Samuel_Tow

I honestly can't imagine how it's even possible to keep a spawn of, say, five minions and one lieutenant (I seem to see a LOT of these for some reason) permanently incapacitated such that they cannot respond. Perhaps a fast-recharging confuse power could be able to do that, paying off for itself with marginal loss of experience, but beyond that? Gravity aside, how would, say, Earth control perma-lock an entire spawn of range-preference enemies such that they cannot fight back, and in such a way that it's sustainable past, say, 30 seconds or so?

Maybe Gravity is at fault, I don't know, but I simply cannot even conceive of the notion of controlling all enemies all of the time, if for no other reason than because a succession of developers have pronounced that as broken and based the I5 controller cutbacks on just this argument. I can see this doable occasionally, between Domination and perhaps a slotted-up AoE hold (and even then it's short-duration), but all the time not taking a hit? How does that even work?

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ractically speaking, it's a function of recharge and duration

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Not really, no. The only thing that counts in real gameplay is reaching mag 4+. Everything else is just safety margin, unless you're talking about PVP (and I never am, PVP is a joke).

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Stacking holds is a fairly simple equation of duration divided by recharge. If you have a 10 second hold on a 10 second timer, your stacking ends up equalling 1.0, meaning you're always going to have one hold on the enemy, assuming lack of distractions and no animation. If you want to increase that to a constantly double-stacked hold, you need to either double your duration (so duration*(1+100%)) or half your recharge (so recharge/(1+100%)). You're either going to end up with a 20 second hold on a 10 second timer, or a 10 second hold on a 5 second timer. Either way, you now have stacking of 2.0, and you're able to constantly maintain double-stacked hold, or maintain single hold on two enemies. In fact, ignoring animation time, as far as stacking is concerned, duration increases and recharge reducers are functionally IDENTICAL.

The difference comes in the areas of cost and utility. A one-shot, extremely long duration hold taxes you with endurance cost and animation delay once, and pretty much not again for a very long time. On the other hand, a single, slow, powerful hold isn't going to let you hold multiple enemies for short amounts of time, essentially trading utility for a lower cost. On the flip side, a very fast, very short hold is going to cost a LOT in endurance consumption and animation delay, and in fact a Gravity Distortion slotted for 100% recharge reduction is going to take away HALF of your total time spent in combat just activating that one power. However, a power that recharges so quickly will allow you to hold multiple people in pretty quick succession, though maintaining that group held has some serious overhead.

There's also another factor that does come to play when short-recharge powers are slotted for recharge reduction - animation time. When you see statistics measured "per activation," this accounts for both recharge AND animation time, and while you can reduce recharge, you cannot affect animation time in any way, shape or form. Gravity Distortion is, normally, on an 8-second recharge and has a 1.88 second animation. Reducing that recharge down to 4 seconds sounds like you reduced the power's cycle to half of what it was, but you actually reduced 10 to 6, so it was more like a reduction down to 60%. The faster the attack gets and the closer its recharge time gets to its animation time, the less recharge reduction actually does for you, because the part you can reduce becomes that much smaller a part of the overall cycle.

A long time ago, playing Blasters, I learned a lesson which holds true for Dominators as well. You cannot out-control the enemy. You can slow them down, even stop them for a while, but eventually they're going to overwhelm you. While you're spending lots and lots of time controlling the enemy, they are spending lots and lots of time killing you, and the one who wins is the one who kills the other guy before he goes down, himself. Control helps, but control alone does not win battles. It doesn't stop it from tying your hands for a good bit of time, though. The idea I run with, now as before, is that I need to get as much control as I can from as little an overhead as I can manage. At the end of the day, I need to KILL that stuff, and the less time I spend controlling and the more time I spend blasting and smashing, the better off I will be. That's assuming a static level of control, of course - I live on control, so I can't afford to control less. But I CAN afford to spend less time controlling while still providing just as much control.

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As Dominator holds are both seriously inefficient in terms of damage per endurance and endurance per activation, filling up an attack chain with too many of them as a source for damage has the effect of butting out attacks that, overall, do more damage and cost less endurance.

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In practice, however, you ARE going to throw that Single Target hold, and you're going to throw it a lot. You're going to stack holds on bosses to build magnitude, and you're going to hold lieutenants and minions to stop them attacking you. You're going to hold enemies that have avoided your wormhole. And in almost every case, the lifespan of your target is going to to be far shorter than the base duration of your hold. And if you slot that hold for damage, you get a half of your basic blast free with every application of your hold. Or you can slot duration and have a hold that last far longer than the lifespan of the target, in 80% of cases.

