new posi TF review/merit whine

Sticking it in here because the merit part makes it semi-relevant. =P

As I've said over and over again, my game time is very restricted and even when it wasn't I rarely had the stretch of time necessary to invest in a TF, especially the old tedious ones.

Last night I popped in with my ar/dev to tend his bids before bed and got an invite to run the newfangled Posi. I decided to make a late night of it and signed up.

The TF itself was great fun- cool maps, not too much travel time, some neat game mechanics. We had a weird team consisting of a human form Kheld, two tanks, two scrappers and two blasters. We basically steamrolled everything until the Save Atlas Park mission where our lack of support finally caught up with us. Fighting dopplegangers was fun, although I'd suggest they make them gray instead of pure black- we couldn't tell who was who, aside from my blaster because he wears a giant hat. Also someone ventured too close to the 'boss room' and triggered Azuria's cutscene in the middle of a heated fight in the rotunda, which resulted in a team wipe (well, except for the kook who wandered off, of course they lived).

So, it took us a couple of hours and I enjoyed the gameplay quite a bit. I don't team much and it was amusing to be reintroduced to the vagaries of PUGs.


I really, really dislike the fact that you can plug a few hours into a TF and not get a recipe roll out of it. I got 11 merits, which will get me a cup of coffee if I pitch in three bucks of my own. And this is where someone chimes in with "well, you should have run the Imperious Task Force"...but I thought the idea behind merits was to make *all* the TFs 'worth' running instead of everyone just hammering the same one over and over because it was efficient.

anyway, I didn't run it for the merits and I had a lot of fun, but I'd have preferred a recipe roll at the end.

Also, why can't we mail merits to ourselves? I have probably a dozen characters with these piddly little piles of merits, useless by themselves but worth a couple of rolls if I could pool them in one spot.

Anyway, thanks for listening to my whine.
And go run the new Posi, it's fun even without a recipe roll.

A couple hours for 11 merits seems like a bad bargain.

Then there is part 2 also. I have yet to run either of them yet.

First, I agree that 11 merits is too low. However, the Devs appear to set the merits based upon the amount of time that a really good team can do the TF. That's why things like the Eden Trial and the Katie Hannon TF have so few merits -- people figured out ways to run these really, really fast.

In the second half, you go up against an AV. That one is 15 merits.

The old Positron was 66 merits. You can still do the old one via Ouroborus, but it now gives only 40 merits. On the other hand, you can now solo it.

There is something I've been saying regarding the self-reinforcing effect of the way merit rewards are assigned to tasks: "When only speed runners find running a TF worthwhile, only speed runners will run a TF." I don't have a problem with speed runners per se, but the value of merits is clearly outweighing the value of the rewards that can be obtained by clean-sweeping a TF. The reason why the popular TFs reward so many merits is because they're seen as worth the time even if you're slow, which makes slow teams want to run that TF, which keeps the average completion time high, which keeps the rewards high. Conversely, unpopular TFs have low rewards compared to the time investment for a slow team, so slow teams avoid them, so the completion times are set by speed runners, so the rewards stay low. I'd guess that "enough merits for a recipe roll" is a critical threshold with regards to dividing TFs into the worth-doing-slow or speed-run-only categories. If TFs were rejiggered to reward at least one recipe roll's worth of merits if clean-swept (via optional clear-all objectives or the like), this effect would be ameliorated, without removing the option for skipping objectives, speeding up the run, and still ending up with a superior reward/time.

I think I've said this before, but if I had my druthers, I'd do the following things with respect to merits (ordered from least to most likely to draw ire):
1. Allow players to set the level that they'd like to roll recipes at.
2. Earned merits go into an account-wide pool.
3. Eliminate the option to purchase specific recipes with merits.
4. Force random rolls whenever the random roll merit threshold is reached through an immediate reward selection popup.

I'd just like to add that, rewards concerns aside, the new Posi I and II are both excellent TFs and lots of fun in their own right. I have played them once already and will happily play them again.

