Many of the TFs and SFs need Updating. Can we do this?

[EyeLuvBooks]

The new Posi 1 and 2 TFs are among the most fun in the game. Nothing like the slog that was the original Posi TF back in the day.

 

The ITF is quite possibly THE most fun I can have in a group with my clothes on and no controlled substances involved. I think that a review of the data would reveal that it's among the top most-played TFs in the game.

 

And yet many are played once for a badge or accolade, a few times when they come up as the WTF, and that it. After playing MANY of them, I think I know why.

 

1) Many of the TFs involve travel to different zones. Not different instances within a common zone (like the ITF) but rather travel from one zone to another. This is less odious now that loading times are greatly improved and Movement Powers are available much sooner but the fact remains that a significant portion of the time it takes to run a TF is consumed by simply moving from zone to zone.

 

2) Fetch quests. How many of the TFs include a 'go here and defeat 20-30 of X group?' Oh, by the way, said group cons gray in many of the zones you'll find them in so you're gaining NO reward for defeating them. Wow...a time-sink built into an MMO? Seriously?

 

3) The sheer number of missions can be daunting. I read somewhere that when the game was first envisioned, the TFs were designed to be done over the course of several session if necessary. That's why you don't get kicked if you log off and don't finish. The idea was that you could pick it up later. Sadly, almost nobody plays this way any the normal group for a TF is whoever responds when the hail is put forth on the LFG channel. IMHO several of the longer TFs would be greatly improved if they received the same treatment as the OG POsi and cut them into more manageable pieces.

 

I'm not suggesting that the TF rewards be increased, nor that they be made less challenging...simply less tedious.

[A Cat]

I want to add 

 

4) Get rid of copy pasted missions like in Citadel and Synapse. Good god, it is the same thing on the same map multiple times in a row. Longer TF's can be ok, as long as the stuff you're doing is interesting. Defeating all enemies in a generic warehouse or a claustrophobic Council base a bunch of times sucks. There is just a lot more to it in the modern mission arcs/Aeon that would inject life into these TF's. There are multiple objectives, little side objectives that change how the mission goes down, etc. 

[UltraAlt]

1 hour ago, EyeLuvBooks said:

Wow...a time-sink built into an MMO? Seriously?

 

Are you being sarcastic and referring to the time-sinks in WoW?

 

Yes, Time-sinks are built into all MMOs for player retention.

 

1 hour ago, EyeLuvBooks said:

Oh, by the way, said group cons gray in many of the zones you'll find them in so you're gaining NO reward for defeating them.

 

I don't remember this being the case.

I remember it being an actual challenge to fight the foes on the hunts.

 

1 hour ago, EyeLuvBooks said:

Many of the TFs involve travel to different zones.

 

I do believe that the running around the city was to show the player how big the City is and how cool the different zones are.

Some of the Task forces were a tour of the City.

 

I still love flying/running/jumping around the city. 

Don't get me wrong, I always try to have team teleport, mission teleport, and assemble team on all my characters to make transport between missions faster when on a team. But that's mainly because there seems to be a good amount of "are we there yet?"

 

1 hour ago, EyeLuvBooks said:

The sheer number of missions can be daunting.

 

This I can agree with.

I think all the longer Task forces should be chopped up into parts like Positron's taskforce. 

Make all task forces gauged so that an average team can knock out one in 30-45 minutes.

 

If there is some badge that you need for an accolade, then make that badge it's own accolade and require a badge for completing each of the sub-divided task forces which yields that accolade. (I'm assuming that would be easier/simpler than replacing the current badge for an accolade with x number of badges where x is the number of sub-divided task forces were created from the original task force.)

 

1 hour ago, EyeLuvBooks said:

I'm not suggesting that the TF rewards be increased, nor that they be made less challenging...simply less tedious.

 

Yes. Divide the merits for task force completion among the sub-divided missions.

 

I do think it should be a progression like with Positron.

That is to say, if you haven't completed Posi 1, you can't lead Posi 2. You can still join a Posi 2, if someone else is leading it has already unlocked it by completing Posi 1. 

[SuggestorK]

1 hour ago, UltraAlt said:

 

I don't remember this being the case.

I remember it being an actual challenge to fight the foes on the hunts.

 

I do believe that the running around the city was to show the player how big the City is and how cool the different zones are.

Some of the Task forces were a tour of the City.

