The Strongholds & Legendary Missions Solo Thread

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I’d prefer da4 to be solo only. 😄😛

That’s what I meant.

Just played Temple Of Scar on GM3 solo until the first chest. What a chore... not really strong enough to enjoy going further with my current loadout. I need way better inscriptions on most of my stuff and a higher gearscore for the base damage for this endeavour. Up until Scelos I could possibly manage but it sure ain't fun to watch (or to play) when those legendary rocket turrets need sooooo much damage compared to GM2.

I think so, too. It's the only explanation I can think of why people still get put into games that have been going on for quite a while and are near the end.

Not if you need like 2 full Ultimates to take down a legendary rocket turret (when I can usually take down 2 with 1 Ultimate in GM2). The scaling in GM3 strongholds compared to GM2 is just really off. Although you could say the same about GM2 compared to GM1 I guess. In GM3 Freeplay it's okay, but GM3 strongholds just aren't enough fun for me right now. Maybe with a solid team, but not solo. I just wish I could slot and unslot these inscriptions and make the build much more the way I like it. It's the far bigger problems as the drop rates itself in my opinion... too much shitty or just decent rolls but no way to actually put some thought into making a good build because you can't change anything. With all the legendaries I keep (because there is no benefit in salvaging them right now) I could really extract some nice inscriptions. And then put them where I can actually use them...

cypherj : I see your point and I agree it might be a problem under these circumstances. The solutions are actually not that hard to find: allow the creation of private lobbys for ALL content. Then there wouldn't be any changes necessary to the quickplay function (for public lobbies) I guess even though one could argue it'd still be nice if the game asked you first if it's okay to put you into a session that has been going on for quite a while so everyone can decide if they still want to join or if they rather want to play a session that has just started a short while ago.

Aside from wanting to play solo I can't tell you how many times I was in a 4-player team with some people I knew, someone disconnected and we all had to leave and make a new lobby because we could not set it to private and the game put a random player in our group faster than the player who disconnected could return and rejoin the session. Very annoying and just super stupid and unnecessary restrictions in the game design. So having the option to set lobbies to private regardless of the content that is being played is not just about a group of people who want to play solo or maybe as a 2-player coop team but also protecting the session against random people filling in the spots in a group of friends if somebody drops out.

What is also pretty stupid: last night I tried getting into GM3 quickplay strongholds. After a while I always got the message that no games could be found and I should try changing the difficulty. Game seems really empty, couldn't even find ongoing GM2 games at times. Anyways, when I wanted to just start my own GM3 stronghold and not join via quickplay the game tried finding a match for me for several minutes. Nothing happened and I was sitting there and talking to the game "just start the damn level with just me in it - how are you supposed to find an ongoing game (quickplay or standard) if you don't even let people initiate them at times like; right now". Sometimes I feel like they really want to show us how expensive their precious server space is. Just open a goddamn lobby if people want to play, wtf Bioware...

ximae : I only do GM3 strongholds for fun and challenge and that's why I like to do the whole run if the team is up for it. It's actually the only thing that keeps me playing and enjoying this game because the loot sure isn't. From a farming perspective I totally agree with you, it's very inefficient to do the boss fight in strongholds as they all take up a lot of time compared to the time you need to get there. It's actually the same on every difficulty. Even in GM1 it's technically not worth it if you take a look at the time needed for it compared to the time it takes get there and the possible drops along the way. Especially in HoR. When bosses didn't even had a chance to drop anything besides the guaranteed masterwork item I hardly ever did these fights. On the other hand I'd go into GM3 freeplay or GM2 strongholds for farming to be honest. GM3 strongholds are just not worth it in that regard in my opinion if you mainly do them for the loot drops. I'll mainly just do it to enjoy the game and to get better (with things like specific movements, timings, ways to prioritize enemys or spawn locations and things like that) which sometimes leads to some epic fails as well.

That's my feeling - they built a team based game so they focused on team based options.

Still, they must know that lots of players played their multiplayer content in private groups or solo. There were challenges/awards/banners for solo runs in ME3 multiplayer. Maybe, knowing the player base size would drop, someone made a judgement to focus on causal players who want to multiplay over solo or private group players who don't?

P.S. Also, lately when I quickplay Missions on the lower difficulties (Hard, GM1) I show up at a final boss fight, sometimes right before the boss is killed for some solo player. That is annoying.

Sometimes I feel like they somehow managed to switch these things and therefore leaving behind what was good and not improving much on what was bad. I mean, "we" (as in some people other than me lol) literally had to build kind of an own text chat in ME3MP with the console commands. At least there were some more options to mod the game. I've played thousands of hours of ME3MP and somehow it's amazing that I have an easier time finding a platinum match lobby pretty much any time of the day opposed to getting a full squad for GM3 or even GM2 strongholds in Anthem at primetime. And of course: when I wanted to play solo or duo in ME3MP I could just put the lobby into private mode but whenever I wanted to find people to play with I usually had no problem with that either.

I just played 3x the Temple Of Scar stronghold on GM3 including the boss fight. I was usually solo for the first part until right before the Gatekeeper or the chest. Now I actually wish I could try the whole damn thing solo. It'll be tough for sure, especially since I sometimes mess something up so foolishly but I'd really like to try it. At least until Scelos. Maybe I'll try again later at a different time of day and see how it goes. At least it's a bit easier to stay solo in GM3 than it is in GM2...

But the primary cause of this isn't bad game design, it's just a simple lack of players.  If the player base was big enough, there would always be four players in these missions, and you would probably only get dropped into a stronghold due to one of the occurrences I mentioned earlier.  But when the player base is as low as it is now, there's a good chance that when quene this will happen because there are more solo/undersized groups doing things.