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Practically speaking, this is where playstyles differ. Playing Blasters and Scrappers has taught me one thing - if you hit what you hold, you just wasted the endurance you used to cast that hold. There's no point in holding something for 10 seconds if you kill it in 2. So it has been my practice to hold things and then NOT attack them, potentially holding them again as they wake up or, ideally, BEFORE they wake up. This allows me to both save myself some incoming fire AND get the most bang for the buck out of my controls. If that means levitating a lieutenant the entire fight, then I'll levitate a lieutenant the entire fight. If that means leaving the boss for last, then so be it. If I hold something and then kill it immediately afterwards, I consider that a wasteful mistake on my part, no different from using Total Focus on a Rikti Monkey with 1 HP left. If I'm going to kill something in two seconds, then I may as well hit it with Lift - it costs less, it does more damage and it buys me just enough time.

I'm going to be using that hold, this much is true. And you have a point - as long as I'm using it, why NOT slot it for damage? The answer, though, is that it compromises what I actually want out of the hold - holding things while I kill their buddies. Without Set Inventions, damage slotting simply monopolises too many slots that I want to use for other things - more hold, less recharge, less cost, more accuracy. What I want out of the hold is the hold itself. It's a large part of what I live by. I have enough damage and more than enough powers to deliver it with, all of which as significantly more efficient, effective and reliable than the damage found in my hold. See, the immobilize... Maybe. I haven't found that useful enough to want to 6-slot for immobilization, but then again I'm not using it much and it would be better to use Power Bolt, instead, anyway.

To me, this is like the dilemma I had a while back - should I slot Soul Drain for damage, or do I stick with lots of recharge? At the end of the day, I decided it wouldn't be doing much damage anyway, and what I really wanted out of it was the buff, as often as possible. So even though it does relatively good damage, I never slotted for it. To me, this is the same deal - I want to use my holds for their hold component as much as I can, and rely on other powers to do the damage.

As you said, it's not a matter of right and wrong, but rather a matter of preference. And I just can't justify slotting my hold for damage over the other things I can slot it for because of how I prefer to use it.

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You'll be able to stack 3 Holds without Domination up, and you'll be able to do it consistently with that slotting.
For a L50 Gravity Dom with 2 L50 Recharge Common IOs and 2 L50 Hold Duration Common IOs [u]without[u] Hasten, GD recharges in 4.36 seconds and lasts for 32.8 seconds.

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Perhaps you missed the "uses SO's, avoids IO's" bit.


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No, I didn't. He doesn't like IO Sets; he seems to have no problems with Common IOs, because he talked about using them a few posts up.

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Back-to-front:

Yes, I indeed have no problem with Common Inventions. My problem with Sets is availability and, ultimately, cost, be that cost in money, cost in time or cost in playing the market. Common Inventions, though they still have a considerable cost, are still easier to get as availability is high, if not for the items then for the salvage to make them, and though they may cost a lot, the cost is relatively static and easy to plan for, as well as actually HAVE to spend on them.

So, Sets no, but Commons yes.

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Stacking magnitude is primarily about recharge, not duration.

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Practically speaking, it's a function of recharge and duration. How that balances out between them and it's too late in the evening for me to do the math, but I can't say with any confidence that it's primarily about one or the other. I can, however, say that slotting for duration vs. recharge has the benefit of both endurance efficiency and opportunity cost efficiency. There is a critical mass of powers a player can use, and the more often you use one, the less often you can use the others. As Dominator holds are both seriously inefficient in terms of damage per endurance and endurance per activation, filling up an attack chain with too many of them as a source for damage has the effect of butting out attacks that, overall, do more damage and cost less endurance.

Personally, I'm a person who looks for efficiency over performance, as efficiency is the science of making the most of what you have. I may not build the most powerful builds, but that just makes it more important for me to make the most out of what I do build. I recently did a DPE, EPA and DPA comparison of most Gravity Control and Energy Manipulation powers and came up with some telling results and some expected results. Telling was that Propel is by far the combo's most endurance-efficient attack - it deals a lot more damage than a power of its cost should - whereas lift is a heavily inefficient power. Knowing this has allowed me to pick my battles and determine which powers are worth using how often. I neglected to include Crush and Gravity Distortion into the comparison, but I'll do that some time tomorrow and let you know how they stack up.

