Crimson_Scarab

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For those folks that have a COH/COV account there is a special item attached to your VIP pass so make sure you stop by early to ensure you get your badge.

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Hmmm. I sure hope this isn't a code that can be input in your account to unlock some item.

If at all possible, please post a transcript (or download) for people who had to work and couldn't attend.

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Sweet more, but 36? isnt that overdoing it a bit

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I can easily see people getting to 36 and still wanting more as more and more sets are created/proliferated.

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Completely awesome!! I never imagined you would allow so many character slots on one server. I figured 24 max...but hey...you guys RoCK!!!

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And based on the design they used, it would be extremely easy in the future to make it 48 or 60 or 72 or any increment of 12.

I don't think I've seen a single negative post in the whole thread. This must be a first.

I'm sitting in my chair at work doing my Caddyshack gopher happy dance.

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War Witch is adding gurneys (ala the Safeguard missions) to the front of the zone that you will go to if you are overcome and hit ye olde hospital button.

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Woo Hoo!

Now if we can just get them to do that in all the rest of the Hazard zones.

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Guess I won't be doing ANY more TF/SF until THIS fix gets a FIX.

Farmers can STILL farm it, and casual players (me) get screwed even more.


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Wait. Before this fix if it was an 8 man TF then spawns would always be for 8 even if it dropped down to 2 players still logged on.

Now, for the same TF, if 6 players just log off, nothing has changed. It still spawns for 8. But, if 6 players quit, it spawns for 2.

You don't see what is on test as an improvement over what is live for a PUG? I didn't say perfect, I said an improvement.

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I still would like the ability to add/invite new players/teammates to a TF/SF if it goes below the minimum for the TF/SF (if the others have QUIT and not just logged off).

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I don't like this idea. People who haven't had any part in the task force could be brought in right at the end and collect a nice, shiny reward. You might even run into people kicking other players off at the last minute just so they could invite an alt on another account.

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I have to agree. It would open the door up to some nasty griefing/exploiting. Start a PUG TF and boot everyone at the end and invite your friends/SG mates for the rewards. Definitely not an option I would want to see implemented.

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I'm going to add my voice to those opposing this change.

I don't like the idea that my current ONLINE gaming can be affected in any way by OFFLINE players.


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If you are worried about it, always be the leader. If you see someone starting the logoff countdown and honestly think they are going to try to grief you, boot them before it gets to zero.

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This change and the previous one is bad because it still allows for some teammates to grief your team should they choose to log off and not quit. I have had it to happen twice since the first change on a few tfs I have done. Once on Katie hannon and once Sara Moore TFs. We need a way to be able to kick people from the team that are not currently logged in. Secondly neither of these changes have done anything to address the reason why this softloading of tf/sfs happens in the first place. If the recipes that people can actually use were more readily accessable we would not be going thru this now in the first place. Either address the issue with the drop pools or you are doing all this for nothing and all it is doing is punishing the rest of the playerbase instead of farmers.

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Understandable and thanks for the feedback. However, I would have to advise you to better get to know the people you are grouping with. Simply put, if someone has a reputation for such, don't engage in a task / strike force or trial with them. You would be well advised to only take your most trusted allies with you to tackle such challenging and dangerous missions!

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I somewhat agree with you on this (except I think PUGs should be able to do them as well without having to worry about griefing) but want to point out that the last sentence of your response really came across like someone talking down to a child.

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Wow, even more gross exaggeration of how much people hate this change. I'll say it again, the people who have generally been posting in this thread do not represent the player base.


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Obviously they do or else the devs wouldn't have been working on a change that is now on the test server.

Task Force Fixes

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Also, bugs are not the only reason changes get reverted on test server. See the last Assassin Strike change.

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We weren't talking about reverting something on the test server. We were talking about reverting something on the live server and leaving it on the test server for more testing (and there's no need to do that).

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And the only reason you both are having the discussion is that if the changes were announced on the test server, then people could have spoken then. They were denied that chance.

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Odds are, if the change was announced on the test server, the shear volume of negativity toward the change would have caused them to not implement it as-is, and instead they would have gotten to the biggest hurdles immediately (like re-examining and changing the minimum number required to start) rather than some day in the future, before it went live.

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Do you really think that tit-for-tat task force succeeded/task force failed bickering will really solve anything or convince anyone one way or another?

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I don't really thing tit-for-tat is needed. If someone has a good experience they are going to keep playing the game. If someone has a bad experience they may not.

100 good experiences don't matter if 1 bad experience causes someone to give up on the game.

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Kind of like the "play my way, aka the right / real / intended way!" people before this patch went live.

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What gives you the impression that everyone should get to play exactly the way they want to? You know there are power-levelers in this game, should everyone be given the ability to click a button and instantly have a level 50 character? Because, you know, if you deny the power-levelers the right to have instant 50's, you're just insisting that they play the "right" way as you define it.

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Strawman argument Tony.

There is a big difference between the devs taking developement time and money for coding things to give everyone what they want (instant 50 button) and zero development time being needed for people using the existing code to do what they want.

