ITF is great, and possibly one of the best designs in MMO history

[oedipus_tex]

This is a counterpart to a recent thread about the Mothership Raid. I'd like to talk about the ITF and why it is one the best dungeons in an MMO. While there are some things about it that detract, overall I think its design is a runaway success.

 

To me, this dungeon hits several specific key marks:

 

• It encourages and allows every member of the team to participate
• It is not likely to be carried by a single player
• It respects the player's time by breaking the action into 4 purposeful missions, with no filler content
• It provides rewards to make it worth the effort
• It pits players against a variety of planned encounter types, including some all-boss and all epic boss spawns that create key "moments" that reward different build types
• It equally rewards AoE and single target damage
• It's approachable enough that even players who have never done it can probably follow the team and mostly understand what to do
• It is loaded with enemies who are dangerous in just the right way. Enemies have -Defense and very little mezz. Also there is some variety in enemy protection against mezz, which rewards using debuffs like -ToHit and Slow

 

 

I could expand on this but I think you're getting the point. IMO the ITF *is* City of Heroes. I'd love to see more content designed using it as a template, and not just for CoX. It stands out to me among MMO content as a high achievement.

[A Cat]

I would like to add that it has an epic battle feel due to large spawns/ambushes.

[Jiro Ito]

Plus a great epic period-appropriate soundtrack!

[TheZag]

It has the last known shadow cyst crystals across all time.

[Lazarillo]

I mentioned this a month or thereabouts back in a discussion of the Aeon SF, but ITF is also a great example of how to tell a story in a TF.  It's not a complicated story, in all fairness, but because it stays straightforward, it's possible to understand what you're doing and why just from things like NPC one-liners and the way mission objectives are strung together.  It helps, of course, if you've done the "A Path Into Darkness" arc before, but it's not necessary.  But the point is that, yeah, it's not just fun to play, but it's also well-executed in terms of storyline.  Not perfect, but leagues better than most group content; it's one of maybe four-ish that actually pulls off feeling like effective group-written content.

 

I do have one beef with the gameplay, and that's the lack of use for control powers in most of it.  Controllers, at least, have their debuffs, but I usually feel kinda anemic if I bring a Dominator on it.

[MTeague]

I would vastly prefer the ITF if it was lvls 35-44.

But that's largely my own strong bias against Incarnates.

 

Leaving that rather large sticking point behind, there's a lot about the ITF to like.

I would see nothing wrong with the addition of enemies who used mez, however.

[arcane]

yeah itf is dope ngl

[Glacier Peak]

Looks like oedipus_tex is at it again trying pad their post coun... oh wait its a parody thread. Continue 😄 

[Saikochoro]

The ITF is my favorite activity in the game by far. It’s just long enough to feel good without being a slog. It can cater to speed farming merits (yeah I know not the fastest) or you can do kill most xp runs.

 

The fact that it is likely the most popular task force also means the teams fill fast. So it’s fun to do theme runs and pretty easy to fill up. Stalkers only! Or fire blast only! Or a Regen only run. Etc. 

 

It has enough hard targets that single target focused characters feel as important as AoE spamming characters. Both are rewarded. 
 

It is just plain fun. 

[Mezmera]

Yes it is very well liked because its very straight forward, has minimal mezzing encounters and armor characters can get the full use out of their builds either through high S/L resist and/or high DDR.  So most every character has a good time on it except for actual control characters which is fair since there's minimal mez altogether on it then its only fair that control gets kneecapped against these targets as well.  

 

It's good we have this cake TF to play but there's no need to emulate most of it, we already have one of its kind.  To me it looks like they are doing right by taking the bits and pieces of frequently played TF's to add to their own crafting of future content while sprinkling in some actual challenge.  We have ITF, we don't need 7 ITF-esque TF's.  I hope they keep pushing things so we get very different things we have the option of doing for endgame.   

 

Quality content and no need to copycat it.  

Edited February 11, 2022 by Mezmera

[gamingglen]

4 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

...IMO the ITF *is* City of Heroes...