 

 

 

I believe he means Numina TF mainly, in this TF you have many many Hunts and for most of em u get zero XP cause theyre just grey, only the last 2 Hunts in Founders/Eden can grant XP's.

 

And yes its a tour through the whole city that existed when Numina TF was Created for Launch and Maximum Level was 40 so basically a goodbye tour, that is the reason Croatoa as example is not part of it or Striga/Hollows, Peregrine Island....

[EyeLuvBooks]

6 hours ago, SuggestorK said:

 

I believe he means Numina TF mainly, in this TF you have many many Hunts and for most of em u get zero XP cause theyre just grey, only the last 2 Hunts in Founders/Eden can grant XP's.

 

And yes its a tour through the whole city that existed when Numina TF was Created for Launch and Maximum Level was 40 so basically a goodbye tour, that is the reason Croatoa as example is not part of it or Striga/Hollows, Peregrine Island....

Yes, Numina is the worst offender in that regard. I think there are something like a dozen 'Hunt X' missions involved.

 

I'd simply like all of the TFs and SFs t be as fun as the ones that people are always starting. I hear calls for ITF and Posis daily and I don't play every day. Most of the others are either a special kind of team started for fun (like the 'All MM' team or the 'All Controller' team) or people are getting badges or it's the WTF and they're going for the double Merits. Many of the TFs and SFs take so long that players have developed tricks to shorten them. Why would they do that unless they'd gotten tired of trying to run through Quarterfield the long way?

 

There is a fine line between Challenge and Tedium. I'd like more of the game content to be the former and not the latter. 

[ShardWarrior]

Synapse and Citadel could benefit from a makeover in my opinion.  Both are just dreadful slogs with all their "defeat all" maps. 

[UltraAlt]

8 hours ago, SuggestorK said:

I believe he means Numina TF mainly, in this TF you have many many Hunts and for most of em u get zero XP cause theyre just grey, only the last 2 Hunts in Founders/Eden can grant XP's.

 

And, as I stated, I recall way-back long-ago before the sunset, that (at least some of) the mobs were level relevant. I don't remember them being all greys way back then.

It might even be that there were ambushes that conned mission setting level. It's a memory and these things fade and twist over time. I stated my memory.

 

9 hours ago, SuggestorK said:

existed when Numina TF was Created for Launch and Maximum Level was 40 so basically a goodbye tour

 

I doubt it was a goodbye tour since as you said it was only level 40. 

I'm sure they planned to expand the game from the get go.

But they could have put it in as a grinder intentionally to eat up time until the game expanded more.

 

2 hours ago, EyeLuvBooks said:

Many of the TFs and SFs take so long that players have developed tricks to shorten them. Why would they do that unless they'd gotten tired of trying to run through Quarterfield the long way?

 

There is a fine line between Challenge and Tedium. I'd like more of the game content to be the former and not the latter. 

 

Agreed.

 

It's also a balance between merits, time investment, and the challenge of the content.

 

So I guess we should list what is tedium?

Hunts?

Zone hopping?

Length of time to complete a task force?

Tagging things (police boxes/patrol, "talk to", and "fed-ex"/"take x to y")

What else?

 

I think that the hunts could be transformed into seeking a key/clue from a group in a zone; the key/clue would randomly drop on defeats.

It could also include waves of mission-level/settings equivalent ambush mobs that spawn in the zone until the key/clue is found.

Could be the key/clue location is known and guarded by a mission-level/settings equivalent mob(s) of equivalent hunt size.

 

I like the zone hopping, but I know it is tedious to others

 

I think 30-45 minutes for each section of task force content is a good time length.

I say this because some of us, for whatever reason, need to bio more often that others, only have a limited playtime, can't always team with the same people, and can't alway play at the same time of day.

 

Tagging things.

If the there is a reason to go to a police box/patrol - change them to hotspots on the map mission-level/settings equivalent mob(s) form - and change it to defeating the mob at those hotspots versus just clicking on something.

I know that the CITY is caught out-of-time and there are things from back then that are still in the game (old school computer CRTs, etc.), but I think the "talk to" should just be team leader calls. This allows it to still provide the text information from the original game but also doesn't slow down the rest of the team as they can't see the info anyway (and honestly, most don't take time to read that stuff during task forces any more.) -or- this could be handled like the below. 

There are many new style missions where you tell the contact that you are ready to go into the mission and they are the mission door. If you need to "take" something to them, then they should be the mission door or at least they should be standing near something that will take you to the mission (aircraft, etc.)

