The Impossible Mr. Trapdoor and Issue 19's New Theme

That's pretty much my experience as well. One of the reasons I like zone events and ship raids better than TFs is because randomly flailing around is generally an acceptable strategy for those.

I can relate to this, too. I've had pretty good luck with the LGTF, but I've been on as many failed ITFs as successful ones. And the handful of STFs and LRSFs I've tried have all been a bust. I won't say that they necessarily require specific powers to succeed, but they clearly require something that I don't have much of.

I realize Venture already addressed this, but I'm pretty sure that a random NPC in Talos Island occasionally advertises the market merger.

It's possible to look over the building and down on the ground to see if there's a nanite patch in front of the door before entering. If there is, simply wait to enter, and in the meantime tell your teammates to keep the fight away from the door. I tell this to every Apex team I'm on, and they generally go smoothly.

Mind you, I've complained pretty vociferously about Trapdoor in the other threads. I do not feel the same way about Apex and Tin Mage - quite the opposite in fact, I find them to be fun and exciting, and not at all frustrating when on a team of people with the will to succeed. But that there is the key - losing the will to succeed is the fastest way to utterly sink an attempt at any TF. I was on a team that got Battle Maiden to 25% with very little trouble once, and then a few small mistakes were made and half the team wiped, and after this, the team became utterly convinced the fight was impossible.

The team broke 5 minutes later without completing the TF.

Mind you, I actually think that Apex is the better of the two new TFs. Tin Mage is much more similar to the stuff we're used to, just with bigger numbers.

I did ITF the other night with a Storm Summoning defender as the lone support character for what was otherwise a team of nothing but scrappers, blasters, and VEATs. We cleared it in just barely over an hour, all the while pulling ridiculous antics like kiting Romulus all the way across the map into the valley near the entrance and fighting him alongside the spawns there.

And this was a PuG.

Now, this criticism CAN be leveled accurately at the LGTF, where the Weakened Hamidon is somewhere between inordinately hard and impossible if your team lacks a controller or dominator.

Honoree is really annoying when he does this. A Vengeanced Bobcat in Tin Mage can do it too, and it's just as annoying (I don't have any idea if she does it when she's fought normally; I've honestly never run Tin Mage WITHOUT doing the Kitty's Got Claws requirements.)

This. And what Heraclea has been going on and on about attitude in all her posts. The biggest thing that kept me subscribing for six years to CoH was the friendliness of the community and the inclusivity of its philosophy. Raids? New hamidon is the perfect example - take anyone, everyone plays an important part.

I watched the introduction of loot with a sinking heart - with IOs, came greed. People stopped being heroes, stopped giving away influence, and became merchants. They do this because the game design prompts them to, and rewards them for that attitude.

Then came the STF and LRSF. With it came more elitism, more pickiness about powersets, etc. Yes, the community has adapted to them. But it's gotten more ugly as a result. L2P is the common attitude, or more nicely and diplomatically, "hey, adapt and get used to it. It's -really- not that hard, you can do this and that, blah blah, etc." The separation has started. Not everyone discriminates against a character only in SOs, but a few have begun to, and people don't shout them down anymore in favor of inclusivity, they just shrug.

Teams have lost the united feeling. People are soloing in their IO'ed builds in a team, zooming off in different directions because they can. Hey, watch my soft-capped defence pwn this spawn of 8! WOOT, I got a purple drop (link link link). Count how many incarnate shards I got this mission ("I'm uber because the RNG gave me so many" is the implication.)

And now Tin Mage and Apex throw in a hardcoded gimmick, FORCING people to turn away anyone not alpha slotted. Even the nicest guy is reduced to "Hey, uhh, we are really really sorry, we feel hopelessly bad about this, but you can't play until you get the alpha slot, cos of the design of the TF." And trust me, not everyone communicates so nicely. It is dev and game design-prompted elitism (if that's too strong a word for you, call it a separation and division of the playerbase into the haves and have-nots, the can-dos and the can't dos).

That is my concern. It has begun a long long time ago. I took a very long break away from this. But the more this game changes to resemble every other MMO out there, in design and in community, the sadder I feel, it's just not the same community anymore.

P.S. For the record, I have alpha slotted, and I have run Apex and Tin Mage. I happen to have the reflexes and situational awareness to dodge the patches, and I don't find the TFs so bad personally. (Though I have taken to camping out on my dark def because she just seems the safest to handle any AV and any gimmick successfully - yay for -regen and being ranged.)

But the very fact that I have to sit here and qualify this in order to deflect the automatic impulse of those-who-can to assume that I can't, is what saddens me.

Haven't done it in a while, but that MM in my sig has never been on a failed ITF and 99% of my TF runs are PUGs.

Dunno where you are, but I constantly get people asking if anyone needs "XXX recipe I just got;" the other day, someone walked up to me and gave me 5M inf because they liked my costume. I will admit that many people are being market monopolists, and that **** needs to stop. Manipulating the market is greed of the worst kind.

Once again, why even team with those people? You know who needs to L2P? Team leaders who think they need an emp. You know what I always look for because it makes things easier? A sonic, to cage GW and the ACC tower to make the tank's life better. But, I'm not going to turn someone away because they aren't a sonic. Or turn them away because they are an Ice Tank.

Having said that, adapt and play. You can't say people are elitist and then say you don't want to adapt to new things; that's classical elitism. I'd never, ever, ever turn someone away for only having SO's; hell, I'd probably send you a Steadfast KB IO if you were on a squishie. People who don't accept SO'd toons need to... say it with me now... L2P. (To be honest, I'd respect an SO'd only toon better :P )

However, people who refuse to even give the Inventions System a try because it seems soooooo confusing (and, hey, it can be) need to... everyone with me now! L2P


If you think that's bad, the full Incarnate branches are going to really piss you off.

