Is there any way to make teams less boring?

[Xeph]

15 minutes ago, Snarky said:

Huh.  You got me there.  I like to throw random comment.  Always say Wazzup or Heyas at team start.  Maybe ask about group intentions to clarify at beginning.  After that my commentary generally goes down to "Here"  or "Anyone have eyes on?"  

 

I think there needs to be a requirement of at least 25 words every 5 minutes or you are booted from the TF.  Would that work for you?

 

You know if your name wasn't Snarky... 😋

 

It would be nice if everyone was able to readily socialize but even if we really lowered the expectations there would still be players that would struggle to crank out 10 words every 5 minutes. For some it takes everything they got to keep an attack rotation going. If we suddenly forced folks to also type, they'd end up standing around in the middle of fights just to make sure they don't get booted.

 

Maybe what we do is we add the 25 words every 5 minutes. And then if someone fails they have to maintain 30wpm for 5 minutes before they can get back into the team. What could possibly go wrong? LOL

[Snarky]

6 minutes ago, Xeph said:

 

 

To me this is a very interesting perspective. Because in my opinion, seriously just an opinion not a fact, you can never complete this game. There is always something you can come up with to do... thus the reason I have 45 characters and only a few 50s.

 

Fully Agree.  Working on my main badger now.  Played for years on live.  Played for overa year on HC.  This is my highest badger 1100+ and still going.  To get a few of these I am having to really learn new things.  

 

One of the reasons I never had a serious Badger is I enjoy a different aspect of the game (I see that a lot in this thread, on these boards, although many enjoy aspects I do not and vice versa)  I enjoy taking an alt (50% time a Brute) and going from 1st-50 doing TF/SF, Trials etc building them out and having fun.  Generally been on PUG teams.  Sullen, uncommunicative folks.  I love 'em lol.  

 

Another favorite of mine is to "Solo the Game" Take one toon (always a Brute) and do every contact (all arcs, side arcs, every mission no matter how small) stopping Exp to do so.  Have accomplished this Redside.  Never Blueside.  Have done Goldside twice on live.  Havent played it here.

 

Future goals. 1) Get a squishy and main that for a year or so.  2) Solo all Blueside   

 

Saying you are done is okay.  You are done.  To me that is like driving from the east coast to the west coast and saying you are done with America.  You seen it all....  Yeah, lol, no.  Did you stop at all the Bar-B-Que joints?  Did you get off the super slab?  Did you even see certain zones, er states, besides whipping in to read the roadside plaque to say you read each one in the state?  

 

I love the game, so I will never be done.  Heck, i do not even play that well, so thats going to take a few more years to hopefully develop some ability roflmao.  sigh, no seriously.

[Darmian]

21 minutes ago, Xeph said:

One other really great option is AE - while I haven't played through tons of AE content there are some fantastic Arcs hidden away in there (admittedly buried under all the fire farms...). Content that is on par with much of what the original Devs had made. There is one minor grievance with taking the AE approach to leveling though - you'll never get any merits. I'm by no means suggesting they SHOULD give merits but it is certainly a disadvantage.

I'm just going to throw this in here. Obviously it needs further development but I'm thinking a halfway house between AE and so on.

 

 

[tidge]

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

Huh.  You got me there.  I like to throw random comment.  Always say Wazzup or Heyas at team start.  Maybe ask about group intentions to clarify at beginning.  After that my commentary generally goes down to "Here"  or "Anyone have eyes on?"  

 

I think there needs to be a requirement of at least 25 words every 5 minutes or you are booted from the TF.  Would that work for you?

 

Do you routinely take longer than 5 minutes to complete a TF?

[Sovera]

16 hours ago, Darmian said:

See, you say limiting themselves, I don't even see it like that.  It is literally not important to me as long as I'm having fun.  Sure, you want to be tough enough to survive, but that's it mostly. Limiting?  Nope. Are you Daredeveil or Thor?  If the former you have way more scope, and no it's not limiting, it's just a different path. If the latter then if it's not God butchers, Thanos or Hela (bit of Loki thrown in) you're outta luck.  But as I say, each to their own.

