Discussion: Changes to Task/Strike Force Missions
By
Acid_Reign,
Posted on: 2008-02-14 15:00 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
Tony, the point is the manual -- even the updated version -- contains a lot of inaccurate and outdated info. The updated version only covers up to Issue 4. what does it say about ED or Inventions or dozens of other things? Nothing.
The manual is not a good authority on the game any longer because CoH/V, like any MMO, evolves. Address the game as it is, not as the manual professes it to be prior to it even shipping.
Hey Toooony? I don't need a manual...... serious. I am sorry you do.
You have the right to state your opinion because you are a player in an online game as all are of us.
But from the nature of the two post's you have contributed to the thread I think you might want to back up and read the prior 64 pages before you post again. Take Ned's advice and look at the dates on your " manual" too.
I could rip your thread apart.. particularly the " good time" part. I shall refrain.
I have ONE thing to say in addition to the above. Your 'good time" bores me... been there and done that. I and my kind make your game better. Even if you don't realize how. You will figure it out eventually.
Again? Read the last 64 pages... YEA.... ALLL 64.... before you come in slinging hash in an already baited thread.
Thank you very much and have a nice night//day 
I am waiting like everyone else for a redname response regarding intention. The points and opinions have been made quite eloquently. Whether in favor of or against this change.
Did I tell you all I sold a Miracle for 99,100,000 redside last night? 
(QR)
Well, it's happened. Didn't take long. First time getting cussed out for leaving a TF early. Guess I'll stick to Fast Katie from here on out.
Re: Tony
No.
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A task force is a team up of powerful Heroes that comes together to undertake a long series of dangerous assignments, which usually culminates in a battle with one of the citys Arch Villains. Task force missions require a great deal of commitment, and are very risky, but the reward for success is proportionate to the risk.
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There's the biggest hole in your so-called argument right there. "rewards proportionate to the risk" TF rewards were NEVER proportionate! A SO? Really? Wow! I could buy about 10 million of those. A crap recipe that I'll have to vendor? Yay! Just what I always wanted!
So....WHAT exactly do we get for these HARD TIME CONSUMING YOU BETTER COMMIT AND NOT HAVE A FAMILY EMERGENCY TF'S??? A reward "proportionate" to our efforts?
Tell you what Tony....when we get THAT, maybe anything you've said will have a LITTLE bit of merit. As it is, you're simply coming off as an uncaring buffoon. This is a GAME, and honestly ANYTHING that happens in real life that deserves your immediate attention is more important. PERIOD.
Tony I'll give you props for writing somethhing in this thread that was unique and never mentioned before. That being said, read the forum before you post. I agree that some content should be done as a team because its more interesting to do so. I just don't think everyone else does nor do I really care what everyone else does. When I do a TF/SF or a trial I team with people who want to do it. If someone wants to solo it then let them solo it and don't worry about them since in the end they are by themselves not bothering anyone. I've said it before, the devs had a good intention idea that sucks and needs to be re-examined and not made live before it is re-examined. And they need to inform people of changes of that nature. In the end if someone wants to farm an eight spawned mission with nothing but a bottle of whiskey and a bear named Zeus then best of luck to them. I just hope they give some whiskey to the bear.
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if positron knows what is good for him then he needs to not touch this thread with a 1000 foot pole. I dont see how any answer he gives will be acceptable at this point.
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Sadly, while I would love to hear the damage control attempt, I think that people are too upset to accept anything other than a "time-out" of this change.
While I sort of support the change itself, I find that it "just got lost" is unacceptable to me. I also think that facts should be straight when trying to explain it (take the time and look at the requirements of each TF, their reward, and average time it takes to complete).
Part of the problem is that all the task forces are "lost content". By that I mean that they fall in the "we'd like to do something about them, but we have too many things ahead of them on the schedule."
The right time to have put this change in place would have been at the same time the task forces are revamped.
Task force rewards should be scaled to the difficulty of the challenge. Katies should give a step up from Pool A rares, while the Master of Statesman TF/Lord Recluse SF should be giving near purple recipies for the difficultly (of course that would yield other problems). Task Forces like Positron and Quarterfield in their present state should be nearer to the upper end of the spectrum.
Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters
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There's the biggest hole in your so-called argument right there. "rewards proportionate to the risk" TF rewards were NEVER proportionate! A SO? Really? Wow! I could buy about 10 million of those. A crap recipe that I'll have to vendor? Yay! Just what I always wanted!
So....WHAT exactly do we get for these HARD TIME CONSUMING YOU BETTER COMMIT AND NOT HAVE A FAMILY EMERGENCY TF'S??? A reward "proportionate" to our efforts?
