How does the Citadel TF exist?

Agent White · 08-15-2012 08:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zaloopa

Honestly I think Blue Steel should be handing out the Clockwork task force. I mean, he's the one that beat a teenager to death and created the Clockwork King in the first place.

Honestly I always found it kind of strange so many of the 'signature' task forces handed out by the 'signature' characters don't really involve them that much. It's "their" taskforce chiefly because they hand it out.

Zombie Man · 08-15-2012 10:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agent White

Honestly I always found it kind of strange so many of the 'signature' task forces handed out by the 'signature' characters don't really involve them that much. It's "their" taskforce chiefly because they hand it out.

Yes, it should be more personal, like:

Numina: "Greetings, Agent White! I have an urgent task for you. It seems that my fledgling boyfriend, Positron, has been acting aloof and been making excuses to be away from me. I need you to monitor him and then report back to me if he's seeing someone else."

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Grouchybeast · 08-16-2012 06:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zamuel

I'm certainly not a pro but with the small amount of homebrew game design work I've done Citadel is just sort of mind boggling. It sort of feels like an untested idea where no one was tapped on the shoulder and asked, "Are you sure about this?"

I wouldn't be surprised if it was pushed out on a silly deadline, with a fixed number of missions demanded from the writer. I mean, even the mission entry text doesn't sound like someone with their heart in the job: "The smell of fresh paint is overwhelming." (As you reenter exactly the same door for the second time). "The layout of this base is identical to the rest." (Really? I hadn't noticed.)

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Golden Girl · 08-16-2012 08:56 AM

Because the Citadel TF originally featured the 5th Column, the thinking behind it might have been that face-punching map after map of Nazis would appeal to the target audience of the game

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DarkSideLeague · 08-16-2012 10:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Golden Girl

Because the Citadel TF originally featured the 5th Column, the thinking behind it might have been that face-punching map after map of Nazis would appeal to the target audience of the game

Part of the reason I'd be okay with a temporary swapout until an actual revamp is done.

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Agent White · 08-16-2012 10:36 PM

I don't care which nazis I'm punching honestly, I just want to punch them in different ways and not just repeating the same map multiple times

Haetron · 08-17-2012 10:57 AM

Should also point out, if no one has yet, Current Synapse is not OLD synapse. That TF has been revamped once, at least, to add the custom CWK map at the end.

Citadel, to my knowledge, has been untouched since CoH launch. The Council/Column swap really doesn't count, I suppose.

Wicked_Wendy · 08-17-2012 11:38 AM

Wait you have been around since 2005and your complaining about Citadel? Have you forgotten what Positron was like before the update? There were times teams used to break, go to bed, and meet back up the next day to complete it. And of course Doc Q in the Shadowshard can still be a nightmare. I did Citadel over the double xp weekend and I realize everything is relative depending on how much time someone has to spend on line but the team I was with managed to fonish in under 90 minutes. It has a number of stealthable missions and the three defeat alls toward the end have always been fairly small bases that didn't take too long to finish up.

If I was to change anything next it would be Numina. I had a character that needed that for TF Commander and did it over the weekend. Take away all those street hunts (time wasters) and that TF has exactly 6 missions that give XP.... of all the street hunts the only one you get xp from is the Rikti in FF. Then of course there are the interruptions while hunting foes like OUTCAST in Steel. On one Numina we had to wait for a zombie invasion to end in Faultline to finish off the Vahz we needed and then again a Rikti invasion caused a second delay when we were after Warriors in Talos.

Eventually I could see them updating Citadel but we have several other TFs that need work MUCH sooner

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Golden Girl · 08-17-2012 11:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wicked_Wendy

Have you forgotten what Positron was like before the update? There were times teams used to break, go to bed weeping, and meet back up the next day to complete it.

Fixed

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konshu · 08-17-2012 12:28 PM

A big part of what made old Posi so slow is that back then all a level 10-15 player often had for travel was Sprint. There was no Ouro portal and not even a Green Line station in south Skyway. The bias was heavily in favor of teams who had at least one player with SS and Recall.

Once players got all the proper goodies, it was a reasonable expectation to knock out a Posi TF with a PuG in 2 hrs.