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LOL

They will never institute that type of zone or instance PvP here

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I'm guessing you took the post literally and missed what he was really saying.

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Teaming is important. Pvp is balanced for teams. The devs should set it so you cannot enter a pvp zone unless you are on a team of at least 4 and you are debuffed until it is a team of 8. If at any time your team drops below 4, you should be kicked from the zone. Thusly, teaming is enforced and pvp is balanced. Ending the exploit of unbalancing pvp by solo'ing.

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That cracked me up. Thanks!

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As I keep saying over and over ad nauseum but the vocal minority here keeps ignoring, if you cannot invest the time and effort into completing such a task force, this content is not for you.

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No Tony, you are the one who keeps ignoring the point. It is unfair to the people who are willing to commit the time and effort it takes to run a TF to the end by penalizing them for the actions of another player.

A player should never be penalized for the actions of another player.

If a TF requires 8 people to start and 6 hours into it 2 of the people drop, it is completely unfair to penalize the other 6 people who fully committed their time to finishing the TF. The spawns remain set for 8 people.

Your official title should be "Dev Apologist" because that seems to be your role in every single thread you join. Maybe you should actually read the content of the thread before jumping to the defense of the developers without knowing if what you are defending is what people are actually talking about?

Just a thought.

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Here's what it has said about task forces from the very beginning, and continues to say about them to this day:

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A task force is a team up of powerful Heroes that comes together to undertake a long series of dangerous assignments, which usually culminates in a battle with one of the city’s Arch Villains. Task force missions require a great deal of commitment, and are very risky .

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You're right. I guess they need to correct the manual. It says, but the reward for success is proportionate to the risk. That is an incorrect statement. Looking through the rewards you can select, I don't see where any of them are worth the risk now.

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I watched Taxibot Belle run a Positron task force just yesterday. It took just under five hours, and everyone seemed to enjoy it just fine.

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no more groups of 3-4 casual players...

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*sigh...* Task Forces are not "casual" activities. Read the manual for a description of what they're supposed to be.

Or in tl;dr metaphor-speak: If you're having trouble finishing task forces as they were originally designed to work, look for better teammates. Don't ask for exploits to be reintroduced to the game.

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*sigh...*

It was not an exploit. If it was an exploit, it wouldn't have taken them more than 4 years to fix. It was working exactly as intended. Remember, recipes didn't exist when TFs were introduced.

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Having poinged around the Shadow Shard checking, all the TFs in there still require 8.

I'm not opposed to this change, as long as the maximum for everything that's not Statesman or Lord Recluse comes down to 4.

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Which is a completely fair compromise, IMO

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The thing is that TFs/SFs have fallen victim to skewed player perspective.

They have never been intended to be easy or fast, or for the average PUG. They are content for hardcore players willing and able to run for 4-8 hours at once, or to reorganize on a regular basis: content for teams of RL friends or SGs.

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I don't think it's skewed player perspective when that has been the perspective since day one. They make this change 45 months later. If this change was their original vision it wouldn't have taken them 45 months to address it.

Player perspective is exactly where it is because of the game design over the last 45 months. There is no skewing.

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Such missions have always been intended to be group activities, hence the reason for the minimum group size requirement to start them. We feel that the group size requirements are certainly not onerous

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Min = Max = 8 man isn't onerous? Losing one person puts you at a 87.5% effectiveness and there's nothing you can do to avoid that. Other than enforced raid attendance.

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Hmmm. That's the solution.

They didn't go far enough. They need to code it so the quit TF button is disabled and the log off buttons are disabled until the TF is completed. Then they need to make it so if your character is AFK for more than 20 minutes or doesn't exit a mission within 5 minutes of completion 1 level gets deleted from every alt on the account every 5 minutes until the player stops being AFK or exits the mission. It also starts deleting 5% of the influence from every alt every 5 minutes, deletes one recipe and deletes one piece of salvage every 5 minutes (starting with the rarest and working backwards).

That would give them their "vision" of what a TF should be.

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Congratulations on killing the Shard TFs, not that anyone actually did them.

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Ouch. I hadn't even thought of that one. They take so long that I've never been on one where some of the members didn't leave before the end.

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This seems like a poor solution to me, more likely to punish PUGs that lose members over the course of a long TF than it is to really clamp down Pool C recipe farming. Additionally, it seems like allowing a single character to set himself up with an infinitely repeatable group mission could only be a boon to influence farmers.

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It's because they Devs tend to go for the quick fix without thinking of the consequences, just to get it out there. They should be taking their time, analyzing it and looking at it from the player's point of view rather than just the Dev "vision".

This change in SF/TFs would have never happened had they put any thought into it beyond "stop recipe farming".

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Funny, all this complaining, and all I really see in this change is "TFs will be played as they were supposed to be played"

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Might I suggest glasses?

So, if 8 people start a TF that needs 8 to start and over the course of several hours, 4 people have to go, the other 4 (who have put in all that time) should be penalized and either attempt to deal with mobs set for 8 players or give up on the TF?

That's the way they are "supposed" to be played?