Tell you what Tony....when we get THAT, maybe anything you've said will have a LITTLE bit of merit. As it is, you're simply coming off as an uncaring buffoon. This is a GAME, and honestly ANYTHING that happens in real life that deserves your immediate attention is more important. PERIOD.
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Wow. Hook, line, and sinker.
Good trolling work there, Tony.
Oh, and to keep this post on-topic: I'm rather afraid of what the next redname post is going to say. Odds are it's not going to be anything which any of us want to hear on the matter.
But oh well. Cappy runs can still be done pretty quickly on a decent 4 man team. Not really the end of the world for anyone but people who want to run anything other than Katie or Cappy, lol.
I think my eyes have started bleeding from reading all of this (tl;dr doesn't exist for me). I kept my sanity by reading the different posts as the various characters from ATHF. All in all, bad change that fixes nothing and makes stuff worse.
Branching Paragon Police Department Epic Archetype, please!
So the question is gonna be..
In 2-3 months from now, will I make enough money selling my 3 LoTG's to give my Ice/Psi dom 5 Purple set?
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Guys, we need to figure out a way to exploit the game that involves the RSF tech, toggle debuffs, vill patrons, other QoL issues, and anything else we feel needs to be fixed, then people need to complain about how they relate to RMT, THEN they might get fixed.
[/ QUOTE ]QFT
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Don't worry guys, I've just been farming Comm Officers cause they give LT level inf at minion hitpoint. THE INF IS ROLLING IN LMAO PANTIEZ IN A BUNCH
I wouldn't have minded this if it was this way from the beginning.
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OK...Here's an example of why this is a bad idea. Running Numina with 3 SG mates. That's the minimum required to run the TF (4). 1 (50) exemped Spines/Regen, 1 (38) Ill/Rad, 1 (37) Fire/Devices, and 1 (38) Grav/Kin. Not even a gimped team right?
Well we have been unable to kill Jurassik. The scrapper can't hold aggro after the Blaster open's up, the Ill/Rad is getting beat around for debuffs, heck the Grav/Kin is getting killed just for throwing heals
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This change has zero impact on this situation.
@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617
This game CAN tell the difference between someone thats logged off and someone thats QUIT the tf.
Therefore a better solution to softloading is to set spawn size to team size including logged off.
If someone quits the TF spawn sizes should adjust because they are not coming back.
This is a song about a super hero named Tony. Its called Tony's theme.
Jagged Reged: 23/01/04
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This game CAN tell the difference between someone thats logged off and someone thats QUIT the tf.
Therefore a better solution to softloading is to set spawn size to team size including logged off.
If someone quits the TF spawn sizes should adjust because they are not coming back.
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I wouldn't mind this.
Some how I don't think Ditzy and MonkeyB would like it.
~MR
AE Arc: 305214 Blood Diamonds (Villainous)
Unleashed/Unchained/B.O.S.S.
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Guys, we need to figure out a way to exploit the game that involves the RSF tech, toggle debuffs, vill patrons, other QoL issues, and anything else we feel needs to be fixed, then people need to complain about how they relate to RMT, THEN they might get fixed.
[/ QUOTE ]QFT
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This worked for the Arachnos Flyer.
When I and a few friends conspired to post on the forums about how the Flyer was now rewarding hundreds of thousands of XP for a single kill, the news made the top of the Dev's community issues list and within 2 weeks Ghost Widow had repaired the Flyer's spawning problem on all servers.
The Widow's Dark Hand - leader of Faux Pas
Champion Server
Tee Hee!
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Did I tell you all I sold a Miracle for 99,100,000 redside last night?
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I have a couple of questions about this to put it into context.
Was this a crafted Miracle?
What level was it?
What did you list it for?
How many other Miracles of the same type (ie crafted or recipe) were on the market at the time of listing?
~MR
AE Arc: 305214 Blood Diamonds (Villainous)
Unleashed/Unchained/B.O.S.S.
99,100,000 wow. Just remember your good friend LDP!
I remember that a while back (issue 4 or 5... my memory is a little fuzzy) players who were not logged in during enough of a task force would not get the badge or reward. When was this changed to allow a player who had not been logged into the task force until the last mission to receive a reward/badge? The simple fix for 'stacking up of Cap sf's is to undo this change and put back in a minimum ammount of tf/sf participation to get a reward.
I have a suggestion for softloading. Use the same tech that was applied to the vines in the cov respec trial. Make all task force mission spawns adjust in size upwards if the team size increases. This should fix most softloading issues with lrsf, stf, lgtf, etc while at the same time not creating an "I win!" button for farmers.
(\__/)
(O.o )
(> < )
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Tony, the point is the manual -- even the updated version -- contains a lot of inaccurate and outdated info. The updated version only covers up to Issue 4. what does it say about ED or Inventions or dozens of other things? Nothing.
