A few suggestions regarding the new CoH game design

[Golden Girl]

HaV is being designed to offer a similar solo and team experience to the one found in CoH - neither type of play will be better/worse than the other.

[dwturducken]

I, for one, found the team experience "better" because of the social aspect, and that doesn't appear to be a problem, no matter which successor game we're talking about.

[silvers1]

No.   

So you are saying "reward ME for MY play style" and punish those who like to solo?

I like to solo.  So why should I be punished for it?   Why should I have to team with a bunch of yahoos, no matter how good or friendly they are, and/or forced to play with trolls and elitists, to get the best rewards?

Teaming with good players and friends should be the reward itself.

No, that's not what I said at all.  I want a similar experience to CoH, where grouping resulted in synergies of powers and hence mowing through mobs faster.   I agree, soloing should be enjoyable - but I dont want something like GW2 or Neverwinter, where groups never happen except for specific dungeons.

[JaguarX]

Said bonuses were lost with the new difficulties, you could be solo or with a couple friends and get exactly same number of enemies and an AV exactly as if you were in a full 8 people team.

Also, the larger the team, the less XP you got since, XP per foe decreased per team member to keep it balanced since the more people on team, more enemies to be fought. For some reason, thar decreasing of XP per team member balance remained untouched so the most XP you could get was on a x8 setting for a soloer.

Technically, a full team would take much less time clearing a mission than a x8 soloer, that I found to be true once you got everyone on team inside the mission and ready to go, the difficult task was reaching that point, we've all been there I guess, a couple people leaving so taking a few moments to get replacements, going to trainer to lvl up, bio breaks... all in all, since the difficulty level changes, teaming was punished in both XP and drops except for characters who had trouble soloing while it greatly rewarded playing alone for easy soloing characters and that's what I meant to be avoided on my previous post.

hm never looked at it that way. I always felt the average joe solo got punished.

I see, if one can steamroll X8, thye could potentially be more efficient at clearing X8 maps more than a team. But if you wasnt uber and or couldnt tackle X8, then teaming with X8 was better rewarded.

The time that it takes to form a 8 man team could be a while. While pound per pound, an 8 man team probably could run through a mission faster than a solo person on average taking X8 but then the time saved is lost with breaks, people switching going afk, this and that waiting for people to rez waiting for people to load into the map, and even the time it takes to form a team. By the time that is done a full hour could easily go by on forming the team alone and more time for the other stuff by then an half way effecient X8 solo person could be on their second or third mission before the team is finally ready to kill their first mob.

That gives me new perspective on it.

Talking about the later years I heard about.

Most of the years I played, teams had the clear advantage on rewards more than solo people.

Cant judge too much on drops as I got crap stuff solo and teaming so I wouldnt know what it was like to get the good stuff and which was better or not. Although it was easier to see when people got good stuff on a team compared to solo. A few people get and of course announce thye got 100 million dollar item. Then of course the rest is probably thinking "Alright, we should get something soon." Nope, again the same few get more the good stuff again.

I think there should be a bit more round robin thing. If someone got a very rare drop, then they shouldnt get another until the rest of the team at least got one instead of one or two people walking away with half billion or more worth of stuff and the rest walking away with stuff that is not even worth anything. That is one aspect of teaming I didnt enjoy much. It might as well been a greed system as far as I was concerned because the same people got the good stuff anyways. And being on the team means were were doing the same task same work same amount of time except a few got paid way more while other got crap. "oh wow, just what I needed, another worthless Pacing the Turtle. Well there should be badge for collecting 100 of them."

[cybermitheral]

I understand the feeling of seeing someone on an ITF getting 4 purples in a single run and the rest of the team getting none. Even when I got multiple good drops and the rest got none I felt bad like I was being greedy.

I would like to see however the Mission Bosses (not just boss class enemies) have a guaranteed drop for ALL members of the team. This would range from a Class A (Top Tier) to Class Z+1 (2nd bottom tier) item. This way everyone gets SOMETHING but you dont end up with the 'basic reward'. This still allows randomness, and yes could result in a middle-class reward that is worth less than a bottom-class item on the Auction House, but thats not the games fault.

