As a Nanotech nanomage, level 79:
"Do the professions with an adequate number of hit-points to "tank" (survive with monsters bashing them) have enough ways to keep the monsters focused on them?"
At the moment, I'd have to say "No". My main nukes (currently Lesser Coronet of Frost, Ol' Faithful and Energised Collapse) generate aggro to the point that, regardless of what the tanks do, at some point in 95+% of the fights I go into, the mob turns to me and starts pounding away. As it stands, my only solution is to use the various health buffs/shields (Doc's, Enforcer's and my own) to toughen myself to the point where I can tank long enough to either finish the fight, wipe the mob's mind with Bewilder or stop casting and hope that someone else attracts its attention.
(On solo missions, we nanomages usually have to take the pain anyway because of the tight confines, but that's another, though linked, matter)
Solution: My gut reaction is to say "turn down the aggro from NT and Doc nukes/heals". That should make it easier for the non-tank classes to avoid aggroing the mob that's hooked up on the tank whilst NOT making us dependent on the tank being a cookie-cutter character loaded to the max with hate generation gear.
"Do the professions that heal (Doctors, Martial Artists and Adventurers) have any use / purpose in the team? Do you really need a healer when the monsters drop in 5-10 seconds?"
Do docs have any purpose? I'm shocked that you're even ASKING this question, Gaute! I've lost count of the number of times a medic has saved my character's life.
Do we need a medic when the mobs drop in 5-10 seconds? It depends on the situation. If a team is fighting an individual mob, killing it in 5-10 seconds and then has enough time to recharge and heal, then the answer is probably no. Of course, they're probably not engaged with anything much higher than a single yellow mob anyway.
When I'm teamed, we generally do one of two things. We either go hunting or we take on a 90-100% difficulty mission. In either case, the fights we get into last FAR longer than 10 seconds, so the doc has a chance to shine.
Note I say the fights, not the mobs - with multiple mobs involved, we might be able to drop individuals in 10 seconds (extremely rare, but it happens) but the rest are still beating away and the fight is still going.
"A natural follow up question here is: Should we increase the unpredictability of monster spawns so that they are more "surprising", and different - so that more healers are needed. (More on this later.)"
I can think of several things you mean by this - and I'm not sure I like any of them. Adjusting the monsters so that "more healers are needed" equates, at least in my book, to "make the monsters do more damage". Unfortunately, the mobs don't distinguish between a solo player and a team - they fight all out, regardless of the situation. The end result will be that soloing becomes even harder - and it's already difficult.
As for teams, well, most teams try to get at least one or two doctors/medics already. If we need even more (say two or three dedicated medics) in a team, then where does that leave the other professions?
As for "surprising", what do you mean by that?
"Do the "crowd control" (the ability to temporally suspend monsters from battle by "freezing" them, "slowing" them down, or totally "wiping" their mind) professions have any use? Do you need a Bureaucrat, Agent, Fixer or Trader to keep monsters at bay?"
The mesmerise-type (aka mezz, mind wipe and Jedi-mind-trick) nanos are useful, but only in specific situations. As an NT, I use Bewilder if either (a), I'm soloing and need to recharge my nano (this ties into the percieved (actual) problems that Humidity extractors work, but don't provide enough nano, even with a nanomage) or (b) I'm in a fight with multiple mobs and need to put some of them out of the fight to give me/the team a chance.
Roots only work with melee based mobs. Since every ranged mob in the game seems to have a range of 40m, by the time you can hit them with the root, they can hit you with their gun.
I've never seen anyone bother with a slow/snare nano against a mob. This could well be a good indicator of how effective they're felt to be, but I leave it to players with more experience of these nanos to make comments.
There's one important caveat on the calms and the roots. Everyone in the team has to know not to hit the mobs that have been calmed or rooted, or it breaks. It's sunk into most people, but could someone please tell the auto-attack function?
Do we NEED the classes you listed? Not when things are relatively under control - and nor should we - but the option's an excellent one to have when things get bad. (By the way, you forgot that Nanotechs have both roots and calms. An indication of how much attention the development team's paid the profession of late?)
"Does support people have any real use? I have noticed many players on low levels having an inadequate number of NCUs to really take advantage of the beneficial nano programs ("buffs")."
