BlazingImp

[ QUOTE ]
unless you are too low for the mission arc you can flashback to get this...

[/ QUOTE ]

That requires running the entire arc. That's a last resort thing to do, IMHO. I think the OP is on the right track in asking for help.

To the OP. I have this mission on Freedom. I'm not on a whole lot these days, but you can PM me if you want to set up a time.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

1. Log into a character with the badge.
2. Open up the badge window.
3. Click on the events tab (unless new "account badges" tab is made in which case open that instead), click on existing badge.
4. Game now (after change) understands that your account should have the badge and sets the flag on the account to award it to all characters from that point on.

Clear now?


[/ QUOTE ]

Well, that's clearer. Also clearly undesirable. It functionally overloads the act of setting a badge as your title to propagating that badge to other characters.

[/ QUOTE ]
So what if it overloads the setting a badge as a title, we're talking a grand total of 6 badges to check against.


[/ QUOTE ]

The fact that it is only 6 badges makes it even less desirable to modify the system. If you wanted to do this with 1000 badges, there's a compelling argument to make the change. Doing it for only 6 badges requires special code to program in the exception. This requires more documentation, more code, more effort, more testing, more time, more manpower, and more money. And as you say, "we're talking a grand total of 6 badges." Not worth it.

By your logic, they would have programed in a special bar for Vandal long ago. After all, we're talking a grand total of 1 badge.

-----------------------

As to the primary topic at hand, I'm kind of wishy washy about making them all global retroactively. I can definitely see an argument against villains getting the pre-COV anniversary badges, especially since players who joined because COV would be permanently ineligible for badges despite joining their game at its inception (and for the record, I have always been against having more than one veteran badge... I think they should work like X Times the Victor does).

My preference for any retroactive rewarding of badges would retroactively reward them to toons who's creation dates precede specific anniversaries. If the database doesn't contain a creation date, then they can look at each toon's earliest anniversary badge and award them each subsequent anniversary badge, thus making it still apply to toons based on when they were created, but allowing people to not have to log in several hundred toons. And I know of people IRL who were completely unable to log in for reasons beyond their control (ie Iraq or Afghanistan), except by exchanging their user names and passwords to friends, which technically is a violation of the EULA. So should anyone who chose not to do that, thus choosing to abide by the EULA, be punished for it? Personally, I should hope not, but I'm not going to keep my fingers crossed.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

How about this - something similar to the mentoring badges, but tied to teaming. For example, a "Team Player" badge or badge series for spending X (and Y and Z) number of hours on a full team of 8?

[/ QUOTE ]


Very afk farmable.

[/ QUOTE ]
Not if they tie it to time spent "in combat", a state that they can track.

[/ QUOTE ] Even still.. lower level foes that wont be able to kill you..

[/ QUOTE ]
Still AFK farmable

Exploration and history badges basically ARE your zone-based badges.

As to the grindiness of badges, here's my take. If a toon can reasonably earn the badge naturally en route from 1 to 50, I won't complain about it. However, most badgers are already level 50 on the toons they actually care about getting all the badges on, and they have no reason to naturally earn them naturally on those toons. Which means they are just going to be expedient about things and farm them as quickly as possible.

Frankly, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I didn't object to most of the MA badges because I thought they were reasonable. Things like some of the virtual badges were way out of line, however, as were the play 250 HOF and 100 DC arc badges (do any toons even play 350 separate story arcs from 1 to 50?). Also, the voting badges were problematic from the beginning. But in general, count badges are fine, so long as the count is reasonable. All to often, however, it is ridiculously out of proportion to the content. This is especially annoying for badges that are precursors to accolades (for example, Illusionist for heroes and Gangbuster for villains).

FYI on Immortal... healing credits damage. So if you have somebody heal you, you get credit for the amount healed towards the damage taken badges. Almost certainly not working as intended, but since I hardly consider the epic badges as working at all, this is at least a bug that benefits the player.

Also, can you add a request to eliminate PvP rep decay for the PvP reputation line of badges? Until I14, these were the only badges where the player could lose credit, and to be honest, the addition of similar badges in I14 is not a benefit to this game.

[ QUOTE ]
We know that finding out about this change after the patch is already live is not the ideal way to go about it. It was never our intent to “hide” or “stealth” this change out, it was simply lost in the volume of other changes spanning many months.