[PSI-on]

Totally agree here. It always bothered me that if I went on that trial and fought Maelstrom, that he might not drop one of his pistols at all, but if he DID, he'd only drop it for one person, not all. I can imagine how tough he was and how hard everyone worked to win, only to have only one person get something worthwhile out of it.

I understand the feeling of seeing someone on an ITF getting 4 purples in a single run and the rest of the team getting none. Even when I got multiple good drops and the rest got none I felt bad like I was being greedy.

I would like to see however the Mission Bosses (not just boss class enemies) have a guaranteed drop for ALL members of the team. This would range from a Class A (Top Tier) to Class Z+1 (2nd bottom tier) item. This way everyone gets SOMETHING but you dont end up with the 'basic reward'. This still allows randomness, and yes could result in a middle-class reward that is worth less than a bottom-class item on the Auction House, but thats not the games fault.

[Nightmarer]

Hmm, tough one, I personally don't see randomness a problem at all, in fact, I think it's best solution. I of course prefer to be the one who gets a "Luck of the gambler 7.5% recharge" and all that but the great thing about CoH was that even if I didn't get it, I could go to the AH and purchase it because not having the "binds on pick up" and "binds on equip" items was one of the best decisions in a MMO.

Between I9 and I13, Ah prices were reasonable, heck, I remember purchasing said Luck of the gambler recipes for 1.5 milion inf, unfortunately, with the launch of I13 and Synapse's infamous Reward Merits, AH prices went bonkers and never recovered.

Can't blame Synapse, theorically, it was a master movement, he screwed up the game and made a living out of monitoring his mess, in fact, it was even reinforced with new kinds of currencies, merits, tickets, heck, at some stage I was expecting Monopoly notes to be a CoH valid currency.

Anyway, sorry for drifting, point is, random drops are perfectly acceptable providing everything can be bought in AH while keeping AH prices and game currencies under control.-

[silvers1]

I think there needs to be a balance regarding drops.
First of all, if you make it a guaranteed drop on defeating the boss, then people will play the TF once, get their uber drop, then never return.
There needs to be some reason to repeat the TF, or it will become an unused area of the system.

I like the way CoH had it, where drops were known only to the recipient.  Nothing to prevent the person from announcing it, of course,
but still no reason to foster instant resentment on receiving that nice drop.

Perhaps the way Neverwinter has it (for dungeons/TFs):
-  You always get something at the end - may not be the uber item, but you do get something as a reward
-  You have a small chance to get that really nice item

[PSI-on]

To be fair, I would hope that wouldn't be the only reason for a TF. In my example, maelstrom's pistols, the point of doing it was it was an iTrial which you needed to do to get the stuff you needed to lvl up and unlock incarnate slots. The pistols were just a little bonus that was hard to get. I suppose it all depends on how it's handled. I'd prefer that even if it was a guaranteed drop that it didn't BIND, so you could still sell and trade it, and if it worked like CoX then it wouldn't hurt to pick up multiple since each character would need to unlock it, not just the account. If it worked like Champions then I could see getting it every time to be a problem since the only people who would buy it then were low lvl's who couldn't do the mission yet. If it had to be random, I'd just hope the random chance would be fair. Fair enough I didn't have to do it thousands of times before I got whatever or force me to pay crazy prices on the AH, but not be so easy that they were as meaningless and worthless as those Purple Gun Tommy Guns seem to be in CO. <_< I just want a fair and reasonable chance at something without being forced to do the same content until I'm sick of it or the game itself (like STO makes me feel) or be forced to grind for the cash to get in from other players. I can't speak for everyone else, but I'm very tired of grinding and farming (unless we're talking about Harvest Moon here) in games.

[Golden Girl]

I like the way CoH had it, where drops were known only to the recipient.  Nothing to prevent the person from announcing it, of course,
but still no reason to foster instant resentment on receiving that nice drop.

