Numina TF Suggestion

[DrRocket]

Colleagues and fellow gamers:

 

    As I engaged in a Numina TF over the weekend, it occurred to me Why not let the hunt missions be done in parallel rather than in series?

 

    One of the reasons, Numina feels slow and perhaps somewhat boring is the go somewhere and kill a number of bad characters. And then we go one area at a time, and burn time like there is no tomorrow. Now since many players knows the what to defeat and where, why not allow the defeat counters of all zones activate right after the CoT mission in Perez Park?

 

    Sure the mission originally display may say kill 10 Clockwork in Atlas, but as they being serviced all the other zones are being serviced, so when Atlas is done and the next zone may have already been serviced, perhaps the third or fourth zone may say defeat 2 family in IP for example. By doing this, it would actually make the TF more fun, and encourage more plannig and team work.

 

   What do you all think? 

Edited December 9, 2019 by DrRocket

[HelenCarnate]

If the game allows it, that would be great.  Instead of kill X here, then go kill Y there it could list the full list of kills all at once or at the very least 2 at a time to help speed things up.

[boggo2300]

9 hours ago, DrRocket said:

Colleagues and fellow gamers:

 

    As I engaged in a Numina TF over the weekend, it occurred to me Why not let the hunt missions be done in parallel rather than in series?

 

    One of the reasons, Numina feels slow and perhaps somewhat boring is the go somewhere and kill a number of bad characters. And then we go one area at a time, and burn time like there is no tomorrow. Now since many players knows the what to defeat and where, why not allow the defeat counters of all zones activate right after the CoT mission in Perez Park?

 

    Sure the mission originally display may say kill 10 Clockwork in Atlas, but as they being serviced all the other zones are being serviced, so when Atlas is done and the next zone may have already been serviced, perhaps the third or fourth zone may say defeat 2 family in IP for example. By doing this, it would actually make the TF more fun, and encourage more plannig and team work.

 

   What do you all think? 

If thats possible, it would be frikkin awesome actually

[Call Me Awesome]

Better still would be to completely drop all the Gray hunts, they're worthless and only serve to waste time and pad the TF length.  Replacing all of them with an extra door mission or two would greatly improve the TF.

[Tahliah]

16 minutes ago, Call Me Awesome said:

Better still would be to completely drop all the Gray hunts, they're worthless and only serve to waste time and pad the TF length.  Replacing all of them with an extra door mission or two would greatly improve the TF.

I have to agree with this; it's busy work and does nothing for anyone to hunt a bunch of greys.  The only conceivable reason to keep it is for teams to best assign their resources for each set of baddies.  But . . . so what?  We can all send blasters to a zone to get "x" baddies, and then brutes or whatever to the next and then hopscotch them.  And even on pugs or newbie teams, what's the point in killing 10 of this here and 20 of that there?  Just padding, really, and not necessary.  I'd rather have another real mission or two with a purpose than a bunch of gray kills.

[Zombie Hustler]

What if they are timed and you have to split your team across multiple zones in order to complete them within the time limit?

 

"We've to stop stop the Clockwork in King's Row, Malta in Peregrine Island, and Council in Steel Canyon? All at the same time???"

[Tahliah]

8 minutes ago, Zombie Hustler said:

What if they are timed and you have to split your team across multiple zones in order to complete them within the time limit?

 

"We've to stop stop the Clockwork in King's Row, Malta in Peregrine Island, and Council in Steel Canyon? All at the same time???"

That would be fun . . . but they're still all grays, so the time limit is the only fun factor here, and what happens if the team fails?  The whole tf is shot?  The Numi hunts are last, so we all lose an hour (or so) for nothing?  Probably not a workable solution.  The best thing to do is to make the hunts level appropriate (and fewer in that case) or to just replace the hunts with another door mission or two.

[Call Me Awesome]

12 minutes ago, Zombie Hustler said:

What if they are timed and you have to split your team across multiple zones in order to complete them within the time limit?

 

"We've to stop stop the Clockwork in King's Row, Malta in Peregrine Island, and Council in Steel Canyon? All at the same time???"

Ok, so fail the mission and go on.  Really I absolutely DESPISE "kill x number of y" missions in the first place and worthless grays on top of that?

[Call Me Awesome]

1 minute ago, Tahliah said:

That would be fun . . . but they're still all grays, so the time limit is the only fun factor here, and what happens if the team fails?  The whole tf is shot?  The Numi hunts are last, so we all lose an hour (or so) for nothing?  Probably not a workable solution.  The best thing to do is to make the hunts level appropriate (and fewer in that case) or to just replace the hunts with another door mission or two.

Every other mission I can think of in a TF with a time limit simply advances to the next mission if you fail.  The Lady Gray mission where you're supposed to lead out the two idiots?  Let them run into battle and get killed, it's much faster and you go on to the next one.

[Tahliah]

Just now, Call Me Awesome said:

Every other mission I can think of in a TF with a time limit simply advances to the next mission if you fail.  The Lady Gray mission where you're supposed to lead out the two idiots?  Let them run into battle and get killed, it's much faster and you go on to the next one.

LOL, so we just sit out the hunts? I'm down with that! 