 

As to 2 to 3 people steamrolling through a TF and 5 flunkies?  I just quit those.  Yeah, my bad.  But I didn't join a team to bulk up your numbers on XP, and I don't play that way, so toodles.

 

As an aside, we really need to nerf the term "endgame content", what is meant is Incarnate level and beyond, rather than content that happens at the end of the game, because content wise plenty of the actual "endgame content" isn't near level 50+.  New Praetorians being an example.

 

You know, I'm rather curious about this. It pretty much shows how we cannot, and should not, try to please everyone.

 

I've had this interaction (once) in the past. We were on a Citadel, team split up, someone mentions the team split up, we pipe in that the team seems to be doing fine (no one was dying). Player was unhappy. We keep on playing. After two or so missions they mention they don't know why they are bothering since everyone is doing fine and can 'solo' the missions by themselves.

 

I don't believe the person quit but they were unhappy.

 

 

At this point, like with them as with you, I don't know what I am expected to do.

 

The mission -can- be done more quickly with everyone splitting up. No one is dying so it's not hard (Citadel, Council, etc). So we need to go all together in a tight knit group for... what reason? To make someone happy about being in a team ball?

 

I'm not being sarcastic. This is me asking. What is the expected behavior? You're saying if you go into a team and three players can tackle the content and are tackling the content alone instead of a team ball you just quit the team. What is the expected behavior? Even if fighting an easy enemy that is not dangerous it's not being done correctly if not performed in a team ball?

 

 

Has it become a sin to purchase attuned IOs and actually work out a build instead of randomly slotting things? For some people this seems like a yes, and I return to my first paragraph.

[Darmian]

I am not going to say "correctly or "incorrectly", I simply state my own play style.  For me I join a team to be on a team, not on "8 players solo everything", or more to the OP's point, "3 players solo everything and 5 wander about aimlessly sucking up XP."

 

It seems mad I have to say this but teams team. Now, if you're happy to be on the "8 players solo everything" grouping then more power to you, and I hope you have fun. But for me teams, well, team, not just group together. Now this doesn't mean keeping together in some sort of murder-huddle, or falling into the Holy Trinity fallacy of each player/character absolutely needing an assigned role, but for me at least teams should offer the chance of actual team work.  That's it really.

Edited March 26, 2021 by Darmian

[huang3721]

  

30 minutes ago, Sovera said:

So we need to go all together in a tight knit group for... what reason?

 

Did you notice a performance gap between your team and that guy? Maybe that's the reason he or she became unhappy. I had a similar experience back in the live server. 

I was a free player, so my toon's build was severely limited. Still, I got lucky and teamed up with those souped-up toons. I should be happy, right? Not really. They split up and doing what you said earlier. This type of engagement was a problem for me. I couldn't attack a mob alone, so I tailed someone and gave them fire support. I did this while hoping those lieutenants/bosses would ignore me. Of course, they would not always do that. So, I often kite/retreat after a few shots. Otherwise, they would get my toon before my friend could kill them. I managed to survive that mission, but that wasn't fun.

You see, in a group, someone would eventually take the aggro away from my character or (often) kill my target before it killed me. 

 

Good thing that guy quits. It's not a sin, but I don't think everyone has enough time to do a proper build.

[Sovera]

2 minutes ago, huang3721 said:

  

 

Did you notice a performance gap between your team and that guy? Maybe that's the reason he or she became unhappy. I had a similar experience back in the live server. 

I was a free player, so my toon's build was severely limited. Still, I got lucky and teamed up with those souped-up toons. I should be happy, right? Not really. They split up and doing what you said earlier. This type of engagement was a problem for me. I couldn't attack a mob alone, so I tailed someone and gave them fire support. I did this while hoping those lieutenants/bosses would ignore me. Of course, they would not always do that. So, I often kite/retreat after a few shots. Otherwise, they would get my toon before my friend could kill them. I managed to survive that mission, but that wasn't fun.

You see, in a group, someone would eventually take the aggro away from my character or (often) kill my target before it killed me. 

