So, I did a Sutter TF today.

In theory, I wasn't helping that old broad in Striga for personal gain but I still got a snazzy ring out of it.

If they are, that's cool, but I have not heard of or seen any concrete evidence of such being awarded.

Actually, though it may not have come across from my post, I liked it. I'm just concerned that with a less abusive team then I was on (5 defenders) and lower level characters it would be too tough, so I'd suggest a few tweaks.

This might be true, and I would be interested in experimenting. However, regardless of whether it is true or not, it is certainly not explicitly noted anywhere I was looking. If indeed there are extra merits granted for completing the optional objectives, it would be nice to see them called out somewhere.

(In both the runs I've done so far, we hit the optional objectives regardless, because they were there.)

Yeah, I haven't had a run where we didn't do the extra objectives so I don't know if it's true, either.

My only gripe is that these attacks are automatic regardless of the AV's status.

Primal Duray can auto-teleport, regardless of how firmly he's held. You can see him standing there choking, he teleports and when you get over to him he's still standing there choking.
He can also auto-Airstrike, again regardless of status.

One or the other I could put up with, even though the mechanic works that way NOPLACE ELSE IN THE GAME. But both is just flat-out ridiculous.

I dislike the method of "adding challenge" being "we'll just ignore anything that's not flat-out damage". This is one of the things that's reviled about the Reichsman TF/SF. He's essentially just a stupidly fat sack of HP. There's nothing inventive about MORE DAKKA to win a fight.

There's also the really nasty problem in the Duray fight of AoE attacks and holds (Hot Feet, Choking Cloud, Death Shroud, etc) completely masking the telltales for the airstrikes. Are the devs demanding we just start turning key powers off now or face auto-hit death? Really?

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More controllers doesn't help anything. My Fire/Rad group was running last night. Granted, we were running +2, but we completely tore through everything until the Duray^2 fight. No amount of holds stops the teleports and no amount of holds stops the airstrikes or clone spawns.

We would have one or both of them reduced to a sliver of health and move out of the way of an artillery strike and die anyhow.

Having the airstrikes spawn in the hospital was not fun. But what was even MORe fun was the fact that an entire squad of Sky Skiffs spawned in there as well!

We loaded up on purples and oranges to ameliorate damage, we were dropping everything we had on them and could never get them down past that last 5-10%. We'd get nailed through 60+% defense, then more of us would get nailed through 60+% defense + Vengeance.

We hammered on it for an hour straight and finally got fed up.

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You suppose wrong.

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I enjoy both the new task forces and think they are light years better than older ones like Citadel and the like. As far as the no holds on bosses goes that does seem unfair without some payback, perhaps if they break a hold they take a massive damage hit or something like that. Making classes of heroes feel useless seems a bad call.

No they don't. Stacked holds prevents the strikes and the porting.

Bull. See above. 7 fire/rads. SEVEN FIRE/RADS. He'd be standing there doing the classic "choke" animation showing he's held.

*TELEPORT*

We'd get over there and he'd still be in the choke pose. We'd continue, and we'd get the arrows for the airstrike. All while he's still choking.

Possible that this is a bug. But as of Monday night, stacked holds didn't prevent a damn thing.

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I didn't see that correlation, myself, and quite enjoyed the many custom maps and feel of the fight.

You have to really abstract the powers to away to the core basics to make such a comparison. It's close to saying "all the missions are the same- they're instanced maps and you hit things" (ok not that bad) or comparing every friggin AV fight before it as just rehashes as one another (because they DON'T have that mechanic)

The Duray mechanic is a new tech item that can break up the "stand there and hit attacks" -- it encourages maneuver. Since the tech was only recently added, I'm not surprised that they include it in more encounters to break up.

Its one of the core design issues in CoH, really. As Jack notoriously said once, "its no fun fighting statues" (or being statues, in case of foe holds). CoH brought many of the DIKUMud mezz concepts over and made them more commonplace than any predecessor. They fit the superhero genre (though one could question the hero-ness of sucker-punching an incapacitated foe)

If foes succumb to mezzes quickly and easily, then adding new mechanics to foes becomes somewhat moot: the old method of "hold em and hit em" will always win out. However, if foes don't mezz as usual, then you've marginalize archetypes that are defined by that ability.


What they really need (but can't add to the game without an NGE-like revamp and corresponding player revolt) is a re-do of the entire mezz and mezz-management system. Rather than go by a binary "you're held or you're not" you may look at a tiered system:

- a foe resisting a hold attack may be slowed (from constantly pushing against the hold) or use more endurance to do the same action or even sustain damage over time by fighting back.
- rather than making a hold "fire and forget" you could create a "sustainment" mechanic where players can continue to strengthen or extend a hold through active involvement (some kind of minigame mechanic). heck, you could have it that if a specific mezz threshold is met the foe is totally subdued. No need to suckerpunch him then :P

Combined, you'd have foes that are resistant to various mezzes start to show other issues as they shrug off the mezz, and your mezzers could feel more actively involved in building up and maintaining the attacks. You lose the 'all or nothing' state that backs the devs into a corner, but you don't marginalize an entire archetype

Then they need to remove the "rooting" code from many powers. Especially MMs. If you have to resummon pets, you are rooted. Quite a few of my /Dark powers root me also. Not mention if I bring a trapper.

I don't mind them use new "tech toys" in multiple areas. That is fine, but make it feel different. Sutter did not feel different from Apex/Tin Mage.

Admittedly all the old TFC and shard TFs pretty much feel the same... Cloned and repeative.

Most SFs villain side have a uniqueness to them that makes them feel different from other SF/TF. Renault being the exception with all it's zoning and 3 hunts makes me feel like I am blue side. But I do get a specail map and Cool AVs at the end.

This.

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This is the biggest problem I have with Sutter and Apex. It's not really the rooting code that bothers me. Outside of these task forces it never really crosses my mind, it's just how the game works.

But with these two the developlers are exploiting a game mechanic for the express purpose of killing players.

How is it any different from the player discovered exploits we've seen closed? Jousting was a way to attack without being in any danger and it got removed. The various AE farms have been abusing exploits to level extremely rapidly with little effort. They were shut down. Every player abuse of the system gets fixed, and that's exactly how it should be.

Now the Devs are apparently okay with forcing us to use powers that prevent movement while requiring that we move. Yes, you can still beat both TFs. But it's still the abuse of a game mechanic over which players have zero control.

I am sorry to hear of your experience, but I'd have to think it was a bug or something. Or our run was bug - one troller and one dom. He was held, never ported, never airstruck, and died.


edit: this was over the weekend (further edit: April 23rd, I think)

This is a bit anecdotal. I just did this on my 20 Rad/Rad Defender (made 22nd level) and had a blast. You can have a travel power w/o any vet bonuses quite easily by 20th level.

Hmmm... I guess that is a tricky line to tread. I wonder if some AVs could have varying resistances to mezz then. They might shrug off stacked holds but are weak to stuns perhaps. Or that they resist ToHit debuffs but crumble under Slow attacks. It'd be fun I guess if an AV had strong resists to everything but knockback. Suddenly KB is not just epic, it's useful!

I'm not sure if that already happens (I know most AVs are weak to immobilize for example) but I can already see the downsides to it by having team leaders pick and choose what powersets they want on the TF... I don't know, I'm not a developer but I find it irritating when an AV (or any NPC for that matter) just shrugs off my Controls for no clear reason.

I was like "Woooo!!! Go, bad guys!"

But then I've always hated Skyway City. It's always struck me as a completely ridiculous zone (eight lane superhighways that go all of two miles and have no ramps except at the ends!) and is annoying to traverse on foot.