EDIT: Keep in mind players had to Sprint across a lot of zones where they might encounter even con street foes, including having to travel through Perez Park with its legion of Clockwork, Circle, Lost, and so on, and occasionally unlucky players would have to hosp (returning them to Steel Canyon) just from the travails of travel.

Nalrok_AthZim · 08-17-2012 12:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by konshu

A big part of what made old Posi so slow is that back then all a level 10-15 player often had for travel was Sprint. There was no Ouro portal and not even a Green Line station in south Skyway. The bias was heavily in favor of teams who had at least one player with SS and Recall.

Once players got all the proper goodies, it was a reasonable expectation to knock out a Posi TF with a PuG in 2 hrs.

EDIT: Keep in mind players had to Sprint across a lot of zones where they might encounter even con street foes, including having to travel through Perez Park with its legion of Clockwork, Circle, Lost, and so on, and occasionally unlucky players would have to hosp (returning them to Steel Canyon) just from the travails of travel.

You were also locked out of your 16, 18, and 20 powers; for some builds, that really can make all the difference (Dark Armor, Assault Rifle, Invulnerability, Willpower, etc.)

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EvilGeko · 08-17-2012 01:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Haetron

Citadel, to my knowledge, has been untouched since CoH launch. The Council/Column swap really doesn't count, I suppose.

I believe it has been modified to use smaller maps for most of the kill alls. Synapse got that treatment too.

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DarkGob · 08-17-2012 01:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wicked_Wendy

Have you forgotten what Positron was like before the update? There were times teams used to break, go to bed, and meet back up the next day to find everyone else on the team had quit.

Fixed to match my first experience with TFs back in late 2005. If the game had stayed like this I can't imagine I'd still be playing (never mind it even continuing to exist).

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Organica · 08-17-2012 07:42 PM

And the best part about TFs in the old days... you exemplared your high level toon to one at the right level range just to run the task force, and then an hour and a half into it the other guy disconnected and you were immediately booted from the task force.

Good times, good times.

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Ein_Dose · 08-18-2012 09:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wicked_Wendy

Wait you have been around since 2005and your complaining about Citadel? Have you forgotten what Positron was like before the update? There were times teams used to break, go to bed, and meet back up the next day to complete it. And of course Doc Q in the Shadowshard can still be a nightmare. I did Citadel over the double xp weekend and I realize everything is relative depending on how much time someone has to spend on line but the team I was with managed to fonish in under 90 minutes. It has a number of stealthable missions and the three defeat alls toward the end have always been fairly small bases that didn't take too long to finish up.

You didn't read my argument, did you?

I was saying nothing about how difficult the TFs are to do. I understand that Citadel's one of the easier Phalanx TFs, that Old Posi was probably moved from the game servers to a circle of Hell, and they're all in some way badly designed.

But I wasn't calling for any of them to be revamped 'first'.

I was making note of the fact that Citadel makes no sense from a game design standpoint, from any angle. There is no logical steps you can take to explain how Citadel exists as a thing that someone, at some point, consciously made. You can understand why every other original TF exists, why the designer thought 'yes, people will want to get a team together and play this', even if they ended up bad for things they didn't predict like mechanical evolution and player preference.

Citadel isn't the worst Phalanx TF. It just doesn't make sense.

Wicked_Wendy · 08-20-2012 01:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DarkGob

Fixed to match my first experience with TFs back in late 2005. If the game had stayed like this I can't imagine I'd still be playing (never mind it even continuing to exist).

Ah don't forget this one too Gob ... Went to be, woke up to find ONE member of the team had logged on hours earlier and completed the entire trial solo because he couldn't stand waiting any longer. [this was not considered a BAD thing by most teams]

That was back in the days when if everyone logged off the mobs scaled back and a one man TF would have mobs designed for ONE MAN. Plus back then Posi was, as I recall, the only TF that had no AV battle at the end only bosses that scalled down to lieutenants if one guy was completing the trial.

Oh and someone else mentioned this YES Citadel did get a minor update a few years back. At one point there were three straight kill all missions, possibly the same trio we see now toward the end, that all used the exact same cave entrance in IP [it was located under one end of the bridge to Terra Volta]. The map(s) were much larger and in addition to the same entrance it was the exact same interior map .. the only difference being one time you battled Warwolves and Vamprii, the next Mekmen and the third basic human soldiers and some Galaxies.

