Should all ATs and all powersets support all major playstyles: team, solo, pve, pvp, etc?

[DougGraves]

Controllers and tankers are painful to play solo.  It looks like they are changing tankers in test to let them solo.   With 4 melee AT's it was Stalkers solo, Tankers team, Brutes and Scrappers team or solo - and brutes and scrappers are fairly redundant already.  If they can all team and solo well will it end up with one best melee AT and 3 also rans?

 

Some powersets like gravity for controllers are meant for soloing while others are meant for teaming.  Given the popularity of teaming, that means those sets are used less.  If powersets were just generic descriptions "solo only control" "solo and small team control" "pvp control" it would not be a problem.  But powersets have a style and some players want that style for their character either thematically or just because.  So if you want to make a gravity controlling astronaut but team, you either accept a set that is bad at teaming or play something else.  

 

So should CoX go with the original idea that ATs and powersets are good at different styles of play.  Choose one that matches your style.  Or should it be that ATs and Devs are thematic and they should all cater to everyone's playstyle?

[Schizophobia]

i mean. y tho?

 

or rather what exactly are you proposing?

 

pretty sure my answer is "no" however.

[Ukase]

I am questioning your reasoning. Who said the gravity controllers were designed to solo? Or better at being solo than, say, an Ill/rad or a fire/kin? Every AT and powerset may be built to team or solo. The choice is the players. Your characters play best when equipped properly, provided the player understands how to make that build support the way they want to play. 

Years ago, my 2nd character was an emp/elec defender, as my first character was a blaster. They didn't have sentinels then; but I knew I wanted to blast, but I needed an emp to keep me going. So, the emp had blasts, and heals. Seemed like an easy choice, until I started playing it. Never occurred to me the damage was less than a blasters. I'd overlooked that somehow, despite the graphic illustration that shows it. But, I still got that character to 50 mostly solo, until I'd learned how to team with it. I think I was level 30 before I got heal other, and I don't think I ever got absorb pain until a respec after I was 50.  It was all under my control, those decisions. I was ignorant of how to build, or even play an empath for the first 30-35 levels. Then I started figuring things out when someone told me there were forums. I'd had no idea! So, I read, asked questions, read some more until I learned enough to get much better at slotting, and power selection and wise use of macros and binds. 

I share that to illustrate that powersets don't have to be one or the other. They can be both. We have 3 builds we can make for our characters to devote to any style of play we like. PvP, PvE 1-25, PvE 26-50. 

The ATs and powerset already cater to just about any playstyle you could ask for. But, that's just me. 

[Twisted Toon]

I believe the premise before the game was shut down was that all ATs should be able to solo basic mission content.

 

Should they easily solo that content? Probably not. But, they can solo it.

Some ATs are designed to by DPM centric. Others are designed for for support. Not all ATs will be able to dish-out or take damage at the same rate.

 

Balancing content for the many varieties of ATs that are available in this game is a nightmare. If you make something easy for the ATs that "struggle" in basic mission content, then you'll trivialize (even more) the same conent for those ATs that already find it easy.

 

Then, you get to RP/thematic characters who are not built for optimal efficiency...

 

[ShardWarrior]

51 minutes ago, DougGraves said:

Controllers and tankers are painful to play solo.  It looks like they are changing tankers in test to let them solo. 

My tankers would disagree with you here.  They are among my favorite toons to solo with. 

[Oubliette_Red]

All powersets already support already support all play styles since play styles are an element that apply to players, not to the character or their powersets.

This might be true in other games where you have a very limited array of powers, and sometimes only one or two available to your character because you chose the play style when you chose the character. Jedi Sentinel, Trooper Commando, Khajiit Nightblade, or Gnome Illusionist, each has its own play style.

 

While the powersets in CoH are not wide open to every archetype (nor should they be) there is so much customization available to players, that they can chose to play nearly any play style with their character.

[Heraclea]

Tankers are not difficult to solo on, are the easiest characters to raise difficulty levels on, and require a lot less investment than other ATs, and that includes Brutes.  In every game I've tried my first character is always a tanking class of some sort.  My first desire is to avoid frustration by prioritizing survival.  Tankers do kill stuff a bit slower than scrappers or brutes, but once endurance is a solved problem this becomes less of a factor. 

[Doc_Scorpion]

11 hours ago, DougGraves said:

Controllers and tankers are painful to play solo. 

