To team or not to team?

[dwturducken]

My feelings on teaming/soloing aside, the general tone of this thread turned me away from it by the middle of the second page. And I usually have found myself in agreement with the two belligerents.

[JaguarX]

Thinking back, I think I might have over reacted a bit. I appologize for that. I let my slight ire get the best of me that time and win that round.  Next time I wont bother asking anything. I just stick to what I know and my opinion and any word I dont know or understand I'll just ignore it to prevent snark replies and it causing an issue where there shouldnt be any.

[corvus1970]

So, is anyone from one of the Plan Z's frequenting this thread?  Would you be able to comment on the team/solo aspects of gameplay that you have planned?

I'd be very interested to hear this.

[tigerbaby]

Thinking back, I think I might have over reacted a bit. I appologize for that. I let my slight ire get the best of me that time and win that round.  Next time I wont bother asking anything. I just stick to what I know and my opinion and any word I dont know or understand I'll just ignore it to prevent snark replies and it causing an issue where there shouldnt be any.

When I come across a word I don't know, or am unsure about, I right/click it and let Google show me what it has to reveal; sometimes it leads me off surfing into interesting new things i did not know before.

I should have been more trusting that the question was sincere, but I've been led down the path before.  Sometimes it's so hard to read intentions from strings of text, but it is also this ambiguity that makes literature what it is, /em shrug

What *is* interesting, though, that Paragon Wiki's definition of 'scrapperlock' is team-focused, and my interpretation more reflective of my solo experience.  tch, scrappers always getting the bad rap on teams...but I must confess there were whole classes of villian mobs I had no idea debuffed or mezzed until I encountered them on teams, because they could not overcome TB's toggles.  I know some pickup teams were not getting what they expected from Tigerbaby, whose build was 'take a licking and keep on kicking' combined with 'disorient express' as damage mitigator, not big DPS like scrappers are 'supposed' to be.

I think some players' solo vs. team experience also has a lot to do with their prior experience in other games - or lack thereof, in my case.  People who enjoyed or have a lot of experience in team-oriented games seemed to want to operate in that paradigm, even if it sometimes didn't exactly 'fit' CoH (like 'we need a healer' as the answer to repeated wipes against Malta /em heavysigh).

[JaguarX]

When I come across a word I don't know, or am unsure about, I right/click it and let Google show me what it has to reveal; sometimes it leads me off surfing into interesting new things i did not know before.

I should have been more trusting that the question was sincere, but I've been led down the path before.  Sometimes it's so hard to read intentions from strings of text, but it is also this ambiguity that makes literature what it is, /em shrug

What *is* interesting, though, that Paragon Wiki's definition of 'scrapperlock' is team-focused, and my interpretation more reflective of my solo experience.  tch, scrappers always getting the bad rap on teams...but I must confess there were whole classes of villian mobs I had no idea debuffed or mezzed until I encountered them on teams, because they could not overcome TB's toggles.  I know some pickup teams were not getting what they expected from Tigerbaby, whose build was 'take a licking and keep on kicking' combined with 'disorient express' as damage mitigator, not big DPS like scrappers are 'supposed' to be.

I think some players' solo vs. team experience also has a lot to do with their prior experience in other games - or lack thereof, in my case.  People who enjoyed or have a lot of experience in team-oriented games seemed to want to operate in that paradigm, even if it sometimes didn't exactly 'fit' CoH (like 'we need a healer' as the answer to repeated wipes against Malta /em heavysigh).

Yeah I remember that feature. On my old computer I did that on the regular but on the new one, that feature doesnt seem to be available. No hard feeling towards you. Sad that some people used that tactic though to get on some people's nerves though and make it harder to tell a legitimate question from one that is just there to start mess. 

yeah my playstyle is similiar to what you described but didnt play many scrappers. All deleted as soon as it got 50. So I played scrappers through and through and thought about deleting each one earlier but kept getting "oh it's gets better, wait until level 20." then "...level 30", "...level 40" "...level 50" so I went and scrappers wasnt my style regardless of the powerset. So I played like that on tanks and brutes. Get in do damge while taking damge until there is nothing left alive. 

