Bosstone

The kicker is Hami. You need someone who can apply holds, plus a mix of melee and ranged. As long as those conditions are satisfied, it'll be easier than the WSTs to date. Plus it's the first WST we've gotten that's shared, so everyone can play with everyone.

Ambushes should definitely not see through stealth. They've been able to do so ever since I can remember on this game, and it's never not been frustrating.

To answer my own post, I think Praetoria is harder to a certain extent, but the things that make it harder also make it more interesting. I don't think it was made needlessly hard, either; both because it was also made more interesting, and also because it was introduced at roughly the same time the Incarnate system is being introduced, and the Incarnate stuff is very, very different from typical City of Heroes. So the new players (and the old) needed some training on the new mission paradigm being employed in endgame.

But is it needlessly hard? For that matter, is it really hard at all?

To be honest, although constant ambushes peeve me, I consider Praetoria Easy Street compared to blue or redside. The missions flow far better and the levels are much, much easier to attain. Moreover, Praetoria is actually fun to play through.

...Well, okay, except Ghoul missions. Man I hate Ghouls. Every time I see them I know the mission's going to be an interminable slog. But everything else is fun!

The holy trinity and teaming are completely unrelated.

It baffles me that you should think moving away from a social activity in a social game is a good thing. Making accommodations for all types of play is fine, but moving from teaming to solo play is not positive evolution.

If someone never has more than 30-60 minutes a day to play, I really have a hard time agreeing that they should be able to attain the same rewards. Given that they have real lives, which the people who can devote 30+ hours a week to the game assuredly don't (), I'm not too worried about them.

I agree to a certain extent that whether or not an MMO focuses on teamed or solo play is a design decision and there's not much that says an MMO must be teamed content aside from the inherent social aspect of the game. However, an MMO is about generating revenue, and the way in which it primarily seeks to generate revenue drives the design goals to a certain extent. When it comes to subscription-based games, they want you paying to play for as long as possible.

Further, there are roughly three types of people who play, with regard to time investment. There's a whole continuum, but it can be broken up into the following:

- The hardcore. These folk think nothing of putting in extreme amounts of time into the game running at the very highest levels. They're always the first to finish content, and are then usually happy to squeeze said content dry to get the maximum amount of reward out of it. If they finish it too quickly, though, they get bored and look for another game.

- The dabblers. You can't even really call these people casual. They are the ones who can only spare 30-60 minutes a day if that, may be called away at any time, can only play one night a week, etc. The cynical may think these are a MMO publisher's greatest customer, as they pay without playing, but they also have no investment in the game. They may like it very much and enjoy it when they are playing, but there's little holding them back from canceling their subscriptions at a moment's notice. I have no real data, but I suspect this is not that big a group.

- The casuals. These are people who either play regularly, as in every night, or if they can only play a few nights a week they can usually devote several hours at a stretch. They don't chew through content as fast as the hardcores, but unlike the dabblers they actually have a good shot at consuming all the content in a reasonable amount of time; any goal they set may be some time off, but it is achievable.

The casuals are who NCSoft want. They're the largest segment of the playerbase, and they play often enough that as long as you keep dangling rewards in front of their faces they'll keep playing for a long, long time. These are the people development is geared toward. If they developed for the hardcore players, casuals would be left so far behind that they'd be dabblers, and their subscriptions become just as easy to lose. If development is geared toward the dabblers, then even casuals will rip through content as fast as hardcores do and may well unsubscribe even faster, as there's less personal investment and need to be the best.

Fact is, the person who simply cannot team because they can only spare 30 minutes a night and may have to leave the computer often during that time is on the far extreme end of the bell curve. Any reasonable progression system is going to leave them in the dust. On the other end of the bell curve, the hardcore players are always going to leave a reasonable system in the dust. It is simply not worth designing the system specifically for either of them. Accommodations can be made, bones can be thrown, but not always more than that. If they can manage with the system designed for the casuals, great. If they can't, well, their circumstances are regrettable, but in the meantime there are another thousand customers who need to be served and who can be served.

Just to clear out the obvious: are you sure it's not the Good vs Evil Jump Pack you're seeing?