Taskforce (, trial and strikeforce) challenge settings

[0th Power]

First off, I’d like to say that I got this idea from the (many) nerf incarnate threads.  For the one person who didn’t participate in any of those discussions, it boiled down to the game is too easy vs. you can make it harder.  Obviously, this is oversimplified, but I don’t want to rehash old threads.  I think a factor that the “you can make it harder” side didn’t address is the fact that people want to be rewarded for added difficulty.  Its a “if I am going to intentionally hamstring myself, I would like additional rewards for it“ mentally. 
 

Enter in taskforce challenge settings. Everyone (I assume) knows that these settings are associated with badges for Ouroboros content and some master of TFs. With the badges, there is really no incentive to complete the challenges a second time, and for most TFs they give no incentive at all. 
 

What I am suggesting is to give a %merit value to each challenge setting. I have not done any data collection or math for proposed values mostly because if everyone hates this idea, I would have wasted my time. 
 

Now, I don’t want this to sound like, “Gimme MOAR merits.”  There may need to be a small % reduction in TF merits to balance it (I am not calling for merit reductions).  This is a possible example, remember I have not collected any data. 
 

Yin TF 20 merits base with a 10% reduction to balance = 18

Time - bronze +5%
         - silver +10%
         - gold +15%
No temporary powers +10%
No inspirations +5%

No enhancement +15%
Enemies buffed +5%
Self debuffed +5%

No travel powers +15%
New possibility: No set bonuses +10%
 

I think if this was possible it would allow the game to be made more difficult on an optional basis while rewarding the added difficulty.  I’m sure there are some potential issues or possible improvements that I would love to hear about. 
 

TL:DR - give challenge settings a reward in TFs. 

[Chance Jackson]

i support merit bonuses but i don't support reductions to balance that out

[MTeague]

I'm immediately leery of anything that might encourage people to only want to take an "optimal" config into a TF, or which might cause people to gripe about other people's power selections ("I want more merits, so YOU should have taken Tactics, so we could all stack good to-hit while not having any enhancements in effect!", etc)

 

And I would flat oppose "No Travel Powers" providing any kind of merit bonus unless it also DISABLED your ability to use "enterbasefrompasscode" for the duration of the TF.

[0th Power]

55 minutes ago, MTeague said:

 

And I would flat oppose "No Travel Powers" providing any kind of merit bonus unless it also DISABLED your ability to use "enterbasefrompasscode" for the duration of the TF.

I agree enterbasefrompasscode would need to be removed/modified for travel power and probably the time ones too

[FrauleinMental]

9 hours ago, 0th Power said:

First off, I’d like to say that I got this idea from the (many) nerf incarnate threads.  For the one person who didn’t participate in any of those discussions, it boiled down to the game is too easy vs. you can make it harder.  Obviously, this is oversimplified, but I don’t want to rehash old threads.  I think a factor that the “you can make it harder” side didn’t address is the fact that people want to be rewarded for added difficulty.  Its a “if I am going to intentionally hamstring myself, I would like additional rewards for it“ mentally. 

There's rarely an argument for extra reward from the "nerf incarnate" advocates--the usual argument is something like, "Make the game harder for everyone because my build is too awesome but I want street-level minions to feel like they had a shot."

 

But if you want the option, I have a couple of suggestions:

-- The time benchmarks would have to be rebalanced, because some TFs are shorter than others.  If you fail the time check, you fail the TF.

-- Any team wipe with a challenge fails the TF.

-- A "no macros" challenge that disables all macros and slash commands while you're in the TF.  Maybe even include that automatically if you include any challenge setting.

[Razor Cure]

Don't forget a KILL ALL option. That totally should gain more merits, because it is directly adding to the time of a tf. Quite a few TFs have low merit rewards, mostly due to how skippable some of the missions are.

On the other hand..would/should killing all enemies give a bonus? That vastly (you'd assume) increase rewards from a lot of the older (read: shittier) tf's, like SYnapse and DrQ. Those have SO damn many worthless hunts/kill alls. But should they give more merits (because in those cases, both tfs give a large merit reward, as compensation for shite content) simply for that?