The Malevolent Seven

Everything I know about teaming in MMOs I learned in City of Villains.

I was finishing up my last mission in Cap Au Diable when I saw a Virgil Tarikoss Strike Force being formed in LFG.  Seeing as this SF follows up on the story arcs I'd just completed from Marshall Brass I couldn't say no to what would be my first Redside team since the return of the game.

Prior to this my most recent MMO teaming experience was running dungeons in Final Fantasy XIV, and this would be very different.  Healer?  We didn't have one.  Tank?  We did have one of those, but only because one joined literally seconds before we were about to start the first mission.

Once into the missions the team scattered in multiple directions at every opportunity, got lost, got found, got lost again, aggro'd multiple groups of enemies simultaneously, almost wiped to the Circle of Thorns in the second mission, and generally lived up to the description of a villain team being 8 soloists who just happen to be on the same map.

7 soloists in this case - which would have been a big team for Redside even back on Live - and there was some teamwork.  Well, one of my fellow villains sent me a rez inspiration at one point.  That counts as teamwork, right?

There was also a discussion of the best tactic for taking on a Hero in the last mission, but since the fight had already started it was a very short discussion.  We did however manage to coordinate long enough to pull the final boss out of the lake of lava he was standing in.

That was literally the only pull of the entire run.

It was, in other words, a classic Redside teaming experience, and fun was had by all.  The world - or at least Cap Au Diable - was also saved from fiery destruction, though that wasn't intentional.

The holy trinity of tank/healer/dps has a place in MMOs, but how important it is varies from one game to another.  In City of Heroes it's almost always been optional, and even encounters designed with the trinity in mind - like the final boss of the Imperious Task Force - didn't actually require it.  Only recently I've seen an All Corruptor ITF forming in LFG, as well as an All Sonic - and I pity the eardrums of everyone in that team.

On Blueside the tactics of the trinity did get used from time to time, but it was unknown on Redside.  Villains didn't even have a healing powerset for a long time, and debate continues as to which class was intended to be the tank.  Not that anyone in the Rogue Isles was actually concerned about that.  "8 of anything" was always the preferred team composition, and judging by this Strike Force it still is.

The trinity is more commonplace in the game now than it was on Live, and that's a peculiar shift.  Other MMOs have tried - with varying degrees of success - to extricate themselves from this particular gameplay straitjacket over the years, and why the players of a game that was never tied to it should embrace it now I don't know.  It is perhaps a habit picked up from seven years in other MMOs.

 

Still, I can't say how widespread this attitude is outside of the AE building, where farms always prioritise predictability and efficiency over everything else.  Again based on my recent experience it's clear that there are still plenty of players who still want to make the most of the freedom offered by City of Heroes to run any content with any team.