A discussion about weekly strikes!

Is any one else feeling the same aggravation I am. What I mean is 'The weekly strikes are killing all other activities in CoX'.
I got back into CoX late November for issue 19 and I only had two 50's at the time. With the introduction of weekly events I've seen regular events get pushed to the side. For instance the winter events, how many people took time out of their shard hunting and incarnate building schedule to do this. On 4 different servers is where I house my chars and on each it was a hassle to find people to do them with at any lvl.
Move onto spring fling - Again people are to busy grinding away shards and such to really give their time for it. I had four separate times where I would join someone we would do their part of the mish and then they would find some excuse to quite or just log off (I chalk up most of these to people who are *****).
And the final annoyance - Task Forces that have nothing to do with shards! No one wants to do them?... Unless they are attached to a weekly strike, hence why Manticore was such a successful campaign again.
Does any one else feel getting a group together for a TF (super groups not included) a royal pain! I have so many alts that joining a SG on one of the four servers would not be kind to them because sometimes I just don't come back to those chars for some time. And if I joined one on each server that's to much time i don't have to give to keep from being kicked out for inactivity.

I think this all I have to say with out some feedback.

:edit, also originally posted on page 2:
I want all here to know for those who continue to read this thread and post here that some time yesterday this thread was officially moderated. My original title was "A rant(discussion) about weekly strikes!" Is now as it is named. I feel that forum moderators (not just here) seem to be creeping into our threads more often changing our original intentions of threads to their own.

"This rant thread was meant to be for those who needed a place to relieve the pent up frustration of grinding with weekly strikes taking away teammates".

Yes and no. I have noticed that content under level 25 seems abandoned by players. It used to be that you could see a Synapse TF being put together at least once a night and now never. Even sewer teams are not as plentiful as before, but still pretty common.

But once you reach level 25 everything seems as before. TFs, trials and radio teams are as common as always.

My suggestion to you is to form a team to go on low level content. I was getting tired of not being able to do a Synapse or a Posi 1 so I decided to start one for the hell of it and to my surprise, a got alot of tells from people saying they wanted in. People still want to do that content but since few people start them it just seems like there is no interest.

I'm apart of the triumph channel and many times sent tells through it and regular broadcast for TF/SF. And would be ignored or receive comments like "we just ran one, where were you?" I tried getting on other channels for two lesser used servers and no one seems to know what I'm talking about there. And my fourth server is always full so I never have need of a channel since some one always is on and actively looking.

I've very recently returned to the game, and I think that the addition of a revolving TF to get these items is nice. It will aid me in getting more of my alts more TF badges, and high level goodies at the same time.

Sure, it would cut down on people taking part in spring fling and other holiday stuff, but after saving that baby time year after year... I might rather do a TF instead of grinding that.

True saving him can be a bear and a bore, but when your going for the costume piece or power given or what have you it seems such a waste to skip them!

agreed, the nice stuff is nice to get... and its a boar (/bore) to go it alone (if you're like me and mostly have buffing defenders that you play).

TL;DR version: Depends on the server.

More detailed response below.

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Originally Posted by angelo55 Is any one else feeling the same aggravation I am. What I mean is 'The weekly strikes are killing all other activities in CoX'.

This has not been my experience at all. Of course, most of my characters are housed on Virtue, which has a fairly large population, including people still leveling alts. I see plenty of non-WST task forces and strike forces being put together on the global channels of which I'm a member, including slogfests like Citadel and, at least 3 times in the last week, Dr. Q.

I mention "still leveling alts" as if it's something that doesn't occur on some servers. Clearly, it does. It's just the case that, the more people who are working on leveling, the more sub-50 TFs and SFs you'll see run. (More TFs than SFs because, as ever, devs hate villains. But that's a side issue.) I see plenty of Posi I and II and Synapse runs as well. They're still excellent ways to blow through the 10-20 band without touching AE. =)

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I got back into CoX late November for issue 19 and I only had two 50's at the time. With the introduction of weekly events I've seen regular events get pushed to the side. For instance the winter events, how many people took time out of their shard hunting and incarnate building schedule to do this.

I did nothing but the Winter event for shard hunting, as long as it was active. The Lady Winter map was a freakin' goldmine.

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On 4 different servers is where I house my chars and on each it was a hassle to find people to do them with at any lvl.

I had no difficulty finding teams when I wanted them, and I'm not what I'd classify as a "social beast." The opportunities were there.

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Move onto spring fling - Again people are to busy grinding away shards and such to really give their time for it.

The spring fling is a different issue. It didn't change at all this year, and forced teaming missions to get to a map full of Red Cap ambushes is not all that entertaining after the first umpteen times you run it. I did help a few people out who asked for help in globals by grabbing a villain, but I basically ignored the whole thing. If they update it next year, maybe add a new badge or something, I'll stop ignoring it. It wasn't about shards or whatever - it was because the event is the same old same old, and not all that enticing as something to grind through yet again.