 

Good thing that guy quits. It's not a sin, but I don't think everyone has enough time to do a proper build.

 

It's been a long time so don't quote me, but I vaguely recall rumblings about their buffs not being needed. On soft squishy targets like council run at +1 I can imagine this was so.

 

I made a friend recently who only plays healers and had rolled their empath and was ready to engage the game in the traditional manner. I gently coaxed them towards Kinetics instead pointing out that they would get to heal as they wanted to do, but that later on when heals aren't as needed they would still buff the team and make everyone happy by their presence. As far as I can tell they are still perfectly happy when I ask them. They heal when needed just the way they wanted to but they notice how their buffing accelerates things to the point they mentioned how they barely have time to attack themselves.

 

I tell them that's a sign you're doing a great job.

 

 

The reason I don't like murder balls (and tend to solo/duo things) is how often we are scrambling trying to find a target as things die around us. If I see a boss at half HP and most of the screen clear I know the team is converging like a frenzy of sharks. What is even the point in joining up and trying to squeeze in a hit? So I leapfrog ahead once the pack of mobs is half dead.

[tidge]

1 hour ago, Sovera said:

You know, I'm rather curious about this. It pretty much shows how we cannot, and should not, try to please everyone.

 

I've had this interaction (once) in the past. We were on a Citadel, team split up, someone mentions the team split up, we pipe in that the team seems to be doing fine (no one was dying). Player was unhappy. We keep on playing. After two or so missions they mention they don't know why they are bothering since everyone is doing fine and can 'solo' the missions by themselves.

 

I don't believe the person quit but they were unhappy.

 

At this point, like with them as with you, I don't know what I am expected to do.

 

The mission -can- be done more quickly with everyone splitting up. No one is dying so it's not hard (Citadel, Council, etc). So we need to go all together in a tight knit group for... what reason? To make someone happy about being in a team ball?

 

Citadel's TF is a very good example of regular content where I think "splitting the party" is a pretty natural approach:

• It has several "defeat all" missions, where the entire point of success is to eliminate all enemies. There is a radical difference in increasing effectiveness between having two 4-person squads and the increase between a single 7-person squad that adds an 8th member.
• It includes a 'delivery mission'. Only one person can complete this mission
• It includes a 'defeat x' mission in an open zone.
• It happens at a high enough level where individual ATs ought to have fully come into their role, and have the slots to make their powers (and if chosen, set bonuses) strong.

I feel similarly about the (blueside) Numina, Manticore, Moonfire and Penny Yin TFs... although the lower in level you go the less access to powers (and set bonuses) characters have.

 

I have NO DOUBT that at least one of my characters recently caused grief for a (large) mid-level PUG. The leader had the mission difficulty cranked WAY UP (see below) before I joined with a melee character that could hold its own. I found that I was both getting in the way of others and that some pets (decoys) would end up blocking me, or otherwise the enemies were falling before my animations landed. I wasn't tanking, so after convincing myself that the other 7 players could handle single groups I branched off to battle 'distant' groups so that we wouldn't draw too much aggro. The other 7 players were objectively less effective without me sticking close... When I saw them struggling I would try to rejoin to assist... but every time this happened it was because of accidental over aggro. I felt like it would have been MORE of a jerk move to intentionally over-aggro BEFORE the rest of the team did it naturally.

 

A note about WAY UP difficulty: In my experience, there are primarily two things about +4x8 content that cause struggles at mid-levels and below,

1. Final (player) To Hit chances fall, so enemies are not as "controlled by KO" as quickly,
2. Other controls work less effectively against enemies... and of course, those precious AoE controls are going to upset enemies!

If a team doesn't have (enemy) debuffs or (ally) buffs... there is only so much "team talk" that is going to help teams! I do try to make suggestions based on powers I see being used, but beyond passing inspirations to struggling teammates (but only if they actually have the sense to be using inspirations and thus have free slots), I don't know what else to do?

[Hew]

Just ran 6's arc this morning with 6 people, mix of incarnates, a 50 with zero incarnates (me), and some not50s. We ran it at +4. Some deaths here and there. Massive bloodfest in the final avatar smasher fight. End result? Team said they felt Strong and Pretty (these were not the words that were used). Badges all around. Right level of toughness, team mix, player count.

