Consolidated list of TF/SF betterment suggestions

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Lady Grey Task Force suggestion:

Put a *warning sign* if you click the base portal. If you enter your base, you auto-drop the TF, which naturally can be a little frustrating when you're about two hours in and now get to set out the rest of the thing because you didn't think about that factor before you did. Clicking the "Drop Task Force" button by accident gets you a "Do you *really* want to drop this Task Force? You will not be able to rejoin" message, and it's a LOT less likely to be done accidentally than clicking the base portal in the RWZ to go craft some enhancements to empty out your salvage and recipes and realize you just kicked yourself out of the TF.

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Yes please!

I want a Carnie Task Force more than anything in the City of Universe.

Second would be a Malta Task Force because the history and backstory of the Malta Group is just begging to have a Task Force.

POS:
* Change defeat all missions to Defeat boss room.
* Place all mish doors in either Perez, Atlas, or Steel.
* Remove having to go to Azuria and Paula Dempsey.
* Lessen CoT involvement.

SYN: I got no complaints.
Sister Psyche: No complaints.

CIT:
* Remove the courier trip to Fareed Abdullah.
* Change Defeat all missions to Defeat Boss Room.

MANT: No complaints

NUMINA:
* Cut the Wild Goose Chase where you're powering the Shard of Kalak in half. Particularly remove "Defeat 20 Vahzilok in Faultline" and "Defeat 20 Sky Raiders in Terra Volta" as well as several others.

Aside from that keep all current TFs as they are, because if people are still getting the badges then the TFs shouldn't change dramatically from what they were when they started.

However, what we need now is a new set of TFs on top of the current ones, which are accessible from these Surviving Eight individuals, but that are wholly new and designed with lessons learned after several years of playtesting. So people can do the current TFs if they still want to, or they can click on Positron and choose to help him with a different TF that grants a different badge (perhaps leading to a different accolade) which features different bad guys and a whole new plotline. These new TFs would be slightly shorter, and more fun.

ok, here is what I am madly wanting in a TF, The Shard TF's would ROCK if they were in a Co-Op zone like Cimerora. I think it would be nice to have Fire Base Zulu be Co-Op for a few reasons, 1. the TF's, 2. I think it may generate more interest to play in the zone, 3. Villians should be able to earn the evil looking eyeball weapons too. . . . I can go on with like 50 more reasons, but I think you get the point I'm making here.

Im in support of allowing soloing missions. I realize that TF/SF are geared to team play, but so much is gained from their completion that they should be able to be completed by people who cant dedicate so many hours AT ONE TIME. I love the Ouros flashback methods that i can log off then come back, so as a method of "unlocking" this option, it could be a condition of after getting ALL ouros badges or something which then adds TF/SF to the list of missions

If this recommendation sounds like a rant, its probably because it is. The Sting of the Manticore and Executioner Contract drops account for MORE THEN HALF of my tf/sf drops. Between the two sets there are FOUR recipes that drop for a 50 who completes one. I mostly play redside, and I almost never see anyone use a sniper attack, and these recipes always sell to a vendor for more then they do at the market. PLEASE at least two of them out of the TF pool and put them into the critter drop pool..

I've been on COH for a little over three months, but here are my suggestions.
Existing TF/SF

General:
The problem with many of the TFs, especially the orignal 6 and the shard TFs, is that we have multiple repetitive missions where one would do.

Take Citadel for example.
We have 2 kill alls, followed by a kill boss room, followed by fetch, followed by 2 more kill boss rooms, followed by a hunt, followed by 3 kill alls followed by the AV.

Ideally, you could shorten the TF by just having one kill all before the AV because storyline wise you are doing the same thing in each of them, so its just padding to have more than one.

Or Doc Quarterfield: a hunt then rescue, 3 more hunts, kill boss, a hunt, kill boss, 3 kill alls, 2 kill targets, kill all, kill target, kill all, kill boss, kill all, 3 kill bosses and a kill all.

Lazy! Even the souvenir reads like a check list. You could probably chop this TF in half or even a third, and still tell the same exact story.

Even beyond that, the old TFs suffer from repeating objective syndrome, there's no reason why TFs should be almost nothing but kill, kill, kill.

