Things I don't like about Alpha Strike

There's a lot to love about Alpha Strike. But it has also, not to put too fine a point on it, brought some floating turds to the surface of the CoX pond.

Lets get this first one out of the way:

- Phenomenal, God-like Power-- Astounding, Lemur-like Intelligence: The barrier for entry into the Incarnate club is currently pretty low, which is frankly as it should be since this is a game. That barrier currently includes willingness to participate in the weekly task forces. Since there are lots of... teamwork challenged... individuals out there who want the goodies and are willing to attempt to jump through the hoops, it means that there are lots of them suddenly working their way on to pick-up group and other taskforces. You can avoid this kind of taskforce pretty easily, and it wouldn't be so bad, except that at the other end of the spectrum, you find


- Speed Runs: Lots of people have lots of characters for whom they want the goodies. Since completion of the weekly task forces is currently the only way to get the t3 and t4 Alphas, these people are going to be doing those same taskforces pretty darn often. This situation is RIPE for breeding min-max play. "What parts of this can we skip to finish as quickly as possible?" This causes taskforces to become more boring, more repetitious, and more mechanical. Players tend to expect group leaders to know the methods for speeding a given taskforce. If you prefer not to speed through a taskforce, you can cause serious communication problems with players who've learned the Speed tactics to a tee.

For example, how many times have the thermal sisters been rescued in the last week compared to the number of times the mission has been purposefully failed?

Hopefully, both this issue and the previous will be alleviated somewhat when i20 brings some mechanic changes to the way characters can earn their Alphas. However, I can only see it exacerbating the


- Flood at the High End of the Market: For some time, the market had stabilized in a somewhat positive curve, with a few odd spikes. This was thanks to a steady introduction of low- and mid- level content, the ability of players to gain experience while exemped, and a few other key changes.

The shape of that curve has shifted dramatically and now resembles something more like what it looked like a few months after issue 9 came out. Since so many people are doing so much high-end content and dumping all the drops on the market, those high-level pieces are dropping dramatically in price. Meanwhile, low-level and mid-level pieces have risen dramatically in price.

This is going to get worse when people start farming their favorite level 50 -1x8 behemoth map for shard drops so they can get t3s and t4s without grouping.

But honestly, the market is secondary to the real game... putting your imaginary life on the line to save the world from the forces of darkness. Right?


- 'Hey, Give the Star to a 50+1 So They Have Their Level Shift. It's Safer and Easier That Way!': This has been happening more and more frequently to me. One thing that I have been enjoying about this particular week's task force is the noticeable rise in invasion events. They're not quite at Invasion Week level, but frequent enough that a lot of people are taking the opportunity to work on their badges and accolades.

The first thing that happens when a mid-level anything starts to try to form an event group is that the 50+1s immediately demand the star so they don't lose their level shift. Sometimes you can deal with this by selecting a 50 mission from their roster. Sometimes you can wait until the team is full and then pass the star. Frequently, however, it just doesn't work out and you have someone complaining and moaning that they have to fight even-con enemies.

Likewise, a LOT of the challenge of the high-level taskforces is simply not present for 50+1s. The obvious thing to do is to raise the difficulty level so that you're presented with at least the same challenge you were as before, if not more. Again, enough people want to min-max these taskforces that it's difficult to assemble a team willing to go for challenge. The risk*time/reward ratio is lowest at -1. You get more drops, more shards, and can blow through any given content in a fraction of what you would if you were fighting even-con enemies.

That very quickly becomes dull and repetitive, at least for me. It becomes easy farming for badge counts or drops. I know some people claim to enjoy in-game agriculture, but I've personally never been one for watching the grass grow.

To be fair, what really is so entertaining about cranking up the TF so that it's actually a challenge, fighting your way through (or whatever) all the challenges as pretty clearly intended, etc... when you're doing it for the 15th time?

I think this is something of a core point in your post. You personally don't like speed runs or foes being at -1, etc., but honestly, are you really going to enjoy the Kahn TF that much the 21st time you run it in a week, no matter how it's played?

As you say, though, that people will play the WSTs like this is basically a foregone conclusion. If you have more than a few 50s and you'd like the incarnate goodies on all of them, you're going to need to run a lot of the same TFs, and that's going to compel an awful lot of people to run them as fast as possible to get it knocked out on as many characters as possible. Like it or not, I don't think it can be avoided so long as Incarnate progress is attached to this mechanic.

I'm not sure I understand the bit about people wanting the 50+1 to have the star. More to the point, I'm not sure these people understand that they can keep their level shift down to level 45. If you have 50s on the team and they don't want to be exemplared down to level 35 or something, well I can't say I blame them, and that's really got nothing to do with level shifts - I didn't like it when that happened long before I19.

I understand your point about the Speed LGTF and letting the hostages die, however in game lore suggests that our characters are equipped with various teleportation tags. So why can't you slap a medical transporter on Infernia and Glacia before things get crazy?

As a matter of fact it's entirely your own fault that they die, since you never had the foresight to give them a medical transporter tag in case things get bad.

Shame on you.

