Rebalancing making a hard push for teaming over solo?

[-Klod-]

There are people to team with, it's just... There's no need to do so. Hopefully, it will change.

[Kain97]

For example - anyone playing a fixer, when was the last time you killed Lord of the Void?

"Last"? Ha. Fixers can't solo scary spider (at least not without a bunch of luck and OSB'd like crazy), lotv is out of the question. I've soloed some interesting things... but OSB's and a ton of luck are always required, and it's guaranteed that for every time I've successfully killed something hard, it's killed me half a dozen times just because luck didn't go my way.

Regarding the hot changes... I'm ofc not aware of other potential changes that might help out more... but the far slower heal intervals on the hots are going to suck. I understand it's supposedly meant to remove any lingering interest in a low-hp build... buuut:

a) fixer hp is among the lowest in game, even with maxed BD - we simply do not have the higher hp that's required for slower hot ticks to work effectively... we're not keepers, with their higher hp, coon, heal perks, etc..
I don't mind my hp yoyo'ing up and down, but when you can be wtfpwnt easily within 20 seconds, especially with the flukey nature of evades...
I always wondered why fixers, who were supposedly masters of the heal over time programs, got shown up by the 2 sec tick on the mongo heal, of all things.

b) our healing at tl7 was never all that great anyways, and in a team situation, the usefulness of hots was pretty meager. "oh, you just got hit for 7k? well, good thing the hot I cast on you will tick in a few seconds for 500hp.. >_>" Slower ticks, even if they heal for slightly better than double per tick, are useless.

c) I"m not huge on pvp, but I fail to see why any fixer would want to go lower hp after the rebalancing - it seems like we're gonna need all the hp we can get to survive some of the perks that will check NR (and with AAD not counting against NR checking perks, I'm pretty sure we're gonna end up getting perked to some degree or another.) Seeing that crats will be getting a big boost in terms of nuking power, and expecting mp's/nt's and maybe docs to get similar boosts... low hp is looking pretty dead, even without pisspoor slow hot ticks.

More on topic: I have nothing against teaming, but I sure hope the advertising/engine/etc all work to get more people into AO... otherwise I see it dying off pretty fast, as the diehard players get fed up with needing to team for things they could solo beforehand. I don't want q/afk pvm... but I don't want to have to team just to kill dynas in inf either.

[Johnnykay]

This game is already far to reliant on teaming to do various things... Like for example leveling. This game should develop a decent rate of leveling solo, that doesn't feel like an impossible to overcome struggle.

Other than that, I also like very much to run solo doing various stuff. Hope they won't fudge that up.

You mean like....daily missions? DOJA chips? Battlestation Daily?

You're right. They should.

[Johnnykay]

There are people to team with, it's just... There's no need to do so. Hopefully, it will change.

This X10.

It's not that there aren't tons of people that want to do Pande. It's that you're too damn greedy to share loot with 14 people instead of 3. That's why you see 2-3 person teams taking down Pande, Mitaar, DB2, etc.

[Shrubberyman]

(...)

c) I"m not huge on pvp, but I fail to see why any fixer would want to go lower hp after the rebalancing - it seems like we're gonna need all the hp we can get to survive some of the perks that will check NR (and with AAD not counting against NR checking perks, I'm pretty sure we're gonna end up getting perked to some degree or another.) Seeing that crats will be getting a big boost in terms of nuking power, and expecting mp's/nt's and maybe docs to get similar boosts... low hp is looking pretty dead, even without pisspoor slow hot ticks.

More on topic: I have nothing against teaming, but I sure hope the advertising/engine/etc all work to get more people into AO... otherwise I see it dying off pretty fast, as the diehard players get fed up with needing to team for things they could solo beforehand. I don't want q/afk pvm... but I don't want to have to team just to kill dynas in inf either.

True enough.

But I can see why FC would (should?) bring incentive or even force players into teaming and/or sacrifiying some of the way too proeminent stats of their profession for more "secondary" skills. Like :

Fixers sacrifying some AR for some hp. Or teaming.
NTs losing some evades for more nanoskills. Or teaming.
Docs and Agents dropping some hp gear to get more nanoskills. Or teaming.
Soldiers dropping some hp and AR for nanopool and evades. Or teaming.
Enforcers dropping hp and AR for nanopool and nanoskills. Or teaming.
etc...