With the healer thing. lol yeah I seen that alot. 90% of the time it wasnt lack of healer and usually ended up with a pissed off healer. And noooo one wants the healer of all people pissed off. Tactics had ot be changed. One tactic wasnt always a fit all to all situations and team make up. Sometimes it meant targeting the sapper first but if a person have an electric armor or better yet, more than two people have electric armor then the sapper is usually low priority and then maybe the Zeus thing has to be targeted first. It's about finding what works for the team at the time. There were some tanks of mine especially that just didnt work well with other teams and did marvelous on some teams. Some teams need something with taunt (I always give fair warning when claiming an invites. "Oi! This bloke have no taunt so if that is what you are needing, I must pass up this invite and kick me now.") Tactics. Underrated in some teams I've been on.

[tigerbaby]

Yeah I remember that feature. On my old computer I did that on the regular but on the new one, that feature doesnt seem to be available.

yeah my playstyle is similiar to what you described but didnt play many scrappers. All deleted as soon as it got 50. So I played scrappers through and through and thought about deleting each one earlier but kept getting "oh it's gets better, wait until level 20." then "...level 30", "...level 40" "...level 50" so I went and scrappers wasnt my style regardless of the powerset. So I played like that on tanks and brutes. Get in do damge while taking damge until there is nothing left alive. 

With the healer thing. lol yeah I seen that alot. 90% of the time it wasnt lack of healer and usually ended up with a pissed off healer. And noooo one wants the healer of all people pissed off. Tactics had ot be changed. One tactic wasnt always a fit all to all situations and team make up. Sometimes it meant targeting the sapper first but if a person have an electric armor or better yet, more than two people have electric armor then the sapper is usually low priority and then maybe the Zeus thing has to be targeted first. It's about finding what works for the team at the time. There were some tanks of mine especially that just didnt work well with other teams and did marvelous on some teams. Some teams need something with taunt (I always give fair warning when recieveing invites. "Oi

I'm a Mac (ab)user, so it might be a Mac thing (yes, I have an extra reason to be PO'd about the demise of CoH!) might be a browser function, too.

Tigerbaby was my first character and -by sheer luck- the one that 'fit' me best: (mostly) single-target scrapper, and the madly overpowered /regen of the day that allowed me to learn the game without accruing so much debt I never levelled.  Even after repeated 'nerfs' applied to his secondary, there were only a handful of situations in which he needed a healer, on teams having a 'healer' was more of a convenience than anything.  But with Malta, the Sappers' ability to drop his toggles represented a real problem.

On paper, a Brute was better-suited to my playstyle, but as it seemed to work out in practice, while Brutes were enjoyable and i think I played them well, I always had the most fun on Scrappers.

There is another type of team dynamic: the 2-player team, which is very different from both soloing and large teams.  In CoH, it seemed that almost any combo of 2 players could potentially work together, but there were some that really shone in synergy...or even more in hilarity.

[JaguarX]

I'm a Mac (ab)user, so it might be a Mac thing (yes, I have an extra reason to be PO'd about the demise of CoH!) might be a browser function, too.

Tigerbaby was my first character and -by sheer luck- the one that 'fit' me best: (mostly) single-target scrapper, and the madly overpowered /regen of the day that allowed me to learn the game without accruing so much debt I never levelled.  Even after repeated 'nerfs' applied to his secondary, there were only a handful of situations in which he needed a healer, on teams having a 'healer' was more of a convenience than anything.  But with Malta, the Sappers' ability to drop his toggles represented a real problem.

On paper, a Brute was better-suited to my playstyle, but as it seemed to work out in practice, while Brutes were enjoyable and i think I played them well, I always had the most fun on Scrappers.

There is another type of team dynamic: the 2-player team, which is very different from both soloing and large teams.  In CoH, it seemed that almost any combo of 2 players could potentially work together, but there were some that really shone in synergy...or even more in hilarity.

2 man teams. Some funny stuff can happen. Like I was on a tank and had this young blaster that kept pestering me about wanting to team up. So I we joined up and get in mish. I'm about ready to go in and do my thing and he types "wait, let me tank." "I responded, so what am I going to do?" his reply, "You be the blaster." lol. So this dude is tanking with his blaster and doing a good job considering we was playing +2/X4 and here I using hurl and various other temp ranged powers on a tank while this guy is using his melee stuff and we are just steam rolling the enemy, although he was doing most of the damage since hurl was only up every so often and I just healed him with heal other when he needed it and kept it moving. It was weird, we probably could have been moving faster but who cared, we was having fun. What turned into a team of supposedly one or two missions endedu pbeing two story arcs whis way just doing various odd and crazy things that on a more serious minded larger team we could not get away with. One mish we went through both using only brawl, then another mish only aoes and so one what what ever crazy idea we could think of that was taboo.

