I mentioned this in a "list of what not to repeat" thread recently, but I wanted to mention it separately.
Partly by way of suggestion, and partly to get the sense of the community.
CoH had minimum team size requirements for every TF/SF/Trial. These became almost laughable late in the game's life cycle as folks managed to defeat this content with smaller and smaller teams. Eventually many if not all were soloed by some intrepid soul.
Now I soloed only a fer few (Posi, ITF, hero respec etc) but I ran all with a dedicated duo or trio of friends and having to recruit fillers really got old. Simul clicky mission objectives were even worse (gives Dr Quarterfield and Cavern of Transcendance the stink eye*).
I understand, and agree with encouraging teaming but please do not implement this kind of content gating.
-joe
Repeat Offender
Tank Addict
Homeless.
yep, I think just a note and an "are you suuuuure?" is good enough, in most cases.
though it would definitely be nice to say "This is as much as a 120 minute mission, and recommended for a full team. Bosses are significantly tougher than usual missions...etc. et al"
I've always hated TF/Raid type dungeons where I'm holding my own against the enemies, working through "tough but fair" fights.. only to, after an hour of chugging, to run into a boss that i'm basically "not allowed" to defeat, for some reason (regens faster than I can dish damage, and don't happen to have any way to -regen him, for example)
So... while I agree there's no reason for true gating (I like the idea of "team work clickies", but in practice they never turn out fun)
I definitely want to enter into such missions with enough knowledge to make an informed decision...
___________________________________
[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
I wonder if it would be easier to make harder content for the "IOed" out characters, by making smaller teams. I miss CoH's 8 member teams, just wondering if regular teams/"TF" teams should be around 5? Maybe just go down to 7? So one less? Though one less doesn't seem like a lot, but just a thought on it.
Minimum team of 1 for everything. Seriously, if you're willing and able to spend billions of Inf and possibly hundreds of hours tuning your character to a razor's edge, why not let you try it solo?
Anything else is just 'play it the way WE want you to play.'
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
Personally speaking, I don't have much of a problem with Minimum Team Size 2 and Minimum Team Size 3 or even Minimum Team Size 4 ... but that's really as far as I'm willing to go on minimum team sizes in a game that allows 8 Player Teams.
The original plan for City of Heroes on this point for the major Task Forces basically made sense ... 3 for Positron, 4 for Synapse, 5 for Sister Psyche, 6 for Citadel, 7 for Manticore, 8 for Numina ... in a Meta Game Design fashion. It was a fairly obvious progression sequence. Cavern of Transcendence was basically MAXIMUM STUPID for its thread the needle requirements before the Flashback system got implemented, not to mention the 8 simul-clicks that completion required inside an instance where Defeated NPCs respawned, making it IMPOSSIBLE to "clear" the instance in a Defeat All fashion ... AND it was on a Timer!
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Since this appears to be in large part about challenges, this thread strikes me as a good place to bring up the idea of [url=http://www.wowwiki.com/Challenge_Mode]challenge modes[/url]. In WoW this exists for the 5-person dungeons so the approach is straightforward and simple: it's a race. That's something that could no doubt be implemented fairly easily in CoT.
The question: how could challenge modes be dialed up to 11 in CoT?
Some of my ideas for options to make team-oriented content more challenging:
* No travel powers.
* All enemies have ranged attacks.
* Smaller team size (to a minimum of 2 or 1, as requested above)
* One or more global boosts suppressed
* Engage at lower than minimum level
Is this something the player base is likely to enjoy or would it prove to be a case of over-engineering?
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Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
At first blush it looks interesting...like some of the missions from Oroborous. The normalizing of the gear might be difficult though. I'd say that it bears more discussion. As for Red's comments: One of my goals is to never again have to worry about a 'workaround' for CoT. Anything that we wanted in CoH early on but didn't get that was then granted later? Yeah...I want that out of the box from CoT. Gleemail to send your own account stuff? Yep. Invite your own alts to your private SG? You betcha. This includes the option to pull out ALL the stops, forget ALL the safety features and at least TRY everything solo. Why? Because players will want to do it anyway and asking them 'start the mission then have all but one quit' is just stupid.