I agree with the merit count. Running both halves of the new Posi is faster than running the old one was and much simpler and easier since your not running to just about every zone in the lower game but dropping from 90+ merits to 26(for completing both halves) seems very low. I've done a number of the Posi sets now and the average time I've seen is about 90 minute or so for each half. I've also done the OLD Posi and with NON speed runs was able to complete that in less than 4 hours. The huge drop in merits foir essentially 1 hour less time invested does seem extreme especially since I can do a Synapse in under 2 hours and make 58. Granted now both halves essentially keep you in one zone, part 2 does run one mission in Steel before moving to Faultline, but the two halves combines run you through 14 missions (including talk tos) and the old Posi was 17 (including talk to mission and 2 patrols). A drop of close to 70 merit for doing 3 less mission in around one hour less time is pretty extreme

Now unless they changed it there is a way, even with them all in black, to determine who is who when facing your clones. They actually have titles above their heads and those pretty much mirror your title as well.. right dow to the SG you belong to. Okay so if your on an all SG team or NO one on the team belongs to any SG it may be tougher but I was able to locate my clone each time using that method. LOL

Hey goat,

if you know in advance of an available time that you would want to run Posi II, I'd be happy to get a team going on Triumph and invite you along for the ride.

This week however would be impossible for me. Computers will be packed up tomorrow for a house move

As a speed runner who used to take purpled out fire blasters and sometimes my DM/SD for a posi run most times would be around 1:00 - 1:20, and at the end I'd be left with 2 sets of 66 merits unless I gave the other spot to someone who wanted the badge. It wasn't something I ran all the time because really, it was a pain even at that speed. Low levels, lots of running around, etc etc.

I was hoping for an improvement with the new Version. So far its been a massive disappointment, for run times? After doing it about 4 times (1 to check it out, a few to finish off TF commander) I've found my times to be around 27-37 minutes for the first part and 30-35 for the second. So I can just about match the old times, with encounters that are to me much more difficult, for much less rewards. I think I missed the part where it was balanced.

Part one with the ambushes outside of City Hall, it was fine solo (Set for 2 obviously) not easy, but inspirations always help. Set for 5 people? What a nightmare, wiped... then the ambushes all spawned leaving around 8 Ruin mages with a pile of spec demon lords and who knows what else. So after more than a few inspiration loads we got past all of them (Its awesome to see that many stacked debuffs at level 15)

The Boss spawn, again.... I'm not complaining about it being difficult. But it is *much* more difficult than anything the previous posi offered. (not a problem... wait for it) For Significantly Less reward. (There it is)

Running through the second part, not too bad again travel times are nice until you get to the last mission. Inside the Dam I was getting multi boss spawns with only 2 people on the TF. Again 2 ruin mages + a handful of minions + a handful of LT's (Spec demon lords with the tohit debuff aura, wooo) Even if it was set for the full three people I started it with, the encounter is much more difficult for much lower rewards. Then of course... the AV.

Throwing the AV in, no big deal. Throwing an AV that runs like crazy and either spawns or calls nearby ambushes at again... level 15? For a reduced reward. Is kinda dumb.

I'm not saying I mind a challenging encounter... I just expected to be rewarded for completing it. The old posi was easier, took less time, and offered a much better reward for the time you needed to invest.

I've only run the first part of the new Posi, but as far as TFs go it was fun. I'm thinking (hoping, really) when GR launches we'll see a new wave of merit reward adjustments, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it'll get bumped up.

Basing rewards on datamining without having the data to mine is tricky. Presumably, the current Posi merit awards are based on run times on test, with a fudge factor to take account of the fact that times usually drop as players find ways to speed up. I expect, as happened across the TFs and arcs before, that the merits will get a tweak once there's a more solid set of data to draw on.

I've decided the best part of the new Posi TFs is the old one is in Ouros so I can solo it.

New posi rewards seem to be about in line with where they should be. There is almost no travel time involved the new one, there doesn't seem to be the chance for getting several truly horrible maps on the new one that the old one had.

If you do the new one with a team that can properly handle its bottlenecks you should be able to do both parts in much less than an hour and a half.

Seems inline, then again I said that when i first saw the tf.