[Kuriositys Kat]

2 man teams. Some funny stuff can happen. Like I was on a tank and had this young blaster that kept pestering me about wanting to team up. So I we joined up and get in mish. I'm about ready to go in and do my thing and he types "wait, let me tank." "I responded, so what am I going to do?" his reply, "You be the blaster." lol. So this dude is tanking with his blaster and doing a good job considering we was playing +2/X4 and here I using hurl and various other temp ranged powers on a tank while this guy is using his melee stuff and we are just steam rolling the enemy, although he was doing most of the damage since hurl was only up every so often and I just healed him with heal other when he needed it and kept it moving. It was weird, we probably could have been moving faster but who cared, we was having fun. What turned into a team of supposedly one or two missions endedu pbeing two story arcs whis way just doing various odd and crazy things that on a more serious minded larger team we could not get away with. One mish we went through both using only brawl, then another mish only aoes and so one what what ever crazy idea we could think of that was taboo.

 And this little gem  of an example shows what was wonderful about the teaming options on City. *sigh*  I miss doing stuff like this.

[MaidMercury]

To me, the game was more interesting with fellow players to Team with.
solo is o.k. if that's your option.

CoH brought out people's imaginations. It was part Detective work, part neighborhood watch,
and part fashion show. It wasn't like hanging out in a chat room in the real world, talking about stupid topics like sex jokes, politics, everyday events, etc...

CoH was a virtual chat room in another world, with zones to either normal places or very different worlds, Oroboros, Cimerrora, etc...but no matter how bizarre, a place where we could make some differences.
The Coffee Talk videos connected us as players to GMs, CoH felt like it belonged to all of us.

[Samuel Tow]

I'd be very interested to hear this.

Well, you'd have to get someone involved in the actual game systems to tell. I'm mostly involved with Lore at the moment, but as far as I'm concerned, the Phoenix Project, at least, should end up having a decent balance between solo and team play.

On the nature of playing for rewards or playing for fun, I never really played for the XPs in City of Heroes. I loved seeing my awesome creations kicking ass, and rewards were just a means to move me through the game. However, as such, I was forced to concern myself with the rate of reward because I wanted to move through the story and I wanted to see some progression on my character. The Incarnate and ESPECIALLY the Ascendant storylines in City of Heroes interested me greatly, but much of the content that these stories revolved around was rather difficulty and expecting me to have Incarnate powers, or at least one level shift, which I never actually saw in City of Heroes. When I'm required to reach some "level" before my story can progress, then rewards become relevant.

Here's the thing - once you boil a game down to "you must be this tall to ride," you're essentially turning it from a toy into work. No matter what I might enjoy about it, I'm forced to abandon it and "work" until I can unlock the next tier. The fact of the matter is that for most of its run, City of Heroes let me play MY game MY way, and it was glorious! Then all of a sudden the Incarnate system started twisting my arm and telling me I should play another way, and that's why I resent it as much as I do. Time would have undoubtedly made things better with additions of soloable Incarnate content, sure, but the original idea of RaidsRaidsRaids was simply wretched. You take a game which is partially as popular as it is for its customizability in crafting your own experience and you crowbar it into the mould of standard MMO raid grind? If that's not missing the game's whole point, I don't know what is.

Solo is fun because the solo experience is controllable. I can pick my difficulty, I can pick my missions, I can pick my characters, I can pick my fights, I can pick my pace and, if I were so inclined, I can walk away from the computer for 90 minutes to go watch Van Helsing that just started on TV. To quote Wolverine: "I go where I wanna' go!" Teaming is always fun, sure, but it's fun in a social way that, to me personally, is emotionally draining. Solo play is whatever I want to make it, and that freedom and independence is how I rest my brain.

[tigerbaby]

Well, you'd have to get someone involved in the actual game systems to tell. I'm mostly involved with Lore at the moment, but as far as I'm concerned, the Phoenix Project, at least, should end up having a decent balance between solo and team play.

On the nature of playing for rewards or playing for fun, I never really played for the XPs in City of Heroes. I loved seeing my awesome creations kicking ass, and rewards were just a means to move me through the game. However, as such, I was forced to concern myself with the rate of reward because I wanted to move through the story and I wanted to see some progression on my character. The Incarnate and ESPECIALLY the Ascendant storylines in City of Heroes interested me greatly, but much of the content that these stories revolved around was rather difficulty and expecting me to have Incarnate powers, or at least one level shift, which I never actually saw in City of Heroes. When I'm required to reach some "level" before my story can progress, then rewards become relevant.

