numina ... Dr. Quaterfield ... but it was never for lack of Players being online at that time, just for a lack of interest among the Players online at the time to join in. I'd imagine that with only a single (borrowing ESO terminology here) Megaserver that has everyone playing together on it, being able to find other Players [i]in your preferred timezone[/i] would be even less of an issue than it was for City of Heroes.

I remember playing on Virtue and it being quite common to have people advertising that they were forming a Team to run a Task Force in that particular zone, with Imperious Task Forces being practically a "rolling event" in their own right. It was almost like wait up to 30 minutes and you'll be able to join an ITF.

Empyrean wrote:

It does mean that I need lots and lots of soloable content.

People like to forget that in most MMOs, most of the content is solo-able. In CoH, whether before the Incarnate content or after it was implemented, how much content existed that could be played solo versus the amount of content that existed that could only be (or was designed to be) managed by teams?

On a general note I'll remark that a request for some team-oriented content is certainly not any kind of "soloer hate".

So long as things are staying the same strength and whatnot and the challenge remains the same I'm fine with people being able to solo pretty much anything. I soloed most of the time myself but that wasn't to avoid teaming it was to see if my builds were able to survive against the various enemy groups at high difficulty ratings. So I think I'm alright with this since there won't be any health drops or damage reductions. Though I still feel like maybe giant monsters should need groups short of some ludicrously, IO'd god character that has been around for a year or two.

Radiac wrote:

You can scale up the Scorpion from EB to AV via difficulty sliders, for all I care.

+2 or above makes the EB into an AV? ;D

Redlynne wrote:

To make what Tannim is saying even more (painfully?) obvious ...
You remember those Difficulty Settings? The ones that ranged from -1x1 all the way up to +4x8?
The ones that let you decide on the Level scaling of the Foes you'd face, so they could be -1 to +4 of your Level?
The ones that let you decide how "big" the size of your "Team" was even when Soloing ... so that you could be anything from Team Size 1 to Team Size 8 when Solo?
Yeah ... THAT. Remember?
Tannim is saying that even if a Task Force can be started by a Soloist the Task Force content would be designed with a Minimum Team Size scaling above 1 even if there's only one PC undertaking the Task Force. This would effectively and functionally be NO DIFFERENT from moving the Difficulty Slider on Team Size from 1 through 8.
To make this even more obvious for those who this is flying over the heads of ...
Positron Task Force: Minimum Team Size 3
In the context of this thread, this would mean that even when played Solo, the content scales itself to no lower than a Team Size of 3, regardless of PC Difficulty Settings.
Synapse Task Force: Minimum Team Size 4
In the context of this thread, this would mean that even when played Solo, the content scales itself to no lower than a Team Size of 4, regardless of PC Difficulty Settings.
Sister Psyche Task Force: Minimum Team Size 5
In the context of this thread, this would mean that even when played Solo, the content scales itself to no lower than a Team Size of 5, regardless of PC Difficulty Settings.
Citadel Task Force: Minimum Team Size 6
In the context of this thread, this would mean that even when played Solo, the content scales itself to no lower than a Team Size of 6, regardless of PC Difficulty Settings.
Manticore Task Force: Minimum Team Size 7
In the context of this thread, this would mean that even when played Solo, the content scales itself to no lower than a Team Size of 7, regardless of PC Difficulty Settings.
Dr. Quaterfield Task Force: Minimum Team Size 8
In the context of this thread, this would mean that even when played Solo, the content scales itself to no lower than a Team Size of 8, regardless of PC Difficulty Settings.
The difference between City of Heroes and City of Titans would be ...
In City of Heroes, the Minimum Team Size was required to even be allowed to START the Task Force.
In City of Titans, a Soloist could START any Task Force on their own, but the content of that Task Force would only scale down towards "Solo Difficulty Settings" but so far ... and that would be determined by the Minimum Team Size STANDARD set for the Task Force as designed.
So rather than "dragging everything DOWN to Soloist Standards" ... instead ... in order to complete that content Soloists would need to UP THEIR GAME to meet Group Standards.
Why this is such a difficult concept for people to grasp is really quite beyond me.
You don't devolve the content DOWN to the Soloist level. Instead you FORCE the Soloists to rise to the challenge of meeting a specified minimum level of Group Intended Content.
And if the Soloists whine and complain and kick and cry while waving their puny widdle fists in the air over not being able to Solo group content even when they're ALLOWED TO, it is entirely right and proper to point at them, laugh and mock them resoundingly for being the spoiled brats that they are ... and then move on to matters that can possibly be taken seriously.
This is one of those "I murdered my parents and now expect to get sympathy/leniency because I'm an orphan!" kinds of easy decisions, people. C'mon, this is nowhere NEAR as difficult as you're all making it out to be.