 

Team was Run What You Brung. Nobody alted to change team makeup. It was purely what everyone just wanted to play. We had 1 scrapper, 2 tanks, a troller, and a dom. up against 3 54+2 avatars, and it was amazing. 

 

You can have a not-boring, challenging, FUN team.

[huang3721]

I suddenly have this on my mind: everyone sees the boss is almost dead, so everyone ignores him and pushes forward.

 

What's the point, they thought.

 

Cue a lonely almost-dead boss trying to keep up with the rest of the team, who were trying to kill him earlier. 

[Grouchybeast]

14 hours ago, Xeph said:

1. By having larger teams we avoid getting stuck in the rut of all other MMOs HOLY TRINITY setup. Because as long as we pile enough on of SOMETHING it'll work out in the end. But if suddenly everything was restricted to 5 man teams we'd see tons of teams with 1 Tank/1 Brute, 1 Healer/Support, 3 DPS. It'd be horrible. Among many reasons, I've played this game to avoid that.

 

This seems unlikely, purely because of the way that CoX works.  A team of 5 doesn't get anything significantly more out of taking a structured 'Trinity' approach than a team of 8, so there's no real pressure towards it. 

 

Back on live I wandered around in a team of 4 AMed-up fire/rad corrs, watching debuffed mobs melting under our fireballs and rains before we even got a chance to fire off a single-target attack,  A brute who played with us sometimes had to run off ahead just to have a hope of reaching a live mob.  Here on HC my last two duos were a MM & Blaster, a Corr & Brute and a Blaster & Defender, and all of those combos worked absolutely fine in a team of two. If we'd added a third team member, then any AT would have been more-or-less as good as any other, because they all would have brought something useful to the table.

[MTeague]

21 hours ago, Apparition said:

Yep.  I know over a dozen people that stopped playing Homecoming over the past year and a half due to the lack of new endgame content.  Only so many times that you can do MLTFs, LRSFs, Dr. Kahn TFs, BAF Trials, Underground Trials, etc., and not get bored.

 

 I am sure that once new endgame content is added to Homecoming, they will be back.

 

Full disclosure:  I'm on lunchbreak at work, and because I'm at work, I'm kind of pessimistic / glass is half empty. 

 

But really? How long do you expect "new endgame content" would bring your friends back for?

Blizzard spends a year and a half to two years on new expansions and new raiding sets in warcraft.

People always hit the new level cap in a week, and finish the new raid sets in two weeks at most.

 

Not everyone of course. Casual players never came close to it before they added a scaled-down "LFR" system to queue for Pug Raids.

But the diehard "gimme endgame" players focus on the new raid / hardmodes like a starving squirrel who just found an open bag of peanuts. 

I never saw it be all that long before they were bored again.

 

And in the case of WoW, that was with a full for-profit AAA gaming studio cranking out content. I cannot see any possible way that Homecoming Devs can possibly provide enough Incarnate Focused Content to keep people who are burnt out on what we already have happy. I'm thinking a few new story arcs / trials would entertain your friends for a few weeks. Perhaps two months. Tops.

 

I would like to see the Devs focus on giving AE more tools because really I think crowdsourcing content to mission creators is the only realistic path forward for large-scale new content to be generated.  And I'd like to see selected missions curated by the devs and turned into a "real" outside-of-AE actual implemented mission ("developer's choice" ones), for those missions that they thought had a really good story and interesting layout and good enemies that fit the game lore.

[Darmian]

3 minutes ago, MTeague said:

I would like to see the Devs focus on giving AE more tools because really I think crowdsourcing content to mission creators is the only realistic path forward for large-scale new content to be generated.  And I'd like to see selected missions curated by the devs and turned into a "real" outside-of-AE actual implemented mission ("developer's choice" ones), for those missions that they thought had a really good story and interesting layout and good enemies that fit the game lore.

I'm for this.  See other post on a (possibly deranged?) solution to doing this relatively rapidly.