The manual is not a good authority on the game any longer because CoH/V, like any MMO, evolves. Address the game as it is, not as the manual professes it to be prior to it even shipping.
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I'm sorry, but a lot of people seem to have this notion that just because an exploit is popular, it's part of some kind of evolutionary process and shouldn't be fixed. I have zero sympathy for that attitude. The task forces were not working as designed. They took an important step in fixing it.
Okay, in the game as it was, people had exploited soft-loading task forces so badly that getting a rare recipe was meaningless. I've mentioned this before, that whenever I got a rare recipe, the first thing that went through my head was, "Damn, I wish I had gotten a common IO so that I could get something for it at the store." This is obviously not working as intended.
In the game as it was, you had stupid [censored] happening like people getting mad at you if you actually wanted to complete the missions of a task force as they were designed instead of playing along with the hokey "okay, everyone log out now" crap that people were pulling. I've actually been kicked from two task forces specifically for this reason, and I make it clear up front on every one I lead that it's not a "speed" anything.
In the game as it was, you had one or two people running the bulk of the task force, and eight people collecting the reward for it.
In the game as it was, it wasn't unusual for one or two people to complete what is supposed to be one of the highest-level teaming aspects of the game in half and hour with maybe just one other person. It was a mockery of what task forces were designed to be.
In the game as it was, hardly anyone ever ran some of the higher-level task forces because it was always only speed Katie, speed Katie, speed Katie.
Some of these things still aren't fixed yet, and hopefully, they're working on them to shore them up further. Personally, I think that we'll have a few more changes come down the pipeline that I'm sure will really have everyone screaming before this is all over, and I couldn't be happier. The people who have been exploiting task forces in this manner are not operating with the best long-term interest of this game at heart, and while I like the idea of a game that will appeal to all people, these exploits have got to stop.
Lighthouse said:
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Such missions have always been intended to be group activities, hence the reason for the minimum group size requirement to start them. We feel that the group size requirements are certainly not onerous and that the need for grouping is a good dynamic in a social environment like City of Heroes. 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.
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This is about as clear as can be regarding what they had in mind for task forces. When they say, "you need eight people for this task force," they actually mean you need eight people for that task force. If you want to try it with fewer, knock yourself out, but you're going to be taking on missions that were designed for eight people. Complain all you want, but this is exactly as it is intended to be.
As I keep saying over and over ad nauseum but the vocal minority here keeps ignoring, if you cannot invest the time and effort into completing such a task force, this content is not for you. No one ever promised you that you would be able to accomplish every single thing in the game without putting some time and effort into it.
We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)
Its not so much of a question, in my mind, of the TFs and such having minimum levels. Its just that this fix was addressing only a small portion of the problem, created a bunch of new ones for a solid player base, and left alone other parts that need just as much if not more actual fixing. They should fix the reward system first, then minimum group requirements for some of the hero TFs, and then work on the spawning rules for it. The soft loading part was the least complained part of the whole thing, if anyone actually did complain about it.
It's helpful when reasons for adjustments are explained. We're all assuming that this change came about due to the CapSF (and I think correctly so), but it really limits the "discussion" when changes aren't explained fully.
Just recently I soloed every single TF heroside for the accolade, on 2 accounts. Is this an exploit?
I'm not at all into the story-line, and I've played for over 2yrs now and have done about all the content I really feel like going through. At this point, I'm just doing it for the accolade. Should I not be allowed to do this? Should I be doing it for the camaraderie instead?
Most TFs, solo, were still really tough, and I had to get shivans on a couple of occasions to help kill the AV. Soloing the TFs was, arguably, tougher than getting a team together. Jurassic was the only AV I had 2 friends help me with, and he went down the fastest thanks to that.
Personally, I think you should get bigger rewards for soloing TFs, but hey, what do I know.
This change will make it impossible for me to get TF Commander on future toons, on my own. Which means I'll have to wait for friends to be able to do this at the same time as me, or take my chances with a pug, which might take an exceeding amount of time to setup.
This is time waiting, organizing, instead of playing.
This particular TF/SF nerf relates directly to capSF (IMO)... so why not specifically change the capSF, just like you specifically changed quickKaties?
I recall the quickKatie nerf was much more widely accepted by the playerbase. OTOH, this is turned out to be 65pages of hate.
just sayin.