 

 

 

[tidge]

12 hours ago, A Cat said:

4) Get rid of copy pasted missions like in Citadel and Synapse. Good god, it is the same thing on the same map multiple times in a row. Longer TF's can be ok, as long as the stuff you're doing is interesting. Defeating all enemies in a generic warehouse or a claustrophobic Council base a bunch of times sucks. There is just a lot more to it in the modern mission arcs/Aeon that would inject life into these TF's. There are multiple objectives, little side objectives that change how the mission goes down, etc. 

 

11 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Synapse and Citadel could benefit from a makeover in my opinion.  Both are just dreadful slogs with all their "defeat all" maps. 

 

I am less bothered by Citadel's  defeat alls, because at that level most characters are able to handle the spawns relatively quickly. The back-and-forth across zones is annoying, but not deal-breaking for me.

 

I feel like Synapse could benefit from an instanced version of a (partial) city zone, similar to how the Penny Yin TF has an instanced version of Independence Port. I don't mind a "defeat all", but having SO MANY of them AND having multiple call box missions AND jumping to Boomtown is quite a slogfest. I'd also prefer if the penultimate Synapse TF mission was slightly tweaked: I'd re-write that mission to lean heavier into the fact that the Clockwork King has a bit of an obsession with Chess and "Medieval Times"... update the bosses, rename the enemies to have 'geekier' names and require the defeat of some number of specific instanced bosses... something like "2 Clockwork Bishops, 2 Clockwork Rooks, etc." I'd be tempted to add either Penny Yin or Blue Steel at some point for some more lore-flavor. I think we could drop the one-shot power from Positron and instead add Penny Yin as a rescue-able NPC to help with the final AV fight.

 

[A Cat]

22 minutes ago, tidge said:

I'd also prefer if the penultimate Synapse TF mission was slightly tweaked: I'd re-write that mission to lean heavier into the fact that the Clockwork King has a bit of an obsession with Chess and "Medieval Times"... update the bosses, rename the enemies to have 'geekier' names and require the defeat of some number of specific instanced bosses... something like "2 Clockwork Bishops, 2 Clockwork Rooks, etc." I'd be tempted to add either Penny Yin or Blue Steel at some point for some more lore-flavor. I think we could drop the one-shot power from Positron and instead add Penny Yin as a rescue-able NPC to help with the final AV fight.

 

 

Or arrange the Clockwork court on a chessboard in their positions. Wouldn't that look sick? Maybe have a captured Penny Yin on the Queen spot. Would be kinda funny since she is the most powerful one there, like an actual chess queen.

[SuggestorK]

2 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

 

I doubt it was a goodbye tour since as you said it was only level 40. 

I'm sure they planned to expand the game from the get go.

But they could have put it in as a grinder intentionally to eat up time until the game expanded more.

 

 

You got me a bit wrong there , at that point in time (before Issue 1 hit).. it was basically a say goodbye tour to that char u played to let him relive evrything he should have seen.. not the game itself... the char was done u couldnt do much to develop him farther beside respeccing him and divide slots differently.

 

1. 40 was max.. no xp beyond like now on HC past 50

2. No badges existed, that why i mostly didnt do any TF at that point beside just once to see what was in it

3. no IOs existed, Single Origin was the best u could get so no need to get much inf either.

4. exemplar and sking didnt work like now.. u had to have someone in range to actively mentor or exemplar you (that why as soon u hit lvl 37 back in those times u got flooded by tells that u babysit a friend of the xp farmer and mentor him and later after lvl was raised to 50 at 47 of course)

5. no Ouro, no Radio, no tips... after u was done with the contacts of the lvl 35-40 range u couldnt get anything yourself, beside maybe pvp zone mission if they existed back then.. not sure about that, basically for anything beside street sweep u had to team up.

6. no AE either of course

7. no Incarnate stuff of course, im sure u would have guessed that by now.. just to mention it

 

Naturally they had plans to expand it.. evryone that publish Online Games does, thats why u didnt delete the char but park him to see what has to come and o boy did they deliver, or we wouldnt play it still.. isnt it 😉

Edited December 29, 2021 by SuggestorK
corrected typos

[UltraAlt]

2 hours ago, A Cat said:

Or arrange the Clockwork court on a chessboard in their positions. Wouldn't that look sick? Maybe have a captured Penny Yin on the Queen spot. Would be kinda funny since she is the most powerful one there, like an actual chess queen.