[Coyote]

18 hours ago, honoroit said:

 

Telling you tho: open pvp in all zones (including pocketD and ouro) is THE answer to every problem. 

I'd drop everything and move to that kinda homecoming server. Don't think I'd be alone. 

Think how exciting it'd be. Also, they can corpse loot merits, recipes and enh...and half your inf. 

 

I played on Siege Perilous so I can speak from the experience of someone from a open-PvP with full looting: it can be fun.

It can also suck a lot of different type of fun from the game.

A lot of players will not be interested in the forced challenge kind of fun, and therefore will move out.

This was true in UO where there were no level differences... it would be far more true in CoH where one character literally cannot beat another character who goes AFK. Or who can get 2-shot before being able to activate an action. Now add in having your Merits or stuff looted after dying from two shots that arrived at the same time so you couldn't react... can you say "ragequit"?

Conceptually, this idea has some minor benefits, but they are hugely outweighed by the drawbacks. I'm always surprised when this is seriously suggested as something that would be good for the game.

[Luminara]

41 minutes ago, Darmian said:

teams should offer the chance of actual team work

 

No mechanics in place to support that.  If Containment triggered double damage for other players' attacks, that'd be teamwork.  If taunted critters were more easily affected by status effects or debuffs, that'd be teamwork.  If "damage dealer" archetypes left a lingering effect when they used their attacks, like a little Absorb PBAoE or -Res on targets other than the one they're attacking, which benefited teammates but not them, that'd be teamwork.  We have powers which aid our teammates and provide some small interaction, typically in the form of "make X go down faster" and "make X less dangerous to us", but there's no actual teamwork built into them.  There are a few mechanics which encourage teaming, like increased XP/inf rewards and shitty inherents like Vigilance and Cosmic Balance, but nothing that rewards teamwork.

 

And there are only a handful of missions which require anything even remotely resembling teamwork.  Pull the AV away from the cysts... send the <archetype> to <do thing only <archetype> can do>... keep this AV away from that AV so they don't do <thing>... yeah, that about covers the list.  Missions weren't designed around teamwork.  You don't pull the AV into a room, trigger a spiky death trap and fight off waves of allies attempting to release it.  You don't hold off multiple AVs while half the team works on consoles to raise a barrier between them in order to cut off their links to one another.  Almost everything in the game can be soloed because almost everything in the game was designed for solo players, including team content.  That team content doesn't add mechanics to make teamwork necessary, it just buffs enemy levels.  We face harder foes than +4 minions and lieutenants before we can even access decent enhancements, much less have anywhere to put them.  Missions don't require or reward teamwork, any more than our characters do.

 

You want teamwork?  Build it into the game.  Without the mechanics, it's just asking people to stand around, pointlessly and needlessly, waiting for... fucked if I know.  A golden ticket?  Leprechaun Hanukah?  The Rapture?

[skoryy]

On 3/23/2021 at 7:02 PM, RogueWolf said:

I'm often stunned after a TF is over and everyone else says things like "great job" "good run" "great team" and I'm like... it was??? That was boring AF. How do you know the team was good when no one needed each other? Four of you kinda plowed through it by yourselves. We barely said anything to each other the whole time because no one felt the need to communicate. All I did was follow behind the pack as you ran off like toddlers on a sugar high and occasionally dropped a buff to feel like I was doing something. I never hit anything because it was dead before my attack animation was over. But I guess that really is some folks' idea of fun? 

 

I've been playing FFXIV for the past five months now, and I can count on one hand the number of times the roulette runs had more conversation than 'hello' and 'tyfp'.  And this is in instanced content with mechanics that require a good deal more thought than most anything in CoH.  And once I got the hang of how the various mechanics worked, running dungeons there became as rote as doing TFs here.

 

By the sixth time you've run a TF / dungeon / raid / what have you, you've become exceedingly efficient at it.  And given everyone who's run that content before, knows the meta, knows the mechanics, and knows all the tricks, well.   What you are asking for are solutions that can't be easily answered because there are no answers here that can easily solve the problem.  Not without, say, massively overhauling the game to match how FFXIV made their content replayable.  And at that point are you even playing CoH anymore?