Specific:

Positron:
Can be done in 5 missions. One each for COT, Clockwork and Vahzilok where you uncover their plans for the dam, at which point there's a mission which all three plans come together(a rescue) and the mission at the dam substation.

Synapse:
A pretty decent TF. Still where we have 3 kill alls in the substations, we only have one. Instead of checking 3 warehouses at the end, we only have the final warehouse, and move Babbage ambush to save Fema Worker one, as sort of a "warning" from the clockwork king not come near.

Sister Psyche:
For a task force that concerns the ZIG, there's a distinct lack of the Zig. Have the sonic devices be in a sewer beneath Brickstown and the final mission be in the Zig itself(Clamor tries to break the convicts out by force). While Brickstown is a level 30 zone and the TF is 20-25, you could get around that by using a train.

Citdal: Explained above, but essentially there should be one factory to shut down at the end. Any more is just padding. Switching up the mission objectives and tile sets can't hurt.

Moonfire: Compared to Hess, this is an inferior TF. Could be condensed, but not as bad as citadel.

Katie: Unlike every other TF/SF with an AV, this one has its at the start. While its a great AV fight, once its done, TF is a cakewalk and done in ten minutes. Adding an AV at the very end couldn't hurt. Like when you get Katy's soul to lead her out, suddenly Jack in Irons ambushes you at the entrance.

Numia: Some people don't like the hunt portion, I do but lessening the number can't hurt.

All Shards: All need to be condensed and take place in the shard itself.

Sarah Moore:
The 4 seals can be in one mission.

Doc Quarterfield: Explained above, but this thing is pure laziness(nobody who wasn't wouldn't have though this was a good idea.) Condense or delete entirely and re-do.

Augustine: No need to be running 8 million place. One monument in each zone could do.

Faathim: Get seven keys in own mission, then use said keys in seven different spots. Zzzzz.... At least this one has AVs sprinkled about. Probably would need to re-do completely since this has to do with Shard Lore directly.

Terra Volta Re-specs: Waiting around for thirty minutes is extremely boring. Cut the time down to 15 minutes max.

Silver Mantis SF: Should not be found on SG computer. Make her an actual contact in a zone.

Lord Recluse SF: First mission is too chaotic for its own good, could stand to be streamline a little, fewer objective. Final Mission should have Phalanx spread out so we don't have to face 8 at once without a Dom.

New Strike Force ideas

The villain 10-15 SF could and probably should star a Cap Au Diablo faction, like the Goldbrickers or Luddites, luddites especially, since there is very little done with them.

The 30-35 SF could be one of two things, First we fight a hero faction, probably a new one, with a hero at the end. Or we have a Tsoo or Family SF, Tsoo especially since we don't fight Tub Ci ever but should.

The 40-45 shoudl either be Malta/KOA or Carnies. If KOA is going to get in a SF, their caltrops should be delt with.

Fix the 'fixed' LGTF by allowing it to level scale just like the ITF.

Original post and discussions here.

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Katie: Unlike every other TF/SF with an AV, this one has its at the start. While its a great AV fight, once its done, TF is a cakewalk and done in ten minutes. Adding an AV at the very end couldn't hurt. Like when you get Katy's soul to lead her out, suddenly Jack in Irons ambushes you at the entrance.

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i'm not sure how this would fit into the current story behind the KHTF, but man, this would be awesome!

<ul type="square"> TF/SF Clear All Suggestions[*]A: Link Area Spawns - Acheive aggro or defeat one spawns triggers an alert that sends every mob withen a certian are to that spot.[*]B: Enemy Morale -Unique Boss/Objects- fairly empty maps with small scattered spawns. One spawn containing the Unique Boss acts as the trigger unless Object related. Object related starts the ambushes when room containing one is entered. Defeating the boss cause em to disapear and return in an ambush after 10 seconds. As long as the faction has morale, the boss will contiously respawn on defeat with an ambush. Morale is depleted as enemy faction is defeated or objects of emportance are destroyed.