Here's the thing - once you boil a game down to "you must be this tall to ride," you're essentially turning it from a toy into work. No matter what I might enjoy about it, I'm forced to abandon it and "work" until I can unlock the next tier. The fact of the matter is that for most of its run, City of Heroes let me play MY game MY way, and it was glorious! Then all of a sudden the Incarnate system started twisting my arm and telling me I should play another way, and that's why I resent it as much as I do. Time would have undoubtedly made things better with additions of soloable Incarnate content, sure, but the original idea of RaidsRaidsRaids was simply wretched. You take a game which is partially as popular as it is for its customizability in crafting your own experience and you crowbar it into the mould of standard MMO raid grind? If that's not missing the game's whole point, I don't know what is.

Solo is fun because the solo experience is controllable. I can pick my difficulty, I can pick my missions, I can pick my characters, I can pick my fights, I can pick my pace and, if I were so inclined, I can walk away from the computer for 90 minutes to go watch Van Helsing that just started on TV. To quote Wolverine: "I go where I wanna' go!" Teaming is always fun, sure, but it's fun in a social way that, to me personally, is emotionally draining. Solo play is whatever I want to make it, and that freedom and independence is how I rest my brain.

I agree with your motives for soloing, but I am most confused - you make it sound like there wasn't any soloable post-50 content?!  What was I playing with Tigerbaby, then, to earn him his Empyrean Merit nyan-cat rainbow-butt aura and all those nifty Incarnate powers and level shift?

River of Dreams: Tibby's new Ion Judgement thing is sick!

(NB: River of Dreams is the ice/storm Controller TB teamed up with most often.)

[johnrobey]

Heh, it's late and I have insomnia presently, so instead of logging into our favorite MMORPG I'm reading and posting here.

I think the point about soloing not being as rewarding vis-a-vis loot and XP is valid.  Solo play was great though for seeing ALL of an arc, reading all the contact's info etc.  I really like the Ouroboros flashback for letting me experience all of an arc without diversion.  I also liked doing some solo play to figure out best strategies for a given toon prior to teaming up.  I also count my player enjoyment as being inherently more valuable than in-game rewards.  With the advent of Hero/Villain merits, I could (and did) faithfully "grind" my 5 hero/villain missions per day on various toons (as much or little as I liked) to earn the "A" merits to then buy that expensive purple recipe or whatever.

Personally, I liked the incarnate system even as I had many friends who didn't care for it.   "Grinding" the Incarnate trials was never a huge deal to me, since I often enjoyed the players on a given league, even as I accepted that often my toon would fall in "the laggy maze of death" during the Espionage portion of the Lambda sector trial, etc .  Going to the hospital, waiting a few seconds, maybe buying some inspirations, then getting back in the action felt personally okay.

Almost always when a friend or sgmate got online, we'd team up after a brief discussion about which characters or even servers we wanted to play on.  While I liked CoH solo, I liked it even better when teamed (omitting some truly terrible pickup teams) especially with friends but even random pickups were often good and how I meet my CoH friends, other than the RL pal who got me playing CoH.

Even before Incarnate, for some game didn't begin until level 50.  For others, 50 was it, so time to make a new alt.  I enjoyed playing low level characters as much as fully IO'ed 50's.  I can't speak for other MMORPG's but CoH did an outstanding job imo in catering to a wide range of playing styles and preferences.  I'm still wishing I could just log in and play - and I'm looking forward to the day when that's possible.  /em holdtorch

[Samuel Tow]

I agree with your motives for soloing, but I am most confused - you make it sound like there wasn't any soloable post-50 content?!  What was I playing with Tigerbaby, then, to earn him his Empyrean Merit nyan-cat rainbow-butt aura and all those nifty Incarnate powers and level shift?(NB: River of Dreams is the ice/storm Controller TB teamed up with most often.)

There wasn't until Dark Astoria, no. Grinding out pre-50 missions for Shards that never seemed to drop doesn't count. Dark Astoria was the first step forward, and I assume many more would have come, had the game been given time. Beladonna Vetrano's mission was a good example.