Another reason to have the team minimum of 1: You're almost done, last bit of the 2-hour grind and suddenly a DC drops everyone but you. Nobody comes back...no way to finish solo. I consider this unacceptable. I want the option to at least try to finish rather than do it all over again.
Again...anything else is 'play it OUR way.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
One way I would do this, and this is going to make an assumption here.
That there is a "Looking For Team/Group/Raid" interface available to use.
This will mean that *no matter where you are* you can take part and get insta teleported into the raid/instance/whatever you want to call it for the missions
If you choose to run it this way, you will go with "whatever the developers deem necessary".
If you go to the start point for the Raid/instance/wahtever *solo* or grouped, then you should be able to start it up by yourself.
Whilst this might be new for CoX people, it *ISNT* new for those who have played other MMO's out there. WoW for example, lets people *solo* raids/instances if they so desire... you just have to get there for it. Hell, you don't even have to have the recommended classes there for it.
But if you choose to use the LFG/LFR interface (looking for group, looking for raid), then you will be there waiting for the group to fill up to the maximum/minimum number of players there for it.
That is one method of doing it, is it the *best* method? PRobably not... but at least it is a *baseline* to work from.
The group I played with regularly had 10 people. Only 8 of us could play on the same team. My character was made to fill in in case the group had a spot open on the team. I wasn't intended to be a regular weekly player. Although, I ended up being that since some of the members couldn't make it for some reason or another. Then others got burned out and left for other MMOs.
As an RPer, there are just times it's useful to have a bigger team option. And going from CoH to CO you notice this.
From just gameplay wise, you also notice it (Though usually more at end game than at early game, at least from what I've seen as a lot of MMOs have terrible teaming functions for different levels/completed missions or not), when you have a SG/Guild with more members than size of team, and possibly can't get enough to fill part of a team.
I wanted to address a few comments here, and add a few more thoughts to the stew.
First, re: challenge modes. In the prior game this existed in flashback arcs. There were things like no temp powers, no inps, enemy buffed, team debuffed, no travels etc. I don't know about having this sort of thing in main game content, but it would be most welcome in some equivalent to flashback missions.*
Second, what do folks think about max team size? I am kind of leaning toward the eight we had or made a tiny bit higher, but I would like to hear other's reasoning. There were times, such as when I ran a couple 1-50 via street sweeping projects, where being able to do some kind of multi-team set up outside of trials would be helpful.
Third, if we have simultaneous glowy clicks or something similar, would it be possible to code the glowy spawn to (team size-1, unless team size=1)?
*off topic: I really really hope we have some sort of flashback mechanic. I spent a lot of time running steam rollers through arcs. In order to enjoy the lore I had to rerun those arcs later solo, when I had the time to read the in mission dialogue etc.
Repeat Offender
Tank Addict
Homeless.
I have no problem with a flashback system implemented in the game.
However, I do have a problem with missions/contacts *refusing* to hand you stuff to do just because you have out-levelled them.
True, the flashback system for CoX helped resolve that problem, but it *did* suck (in my own opinion), in that you had to use a mechanism which *prevented* you from getting help as and when you needed it (and actually forced you to restart from scratch the arc), just because you got stuck on one part.
The most obvious "simple" solution to that sort of problem is to essentially push the "newspaper" repeatable missions onto the Contacts themselves, and flag the repeatable missions as being repeatable (to avoid confusion with Story Arcs. The entire reason why the Newspaper Missions existed at all was because of City of Villains being set up to "need" to run some Newspaper Missions for Brokers before getting passed off to any Contacts in a new Zone on Redside ... presumably as a way to inflate the amount of content available on Redside since the actual quantity of content for Redside was more limited than Blueside.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I was referring more to the normal story arcs that they had instead of the "repeatable" stuff.
For example: With very few (if any) exceptions in World of Warcraft, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Rift (I think you get the idea here), there is nothing to stop a level 90 character from doing a level 10 quest. Go to quest giver, pick up quest. hand it in. Hell, a level 25 could do a level 19 quest/mission. Sure, the reward might be crap, and worth nothing... but you could still do it.
City of Heroes: Sorry, I have nothing for you to do.