I think if its happening not on your team you should mind your own business and contact your teams accordingly. Tell folks at the beginning that you plan to grind through every mission of a 15 mission task force so they can stay or go if they don't have the time for an 8 hour positron task force for example
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I think if its happening not on your team you should mind your own business and contact your teams accordingly. Tell folks at the beginning that you plan to grind through every mission of a 15 mission task force so they can stay or go if they don't have the time for an 8 hour positron task force for example
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I agree. Unfortunately, though, there's a "default" that, if it doesn't come up, everyone assumes. Before rare recipes were given as rewards, everyone knew that the default was that a team will be working on missions as they are designed, and this "speed" crap wasn't a problem. Sure, some teams would do goofy things like see how fast they could finish a task force, but it was the exception, and they would make sure to let everyone know about it ahead of time.
Since rare recipes are given out for completion now, though, attitudes have shifted and about the only people who run task forces now are farmers on "speed" runs. It was genuinely hard to get on an "honest" task force because even those who wanted to work on them usually got recruited into the "speed" runs. The default had shifted to using exploits to finishing task forces.
I have a suggestion that I think would solve the problem too, though I'm sure that the people posting in this thread wouldn't like it very much. They should completely eliminate recipes as rewards for undertaking task forces. They should only be given as drops, and only when an individual is undertaking something that is moderately difficult. I'm not going to expound on how that could be determined right now in the interest of not posting a book, but obviously, completing task forces don't measure up to that standard.
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Well, it's happened. Didn't take long. First time getting cussed out for leaving a TF early. Guess I'll stick to Fast Katie from here on out.
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Keep it up. Every comment like this just makes me more right and is a dare to the developers to change something else to make it more inconvenient for players like you. Comments like this do more to sway their opinion than anything I could possibly think or say.
I am curious, though. You obviously know how inconvenient it is for your team when you bail on a task force, and how they tend to last for a few hours. Why did you leave it? If you knew you were going to have to leave, why did you even start it? Did you let your team know ahead of time, or are you just one of these "i gtg" people?
We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)
I agree with you that being given the reasoning behind changes would go a long way to improving discussions like this one.
I think that the changes I suggested are at least worth looking at as an alternative to the current "fix".
(\__/)
(O.o )
(> < )
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While you're reading the manual, remember to brush up on essential game facts, like not being able to use Temp Invulnerability and (self-rooting) Unyielding at the same time, the maximum level cap of 40, and Eden, the most dangerous zone in the whole game so zomg take a team.
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Funny, in the latest version of the manual, neither Temporary Invulnerability nor Unyielding are mentioned. The level cap is clearly stated several times as being 50. And the Eden zone is not mentioned at all. How about you pointing out the page number where it says that stuff? Or have you even read the manual? It sounds like you haven't in several years.
Here's what it has said about task forces from the very beginning, and continues to say about them to this day:
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A task force is a team up of powerful Heroes that comes together to undertake a long series of dangerous assignments, which usually culminates in a battle with one of the citys Arch Villains. Task force missions require a great deal of commitment, and are very risky, but the reward for success is proportionate to the risk.
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Which part of "long series of dangerous assignments" and "require a great deal of commitment" did you not understand? For the life of me, I don't know how I'm missing the "task forces should take 30 minutes to an hour and be easily accomplished by even the most casual of player."
What a bunch of whiners I've seen in this thread. You know what the funny thing is? In-game, I don't see anyone complaining like this. I still see a steady stream of task forces being run all the time, and I've run a couple myself without any complaints or incidents. In spite of the doom and gloom predicted by a vocal minority of farmers and exploiters, the game continues to survive and thrive and everyone else seems all the happier. That's just got to hurt to be so wrong.
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Smaller spawns on the Dr. Q TF because one defender logged and the other had a family emergency is not an exploit by any definition.
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Oh, how silly of me! When I read, "you need 8 members on your team," for some really weird reason, I took that to mean that if you have a team of six, things would start getting difficult. I missed the part of the task force description where it says, "but if you drop down to six, that's okay too." So if six is okay, how about four? Two? Are you one of those folks who think that all task forces should be soloable? Where do you draw the line where you say, "Okay, it says you need eight people, and enough is enough." Are you one of these people who insist that since casual players play the game, every single friggin' thing must appeal to the lowest common denominator? One of the people who ironically accuse others of trying to force their playstyle on others?
And let me ask you this. If you're really so concerned about people's family emergencies, why are you concerned about not being able to complete a task force? I mean, as a human being, with a family emergency in progress, shouldn't you be more than happy to not worry so much about the task force? Because come on, man. There's a FAMILY EMERGENCY! I'm going to have to call shenanigans on you of this tired old "family emergency" excuse that keeps being bandied about. Like I said, if people are bailing out on your task forces, find better teammates. I've done it, it's easy, and you can do it too. Very rarely do I not successfully complete a task force.
Man up, Nancy, and get on with your City of Heroes life already. (Or don't, but can I have your stuff?) All of your misery is only bringing yourself down. The rest of us are still having a hell of a good time with this game.
We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)