Redlynne wrote:

Well let's hope for friendlier healers in COT

Hyperbolt wrote:

Redlynne wrote:

Well let's hope for friendlier healers in COT

It's a two-way thing. Simple concept, if you don't care about other's in the group (especially those you rely on for heals/support) then why should they care about you?

OathboundOne wrote:

As someone who tends to play healers in MMOs, I can tell you from experience that (in general) people don't start playing support if they're like that second picture (because why would you? If you didn't give a damn about your groupmates, why play the primary role that's SUPPOSED to care? Just play DPS), you just END UP that way because of the craptastic way you get treated a lot of the time.

Quoted for Truth

Although I don't blame others for treating us healers that way, since it is primarily out of ignorance rather than spite that they don't take healers' concerns into account.

Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

"Stand in the fire to stay warm!"

That is what I used to do in one of the braziers in front of Atlas Park City Hall!

*purrs wistfully*

Personally, I loved healing my guildies, even though I had to work hard to develop AK's Peacebringer skills to make her an efficient utility healer. I *finally* felt more efficient when I got the Incarnate AoE Heal!

I guess that I must have been at least a moderately decent healer since my guildies gave me their extra Numina's IOs and even a few purple IOs.

BTW, I loved the vid in the OP. It was *so* true! PuG players treated me disrespectfully at times. I guess they wanted a Lobster Tank, and totally ignored the mysterious healings they got.

*shrugs*

I remember one time I was a rad/rad defender way back in CoH which I played as more of a blaster, I just liked rad/rad but it wasn't available as a blaster set.
Anyway I was in a team doing frost fire, we were kicking butt all through it and my character was dealing a lot of the damage (as far as I could tell). We get to the boss door and someone says to me "Hazard (as my character was Project Hazard) we're going to need you to be a healer for this."
I had one healing ability. The basic one. No enhancements. No nothing. I hadn't even used it the entire time. So I say to them "Have you seen me? I'm pretty much a blaster! I don't do healing." Then someone else is like "lol, you go in first then."

So I say "Fine!" And I ran on in there leap into the air, click on my hover power, and start laying into FrostFire with my six recharge slotted basic blast (it more or less fired every time the animation was done. I made it an auto attack) the group stunned for a second followed shortly after...

And we won. Easily. No one even got close to going down.

Good times...

Brand X wrote:

OathboundOne wrote:
Brand X wrote:
blacke4dawn wrote:
Hyperbolt wrote:
Redlynne wrote:
Well let's hope for friendlier healers in COT
It's a two-way thing. Simple concept, if you don't care about other's in the group (especially those you rely on for heals/support) then why should they care about you?
By that logic, if the healer cared about the others in the group, they'd speed up.
I've played in lots of MMOs, I only cared for what CoH may have considered raid content, but what I know is, people always want fast, they never want slow. :p
Just because people want to go fast doesn't mean that it's sustainable.
If you're going too fast and pulling too many mobs, not letting your support recover their resources, etc., that's your fault. Not theirs.
Yes if the healer is capable of going faster but just chooses not to, that's on them. That person is a bad sport and a poor teammate. But if you're at the point where your healer's playing at the max of their capability or skill level and you keep trying to push even harder, and soemthing goes wrong, that's not their fault.
But then there's the upset healers, when the DPS was self-sustainable. "You don't need me!" or the support that said "I don't heal!" "But Kinetics has a heal!" "Yeah, but I never use it, because I'm not a healer. No speed boost either, that's just annoying to pass out." :p
Though, after IOed out, I was nice and went "I sustain end, speed boost won't do anything but let me run faster, won't even help my dps"

So... we can go back and forth about this with specific examples (mostly anecdotes) but the basic fact is that if one is never willing to accommodate other teammates in any way shape or form they are a crappy teamplayer regardless of their role/playstyle and power sets.

In most MMO's tanks and healers seem to get a higher proportion of the "blame" for wipes and such or critique in general so is one fairly big factor in why there is, proportionally speaking, much less people playing tanks and healers.