[/ QUOTE ]

Given that this is the third such instance this update alone, and all three are changes that would obviously upset a large percentage of the player base, I find this statement absolutely lacking in credibility.

ps. Enjoy the bug tickets now that the first mission of the RSF can't be soft-spawned. I don't suppose fixing escort AI ever came up for consideration?

I thought this dead horse had long since rotted away

In short
- Epic Inf, Heal, and Dmg badges suck and should be lowered
- Even most people who have the top badges in those categories think they should be lowered
- Devs have yet to express any interest in changing them
- Blah blah blah
- Yada yada yada

I have to agree... The Strange Case of Benjamin Decker is the way to go. As a corruptor, even with no stealth and no travel powers, I had no problem with the four glowies.

Also, in the 15-20 range, if you go with eh Zig breakout, you can deliberately fail the challenge by letting all the prisoners get killed, yet still succeed at the challenge. No need to escort them back at all.

[ QUOTE ]
If it were 500k/hour that would be 2,000 hours. On the other hand the only character that could possibly achieve this might be a Rad Corruptor healing 7 Masterminds with all their pets sitting on a red CoT crystal.

[/ QUOTE ]

A rad (or thermal) corr with 7 MMs can achieve 11.5 million HP/hour of healing, making Empath achievable in about 87 hours, or less than the time that passes between the standard resets between on Mondays and Fridays.

Empath or Rad defenders/trollers can do the same if they make 7 MMs their special valentines

[ QUOTE ]
How long for farmers?
How long for non-farmers?

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree with others here. For this badge, you should not take farming into account. Why? because you really have no idea how effective farming can be. I earned Empath in 20 days. Any rad, empath, or thermal (and probably any kins and darks) can do the same. Faster, even, as I did not use the most optimal setup. Optimal farming setups so far outstrip normal play as to make anything that is achievable in normal play relatively trivial with farming setups in almost all categories of this game.

Here's the thing. If you want people to not farm for stuff, then here are the key steps:
- Make it fun (aka unlike the Oro, crafting, and RWZ badges)
- Make it incidental to other accomplishments in the game (such as reaching level 50 via normal play)

As soon as a badge becomes a goal in and of itself, people will seek more and more efficient methods for accomplishing that goal. That's all my epic badges mean to me... it means I fulfilled a a task/objective in this game the most efficient way I knew how. Empath does not make me a better healer. Disruptor does not make me a better PvPer. I could go on and on.

My advice: Don't read into the meaning behind badges, because all they mean is you caused some signals to go through certain logic gates. Congratulations

Wow... I *just* came across this thread. What a walk through memory lane! Right now, there are so many superteams running around, and the theory behind them are more or less established, but it was a real hoot to go back through this thread and see how some of those theories got started.

I am really happy to have been a part of this history and some of the superteams listed in this thread, and I hope the party keeps on rolling

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Might want to update this, Snow... after the I9 beta, at least four people were awarded the badge, that I know of, definitely moving the number beyond being able to count on one hand

[/ QUOTE ]
Noted. How about a dysmally small percentage of the population?

[/ QUOTE ]

still more than the number of non-distracting animated avatars that have ever existed

[ QUOTE ]
How do I get Bug Hunter?
This is a special badge only granted specifically by the developers, for finding and reporting to either Cryptic or NCSoft directly major, serious and game breaking bugs. The amount of characters that have gotten this badge legitimately can be counted on one hand, with room left over. At one point a few characters got the badge through a bug in the system.

[/ QUOTE ]

Might want to update this, Snow... after the I9 beta, at least four people were awarded the badge, that I know of, definitely moving the number beyond being able to count on one hand

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Did you know...

There used to be some nearly impossible to find mission doors due to a navigation bug? One such door was underneath a basketball court in the SW corner of Brickstown (/loc of 367.2 -30.6 2280.1, if you'd like to check it out). The bug was that for some reason, perhaps because it was located below some minimum terrain threshhold, it produced no beacon to follow in your navigation window, and by guesstimating using your map, it lead you to an empty basketball court. Only by noticing the narrow, fenced-in ramp adjacent to the court could you find the mission. Occasionally, you could find several toons just meandering about this basketball court unable to find their mission . I'm pretty sure this was fixed (or that door is no longer used, perhaps), although I can't recall the specifics of how or when.

