Discussion: Changes to Task/Strike Force Missions
By
Acid_Reign,
Posted on: 2008-02-14 15:00 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
Huh, a pro-farming change? "Pad once, benefit twenty times!"
Also, /scorn at people who can't beat missions set for more people than are in the team with high-level IO's and rep set to Heroic. Sure, it's annoying to not be able to run on Rugged or Invincible or whatever, but in most cases you should still be entirely capable of completing with little extra effort and not much danger. It's not like the AV's spawn as harder for larger teams (though such a change would not surprise me).
I was hoping the change was to allow smaller groups to start TF's. I can generally get three people interested, but not 4-8. I'm all for teaming etc., but I wish the game allowed for more options.
In general I think the Task Forces should be reworked to allow more players to be able to participate in the content. The time that needs to be invested in the Task Force is prohibitive enough for a lot of people, much less having a team number requirement.
Just my 2 influence on Task Forces.
[ QUOTE ]
We feel that the group size requirements are certainly not onerous
[/ QUOTE ]
Just my 2 inf; I think I understand after reading through 30 pages of this thing what you were trying to accomplish. I think there is an issue that needs addressing here.
But this isn't the right fix.
I had hoped to eventually run the Shard TFs, but with this in place their already ludicrous requirements become pure insanity. Nobody will run these outside of groups of friends, or tight-knit SGs that are essentially friends.
Heroes have 16 task forces available, and two of those plus a Trial can be completed fairly quickly. Villains have 6, with 2 of those late game and one really hard to start. One of the villain side SF/Trials can be done easily, so "obviously" this needs a fix. A fix that makes several other TFs essentially unplayable.
Devs please try harder. This is not the right fix for this problem. Rollback please.
I don't like this change. Others have made these points before, so I'm just going to offer a quick list of problems I see with it.
1) People quit Task Forces. Currently, it's not a big deal, unless so many quit that the remaining team can't handle an AV. With this change, it will be a serious burden to many non-optimized teams. Uber and farming builds will be affected less, of course.
2) Casual groups often run TFs over an extended period due to scheduling difficulties. During this time, it may only be possible for a small subset to get together at any given time. Under the previous build, they could still accomplish something. Each subteam could run a few missions, then everyone would get back together on the weekend to tackle the big missions/finale. This change will make that much more difficult for casual players, further turning them off of TFs.
3) As a corollary to #2, this will result in characters being tied up in TFs longer. Sure, some builds will shrug off the extra load when not everyone is online, but many casual groups will need the full team to finish even the non-AV missions without massive frustration. (Remember, not everyone has IOs. The invention system is optional, and should never be required for anything.) Since you can't do much else with a character that's on a TF, that's going to leave casual players with characters hanging in Limbo for longer periods of time. That's a frustrating situation, especially for people who don't have a lot of alts.
To summarize: I don't expect this change to have a significant negative impact on RMT farmers, but I do think it will drive casual players still further away from TFs. Is it really desirable to make a major chunk of content even less user-friendly?
I think this change was ill-conceived, and that it should have been announced well in advance, even before it was put on the Training Room. The people on whom it has the greatest impact are precisely the people who wouldn't be on the test server to see it, anyway.
The Way of the Corruptor (Arc ID 49834): Hey villains! Do something for yourself for a change--like twisting the elements to your will. All that's standing in your way are a few secret societies...and Champions of the four elements.
[ QUOTE ]
...
4 Hero TF with 3-4
4 Villan SF with 4
11 Hero TF with 6 or more (6 with 8)
2 Villan SF with 6 or more (2 with 8)
[/ QUOTE ]
LOL 
This is like the 5th person to post the numbers for Lighthouse. Apparently the devs documentation isn't so good.
But then again that's obvious, with the reoccurring missing patch notes. 
If you crank up the difficulty of the Ice Mistral SF so that the enemies are higher than level 39 or 40, then either solo or in a Damage+Buff/Heal duo, villains can now totally go to town with farming the highest tier of salvage/recipes and huge masses of infamy.
All the enemies are arcane, and the AV is a pale shadow of his former self so long as you bring at least 1 shivan or a nuke. Of course, why bother finishing all the missions when you can just re-run the same one over and over with a spawn size of 4 
The Widow's Dark Hand - leader of Faux Pas
Champion Server
Tee Hee!