The fact that you need the most very basic of the endgame content to run the most difficult TF's in the game is not elitism. Unlike IO's:

It is recommended you take part in the Incarnate System. This is not the invention system; the game will be made harder because of it. By the end of the Incarnate branches, regular newspaper mishes will probably be soloable by a Defender on +2/8 settings

Ran Imperious a few days ago with a bots mastermind and it was a nice brisk completion. My roommate ran one with a Ninja's Mastermind last night and they were also successful.

One of my MMs is a Dark Miasma too, and I had said when I bring my Darks, I win - so I'm not entirely convinced that another Dark Mastermind proves the point, as it might still be as much an issue of "Dark makes it work" as anything else.

Well, as i've mentioned in a few places, the majority of my TFs are wholly or in part PuGs. That ranges from "bring whatever you want" to "one or two support would be good if anyone wants to bring one." i've been on several ITFs with Masterminds, but none of mine have gotten high enough level to run one. Honestly, i see more Stalkers on ITF teams than Masterminds, but i've never seen an ITF with a Mastermind fail.

It does help that most of the people i team with frequently tend to play support/force multiplier ATs like Controllers, Masterminds, Defenders, and Corruptors; so it's unusual for us to have no support ATs on the team unless we're specifically building for it.

Then again on one occasion i managed to lead a PuG ITF to victory after the leader and half the team (including the Tanker) quit after the leader's directions repeatedly got the team wiped against Rommy and the Kooshies. And he'd worked so hard at building the team to his specs and trying to micromanage everything everyone did. To be fair, i did summon a Shivan and an HVAS as substitutes for the four who had quit, and it did take a while, but we finished it.

Moo,

Can I "Like" your post?

'Cause I like it. Thanks for the vote of confidence and speaking out against people who want an "I Win" button. I wasn't too proud to ask for help against Trapdoor the...um...4th time I went up against him, and I got some new in-game friends in the bargain (much love, Lion Seed!).

Now granted I haven't tried him since the patch (which is still loading for me now), but I'm sure I could figure out a way to beat him eventually...and in my book "asking for help" is a definite "way to beat him".

It's nice when the bar gets raised...especially on stuff that's supposed to be our much desired "end game content".

Because I PUG and am in favor of inclusivity, so I see all sorts. The good and the bad. The separation of us vs them is what I am always wary of CoH heading down that road. I'm not in favor of dismissing anybody because they don't play like me.

But if the community 'feel' ends up shifting to selfishness instead of encouraging and nurturing, then it becomes much less attractive for me to bother with teaming or playing the game. Used to be I would get an 80-90% good PUG, now it's 50-60% chances. If it drops any further, I'll be even sadder.

I've been in several ITF's with my bots/traps MM without any problems, and I've put together a couple all-mastermind ITF runs on Protector that went off without a hitch...

Does she have an Unstoppable that caps her DR to some damage types, then? I've never noticed it, but that might only mean we've had enough debuffs and/or "correct" damage types.

Edit: By the way, if you're dealing damage to which the Honoree has 100% resistance, you actually don't get any damage float text. That can be hard to notice in a high-gear 8-man team, but it's how I noticed this eventually. I really start to notice it if I an playing somthing that can crit, scourge, assassin strike, or whatever. You see, you get that message ("CRITICAL") and no attendant damage numbers, which has a slap-in-the-face feel to me when I know what it means in this case.

What server are you on? I can hold your hand through a PUG ITF if you like - they're really not that hard

Some of my characters

A) I don't PuG. I play with my VG.
B) I play villains. You don't like villains.
C) I don't need hand-holding. I can massacre the ITF as well as anyone else. I just have to bring my Dark Miasma characters.

Then how do you know PUG ITFs are hard?

You know the ITF ius co-op, don't you?

In other words, you do have trouble with the ITF

Lately I've been playing my DM/Inv Scrapper with the Siphon Life > Smite > Midnight Grasp > Smite attack chain. It's no wonder why I wouldn't notice an untouchable message. Two of the attacks are pure Negative Energy and the third is a combination of Smashing/Negative Energy.

Sorry if you had crappy ITFs, but I honestly haven't failed one since it's early inception. The only real rule to ITFs is "No Carrion Creepers for Healing Nictus to leech." Though that rule is moot if multiple Colds or Poisons are on the team, -Heal is a handy debuff.

Unless the Mastermind user just sucks in general, every MM secondary brings something to the table.

Dark - you already know this.
FF - can cap/near cap player defense
Pain - heals, +res +dam +tohit +regen +recov buffs, def/res debuff
Poison - a big middle finger to whatever Rommy has
Storm - tohit/res/def debuffs, slows, res/def buff
Thermal - heals, +res +tohit +dam buffs, regen/def/res debuffs
Traps - FF Gen and Poison Trap, nuff said
TA - all it does is debuff

The only thing that can cause a failed ITF is a bad team/bad players and IMO, there's no excuse for a team to fail the ITF anymore with the presence of a inspiration vendor in the "hospital"

Ah, L2P. Such a simple and easy thing to fall back on, isn't it?

Are you assuming I'm telling you to "L2P?" If that's all you got out of my post, then I can't help you.

Actually, I'm assuming you're telling my VG-mates to L2P, since I've already stated my own ability to complete the ITF. Regardless of what you think you were saying, the message you did convey was "if you fail the ITF, it's because you (or the people you are with) are bad at this game", which is, in essence, "you (they) need to learn to play".