Suffice it to say that, as things look to me now, I'd rather build my attacks for damage and safe the holds for control. I'm not saying that's the best option, but it's the one that seems most attractive to me right at the moment.

CIHYS? I like that!

I will consider that, though what swallowed up the bulk of my spawns, realistically speaking, was my secondary slotted for damage. I'll try to gravitate more slots towards the hold, but I'm afraid life would be really hard without damage

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it took them as long as it took them to realize that champions was going to have it.

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So, two years, then?

Allowing people to buy ready-made Common Inventions would be enough of a money sink, only it might not sink the right people.

I'm not really sure what "core game" even so much as stands for. The things Cat mentioned may enter into it, but they seem like quality of life more than anything else. What is there to work on, aside from QOL, then? I certainly don't want to see combat change radically or some such, and the Architect IS pretty much what I'd consider a core game expansion.

About the only other thing I can think of is adding more content - missions, zones, contacts, etc. - but that doesn't seem to be what we're talking about.

That's an artefact of every sound card I've tried, specifically Sound Blasters. I have an X-Fi Xtreme Audio, and it used to do the same thing. The trick is to set up your system to play 3D sound, because otherwise some of the channels the game supplies to your output simply don't play, specifically side and read channels. Essentially, all you get is front right and front left.

If you have a sound card, fiddle with the software that comes with it and ensure you're set up to 5.1 or however many speakers you have, then ensure your sound card is set up to expand stereo into surround. Mine has two options - Stereo Expand and X-Fi Expand. That'll ensure you catch all sound channels.

I'm not sure what you can do if you don't have a sound card, but you should have some kind of control software with your card anyway. Most motherboards I've seen that come with an onboard sound card use a Realtek Control Center that you can set these up in. I'm not sure what you'd use on a laptop, but there has to be some kind of at least third-party programme to expand your stereo.

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However, as some have pointed out, the "real numbers" readout is more "the numbers we think you'll be interested in, but not all of them" than "full revelation of power data." That's what RedTomax is for, but I'm not sure if the exact data is there either.

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The "Real Numbers" are the numbers that come out in printouts, and occasionally the numbers inherent in a pseudo-pet presented as numbers for the power that summons it. They're by no means complete, not always true and not consistently reliable, but very consistently, unusual effects are plain missing from the readouts altogether, especially when the power is complicated.

Take Mastermind Detonator, for instance. It doesn't actually DO anything, but it gives the selected henchman a power that he is compelled to use immediately. It gives two different powers based on the henchman, and one actually causes the henchman to summon a pet, which has several powers of its own. So it's a power that grants a power that summons a pet that activates a power. Because real numbers try to pretend there IS no such thing as pseudo-pets, this power displays precisely NOTHING.

Or, for an easier example, try the GvE Jump Pack.

Well, I'm getting to the 30s now, so slotting things should be a lot easier. I tell ya, it's always a boon to stop getting so many powers and instead start getting so many slots. LOVE IT

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It's not until level 30 that you start to feel combat complete, and it's not until 40ish that you've probably got all the powers you need to have the most fun with your character.

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Speak for yourself. By which I mean, don't try to speak for me and don't try to speak for a majority you don't represent. Try to use "I" instead of "you." It works wonders.

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Given the limited number of actual powers, and the way you only get one every two or three levels, CoH is a game that has very little sense of reward for leveling compared with every other MMO, where abilities are plentiful, characters start to be solid and interesting around 10, or 20 in higher cap systems, and there is alternative advancement as you go along.

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False on its face. Firstly, it is ignorant to believe that only powers mark progress. Slots mark progress just as much, in fact a LOT more so than powers. The reason the 30s feel so much better isn't because of the powers you have and get. Hell, you start getting a power every three levels as opposed to every two. The reason is that you get a LOT of slots in the 30s, slots you simply didn't have anywhere near enough of in the 20s. Oftentimes people have suggested that they be allowed to trade a power pick for more slots. I suspect there's a reason behind this. Performance is a function of power picks and slotting. It's short-sighted to hold one above the other when both are functionally critical. I'm as happy as a lark every time I grab a new power, sure. I'm a lot more happy when I stop pretending I don't have it and get to actually USE it and have it DO something after I slot it.

As for the groundless statement about "other games" that are so much fun and complete from the start when everyone's complaint is how MMOs aren't fun until the level cap, I'd appreciate some actual examples and explanation. Without this, that statement is empty and meaningless.