[/ QUOTE ]

I realize that this post was made well over a year ago, but I just had a radio mission at this door on my toon, and I was running all over the place trying to find a way down there. It wasn't until after I'd almost given up that I'd found the ramp that leads under the court.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hehe... that happened to me, too, years ago. Finally I got a GM to help me and so there we were.. a scrapper and a police drone, wandering aimlessly about, until I literally fell down the ramp.

I agree with others who say this balance is currently borked. I think the biggest problem is that accuracy means almost nothing in PvP, because it is so heavily trumped by to-hit and defense coefficients in the equations. For example, barring inspirations, a controller, even a rad controller, has almost no chance killing a /SR, /Ninjitsu, or /EA with their tier 9 running by themselves. Conversely, those same toons might as well have no armor on at all when facing any other hero AT who has access to the massive to-hit buffs via BU, PBU, Aim, and Focused Acc. There's simply a disconnect between these powers being absolutely dominate or absolutely useless.

So my answers, and I mean this only for PvP:
1. 70% (misses make for a dull fight)
2. 85%: create room for -defense debuffs to add value for even the best PvP offense builds.
3. 50%: Nothing should be godly. However, some consideration should be given to grant some tier-9s that are defense-only some other benefits to offset this, such as dmg resistance, increased regen, etc.
4. 70%

In all cases, my numbers would make stalkers want to howl, probably. I can understand that. Perhaps the interruption of AS should be re-examined, as well as their max HP. I just dislike the rock-papers-scissors nature of solo PvP.

[BUMP] to avoid thread deletion

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Did you know....

front loaded missions used to exist? These were missions in which the toughest enemies were near the door, and the weaker ones deeper in, ending in larger groups of -1 and -2 enemies. They provided a nice variation to missions structures, and a lot of fun in mowing down weak minions.

People complained about the lower xp for the -1 and -2 foes, and so the missions were scrapped.

Hooray for xp......

-kendal

[/ QUOTE ]

There are still a few 'back-loaded' missions. "Unlucky Pete", a Lost mission, is one of the ones I most clearly remember. You always see greens when you walk in the door, and are fighting yellows by the time you reach Mr. Pete.

Still, there used to be more variation in mission levels, and I miss that too.

[/ QUOTE ]

Atta is another backloaded mission, although I seem to recall that it used to have greater variation than it does now. Of course, by the time you get to the end of the miss, you've probably levelled at least once anyway.

The big problem with front-loaded missions was that a lot of teams, especially in the lower levels, could not kill the frontloaded parts. A similiar example that still exists is the Positron TF, where the first two missions are arguably the toughest of the whole TF, and I would argue most teams (or at least a sizable proportion of them) that start the Positron TF do not even get past those first two missions.

(I'm especially amused when I see a team of lvl 10 or 11 heroes gathered by Positron. Once just out of curiosity, I followed them to their first misison, then headed to the nearest hospital. Sure enough, there they were! )

[ QUOTE ]
If you take a look at Buffer Overrun, my All-Rad SG (link in my sig), you'll see that Update 5 doesn't change anything with regard to Tankers and Scrappers. A well designed SuperTeam can do better than a balanced team containing a wide mix of ATs. This has been true since the beginning of the game, it's just taken me a while to see it.

Even if this does catch on, it'll only be a fad. It took me 6 weeks to go from level 1 to 50 in Buffer Overrun. This SuperTeam looks to be even faster. In a month or so, people playing in this SuperTeam will hit 50 and move on. They'll go right back to playing Tankers, Scrappers, or whatever else they want. I'll go back to playing my current main, a Scrapper. Life will go on.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'll make this post as a follow-up to the whole Tank Mage experience. We ended up with getting 5 regular players, one of whom had two accounts, and picked up 2 non-regular players or two random kin, FF, or Sonic randoms most of the time, and occasionally blasters or other toons at other times.

We absolutely flew through the levels and demolished everything. By the time we hit lvl 50 after about 200 hours of play, we had done every task force except Positron (becasue we outleveled it too quickly) and the 4th Shard TF, because we hit 50 first.

True to TopDoc's prediction, this Superteam did not endure as an active super group. It is all but retired now. However, as someone who has played this game a lot, I must say that my esperience with the Tank Mages was the best time I have had in this game. We did some incredible feats, such as dropping the Crystal Titan in under a minute, without clearing his room first, and then dropping the thousand or so mobs that charged at us in maybe an additional minute.