Now to my list of things in TFs we need to see fixed..

1. Synapse .. We start with a defeat all followed by a street hunt and a talk to mission (positrion). Then we have three straight defeat alls followed by a patrol (always a favorite of mine .. no xp at all just run all over the zone clicking patrol boxes). After that patrol {SUPRISE} another defeat all followed by another patrol. Then just to add to the annoyance and frustration the first of the missions where a team could actually stealth to the boss and its minions is ALWAYS located deep inside Boomtown. With mission teleporters and now team teleporters available this isn't as awful as it used to be but still.. the FIRST time we don't have to actually kill everything inside a building we have to travel to another zone to do it?

2. Numina .. Already spoke on this LOSE THE STRRET KILLS! Oh and this is sort of a personal thing ... No idea if anyone else cares or not... Wedo this entire TF supposedly to find and rescue The Woodsman. Maybe we could actually make freeing the Woodsman from a few captures a part of the requirements to complete the TF? Not just defeat Jurassic and clear the room he's in!

3. Manticore ... Okay this is a two fer. Firts is there really a reason we need to have 2 street hunts in this thing? One in Brickstown, which at least leaves us in the same zone as the next two stealthable missions. But the second is in Crey's Folly and more often than not here is exactly how it plays out. We travle to Kings Row and free the councilman and then head to CF to defeat Crey. Once that's over we head to another zone (sometimes right back to KR) to complete the final mission. Okay I did say it was a two for one ... through out the entire TF we supposedly are chasing down Countess Crey and when we enter the final mission who o we get to battle? Hopkins her bodyguard. Now at some poit this guy may have actually been a threat but these days its embarassing how fast almost any team can defeat him. I know I am NOT the only person that feels this way because I have been part of a lot of short after TF discussions.. How about letting us actually fight Countess Crey!

Having suffered through a number of the old Positrons to get TF commander I must say I am very impressed with the revamp. Personally I never disliked the Old Sister Psyche TF it had a lot of missions that could be stealthed if you wanted or you could take all day grabbing XP. Obviously at the very least it needed to be renamed when SISTER P died in the SSA and was replaced with Penny Yin. That said I also enjoy the new format of the Yin TF. So the Devs are gradually making improvements and I think there is a real chance we'll see more changes in the future. One big diffrence you notice with the two revamps is travel time. The old Posi took you on a tour of every zone they could find that a 10-15 level could possibly survive in (if they were lucky). The two new ones don't do nearly as much zone hoping. Part one send you to Atlas Park for one mission.. all the rest are in Steel. Part two has one mission in Steel and then we move on to Faultline where we stay until the TF is complete. Same with Penny Yin. Sister P had you travel to numerous zones before the end.. the YIN TF NEVER leaves IP!

Keep it up guys you are doing ok!

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Golden Girl · 08-20-2012 07:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agent White

I don't care which nazis I'm punching honestly, I just want to punch them in different ways and not just repeating the same map multiple times

Check out the Incarnate Trials then

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Zamuel · 08-20-2012 08:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wicked_Wendy

Okay I did say it was a two for one ... through out the entire TF we supposedly are chasing down Countess Crey and when we enter the final mission who o we get to battle? Hopkins her bodyguard. Now at some poit this guy may have actually been a threat but these days its embarassing how fast almost any team can defeat him. I know I am NOT the only person that feels this way because I have been part of a lot of short after TF discussions.. How about letting us actually fight Countess Crey!

I actually don't mind this since Countess Crey is supposed to mostly keep her hands clean. It could stand to have a cutscene of some form at least acknowledging that she's purposely staying out of the way. It would also be nice if the later story arc where you do take her down was easier to get.

As far as Hopkins...yeah, he needs a buff.

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RemusShepherd · 08-20-2012 08:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ein_Dose

Somebody presumably wrote the entire Citadel TF, likely aware that every single mission was functionally identical, and said "yes, this will work. People will want to play this content, which I have deliberately laid out to be against the exact same enemies, in the exact same maps, without any difference or variation whatsoever, for ten missions".
Help me out here, I'm just completely lost.