[ QUOTE ]
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
[/ QUOTE ]
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. I'm sorry, did that sound like World of Warcraft terminology? Your game's main advantage and draw -- that it was very casual friendly -- has been going out the window ever since you introduced inventions. This is only accelerating that trend.
Not to mention the problems you have with population imbalance. If you divide the number of players CoH has by the number of servers, and balance that for level spread it looks pretty easy to find a TF/SF team.
Until you realize there are way more heroes than villains. Given the activity of the market, probably at least 1.5 times to 2 times as many heroes (WoW's historic ratio before Burning Crusade) as villains. Then you factor in that population across servers isn't even and you'll discover that it might be that if you are on a low population villain server, you're fighting a serious uphill battle for those "easy 4-man" TFs. They're already effectively as hard to get a group together for as 6 to 8-man hero TFs since you've got (about) 2/3rds to half the population, not even factoring in the server population disparities.
[ QUOTE ]
and that the need for grouping is a good dynamic in a social environment like City of Heroes.
[/ QUOTE ]
Why not just nerf everyone to the point grouping is required, ala EQ, EQ2, DAoC, AC2, SWG, and many others? That certainly seemed to be the direction Statesman wanted to go -- enforced grouping. Of the big enforced grouping games above I've played one -- DAoC and only for a short time. If you want to enforce grouping that's cool, it sends me a signal clear as day that this ain't the game for me.
Warcraft, particularly with Burning Crusade, has done a great job setting up a solo-friendly but grouping-encouraged game. You can solo all the way to the max level by yourself. If you want good equipment, you're probably going to have to group up to do a instance. And yes the instances are 5-man and you need 5 to complete it, the spawns are static and fixed. On the bright side, if someone quits, you can invite someone new to the instance. And they just made it easier to teleport that person right into the instance where you are.
What you should be doing is rewarding grouping and rewarding good (group) play. A change to the TFs that was this "size (-1)" minimum spawn size plus the option to select better loot if you run with enough difficulty settings would be much better for encouraging grouping. Requiring "no enhancements/no travel powers" is going to kill a solo farmer, or even a parallel ghosting run like my group does. However, grouped up we can put together a group that'll operate as if we were pretty close to normal: 1 brute, 1 thermal/sonic corr or ff mm, 1 kin corr. Folks (other than the kin) have blue due to Speed Boost, the brute has decent shields on them even without enhancement slots, and we have a spot free that can go to any class (though another kin would be a sweet addition, as would a dark corr/mm or traps mm or rad corr for the debuffing action).
I'm very happy to play with my group of friends. I even like adding an occasional PUG'er to us. I'd frankly much rather do a TF for "real" than ghost five simultaneously. But your rewards system doesn't give me any incentive to do that. If I can do it solo and we can get more done in less time, then I'm more likely to get a good reward since it is all up to the PRNG what I get. The more rewards from the PRNG I get, the better chance one of them is the about 6 to 10 good recipes out of a set of 75-some drops.
And with this change, I won't be PUG'in with non-guildies if I don't have to for a TF ever again. Why put the TF at risk with a PUG'er who might quit in the middle? I might group with my friends to do TF/SFs, but I already do that. This hasn't added any incentive for me to group with them more (we're pretty much always grouped if we're on and playing), only removed any incentive I had to ever group with anyone else.
[ QUOTE ]
We want to continue to offer good rewards based on a group accomplishment through such missions and maintaining that requirement is the reason for this change.
[/ QUOTE ]
Do you really think the SO rewards out of TFs are "good rewards"? A lot of my characters don't even ever slot SOs anymore -- the expiring is just too much hassal, and/or IOs are strictly better (35+), and/or I'm slotting set IOs for set bonuses, or just for the benefit to multiple aspects of a power.
Do you really think stuff like "Trap of the Hunter: Acc/Immob/Rech" is a good reward? How about "Malaise's Illusions: Chance for Psi Damage" -- and while you're answering that remind me exactly how many sets percentage wise can slot that?
