When are the levels going to be fixed?

I am sure that there are other threads relating to this but tbh I cannot see them easily so I thought that I would post the question here.

When in heavens name are the diff levels going to be fixed for SF/TF'S?????

As leader of the Handprints SG which spans both sides I have to say that the result of the wimpy diffs has had a DRAMATIC negative effect on members, seeing many long term players leave the game and those that are staying getting fed up of running flashbacks for (certainly on Villains side) poor merit reward numbers just so that they can play their toons against foes that are worthy.

To be quite frank I could not care less whether people get their MO badges on a -1 diff if this is the alternative, obviously I would rather they got them and had a bit of a challenge but this 'fix' is killing the enjoyment of the game for a lot of my members (of which until recently I had over 90 individual accounts).

Gone are the days of Handprints LGTF races where 16 people would rock up and do the TF on 5th diff with no ghosting to see which team could go fastest. I16 was a truely wonderful thing, the super SK system making organising events so much easier but now their seems to be no point that it is easier to get teams without struggling with half the team not being able to get an SK when the SF/TF we want to run is just too damn easy. For a brief while we enjoyed the new diff levels bringing us new challenges, but this was snatched away because a few could get a badge too easily leaving the rest of us hard core players floundering and wondering why we bothered slotting our toons at all if all we are going to fight are whites and yellows.

Please, please, please, please fix this issue before we loose anymore people to boredom and easy repetitive play!!!!

Rant over

This confuses me.

Are you complaining about the new difficulty settings? They make the game harder, now. You could get a +4 spawn (+5 to any SSK's!) with 8 people before. The most you could get was +3, iirc.

I lose interest as soon as I read the words "I am sure that there are other threads relating to this but ..." That is more of a closing line, like an apology for making someone read stuff that they have already read before.

But hey in your case it saves me time, I appreciate that.

Be sure to drink your

You cannot set the diff levels for SF/TF's that is the problem Rad, you can do it for teams, flashbacks etc but not for SF/TF's

I'm confused now, are TF's and SF's not letting you set them at anything other than +0? Is that WAI??

If so, it's stupid, what's the fun at level 50 of taking on a white villain? At 50 I wanna fight purples, risk and reward and all that?

I did not mention anything about RP'ers or such like and I said in my original post that I understood why it was done.

I also understand that it was 'Temporary' but how long is that?

I was merely asking for a timescale as to when it was going to be fixed that is all before we loose more people through boredom.

I agree in principle that people should have to work for their MO badges and that something needed to be done, my gripe is the timeliness of restoring the diffs so that the rest of us can get back to enjoying SF/TF's with a challenge

Maybe they could make the TF contact have a selection of difficulty settings for when you formed the TF, but none that went lower than +0?
Like the way you can pick no temps, time limits and so on - just make a "fight enemies at +1, +2, +3, +4" option.

Well, taking the role of devils advocate, it's easy to see both sides of this one.

I can understand why the devs put in the temp fix, I'm a badge hunter myself and the idea that I could get any MO badge too easily was just plain wrong, no matter how little it effected the game for everyone else.

However, I can see the POV of the OP as well, There's been a lot added to the game to make it more fun, but one of the most enjoyable aspects of this game is the TF's, on both sides. Having it stuck at +0 is not going to be anywhere near as enjoyable for a lot of people, particularly those who like a challenge, which some of the higher lvl TF' can be when set properly. I think Von is just asking how much longer do players have to wait for it to be fixed? Is there any news on a fix date for this? Is it even being worked on? I read the boards regularly and I've not seen any mention of it anywhere, hence me not even realising it was still an issue!

To send a message to support only to be told this is WAI (which is it, in a way, as that's how the devs have fixed it for now) is not really telling the players how much longer it will be until it's sorted out.

Do we have any idea of what the actual issue is with the TF's? Why this big is happening? I've still to do the new 5th Column TF atm and I don't particularly fancy doing it if the team just burns through it easily, where's the fun in that?

On topic, I don't think we'll see a change until Issue 17 / Going Rogue.

This particular fix was to temporarily deal with a number of issues that the enhanced difficulty options in I16 generated. No one issue was the cause of this, and this fix is temporary.

Getting the difficulty sliders to work properly with Task Forces and Strike Forces is definitely something we are working on. This is something that is important to us, but any fix to the TF/SF Difficulty Slider is risky in that it is code which effects the whole game. We have to be very careful when working with this code because any changes can have significant and unforeseen ramifications. It takes a lot of time, especially testing time, and if we're going to take this amount of time we want to deliver a fix to you guys that isn't just a work around hack, but that delivers a fully working product.

We know this is frustrating, and this frustration has been well communicated to the Dev team. We'll communicate with you more on this issue as things progress.

Thanks,

How many people have left the game since this TF change happened? Is there a quantifiable number somewhere, such as subscriptions over a period of time? Or are we begged to take one's word for it at face value?[/QUOTE]

I cannot quantify anything it is a general feel for the game based on SG members and also using the search for people on Union, as an example I searched for people to join a team I was forming on Sunday at 11.30am gmt, taking in 3 level ranges from the search window up to level 41 there were only 15 people actually online and viewable for team searching. Now I know that some people hide from searches but even taking that into account it is miserable number. That combined with a drop of at least 30% in SG members since this problem happened, (No going to mention rankings as we all know that does not necessarily mean activity or members, however we did have over 90 different globals over the 2 SG's)most of which were hard core gaming vets who have left due to boredom to try other games I just wanted an idea of when this was going to be fixed.

As I say i16 was brilliant but the longer this drags on the harder it gets.