Discussion: Changes to Task/Strike Force Missions
By
Acid_Reign,
Posted on: 2008-02-14 15:00 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
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Why do you think anyone would pull wool over your eyes? What do you think they're trying to cover up?
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A coverup seems a bit farfetched. A safer guess would be that the devs didn't consider this to be a significant change. Hopefully, this 41-page (so far and counting) thread is giving them some useful feedback.
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Last night I tried out the change, running some Cap SFs. There were 5 of us, and only 2 had done it before, so we only did 2 parallel runs. My Plant/Thorn Dominator, duoed with an Ice/Psi. It was a bit more difficult, but not that much, and my build could be further optimized for this activity. The best builds will still be fast, while marginal ones will not be able to do it. If everyone is bringing 4 to 8 characters to the table, at least one of them should be good for soloing big spawns. My conclusion is that the change won't slow down the multi Cap runs significantly, and the villain market won't be horribly affected.
Since Pool Cs on the BM is the only reason I care about the change, it doesn't bother me any more. But, since this change is supposed to address the multi-Cap runs (I can't see any other reason), but doesn't, it should be rolled back until the other issues can be dealt with.
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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
I can get behind that: just make all TFs with the exception of those that are intended to be 'hardcore' have a minimum spawn size of 4, regardless of how many you need to start the TF.
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!
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Seriously....this is a MAJOR ball drop here, and the "official" comments so far have been nothing but an attempt to "pull wool over our eyes".
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So what sinister truth do you think They are trying to keep from you?
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Is there something useful to be gained by constantly chasing after people suggesting conspiracy theories in this thread? You've made your point, there's no need to repeat it over and over. It just becomes noise.
I'd rather we discuss the meat of the issue -- the actual changes made to TFs.
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Tell you what. You tell that to all the people that keep saying that there is a conspiracy, a cover up, a deep truth, a hidden agenda, a purposeful deception in order to achieve.... I'm not sure. That's why she's asking.
They are the ones that keep bringing this up and are off-topic, so, why don't you tell them to knock it off? Once they do, we can stop inquiring as to what it is they keep implying is happening but are unable to name.
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I can get behind that: just make all TFs with the exception of those that are intended to be 'hardcore' have a minimum spawn size of 4, regardless of how many you need to start the TF.
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I'll also agree, this is the best solution.
I will request that the few "hardcore" TF's they have keep their length below 4 or 5 hours, just for the feasibiility of keeping any group together that long. Currently I view only Statesman, and L. Recluse TF's to be "hardcore." They are a pretty good length. I don't mind adding a couple more hardcore taskforces, but they should be a similar length.
I do feel that the VAST majority of Taskforces should be at the 4 person level.
On a side note, please shorten the Freedom Phalanx and Shadowhard taskforces, they are just needlessly arduous. I would be thrilled if one entire issue was just dedicated to renovating existing Task Forces, and adding a couple more, especially villain side.
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edited to add last paragraph
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I didn't say that Lady, you quoted someone else.
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If you look at the post you responded to, you'll see where the confusion arose.
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SOLUTION - Standardize all Task Forces/Strike Forces to have a Minimum Team Size requirement of 5. The LSRF and STF being the exception as they are supposed to be the pinnacle of challenge. This means that those farmers that try to roll in and farm one solo are going to face a super serious challenge. They may be able to handle mob spawn sizes of 4 but 5 I hazard to guess will thin that herd a lot more, making them a negligible minority.
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Your guess is wrong. I take on a 6-man spawned TV Don with no fear with my 50 SM/ELA solo. I'm not even fully purpled out (yet).
Also note that a static fixed size isn't fair to red-side when it is vastly underpopulated compared to blue side. It also advantages being on more populated servers (freedom) which will just contribute to the overpopulation and lag. I'd advise against that as a solution: bad side effects.
Now if you split it, 5 for hero, 3 or 4 for villain that'd be better. If you look at the sizes, the devs have already recognized that this is an issue, particularly on red-side.
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SOLUTION Revamp the older TFs by reducing the number of pointless missions that are nothing more than padding. There is no real necessity to hunt this and hunt that and click this and click that. The Shard TFs are overly crowded with this sort of crap and their presence adds no real value to the TF. The Villain side has that figured out pretty good.
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This would be nice. Reducing the useless "travel to this zone to do what you just did" would be really nice blue side, particularly for POSITRON where many players lack their movement yet.
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People softloading was taking advantage of a design vulnerability. That is an exploit! That is against the game rules.