How about offering actual good rewards, like the choice of set type? Or at least dropping a set that I could possibly slot as my AT -- no more of this Confuses dropping for my brute. I'll still trade on the market. If I get a Mako's Bite, but I'm slotting Crushing Impact so up on the market it goes. Or I get my 6th Mako's Bite and don't need it even though I'm slotting it.
[ 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 ]
What plans can you assure the players that you have in-place to prevent this in the future?
[ QUOTE ]
One of the many aims of this most recent update was to address exploitive behavior that could be used for influence/infamy farming.
[/ QUOTE ]
It seems to me you've only "addressed" recipe farming and made the inf farming problem worse -- now there are ready spawned missions for inf famers to grind day in and day out. While farming the Cap SF at 20 is going to be hard on most brutes, doing the Ice Minstral SF at 40 gives you enough of your powers that farming a 4-man spawn is so easy you'll be using the diff slider to boost that to a 5-man spawn.
Drops high level (expensive) magic salvage, check. If you're 50, drops inf as a even-level kill for you, check. Doesn't drop purple recipes, but can drop some of the similarly-expensive "ends-at-40" set recipes: Touch of Death and Decimation spring rapidly to mind.
Not to mention with less players farming TF/SFs, the recipes going into the market are going down. Prices are going up, which means increased incentive to RMT for inf to afford it.
[ QUOTE ]
This is especially relevant when considering recent problems with unwanted real money trade (RMT) solicitations in game.
[/ QUOTE ]
Oddly I didn't see any RMT solicitations until such time as inventions and the market were introduced. Of course I can't prove cause and effect -- it could be that the RMT tells caused the market to spring into being, fully formed from Statesman's head.
I'm sure there was RMT before the market -- SOs could be expensive, and prestige was very costly, but the problem was tiny until your introduction of IOs/the market.
[ QUOTE ]
Also included in the most recent update is the change to make it harder for RMT spammers to use the in game mail system for such advertisements. We will continue to make other changes as necessary to address the issue.
[/ QUOTE ]
Like removing the market? Because now that you've created an incentive, you aren't going to ever stop RMT. Not only do you as a company have a relatively small incentive to control it (RMT'ers, and especially when you ban their accounts means more new retail boxes sold to create new (paying) accounts for you). No, your incentive to control it extends only as far as making sure you look like you're doing enough to have fewer real players leave the game than RMT accounts get registered.
Very disappointed in how poorly this change was thought out and implemented,
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.
- It was always intended for TFs to become 'impossible' if too many people quit (that's WHY you can't add more people: it's part of the challenge).
- There have always been outlier builds that can accomplish the theoretically impossible, but those are supposed to be outliers, not the norm.
- The Dev overvalued the rewards that TFs give. The rewards needed to be bigger to make them attractive. Shivans would be an example of a reward that would be appropriate for a TF, IMHO.
It would not suprise me to see a major revamp of the TF concept upcoming this year, and to find that these changes are part of that.
But the game was overpowered vs the critters, and the TFs became easy/standard content. Now people expect it.
I think the change as it stands is excellent, but here's what I suggest going forward:
1) Redo the current TFs, and make them expressly team content for PUGs: a little shorter, a little more variety, same rewards. However, these TFs should always require more people to start than the minimum spawn size. For instancem, 8 to start, minimum spawn for 4. If you are forced to have 8 people to start a team, it's a little less likely to dwindle to 4 in 2 hours. And if it does, guess what: bad PUG, start over.
2) Add a new class of uber TFs that are intended for hardcore players: spawn for a minimum of 8 at +2 to the leader, 4-6 hours of content, larger rewards (primarily temp powers, to add replay value and to prevent gating content to more casual players). Set the expectations right from the beginning. More content is always good!
3) Concerned with farming? Put more missions on timers. Put more rewards on 'lockout' timers.
4) Have bot critter groups occaisionally run game content and then sell the proceeds on the market. This will increase supply in a natural way and help prevent market manipulation, while ensuring that people who avoid certain content with unique rewards still have a chance of getting some.
Just some thoughts.
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
[ QUOTE ]
[ 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 ]
Odd how it's always the nerfs that "accidentally" get left out of the patch notes but the things that the devs see as things the players will like always make it in every time.