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Regardless of whatever your opinion may be on that, the fact is that most people don't enjoy the leveling process and just want to realize their character concept or start having fun with their character's full range of powers as soon as possible. Thus, the farm.

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"Most people don't enjoy the levelling process" is a statement that straddles the line between a bold-faced lie and a staggering absurdity. Unless you have actual evidence, making outlandishly unjustified claims serves no real purpose. That a lot of people farm - and you have no means of telling HOW MANY either in number or as a proportion - is in no means evidence of either everybody, or even a correlation between not liking the levelling process and farming. Coexistence does not prove correlation. It doesn't even imply it. In fact, from my experience most people farm not because they don't like the levelling process, but because they've been here for five years.

It's also interesting how you claim my opinion doesn't matter because your opinion is fact.

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You're also losing sight of the whole reason this was even brought up: Which is that AE is not to blame for farming, the game design itself is responsible for pushing people to farm as fast as possible to the top without much regard for the content. That much is undeniable, as farming and power leveling has been a huge part of CoH since day one, in various forms.

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You are wrong. Give people a shortcut to the end and they WILL take it regardless of good or bad the game may actually be. It's a factor of human thinking. If there's something to be "gained," people will ignore the actual game and gain it. To think that you can prevent that by making the game abstractly better is simply incorrect.

Things fall down. You can hold them up, but that doesn't stop gravity from pulling them down. People look for the most efficient way to gain all rewards and get to the end. You can try and distract them with gameplay, but that will not stop them from rushing to the end. To believe otherwise is little more than wishful thinking. Such a utopia of a game where people have no desire to game the system and shortcut to the end is all well and good as an abstract goal, but as any utopia, it simply isn't real and cannot be real. No amount of changing the game will stop people powerlevelling. The only thing that will stop it is changing people, and that isn't an option.

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Given that, there is ultimately no harm in allowing greater control over mission scripting, even if it does make for better farms, because farming is something that has been and always will be with us regardless of how effective it is - The best thing you can do for the game is to simply make it fun by providing players with the tools to script interesting missions that are worth experiencing for the sake of it (although you could cap exp per minute or something if you really wanted to).

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I was never against better scripting tools, but for the fact that the more complicated you make it, the fewer the people who are going to use it. It's a simple fact of game design - while there ARE people who revel in an overcomplicated, intricate system, the only way to sell a game mechanic to the general masses is to make it easy and simple, yet powerful in effect. I'll tell you right now - if mission design ever became a mix of making your own maps with a base-editor-lookalike and placing your spawns minion by minion, I'm never going to even consider touching the thing ever again. I'm simply not interested in game-modding.

Look at the base editor and how it was advertised to be the next step of customization after the costume editor. And while a few base builders have made AMAZING things with it, cost, complexity and limitations simply made it difficult to use for what it was intended to provide - more free-range customization. Not everyone enjoys a sandbox game.

Still, I can't object to more customization options for the Architect. More customization is always good, and if you'd stuck to suggesting that on its own merits without inventing intelligence-insulting "evidence" you would probably have been received a LOT better. Pretty much everybody will agree with more customization.

Do we need an official "Architect is ruining the game" thread? I mean, I was enthusiastic to discuss it at first, but I'm getting a little weary of the reruns.

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Since when do the laws of physics apply in this game?
*hovers*

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Since about I6. So says Ageia. Or said, anyway.

It is, if you bring the whole Freedom Phalanx with you. I don't know what the Jade Spider actually DOES (all I ever saw it do was walk around) but I had to step away from the computer in that fight, and a few of the Phalanx members were still alive when I came back.

I thought it stood for "After Earth." Points for anyone who knows why.

This is uncanny. I honestly, seriously cannot come up with a second on-the-job costume for this guy. I guess part of it has to do with the fact that this wasn't entirely my design, so I don't fully "get" it, but I just got to 30 yesterday, and I'm in the process of getting my third costume slot now. Pretty soon I'll need another costume and I really, seriously have exactly ZERO idea what to do with it.