In any case, TopDoc has a nice synopsis of the Tank Mage philosophy that anybody can read. If you have a grp of friends that can form a large enough team and play together regularly, you will not regret forming a team like this. So have a great time, and tell me how it goes

Did you know...

There used to be some nearly impossible to find mission doors due to a navigation bug? One such door was underneath a basketball court in the SW corner of Brickstown (/loc of 367.2 -30.6 2280.1, if you'd like to check it out). The bug was that for some reason, perhaps because it was located below some minimum terrain threshhold, it produced no beacon to follow in your navigation window, and by guesstimating using your map, it lead you to an empty basketball court. Only by noticing the narrow, fenced-in ramp adjacent to the court could you find the mission. Occasionally, you could find several toons just meandering about this basketball court unable to find their mission . I'm pretty sure this was fixed (or that door is no longer used, perhaps), although I can't recall the specifics of how or when.

Did you know that there are and have been Super Groups designed around single character classes...

A feature in this game that has not been talked about in this thread has been super teams. By this I mean teams or SGs built around ATs/Builds so that their powers complement one another well.

A few notable examples I know of are Buffer Overrun from Freedom, an all Radiation Emissions SG, Pinball Wizards from Freedom, an all Kinetics SG, and Tank Mages from Protector, a mix of Kinetics, FF, and Sonic defenders. Other superteams I've heard of revolve around all-troller teams, all assault rifle teams, all mastermind teams, etc.

Teaming with these synergistic SGs is usually very different than teaming with normal SGs or PUGs, as roles are very complementary. Also, players on these teams almost universally, in my experience, have the leadership power pool, and these toons often find themselves poorly equipped to play with PUGs, usually as a result of kin and rad based team members never taking Stamina, and so always having end problems on PUGs. Also, synergistic teams tend to fight very quickly, and can do some pretty impressive feats, such as dropping AVs in seconds.

Another distinguishing characteristic of super team based SGs is that they are generational, in that once the first group of players hits 50, the SG pretty much dies away, as most players would rather branch out into other toons than player the same mold again, and so it is very hard to maintain active membership once the SG matures.

As new releases come and go, there are often attempts to find the next "perfect team", and super teams reflect the interests of groups of friends to find a new experience within the game.

[ QUOTE ]
Why is this thread more about the history of nerfs, power leveling, and complaining than about the history of the game itself?

[/ QUOTE ]

Why complain about what other people view as important elements of this game? In the case of nerfs and power leveling, these are the only things other than the introduction of new zones and ATs that have significantly altered the way the game was played. For example, the lvl 36-42 game is now much different than it was when everyone would go to the sewers at lvl 36 and emerge at lvl 42. Not everyone is complaining about these changes, but you cannot deny that nerfs (or power adjustments, if you prefer) have had a very big impact on how this game has been played. And in my opinion, the history of how this game has been played really is the history of this game. Consequently, you shouldn't be surprised when a lot of people reflect on the past and remember what their favorite toon used to be like with a sense of longing, and so they want to capture that in this thread. That's partialy what this trhead is here for, after all.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
This is significant because almost all nerfs since I2 are due to either PLing or to PvPing.

[/ QUOTE ]



Just because you say so doesn't make it true.

It's downright false.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm sure I made several, if not many, mistakes in my post. But please correct them rather than just refuting them without any support.

Did you know there have been many ways to power level that have disappeared?

This is significant because almost all nerfs since I2 are due to either PLing or to PvPing. Also, at some stages of the game, one of these methods was so dominant that it was very difficult to find teams that did NOT do this (notably Kraken, Winter Lord, Sewers, and Frostfire), so these things had major impacts on different aspects of the game. Even players that abhorred PLing (and some people will not consider everything I have listed as PLing) know of these techniques because of the constant broadcasts and requests that would be thrown out in chats during the times that these methods were in use.

So I thought it might be informative to have as many of these methods listed in one area to see how prevalent PLing was and still is in City of Heroes). Here are the ways I remember, in no particular order, although some have already been mentioned in this thread and I'm sure I haven't seen them all...

1. Winter Lord: Massive monster spawns from winter of '04-'05 let lower level toons form WL teams and power level themselves in KR and such. Unfortunately, this also led to the previously mentioned Winter Lord Effect, where PUGs were totally unmanageable for months as a result of lvl 20+ toons not being built for real team play (especially lvl 20+ tanks and scrappers with no mez protection).