Once Morale is empty, enemy no longer 're'spawns and remaining run away.
[*]C: Enemy Morale -Battling Factions- Simular to B however two or more factions actively fight against each other only attacking player when interfeared with or closer then the enemy. Also, the fighting factions regain morale by gaining defeats. There are no objects. (unless there are supporting mobs that are helping you. Then they would stick around until certian objects are destroyed. )

Once more, once morale is empty, the remaining run away for that faction.
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Important to note: When I say boss is defeated and it returns. I'm talking the named/unique boss alone. The spawn it came in doesn't matter. You defeat that boss, it will return with more regardless of the condition of the spawn it came in. That means if you target only it, you could end up getting overwhelmed by a rapidly growing mob.

[ QUOTE ][*]C: Enemy Morale -Battling Factions- Simular to B however two or more factions actively fight against each other only attacking player when interfeared with or closer then the enemy. Also, the fighting factions regain morale by gaining defeats. There are no objects. (unless there are supporting mobs that are helping you. Then they would stick around until certian objects are destroyed. )

Once more, once morale is empty, the remaining run away for that faction.
[/LIST]
Important to note: When I say boss is defeated and it returns. I'm talking the named/unique boss alone. The spawn it came in doesn't matter. You defeat that boss, it will return with more regardless of the condition of the spawn it came in. That means if you target only it, you could end up getting overwhelmed by a rapidly growing mob.

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Actually based on this, how about a TF that can branch into different missions depending on the result of this battle?

Personally: I'd say Villains side for this fora few reasons:
<ul type="square">
1. Giving red-side more unique stuff.
2. Picking an enemy faction to ally with and/or possibly backstab.
3. It'd be kind of hard to be a hero and assist the villains that the other hero group (wyvern, legacy, longbow, etc) is battling.[/list]
And if that's too tricky, how about during the TF a second contact is introduced and offered as a optional arc with ending?

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Fix the 'fixed' LGTF by allowing it to level scale just like the ITF.

Original post and discussions here.

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This would be a really good change.

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1. An in depth description given before forming the TF that describes what enemies you will be facing, what levels you will be fighting, a recommendation for the team make up, and an approximate time range in which you can expect to finish it.

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I can't say too much about this other than I think the a recommendation for the team make-up is a little alienated and possibly excluding. All the villian ones will have a little disclaimer "Pick up a stalker only if you are short one person." But over all the code themselves is fine...yes every once and awhile you get the mob that is two levels too low, but that aside.

The meat of my comment has to do with an actual story and mission overhaul. The developers have seem to hit a Task/Strikeforce stride after the LRSF even it had unique content that you just couldn't find anywhere else. Also, Villian's Strikeforces tend to be a bit more unique. CAD's Strikeforce is infinitely more unique than Positron's. Taking the creative power behind LG(S/T)F, STF, and I(S/F)F revamping the rather grinding feel of some of the older Taskforces in Heroes could really improve their received attention by players.

Take Positron's Taskforce (I just did it yesterday so it is freshish) it plays out just like any other arc during that level range except you have hot threesome going on and it takes three hours. The final mission should be at least near a damn or water. Faultline is too high, but something like The Hollows would be a bit more appropriate than Perez Park. Or make a unique map for "the dam" in question making the three hours of going through normal missions a great unique ending

The next side of this is some of the missions just need to be changed because the world has changed. I forget the taskforce right now, but it has you go on a Vahzilok hunt in Faultline. Before they redid it this was a relatively easy task as Vahzilok were everywhere now you can only find small groupings of them and only at night creating a rather aggravated moment in the team.

I understand an overhaul on this scale would cost a mediocre fortune, but it is one that I think people would enjoy. I haven't met someone yet who has truly despised the newer task/strikeforces except for maybe when Romulus and Co. doesn't go down.

*drops 2 cents in the take a penny case*

TF's and SF's are all so much the same. Aside from the number missions heroes have to villains. They're the same. Do a few missions, locate an item, defeat this Elite Boss, defeat the main Hero/AV, talk to this contact so on and so forth. And it's always 4 to 8 per team.

Why can there be 2 teams of 8, Or 3? I'm suggesting TF, SF, or a Trial in which there are mulitple teams with different mission objectives relating to the overall task. Separate missions across two to three teams, with a timer to keep the teams going. Team 1 does missions A1 and A2, Team 2 does missions B1 and B2, etc. Give each team an hour to hour-and-a-half to complete their tasks and then they all meet in one final mission against something truely massive.

