Mr_Squid

I know you've already played through them, but I would love to see The Lost Choir in sepia tones, scratchy lines, and set to ragtime.

So, for future reference, changes.

1. EoE farming will occur on the friday before the raid at 8pm EST. It is not required for people to show up, yet highly encouraged. If we have an EoE surplus, farming will be cancelled.

2. After the yellow taunt team moves in, I will call out the first yellow for the spike team to begin attacking. This will shorten the gap between the spike team moving in and the assault teams attacking.

3. Only six masterminds are needed in the pet stream. Poison, storm, traps, and trick arrow MM's will be put in the stream. Dark, FF, and Pain MM's will be spread across all other teams to provide support and additional firepower.

For all you TL;DR people:

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1. I love you all, and you all did a phenomenal job
2. Redside raids will happen weekly, at 9PM EST on Saturdays.
3. EoE farming will happen at 8pm EST on fridays. It will not be mandatory however.

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First of all, I would just like to say to Champion server as a whole: I love you. I love your spirit, I love your tenacity, I love your will to rise up in the face of the impossible and give everything from demigods to demons what's coming to them.

The Redside raid tonight was a fantastic experience, and a very fun one. Everyone did a stellar job. There were a few times there when I thought for sure people would start ragequitting like flies. But that never happened. In fact, I don't think a single person did such a thing.

If I haven't made this clear already, lemme say it again:

I. LOVE. THIS. SERVER!!!!!

That being said, this WILL become a weekly event. Every Saturday at 9pm EST we will do it again. I know tonight went a little long, but once we hone our strategy, I am confident we can surpass blueside.

A couple of things though to help us improve our performance:

1. Lack of EoE's. There were no less then 3 times that the yellow taunt team ran out of EoE's and forced people to run back to their bases to pick up more. This is really because we had several restarts caused by the yellow spike teams wiping, but even if everything does go off smoothly, we cannot risk running out again. Therefore, EoE farming will occur Fridays at 8PM est. If however, we find ourselves with a surplus of EoE's, we will refrain from farming until such a time that we need to again.

2. The Spike team disconnect. One problem I noted is that as the targetter, I had no idea where the yellow spike team would be hitting first, and as such, had no idea where to call my first target. Thus, I will call out the first yellow mito target before each wave from now on.

That's about it. Awesome job once again, and I hope to see you all again next week!

Awesome job all! Hopefully we can turn this into a weekly event! Making a separate post about it now!

Well if you don't like it you SHOULD raise a stink about it. Like it or not, you are the metaphorical 800 pound gorilla of the reviewer and lore world, and if you feel the I15 additions to content are horrid, then you should say something. We must remember that these TF's have not been warmly recieved, and there are numerous other people who would agree with you. Your influence could serve to tip the devs into doing something about it.

After all, despite what they may or may not be doing to the lore, we do have a dev team that has demonstrated time and time again that it listens to its playerbase.

Well what I meant is that there is no real connecting thread amongst the missions of those task forces. Lets look at the LGTF for an example.

Mission one asks you to go save Penelope Yin from the Rikti, as they are trying to use her as a psychic battery to power their portals. We can give this one the benefit of the doubt seeing as it is only the first mission, but none of the elements brought up in this mission are ever mentioned again. Penelope Yin never shows up again, and while the whole "using psychics as batteries to power portals bit" is mentioned a few more times, by the end of the TF that particular story thread just gets dropped.

Mission two: This mission asks you to go stop the riders. Now whats the problem here? The riders were never mentioned before, and after this mission, they are never mentioned again. You could remove this mission from the TF completely and there would be nothing lost.

Mission three: This mission asks you to go save some former omega team members from the rikti. Again, the same problems as mission two appear. Sure, you are also saving some human psychics the rikti were trying to use to power their portals, linking back to the first mission, but once again, after this mission you never hear about that thread again.

Mission four: So, the Rikti are trying to take out the Hamidon and "harness its power". Uh...why don't we just let them kill the hamidon and take out one of our greatest foes? It is mentioned that "harnessing the hamidon's power may be the key to defeating a powerful foe". Mind telling us why this guy is before we go do this? And what exactly does harnessing his power mean?