2. Hydra pulling: Only saw this once on Freedom around Feb of '05... a lvl 50 rad troller used Radiation Infection and Enervating Field to empty the entire lake of Hydras and pull them to near the Galaxy City gate of Perez Park, where she would use EM Pulse and other non-damaging mezzes to hold them and let her lvl 10 friends aoe them to death. Wash, rinse, and repeat. Probably not very fast xp, but that was the only time I've ever seen the lake empty, and I saw many a lvl 8ish toon run in terror at the approach of about 150 lvl 13-14 Hydras

3. Kraken farming: Farming the Krakens from the abandoned sewers trial used to be the shortcut from 36 to 42 for many, many toons. This disappeared when I4 was released and the xp from Krakens was reduced to almost nothing. Since then, the Abandoned Sewer Network has been very aptly named

4. Glowie missions: Some glowies in missions used to give out xp to the entire team, regardless of where in the game they were. This was particularly significant due to a lvl 40-45 Nemesis mission that contained a lot of such glowies in an easily navigated outdoor map. Thus, any toon with phase shift and super speed could simply run in, click all the glowies, give all teammates insane xp, run out, and reset. In the meantime, rest of team could be afk somewhere or out street hunting and thus earning even more xp. Two changes were made because of this. First, the auto-afk timeout was implemented in a patch sometime in the fall of '04, and second, when I3 was released in Jan '05, all glowies that gave xp only gave xp to the person who clicked them. Thus, this PL technique died with I3.

5. BP farm: This farm was created as a result of the devs fixing a bug. It used to be that Death Shaman spawns were capped at lvl 29. The devs fixed this around I5, I believe, so that they spawned to the level of the Death Shaman, which could be up to lvl 52 in portal missions. Thus the BP farm was born, since Death Shamans generally do not attack much, a bunch of them could be herded together, and they would constantly spawn minions that would run to a tank that had burn on auto. Just set it up, go to bed, and wake up with all the SK'd toons several (or many) levels higher. This lasted only a very short time, however, as the devs quickly made the spawned minions worth no xp.

6. Portal farming: This was the same thing as the BP farm, but occurred long before then. Basically, aggro a portal, kill all the spawns, move to next portal. Nerfed once portal mobs were no longer worth xp (Also worked with Rikti portals summoned by Communications Officers).

7. Puppy farms: Shadowhunter and some lvl 40+ 5th Column Warwolves missions used to be very farmable. At one point, wolves did not have any ranged attacks, so Inv scrappers and tankers were particularly good at herding tons of farms into a small area where blasters could nova them in seconds. The devs responded by making all wolf missions timed and by giving all wolves hurl bolder, which can disorient tanks if stacked enough. This was also a significant reason why Invincibility from the Inv power set no longer gives defense to ranged attacks as well as why Unstoppable is no longer perma (which in turn forced the devs to make Elude, Rage, and MoG non-perma to balance them out).

8. Dreck farms: A lvl 50 Unai Kemens mission was the PL map of choice for a long time. Containing Freaks in a large outdoor instanced map, this map can be farmed very effectively, due in large part to the fact that freakshow give more xp than most other mob types of the same level. The devs responded by making this mission timed, and by making it completable just by killing the AV. Many people, however, still have this mission (some untimed Shadowhunter missions still exist as well). Currently, there are many lvl 50 outdoor missions that are farmed in this way.

9. Kora runs: This worked around I2 and I3. Kora missions from the Shadow Shard were missions in which toons were asked to pick a certain number of Kora Fruit (bright plant-like glowies that gave tier 3 inspirations to whoever clicked them). These missions still exist, but they used to be completable just by clicking all the glowies. Thus, a lvl 50 would get the mission, which was always in Firebase Zulu, a flyer would go to the mission and TP the rest of team there, and then all the runners (toons with phase shift and super speed) would go in and click the Koras, thus giving everyone mission complete xp for a lvl 50 mission. The devs responded by adding a kill boss component to these missions, and the Shadow Shard has been abandoned ever since. This and the other glowie missions, as well as PvPing, is why Phase Shift, Quantum Flight, and Nebulous Form can no longer be kept on permanently, as well as the reason why you can no longer click glowies while phase shifted. Since then, you see PSers far less frequently, and Invisibility is far more common.

