NO DR for redside SFs per 18 hours!

People have been asking for that since 2006.

"Sorry bucko, but CoH and CoV are the same game." -BackAlleyBrawler
"Silly villain, CoX is for Heroes!" -Saicho

Yup, I know about this. I just don't agree that ALL TF/SFs should be shorties.

I prefer the 90-120 minute focus. I don't want the really long ones (Shard, I'm thinking of you!), and the short ones are like an appetizer to me.

As GG pointed out, you can spend about as much time recruiting for a shorty as you do playing it.

One of my suggestions over the years has been to have our TF/SF contacts give multiple choices for their TF/SF. So you could do Posi A, B, or C, for example. Some players would choose the shortest one, some players would choose the one with certain foes, and some players would choose the one with the most merits.

Although, the problem with merits seems to be that you have to get great gobs of players, especially entry level players, going through the TF/SFs in order to get a beefy merit reward. When the TF/SF is short, and those who play it are few and experienced, the merit reward is a bit lean.

Having multiple choices for TF/SFs per contact could easily lead to lean merit rewards on all of them.

I agree with this. An idea I've had for the last few years, that reflects how I like to play, is the "Special Operation."

The Spec Op would be a type of unlockable arc you can get that is more intense than the regular arc and kind of like a mini-TF. Several of my AE arcs (e.g. "Dante's Inferno," "Live and Let Die," "Hall of the Dancing Tigers") were written with this concept in mind.

How this would work, ideally, is you get a contact and do a mission from them that unlocks the Spec Op. You do not have to do the Spec Op, or do it at that time, but it is now unlocked. And while a Spec Op can be soloed, since they are more challenging fare, it's the sort of thing where you are encouraged to build a team and run through. At the end, everyone would get a Spec Op reward of some sort, which - depending on the arc - could be a temporary power or some merits. Also, if there is a second arc in the story line, that would be unlocked for everyone.

Adding Spec Ops would also be a way of revamping old content while providing new content.

Of my arcs mentioned above, "Dante's Inferno" is intended to be unlocked by Azuria, "Live and Let Die" would be unlocked by Prince Kiros Nandelu, and "Hall of the Dancing Tigers" by Derek Amberson ... all starting contacts.

Except that he doesn't actually address the question of the stock of time across diverse groups. The only times that were addressed were those of optimized groups even though merit awards aren't determined by the maximum efficiency but rather by the average efficiency as determined by the devs actually getting that information from the servers. As I have been saying since the very beginning of this argument, bringing up a single completion times does not represent an accurate average whatsoever for merit awards. The devs do not use a single completion time to determine the reward of a TF/SF. They use a compilation of every completion and then arrive at a conclusion from there.

Now, if you want to make a case that there is a problem with the accounting of variance in the completion times of TFs and SFs, I might have to agree (from what I've seen, SFs have much lower variance in completion times so the theoretical opportunity to be more efficient is lower), though I'd want to get that information from the devs rather than from anecdotal evidence. Of course, when you're assuming for variance, you also have to realize that this means that, while you have less chance (assuming standard probabilities of arriving anywhere within the normal curve) of being more efficient, you also have less chance of being less efficient, which actually occurs with relative frequency for blueside tasks. Variance is not a one-way phenomenon: in order to be able to optimize for greater efficiency, it has to be possible but difficult to do things faster than average while substantially more common to run longer than average. Variance such as this means that the average group is going to get less than the desired merit award while skilled groups are going to get more than the desired merit awards.

Umbral you could not be more right about the variance, being a heavy TF participant, since I do depend on merits to buy the recipe I want, I can tell that variance for blue side for TFs is quite a bit looser than SFs.

Take Positron, when done with 3 people with stealth, it can be done in a mere 90 minutes or less, I done it. Normally in a decent PUG it takes about 150 minutes, take a not so good group you are talking about 210 minutes. When devs allegedly claim that we should earn 1 merit per 5 min, the 66 from Positron would indicate a mission duration of 66*5=330 min as the expected length for it, of course there are modifiers to make Positron appealing due to length, I believe its a 20% bonus, so the mission expected duration would be about 270 min. Still well over the top from average not so good PUG time.