Controllers, yeah.  Tanker...  are you high?  Or do you have an exceptionally low "pain" tolerance?  (And that's setting aside the whole apples-and-oranges thing.)  A tanker will never solo like a scrapper or brute, but it's light years ahead of a 'troller or 'fender.

[MetaVileTerror]

And I don't know, but my experience soloing as a Controller tends to be some of the most pleasant.  It's soloing as a Defender where I have trouble.

[boggo2300]

Soloing Trollers turns into faceroll city around level 20 in my experience

[Gulbasaur]

15 hours ago, DougGraves said:

Controllers and tankers are painful to play solo. 

I'd say controllers were pretty easy. With Containment, they're just below blasters in ranged damage (1.1 vs 1.125)... but their first shot is much weaker (0.55) so even if they only get one shot with Containment, they're still pretty powerful from a raw damage perspective. Debuff sets are outstanding on controllers because of this synergy. There is a big difference between set choices, though, possibly the biggest variation in the game in terms of utility and attack chains (some controllers never truly get one, some are rocking around with a full chain by level 4). This is true of support sets generally as debuff sets will fare much better than buff sets solo, but controllers also have a fairly big variation in their primaries. A mind/rad controller is an absolute beast, or a fire/ or illusion/... but the secondary makes a huge difference. /time, /rad or /dark will have an absolute cakewalk... /empathy or /kinetics not so much (or maybe, but very late in the game).

 

I'd argue that controllers actually find it hardest to have a clear roll within a team. Back before Going Rogue rewrote team dymanics, a controller walking onto a team was a sign that you were in for an easy ride. Now, we all play like villains (frenetic free-for-all) so sleeps and holds have less value as many teams just DPS their way through. The fact that dominators can, well, perma-dominate means that many controllers get to about level 40 and start questioning what exactly their role is on a team.  

 

Anyway, should they all be able to solo to some extent? Yes, of course, and they can. Should they all be able to take down +4AVs? No, but plenty of debuff support sets can and have been since the earliest days of Live. Back in the old pre-CoV days, rad/rad defenders had a reputation of being able to solo anything given enough time. 

Edited November 1, 2019 by Gulbasaur

[The_Warpact]

My fire/kin, ill/cold, mind/therm and elec/rad disagree with you.

Hell my buddy back on live used his elec/cold to solo GM's, av's, and TF's.

 

[Haijinx]

We should redesign the game completely.   Now.  Since its only almost 20 years old.  

 

 

[boggo2300]

First time I solo'd an AV was with a Controller, I'd say they were a long long way from hard to solo

[EmmySky]

This is an MMO so I dont think it was ever intended to be solo'd (except the few missions that are stated as solo).  That being said, I solo most of the time because...reasons. 

 

Some ATs lend themselves to solo play better than others and I think that is a wonderful thing.  If every AT or every powerset or every toon were the same, it'd be very boring! 

 

Being as this game wasnt designed to solo, I think solo-ability is entirely caused by player skill and choices.  I choose not to solo an Empathy defender because its slow but a Dark defender, she can bring it!  

 

If you can solo every AT, good on you.  If you find certain ones slow, boring or fragile and need/want a team to help, good on you.  

 

Happy hunting!

[MetaVileTerror]

I think what we "need" is a little help for new players with some clear and conscious descriptors in the Set and Power Descriptions.

"Solo-Friendly"

"Team-Dependent"

"Flexible for Group Play"

 

Make sure that new folks know what they're getting in to with the Powers and Sets.  Put these descriptors as the FIRST bit of text in the Description, before the delicious flavouring.  It's crucial information for players to have to make informed decisions.  The more robust and descriptive which we can make this information, the better, but maintain brevity for the sake of not cluttering the description boxes.

 

And for the love of all that is legible, when we do these changes:  

Use

line

breaks.

 

Please.

[Shred Monkey]

I think the answer to the question is the subject line is... "Yes, they should."

 

I think you'll spark a huge debate (or maybe already did) by saying, "They currently do not."

[Itikar]

8 hours ago, MetaVileTerror said:

And I don't know, but my experience soloing as a Controller tends to be some of the most pleasant.  It's soloing as a Defender where I have trouble.

Honestly I have soloed my defender through Praetoria just fine. Damage was a little low, compared to other archetypes, but eventually I managed to solo any mission that was thrown at me, including those with elite bosses, up to level 23. Looking forward to other content, but if anything the character feels stronger as I level. My powersets are force fields and energy blast. The enemies that gave me a harder time, so far, were only the advanced clockworks and to a lesser extent resistance members.