Why I seem critical, however, is because many of the Dark Astoria missions were balanced for ridiculous difficulty. And no, it's not just that "Incarnates are supposed to be stronger." How do I GET stronger when the only content to do that in expects me to be stronger already? Expects me to be using complex intricate Inventions builds for defence cap? Even at the best of times, I could only ever play the Incarnate game with any degree of comfort with only a select few powersets. Super Reflexes? Not without piling a ton of Inventions defences on top. And even then, I got run through the ringer.

And it's not "just" difficulty. It's also the practice of spawning HUUUGE spawns on top of me, or sending multiple spawns to fight me at the same time. That "Defend the Midnight Mansion" mission with the four Elite Bosses is just absurd, and I felt like slapping whoever designed it upside the head... And that's not even Incarnate content.

It's not Dark Astoria's fault. The developers simply assumed I was a lot stronger at one point, and started making the game much, much harder on my old difficulty, all the while rewarding me not much more for it. I'm fine with people wanting their game to be challenging, but that's what the difficulty slider was for. What it WASN'T for is spawning x4 spawns in my missions set to x2. What it WASN'T for is spwaning +3 enemies in missions set to -1 (keep trucking, Tub Chi). Somewhere along the line, the whole game got far too difficult for me to play and still enjoy it, to be quite honest.

But here's the catch - in regular content, I could always stick to the old 2004 missions that had ordinary spawns, didn't have ten ambushes every time I sneeze, didn't have multiple huge spawns, didn't have four elite bosses at a time. I could stick to the old content that was easy... But for Incarnates, there WASN'T any old content. It was all new stuff designed for much stronger characters than I had.

---

The thing with solo play isn't just what "possible" to run solo. It's technically possible to solo AVs and Giant Monsters. It's what I can solo and actually have fun doing it, and much of the game started getting uncomfortably brutal towards the end. There's a reason I stopped playing Blasters altogether - boy that was stressful to play. But towards the end, I was considering dropping entire powersets from the ATs I liked, such a SR, Energy Aura and so on. They were a right pain to play in Incarnate content.

[Samuel Tow]

Almost always when a friend or sgmate got online, we'd team up after a brief discussion about which characters or even servers we wanted to play on.  While I liked CoH solo, I liked it even better when teamed (omitting some truly terrible pickup teams) especially with friends but even random pickups were often good and how I meet my CoH friends, other than the RL pal who got me playing CoH.

For me, it's completely the reverse. When teaming was fun, I could play it for a while, but I would have quit the game years ago if that's all I could ever do. Say what you will, but I've always enjoyed playing alone most of all. Not because other people bother me, not because of rewards or mechanics or pick-up groups or whatnot. For me, entertainment is the sweetest when experienced alone. I can have fun with others for a while, sure, but afterwards, I need to rest my head and not speak with anyone else for a couple of hours. I'd come back from a hard day at work dealing with my students and my colleagues and then just shut myself in a room and play a single-player game for two hours straight.

Any game I can't play by myself is a game I can't play period, since most of my gaming happens alone anyway. I will team, of course - it's a lot of fun. For a while. But unless I can be by myself and rest, then the game stops being fun and turns into a chore, because there's only so much "socialisation" I can take before I need to recharge.

[Lady Luck]

I always found teaming to be one of the more fun aspects of COH but aside from a few situations I also liked that it wasn't required.
I liked seeing the creativity of people whether in their character concepts or in the banter of the team.
Everyone always seemed to be looking for teams but no one ever seemed to want to form teams.
I had no problem starting teams and keeping them full. You only needed to keep your contacts up to date.
During the final months of COH, I ran full teams nearly every night to help people get to 50 who never got to 50 and made some great friends that way.
Other MMOs seem to discourage teaming or at least make it difficult to find a team.

[CG]

Everyone always seemed to be looking for teams but no one ever seemed to want to form teams.

I noticed this as well, but generally when I saw a couple of requests I would just start a team.  It was never really a problem to keep going. 

[Ceremonius]

Well on Zukunft (german speaking server) it was like: whenever you wanted to go afk or had some other businesses -> you got a team.
After about 20 minutes half of the team was afk . But you'll just need 3 people get the ITF finished. A brute who knows how to tank, a good healer for the brute and a scrapper who knows what he's doing...well mostly....not .

But we survived and made the ITF with just 3 people instead of a full team....not master, but we made it . And nearly without kissing the ground. Well the scrapper (me) died serveral times, but due to regeneration and those winter temp powers (forgot the name wich revives you with dmg and knockback to enemies - was it knockback?) it wasn't such a big problem.

Ahhhh.....good'ol memories