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False. It is bad design by the devs and nothing more. An exploit would be figuring out a way to dupe money, XP, IOs, crash servers, auto-complete TF missions which aren't auto-completable, etc. The "rules of how the game works" weren't being broken -- missions spawn for the number of players in the team. That you could use this to make a mission easier isn't against the rules of the game any more than bringing a 50 in to crush a badge mission is.
If I figured out that doing an /afk <string of 257 characters> in base caused spawns to shrink to only 1 minion, then that's probably an exploit, because that's not what the code is designed to do (for one thing, /afk shouldn't interact with the mob count in any way).
This calling everything an "exploit" is as bad as the "hackers broke into..." thing the news does all the time. Those aren't hackers. Crackers maybe, but script kiddies more likely.
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Plugging that hole is the exact thing we players are constantly crying for. We are always yelling at the devs for not fixing this and not fixing that. Now they fix one
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Not that they've fixed the scientist spawn in Cap or apparently LRSF. Not that they've fixed Force of Nature being unusable when malefactored.
Not that they've fixed robosurgery.
The first may be hard. The second and third are almost certainly trivial. They are easily repeatable, testable bugs. There's plenty of really rather bad outstanding bugs that could use a fix. I've had a friend about ready to quit the game over the scientist in portal corp in the Cap Au SF issues because he is SO FRUSTRATED that half the runs he does the stupid scientists disappears into the wall and he has to reset the mission to try it again...
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, a BIG one and many people are crying no fair. It was a vulnerability that players (farmer or not, RMTer or not) were using to speed up the time in which they completed a TF/SF to maximize their gains and minimize their risk.
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False. Risk was not minimized. I'm absolutely safer with my full regular team signed in than I am going through those missions solo. Risk is minimized RELATIVE to reward, but DUH. That's what players do in games, from bringing in a 50 to stomp a difficult badge mission to loading an alt up with inf.
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That is a categorical definition of Exploiting a Game Mechanic. It is cheating, regardless of weather your intent was sincere (i.e. you actually wanted to do the TF for the badge and the team fun) or not (meaning you just wanted the rare recipe). This patch resolves that, and on that front I can do nothing but applaud and endorse the decision.
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FREE YOUR MIND!
http://www.sirlin.net/Features/featu...ToWinPart1.htm
Specifically the "Boundaries of Playing to Win" section. It may be a bug, it may be unintended design, but as long as it isn't crashing instance servers, corrupting the database, etc., I have a hard time condemning it. Blame the devs for the player's behavior, because players are doing that "bad" behavior as a result of (real) bad design on the dev's part. There are alternate ways to make doing a TF "as intended" more rewarding than the ghosting method, yet without breaking the rate of supply of any given uber recipe going into the market.
A simple one would be a TF done with a bunch of the difficulty settings enabled gives you a recipe of your pick. You want Miracle: +recovery, you get it. Of course you've just completed a TF with enemies buffed, players debuffed, AT-only, and no enhancements. Frankly if you invested the time (no travel powers) and are good enough as a team to do it with those restrictions I don't care if it was a level 15-20 SF or LRSF, you deserve a HO or your pick of (any) recipe.
Would that suggestion benefit me? Sure. I know my group of friends, I know what we can accomplish when we work together. At the same time, it'd take us about the same time as doing an old double-6x8 BZ grid for 98 recipes and actually probably produce LESS "really good" recipes than that grid does (on average). But it would be more fun to do since I could actually play with my friends and wouldn't have to have un-fun login/logout sequences as well as 5 minute downtimes while someone spawns BZ.
Just my not so humble opinion.
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Is there something useful to be gained by constantly chasing after people suggesting conspiracy theories in this thread?
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Suggesting?
'Sorry Devs....thats a lie.'
'bullcrap, I saw the post where lighthouse said this was a bug and then that was deleted, lost in the volume my [censored]'
'I call shenanigans on this one. Once again, a stealth "oops" has made it into the game.'
'I am quite annoyed with the sneaking it by (come on, that's what it was...)'
'Their PR department said "It's not going to be popular. We'll come up with a "repsonse" when they find out about it after it's live."'
'Sorry I don't buy it that this wasn't intended to be stealthed in.'
'I don't buy the "we forgot" nonsense for a second.'
That's not suggesting. That's asserting.
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"Risk vs Reward". The risk of TF's just became to great for the reward you get, in most cases.
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I'll agree with this and compare it to the "New and Improved Hami Raids" 
We on Protector went from doing a hami raid at least once a week, now...... I think we have done a total of 8 raids hero, and about the same red side. Half of which have been "Themed Raids" just kinda for fun.