The balancing would be kinda cool if instead of making toons' power curve be only vertical (I need more of X and Y to keep being uber), it made the power curve go horizontal (I need X and Y, but also some good amount of Z and W), cause it would mean 1) moving away from the cookie cutter setup models and the score inflation, and 2) that teaming a wide range of professions always bring you an added-value.

Just my 2 cents

[Mastablasta]

So you're complaining that it's just on the border of being too hard to solo now? I'd like to make that into a false claim. Even if it got 25% harder to do everything, you'd still have no problems doing anything.

And like Klod said, there are plenty of people to team with, just none of you greedy bastards want to team with them because there's no need. Better to keep all the loot for yourself than potentially having to share. I experienced this in Smuggler's Den, of all places, where I wanted to team with a person who was there to kill mantis for his daily mission, like me. No thanks, he said to my offer of joining forces and not trying to outdamage eachother. Which he couldn't anyway. Why on earth would anyone say no to that? I don't get it, but hey there's this hatred of teaming building up and I don't really see any reason to push that hatred further.

[Xephonics]

there are plenty of people to team with sub 220?

and by plenty do you mean you can get a team to do an inf mission within 30mins? OR that bs's cycle within 30min? Cause I have waited at tl5 bs for 3-4 hours. I have waited in inf for 2 days (and I was 205+).

Anyways, I just do not see the reasoning to push harder for teaming before they get a swell of people (hopefully from the gfx engine). I guess if you are sitting happily at 220 then teaming is a cinch, but if you are not, then oh well :P

I'm fine anyways as I always have a perma partner ingame (my wife). I just do not want it to chase away more of the pop. Hopefully i am wrong andit just makes leveling more fun for team and solo.

[Vurtuoso]

This game is already far to reliant on teaming to do various things... Like for example leveling. This game should develop a decent rate of leveling solo, that doesn't feel like an impossible to overcome struggle.

Other than that, I also like very much to run solo doing various stuff. Hope they won't fudge that up.

I totally agree with you, if I knew I could solo with other characters I would start playing them, but I think the current formula is kind of messed up, since there are "heck teams" and crap like that, imo thats exploiting the game. I will not exploit a game if I am having enough fun in it. I want to be able to stop whenever I damn well feel like it and look out at a scenic view without feeling obligated to continue with whatever mission my team is on. Autonomy is with this game needs big time in my opinion, personally I want to go everywhere in SL besides instanced areas, but I cant without a team, and since I am pvp twinked I certainly can't pvm well at all. Soling now should give you = amount of xp as if you were in a team, and if you are in a team you should get 50% extra per teammate, yes I love my 220/30 but the days of being happy and satisfied I ground for ages to achieve the title of uber nerdo are behind me, people should be leveling much faster now, and getting to end game for the most part themselves. I think people are not the most satisfied being in lower tier purgatory, besides the heavy twinkers, most people are happy being high level and uber, thats what would keep them in the game imo.

[Xephonics]

i do not mind the slow go honestly. I guess others might, but they should not really be in this game then.

Though one change id like is either lower hecks exp, or raise the xp of other mobs. I am sick as hell of grinding on rocks, and it is retarded that they offer such reward for repeating the same thing for 100 or so levels.

[Towerblock]

Debump. Put the (M)assively (M)ultiplayer back into MMO's.
If I wanted to play a solo game, I'll play a console.
MMO's are intended to be social. If youre not the social type, then MMO's probably aren't your thing.

Oh and Limdul, the population will not remain the way it is. Lots of folks talk to much doom and gloom, and no one remembers the part where there will be a massive ad and marketing campaign to bring new and returning blood back to the game. I, like you, believe much the same. That being said, AO's future is not going to be as bad as it is now. In fact, I am quite reassured that the population will need good experienced players like you and I to show them the ropes to be in successful teams. This is a great opportunity.

[Xephonics]

I am more than willing to help :P

though on a side note multiplayer only means there are many players, it does not imply forced teaming :P I like AO because I can do both whenever I want (except for lately, when I'd like to team but it is a damn ghost town if you are not 220 :P )

[Towerblock]

Check out s10. It looks like the flood gates of noobdom down there.

[borriss]

Debump. Put the (M)assively (M)ultiplayer back into MMO's.
If I wanted to play a solo game, I'll play a console.
MMO's are intended to be social. If youre not the social type, then MMO's probably aren't your thing.