There's a general impression of "I need to get all my 50's up to speed NOW because next issue, all this stuff will be obsolete and then I'll have to spend MORE time trying to get up to I19/20/21/22/etc standards while the finish line gets FURTHER away" that hasn't existed prior due to the easily attainable level cap and static nature of the game once you're there. I can't say it's a bad thing since most MMORPGs seem to run this way with level/gear/raid progression but it's certainly a change in the neighborhood.

No longer can you just hit 50 and casually work on your build or say "Time to start over!". Now you need to unlock that alpha, get your shards, work your way up to level shift, worry about whether you need your ultra-rare for the next tier of slots, and whatever comes after that. It seems to discourage some of the casual alting you'd see before, for better or for worse.

This is why I run the WST once. Once. It's funnerest that way.

Sure, if a bud asks for help I'll run it a second time. But what silly advantage do I gain by running it 10 times? Oh! I know! I get to run out of things to do quicker!!! Yes!

So many people are in a rush to get to the Pinnacle of power right now... to do... what? Farm more. Run the ITF six hundred more times.

Pehhhhhh. I'd rather systematically take my 50s through the Alpha Bamalpha stuff week by week and have something, anything to look forward to.

Faster is NOT better people. Faster means you are in game less. In game less means more real life. More real life? Yuck.

Okay, I speed run junk when I don't have the time, but when I do have the time, I watch what happens and take it all in.

Task Forces are a team sport. Team sports are funny. Some play for love of the game, some play to be the best, some play for a paycheck (rewards). I play to laugh at myself and other people. Why would I shorten that?

Alpha Strike has given me way more groups than I've ever had, doing way more things. I'm sold.

I think everyone should play like me.

The level 50 TFs that've been in the game for years don't present any kind of challenge anymore. If you turn the difficulty up to +4 and run it that way, the TF isn't really any more challenging; it just takes longer to complete than it would if you plowed through at even level. Nothing qualitative about the experience changes other than how long the mobs take to die. As far as I'm concerned, that isn't very much fun.

On the other hand, seeing how quickly you can blow through an ITF is kind of an enjoyable challenge. It encourages your group to think of new strategies for completing the content and about how the different members of the team work together. If the group figures out a new way to do something that speeds up the run, that's gratifying.

My personal record for the ITF is a little over 19 minutes, by the way (this is with a semi-regular group of folks.) I haven't bettered that number in a while (and we aren't really trying anymore either), but it's somethign more interesting than clearing the same spawns of romans the same ways for the millionth time.

There seems to be this impression that speed runs are the domain of powergamefarmers or whatever the term of art is these days, and I guess that's true as far as it goes, but they're also one of the last ways to make old content fun. The idea that "min-max play" is the least interesting way to play kind of makes me laugh. Min-maxing's about pushing limits and finding new ways to do things; the preferred alternative, apparently, is to run stuff the same way over and over.

Anyway. I also think it's dumb to render judgment on the effects of the WST when it's only been going on for three weeks and hasn't included a TF below 45-50 yet. A week of folks blowing through sister psyche over and over again should provide a bunch of low-level stuff to buy.

I think that folks who don't like speed runs should do the one thing that avoids speed runs - form your own teams, announcing when you recruit for them that they are NOT speed runs. That way you will be in charge, since you formed the team, and you won't be 'peer' pressured into doing a speed run since you announced ahead of time that it was going to be a normal run. I find that folks will sign up for those just as readily as they tend to want the shards that drop as much as the end reward.

As for me, there are certain TF's and parts of TF's where I prefer to do speedruns. Moo mentioned the twisted sisters on the LGTF - I actually HATE keeping them alive and doing that entire mission. The map is HUGE and far to spread out, you have to clear a ton of mobs AND lead 2 annoying NPC's to the door, then finish off an AV that always seems to take longer to kill than the final 2 at the end of the TF. I have done LGTF's where we complete that mission - the team was always splitting up, spreading out, missing hostages and it took forever. If folks want to kill for shards, I prefer to do it on the other missions. On the first mission freeing penny and then assembling back at the mission door is actually faster than getting her killed - even if you have the entire team carve their way to her. ON mission 2 the path to the riders is nice, straight and full of nicely grouped up mobs that are easy to steamroll. On the last mission its a pretty straightforward run to the end as well, so killing on the way takes only slightly longer than bypassing them.

I felt the same way about the khan - fighting spread out groups of 5th column on an open map is mindlessly boring, as is trying to fight through crowded tunnels on the underground maps. Its not like there is any challenges in killing 5th column mobs - so why not just destroy the troop portals in mission 2, then stealth to the end boss in mission 3, click on the glowies (ignoring the troops as much as possible) in mission 4 and go straight to reichsman in mission 5.

Now this week will be different - you can only speed run sister psyche so much (mostly on the 2 click the glowie missions) and I plan on running a lot of lower level characters for the XP anyways. When we do the ITF I forsee a lot of non-speed runs as well - shard drops are nice on ITF's and I like killing cimerrorans.

Ultimately though, I think my initial advice is the right way to go. When I am in the mood to run a TF the way I want, I just form up a team myself. When I join someone elses TF, I expect to run it the way they want and am usually happy to do so.

somebody twist your arm and tell you you can't roll another alt or something?