For a trial, do it like the Catherdral of Pain. One massive map, like a labyrinth. Teams of 8 split up, defeat sub-bosses, find a key, regroup, and take on a really big AV. Timed of course, time runs out you fail. Obviously you could just bring the CoP Trial back. But why not make something new?, not involving SG's, base raids, and Items of Power.

The current TF's and SF's are stale. They follow that same old formula. All of the TF's and SF's (outside of the STF/LRSF and MoSTF/MoLRSF) aren't difficult anymore, they don't really provide a challenge.

I would like to see hero side TFs be re-tooled and made more player friendly and considerate.

The first change is get rid of inter-zone travel, inter zone travel seldom adds to the interest of the thread.

Get rid of hunts, always are below the players' level, so they are a pure waste of time, and has no challenge either.

Auto Sk players to the group's highest player level, so all can contribute in a more even level, and we don't have trully weak links either. Also it does not force to have as many high levels as low levels for pairing purposes.

As I said, make TFs and SFs more player friendly

Stormy

Dealing with Merits, there is a set amount of merits that are awarded, however with the new difficulty level settings I believe a scaling process needs to be added.

For instances an ITF is worth 20 Merits at +0/+0, granted I think you shouldn't reduce the number of merits if it's at -1/+0, however anything above the normal standards should give additional merits.

ITF:
-1/+0 = 20
+0/+0 = 20
+1/+0 = 22
+2/+0 = 24
+3/+0 = 26
+4/+0 = 28

These are all hypothetical numbers, since I wouldn't be the deciding factor in how many more merits to give. That being said, there would another incentive to do a SF/TF at a harder difficulty setting.

Giggles...


TFs/SFs, how to make them more fun... uhmmm

I would start with making missions more sensible, that is if the mission is "get information", it should be a glowie click, not a kill all. If you are supposed to defeat boss and guards; it should only require to defeat the boss and the mobs spawned with the boss, and not the entire pseudo room the boss happened to be. I mean pseudo room, because now all too often, that room has multiple levels, large closets, and what not, so at the end you feel you are in a Verizon situation, where you defeat boss, guards and then forced to defeat family and friends as well.

Kill all missions, need to be all together eliminated or at least made really exceptional in its use; they need to really make sense, such as a bunch of infected people are in a warehouse, take them all down before the plague spreads out... As oppose go to another zone from the one you are in, and defeat all the mobs in a building, for the heck of it.

Hunts need to be deleted, they really serve no purpose besides pointless inter-zone travel, and killing grey mobs that have no reward for their defeat, sheer waste of time; kinda insulting in my opinion.

I understand that Task Force, has to be group, after all it is kinda arrogant to consider oneself a force of one. But there should be adventures which yields merits, task force like for players who like to solo, no need to make excuses for one's liking to solo from time to time; after all I tought grouping was optional.

We need more level 50 TFs/SFs, use other baddies besides malta, freaks, nemesis, longbow and Rikti. Design these challenges to be one to two hours long, and do not punish good teaming, leadership, practices by awarding low merits for it.

Which reminds me, I feel TFs/SFs would be much more fun, if intelligent play is rewarded as opposed to punished, the time metric to award merits is simply not appropriate. Play smart do it quicker, get punished, play stupid take forever be rewarded; surely we can do better than this!

I do think, that having some of the contacts actually participating in the TF with you, would be very cool, love the idea of a previous poster.

Contacting contacts during a TF/SF, if you already in the past have gained their confidence to get their number, let the phone work during the TF/SF, after all its not like we are strangers anymore.

Hugs

Stormy

Hi:

I been as of lately designing AE missions and truly enjoying the tools that come with it.

In many of the old TFs, I find that the missions, while at different zones, utilizes the exact same maps over and over. For instance, searching for the boss in room if a council mission, all you have to do is ignore the entire map till you find the pool room. Glowies are predictably in the last floor back room, so I just ignore everything while looking for elevators, and since we always use the same map, I already know where the elevators are at.

I believe if the TF would use the AE mission choice of random maps, it would actually help make the TF feel a little different from pass to pass. By allowing the boss to be in a random location, not always far back, it also helps with the enjoyment of the mission, same with glowies.