I'm sure on the higher pop servers, it won't affect it too much to get teams together. But on a low pop server (like Protector) it becomes a problem, especially on off times, where you can only find one or two people that are on that actually want to run one when you're in the mood for it. A lot of the time, I just get some help to start it so I can take my time, read the story lines, take breaks whenever I need to.
Unless it's a pre-arranged get together with your SG, Coalition, friends (that's if your not a small SG with one or two active memebers) I know that runs are going to drop quite a bit on "lol Protector" 
Unless of course, everyone just runs the TF/SF's on only their Uber/FotM builds, where's the fun in that?
Well, anyway, I already got a couple toons set up on a Synapse run, guess I'll log them back in and see how it goes.
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Is there something useful to be gained by constantly chasing after people suggesting conspiracy theories in this thread?
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Suggesting?
'Sorry Devs....thats a lie.'
'bullcrap, I saw the post where lighthouse said this was a bug and then that was deleted, lost in the volume my [censored]'
'I call shenanigans on this one. Once again, a stealth "oops" has made it into the game.'
'I am quite annoyed with the sneaking it by (come on, that's what it was...)'
'Their PR department said "It's not going to be popular. We'll come up with a "repsonse" when they find out about it after it's live."'
'Sorry I don't buy it that this wasn't intended to be stealthed in.'
'I don't buy the "we forgot" nonsense for a second.'
That's not suggesting. That's asserting.
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So...what? We should just shut up and roll over? We should just ignore a GLARING inconsistency? We should say "Thank you devs, please nerf some more?"
Look, we're calling it as we see it. Obviously this was so secret that even Lighthouse didn't know about it!
Does it not strike you odd that it took them TWO days to admit it? Does it not strike you odd that once they do admit it, all we get is a weak excuse? Does it not strike you odd that we STILL have no further word from the devs on this issue?
Seriously....I HOPE that once we finally get a STRAIGHT response, everything will be cleared up. But atm....it really makes you wonder. What was the logic behind this? What else do they have coming? Is this the first of many? Is this a random "brain fart" by the devs?
They aren't helping themselves by keeping quiet on the issue.
I've been on Statesman Task Forces where we lost two people and managed to succeed. So while I agree that it and the LRSF should require 8 to start, I don't think that spawns should remain at 8 if people leave.
There are two things this change is meant to block. One is having people solo TFs meant for groups. The other is softloading to quickly do a TF.
I've got no problems if changes make TFs unsoloable, but I fail to see why it's a problem worth hurting teams if they can be soloed. With the possible exception of Positron (blueside at least), soloing a TF isn't the easy way to get it done. People solo TFs either because they can't do one teamed for one reason or another, or they really want to push themselves for maximum challenge. Of all the ways to earn XP or Influence quickly, soloing TFs is far far down the list.
Softloading a mission is something that can cheapen the reward of a mission. I've got sympathy to those who want to softload to avoid a bug in a mission (LRSF), but "this will slow down how fast we can get the recipe" doesn't earn much sympathy. However, the solution chosen hurts those who are doing TFs as intended but have problems.
Are we even being listened to? Based on the silence so far, the message I'm getting is "this is it, like it or lump it".
My arcs are constantly shifting, just search for GadgetDon for the latest.
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GadgetMania Under Attack: The Digg Lockout
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'I call shenanigans on this one. Once again, a stealth "oops" has made it into the game.'
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That one is mine Sadako and its not suggesting a conspiracy theory, since you lumped it in with your other ones, its suggesting that once again, something that they knew would upset the PAYING customer base, was left out, imo intentionally. Its no secret that I am not a huge dev fan, I've been here since States was in charge and some of his changes I just didn't like at all. I was working my way back to polite dev affection...until this change... Anyway, I remember way back when we were promised that they would try better with keeping the patch notes up to date. Is it too much to actually expect them to do that?
And since none of them have the "time" to come in here and refute all the theories, I'm going to stick with mine. Done on purpose.
Thanks, NC Soft, for closing my favorite game ever without warning and with plenty of life still left in it, and thus relieving me of the burden of EVER wanting to buy, try or even hear about another game from your company. Will my decision make a dent, or persuade them in anyway, shape or form? Nope, obviously not. Don't care. NC Soft is dead to me. ~ PsyFox
Interesting. If you are wrong, what reasonable evidence would you accept?
Maye you have been given the straight story and you are simply refusing to beleive it.
In any case, it seems that the changes to the task forces may have simply shifted the farming from recipes to inf. Do you beleive that farming is an issue? What other changes should be made to task forces in your opinion?