City of Heroes *forced* you to go into Taskforce mode, where if you got stuck, you couldn't ask others for help. Sure, if someone was out there and called for help, or asked if people wanted the badge, that was the other "work around" for it.
But that method is reliant on others to just run the content
I'd say have max team size be 5-7, not CoH's 8.
I'd like to say 10 but we have to be practical. Get a bunch of Commanders with all their pets out shooting at once? Lag city. 5 is obviously too low (CO proved that). I'd be willing to try 7
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
I dunno, I organized an all Mastermind Rikti ship raid once, 3 teams worth, it wasn't as laggy as I expected it to be.
If CoT supports big raids then it can support more then 8/team.
I'd be fine with setting maximum team sizes at either 6 or 8, with a preference for 6 because it's something of a "sweet spot" in terms of individual contributions and overall group dynamics.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
+1
Tera had a max team size of 5 and I hated it. What happened was that the game pretty much glommed onto the holy trinity, with instances balanced for 1 tank, 1 healer and 3 DPS. You couldn't have 2 tanks or healers without seriously risking failure, nor could you reliably run without a tank or healer. Further, if the instances were balanced to allow these combinations, then the tank/heal/3dps combo would have too easy of a time.
There's just too many quantization problems at a maximum size of 5 or less. The only way around it would be to develop a "balancing" algorithm that changed mob spawns and levels based on team composition, not just level or member count. Much harder to get right.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Part of the problem is not just the lag (ie high ping/waiting for stuff to resolve server side), but also the *number* of additional effects/models that the game engine has to cope with.
Now, with that, there are work around for it, but they are all client/user side (reduce graphics settings) for example. But that is an extreme case.
Just like in Eve Online where if you are getting into a *big* fleet fight (300+ ships per side, potential for *each* ship to have up to 5 drones out, which are each individually modelled, and then you have missiles (which are again individually modelled)) it is *highly* recommended to drop your graphics settings, just to keep the FPS up and to reduce the amount of time spent loading in new/different ship models when you warp from one area to another.
I'm a more the merrier kind of max team size guy.
If you limit a team as low as 5, please include an "ally team" module for epic lairs where two teams can group up for a 10 man super team.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
I'd want the max team size to be at least 8. As far as the OP's suggestion, allowing folks to more conveniently solo TFs sounds fine to me. I'd expect TFs to not scale as widely as the regular content, but folks should have the option of trying it below the minimum for which it was designed.
As for the non-TF content, I think the system should be designed so it can scale from 1 to whatever. I also think it should scale based on the mission holder's level. We should be able to use the difficulty settings to directly manage difficulty, and not have to use workarounds like fiddling team size or 'leveling past it a bit'.
Global: @Second Chances
SG: Fusion Force
"And it's not what I wanted
Oh no, it's not what I planned
See it's not where I thought I'd be
It's just where I am"
Indeed. Hopefully all content will be available to solo instead of having to revolve play time and what I get to and don't get to play around other people that don't pay my subscription's interest.
In concept, the team gate TFS/Trials seemed like a good idea. In practice it was horrible. Like they never gave a single thought to what happens when the population drops or everyone wants to farm one or two TFs and screw the rest of the TFs. Leaving those that don't want to farm with no choice but to join the farm squad of said few TFS or basically can forget about doing TFs and trials. Sounds like a crappy choice to me. Allow people to play the game totally whole, like they paid for to do, whether or not other people are interested at the time in the same thing they are or not.
That's just another example of [b]The Path Of Least Resistance To The Greatest Reward[/b] in operation there, jag40. No way to avoid or get around it, let alone eliminated it as a factor in what content appeals to which Players.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Of course and thus stuff shouldn't be team gated so it ends up with players that have no choice but to follow the crowd whether they want to or not.
WIth out stuff team gated it eliminates the problem of people having to do content that is only path of least resistance simply because that is what everyone else is doing and without team gated content the player can do what they want to do when they want to regardless of what content everyone else is doing.
There may be no way to rid of the player mindset over all of path of least resistance but there are ways that the problem can be and have been made much worse and pronounced. Team gated and team requirements.
