TF/SF Idea - Divide and Conquer

Yesterday, I started thinking about what would make for difficult TF. How about one that required the team to split up and take a different path (like in the Reichsman TF) and then have different traps sprung or goals to accomplish (like the Hess TF).

After entering a certain map on the TF, you get to a a room that has multiple exits, but those exits have a force field or lasers or whatever that only allows certain ATs to get through while the others cannot go through. It's reminiscent of Arcade and Dr. Doom style traps that try to find the limits of their opponents.

A defender might need to keep a civilian alive, a scrapper might need to take down a steel door before being overwhelmed by large ambushes, a blaster might need to destroy high defense items that are far away through a barred cell door, etc.

Each member would need to finish their gauntlet to reunite and take on the final boss.

Sounds cool. The only problem with specific tasks is this: Different builds varry wildly in ability. Your FF/dark defender will be a different animal than my DP/TA defender. MY IO'd to the gills DM/SR scrapper can do far differently than someone else's DB/FA scrapper. You get the idea. In the end, you're basing the task on powers...powers a player is not guaranteed to have/have in supply to the task.

The other route is to base tasks on temp powers, as those you'll know how they work. It may be a safer approach than AT. (Especially when CoV/H's archetypes define ability so minimally.) As such, the player that clicks a console with a healing/shielding unit is tasked with protecting the scientist. (Or the player that agrees to protect the scientist gets said powers.) That way players can decide what they'd be best at, and take on those duties.

An addendum to the above, this brings to mind something I've always wanted to see: multiple team SF/TF arcs. The trick being that one team's progress may be dependent on another, so there's that problem to mitigate. But they've shown with the winter event that they can do multi-team instanced maps. Doing such would be a kick.

/derail

I know what you mean about the variety of strengths/weaknesses of different builds and different powersets. It's a hard design problem.

But that's why I think some fairly generic objectives should be doable by a wide variety of characters. You can keep a civilian alive by healing, by buffing, by debuffing, by mezzing, by taunting, or by annihilating the critters.

Similarly, the long range targets could be taken out by any character with some range attacks and tohit, even if some might require yellows. So blasters, doms, corrupters, defenders and even some melee characters would be able to do it.

Running the gauntlet of huge spawns to get to and break down a door can by done by anything that is used to mowing down large numbers of critters without dying. I've seen some builds of just about every AT that could do that.

Perhaps the Mission could have eight doors and everyone on the team has to pick a door. Clicking on the door would open up a dialogue box letting you choose one of the three (or more) options.

What I like most about City of Heroes is how there is generally no "need X". You can grab a bunch of friends or people and it doesn't matter what archetype or powers they have. What matters most is intelligence. Right now the only content that works significantly differently is the Barricuda TF and Hamidon raids. Sure, one could overpower either of them with incredible amounts of force. At the moment, off the top of my head, I can't think of anything else that really "needs something specific". I've done the RSF, the STF, the ITF, the LGTF and many other content with whoever is at hand and crazy combinations or teammates.

The TF you propose would not be something I would be interested in ever participating in. I understand that City of Heroes should cater to other players besides myself. I simply want to state that I would have no interest in participating in such a TF and have no interest in content that requires such things. I don't want content that specifically is engineered for or against specific archetypes.

I'm not trying to say that it has to be X AT, only that the team has to split up and accomplish individual goals.

As stated above, I think all sorts of ATs and powersets could accomplish a "keep the citizen alive" goal, or a "overcome overwhelming odds to reach the door" goal.

But if you don't like it, you don't like it.

I do like this idea in principle. Designing it to be both fair and fun would be a major challenge, however. There's a bit of this with the temp powers in the Barracuda Strike Force, but you're talking about actually separating the team, which takes things to a whole new level.

Let's look at some possible challenges for hero ATs first.

Tank:
This one is pretty straightforward. The tank's role is to run a diversion, pulling attention away from one or more other members of the team, or an NPC. My suggested encounter would be with a really big set of destructible doors and a bunch of (relatively) weenie mobs. The tank breaks down the front door while the rest of the team is sneaking in. (Bonus points if it happens on a narrow bridge over a chasm.) Maybe have doppelgangers of the teammates moving slowly through the encounter, and if the doppelgangers draw aggro, the rest of the team gets hit with an ambush.

Blaster:
Destroy something at range. Maybe the Blaster's route leads to a gun nest overlooking a courtyard surrounded by power-suppression projectors. The projectors can't be reached from below, and will make the team easy prey for the other machine gun nests/turrets. The Blaster is outside the field and must take out the projectors (and maybe the turrets) in order for the team to progress. The turrets can target the Blaster, so he'll need to use the cover of the nest to protect himself.

Controller:
There's a deadly (or just impassable), indestructible guardian blocking the way forward (giant robot, irradiated lizard, whatever). Fortunately, it's not invulnerable to mezzes (though it has some protection against them). The controller's route leads into a tunnel with a small grate providing access to the guardian's chamber. The guardian must be controlled for the team to proceed (hold, sleep, stun, or confuse).

Scrapper:
Kill stuff. The scrapper faces a gauntlet of the Big Bad's lieutenants (which are bosses/elite bosses) alone. Any that the scrapper doesn't kill will ambush the team--simultaneously--during the fight with the Big Bad.

Defender:
Here's the fly in the ointment. Defenders do different things, and they do them in more wildly different ways than the other ATs, so it's hard to come up with a one-size-fits-all challenge for them. The obvious choice is to have the Defender covering an NPC while the NPC does something else that takes time. The problem is making it possible for any Defender combo to do it without making it trivial. You can't require healing, or any particular type of buff or debuff.

The best I can come up with offhand is a series of ambushes coming after an NPC, balanced so that the NPC loses health steadily if unprotected. If the NPC's health drops below X%, he turns to fight or teleports away, and will start the task over when the current ambush is defeated or when his health returns to full. While working on the task, the NPC emits regular (but not overlapping) taunt pulses that cover the whole area. The Defender can protect him with buffs, with healing, by debuffing the ambushers, distracting the mobs between taunt pulses, or defeating or neutralizing the mobs. The Defender needs to reduce incoming damage to the NPC by 50% in order for the NPC to complete the task without being distracted.

Other pitfalls--

Obviously, if the team is missing an AT, there needs to be a way to bypass that AT challenge. That could present a way to cheese the system. What if you take an all-Defender team into the TF? You eliminate 4 out of 5 challenges.

What about extra members of an AT? What does the second defender do, for example, or the off-tank?

What about Kheldians? What's their job in this? They're designed, in theory, for versatility more than for a specific role.

Random thought--

Another touch I'd like to see in this: the TF contact accompanies you on the final mission, and provides the dialog options to split the team up in the mission map. Perhaps the contact is even the NPC the Defender has to protect.