Originally, it was going to be announced in the system chat - but they quickly dropped that idea

[Aggelakis]

Originally, it was going to be announced in the system chat - but they quickly dropped that idea

Ugh. I was in that beta. How hard and loud I pushed for that removal. I think I was probably leading the pitchforks-and-torches mob that time. :x

[Golden Girl]

Ugh. I was in that beta. How hard and loud I pushed for that removal. I think I was probably leading the pitchforks-and-torches mob that time. :x

It was almost like they were trolling the players

[Aggelakis]

It was an all-or-nothing thing too, they were going to announce everything - recipes, salvage, TO/DO/SOs, inspirations....they had no way (or didn't want to code a way) to turn it on selectively, so I was going to know that my teammates got a breakfree from that dude. I was gonna know my lowbie sidekick got a Training accuracy from that other dude. I mean really, the rewards announcements scroll by so fast already, it was going to turn that channel into nothing but spam. I don't F'ing care that Joe Bob Punchyman got an Invention: Confuse Duration! I DON'T CARE!!! lol

[Golden Girl]

I think that they simply thought that as players had been asking to be able to see the numbers and stats behind the powers for so long, they'd probably want to see these as well.

[PSI-on]

Then I'm guessing it's safe to say that this could be added to the list of things we don't want to see in a new CoH type of game? Makes you wonder why Cryptic thought it would be a good idea in their new games.

It was an all-or-nothing thing too, they were going to announce everything - recipes, salvage, TO/DO/SOs, inspirations....they had no way (or didn't want to code a way) to turn it on selectively, so I was going to know that my teammates got a breakfree from that dude. I was gonna know my lowbie sidekick got a Training accuracy from that other dude. I mean really, the rewards announcements scroll by so fast already, it was going to turn that channel into nothing but spam. I don't F'ing care that Joe Bob Punchyman got an Invention: Confuse Duration! I DON'T CARE!!! lol

[cybermitheral]

I wasn't suggesting that EVERYONE gets a Tier1 drop on defeating the end boss (ie: Lord Recluse) rather that everyone is guaranteed a drop of some kind above the basic drop level. This could result in a purple drop, a LotG +7.5% or a Multi-Strike. It could be an Enhanced Platinum (T1) or Tier 2 crafting material. Etc.

For bosses with unique rewards then someONE should get it on defeat. If you run the iTrial twice and get it twice in a row then you are lucky. Others will still get SOMETHING on h is defeat.

[PSI-on]

That would be good enough for me too. Sounds a bit more balanced but fair than what CoH sometimes had and what I proposed, a good middle ground, I think.

I wasn't suggesting that EVERYONE gets a Tier1 drop on defeating the end boss (ie: Lord Recluse) rather that everyone is guaranteed a drop of some kind above the basic drop level. This could result in a purple drop, a LotG +7.5% or a Multi-Strike. It could be an Enhanced Platinum (T1) or Tier 2 crafting material. Etc.

For bosses with unique rewards then someONE should get it on defeat. If you run the iTrial twice and get it twice in a row then you are lucky. Others will still get SOMETHING on h is defeat.

[dragonhawk]

While I like the archtype/class system in MMOs and the one in CoH in particular, I do feel there were some issues that should be fixed if it is ever used again.  As well as a few other game mechanic changes that CoH had.

Tanks/Brutes:  Brutes made tanks completely irrelevant in CoH, they could take almost as much damage and do alot more dps.  My solution is combine the tanka nd brute archtype into one and include a stance system.  In def stance (tank) damage goes down but resistance cap goes up to 90%, and in offense (brute) damage goes up while the resistance cap drops down to around 60%.  Include a cooldown on the stance swap (say around 1 min) so you cant just spam stance swapping.

I would also make some changes to tanks/brutes vs scrappers/stalkers.  Tanks should be resistance based with lower defense.  Scrappers should have their defenses based on avoidance.  In comics tanks take the hit for the team, they stand in front of the plasma cannon and block the shot because it would kill everyone else on the team.  Scrappers on the other hand dodge attacks (or heal through them).  Virtually all the scrappers from Batman to Spiderman avoid hits and dont take them.  This should be reflected in the game where the power sets are avoidance based and scrappers have a much lower resistance cap than they did in CoH (maybe around 30%-40%).

Controllers/Defenders:  Again controllers made defenders obsolete, since they had had defender secondary abilities for secondary powers and brought lockdowns/pets to the team which more than made up for the lower heals/buffs/debuffs.  My solution would be eliminate controllers as an archtype and divide control duties/powers into dominators and defenders/corruptors.  Have dominators have stronger AoE cc for dealing with trash, but weaker single target heals.  Defenders should have strong single target cc with few or none AoE cc.  Combine that with heals and buffs/debuffs and it would make defenders/corruptors ideal support for boss/AV fights.  I would also change cc in the game so that mobs are not permanently locked down.  Make it so that as you damage a mob it weakens the cc so that at say 40% health they would break out of the cc.  Bosses and AVs would have their own mechanics for dealing with cc.  As far as the controller pets go I would move them to the mastermind AT, adding some power sets based on elemental type pets.

