Release Notes for 19.20090918.3T - 9/24/09

Pity this exploit has been found so early; I've been trying to earn MoSTF for MONTHS with no success at all, twice we had just 1 death, and it was in the last mission, either because the Flier or because of any of the Recluse's lieutenants, but now, with the "-1" trick, I finally managed to get it yay! Now in a more serious tone, I was afraid this could be intented, it's nice to know that it's been a bug or exploit and they are gonna fix it, I didn't feel fine after completing it tbh, I thought they were far too easy (Recluse at lvl 49??? incredible!).

I've avoided the Mo teams on the basis of well I couldn't give a stuff. I like things challenging and would want the matter jumped on as main priority to sort it all out properly asap pls.

Please, please, plesase, don't do it... Anything, even the present setup, would be better than disabling difficulty options altogether,

Question, does this also prevent you from soloing arcs in Ouro as a full team of 8? Because if so... we're going to be right back to people looking for fillers again.

If the cost of allowing a -1 setting is that we won't be allowed to increase the difficulty of TF/SFs, then that cost is too high and the -1 should be removed from the game.

If you have characters that can't handle +0/x1/No/No difficulty due to build choices or whatever, that's a great time to start utilizing the dual builds feature.

I really dislike the WoW "The game as a job" mentality that has been creeping into the player base since the advent of IO's. Before there was no "must haves" for builds beyond some specific powers, but why play a Rad without the debuffs or a Kin without the buffs?

Now.. damn I'm tired of people acting like if you're not fully IO'd out that you somehow don't know how to play. That somehow other people not playing the game on Invincible somehow impacts your game play.

And the fits of rage over people earning a badge, from people who couldn't care less about what Badge collectors do most times is sickening.

It's a game.. if you're driven to these heights of anger of a change or because someone got something you didn't.. perhaps it's just time you move on anyway. I play CoX because it's a much more relaxed and friendly atmosphere then WoW, try not to ruin that.

-1 x 5+ is great for my "weaker" aoe toons. You know the kind of toons that can do tremendous aoe damage, but don't have very much survivability. Not everyone is a scrapper or brute or a softcapped squishy, but they still may want to experience the same joy of playing a hack n slash as other people get.

I think the -1 setting is awesome for low level toons and even some high level toons that don't dump a lot of inf into their build. I'm generally running at +con/4+ on most of my toons by the late 20's/early 30's, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the typical cox user.

From the sounds of it it is not the -1 setting that is causing this change to TF's, but rather making it more of a priority to the dev team.

TF's have been using the old difficulty system for years and just now we here it causes all kinds of problems...I doubt those problems are greater than everyone being stuck running the ONLY end game content the game offers at the same difficulty, but hey what are you gonna do.

Use the old system for TF's or find a way for -1 to be disabled for that area of the game only. Those are the only two solutions that should be on the table at paragon. We don't need another difficulty system introduced for TF's on top of what we already know, it's too late in the game for that. Option A or option B and as far as I'm concerned that should be the end of the discussion as I'm not really interested in hearing excuses from the dev team.

I look at it like this. Using the forum as a our sample base, calls for a way to systematically lower in the way a -1 setting does were basically non-existent. While there are certainly some builds and even whole AT/powerset combos that are... less optimal at soloing than others, very few people complained about the actual difficulty of the game at Heroic or Villainous difficulty. Indeed, most complaints about soloing ability appeared to take the form of complaints that they were "forced" to solo on Heroic.

In contrast, people were often looking for ways to up difficulty. Far from everyone, but more than I ever saw asking for lower difficulty than Heroic.

I have no objection to the -1 setting, either in general or even on TFs. However, I personally have no real use for it except for farming purposes, and even then I generally find it more fun to fight +2 foes. It's mostly been useful to me for purposes of faster gathering of drop rate statistics.

I think it's worth noting that there's no clear indication that the -1 setting is the stand-alone reason the devs are doing this. Remember, the new settings added +3 and +4 settings as well as -1, and as far as we know whatever problems the system introduced is just as likely with those settings.

This is one of the reasons I back the idea of giving us the old pre-16-style settings for TFs if possible. I would think that system would have been fairly well hammered out given how long it's been available. That's an assumption on my part, since I really don't know what the underlying problem is. It just seems reasonable based on how long the pre-I16 system was in play.

An example of a small bug coming from the +4 setting.

On the STF on Saturday night, we ran it at +4 primarily for giggles and a sense of being in a real fight. From time to time, the spawn rules created a level 54 EB, basically the Arachnos Heavy from RV. (Im not sure if its the full blown one or the one that is available as the pet for getting the 1000 temporal points).

Not only did the team get zero XP for defeating said hostile EB, that EB actually would turn on the group it was spawned with and start fighting them, well basically wiping the floor with them in fact.

Lost kill credit on quite a few toxics this was, and I would be a little peeved, but for the reduced count for that badge meanign my character already having it. (In fact I think the entire team already had it from several STF/Silos and Khan TFs)

Big deal - no, but an example of a bug created by the +4 difficulty setting.

I see nothing wrong in ppl running STF and LRSF at -1 difficulty, "Master of" or not, in fact it makes more sense than having two TF's intended for lvl 45-50 that can't be done with an all lvl 45 team.

If the issue is the cheaping of the "Master of" attempts, perhaps devs should add an additional difficulty setting called "Master of X" for the TF's that can grant said badge that directly takes the team to certain difficulty settings and option requirements overriding anything else. If that worked for the whole team no matter what, would also be good in case team leader gets temporarily disconnected during the TF.

The ability to have your difficulty slider affect your Task Forces and Strike Forces has been temporarily disabled. This was done to prevent people from running through a TF/SF with the difficulty set at -1 level in order to more easily get the “Master Of...” Badge. We know that many of you enjoy the challenge of running the higher-end TFs/SFs at increased levels of difficulty and we are looking at solutions that will allow you to do that once again. .

We apologize for the inconvenience.

--Horatio