Will have to disagree. Most people who would want to solo a TF where in the minority. Not to mention, when you something that generally requires a team makeup, you get people who whine when they can't solo it.
And let's not kid ourselves, CoH had a lot of people whine when they couldn't solo something. Turning EBs into AVs was one of the worst things imo. Took away from the immersion of them being what they were supposed to be...an ArchVillain!
I'd like to see : Minimum=1, and Max=[whatever can be handled mechanically by the engine/server]. But I'd also like the pre-mission blurb to receommend a team size appropriate to the RP epicness of the instance. Like the "You may want to bring a few friends (3-5) along." Totally ignorable, but gives you an idea of the scale the Devs had in mind. Again, this is more about just letting everyone play with the most options. Be able to play however you want, whenever you want.
What about XP scaling? I know there was a bonus for having a full team, (I think that should stay, BTW) and I always felt there was a little benefit, XP-wise, to going in with a team. Was that just because more mobs spawned with larger teams? Was that the actual case, or just my perception? Part of me could see a sort of inverse ratio thing happening, with more XP for smaller teams, but that would kind of discourage teams. Don't want that. Maybe some kind of algorithm that takes into account team (or individual) level. So that higher level characters get teensy bonuses for running solo/small team? I dunno.
I belong to a group that would have weekly TF events, where everyone who showed up got into the League, the Leaders would sort us into teams, and then each team would run the TF, while still being in the League. There was casual competition to complete stages faster than other teams, and we all bantered together on multiple channels.
It would be cool to have regular missions that could be super-sized for multiple-team rampages.
Be Well!
Fireheart
You have to be REALLY careful about Teaming bonuses to XP, because if you aren't careful you can wind up with a runaway inflation behavior.
The default assumption is that there will be Spawn Size Scaling to match the size of Teams. That ALONE will increase the amount of XP and Loot getting dropped right there, simply because you're needing to chew through more Foes. The thing is, you run into a mismatch of scaling kind of issue then, where a Team of 1 ought to run into 3 Minions and a Team of 2 ought to run into 6 Minions (effectively) and a Team of 8 ought to run into 24 Minions (effectively) if you divide XP gains equally.
I'd argue that the best way to grant the "Team Bonus" would be to simply add +1 Minion to Spawn Group Sizes for each Player actually present on the Team.
So using the above example:
Team of 1 @ x1 Difficulty = 3 Minion Spawn Groups
Team of 1 @ x2 Difficulty = 6 Minion Spawn Groups
Team of 1 @ x8 Difficulty = 24 Minion Spawn Groups
Team of 2 @ x1 Difficulty = [b]7[/b] Minion Spawn Groups
Team of 2 @ x2 Difficulty = [b]7[/b] Minion Spawn Groups
Team of 2 @ x3 Difficulty = 10 Minion Spawn Groups
Team of 8 @ any Difficulty = 31 Minion Spawn Groups
So the formula is that you have Team Size * 3 for the base size of your Minion Spawn Groups, and that is what would be affected by the City of Heroes Difficulty Setting (visit NPC to adjust) ... but for every Player [i]beyond the first[/i] you add an extra +1 Minion to the Spawn Group sizes. All that you need to do then is design a "gearing ratio" for how many Minions equal 1 Lieutenant and how many Minions equal 1 Boss so as to get an "exchange rate" going for randomly determining the sizes of Spawn Groups.
If memory serves (and I could be wrong about this), 2 Minions equaled 1 Lieutenant in City of Heroes ... which is why when soloing @ x1 Difficulty you could come across lone Spawn Groups of 1 Minion and 1 Lieutenant. My guess is that 6 Minions equaled 1 Boss in City of Heroes, if just going by the Level 50 HP comparisons.
