What do you mean a Task Force only takes 2-3 hours now?

Ok so since coming back I've been thinking about getting a group of friends together to run some drunken Task Forces on saturdays like we used to do. I like a long TF maybe an ITF so my Invuln Tanker can feel uber, or Posi for my lower level toons or if I am feeling particularly malicious and sadistic I would start up a Lady Gray. However I've heard through the grapevine that Missions have been cut out of the Task Forces and they have been made shorter and easier.

WHAT?!?!?!

I enjoy ordering take out and drinking to much on a saturday afternoon, cracking bad jokes at the expense of the NPC on ventrillo, getting to the point of exhaustion where you have a personal vendetta against the main boss because the darned thing has put you through 8 hours of the same map only to not die when you hit the SOB with all your teams worth in the face, I miss the sleep dep and Saki fueled strangeness that ensues when waiting outside of the mission door.

How can I enjoy the epic grueling battles, how can I become engaged in the thrilling story if I'm not dragging a team of eight through hell, legionaries, clockwork, and Rikti to the point of exhaustion?!

I want my day long Task force back damn it!

Even two years ago I don't recall a single TF taking an entire day unless you count Storm Palace which I personally never managed to get through because people would keep LDing or something.

It's not the length in my opinion that makes the epic feel, but the action that takes place. ITF is fun as hell.

Ok so I'm over exaggerating the time, but the point still stands, I like the grind I want harder missions and maps Not easier ones! I've been playing this game for to long now to enjoy anything easier. I want to be forced to use tactics. Yes an ITF is hella fun (pets Seri in her Roman gladiators armor) but really cutting out missions and making them easier just kills the thrill for me.

Tactics? The TFs before didn't require tactics. The only thing they had going for them was being stupidly long and maybe having an OP enemy group.

Now they aren't stupidly long, still don't require tactics, and still might have an OP enemy group.

I suppose the only thing you could say tactics to are the STF/LRSF...Even the shadow shard TFs didn't take tactics; only a days worth of your time.

I do believe that even ITF required a small amount of tactic. Every team I lead, I always insisted on having a defense debuffer. More particularly, a Rad def/corr. Helped even more when I was playing my kin def.

Posi was made infinitely better by getting rid of the endlessly repeating missions. If you really, really want a grind, it's still there...Quaterfield, anyone? (Which was made shorter merely by virtue of having more options for getting around, without dropping any of the mission tedium.) Or you could just do...the TF two or three times in a row? Two different TFs?

Its not about the grind though, its about the feeling of accomplishment, its about the flow of the story, and its about camaraderie that comes from spending time with the same group of peeps to the point of mutual understanding and hilarity ensuing.

I mean if I just wanted a grind I'd go to the AE or something, I can do that I got my first Brute 1-50 on a double xp weekend 2 days no problem, but thats not the point. The point is yes I understand theres an influx of new players and you need to make the game fun for all levels of skill but come on! dont take away all of the challenge!

The vast majority of the TFs haven't really been touched since they were added. The LGTF and ITF should both be pretty much exactly as you remember them, though ITFs in general tend to go more quickly now that most people have the tactics down. The Posi TF was revamped and split into two pieces, but I can't think of anything else that has been changed.

Oh, I forgot one other in my earlier post--the Operative Renault Strike Force had two missions deleted from it at some point. Other than those (Renault and Positron,) TFs have pretty much gone untouched.

My suggestion...kill all on the map, don't take short cuts, and maybe even play it with substandard builds!

Doc Q still tends to take quite a bit of time.

LGTF can take awhile if you kill all instead of letting rescue targets die or teleporting everything about.

Another one: Try and do the LGTF using spike damage instead of holds on the weakened Hami! >.>

BB your avatar is freakin me out man...:shudders:

Well here's what happened:

Rewards.

When IOs were introduced, you got a chance for "one of the good ones" to be dropped at the end of a TF. Almost immediately, people started looking for the shortest TFs to play and how to do them the most efficiently. Eden and Kattie Hannon became immensely popular for this reason, they could both easily be done in under 20 minutes.

So then the devs turned around and introduced Merits. They took away the chance for a reward drop and instead assigned a point value to every tf and storyline in the game, based on inherent difficulty and average completion time. Katie and Eden were no longer worth a reward roll, so people stopped doing them, instead focusing only LONGER TFs with higher rewards and finding out the best way to complete them in the shortest amounts of time.

Shadow Shard Tfs are still considered not worth it due to length. Khan and the New Posi are too short to give decent rewards. The ITF, which stymied people at first, can now be blazed through for a random roll with just a little left over. A good team can do the same thing to the LGTF and STF and get a good time/merit ratio.

And so now that's what people are used to. They want a reward for the time invested in doing a task, and they want their reward as quick as possible.