[/ QUOTE ]
Agreed. I don't buy the "we forgot" nonsense for a second.
"...freedom isn't a commodity to compromise." -- Captain America, New Avengers #21
Guide to Base Teleporters
[ QUOTE ]
Agreed. I don't buy the "we forgot" nonsense for a second.
[/ QUOTE ]
So what possible benefit could the Devs have had from suppressing it on purpose, seeing as it was obviously going to come out anyway?
Forgetting, I can buy maybe.
Letting players fret for two days and deleting posts after being made aware of it is very bad form. It really makes it look like you guys were trying to pull a fast one.
"Sorry bucko, but CoH and CoV are the same game." -BackAlleyBrawler
"Silly villain, CoX is for Heroes!" -Saicho
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Agreed. I don't buy the "we forgot" nonsense for a second.
[/ QUOTE ]
So what possible benefit could the Devs have had from suppressing it on purpose, seeing as it was obviously going to come out anyway?
[/ QUOTE ]
Why did it take them two days to "find" the patch notes or to comment?
[ QUOTE ]
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.
[/ QUOTE ]
If that was the intent, well, that's an even worse idea than this change. I'll grant that the STF is supposed to be hardcore. But most players aren't hardcore, the game isn't targetted at hardcore, the appeals of the game aren't the challenge it gives to hardcore players.
I'm sincerely hoping that isn't the devs vision of what TFs should be. And I'd say that the evolution of TFs suggests otherwise. We've gone from the grind of the Freedom Phalanx TFs and the Shard TFs to 5 fast-paced missions for the Lady Grey TF. CoV SFs are all much faster, much less "go defeat everyone in that base. Now do the exact same thing in two more identical bases" grind.
Yes, task forces take a commitment, and for that it's not going to be for everyone, and they aren't meant to be soloable. But based on later TFs, I think they're looking at 2-3 hours tops for most TFs.
You're also confusing "challenge" with "time spent". There are people who are very good at the game, but have problem with long time commitments. And there are people who an play for long stretches of time, but are only average in the level of challenge they can deal with. The STF is challenging (the Master of STF very so), but it's not a particularly long TF. If your team is able to deal with the challenges presented, you can get it done in a couple hours. The long STF runs are from team wipes and shivan runs and inspiration runs trying to find a way to beat specific issues (mostly ghost widow).
My arcs are constantly shifting, just search for GadgetDon for the latest.
The world beware! I've started a blog
GadgetMania Under Attack: The Digg Lockout
When I think about villainside SFs, the change really doesn't have much of an effect.
For an average player, the Cap, Sky Raider, Leviathan and Ice Mistral SFs, and the Respec Trials; already require 4 people to complete successfully since they all feature final AVs that you don't have much chance defeating if there are only 3 villains or fewer on the team.
For the LRSF, spawn sizes really make no difference whatsoever to completion. I've never even heard of an LRSF failing due to losses against regular mobs - it's the Heroes that you really need to worry about.
Therefore the change only really hits the Cap SF solo runs with a 10 minute delay, and nerfs people trying to solo or duo any SF/Respec from beginning to end.
As many have said, the change actually encourages the behaviour it professes to deter. Under the new changes, powerful farming villains may give up PLing people who pad out their team size in normal farm missions and instead run SF/Respec missions solo with a spawn size of 4 or 8.
Put simply - the winners are:
Infamy farmers
Powerful characters who can take on huge mobs alone
RMTers
People who sell rare recipes for huge prices
and the losers are:
People who want xp (from big team farms)
People who like running SFs
Pool C/D recipes and those that want them
Now um...doesn't that seem like the reverse of the intention?
I'm not going into heroside consequences - I don't even want to think about the Shard or Posi TFs
The Widow's Dark Hand - leader of Faux Pas
Champion Server
Tee Hee!
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Agreed. I don't buy the "we forgot" nonsense for a second.
[/ QUOTE ]
So what possible benefit could the Devs have had from suppressing it on purpose, seeing as it was obviously going to come out anyway?
[/ QUOTE ]
It prevented discussion during testing. It prevented warning players that the huge change was coming. It prevented feedback, and finally prevented players from quickly farming faster TFs/SFs to grab as many recipes as possible before the change hit live.
