vampiroz
well i read your view on my ring and would like to know how you would improve it to help solo-ers. it would be very interesting cause i really like your views of my ring.
One of the hardest things about designing rings for solo players is that just about anything which is good for one player, is good for a Crew - it's actually rather difficult to make rings that specifically enable soloing, because those same rings have to be balanced as they'll be used in a Crew. As such, if you really want to encourage soloing through a ring, you have to impose some sort of restriction that essentially requires it to be used for soloing. Additionally, you have to be mindful of the limited resources a Solo player has available; because they lack Crew support, solo players spend more Stamina and Rage on buffs and healing, compared to an average Crew player - this gives you the opportunity to create effects that are good for soloers because they are resource-light, but also necessitates that you keep any effects for soloers relatively cheap.
An example of a very simple soloist ring would be 'Second Wind' - a mediocre self-only healing ring that has a relatively low Stamina cost, in exchange for a relatively long Cooldown. Because the ring is very Stamina-cheap, it allows solo players to invest their Stamina where they really want to, while not sacrificing that crucial self-healing role. Obviously this isn't the direction you're headed with your suggestions - and it isn't 'flashy' enough to fit the position, anyhow - but it gives an idea of how solo-encouraging effects tend to play out.
The first thought I'd have for a more aggressive ring for soloers is something themed around 'Dueling' - mechanically, something which is more effective the fewer names are on your target's Hate list. Generally players playing together in Crews will accrue Hate collaterally on all engaged enemies, which would reduce the effectiveness of the ring in those situations - however, players playing alone (especially within instances) would be able to use the ring at its full efficiency. Indeed, it might even be possible for such a ring to facilitate an in-Crew 'flanking' strategy, where one 'rogue' Crewmember attacks the few enemies that aren't otherwise engaged, essentially functioning as a soloer within a Crew. Such a tactic would still require some normal Crew structure, to deal with the enemies that do become engaged in groups, and it would be a bit fragile by nature, but it would offer an interesting possibility to role-oriented gameplay, and even offer a easy-to-fit slot for solo-oriented players within Crews. 3nodding
The biggest obstacle is that while you want such a ring to be 'good', you don't want it to be an auto-include - if it's an attack, for instance, you would want the player to make a decision between it and Hack or Mantis, rather than just taking 'the best one'. This means it would need some sort of drawback - particularly one that is relevant for soloers - so that players who seek to take advantage of it have to work a bit harder to do so. Offering a bit more power in exchange for less flexibility is usually fair, but I'm not sure what sort of drawback seems most natural, based on the theme... confused
EDIT: I didn't mention the most obvious soloer ability - effects that work better when there are fewer members in your Crew. To me, that's simply too straightforward and anti-Crew message to be sending in zOMG!, and it offers no potential to work around it within a Crew for interesting interactions; being that it would still face most of the issues that other solo effects already face, I think that such effects would probably just overshoot what we'd like to achieve with them...
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