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And the final annoyance - Task Forces that have nothing to do with shards! No one wants to do them?... Unless they are attached to a weekly strike, hence why Manticore was such a successful campaign again. Does any one else feel getting a group together for a TF (super groups not included) a royal pain!

Again, not my experience on Virtue. I've actually missed out on TFs that weren't the WST because I was too slow to respond to something in a global channel. Something else inevitably came along, though.

I'm sorry your experience has been less than fulfilling for the past few weeks, but as I noted up-top I suspect that it's either a function of the server population, or not having managed to find the optimal global channels to be part of in order to locate non-WST things to do on a given server.

It's only very slightly aggravating to me. I never know what the WTF is on any given week, but I can always tell without even asking. Why? Because there's a call for said TF forming and looking for members every half hour or so, to the exclusion of almost anything else.

The WTF idea has indeed done a lot to get people together and get lesser-known TFs run, but at the same time it has made it so that you can only really hope to run one TF each week, and have to wait for the right week to run the one you may want.

Sure, it's probably possible to put together a non-WTF if you really tried, but I've put together more failed, horrible TF teams than I have good ones and TFs I lead tend to end up with grumpy people by the end, so I've given up entirely. No sense wasting people's time, after all.

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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.

I find that by Saturday evening the WST is old-hat and it gets easier to find teams for the off TF's by then. I got on Saturday looking for a Renault but ended up on a Citadel instead (I was on with a rogue). I got on just to do some maintenance on my tanker and got asked for both a Posi and a Numi which I had to turn down but not for a Manticore.

I think it is a lot easier to fill a team if you want to run the WST but it doesn't seem that much harder to fill for other things, at least by the weekend.

I've had some frustration with the weekly(this week I had challenges getting mine)but once you get your notices and favors....then you can stop. You don't have to run every one!

I think at the end of May I can stop. Just figure out how many you need for the higher slots you want and then calculate the time/weekly's you need. The newness of the WST is wearing off so things should get back to normal soon. Also, I think the WST was created to get users busy enough so they wouldn't visit DCUO too. Smart people at Ncsoft/Paragon Studio!

People on Pinnacle seem to run the WST from Tuesday when it starts through about Friday, then it's back to business as usual by the weekend (most of the time)

Good luck finding anything else to do for the next couple weeks, from what I understand I20 is going live either today or next Tuesday.

Truth be serious, for months I thought Pinnacle was dead or dying. Then I discovered everyone was just organizing TFs and Trials in a global channel. I joined it and never looked back.

Since returning full time after ISP problems, I have been able to amass my own sub-global channel/cult of personality of friends and well wishers and we've managed to have a fairly packed weekly schedule where we do a special TF or Trial 5 out of 7 nights a week. When WTFs hit, some of those nights became dedicated to them, but we were at the point where none of the people in the channel really needed anything. We have managed to run Posi and Citadel for those who needs Task Force Commander and Lady Grey or ITFs for those who need shards. We even managed to find 8-14 players two nights out of three that wanted to do Halloween banners in a full fledged raid-type set up.

So my advice to anyone finding it hard to find teams? First, forget any guide in the guide section about finding teams that require you to stalk the LFG menu with notepad open. That's borderline OCD and unnecessary. Just ask around on your server or do a global channel search and get into the ones that seem the most populated based on your server. *SERVER NAME* Badges or *SERVER NAME* TFs is a good place to start.

I read thru all and I have been getting better results now that the newness of WTf are wearing off. But then I20 hits and I might as well just stay on a 50!

As I stated in my last posting "Might as well stay on a 50!" I've done more trials then lower lvl msh's aside from sutter and kal when that was the weekly.

It is killing free gaming but you can change that right now. First, calculate how many notices and favors you need. Then add +5 to your number. Second, calculate how many you have now. If the number is the same then you can quit running them.

Personally, I have stopped running them because I have enough. I may run them once or twice a month in the future but not weekly.

I think it's multiple issues, actually.

The player population stays pretty static. No huge increases but no major losses either.

The popular concept for "improvement" is "expansion" which gave us City of Villains, Praetoria and a plethora of new zones since the game first came out. Indeed, the last few Issues have been new Trials and tasks and the next one has been announced to have a new zone as it's focal point.

The problem is that if you keep increasing the number of things players can do and the number of places they can be, then the population will automatically begin to seem less because that same number of players is stretched thinner and thinner.

Then you run into the problem of "ooh SHINY!" where you get a glut of people all trying the newest content before they get bored with it and begin looking for something else to play with.

Since the new shinies in question are pretty much all concentrated in 50th level character range, the early level stuff has become a ghost town. When the Devs were turning out new power sets and archetypes it was the exact opposite; there were hundreds of first level Demon Summoners and Dual Pistols characters looking for teams.

I am not against the Weekly Strike Forces for one reason; they encourage 50th level characters to organize or join TF teams. I don't have a 50(yet) but I've run my existing characters through more TFs over the past few weeks than my entire game time prior to that. I've been having pretty good luck with it so far, even on the lower population servers.