 

Funny, but cool too at the same time.

[srmalloy]

8 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

Synapse and Citadel could benefit from a makeover in my opinion.  Both are just dreadful slogs with all their "defeat all" maps. 

Citadel even more so because of its "Independence Port! Talos Island! Independence Port! Talos Island!" mission location alternation, which made it a particularly nasty slog on Live back before the availability of Team Transporter, especially when the IP missions were in the southwest corner of IP. Reworking it so that the first couple of missions were in IP, then the next few in Talos, and the final missions are on Striga where the Council have a big presence, would be more coherent.

[EyeLuvBooks]

14 hours ago, srmalloy said:

Citadel even more so because of its "Independence Port! Talos Island! Independence Port! Talos Island!" mission location alternation, which made it a particularly nasty slog on Live back before the availability of Team Transporter, especially when the IP missions were in the southwest corner of IP. Reworking it so that the first couple of missions were in IP, then the next few in Talos, and the final missions are on Striga where the Council have a big presence, would be more coherent.

I completely agree. Any TF that involves zoning after every mission or even every other would benefit from 'how about 4-5 missions here, and THEN we all go to the next zone?' IMHO.

[Cancrusher]

Yeah, Numina is painful when you hit that "Run around the city and cull mobs" part.

 

At any rate, if it's viable, I fully support the OP's suggestion.  👍

[UltraAlt]

On 12/29/2021 at 2:01 PM, SuggestorK said:

at that point in time (before Issue 1 hit).. it was basically a say goodbye tour to that char u played to let him relive evrything he should have seen..

 

I can see that point of view, but it was also clearly an intentional time-eater.

I think that they really expected the kind of player that they would be getting would all be making alts and not focusing on a "main" character and that they would have more time to expand the game. 

[Monsoon]

I don't mind the Tour de Paragon in the Numina TF.  If your group is coordinated and in position to take out large groups of the right mobs in each zone, it can breeze by pretty quickly.  Finding Vahzilok in Faultline seems to be one part that slows things down.  Sometimes people have trouble finding Council in Boomtown because they keep encountering groups that are actively fighting 5th Column; direct them to the Council base in the southwest of the map and they can find larger Council-only spawns to deal with.

 

The Council missions in Citadel are less boring than the Clockwork missions in Synapse.  Council at least has some visual variety to their mobs, while Clockwork is all dirty bronze and zappy-zap all day.

 

Manticore can sometimes be a slog, but that's mostly due to Paragon Protectors getting those obnoxious T9 powers just as you're about to finish them off.  If you've got some good CC and/or enough damage to drop them before they can pop their T9 it's not so bad.

 

All things considered, I'd rather run Synapse on all my alts to get Task Force Commander than take them redside for the equivalent Accolade.  It would certainly be nice to trim the Synapse TF a bit.  Drop some of the Defeat Alls and/or put them on smaller maps.  Lose the patrol missions to click the phone booths around Steel Canyon.  Maybe adjust the Bertha mission in Boomtown so it always spawns at a door closer to the Steel Canyon gate.

[Aurora_Girl]

Why run Synapse when you can do Invader on three or four alts in the same time frame?

[Lazarillo]

On 12/29/2021 at 11:48 AM, tidge said:

I'd be tempted to add either Penny Yin or Blue Steel at some point for some more lore-flavor. I think we could drop the one-shot power from Positron and instead add Penny Yin as a rescue-able NPC to help with the final AV fight.

Blue Steel could be an interesting addition since he's got some backstory going on there, and whatnot.

I really dislike the one-note-ification of CWK to "he's obsessed with Pitstop Penny" though, and really feel like we don't need more of her involved with his evil plots and whatnot, though.

[Razor Cure]

Totally agree with the OP. The new Posi1/2 are both great and varied and a great length. You can easily do both in under 30, speeding (or just with a great team), or go slow and everyone gets a few levels. Same with Penny.

Obviously Synapse is just an utter POS. It is easily the least common (at least to me) tf being formed, and the hardest to get people for. Numina seriously needs a revamp too, as the entire TF, bar the hunts, can be done in like 20 mins or less.

Manti and Cit also have the problem of nearly every mission being the damn same. Go in, kill everyone or kill a boss.

 

Granted, many of the red side SFs are similar, but they all have varied maps and mobs at least, so they feel less samey.