Dark Ether wrote:

Unfortunately for the world, you can't heal stupid.

QFT!

Brand X wrote:

I always liked it when a defender/corruptor what have you would go "Wait for me to set up!" and I'd be on my scrapper, diving right in, kill everything before they did anything and then they'd ask "Why am I even here." :p
Some teams didn't need to wait. A lot of debuffers always thought you should have to. :p Sometimes, a debuffer is there only to make some things faster by getting debuffs out fast, not "Okay, sit and wait." Hell, I hated waiting for tanks who said "Let me gather them all up first so we can AOE them" which always took just as long or longer than just killing them in small groups.
I remember one coalition member getting upset because I could solo the ITF on my scrapper :p "What's the point of a team if you can solo it?" to which I replied "Just because I can solo, doesn't mean it's fast. Teams make it faster! Soloing is just to see if I can :)"

Reminds me of my WP/SS tank. Could handle a lot on her own.

I had a human form peacebringer too. But she didn't do as well as Amerikatt did apparently!

One of the things I hated about Tera was the dungeon teams always had to be EXACTLY one tank, one healer, and three DPS. And the one class that was basically a dual-mode tank/DPS [i]didn't count as a tank[/i] for teaming purposes. There was one tank class out of nine (then) total classes.

CoH, on the other hand, had several overlapping classes and different ways to do it, and better yet, had an 8-character team limit, which just gave you so much more flexibility.

"Hey, we don't have a healer." "Don't worry, we've got a force field defender. Just hold for the bubbles."

Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

One of the things I hated about Tera was the dungeon teams always had to be EXACTLY one tank, one healer, and three DPS. And the one class that was basically a dual-mode tank/DPS didn't count as a tank for teaming purposes. There was one tank class out of nine (then) total classes.
CoH, on the other hand, had several overlapping classes and different ways to do it, and better yet, had an 8-character team limit, which just gave you so much more flexibility.
"Hey, we don't have a healer." "Don't worry, we've got a force field defender. Just hold for the bubbles."

8 man Mastermind team!

blacke4dawn wrote:

OathboundOne wrote:
Empyrean wrote:
So much depended on the difficulty setting. Many could solo just about anything on, what was it, -1x1? And if CoH had a greater than x8 setting that would have been great for full teams to increase the challenge so tactics and playing smart paid off (and by that I don't mean classic trinity roles, just using whatever you have well).
At 50 I always set everything to max so that smart play and tactics were desirable, both solo and in teams, but an 8 player team could be so powerful that it still didn't matter--so x10 or so setting would have been awesome. I almost always formed my own teams and let people know we were going to set max and play smart before they decided whether to join or not. If I hopped on a team I'd go with whatever the flow was--or politely hop back off.
Anyway, teams can multiply force, so much so that I hope CoT will have a setting that not only increased the levels of the mobs beyond the max level, but also that will increase enemy numbers beyond max team numbers to account for the incredible power of a full team--for those that want it.
Seconded. Towards the end there, between a half-billion inf IO build and Incarnate madness my Time/Fire Defender solo'd at +4x8 (which was really only +1 because of the extra Incarnate levels). Adding anyone else to the team for anything short of an Archvillain(or the Incarnate Trials themselves) just turned it into child's play. Having broader, more robust options for difficulty settings would have really helped.
Personally though I hope that they can get the "difficulty balance" in regards to the dynamic group size so that soloing x8 is effectively impossible. Though having difficulty settings that spawns enemy groups intended for larger group sizes than is possible to form won't be a bad option regardless.
It seems to me that CoH had a liner formula in how many total and of each enemy tier to spawn which isn't really ideal since larger teams tends to be more on the exponential side in terms of collective "power growth".

Maybe the difficulty settings could be geared so that x8 is the highest it would allow you to go while solo (and have that be calibrated so that would truly be a maximal challenge for anyone playing solo) but if you've got a team going then higher values could be available (x10, x12, etc.).