Blasters:  Aside from needing to be king of ranged dps and even dps in general, the biggest change I would do would be to their nukes.  Nukes should not completely drain their energy and all of them should be ranged.  The idea that the squishiest AT int he game should run into the middle of 10 mods and fire off their nuke was silly, particularly when it was in the ranged damage power set.  About half the blaster power sets had a ranged nuke and they should have all had it make to ranged.  The other thing I would do would be to allow blasters to change their nuke from an AoE to a single target when dealing with a boss/AV.  It could be like a tanks stance where once swapped to single target mode the nuke would do increased damage to one target and when dealing with trash could be in AoE mode to take out packs of mobs.

Super Groups:  Make SGs relevant, there wasnt really anything that made an SG relevant in CoH.  In the future there should be missions and TFs that only an SG can access.  I would not have them drop loot that you cant get in pug TFs, but have the drop rates be much better.  I would also make the fights tougher with the idea that it would be a group of people with some kind of VioP system in place to coordinate the fights.

Vaults:  Allow players to store anything in their vault/bank.  The idea that I have to start my own SG just so I had a place to store my IO recipes/enhancements, because I couldnt put them in my vault was stupid.  Just do a bank system like every other mmo that lets you put whatever you want in your bank.

[cybermitheral]

Tanks weren't just meant to be Themed on big large sacks of HP, but also means of aggro management
There is no reason that Spider Man couldn't be an Agile Tank. he taunts a hell of a lot and is frustratingly hard to hit.

Resistance was ignore % of damage but still getting hurt.
Defence was ignoring damage through avoidance or deflection (Shield Defence) or a barrier that if you got through hit for almost full damage (like Energy Aura).
Forcing Tanks to ONLY use Res and Scrappers to ONLY use Def is too limiting to not only concept but also build design.

Tanks vs Brutes
Yes Brutes could become WAY to tough and overlapped Tanks way to easily, especially with IO's for normal and +1/+2 even +3 Difficulty. Some of my IO'd Brutes could even Tank at +4 depending on the Powersets and enemies (Inv and Psi enemies don't mix no matter what lol).
CityOfTitans (www.CityOfTitans.com) will have both Tanks (called Bulwarks) and Brutes/Scrappers (called Gladiators), along with the other Class types (Ranged/Support/Control/etc), but will also allow you to chose your own Mastery (or Inherent using CoH-speak), so if I want to use a Rage-style mechanic I can, or a +X% to Crit I can, or a .....
They are also having each Class its own Protection (my term) caps with Bulwarks at the top by a significant margin. So there is no Brute/Scrapper with different HP/Def values (unless a Mastery allows for one?) and even if there is the difference between what a Bulwark can tank and what a Glad can Tank will be very different.

Come on over the the CoT forums, the game is in pre-alpha/design stage. The water is cool, the food is hot and the sunrise is just starting to shine over the horizon of the great future that is CoT

[Felderburg]

Super Groups:  Make SGs relevant, there wasnt really anything that made an SG relevant in CoH.  In the future there should be missions and TFs that only an SG can access.  I would not have them drop loot that you cant get in pug TFs, but have the drop rates be much better.  I would also make the fights tougher with the idea that it would be a group of people with some kind of VioP [sic] system in place to coordinate the fights.

There was some stuff planned and in some cases implemented, like PvP base raids and the Cathedral of Pain Trial. But even if there's not SG-specific content, being in a group with like-minded people is "relevance" enough, isn't it? Plus, you don't want to lock people who want to play solo out of some content, just because they don't particularly want to join an SG.

The idea that the squishiest AT int he game should run into the middle of 10 mods and fire off their nuke was silly, particularly when it was in the ranged damage power set.

Silly? Maaaaaybe. Fun? Heck yes! Although you do raise a good point about the highest tier of a ranged power set requiring moving in to melee distance.