Dr Quatermaine TF - What My SG Mates Had to Say...

We ran the Dr. Quarterfield TF for the very first time ever this weekend, and as a team full of 5+ year veterans, here's how everyone chose to score it (10 being highest):



Do you *think* that maybe, just maybe... this TF could get a major overhaul? Nearly 10 missions out of 25 had the same map, same villains and the same glowies in EXACTLY the same place - AND NO BOSS IN THE FINAL MISSION (which for some strange reason finished up in Oranebega which made absolutely NO sense)! That was reason enough to call this the WORST TF in the history of CoH.

Please take the time to refresh/revamp this TF - if not the whole Shadow Shard. We love Rularuu and they're a great enemy to fight but TFs like this just don't do them justice. Thanks.

It's Quaterfield, not Quatermaine.

i think shadow shard revamp and/or expansion has been asked for many times now lol

You have to remember that the Shadow Shard TF's were originally focused on the multi-day event styling of other MMO's. It wasn't ever designed to be completed in a day.

That being said, yes, the subject of revamping the Shadow Shard comes up roughly once every two weeks. The developers just haven't had time to sit and "vet" the content for a revamp.

That being said, I wouldn't mind being given a shot at re-writing the Shard events for updated encounters... *raises a mug* Here's hoping I get a phone call or email inviting me out to California for an interview...

I have no idea how people did this back when DCing meant you "quit" the team. The only way I did it was by getting a group via the server forums when the servers were much higher population.

I'm almost scared to try it again...

I've done this TF a grand total of once. It was our annual "we have no place to go and/or can't get a sitter" New Year's Eve event. I was drinking, that's the only way I made it through the whole thing. It was also the year the self-rez holiday temp power was introduced, we got a little slap-happy and started doing kamikaze runs as soon as those things recharged.....

I'm guessing the person who gave it a 10 was either suffering from a bout of tedium-induced temporary insanity or they really really needed the merits.

I've done Quaterfield at least 8 times (it could quite possibly be more) and can honestly say that it doesn't deserve quite the reputation it has. It deserves to be called the longest and quite possibly most repetitive TF in the game, but it's not as bad as most first timers think. With a decent team that knows how to navigate the shard and use/abuse teleporters and other in game travel mechanics, you can easily finish Dr. Q in under 4-5 hours.

That said, I would fully support a Shadow Shard revamp and a revamp of all of the Shard TFs (which are remarkably repetitive and involve way too much zone travel, especially when you're having to tag 12 different patrol points scattered through the largest zones in the game just so you can get to a door mission that takes 15-20 minutes at most). Of course, the devs have pretty much said "no" because they'd rather make new zones rather than revamp old ones (not entirely something I agree with, but, whatever).

I find it truly sad that the most original and interesting content in the entire game is seen by so few people. I've had friends try out the game for a month, running around every zone and doing all kinds of content, and it's not until they enter the Shard that they truly become awestruck by its scale, its lore, and its incredible aesthetic. It scares me to say it, but the Shard was one of the best things that Cryptic ever did for this game, and nothing since then (with either development staff) has really come to equal it. I'm always saddened by the fact that so many of the people I see in game in various global channels have never set foot in, much less seen the Shard, but it always warms my heart to see them stand stunned in amazement when they first enter and exclaim that this is the most incredible thing they've seen in game. It's even funnier when I tell them that the Shard has been sitting here virtually untouched since being put in game back Sept 2004. I don't think anyone that's been in the zone thinks that it doesn't deserve to be revamped and given a spotlight as the only really original lore/zones/enemies in CoX.

I have had fun on this TF, but mainly because of the groups I was with. I would give this a 3/10 but only because the enemy group is actually, legitimately difficult. If someone were to slash out 2/3rds of the missions at random I doubt if anyone could even tell on the story front, because the story is basically "go kill some rularuu and then grab some glowies."

If nothing else the change that is needed is the contact giving out his phone number after the first mission. I think right now it happens on the 7th or 8th mission? Luckily you can jump off an island and then get tp'ed back, but I mean, really.

The Quaterfield TF isn't so much bad, it's boring. The souvenir you get is pretty much all the evidence you need to tell how boring it is. "Then you raided the first lab. Then you raided the second lab. And THEN... You raided the third lab." I don't know who was tasked with writing out mission sequences back in 2004, but I hope he got fired or tasked with something else, because the amount of dead air present in anything trans-dimensional is just staggering. 90% of Maria Jenkins' arc is spent looking at this screen: "I'm sorry, but your Statesman is in another castle!" and most of Unai Kemen's arc is spent investigating Dimensions 1, 2 and 3, several times over. Not even the DAY 1!!! content is quite this boring and dead.

The Shard, as it stands right now, is a monument to terrible, misunderstood design. It is THE largest, most expensive, most creative wastes of resources and investment in the entire game, and all of that is down to a single reason - it was created to ape "other MMO" end game raid grinds, though at the time "other MMO" was usually EQ or DAOC or SWG. I suspect EQ, though, with their Planes of Whatever. It's built on the notion that all anyone should be doing after 40 is massive time-sink max-size-team long, repetitive encounters day after day after day with the story being largely irrelevant.