When you go to red, as you mentioned Umbral, the red metrics were likely taken when a great deal of speed players were zooming thru the SFs,and the database became quite biased. Red side did not have a rich historyy track as the blue side to achieve a reasonable mean time to do the TF. As a result, the average PUG doing an SF do not get to break even with the merit each 5 minutes, and the overall merit yield for the effort is thus depressed.

Another problem red side, which is not entirely a dev fault, is the time it takes to form an SF versus TF, the time differential is quite marked and is really a population issue more than anything else, besides the point that doing SFs for merits is kinda pointless in many instances. This may be a reason why villains favor ITF and LGTF so much, they lack the SF penalty (ha ha ha).

Hugs

Stormy

Don't let the redside door hit you in the backside on the way out.

Goodbye, and have fun in Atlas Park.

Just because you're leaving doesn't mean the rest of us shouldn't get improvements to redside.

Already voiced my concerns on most of this.

But it's 1 merit per 3 minutes, not 5.

-Rachel-

IIRC, it used to be 1 merit for 5 minutes (12 merits/hour), but then the reward scale was updated to 1 merit for every 3 minutes (20/hour), though many people still confuse the two because of confusion between converting between base 60 (hours) and base 100 (percentile). I have to correct myself quite often when giving pug groups expected completion times because I often find myself quoting the 1:5 ratio rather than the 1:3 ratio out of habit.

Sweetie, I was being sarcastic.

The problem I see in this thread is the total lack of integration into trying to fix red. all i see ia a few posters trying to submit an idea and then get shut down without a suggestion on how to make it work.

It is true, that since fixes to the red side that matters will not happen any time soon, it is practical for me to simply move my alts blue side, take advantage of a more mature zone's features to get my villains appropriately IO set built, and then when the devs eventually do something with red side to make it worth my effort to return, to return.

I have posted in other threads, of my concern that with GR that the mass exodus to Blue will far exceed the trickle cross-over from blue to red, that Red is likely to become "lame duck" and the issues red is experiencing now, will get far worse. I was hoping thru this thread that ideas and solutions could be shared with devs to help keep the red side viable.

Hugs

Stormy

actually i gave a legit idea on how to improve the choices for red side. just like every other time anything is brought up for red side. it's called more content for red while revamping some of the blue content.

Interesting discussion. I think that people have forgotten the original metrics of SFs and TFs benchmarking.

Originally there was no big reward for running a task force. A badge, a souvenir and a SO were all to be had. People didn't have a desire to run multiple TFs, let alone speed them. They complained.

Strike Forces were designed to appease people by making SFs shorter so people wouldn't have to take breaks in order to finish a long series of missions.

After recipes were added, Villains actually were at an advantage since a rare recipe drop was the reward for a strike force/task force completion, regardless of SF/TF duration. This led to speedy TFs and SFs, especially KHTFs and Edens.

Now that SF/TF rewards have changed to be duration based, strike forces suffer in comparison because historically SFs were sped through to get the drop (dropping the time metric), and there are fewer strike forces in general.

What I'd like to see is the development of Strike Forces based on Ghost Widow, Scirocco and Black Scorpion.

While I think that villain content is much better in writing, I think it is also harder to get a Villain concept going that is rated "Teen" friendly. Parts of the Vanguard stories and most of the midnighter arc is evidence of the shoe-horned nature of villain content lately. This leaves villains feeling gypped. Heroic motivations are easy. Villain motivations not so much unless you want to make them insane.

Eg. Barracuda Strike Force: When Mueller rescues Reichsman, he refuses to reward Mueller and pops everyone instead. Why keep the villains alive and kill Mueller?

I'm just hoping the villain writing gets back to the level of Westin Phipps. Now there's a Strike Force I would do...instead we'll probably get ebil emo vampires for the next Strike Force.

Damnit, we really need a sarcasm font

I agree on several points. I'm just getting tired of the blueside players saying "Nothing needs to be fixed on redside because Going Rogue is coming out", when nothing could be further from the truth. There are many of us that have no intention of becoming Rogues, Vigilantes, or Heroes.