Mission five: Finally, we figure out that the Rikti are trying to bring over the Honoree. So why is this a big deal anyway? We have never seen this guy before, never heard of what he is capable of, and for all we know, he could just be a complete wimp!

Go ahead and strike "The Descender" ID 33034. From your list. I pulled the arc to make room for my three part epic "The Lost Choir". I would ask you to review that one too, but you have a LOT on your plate!

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Reviews are likely to be scarce while I tweak my arcs to account for issue 15's changes. I've been getting requests to review the two new TFs but frankly I don't see a percentage in that. Having run the villain TF and from what I've heard of the hero one, both need to be rethought from Square One and that is simply not going to happen.

Or, maybe not, as AE on Test is down again, so I guess I'll hop over to Live and run one or two there.... :-P

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Eh...I really didnt expect much...every TF/SF added since I10 has been the very definition of "A bunch of stuff that happens" (well maybe not some of the Ouro TF's). Then again, I've been trying to avoid spoilers for this one so maybe that's not the problem.

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Mr. Squid have you gotten with any of these people as to what toons you want them to bring?

I know from the strategies I have seen I would say what we need the most of is...

Brutes with taunt
Therms/Pain
Kins
Master Minds

So if they have one of those toons then make bringing one of those the priority?

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Sending out a wave of PM's now. Thanks for the reminder.

Slightly over 3 years. No really. Made my first hero right after launch (a blaster), made the incredibly dumb move of only soloing with him (hello perma debt), only had him at level 33 by the time CoV rolled around, made my first villain (dominator), finally got him to 50 right after issue ten hit.

I have, however, REALLY stepped up my game since then. I now have seven level 50's.

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This thread has jumped the rails and spiraled out of control. For my part in this madness, I apologize.

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Dude, its the hall of RANDOMNESS. I honestly expected this.

Um... I think I get your general point...that reviews should be visible to people playing the arc...but damn...that brick of text is one hard thing to penetrate.

I know, making a complete 180 turn on my opinions is kind of hypocritical, but [censored], I just beat an LRSF which had honestly everything going against it.

It all began when I was playing my widow, and saw a broadcast for one spot left on an LRSF go out on my server's main global channel. This was the same person I teamed with two nights before during the failed LRSF that inspired me to create my whiny "LRSF is broken!!! BAAAAWWWW!!!!" thread. My initial reaction was to ignore him completely. There was no way I was putting myself through that again. But, I figured I didnt have anything else to do really, so I might as well give it another shot.

I asked what the team makeup was before I started, and it sounded very promising. Two brutes, one of which was stone, a widow, three corrs (two kins, one dark), and a dom. It sounded good, so I asked for an invite, and we were on our way.

The first warning light went off when it became apparent that half the team consisted of newbies. One of which came right out and admitted to being PL-ed by AE farms. Questions like "What are badges" "how do you get to nerva" "whats a GM" were all commonly heard.

We get to the first mission and things do not go well. The tech spawns in the first radar tower, which means I have to lead him all the way around, before I get ambushed by a massive wave of longbow. Deaths were happening left and right. But I consoled myself with the knowledge that they were only happening because we were so spread out. We get to crimson, and to my surprise he goes down very quickly.

Mission two begins with us taking on Kronos, as per usual. We have a death or two, but nothing too bad. Kronos goes down and we head in. I ask if anyone can stealth to the end. One teammate tries, dies, and has to be teleported back and rezzed. Eventually we get to the end, and the other widow grabs the orestes rifle. We take on slinger, and manage to take him down.

Mission 3 was a mess. We all gathered on the top of the atlas globe, I pulled numina, and she promptly hovered just out of melee range. Our dom fell off, and couldnt get back up. We all piled on babs, who was in range, until I remembered we could fight numina in the air. I hit my jetpack, but numina was promptly hit with a -fly and plummeted to the ground. About half the team attacked her while the other half sort of milled around on the atlas globe. Eventually we took them all down, and it was on to mission four.