When considering the old game, increasing spawn size for increased team difficulty didn’t really matter much. Even before then, and before aggro caps it didn’t matter. Having multiplr full-scaled spawns in a small map area where they overlapped didn’t slow down a full team.

You have to consider how many possible pawns the map will allow with pcs, how much total xp / rewards you want to be obtainable, pawn group over lap, so on.

One thing we can take into consideration for our game beyond size scaling is level increases. Our level lens formula can made increased level differnces very challenging. The trick will be finding the spots were difficulty leads toward too difficult or too long to play through an encounter where while challenging, it can also feel like a slog.

Empyrean wrote:

Lothic wrote:
Maybe the difficulty settings could be geared so that x8 is the highest it would allow you to go while solo (and have that be calibrated so that would truly be a maximal challenge for anyone playing solo) but if you've got a team going then higher values could be available (x10, x12, etc.).
I REALLY like this idea for wherever feasible.
Tannim222 wrote:
The trick will be finding the spots were difficulty leads toward too difficult or too long to play through an encounter where while challenging, it can also feel like a slog.
That is true--BUT I think that should be left up to the individual player.
Many nights I was in the mood to just play, so a long, tough, barely doable slog was just what the doctor ordered. Some times I had a build goal and I needed to git crap done, and so might not push the settings as hard. But rather than choose for the players, give the players lots of choices and they'll go where they like.
You might be surprised what some players will enjoy. I was. I couldn't imagine playing on lowest settings, but many players I met did it regularly. On the other hand, I always maxed settings for the challenge (unless I had a specific goal), even if it made things a bit onerous, and that would sound completely stupid to many, perhaps most, players.
Options, options, options!

While it is understandable to lean toward what the player enjoys, as a dec you also have to consider what is good for the game as a whole. The entire spectrum of the design scope.
Sometimes what is good for the overall game and that anplayer may enjoy are not entirely compatible.
Hence why I said it would be finding sweet spot.

Simply ratcheting up the spawn count may not be necessarily increasing the difficulty anymore than allowing players to heard an entire map and nuking them.

If we’re talking about increasing the challenge between solo and group play using the same scaler for difficulty, at some point we have a maximum setting - for example x8 (to simulate a full group for solo), and how that should apply when a full group, instead of simply using spawn count increases, look to the level modifier side.

Our level lens function is similar but to the purple patch, but acrually can get much harsher. Applying the appropriate level scaler to the difficulty selection is where you will likely find a better challenge.

And that maximum setting is something that is what will need to be set right. Because too high and players will be outright squashed, ridiculously so. Or it may be possible, but the frame could be considered too long to be healthy for the general game - much less an entire mission as such. That’s why it is called balance.

Tannim222 wrote:

While it is understandable to lean toward what the player enjoys, as a dec you also have to consider what is good for the game as a whole. The entire spectrum of the design scope.
Sometimes what is good for the overall game and that anplayer may enjoy are not entirely compatible.
Hence why I said it would be finding sweet spot.
Simply ratcheting up the spawn count may not be necessarily increasing the difficulty anymore than allowing players to heard an entire map and nuking them.
If we’re talking about increasing the challenge between solo and group play using the same scaler for difficulty, at some point we have a maximum setting - for example x8 (to simulate a full group for solo), and how that should apply when a full group, instead of simply using spawn count increases, look to the level modifier side.
Our level lens function is similar but to the purple patch, but acrually can get much harsher. Applying the appropriate level scaler to the difficulty selection is where you will likely find a better challenge.
And that maximum setting is something that is what will need to be set right. Because too high and players will be outright squashed, ridiculously so. Or it may be possible, but the frame could be considered too long to be healthy for the general game - much less an entire mission as such. That’s why it is called balance.

I understand all of that, and I wasn't sugesting increasing spawn as the primary difficulty mechanic. Of course difficulty should be well thought out and managed.