In the past there have been deliberate and accidental changes that I can believe were forgotten about when patch notes were written. However, this isn't one of them. The long silence from a redname for the past two days speaks volumes.
The Widow's Dark Hand - leader of Faux Pas
Champion Server
Tee Hee!
[ QUOTE ]
So what possible benefit could the Devs have had from suppressing it on purpose, seeing as it was obviously going to come out anyway?
[/ QUOTE ]
I suppose by making the change a fait accompli, the devs might reduce the duration of complaints a bit. If it were revealed while on Test, people would naturally complain while on Test, then continue once it was pushed live. Here, they can only complain during the live phase. The devs could conceivably have kept the change hidden in the hope that the furor would die out quicker this way.
I think that's unlikely, since it would imply the devs are absolutely committed to sticking to their guns and pushing through a change they know will be unpopular. If that were the case, you'd expect them to mention it to Lighthouse in advance. :-/
I suspect this is just an unusually glaring mistake in the documentation process, but that doesn't mean it can't be deliberate. There's a reason the old saying that 'it's often easier to get forgiveness than it is to get permission' is a saying.
-D
Darkonne: Pinnacle's (unofficially) mighty Dark Miasma/Radiation Blast enthusiast!
Be sure to check out this mighty Arc:
#161865 - Aeon's Nemesis
That was indeed the stated intent at the time.
I that TFs have been getting shorter, and that that's a good thing. But there's a limit. They are only supposed to get So short, So easy. And where ever that line is drawn short of getting rid of TFs completely, there are people who will want them to want less commitment and time.
This is as good a place to draw the line as any.
There are many forms of challenge in a game, and 'time spent' is as legitimate a challenge for a goal as 'sufficiently minmaxed', 'can team', or 'is level x'.
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
I'm on the fence about the misplaced patch notes since there were threads about this change in 3-4 forums after the patch went live.
What took them 2 days to find the notes?
[ QUOTE ]
I suspect this is just an unusually glaring mistake in the documentation process, but that doesn't mean it can't be deliberate. There's a reason the old saying that 'it's often easier to get forgiveness than it is to get permission' is a saying.
-D
[/ QUOTE ]
I don't think its a consipracy.
But most definetly this is NOT unusual. After being promised that they would improve their patch notes process almost a year ago, after similar missing patch note fiascos, I'm surprised that this could happen again.
Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
Ice 'Em Aura LVL 50 Ice Tank
Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!
[ QUOTE ]
That was indeed the stated intent at the time.
I that TFs have been getting shorter, and that that's a good thing. But there's a limit. They are only supposed to get So short, So easy. And where ever that line is drawn short of getting rid of TFs completely, there are people who will want them to want less commitment and time.
This is as good a place to draw the line as any.
There are many forms of challenge in a game, and 'time spent' is as legitimate a challenge for a goal as 'sufficiently minmaxed', 'can team', or 'is level x'.
[/ QUOTE ]
Except they threw that out of whack with the stf.
The stf can be completed in less time than the posi tf.
That right there says right now the way tfs are viewed by the dev team is basically borked. I don't think tfs are hardcore at all.
Just some being ridiculously and unnecssarily tedious.
And I'm sorry but tediousness for tediousnes sake is NOT challange as far as I'm concerned.
Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
Ice 'Em Aura LVL 50 Ice Tank
Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
So what possible benefit could the Devs have had from suppressing it on purpose, seeing as it was obviously going to come out anyway?
[/ QUOTE ]
I suppose by making the change a fait accompli, the devs might reduce the duration of complaints a bit. If it were revealed while on Test, people would naturally complain while on Test, then continue once it was pushed live. Here, they can only complain during the live phase. The devs could conceivably have kept the change hidden in the hope that the furor would die out quicker this way.
I think that's unlikely, since it would imply the devs are absolutely committed to sticking to their guns and pushing through a change they know will be unpopular. If that were the case, you'd expect them to mention it to Lighthouse in advance. :-/
I suspect this is just an unusually glaring mistake in the documentation process, but that doesn't mean it can't be deliberate. There's a reason the old saying that 'it's often easier to get forgiveness than it is to get permission' is a saying.