[Megajoule]

A little context, from a previous post of mine:

 

On 10/17/2019 at 8:42 PM, Megajoule said:

The thing to understand about Numina is that, way back at launch - yea, even before we got Peregrine Island and 40-50 content - that was The End.  The final Task Force.  The finish line.  And so, it was designed as a victory lap around the city, a counterclockwise ("widdershins") spiral out from the center, in which the players face all the enemies they fought on the way to 40:  a "boss rush", but with mooks / villain groups rather than bosses (or AVs).  Naturally, no one actually plays it this way, with the entire group moving from zone to zone in order; but that, I believe, was the intent.

 

The original design was to fit a very specific storytelling purpose... which has now fallen by the wayside.  Do we discard what's left, or try to restore or update it somehow?

Edited December 11, 2019 by Megajoule

[Haijinx]

They could change the council hunt to 5th column.  That would help for sure.  Since back when the TF came out that zone wasn't overrun by the 5th Column making it harder to find the Council. 

 

Also The Vhaz hunt in Faultline is annoying, it always drags out,  Maybe they could change the zone? 

 

And some of the Hunts are way too big,  Isn't the Rikiti 30ish? 

 

 

[Megajoule]

Um, back when the TF came out, there were no Council, only the Fifth Column.  Issue 0 content, remember?

They probably just did a simple search-and-replace for Issue 3 and didn't touch it since.

 

As for the Rikti hunt, consider that everyone's going to be converging on Founders anyway because the last part happens in Eden.  In my experience, it goes pretty fast.

Edited December 11, 2019 by Megajoule

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

Here is why this is actually not that good of an idea. The reward merits for TFs are based on the average time they take to complete, and while yes your idea would shorten the team time average to clear those, it would also mean having to change that lovely merit reward likely to something low enough many people would never want to repeat it just for fun or to help others out without feeling  rewarded for their time.

 

Keep in mind HC is also more solo friendly so this change wouldnt even help soloists and small groups and imo any change should take into account both teams and solo players. Likely a new revamped numina tf while putting the old in the flashback roster would be the best compromise but also demand the most effort of our limited dev team.

 

Now frankly imo that would be a great use of dev time, a revamp all the old tfs to the new penny yin standard of short sweet and just enough merits to make it worth re running to help others. Maybe one each update and update the story to 2019 while we are at it.

 

Now that I think about it wouldnt that be a neat way to re order the flashback system as well, attach certain content to certain years. Considering how many seem to ae farm and stick toa  single locale, maybe we should introduce Ozone as part of the tutorial, make time travel be more central to the over all game etc. Be more Legends of tomorrow and make the tutorial involve being pulled from a certain death as a young hero and given the chance to become the hero of destiny, could even tie the whole well thing into it.

 

I mean we all know how much chaos the timeline and content eras of the game have made it something of a crey crey mess especially for the role players trying to connect lore, and content to their origins story.

 

Imagine if at the end of the tutorial you are taken to the ozone, and you basically can use the hub as a way to return to the world and explore it at various points in time. The only real issue I see with this is its not really pug friendly with the whole way we lock teams in on tfs and flashbacks.

 

Which leads to another tangent. what if we did away with end merit rewards and instead broke them up as rewards for each mish in the arcs and tfs, and got rid of the whole team lockin? That way sure if someone joins just for the end av they wont get a big reward, but neither will those who have RL tear them away mean no rewards for time given and leaving a team short a body.

[Heraclea]

7 hours ago, Haijinx said:

They could change the council hunt to 5th column.  That would help for sure.  Since back when the TF came out that zone wasn't overrun by the 5th Column making it harder to find the Council.

Easy to find Council in Boomtown that aren't getting pwned by 5th Column.  Look between the sewer entrance and the west wall, where the Goliath War Walker spawns. 

[ShardWarrior]

I don't see the need for it.  Just split up and have people cover individual zones.  Do you really need all 8 people to defeat Clockwork in Atlas Park?

[Lazarillo]

16 hours ago, Megajoule said:

The original design was to fit a very specific storytelling purpose... which has now fallen by the wayside.  Do we discard what's left, or try to restore or update it somehow?

Yeah, the victory lap just doesn't really feel like one anymore (and I'm not sure, in practice, it ever did, since I don't think Jack Emmert's vision of everyone street sweeping ever really took off).

Either way, I'd say the TF needs a pretty good overhaul anyway just because the story's...not good.

 

Numina: "A hero has gone missing!"

TF: "We found him!"

Numina: "No, actually, he was missing too, but it's somebody else."

TF: "Well Crey kidnapped this other hero, but they killed him a long time ago."

Numina: "Well then clearly that hero isn't missing, he's dead. Go check with Nemesis"

TF: "Nope, Nemesis also killed a hero, but didn't kidnap anybody."

Numina: "Fuck it, just beat up everybody until someone admits to kidnapping someone."

TF: "Well, we beat up every villain group that exists below 40, even the ones we already knew didn't kidnap anybody, but there was still nobody kidnapped, just the Devouring Earth also killed a hero."

Numina: "But when that hero died he became a ghost and I know where the ghost is now meaning he's not missing, so close enough.  Hey, wanna do the Eden Trial?"

Edited December 12, 2019 by Lazarillo

[Megajoule]

TF: "No, not really." *disbands*