I guess I could go with a Dr. Animo look from Ben 10's Gator Fest episode, but Zombra will grumble if I give him big robotic gloves

Pretty much everything I agree with. Thank you

I did take my single-target hold and intend to slot it some more later on. It is quite amazing with Power Boost on, and that's available if not every spawn, then every other spawn. When I need to choose between Gravity Distortion Field and Wormhole, I typically choose Gravity Distortion Field, just because I know I can use it now and then use Wormhole for the next 15 minutes

As for Wormhole being fiddly, I occasionally play with the owner of a level 50 Gravity/Energy Dominator from before the changes, and he praises me pretty much every time I use Wormhole or Dimension Shift well

Speaking of Dimension Shift, I don't believe it gets worse with accuracy. It's just not straight-forward to use. I have three uses for it - handling extra aggro, splitting a spawn and emergency survival. Handling extra aggro and emergency survival both require I ENSURE everything gets shifted, so I need to be able to rely on that. Splitting up a spawn could theoretically be done by counting on the power to miss, but I don't enjoy a crapshot, so that's not something I shoot for. Instead, splitting a spawn is appropriate when the spawn scatters or stretches out in a line so that part of it would be out of range of a Dimension Shift on the farthest enemy, or when the spawn stretches around a corner, so that part of it would be out of line of sight of a Dimension Shift on an enemy from the other part. It requires some lateral thinking on your feet, but it's only as unreliable as I am, rather than being as unreliable as the RNG wants to be.

I'll see about slotting my single-target hold more. I'm not sure I'll be able to quite triple-stack the hold unassisted, but that's what Domination, Power Boost and eventually even Hasten were made for, Eventually I'll probably want accuracy/endurance reduction/x2hold/x2recharge. With level 50 Common Inventions, the difference between two and three enhancements is marginal (on the order of one second less recharge) and I'm really not interested in 3-slotting anything but damage unless I have free slots and room to put them in powers.

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Beef Cake's TP Resist.

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The... Market taxed this 50 MILLION...

Back to front:

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-Don't do the trenchcoat ala dark watcher.
-Long Pants with a blended pattern. Sterile.
-Monstrous bare hands. They won't be too noticeable but will enhance the vicious implications of your cold-blooded killer.
-Buttoned Shirt.
-Avoid busy details at all costs. You want him to stand out against the decorated villains.


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This sounds almost like a remake of the character. I like the original costume and I'm going to keep it as his original and default and pretty much wear it all the time.

Still, a few points: Monstrous bare hands won't really work, partly because I want to keep the gloves and partly because I don't want the guy to be physically monstrous. A buttoned-up shirt, similarly, isn't really appropriate as I simply don't see Landark bothering to button it up. The one "civilian" costume I have (I'll get you a screenshot as soon as the servers come back up) uses a vest over a bare chest. If I did make another clothes costume, it would have to be similarly dishevelled.

I'm actually looking for someone who's not so much sinister and constantly scheming, so much as someone who drifts through life without any real aim or purpose other than getting through one more day. Not exactly a homeless bum, but pretty much the next best thing. I tend to roleplay characters' responses to contacts in my head when I take missions, and this guy's responses are generally the same one. He'd stand and listen to the briefing with patience, then say "All right." turn around and go do it. "Go kick some puppies." "Sure." "Go kidnap small children." "Whatever." "Go save this woman." "Fine." That sort of thing.

I say "calculating" in the sense that there's a fiercely intelligent mind behind it all that makes sure whatever he commits to, he succeeds in. It's just that this mind doesn't actually CARE about anything beyond basic success and just about basic comfort.

I do agree with your take on details, though - I do want this guy to be simple and stylistic and stand out against all the other detailed, ornate villains who dress to intimidate.

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Physique:
When I think emotionless cold-blooded killer, I think of the creepy guy from con air that sang you are my sunshine with that girl. As such, you probably want someone more lanky.

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Granted, as a Gravity Dominator, Landark wouldn't really need a strong frame, and indeed his physique is below average, though not by TOO much. However, I don't want to make him so much a creepy old man (I have a creepy little girl to fill that role ) as a somewhat old-style villain without a cause. That's kind of why I gave him the big pointed overexaggerated shoulders to begin with. I'm looking for someone who isn't clearly weird and creepy and scary so much as... Let's call it "the quiet one" that no-body really gets and who doesn't seem to have any discernible goal. In essence, evil not so much because he's malicious as because he's callous.

As well, because one of his overriding themes is "more power." Typically, heroes and villains will have a home, a hideout, a bat cave and so forth, a place where they store what they can't carry and go to when they're not doing anything. Landark isn't like that. The only things that truly matter to him are the things he can carry, and chief among those is power. Becoming stronger, possessing more energy, learning to use his power better and so on and so forth. The things that don't take up any space and don't add up any weight. As such, his being physically fit is more or less necessary, even though it doesn't necessarily make sense for physical fitness to help in controlling Gravity better. It's a visual theme thing. It's also part of making him look outwardly dangerous - a tall tough guy running around shirtless is going to be at least somewhat intimidating, or at the very least unsettling Not that I'd send him running around shirtless, but shirtless under an open vest isn't too much better.