You're working with a mistaken assumption.

In the old days, the purpose of creating for the game was not to make content that people would want to play. The purpose was to make content that people would be forced to play, and to draw out that content for as long as possible.

The goal was to make people play longer, with the assumption that when players invest time in a MMO they become hooked. The more time you have invested, the less likely you are to skip to another game. That's why most MMOs didn't have travel power (and even CoH delayed them), why missions were usually in zones far away from your contact, and why they used repetitive missions to pad out taskforces that players were locked into.

The Citadel TF was not only part of an almost-necessary Accolade (being one of the few endurance buffs in the game back then) but it was also at the start of the difficult leveling period from 25-40, when content was sparse. Players *had* to play it. Since the players on the TF were a captive audience, the developer at the time made the grind as long as possible, then dusted their hands off and said, 'There. I've just made an extra 2-3 hours of game content. Now let's work on the Numina TF, we can probably wring another 3-4 out of that."

Today our devs are much more enlightened, and they appreciate that good content keeps more players than tedious mandatory content does. Citadel is long overdue for a remake. Hopefully it happens soon.

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Wicked_Wendy · 08-20-2012 09:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zamuel

I actually don't mind this since Countess Crey is supposed to mostly keep her hands clean. It could stand to have a cutscene of some form at least acknowledging that she's purposely staying out of the way. It would also be nice if the later story arc where you do take her down was easier to get.

As far as Hopkins...yeah, he needs a buff.

Yeah but the villains get to fight her .. *pouts* I do like the cut scene idea and that would explain why we never see her.

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CatAstrophy · 08-20-2012 09:49 AM

Only thing that make Citadel more bearable then Synapse is that it can be done in less then 1h - and Council is easier then Clockworks. I still do these TFs only once on each alt (with more then 50 alts that means I have done each one of them at leas 50 times ).
Even with revamp of Posi and Penni TF, I still find SF to be more fun. I have come in game after Good vs. Evil, so I have missed some things, unfortunately haven't missed old Posi without stamina, and I don't know from personal experience how was the game before that, but I have always thought that Villain side is much more interesting then Hero side. Unfortunately finding team on Villain side is very hard (even on populated servers) so I also have more alts as Heroes (often Vigilante so I could do at least SFs when someone is forming them). If I have to choose to do Binder of Beast or Synapse (both 15-20), I would rather do Binder 10x then Synapse once.

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Golden Girl · 08-20-2012 12:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zamuel

I actually don't mind this since Countess Crey is supposed to mostly keep her hands clean. It could stand to have a cutscene of some form at least acknowledging that she's purposely staying out of the way. It would also be nice if the later story arc where you do take her down was easier to get.

She should actually be the end boss for a TF - Crey is quite a big villain group, so she deserves a suitably epic encounter.

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Iannis · 08-20-2012 12:06 PM

Hopkins has always been a big wimpy sack of meat in any era of the game. Hopkins seriously needs some back-up.

I think the original dev thinking was it was more 'epic' for your hero to face off against Countess Crey as the culmination of the Crey story arcs and you finally forced the manipulative psychic mastermind into a corner where she has to PERSONALLY face you instead of throwing wave after wave of Crey employees and Paragon Protectors at you (you already slugged you way THROUGH all of her waves of minions, lts and bosses)

Adeon Hawkwood · 08-20-2012 12:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Golden Girl

She should actually be the end boss for a TF - Crey is quite a big villain group, so she deserves a suitably epic encounter.

Yeah but she's the archetypical Villain with Good Publicity. The whole point of the TF is that you spend ages trying to catch her and she's always one step ahead. As others have said a short cutscene to establish that she is staying out of it and maybe something to introduce Hopkins a bit earlier in the TF would be nice but I don't think we need to fight her there.

Besides it would spoil the surprise in Janet Kellum's arc (it's a pity that the arc is so long because the story behind Countess Crey is actually very interesting).

ChaosAngelGeno · 08-20-2012 12:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ein_Dose

Synapse isn't much better, but at least it's trying.

You're kidding, right?