This is such a stupid statement. It's simply a fact that games where you are able to level solo aswell as leveling in teams are much more fun. You get teams when you want to do the "hard" and rewarding stuff. Then for the rest it's fun to go about to level solo. Anarchy Online has always been a senseless grind to level in a team, and sort of out of the question to level solo untill recently. Where you can do dailies.. I won't deny having had some really pleasant/funny teams, doing various grinds inf outdoor/Ado hecks etc having alot of fun with my teams... But the times you really have fun with a team are rare.. And all in between just sucks.

I'm not talking about at end game, I miss the times when LoTV and Razor/Xark were scary as hell pre AI... I wish none of the end-game mobs were soloable. And I wish raids actually took more people. Like 3 people can do almost anything today, you just need to take your time...

Heck I even miss Mercs, when docs had to take turns on Complete Healing. Tell me that wasn't epic!! I remember getting close enough to get the AOE nuke and I was scared as hell, that thing was devastating! I loved those old Merc raids...

[Xtremtech]

I'm interested in the basic premise here: That FC is trying to encourage more PvM teaming with the announced balance changes.

Where's the evidence for this? Which changes are designed to encourage PvM teaming and push people away from solo?

X

[Radia]

This is silly, in all other or close to all other MMORPG's you can solo level quite well... Teaming is only needed for dungeons and other stuff where you are rewarded slight XP gain and awesome items.

If WoW were team leveling only, I bet only half of the people would actually ever make it to 80(85 soon)... Because it would SUCK. Just as leveling in AO currently does...

I know I may get booed for talking about WoW, but I thought I'd chip in on this.

First: most WoW levelling strategies now recommend team-instances as the best way to level. Many of the recent WoW features are aimed at constructing teams in a really fast manner, so it actually proves to be a better strategy than using quest guides even though it takes very little effort to complete an instance.

Second: Blizzard once released statistics about how many people actually do hit 80. Its about 10 - 20% of the total number of accounts. WoW may claim to have 11 million people playing; a large part of that is down to highly aggressive advertising. It doesn't have 11 million level 80 players.

[Radia]

I'm interested in the basic premise here: That FC is trying to encourage more PvM teaming with the announced balance changes.

Where's the evidence for this? Which changes are designed to encourage PvM teaming and push people away from solo?

X

Its a clinch reaction to the nerfs to the Crat's single target debuffs, I believe. As Crats are hands-down the best soloers, that forms a belief that FC are nerfing all soloing abilities, instead of their real target - the solo-ability of Crats.

[borriss]

I know I may get booed for talking about WoW, but I thought I'd chip in on this.

First: most WoW levelling strategies now recommend team-instances as the best way to level. Many of the recent WoW features are aimed at constructing teams in a really fast manner, so it actually proves to be a better strategy than using quest guides even though it takes very little effort to complete an instance.

Second: Blizzard once released statistics about how many people actually do hit 80. Its about 10 - 20% of the total number of accounts. WoW may claim to have 11 million people playing; a large part of that is down to highly aggressive advertising. It doesn't have 11 million level 80 players.

Speed leveling with quest routes are still faster in WoW than team lvling, not to mention if your team is not top notch you'll end up with a really bad pace of leveling.
I can level solo from 1-80 in 5 or 6 days in WoW real time, not /Played. I dare you to do the same in AO.

As for how many level 80 characters there are, there are actually more than 10 million level 80 characters. I know you said players, but the point here is how many actually go through the levels. And really in WoW even though teaming is encouraged and it's not a bad rate of leveling.. AND for the noob who's unfamilliar with rewarding quest routes, teaming is faster.. If you've gone to 80 5 times or more before, then you're pretty much alot faster doing solo leveling than team...
If you want to use the dungeon finding system in wow you'll be stuck in queue for about 30 minutes sometimes, unless you're a healer or tank. So it's not very efficient in that manner either. Which further more decreases the value of team leveling.

AO is not WoW, but solo leveling that's at least viable would be fun... It can be slow compared to teaming, but let it be viable..