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!
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"Risk vs Reward". The risk of TF's just became to great for the reward you get, in most cases.
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I'll agree with this and compare it to the "New and Improved Hami Raids"
We on Protector went from doing a hami raid at least once a week, now...... I think we have done a total of 8 raids hero, and about the same red side. Half of which have been "Themed Raids" just kinda for fun.
I'm sure on the higher pop servers, it won't affect it too much to get teams together. But on a low pop server (like Protector) it becomes a problem, especially on off times, where you can only find one or two people that are on that actually want to run one when you're in the mood for it. A lot of the time, I just get some help to start it so I can take my time, read the story lines, take breaks whenever I need to.
Unless it's a pre-arranged get together with your SG, Coalition, friends (that's if your not a small SG with one or two active memebers) I know that runs are going to drop quite a bit on "lol Protector" Unless of course, everyone just runs the TF/SF's on only their Uber/FotM builds, where's the fun in that?
Well, anyway, I already got a couple toons set up on a Synapse run, guess I'll log them back in and see how it goes.
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Ok, running through the mish's now, and it's kinda turning into a Posi. Even with 2 on the team (so if you start with 4, and 2 drop) I'm back to resting between each room, spawns are all +1, usually 2 lt's and 2-3 minions. This is gonna take a while.
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So...what? We should just shut up and roll over?
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No, you should confront the actual changes instead of the whackjob conspiracy theory that people seem to think accompanies them.
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Does it not strike you odd that it took them TWO days to admit it?
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'Admit'?
What, do you think they're like children hiding some guilty secret that has to be coaxed out of them?
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Does it not strike you odd that once they do admit it, all we get is a weak excuse?
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Sorry, what 'weak excuse' would that be? All I see is an admission that they didn't have their act together when it came to getting the patch notes out, which is HARDLY NEW.
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Does it not strike you odd that we STILL have no further word from the devs on this issue?
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Not really, since they apparently don't see it as quite so important as half the people on this thread seem to.
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But atm....it really makes you wonder. What was the logic behind this?
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The logic behind this change, as opposed to the way in which it came across to the playerbase?
It seems to me to be a steam roller solution that doesn't actually work. Not the first time that's happened, either.
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That one is mine Sadako and its not suggesting a conspiracy theory, since you lumped it in with your other ones, its suggesting that once again, something that they knew would upset the PAYING customer base, was left out, imo intentionally.
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But... do you really think the Devs thought that leaving it out of the patch notes would mean nobody would ever find out?
Come ON! This change was picked up on, without patch notes, within... what, a day? You really think the Devs are saying 'oh! we hoped not to upset our Paying Customer Base, but despite our clever ruse of leaving this change out of the patch notes, they somehow found out!'
Again, I have to ask - once they'd made the change, what possible good would it do them to keep it out of the patch notes on purpose?
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Interesting. If you are wrong, what reasonable evidence would you accept?
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I don't think I am though
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Maybe you have been given the straight story and you are simply refusing to beleive it.
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I've gotten some of those straight "stories" from States (ie, pets were never meant to stack, etc.), so yeah, please devs spin me a straight story. I need a new one to put in my sig!
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In any case, it seems that the changes to the task forces may have simply shifted the farming from recipes to inf. Do you beleive that farming is an issue?
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I enjoy farming. And I'm pretty sure I'm vocal about that too.
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What other changes should be made to task forces in your opinion?
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Positron tf sucks, the shard tfs are awful and absolutely no fun for me. I like your idea of making them all set for 4. Because then I could still SOLO them the way I like to. Ohh and not sure if it was you, or someone else, I'd also like to see them revamped, less run here there mishes, etc. Make them more doable timewise.
As for recipe farming, I like getting the shineys. I just got done doing a pug Manticore and the people were nice, a few went afk, somebody's wife got locked out of her car, somebody had to go afk to pick up their kid, and after 2 hours and 17 mins, all I got was a lousy Pacing of the Turtle - Chance for Slow. Woofreakinghoo. Now, if that had been 5 of me on that tf - I would have had a better opportunity to get either something sellable or something slotable. And you will probably point out that oooh I'm being selfish because I want the shineys for myself. Yep. I am. Which is why when I want to make some extra influence, or hopefully get a miracle or a lotg, I do a tf BY MYSELF or with one of my close friends by ourselves....