This is what I want...this, I could get behind. I don't want the content made easier to accommodate my desire to run it with fewer than the recommended number, I want the option to challenge it with less than the recommended number of people at that minimum difficulty...or harder, if we so choose. And it's not necessarily about soloing it, either. Dispari, Godchild, Grey, and I used to run the ITF with just the four of us. We'd all pick a direction and meet in the middle. It was a test for our builds, which we spent a great deal of time creating and getting all of the pieces for. We enjoyed it.

I really like what I hear as far as game direction that is coming from the developers. They genuinely seem to be trying to increase everyone's options for how to play, while trying not to lock players into a particular way to play. (This is pointed toward no one at all) I never understood the, "You are ruining my game because you don't want to play like I think you should" voices. I personally would find any MMO that had a community with united and unvaried views very boring. I know that this is too much to ask from most people, but I wish for an environment that has people being happy for their supported play style without trying to limit others. I think we can have that and very much look forward to this going live. I don't see how allowing anyone to start a TF with smaller than recommended team size impacts those that prefer a recommended team size. I see win. It allows everyone to do what they like and even makes it more attractive to team, as from what I read the rewards will be higher for doing so.

Guild Wars 2 has a maximum of five per team and that made arranging teams strangely weird. I am in a small guild, but even then we are often faced with the conundrum of who to leave out. The eight person teams from City of Heroes were not as bad, in my expirience. So I too am in favor for a maximum team size of eight. If one is needed. If there is no real limit, like Radiac suggested, people will find out what their maximum comfortable team size is and take about that much other players in their team.

If your team size is 8 and you have the problem of who to leave out, that assumes you have at least 9 people wanting to do the same thing. In that case, those 9 people could divide into two teams of 4-5 each and maybe pick up some random people to pad out to 8 each. THAT isn't, therefore, a problem. Assuming a lot of TFs will be able to be completed by 4-5 person teams, you could just split into 2 teams and not get any more people and still roll that TF with two different teams doing their own copies of it in parallel.

On the other hand, if 5 is your upper limit, and you have 6, that leaves you with two 3-person teams, which may well leave both sub-groups in need of at least one more to do the TF at all. CoX was not a Holy Trinity game and I doubt CoT will be, so I can see TFs needing 4+ people to reliably be able to complete them being a thing. Tannim was saying they could make the TFs scalable like the iTrials to the point where they're all good for like 4-24 people maybe. For this reason, and because it was what I was used to in CoX, I want 8 as a team size max if we're going to have that at all. Nothing less.

Izzy wrote:

Most Wanted:
Meat Shield (plus a backup). 2 players for that
Most Desired:
Damage (at least one). 2+ players for that, endurance strain is too much for one, or 2, maybe 3.
Most Coveted:
De/Buff with Holds/Heals/etc... (a backup needed while leveling up, endurance strain is too much). +2 players for that.
2 + 3 + 2 = Lucky Number 7. :D

using your breakdown...I would go with
2 + 4 + 2 or
2 + 3 + 3
sooo, my lucky number is 8! :)

Of course, in the "You can do the TF with anything from 4-24 people" universe, having 9 people isn't a problem in the first place, and neither is 6 for that matter.

This circles me back to the idea that the team size max, if there is one, is only going to be a thing you care about in places where you can't go above it, which I assume will be the basic NPC-given missions. Assuming those have a limit of "one full team, no more" then that is probably the only place where the team size truly matters at all, and as such making it a larger number is more helpful for logistical purposes. I would like to be able to bring anything from 1 - 8 people to do a mission. I feel that's a good range, because I feel that getting a full 8 isn't going to happen often (at least not for the average PUG doing missions), so you frequently don't even notice that upper limit is there. And, as I said above, having to split a team of 8+ still eaves you with two teams of 4+, which is probably enough to still do the content you want to do. I don't think it will be a problem to make NPC-given missions scalable from 1 to 8, because that's what CoX did after all. Conversely, I think the lower you go down from 8 the more noticeable and annoying that upper limit becomes. I think we can all agree that an upper limit of 2 is way to low, as is 3. Personally I don't see why anyone would want to make the upper limit anything lower than 8. With a limit of 8 you can still have teams of 4+ and do missions with PUGs at an appropriate scale. Heck, with a full 8 you're probably more than able to defeat the AV boss at the end of the mission arc.

1 Tank
1 Scrank
1 Scrapper
1 Blaster
1 Controller
1 Debuffer
1 Healer
1 Buffer

Eight!