10. TF teams: This technique was particularly common with the Synapse TF, which used to begin with a 'Visit 5 locations' mission, a kill 30 clockwork mission and either a delivery or some short door mission, each of which gave the entire team lvl 20 mission complete xp and could be completed by a team of lvl 15s. They would simply then quit the TF and restart. The devs responded by adding a new mission or reordering them so that a rather annoyingly long kill-all mission is the first mission in the Synapse, Sister Psyche, Bastian (now Citadel), and Manticore task forces. Thus, some complain that now these original task forces, notably Manticore, is very much front-loaded. Not to mention they're too long anyway.

11. Burn tanks: The devs created this monstrosity when they released I3 granting fire tanks much better mez protection as well as boosting tank damage in general. Suddenly fire tanks, which used to not have any sleep protection, could herd large numbers of mobs to them, sit in a corner and burn them to death in a very short amount of time. This had a major effect on many aspects of the game from Jan '05 until I5 was released in the summer of '05. Fire tanks became the most predominant type of tank, whereas before I3 it was Inv tanks. Also, teams that had fire tanks on them were basically defined by the tank and a support cast to keep the tank alive or at least stay out of its way. This period of the game came to an end when I5 was released and Burn was severely nerfed so that it was much shorter in duration, much slower to recharge, did less damage, and caused foes to flee... the rare quadruple nerf not seen since Invincibility had been nerfed when I3 was released. Burn tanks were also the root to other game changes, as well, such as a target cap and an aggro cap. Currently, other ATs/Builds are predominant PLing toons, including spine scrappers, dark scrappers, all tanks, and now trollers, especially fire/kins.

12. Ninja farms: The ninjas of the Chimera mission do relatively little damage and have almost no damage resistance. Their only effective weapon is caltrops, which is completely negated by Hover, Speed Boost, and Phase Shift (before the PS timer was implemented). Thus almost any toon with PS or any tank with hover or SB could herd a ton of ninjas to a corner and then let a blaster nuke them with one shot. Sometimes a PS'd blaster would do this single-handedly. This mostly disappeared with the implementation of max targets for attacks and the aggro cap (either I5 or I6... can't recall).

13. Frostfire & Atta: These two Hollows missions are single-handedly worth about a level or more to any even level toon who completes them on an 8 person team. As of now, they still exist, and are the dominant means of advancing toons from level 5 to level 15. Chances are, however, they will not be nerfed in any way, since they actually engender teamwork and they are very effective and introducing the face-plant position to bad players.

14. Sewers and PP: Before I2 and the Hollows were introduced, low level teams would often PL themselves simply by going to the Sewers and killing mobs until they reached lvl 7, then go to Perez Park and hunt the skulls and hellions on the street until they were high enough level to go hunt Hydras in the lake. Before long, they could be lvl 15 and on their way to the Synapse TF. Thanks to the introduction of the Hollows, PP has been cut out of this equation in favor of Frostfire and Atta missions, and is only visited by low level toons who enjoy pain or are there to complete the "Find the Missing Fortune Teller" mission for the Spelunker badge.

15. In general, some teams would often hunt in hazard zones due to the large spawns and relatively high levels of the mobs there. This was/is particularly prevalent in the Hollows, PP, Boomtown, Sewers, Abandoned Sewers, Cray's Folly (esp. for lvl 35+ burn tanks who farmed the freakshow areas near the RCS entrance to PL themselves to 40).

16. Synapse TF: At present, this still exists. Because the first eight missions of this TF consist of five kill-alls, one delivery, one patrol, and one hunt mission, each of which provides lvl 20 mission xp, it is very easy for a lvl 15 or 16 toon to join a Synapse TF and finish at lvl 20 a few hours later. Unfortunately, this means that relatively few lvl 19 or 20 toons are interested in doing this TF anymore, since they will do the last couple of missions as lvl 21s who are exemped and thus receive no xp, and so the first few missions are run with very poorly balanced teams, and the last missions are too easy (and usually stealthed since people are tired of fighting nothing but clocks by then). There is no change in sight for this situation that I know of.

17. Monster/AV farming: This has been done periodically, and some still do it. Basically, missions in which there is an AV (notably first mission of Katie Hannon TF) or where outdoor monsters spawn (Hive or monster island in PI), sometimes people will farm these beasts for xp, or more recently for prestige or lvl 53 SOs. The devs have adjusted the rewards for AVs and Monsters often, which is why this method is seasonal.

Well, that's all my memory could dig up. Please feel free to add or correct anything