 

I also tried to solo a controller, although at a relatively low level so far, and even going against enemies with mez protection (Arachnos lieutenants) I would not call the experience really hard. I just kept in mind my immobilize and single target hold were also my main attacks.

 

The one archetype that gave me a little trouble, or rather more trouble than I would have expected, was corruptor. But eventually even on that, once I got some key powers from my secondary, the experience improved dramatically.

 

In my experience so far all archetypes can solo, some better than others of course, but still all can solo. What I have noticed, even for "good" archetypes at times, is that some people team-up pretty early with their character, often skipping the early levels, or they straight up powerlevel their character through various means, and then they are often not really prepared to use their character's powers to their advantage when facing solo content.

[MetaVileTerror]

The Archetype which I always face-plant as, most of all, is Blaster.  But that's my fault.  I just don't like dealing damage; I like to solve my problems creatively.

 . . . not exactly an effective mindset to take for an Archetype built around the concept of "The Best Anything is Overwhelming Offense."

 

But I know other people absolutely connect with that mentality and slay their way to victory.

 

The point I'd like to make, though, is the same one so many other people have already made in this thread:  It's not necessarily the Archetypes or Power Sets which are fine-tuned to certain playstyles . . . it's the players.

[DougGraves]

2 hours ago, MetaVileTerror said:

I think what we "need" is a little help for new players with some clear and conscious descriptors in the Set and Power Descriptions.

"Solo-Friendly"

"Team-Dependent"

"Flexible for Group Play"

 

Make sure that new folks know what they're getting in to with the Powers and Sets.  Put these descriptors as the FIRST bit of text in the Description, before the delicious flavouring.  It's crucial information for players to have to make informed decisions.  The more robust and descriptive which we can make this information, the better, but maintain brevity for the sake of not cluttering the description boxes.

 

I wish that the ATs had descriptions of "Play this if you want to..."  And those descriptions would be the vision for that AT and powerset.

 

Tanker - "Play this if you want to focus foes on attacking you instead of your allies and being able to survive large numbers of foes."

 

[Oubliette_Red]

2 hours ago, MetaVileTerror said:

<snip>

"Team-Dependent"

<snip

 

I don't consider any archetype or powerset in the game to be "Team-Dependent", that's right up there with saying your team needs a "healer".

 

That doesn't mean that people can't purposely gimp their build with powers selection/slotting but those are outliers, not the norm.

[MrSnottyPants]

6 hours ago, Oubliette_Red said:

 

I don't consider any archetype or powerset in the game to be "Team-Dependent", that's right up there with saying your team needs a "healer".

 

That doesn't mean that people can't purposely gimp their build with powers selection/slotting but those are outliers, not the norm.

I'd say an Empathy Defender made a poor choice if they never plan to team 😁.

 

But I assume that Empathy Defender can solo door missions all the way to 50 if they want (maybe at -1 level).  Other content like task forces is meant for teams - some can solo those too, but I don't think every AT should be made to.

 

Making ATs more fun in teams and more fun to solo is a great thing.  The blaster's sustain powers, defender's getting a damage boost in small teams - these seem like the right approach.

[DougGraves]

7 hours ago, 5099y_74c05 said:

Positron is critical of their AT design choices and specifically calls this out in the interview (approximately 5:30 min mark). I think he readdresses it again towards the end.

 

Great video.  It is a 6:15 he starts talking about ATs.

[molten_dragon]

No, I don't think every AT or powerset needs to support every type of content.  I'd actually enjoy a support-only AT that mixed a control primary with a protective secondary and was unable to solo (mostly).  

[boggo2300]

On 11/2/2019 at 12:25 AM, EmmySky said:

This is an MMO so I dont think it was ever intended to be solo'd (except the few missions that are stated as solo).  That being said, I solo most of the time because...reasons. 

 

Some ATs lend themselves to solo play better than others and I think that is a wonderful thing.  If every AT or every powerset or every toon were the same, it'd be very boring! 

 

Being as this game wasnt designed to solo, I think solo-ability is entirely caused by player skill and choices.  I choose not to solo an Empathy defender because its slow but a Dark defender, she can bring it!  

 

If you can solo every AT, good on you.  If you find certain ones slow, boring or fragile and need/want a team to help, good on you.  

 

Happy hunting!

Except Soloing pretty much became the most common way to play MMO's and to their credit the Live Devs recognised that and made CoH one of the most solo-able MMO's out there, it's how it earned its reputation as THE MMO for casual players