Thanks, NC Soft, for closing my favorite game ever without warning and with plenty of life still left in it, and thus relieving me of the burden of EVER wanting to buy, try or even hear about another game from your company. Will my decision make a dent, or persuade them in anyway, shape or form? Nope, obviously not. Don't care. NC Soft is dead to me. ~ PsyFox
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That one is mine Sadako and its not suggesting a conspiracy theory, since you lumped it in with your other ones, its suggesting that once again, something that they knew would upset the PAYING customer base, was left out, imo intentionally.
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But... do you really think the Devs thought that leaving it out of the patch notes would mean nobody would ever find out?
Come ON! This change was picked up on, without patch notes, within... what, a day? You really think the Devs are saying 'oh! we hoped not to upset our Paying Customer Base, but despite our clever ruse of leaving this change out of the patch notes, they somehow found out!'
Again, I have to ask - once they'd made the change, what possible good would it do them to keep it out of the patch notes on purpose?
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I think they are like the wayward husbands that manage to take the wife's new car out and scratch it. They are praying they don't get caught *grin* but they know they are going to eventually and will deal with it when they do. 
Thanks, NC Soft, for closing my favorite game ever without warning and with plenty of life still left in it, and thus relieving me of the burden of EVER wanting to buy, try or even hear about another game from your company. Will my decision make a dent, or persuade them in anyway, shape or form? Nope, obviously not. Don't care. NC Soft is dead to me. ~ PsyFox
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Sorry, what 'weak excuse' would that be? All I see is an admission that they didn't have their act together when it came to getting the patch notes out, which is HARDLY NEW.
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The weak excuse that this change was primarily to prevent RMT'ers, when clearly it BENEFITS them more than prevents them.
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No, you should confront the actual changes instead of the whackjob conspiracy theory that people seem to think accompanies them.
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Um....guess what? We ARE confronting the issue. We are asking for clarification. I do not consider myself a proponent of a "conspiracy theory", I am pointing out the MANY inconsistencies in the little bit of information we have so far gotten from them about this issue.
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Is there something useful to be gained by constantly chasing after people suggesting conspiracy theories in this thread?
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Suggesting?
'Sorry Devs....thats a lie.'
'bullcrap, I saw the post where lighthouse said this was a bug and then that was deleted, lost in the volume my [censored]'
'I call shenanigans on this one. Once again, a stealth "oops" has made it into the game.'
'I am quite annoyed with the sneaking it by (come on, that's what it was...)'
'Their PR department said "It's not going to be popular. We'll come up with a "repsonse" when they find out about it after it's live."'
'Sorry I don't buy it that this wasn't intended to be stealthed in.'
'I don't buy the "we forgot" nonsense for a second.'
That's not suggesting. That's asserting.
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Who really gives a good gotdamn,Lady?
Get off it and onto the issue at hand regarding tf/sf's please. Shut up about " omg they accuse the Dev's of being dishonest!" Sheesh...... All of you all just quit it! Dayum... do youall need to go to timeout? Here.....
Passes tinfoil hats to anyone in the thread that has a remark not DIRECTLY related to the current change and a suggestion for a compromise. 
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Who really gives a good gotdamn,Lady?
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Everyone I quoted, by the look of it.
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Get off it and onto the issue at hand regarding tf/sf's please.
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Sure, so long as the same applies to the conspiracy theorists, and you tell the next person who comes up with one to 'shut up', too.
EDIT: Okay, so you edited. Fair enough.
Done!!
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Passes tinfoil hats to anyone in the thread that has a remark not DIRECTLY related to the current change and a suggestion for a compromise.
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IMO, discussion of how the devs chose to relay this information is just as valid as the change itself.
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I'm not arging that they should stay with the original design. I'm just saying that since the current statement by the devs states that they are not intended to be casual content, that the design supports that statement as it currently exists.
I am in favor of casual TFs existing as well as hardcore ones.
The ones we have now (with the possible exception of the most recent ones as you have pointed out) are more hardcore. Having there be 'softcore' TFs in addition would itself be a change.
Maybe even a change they have already moved towards. And that's fine.
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I agree, pretty much.
I don't think the original TFs accurately reflect what the devs see for TFs today (most are designed for pick-up groups to manage in a single session, a few high-end ones are intended for the hardcore players). The question is when and whether the devs will revise the original TFs. It's always seemed like a low priority. I'm hoiping this change signals that revising the original TFs will become a higher priority.
Also, what constitutes "casual" is a tricky thing to define. Does it mean "soloable"? For me, it means "can be completed in a reasonable time by a good PuG". What it may mean to others is open to debate.
I do think all TFs should be completable in a single session. The days of TFs being split up over multiple sessions due to sheer length should be over.