My point was that one problem with CoH's difficulty slider was that it no longer had a setting that was very challenging once you formed a max-level full group. This was because the slider increased difficulty by increasing both the level AND the spawn size you could fight UNTIL/UNLESS you were in a full group.

At that point the system broke down because you could no longer fight above your base numbers since there was no higher setting than 8. So, increasing spawn number past max group number would be one improvement that could help to correct this.

Fireheart wrote:

So, how about two complimentary mechanics? One is based on Character Difficulty settings and is most weighted in Solo adventuring. The other is based on team size and is most weighted in group missions. The two mechanics interact, such that, if the leader of a full group also has his difficulty at max, then the encounters are really tough.
Would that work?
Be Well!
Fireheart

Exactly. Something like this and/or what Lothic suggested. Or perhaps multiplying the spawn number by the group number? So x2 is twice as many mobs for whatever the group size is. I could see how that might get out of control, though :).

I think the key point is that max solo and max full team probably shouldn't have the same difficulty limit. If they do, it will always be too hard or too easy for one or the other. But then, don't go too easy on the solo folks or some will have to start a mission on a team and then drop the team as a workaround to get more challenge like people used to do for some things in CoH

If they must have the same limit for some reason, then I'd advocate basing it on what is actually challenging for a full team and letting those soloers who want bang their heads against impossible odds till they find their sweet spot.

I may have missed it, but I don't think there was any discussion about adjusting the AI. It seems to me that adjusting the AI could remedy the issue of creating more cannon fodder for herding. I would think a high level AI would be less likely to crowd together and more likely to run for help, coordinate attacks, focus on 1 target, prepare with inspirations, and whatnot.

"THE TITANS ARE COMING! THE TITANS ARE COMING!"

*remembers the first AI..... and shudders*

No, not going down that path again. That way leads to Skynet.

The heroes are murdering Everything? Release the AI!

Be Well!
Fireheart

Tannim222 wrote:

The point being, simply increasing the spawn size for teams of 8 beyond the “normal” limit doesn’t necessarily add any more challenge. If teams could handle 3 full sized spawns all at once without it being anymore difficult than one, than the difficulty isn’t adding any real additional challenge. Hence why I’d probably look tonthe level scaler.
Where maybe solo would go +3 for level, groups may go to + 6 (for example).

There are a couple of things here. "Simply" increasing spawn size was never the suggestion. No longer being able to increase spawn size once you had a full team was a flaw in the CoH difficulty slider that made things suddenly get much easier once you had a full team--especially at max level. The suggestion was to do better than CoH by allowing spawn increase past a full team to some extent, in a balanced way in combination with other difficulty factors, to create a more customizable player experience.

In CoH, while some teams could indeed handle three full sized spawns at once, it was in fact much more difficult than one spawn at high or max level settings, and adding more would have definitely upped the difficulty significantly--again, at max level settings. Being able to have spawns beyond maximum team size isn't the answer, but it is a factor and a tool, and one that caused a weakness in CoH when unused. I'd need to see the specific argument for why max team level really needs to be the hard spawn limit.

I'd be for the AI adjustment too if it's feasible. Unless it's all or nothing for some reason. Wouldn't want full-on Skynet but small increases would be fun if possible/feasible.

Redlynne wrote:

We know what simply increasing the spawn count looks like.
Moo moo moo moo MOO.

It biases the game towards mass attacks and away from single target attacks so as to farm mass quantities of opposition more effectively/efficiently in terms of time spent.

Agreed. But, again, the key word is "simply"--and in the case of weak mobs. If the mobs are not trivially challenging, then the challenge does go up with spawn numbers. I almost always played at max level settings and trust me, every single freaking mob counted.

I'm not arguing for Zerg, I'm arguing for not letting the team size be the hard limit to spawn size to add one more factor as a tool. Don't reductio me ad absurdum, y'all :P.