Not sure if the entrance to the mission can truly be made random, both in zone and where in zone. It would be nice, if that could be made random, as opposed to developer fixed with little variation at all. For instance when doing Citadel, it seems there are 3 mission order and location templates. You soon find that one template has mercifully missions near the hospital at IP, the others are travel abusive such either left or right of TV. Would be nice, if these locations could be made random.

Portal missions, it strikes me as stupid, that you do a mission in one portal, and for the next you have to go to the next building and use that building's left portal. I would think a portal would have some kind of dial-up tuner and could take you anywhere...

Well, these are some suggestions in trying to make TFs less obviously repetitive

Hugs

Stormy

Suggestion 1: Shorten any TF that's over 3 hours in length.

Ideally most TFs should shoot for a 1.5-3 hour window to make them friendly to a wider range of gamers who would otherwise not get to experience them (I'm not exactly casual, and I've still only done about 5-8 TFs/SFs in the entire time I've spent with CoH; because they're a time investment I can't afford).

The ITF 'feels' about the right length for a TF/SF, it feels like time well spent rather then time that could be better spent doing something else; it's hard without being frustrating (most of the time); and even if you fail it doesn't feel like a total waste.


Suggestion 2: Pity Merits.

Grant a small amount (3-8 or so, depending on the difficulty (NOT length)) of "pity merits" once per month, to make people less likely to simply farm free merits) for quitting or failing a TF. This makes failing a TF sting a bit less, and will encourage people to try them rather then looking for optimal builds / team combos; and makes casual players more likely to give the TFs a try rather then avoiding them in favor of more stable forms of team play.

The biggest flaw i find in tf's is the defeat the boss missions, mostly because it becomes a everybody get in, wait at the door, tp'er goes to the end room, tp's everyone, kill, repeat. which is fine imo if you've done the tf several times and aren't trying to level anything, but really becomes boring and not terribly fun the third or fourth tf you do.

So what if we had "the base has been alerted to your presence missions?" instead. Example: team goes in mish door, somehow or another theyre told that the base/group they've gone in there to defeat has been alerted of their presence, and *most* of the mobs on that map, rush the door? not too many bosses and not too much of a difficult matter to deal with, mind you, we dont want a "garunteed team wipe mission." and cutscenes, showing the boss/av/eb/whatever shouting attack! or "Get those pathetic heroes!" or something like that would play in nicely

In fact, i might just start a new thread about this and other new types of missions..... but i think tf's would be a great way to start, test, and ultimately, include them in the regular game

I will say a lot of the TFs need to be changed. They are horrid. In my 2 years here I have one toon with the task force commander accolade. The sole reason is due to how painful the TFs are to play. It's like work. The worse has to be Synapse.

DEVS, please, make some changes! Synapse is repetition defined! Change it up! Lots of running around and the same thing over and over. I realize these were done long ago and designed to take a lot of time so players were doing something and didn't complain about running out of things to do but please....there's lots....change them so we could actually enjoy them! The Shadow Shard ones hurt too....so much running around.....ugh...pain!

Finally, I am all for longer TFs/SFs if they are interesting and don't involve running all over for no reason. I think the game is at a point now where these things could be 'updated' after GR. After Mission Architect was released it seems altering a few missions in a TF/SF wouldn't be too tough

Hi:

I believe red side needs more SFs with greater merit values than the current ones, in fact they need SFs that are comparable to those available to heroes such as Positron, Synapse, Syster, Citadel, Manticore and Numina. Lately I have been experiencing difficulties forming groups to do SFs (in Champions), and after spending hours begging for players to join, we do the SF and get 16 merits if lucky; that is a great disappointment. In fact this is a prime reason during GR that I intend to move my villains to blue side.

Perhaps, more coop zones can be made or existing zones such as FBZ turned into a coop zone, I would suspect turning FBZ into a coop zone not very difficult, but the TFs there would have to be re-tooled since they tend to send players in to paragon city for the unavoidable pointless travel across zones, perhaps these missions could be changed to have a door entrance within FBZ instead, which would sadly reduce the amount of pointless travel :<)

Hugs

Sue