I'll give you a pic of the "clothes" I have in-game. I'm pretty happy with them, though, so I'm going to need to come up with an exceptionally good idea to make another clothes costume.

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Second costume link. Still need a third one

I actually panicked it looked like Vegeta when I first made it

I'm keeping my first costume, though. I like it too much. I'm hoping to get to something more "retro" as it were, say older tights super villain costumes (but without the face masks) maybe mixed in with some tech. The tech doesn't actually contribute to the powers of the character, but I just like to have it on anyway

Multi-slotting my hold so early in the levels would have deprived me of much-needed damage, and I took one of the central points of the changes to be the elimination of the "Controller" syndrome where you lock everything down and proceed to brawl stuff to death So I focused on damage. It hasn't exactly been easy, but it's the damage that saved me very often. Why I haven't slotted it NOW is a bit less... Justified. I just forgot I should

As for global recharge, I try not to talk about it, because it always gets me into trouble. Let's say I don't like set inventions and leave it at that. I am not subject to being convinced.

As for speeding up my AoE controls, I can sort of see that, and I might even be inclined to take Hasten if I run out of powers I want, but I'd rather just slot recharge reducers in them as necessary. Global recharge buffs have the tendency of drastically increasing endurance consumption from everything, and my Dominator is already looking at more than enough cost overall. I was never in the habit of boosting recharge and endurance mitigation ever upward and I'm quite very fine to stick to slower recharge as a means of saving endurance. I was never really interested in being very strong. Soloing my own missions is about enough, and that much I haven't had meaningful problems with. There was a Tellus of Earth with his annoying pet that killed me a few times, but beyond that it's been relatively smooth sailings.

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2. The problem of CoH's level system. The level system was flawed in it's original design because player's don't start to have interesting characters until halfway through, and don't really feel complete until they get near 50. THe gameplay might be fun, but the actual leveling is a lot more painful than it justifies. Which leads people to find any way they can to farm (and there was plenty of farming prior to CC).

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That's a load of nonsense. Remove the levelling system and this game becomes pointless. Half the fun to be had from playing this game, or indeed any game with a level progression, is watching a character grow and mature, going, yes, from absolute weakling to really, really strong. You're under some false impression that the only reason people play this game is to find interesting stories and encounters, completely forgetting the fact that it is, after all, a game first and foremost.

There is this myth going around that D&D or whatever first introduced levels and now all game designers are blindly following without giving a thought to improving this unnecessary, outmoded mechanic... But that's all it ever was - a myth. Levelling is a powerful mechanic that gives games a very clear sense of progression, and believe it or not, that's what some people actually like. There's something to be said about games that start you off with all abilities you're ever going to have, but even THEY present you with a progression of difficulty that requires you to develop better and smarter ways to use these abilities.

Frankly, if your characters aren't interesting to you until mid way-through, then you're doing it wrong, and if they don't feel complete until level 50, then your expectations are out of proportion with the actual game. My characters are interesting from level 1 to level 50, and they're complete as soon as they are made. They get better, of course, but at no point have I ever felt like my character was missing something he really, really should have. Not after figuring out how to play said character, anyway.

And, frankly, a well-made game isn't one that makes you choose between "XP/hour" and "something fun." It's a game where both are the same thing.

You feel there are lessons to be learned from Ryzom. I'm not sure I agree. It's like saying there are lessons to be learned Quake 3 Arena that can be applied to City of Heroes, or that lessons can be learned from Masters of Orion 2 that can be used here. Maybe there are, but it's pretty safe to dismiss them, because even IF there are, they're not specific to that game, but rather general ideas after the heavy conversion between design bases.

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Only one of those task forces goes for "most hated" (Quarterfield.) The others aren't so bad. And there's a little bit of content in there, actually.

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The last time I did Faatim the Kind's TF, it took me 7-8 hours. No matter how good the TF may have been (read: not THAT good), it's not worth that kind of time investment, specifically since so many missions were unnecessary.

Far as I'm concerned, they should downgrade all the Shard TFs aside from Faaitm's and perhaps the one that has Ruladak into regular story arcs and add a few extra story arcs to the zone as well. Maybe extend the Mole Points as General Hammond said they were planning to five years ago. It's getting to the point where game time is moving slower than real time, if they can't build a mole point in five years.