And let's not forget the way all powerful superheros are rendered impotent: threats to innocent victims or other mechanics that make defeating the enemy chaff immaterial to the success of the mission.

Mission design will go a long way towards making content challenging and group-appropriate. [list][*]Give some thugs dead-man switches such that defeating them will either harm an innocent, make a puzzle more difficult, or destroy a potential reward. Indiscriminate slaughter then becomes a far less attractive option. [*]Make the players have to make impossible choices between one objective or another, or split up to go after both (or more) thus diluting the players' power and increasing the relative challenge.. [*]Put some glowies in the mission that need to be activated within 30 seconds of each other, the number of which would certainly have an affect on the mission difficulty, especially if you have to fight mobs to get to them. [url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/interaction-beyond-just-click-glowwie](see Radiac's post on 'beyond clicking the glowies' for a great discussion)[/url] [/list]

All these things and more can be implemented to make missions more or less difficult, and more or less dependent upon a team to complete.

My Rules (more like guidelines than rules) for Healing are:
1- TGIF, tanks go in first.
2- Don't out run the healer.
3- I can't heal stupid.
4- If you take the aggro from the tank it's yours to keep.
5- If a DPS dies the group can continue. If the tank or healer dies the group will wipe.
6- Don't stand in the fire.
7- Know all your characters abilities.
8- Know the fight.
9- ABC, always be casting.
10- OOM, means your out of luck, Skippy.

In WoW healer aggro is a thing, but you have tools to help you drop aggro when you are burst healing. There are super hard mythic dungeons that have various aspects or debuffs and gimmicks that you have to overcome. But if you know your character and use your abilities in the right order at the right time, you are rewarded for good gameplay. There is skill involved to make sure you beat the MOBs. A good healer will kite the MOB back to the tank, and a good tank will take the aggro back, the same it true with DPS. Generally, everyone blows their cooldowns in the beginning so the boss won't single out one DPS. But also using redirection abilities and positioning they return the aggro back to the tank.

Brand X wrote:

Take out the Tank or the one keeping the tank alive? Take out the DPS, or the one keeping them doing damage?

Also, it just makes sense, since a lot of times, those who don't like it, often want things realistic everywhere else in the game. Well, guess what's realistic? Targeting the medic! :)

Who cares about realism? It's a game, the question should be "What makes for more entertaining gameplay?"

Redlynne wrote:

Tannim222 wrote:

They may require powers within a primary or seconday to be used in order to apply their effect, but a mastery isn't anything switched on or off.

This fuses player actions with their build's playstyle and classification's play style. In the xase of ranking and taunt, the Stalwart with the appropriate mastery power actively taunts theough the use of their positioning and powers.

In other words ... Punchvoke?

I like to think if it as that with a bit more nuance.

Brand X wrote:

Project_Hero wrote:

Brand X wrote:

Take out the Tank or the one keeping the tank alive? Take out the DPS, or the one keeping them doing damage?

Also, it just makes sense, since a lot of times, those who don't like it, often want things realistic everywhere else in the game. Well, guess what's realistic? Targeting the medic! :)

Who cares about realism? It's a game, the question should be "What makes for more entertaining gameplay?"

Healer grabbing aggro ALWAYS makes for more entertaining game play :p

I remember grabbing aggro in City of Heroes when teaming my Emp/Rad Defender with my wife's Stone/Energy Tank if she didn't taunt or forgot to put on her Mud Pots damage aura, things would turn an hit me if I was not careful with saving my big heals when she taunted. I always saw Aggro and boss mechanics like mini-games. Each player brought different tools to the fight, and our job what/when to use our tools to prevent the boss from killing us. It felt great when we could figure out how to beat a boss that we couldn't do on our own. One of my fondest memories was Hamidon. I was there when the Justice server took it down the first time. The screams and shouts of joy over teamspeak was like we won a Superbowl! If there wasn't the possibility of me getting one-shot by healing the Stone Tanks too much I don't think it would have been as rewarding.