I entered the mission, stealthed to the vindicators and waited for everyone to get in. Once they did, I team recalled them to me. Unfortunatley, our main brute had no idea what was on the other side of the doors, opened them up and waltzed right in. I promptly braced for a team wipe.

...which never came. We ran through the defeat order like clockwork, and I don't think we ever had a single death.

However, I ended up pulling a monumentally stupid move and shot myself in the foot by saying this:

"Wow, I am amazed. I end up with a team of complete newbies, and we still manage to completely kick the vindicator's [censored]. Awesome job all!"

It was a compliment...sort of...more like an insult followed up by a compliment. This had the effect of angering the newbies, angering the people who were not newbies, and making our other widow ragequit. The same widow who was carrying the orestes rifle.

Its a good thing I wasn't sitting at a desk, because my head would have rocketed into it.

With the entire team bickering, we managed to clear all the way to the codes (a group was standing right in front of the glowie), and headed to liberty. To my, and everyone elses surprise, she went down very quickly. (ba dum tish)

Before mission five began, I asked if anyone had shivans or nukes. Nobody said anything. Mentally sighing, I asked that everyone go to oro and pick up some inspirs.

We get into mission five, and person who formed the SF immediatley starts saying that we need nukes. I really don't feel like taking the time to get them, and I have confidence in our team. I am still worried as all hell though. Our basic strategy was to have the dom die, tp him back, fire veng with the two characters who had it, hit all our inspirs, and let the stone brute tp in.

Although we wiped on the first run, we did manage to get numina down to a sliver of her health. Seeing how close we were, we zipped back in, repeated the strategy, zoomed in, and took her down. We began attacking sis, but wiped when she was at about 50% health.

Round 3, we managed to take her down, and started on posi only to wipe again at 60%.

But round four...we managed to BEAT THE SF. Posi fell with a resounding crash, and we promptly ran through the defeat order, knocking over the phalanx like dominoes. Even the mighty statesman went down like a sack of bricks. Finally, manticore fell, and the "STRIKE FORCE COMPLETE!" message popped up.

All in all, it took around 2 and a half hours. But damn was it a fun time.

I now think the SF is balanced, as long as you assemble a well balanced team. I may have argued in the past that any team should have been capable of taking it on, but I now realize that if you think you can take any old ragtag PuG and rush into what has been advertised numerous times as the hardest thing in the game, you are deluding yourself. I still however, think the merit reward should be upped. 30 merits seems like a good number to me.

Although, in *sigh* his defense, it's pretty much impossible NOT to like Spongebob.

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The most I'll budge is maybe reducing the AV lvls down one. Other than that it's fine. I should think that the STF should be bumped up in diff.

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Agreed. Also, why does the ITF give more merits, but takes about the same time as the LRSF and is far easier? Can we please bump up the merit reward to 30? At least?

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We can't forget STARFISH ADHD. Did anyone find his blue foam helmet with a rainbow strap? This YOYO must have bump his head.

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....WHAT!?!??!

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[BMT of Champion]SCyberTaz: My pants are haunted!
[BMT of Champion]Mr Squid: Well good for you
[BMT of Champion]Bad Wonka: Taz, I believe they are more stained than they are haunted, then again it is pretty haunting, how brown stained they are
[BMT of Champion]Miz Nibbles: ew
[BMT of Champion]Plasmic Fire: ewwwww
[BMT of Champion]Plasmic Fire: mm i made banana bread

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It seems likely that Statesman and/or any number of other villains played a part in slowing the meteor's descent in an effort to reduce the devastation.

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Even then. Going by the calculator, the minimum entry speed for an actual meteor is 11 km/s. However, set the speed of entry to the lowest possible the calculator will take (1 km/s), and the crater is still 111m in diameter - and that's after losing almost 90% of its kinetic energy during reentry!

If they had the power to slow it down so much that all it happens is that it cracks the pavement a little bit, they could have sent it packing back into space.

EDIT: Oops, read the numbers the wrong way around, it's actually under 90% kinetic energy loss.

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Well in that case, they probably used the P.L.O.T. device to stop it.

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I've said it before and i'll say it again. Trying to argue about physics in a comic book game is like trying to arrange a gravel driveway so all the pebbles are the same size, shape, and color. You can do it, but it's much better to just accept it for what it is and move on.