City of Heroes Level 50 [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Minion]Minion[/url]: 430.8 HP
City of Heroes Level 50 [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Lieutenant]Lieutenant[/url]: 857.5 HP (x2 Minion)
City of Heroes Level 50 [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Boss]Boss[/url]: 2570.2 HP (x6 Minion)
So if you think of Spawn Group sizes in terms of a "Minion Budget" where you get 3 Minions per Team Player (which can be adjusted by the x1 to x8 Difficulty setting) and add a further +1 Minion for each Player actually present on the Team ... you get a situation where a Team of 8 Players has 3*8=24 Minions baseline +7 extra Minions for having 8 Players present ACTUALLY playing together, resulting in a Spawn Group "Minion Budget" of 31 per Spawn Group (maximum) in Team 8 (that is actually 8) gameplay. That can then be anything from 31 Minions to being 5 Bosses plus 1 Minion (since each Boss equals 6 Minions in this Spawn Budget). Throw a randomizer algorithm at the problem, using the two parameters of Difficulty Setting and Players inside the instance and you're all set.
Note that this structure does not award additional XP or Loot as a "freebie" of playing in larger Teams or of dialing up your Difficulty setting, since the amount of "work" needed in terms of Damage Output Per XP Gained remains relatively constant. Instead, all that changes is the "Target Richness" of the environment, increasing the "density" of [i]available[/i] XP and Loot within any given unit area of instanced mission.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
In fact, in SW:TOR, characters who are mid-level don't have access to the daily missions that characters at level cap have to acquire the resources to slot out full sets of the 'custom' (modifiable) gear for the character and their companions as the character levels up; running badly-outleveled 'Heroic' missions (two- or four-player team missions) solo can be done daily to obtain the commendation rewards to buy the mods to put in custom gear to increase the number of pieces of modifiable gear that a character can keep up-to-level. So it's a 'feature' to be able to repeat outleveled content (and, in fact, I have a Trooper character that I periodically rerun the Hammer Station flashpoint mission with because it can drop decent-looking heavy armor chest and leg pieces, and as a characterization bit for the character I want to try to outfit my companions in gear with the same appearance; it feels odd to be the officer in charge of Havoc Squad and have the squad not be in 'uniform'.).
The Legion of Catgirls would do this weekly as well; I remember the craziness that ensued from a mass Quarterhell run as each team tried to minimize transit times to get through the series even a [i]little[/i] faster than the other teams. League chat could get... quirky.
I don't think there was any bonus for full teams in CoH, exactly. I recall hearing that there was a point of diminishing returns that you hit earlier than that, probably because the impact of dividing the XP between all of the players on the team ended up exceeding the benefit of the XP multiplier (I dunno if these numbers became obsolete, but you can see some here... http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/xp_division.php). That doesn't tell the whole tale, though, since there was also the question of how quickly the team was clearing groups... generally speaking, more folks meant a faster rate of defeats, possibly at a higher level of badmen, as well.
I think the CoH scheme was one of the components of what made the game so friendly to casual teaming, so I hope that CoT keeps a similar level of benefit. It was enough that folks who were not adverse to teaming were up for it, but not so overpowering that you felt like a sucker for soloing (in fact, efficient soloers related stories of how they got better XP rates on their own than they did on some random team).
Global: @Second Chances
SG: Fusion Force
"And it's not what I wanted
Oh no, it's not what I planned
See it's not where I thought I'd be
It's just where I am"
Yep, Legion of Catgirls, I just didn't want to call out any names.
I've seen a few of them lurking around here, but it seems like the Sleepy one is off playing Stronghold Kingdoms.
Be Well!
Fireheart
I see where you are coming from and it's probably true. Those that wanted to solo a TF may be in the minority.
But what I'm getting at is the team requirement thing. Not everyone wanted to do farms with majority or not do TF at all. Many people wanted to do Shard TFs but couldn't find enough people to want to do it with them when they were on. I think many people would rather have the ability to solo than not be able to do it at all simply because majority of the folks wasn't interested.
COX was only 2-3% of NCSOFT income aka a minority, doesn't mean it needed to be shut down right Thus, sometimes it's best to keep the minority in mind too. Especially since those that still want to team TFs and can find teams of 8 will be in not a single bit affected.
It could be another option so people wont needlessly be left out nor be at the mercy of what majority feel like playing at the time.
We here should already know exactly what that feels like, and I doubt anyone feel it was good feeling to get to the curb simply because we were viewed as an insignificant part of the equation. Same feeling for people that cant enjoy the game simply because it's team gated and everyone else rather farm besides a small minority that probably don't get the chance to come across each other in forces of 8 very often.