[Mastablasta]

Teaming is still more fun than running about solo. Or it was back when people were having fun talking to eachother and playing with eachother. Now a team is pretty much always completely silent and people seem to just barely tolerate eachother's presence. There's of course the exceptions to this, and they're plentiful, but the number of people who just hate on the idea of being in a team and sit around sulking because it's better than soloing green mobs and doing dailies, they're the ones who ruin teaming. And you people here going "teaming sucks" and "we should be able to solo everything" just want to ruin the fun more. You people are responsible for turning MMOs into crappy singleplayer games with optional multiplayer parts. Really, why is it that you want to pay to play a poor version of an RPG? You don't want to talk to people, you just want to run about and whine about how that mob you wanted to solo now was down because someone else killed it.

[Liamboru]

I am currently pocket levelling in a static at The Core. I use alts, strategically placed over the level ranges, so I always have someone to team with (to the guy who threw out the 5 day challenge, that would probably not be possible, but, if I had 5 days to throw away, i might offer to actually try and I might come close). But first, i try to look for teams, either on /lft or just by grabbing people in the pf. Sometimes, probably due to crappy times I play, it is pretty lonely. The other day a guy came into the static, fairly well geared (better than me, I last geared up at level 30 and that toon is 48 now). He started out killing a mob and, based on the dd he was doing, he would have done fine by himself. What the heck, he took my invite anyway, even did not seem to mind my doc sitting back leeching.

Back on noob island, ran in to guy at the lower dock bosses (the two bots). I was on the far one and he was on the near one. Well, he decided he needed both, so he came in and started shooting while the thing had 1/4 hp left. I threw out a team offer and he declined. Well, he kept pushing and pushing, getting the timing correct where he was at the far spot on pop...and he ODed me (damn level 5 agent dd sucks). I asked him why he did not want to team. he said i was Omni scum or something to that effect and that he just ftw pwnd me or something to that effect....I lol so hard, i damn near pulled something. How could you be mad at something like that? I figured he was just being a jerk and he was rping to the core, that is good stuff.

So, sometimes teams happen and sometimes they do not, for various reasons. I try to adapt to both. i will not argue that it used to be much easier to get teams and I hope in the future we get back to that point as I like the social part of teaming, regardless of whether or not i need them.

Teaming is still more fun than running about solo. Or it was back when people were having fun talking to eachother and playing with eachother. Now a team is pretty much always completely silent and people seem to just barely tolerate eachother's presence. There's of course the exceptions to this, and they're plentiful, but the number of people who just hate on the idea of being in a team and sit around sulking because it's better than soloing green mobs and doing dailies, they're the ones who ruin teaming. And you people here going "teaming sucks" and "we should be able to solo everything" just want to ruin the fun more. You people are responsible for turning MMOs into crappy singleplayer games with optional multiplayer parts. Really, why is it that you want to pay to play a poor version of an RPG? You don't want to talk to people, you just want to run about and whine about how that mob you wanted to solo now was down because someone else killed it.

Agreed, people who disagree with me do suck!

[Xtremtech]

Its a clinch reaction to the nerfs to the Crat's single target debuffs, I believe. As Crats are hands-down the best soloers, that forms a belief that FC are nerfing all soloing abilities, instead of their real target - the solo-ability of Crats.

I think that there have been a few changes to stuff, like the one you mention, that seems to be designed as a nerf to soloing... but the reality is that they were usually changed for very different reasons. You sound like you think so too.

I doubt that the changes made are about nerfing soloing in order to promote teaming. They're more about the general balance changes that are designed to balance the professions against each other.

So, sometimes teams happen and sometimes they do not, for various reasons. I try to adapt to both. i will not argue that it used to be much easier to get teams and I hope in the future we get back to that point as I like the social part of teaming, regardless of whether or not i need them.

/agree

I've been running a baby adventurer of late, in order to give feedback on the beginner experience. I've ben playing him as though I were a new player - following a profession specific guide and a general one that I found by googling. I've been trying to be careful not to use any knowledge or information that I already have and have tried to make my skill level around the right area.

At the moment I'm around level 50 and I'd have to say that - despite playing at a crappy time when the US is asleep and Europe is at work/school - I've not had much trouble getting teams so far. That's mostly in Subway and ToTW so far.

I'd agree that many other people seem to be pretty quiet in teams. I talk a lot myself and occasionally get people going and coming out of themselves... but I also recognise that given my hours, it's quite often people who are not english speakers that I'm playing with, which is also an issue of course.

It's early days yet... but it really hasn't been too bad so far.

X