You know what? I am a moron. I hereby retract all statements about this SF being "Broken" or "Impossible". Why? Because I literally just beat it.

The difference between this one and previous attempts? A very well balanced team. We had three widows, two SS/shield brutes, a bot/dark mm, a rad/rad corr and a ice/cold corr. Also, we had a crapload of warburg nukes.

I think I realized what my problem was with these. I was being far too nice. Anyone who sent me a tell saying they wanted in, I would invite them, and with whatever AT they wanted to bring. *sigh*, I really am stupid aren't I? This time however, I made sure to craft a well balanced team.

The last mish was a breeze. We had a few deaths, but nothing close to a wipe. Mostly because we bombarded the FP with chem nukes and ourselves with bio nukes. The whole thing took slightly over an hour.

That being said, I still have a few bones to pick. I still think it is too hard. Without the nukes we had I doubt we would have succeeded, and even if we did just by a hair. If nukes are not necessary for the STF, they shouldn't be necessary here. Also, can we up the merit reward? SLIGHTLY? 30 merits would be fine.

So overall, I think my opinion is sealed on the matter. It's doable, but it requires a significant amount of prep time before hand.

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[BMT of Champion]Ang: LOTF?
[BMT of Champion]SonicBang: Luck of the...
[BMT of Champion]Mr Squid: Flounder?
[BMT of Champion]Ang: :-p

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1. Merit values: States TF: 38, Recluse: 25. Right there is an indication that the LRSF is obviously shorter (or comparably easier if you prefer) going by the reward formula.

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This here I see as an oversight in merit calculation. Im sure that most SUCCESSFUL LRSF's take about an hour, because it's the same superteams running them over and over and over, thus driving the completion time down. That of course does not take into account the attempts that take far longer then that, or the attempts that end in failure. It's one of the prime examples of powergamers ruining it for the rest of us.

Ugh...Ghost Widow's Strike force...Trust me, after that mission. IT GETS WORSE.

I ran it with a full team, so we were able to get to mission 5.

Ghost widow warned us that the supergroup that the author belonged to had been contacted to stop the ritual. So we set off to take them out.

We get to the last room and what do we see?

The author's character, as an AV, surrounded by a huge mob of at least 12 CUSTOM ELITE BOSSES, half of which were storm, the other half of which were forcefield.

We quit.

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It is far from easy on a PuG. Only attempt with a PuG if everyone is willing to do a Shivan run and a nuke run beforehand, as needed. You may have a prayer of sucess with plenty of temp powers.

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And this is precisely why I haven't bothered with the LRSF since it was introduced.

It is broken. It is horribly designed.

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I hardly think that the self-proclaimed hardest challenge in the game should be easy with a PUG, nor do I think that constitutes brokenness or horrible design.

If you want easy with a PUG, play the other 99% of the game. Leave the TFs to people who actually want something close to a challenge.

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I never said it should be EASY with a PuG, it should be quite hard. But the LRSF is a whole other level of brutality. Look at the STF for instance. Quite hard with a PuG, but still doable.

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You know, I've completed the LRSF multiple times on the highest difficulty without a single nuke or Dominator.

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Then please explain how. I would love to know.

For all you TL;DR people...

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The LRSF is impossible for all but the most ardent powergamers, or teams with mind doms, or scores of nukes. Either reduce the level of the phalanx, spread them apart, or remove the chain aggro rule.

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That being said...

I must have run the LRSF around 20 times now...I have beaten it four times. This is not what is called good design.

Now, I know the typical arguments here. "Well it's supposed to be hard", "you need to pull them", "You need a mind dom", "bring more nukes". Well as far as I am concerned, all those arguments only underscore its poor design, and just plain unfair difficulty. Lets analyze all of these arguments closer.

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It's supposed to be hard.