The Shard HAS to be revamped with lessons learned since. Give it some story arcs. In fact, render the old TFs as story arcs. For the most part, they are. Give it more contacts, give it more story, extend the Mole Points system and get rid of the cop-out teleporters, mark the vertical-shooting geysers, then add a few NEW TFs that have to do with Rularuu the Raveger, himself. The Cathedral of Pain is a good idea in that regard, but a few smaller-scale ones would be fine, too. Just make sure people have reason to go there by themselves.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

To bad the EATs came along after the Shard. It would have been pretty cool if the Shadow Shard had been the Kheldian home dimension (would have required a bit different background and I suppose that would have boned some of the Coming Storm stuff, but Khelds would have been well adpated to the place considering thier natual ability to teleport and fly.

I love the Shard and its task forces, but I wish they would get revamped too, maybe make them cross-faction, and less like a series of radio missions. I try to run the Shard TFs on all my characters but it can be a struggle to fill teams.

For the very first 2XP weekend, we did 3 of the SS TFs in 19 hours - but the 4th broke the will of most of the team to go on

I think the original posters point is so blatently obvious, most people wont even bother to psot to agree with it.

That is the problem with MMO's though, they spend a lot of time adding new and amazing stuff, adding better tech, raising the standard and the bar....

...but then forget about all the old crap and leave it as a horrible experience.


For example, I have been trying to get my brother back into the game. I keep telling him how it has changed and how much it has improved, yet he makes a new character and begins to play the first 10 levels and gets bogged down in "Kill 10 Lost or Kings Row" or "Visit that cop guy in Hollows" or "Kill 10 Circle of Thorns mystics in Perez Park" or "Speak to the Steel Canyon Security Chief". or "Speak to the Boomtown Security Chief" or...do I really need to go bloody on??

Granted, Going Rogue will be a great boon for this issue, and I don't want to see the devs spend 9 months revisiting all old content whilst giving us nothing else to do. Yet in my mind, I can't think why this stuff is just blatently abandoned. I don't want a huge revamp, but why not cull some of the god awful missions that plague low level contacts and just tidy it up a bit??

I agree completely with the Shadow Shard stuff by the way. It should be opened up to Villains as well. But I would prefer to have low level stuff cleaned up first.

My one and ONLY Dr. Q run was... 5 years ago? Maybe 4... i lose track, but it wasn't all to long after it was added to the game... maybe 6 months tops. (had a hard time finding teams... then i found out why... lol)

It was...10 hours, give a take an hour. (9-11 IIRC. been along time ago) And frankly it was a misrable expearince. This was way back, before all the "short cuts" where added to the game in the form of pocket d porters, oro, mission recalls, and a jetpack dealer in the sharde itself. The travel times were mind boggleing for this game. The missions were boring and repteive... no AV as i recall... it just felt like the longest, PUG radio team EVER. I'm pretty sure we all stuck it out... I mean, after you've invested 6 hours your not about to just STOP. (or at least i wasn't) By the end we were all alittle snappy with eachother. It started out pretty light hearted, and by the end i think a few people wanted to kill eachother.... for verious reasons, none of which i clearly recall. Just little things exagerated by a 10 hour dragging TF.

I've never ran it again, dispite claims on my servers TF channel it can be done it 3 hours now a days. (I don't trust it... my luck is never that good...) And i never will unless it's required for something in the future, like an accolade or something. And if it ever gets tied to one, you'd better belive i'll be screaming bloody murder if it isn't revamped. (mainly at my screen as i trudge through it...)

As for the zone itself... the concept behind it is really cool. And the potental for an epic set of mission or a new raid against, prolly the biggest bad in the game, is awsome to think about. The devs really IMO need to give this zone some more love, maybe even make it coop for a new epic coop raid. But, at this point, with a whole NEW zone being added to the game that's one of the main focuses of GR itself... i don't see it happening.

The shadow shard is such an awesome place, but it just doesn't work the way it's currently designed, especially for task forces and missions.

-It's easily by far the biggest zone in the entire game.
-It has the least variety of enemies exempting the hami zones.
-The task forces make the most of the size of the zone, but this ends up just being tediouse kill x rularuu missions.
-the design means the only workable instance, outside of the spheres, is the large cave which makes the environment very bland and boring.

The concept has so much potential and so much room for improvement that it would be stupid not to revamp it. It could be made accessible from both hero and villain side so as to not make it just updating hero content, concidering the devs stated they were no longer making any side specific content.
(which i gather means they aren't going to remake something if it only effects one side and doesn't have something equal for the other side)

I think as it stands, the DrQ tf potentially sets such an nasty tone for the other shard tfs that finding folks who want to actually do them can be difficult. Put me in the camp of revamping the DrQ tf. The other shard tfs imo, don't really need to be though the hunts/missions can be repetitive just like the DrQ but you're not 'stuck' doing them for hours on end.

I'm not a hardcore badger (used to be) but I try to get all the accomplishment badges on all alts. I have several toons who have completed DrQ and all the rest of my 50s need only Portal Smasher.

The tf is such a time suck (about 5hrs average) when I run them that I simply don't have the time block to complete it in. I actually do like the other shard tfs but the DrQ gives the shard tf overall an underserved bad reputation.

Average time block from my perspective:
DrQuaterman: 5 hrs
Sara Moore: 2-2.5 hrs
Justin Augustine: 1.5-2 hrs
Faathim: 2.5 hrs

When I put together shard tfs, the most often things I've heard...
1) this is the first time I've been here, this place is beautiful
2) traveling can be teh suck here

I still hope that the shard can be put to better use as I think it deserves it. People on reputation alone avoid the shard because of the perceived difficulties in travel there without fly. The zones are a lonely place and they don't need to be.