Positron TF Question

[Mirai]

Do you actually have to fight Dr. Vahzilok in the second part of the Positron TF?

 

I remember doing the original version way back when, and there was just an eidelon elite boss at the end, but the missions have changed significantly. I'd rather not start the second part if there's an AV fight.

[Jaguaratron]

There is an AV fight, its soloable even at lower levels provided you kill the adds that spawn when he his 50% life a couple of times and throw envenomed daggers temp power at him. I solod him with a lvl 15 staff/bio stalker, I would recommend clearing around his spawn on the floor as he can go walkies.

 

You can also do the original Positron task force in Oroboros, I think its called "The New Recruits" and that one has no AV fight, just an EB at end.

[Mirai]

1 minute ago, Jaguaratron said:

You can also do the original Positron task force in Oroboros, I think its called "The New Recruits" and that one has no AV fight, just an EB at end.

Oh, nice. Thanks for the info. I'm not sure I'd want to do that insanely long TF again, though.

 

As for the AV fight, I'll pass. I'm a casual player, and I don't even try to fight AVs solo. Well, except Dollface, but that's a special case.

[Jaguaratron]

2 minutes ago, Mirai said:

Oh, nice. Thanks for the info. I'm not sure I'd want to do that insanely long TF again, though.

 

As for the AV fight, I'll pass. I'm a casual player, and I don't even try to fight AVs solo. Well, except Dollface, but that's a special case.

Its not so long solo, just getting about takes time if you arent using the cosmic transport hub.

 

Or just tag along with a group, they are always forming posi teams

[Sakai]

It seems to me that the original Posi was kind of a repetitive slog. 

 

Did it have a decent story line?

[srmalloy]

Not just a repetitive slog, but doing it before you got a travel power. Which cranked the slog up even more, as you had to run across zones, dodging mobs that could con in the deep purples.

[DoctorDitko]

It was literally the worst introduction to task forces available in the game.

 

I have no idea what they were thinking.

 

On the plus side, if you kept doing TFs (against your better instincts), Posi would leave you prepared for Doctor Q!

 

 

 

[Heraclea]

My vague understanding is that task forces were originally conceived as team activities that would take several days to complete.  I remember being told this is why, unhappily, you can't invite new members once you start; happily, it's also why you're still in the TF if you get disconnected.  The idea would be that the players who proposed to run them would do so over the course of several days.  They'd log in at an  agreed time, run a couple missions, and then log out until they finished.  That way no one would get too annoyed or bored with multiple defeat all Clockwork missions strung together in one storyline.  

 

Task forces were pretty peripheral content in the early game, until the introduction of accolades and reward merits. 

[Sandolphan]

At first Task Forces were also bugged, so if you got disconnected or logged off, you could be booted from the TF.  It turned off a lot of people in the beginning as well as the repetitive slog of missions.  Our first Posi took 8 hours the day it came out; we lost 2 people along the way to disconnects and two more quit in disgust.

 

The original Posi TF had one of the few mobs to use confuse in the game: Cortex, the end EB.  Many times you'd have the tank or scrappers wallop one of your teammates or the blaster shoot your teammate dead.

 

They also had problems with people 'looping' the first missions over and over if they were simple and easy.  Synapse was patrol 5 locations, Sister and Bastion were arrest 20 freaks or 5th (resp).  You could get the mission complete bonus easily which was boosted for being a TF.  Then all quit and reform to do it again, leveling quickly.  Hence why the first missions on those were changed to kill-alls.

 

[Mister Mass]

On 8/30/2020 at 1:36 AM, Heraclea said:

My vague understanding is that task forces were originally conceived as team activities that would take several days to complete.  I remember being told this is why, unhappily, you can't invite new members once you start; happily, it's also why you're still in the TF if you get disconnected.  The idea would be that the players who proposed to run them would do so over the course of several days.  They'd log in at an  agreed time, run a couple missions, and then log out until they finished.  That way no one would get too annoyed or bored with multiple defeat all Clockwork missions strung together in one storyline.  

 

Task forces were pretty peripheral content in the early game, until the introduction of accolades and reward merits. 

This was how we did original Posi on Live.  2 SGmates & my blaster did Posi over several days.  The Dark/Dark Defender was only minimum level for the TF, so he (hilariously) kept dying trying to get to a mission door in Steel Canyon, living up to the nickname of "Death's Doorman" that we had given to the player in face-to-face D&D sessions a few years earlier.  So 3 of us, low level & poorly-slotted with TOs (& some DOs) worked through the TF a little at a time.  The Tanker would corner pull some mobs back to the spot where the Defender would drop his Tar Pit debuff patch & my Blaster would dps like nobody's business.  Even completing just one door mission took a very long time this way.  And our characters leveling up actually made the slog worse in a way, as our enhancements would go red.  Having to stop in order to go on a shopping spree was just part of the fun.  But we eventually got it done - & the 3 of us would run all of the signature TFs together on the march to level 50.  So somehow, despite how painful this whole process was, I feel nostalgic for it.  Go figure.😄

[srmalloy]

On 8/30/2020 at 2:20 AM, Sandolphan said:

At first Task Forces were also bugged, so if you got disconnected or logged off, you could be booted from the TF.  It turned off a lot of people in the beginning as well as the repetitive slog of missions.  Our first Posi took 8 hours the day it came out; we lost 2 people along the way to disconnects and two more quit in disgust

Not to mention that characters who were over level for the TF had to be matched one-to-one with characters in the level range of the TF for the exemplar to work, and if the 'aspirant' (the character serving as the level anchor for the character being exemplared) disconnected, the exemplar had about 30 seconds for the aspirant to reconnect -- or establish another exemplar/aspirant link -- before they were automatically kicked from the TF for being over level.

[DoctorDitko]

If I remember correctly, my first run of Posi was with my Grav/FF controller. By hour 4, all but one other character had dropped out, and we were confronting a front-loaded door mission. It was only with the help of Doctor Door* (remember that?) and much persistence that we finally finished the TF.

 

Still, it was pretty epic This was before Propel was fixed, and two toons were taking on a mission set for a full team. Good times!

 

 

*This was a feature added to compensate for a bug which caused your character to suffer minor damage when you went through a door.  The net result was a slight heal effect. Bouncing in and out of a mission was one way to handle the deadly front-loaded type. I really missed it when they killed off Dr. Door!

[MTeague]

On 8/30/2020 at 1:15 AM, srmalloy said:

Not just a repetitive slog, but doing it before you got a travel power. Which cranked the slog up even more, as you had to run across zones, dodging mobs that could con in the deep purples.

The real killer on the Oldschool Posi TF's, you'd have a travel power, was Old Faultline.  Because there was always someone who fell into the Marinara Trench, but who somehow managed not to die, and wanted to try to find their way out, instead of just sucking it up and taking the Hospital Express back to safer ground.

 

Plus that mission filled with piles of CoT spectral demons stacking -To Hit buffs all over the place, when most of the players still had only Training Enhancements, and hardly could squeeze in Tactics. (if that was even POSSIBLE in the old scheme)

[Doomguide2005]

And despite all that, an SG mate and I regularly ran it via Oroboros for the merits.  But we did become intimately familiar with what we could skip/stealth, where ambushes occurred, combined with being exemped, having travel powers etc it didn't take hours.  A far different experience from doing it the first time many issues prior with a level 13ish well before Inventions came along.