Oddly, I never had a problem with NCU space until about level 70, and Layered Protection. At 79, I have 115 NCU, which I could probably get to about 135 if I take my range extender out. Even with that, NCU space is tight, but manageable...I just have to accept that I'm not going to be able to run every buff I want to.
But yes, support people are useful. Doc health buffs have got me through most of the last week's fighting without too many deaths.
At low levels, I'm not sure that NCU capacity is a problem. At high levels...well, I'm feeling a slight squeeze. Anyone else?
"Do you meet monsters that require skill and tactics to fight other than in the static dungeons?"
YES. The teams I'm in take on level 120-140 missions quite regularly. We're often level 70-100. Skill and tactics (or at least, a certain level of them) are a prerequisite for surviving, never mind clearing the mission out.
cson is right about the higher level game. Running into a caster mob that can kill with one nuke is a game-breaker - the ONLY way to stop that is to kill the mob as quickly as you can and hope that you get lucky and it doesn't cast its super nuke. Incidentally, do nano-skill debuffs work on mobs? Because in the long while that I've been using Lesser Coronet of Frost, I have NEVER seen its debuff side effect achieve anything. -60 to all nano skills ought to have some effect, but the mobs don't even slow down their casting...
"Would you like us to add them, or would that seem like we are reducing your capabilities to solo?"
Add them? They're already there! - and yes it would reduce our (already low, in the hgier level game) capability to solo IF we had to fight them to make soloing viable. Actually, since "require skill and tactics to defeat" is usually a paraphrase for "needs several characters to bring down and is still hard to beat", ditch the "seem like". It WOULD reduce the capability of a player to solo if they had to solo such mobs.
(Incidentally, does this mean that you think the current mobs DON'T require skill and tactics to defeat?)
"Do you have enough time for socialisation?"
Yes, *if* we want to. Not having *compulsory* downtime is one of the things I like about AO. If I want to beat on the mobs non-stop, I can. Equally, if I want to take it slower and socialise, I can do that as well. All I have to do is not steam headlong into the next fight. As it stands, AO can be as fast paced as you like or as leisurely as you like. I can't see a need to change anything in this respect.
"[b]I wouldn't dream of changing the rules in such a way that you would be less effective in what you do, or "nerfing" your abilities[b]. What I could consider would be to make life less predictable, and in turn more rewarding. In addition there should be new ways of fighting so that tactical abilities and cooperation are more frequently needed. " (Emphases mine)
Gaute, to say that cooperation is more frequently *needed* implies a nerf, or at least a partial nerf, to soloing. This doesn't jibe with the first sentence in that quote. Was "needed" perhaps the wrong word to use there?
By all means introduce new ways of fighting - but don't make them necessary - allow the current methods to work.
"Give monsters a more complex AI when you meet them with a team. Let them pick dangerous opponents, basically be "nastier", more challenging... (More fun?)"
Erm...first define “dangerous opponent”. When a mob is facing a team, what's the most dangerous opponent it faces?
Answer: The medic. Remove the medic and it's a LOT easier to take out the rest of the team, since they now lack most of their ability to regenerate damage. If the medic is healing, it effectively doubles or triples the rest of the team's hitpoints.
If the mobs figure this out, then Docs will go straight to the top of every mob's hate list. Regardless of Mongo Slams, Aggression Enhancers or any other aggro-generator. The moment someone heals someone else, they will go straight to the top of the mob’s hate list because the mob will know that they represent the biggest threat. Something of a profession breaker – I don’t recall anything saying that Docs were supposed to be tanks.
“Go through each profession and make sure it has something unique, or at least very good, to contribute to a team in a fight.”
Wasn’t this the whole idea of having multiple, distinct professions? IMHO, the professions are a thread in their own right…
Include different team-missions. Finally turn on the team-mission booths and give them tougher monsters, more of them, better loot and several levels. Maybe with a boss at the end? + Multiple reward and tokens.
Yes please. As it stands, a “team mission” is a 100% solo mission. Fun and rewarding, but what’s being proposed here sounds good.
“Let me stress again that this should in no way change the way you solo, or your ability to solo. Those aspects should remain as good as they are today.”
That’s nice – but the general opinion of everyone I speak to much above 70 is that soloing is currently unviable. Soloing is in need of a boost, possibly more so than grouping.