-D
[/ QUOTE ]
I find the mistake claim to be a little weak in this case for one reason: They already had 2 missing patch notes (the Rikti portals and the Ouroboros Welcome to Vanguard changes).
When they added those in, no one thought "Hmm, is there anything else we changed that was left out?" I find that slightly hard to swallow.
I was almost sure that this was an unintended bug in the new patch based on that. Having it turn out to be completely intended was disappointing. I'm not going to get too worked up about it because, by and large, this current crew has been pretty good at communicating with the players.
If this was an honest mistake, so be it. I'm just not buying.
[ QUOTE ]
- It was always intended for TFs to become 'impossible' if too many people quit (that's WHY you can't add more people: it's part of the challenge).
[/ QUOTE ]
Time to reintend.
I don't want the "challenge" of a TF to be discovering that the Defender in the group is 12 years old and has to go to bed. I don't want the "challenge" of a TF to be the Tanker saying his wife is getting mad at him and has to quit. I don't want the "challenge" of a TF to be a malevolent mapserver or ISP, especially one that's not on my end.
I want the challenge of a TF to be the TF itself.
If they want TFs to be viewed in this manner by players, they need to redo every TF/SF made before I7 to look more like LRSF/STF/LGTF, in which there are between four to seven missions, with each presenting a unique challenge that actually requires a balanced team to overcome.
Not this "string of 15 paper missions followed by some lame AV" crap.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
So what possible benefit could the Devs have had from suppressing it on purpose, seeing as it was obviously going to come out anyway?
[/ QUOTE ]
I suppose by making the change a fait accompli, the devs might reduce the duration of complaints a bit. If it were revealed while on Test, people would naturally complain while on Test, then continue once it was pushed live. Here, they can only complain during the live phase. The devs could conceivably have kept the change hidden in the hope that the furor would die out quicker this way.
I think that's unlikely, since it would imply the devs are absolutely committed to sticking to their guns and pushing through a change they know will be unpopular. If that were the case, you'd expect them to mention it to Lighthouse in advance. :-/
I suspect this is just an unusually glaring mistake in the documentation process, but that doesn't mean it can't be deliberate. There's a reason the old saying that 'it's often easier to get forgiveness than it is to get permission' is a saying.
-D
[/ QUOTE ]
I find the mistake claim to be a little weak in this case for one reason: They already had 2 missing patch notes (the Rikti portals and the Ouroboros Welcome to Vanguard changes).
When they added those in, no one thought "Hmm, is there anything else we changed that was left out?" I find that slightly hard to swallow.
I was almost sure that this was an unintended bug in the new patch based on that. Having it turn out to be completely intended was disappointing. I'm not going to get too worked up about it because, by and large, this current crew has been pretty good at communicating with the players.
If this was an honest mistake, so be it. I'm just not buying.
[/ QUOTE ]
I really do think it was a mistake, since what took place kinda showed that Lighthouse might not have been aware at first.
With that said, for the [censored] 100th time, they need to fix their damned patch notes system.
Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
Ice 'Em Aura LVL 50 Ice Tank
Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
- It was always intended for TFs to become 'impossible' if too many people quit (that's WHY you can't add more people: it's part of the challenge).
[/ QUOTE ]
Time to reintend.
I don't want the "challenge" of a TF to be discovering that the Defender in the group is 12 years old and has to go to bed. I don't want the "challenge" of a TF to be the Tanker saying his wife is getting mad at him and has to quit. I don't want the "challenge" of a TF to be a malevolent mapserver or ISP, especially one that's not on my end.
I want the challenge of a TF to be the TF itself.
If they want TFs to be viewed in this manner by players, they need to redo every TF/SF made before I7 to look more like LRSF/STF/LGTF, in which there are between four to seven missions, with each presenting a unique challenge that actually requires a balanced team to overcome.
Not this "string of 15 paper missions followed by some lame AV" crap.
[/ QUOTE ]
Said it better than I did.
Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
Ice 'Em Aura LVL 50 Ice Tank
Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!
[ QUOTE ]
AWESOME CHANGE! Softloading is the most stupidest thing.
[/ QUOTE ]