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Well there is a difference between hard, and just plain unfair. Hamidon is hard. The Statesman TF is hard. Ghost Widow is hard. But all of the above examples have weaknesses that can be exploited by nearly any well balanced team. The weaknesses of the LRSF are so specific that there is no way a well balanced team can be expected to be able to exploit them. Hamidon is simple as long as you make sure all the present players know their roles and follow them. The STF has AV's that can be easily pulled apart, and as long as the tank is competent, Recluse himself can be brought down. Ghost Widow is simple as long as you stay out of melee range. There is no one strategy for the LRSF. The fact that nobody has figured out a good way to do it in nearly THREE YEARS underscores this. Now I know there are teams of ardent powergamers who can come together and run this quite easily. However, not everyone is a powergamer, not everyone wants to find the ideal team makeup every time, and not everyone wants to commit to such regularity. The same cannot be said for its counterpart the STF, which I have run almost always successfully, and always with pick up groups.

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"you need to pull them"

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Now, this would be a perfect weakness, if it were not for the proximity of the Phalanx to eachother, and the bizzare aggro rules governing them. For starters, putting the members of the Phalanx so close together makes it incredibly hard to pull one member off. But under any other circumstances, not impossible. However, the nail in the coffin is that the phalanx uses "chain aggro". Chain aggro basically means that whenever one member is aggroed, the others will all come sooner or later. They may all come at once, or they may come over time, but eventually the entire Phalanx will be attacking you. This makes a pulling strategy pretty much impossible.

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"You need more nukes"

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One of the few times I have seen the LRSF beaten is when every single member of the team dropped all three kinds of nukes at once. The phalanx went down in about 45 seconds. It was absolutely glorious. But an entire teams worth of nukes should not be needed. While you could make the argument that it would be a VERY WISE IDEA to have at least A FEW nukes, but making it nearly mandatory for the entire team to have them is ludicrous. Warburg nukes are by their very nature OPTIONAL. And if something that is optional becomes REQUIRED, then its optional nature is no longer present. To further underscore this point, I have seen a run where four bio nukes and six chem nukes were dropped, and we still didnt manage to take down a single phalanx member.

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"You need a mind dom"

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One of the only surefire ways to beat the LRSF is to have a mind dominator put the entire freedom phalanx to sleep, and then pull one member away, thus negating the chain aggro rule, and allowing the sf to be completed with ease. But requiring one specific archetype and power combo is incredibly bad design. it assumes the team has access to something it does not. The simple and obvious fact is that not every team has access to a mind dominator. The fact that dominators are the least played archetype in the game next to kheldians only underscores this.

So, as we can see, the LRSF is damn near impossible. Any challenge should not lock out all but the most powerful and experienced players. The ideal challenge should be beatable by everyone. Granted, they might have to try quite a few times, but in the end, it should be possible to beat.

So what can we do about this? Well the following three suggestions may help.

1. REMOVE THE CHAIN AGGRO RULES.

If the chain aggro rules were removed, then it would still be hard to pull the phalanx apart, but not impossible. I expect that even the best pull would still get at least two of the phalanx, but at least it would not result on the rest of the phalanx bearing down on the team.

2. SPREAD THE PHALANX OUT.

Lets look at the STF for an example. In it, you must fight all four of the patrons. At first, it looks like they are close enough that you have no choice but to fight them all at once. However, they are actually placed JUST SO, that they can be easily pulled apart. This is of course, counteracted by them being level 54, which is something touched on in suggestion 3. Spreading the Phalanx out would allow for far easier pulling.

3. REDUCE THE LEVEL OF THE PHALANX.

As of right now, the phalanx is level 53. Now, the difference between a 53 and a 52 is not huge, but big enough to be noticeable. For example, consider the fourth mission of the LRSF. In it, you must fight five of the Vindicators at the same time. However, every time I have run the LRSF, everyone charges in, and manages to take them all out on the first go. It is worth noting that when the LRSF was first introduced, the Vindicators were level 53, and many teams could not get past them. Now that their levels have been reduced, most teams have hardly any problems.

So, there is my little schpeal. Hopefully some of the devs will take notice and make a few changes. I have great faith in this dev team, and hope that they will do at least something.

Oh, and one more thing? 25 merits? Hamidon takes an hour too, and gives 40 merits. For something that is far harder then hamidon, I expect a better reward.