Edited March 26, 2021 by skoryy

[Erratic1]

5 hours ago, Snarky said:

Huh.  You got me there.  I like to throw random comment.  Always say Wazzup or Heyas at team start.  Maybe ask about group intentions to clarify at beginning.  After that my commentary generally goes down to "Here"  or "Anyone have eyes on?"  

 

I think there needs to be a requirement of at least 25 words every 5 minutes or you are booted from the TF.  Would that work for you?

 

The other night we exited a radio mission in Founder's Falls and the next mission was not only at the same door but it was the same map. Of course I had to ask, "Were we not just here and did we not clear the place out?"

 

Team member responded, "That's how tight the rental market is. Bad guys move in immediately."

[golstat2003]

On 3/25/2021 at 12:52 PM, CFIndustries said:

For those looking for limitations and oldschool gameplay, isn't there a server out there that caters to that?

 

What is Rebirth's restrictions? I really am not an expert on all the variant servers honestly, but I suspect some in this thread might be.

 

And some of these alternative servers have lower populations so maybe their Market is expensive, forcing your hand on builds?

 

Just a thought…

 

Some of those servers markets pretty much don't exist because the population is low, because more folks prefer the changes HC made.

 

On those other servers You earn stuff form playing regularly via drops and merits.

[Peacemoon]

My honest suggestion is to try do things in small groups. 
A balanced group in CoH generally only needs 4 people, of any AT. The fact that teams can go up to 8 isn’t really required anymore.

 

Keep it tight, play with a small team, do lower level content, set the difficulty high, and enjoy having to strategise to win 🙂 

[Peacemoon]

Also if you have a premade team, you can do TFs over multiple nights if it’s really tough with a few people. 

[Darmian]

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

You want teamwork?  Build it into the game.  Without the mechanics, it's just asking people to stand around, pointlessly and needlessly, waiting for... fucked if I know.  A golden ticket?  Leprechaun Hanukah?  The Rapture?

Nope, that's the game forcing you into a group that needs X+Y to succeed. I LIKE that most things can be solo'd, I do. But teaming has its fun too. I'm probably whistling in the wind here (not at you now) but a sea change in attitude is needed, so that teams are treated as teams and not just extra bodies to up NPC numbers/blah blah. So in the spirit of "be the change" albeit some may get pissed at me, I drop from teams that are just 8 people soloing in the same mission.

 

Leprechaun Hanukah? 

[honoroit]

2 hours ago, Coyote said:

ragequit

 

Git gud? 

 

do what eq2 did, you exemp down to engage, or you cannot engage. 

 

Supress / lvl curve the enh, strip powers not available at exemp'd level. 

 

You'd still be twinky, but not aoeing ap to all hell like some angry god. 

[CFIndustries]

3 hours ago, golstat2003 said:

 

Some of those servers markets pretty much don't exist because the population is low, because more folks prefer the changes HC made.

 

On those other servers You earn stuff form playing regularly via drops and merits.

 

Sounds like the perfect server for those wanting to exist simply on SOs and generic crafted IOs. Self-limiting and easy to find like-minded users.

 

Nothing wrong with having alts and friends on two separate servers. 🙂

[Herotu]

Fear. Fear is the way. Hank nails it on one of his recent videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCh5vto8JFstb9Sma9zV25g

 

FEAR is how you squeeze magic from players. We're the sponge and fear is the juice.

 

We're not afraid of the enemies anymore. Back on live, we were scared to pull huge groups because we would struggle so much with them, but now it's a dose of revenge where the mobs have zero chance.

FEAR makes it interesting - makes us strategise.

 

HOW can we make the game interesting? Add a few near-invincible patrolling enemies - that sort of thing. Reintroduce the fear.

 

In the past, I have suggested Nemesis and Weaknesses systems, but got roundly shouted down, but I suspect those players are more interested in steamrollering over enemies that would spank them on live, like some kind of weird catharsis against mobs whose bullying clearly scarred them years ago, lol.

 

Edited March 26, 2021 by Herotu