 

not even close 

[Cancrusher]

While I do find it a bit overlong, it's an extremely fun taskforce.  Probably my favorite, right up there with Penny Yin.  Honestly, I need to do more TF/SF.  There's several I haven't even tried yet.  I really want to try Miss Liberty and Lord Recluse.

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 hour ago, Cancrusher said:

I really want to try Miss Liberty and Lord Recluse.

 

You should. They're fun.

 

On topic, I enjoyed the ITF more when I didn't have to load up on acc/tohit buff due to the last fix patch for Cimerorans. It's still my favorite TF.

[oedipus_tex]

3 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

On topic, I enjoyed the ITF more when I didn't have to load up on acc/tohit buff due to the last fix patch for Cimerorans. It's still my favorite TF.

 

 

I did notice I was missing more often in my last run. What are the details of the fix?

[Bopper]

29 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

 

 

I did notice I was missing more often in my last run. What are the details of the fix?

One of the powers the Romans had on Live got commented out during the post-sunset era. It was believed at the time that something to do with their FX was causing major lag which prompted the removal of the power. The true bug that caused the lag wound up being something else, but the removal of the power had become overlooked and remained unavailable to the Romans up until last year.

 

The power in question was Phalanx Fighting (it went by a different name originally, but it basically was the equivalent of that power and got renamed as such last year). The extra defense from Phalanx Fighting is why folks who became accustomed to the ITF post-sunset have noticed the higher difficulty to hit their target. However, folks who remember the ITF well from Live should not really notice a difference.

 

---

EDIT: Some extra information below.

 

I looked up the powers on ParagonWiki (which is archived to what the site looked like at sunset). Here is one of the sets of powers for the Romans.

 

Now...the powers were poorly represented. The "Energized Shield" actually was the "Phalanx Fighting" as in, its actual effects gave the Foe extra defense for each ally near them. This is the power that was removed by mistake post-sunset. As for the Energized Shield description, it was copy/paste from the player power and does not describe what the actual power did at all.

 

If you go on City of Data, you'll see Energized Shield is still the internal name, but the display name was changed to "Phalanx Fighting" to better represent what the power actually does. 

 

As for the power formerly known as "Phalanx Fighting", it was renamed to Roman Armor which is an auto power that provides defense and DDR.

Edited February 11, 2022 by Bopper
Added pics

[Shred Monkey]

8 hours ago, Cancrusher said:

I really want to try Miss Liberty and Lord Recluse.

 

One tip for first time runners.  In all my times running these not once have I seen either of them run as a "kill most."  They're always run as objectives only... (i.e. speed run).  But don't let this bother you.  It makes running them around 15-25 minutes each.  This is about right in this game, IMHO.  Plus, the objects are clearly identified for you and you can just follow a teammate who appears to know where to go.  They mainly consist of AV fights where you can (and do) skip any enemies between the AVs, and even grouped with the AVs.

[SeraphimKensai]

Is it just me, or since the map update in Cimerora has the cave map for mission 2 become fixed to be a cave over by Tommy's castle? I must have run about 30 or so ITFs over the last couple of months and it seems the cave is always over there now.

[s1l3nttr00per]

Yeah gota love a Kill all or speed ITF, they're both fun for different reasons, one of my all time fav missions in the geme is the 3rd mission on the ITF, fighting through hordes of roman traitors to find sneaky nazis building robots, fighting two AVs and the worlds most robust computer pannel. 

[Erratic1]

8 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

You should. They're fun.

 

They would be even more fun for people new to them if groups did not rush them. But do any TF enough times and the story slowly emerges.

[Snarky]

The ITF has always been good (except for "valley of lag" issues on live)  

 

But don't you think these over the top dramatic statements are so yesterday?

[fitzsimmons]

I like the ambush gather just after the overpass in the 3rd mission for defeat most ITFs.  It's fun, especially if the ambush spawns are close together.

[oedipus_tex]

6 hours ago, Bopper said:

One of the powers the Romans had on Live got commented out during the post-sunset era. It was believed at the time that something to do with their FX was causing major lag which prompted the removal of the power. The true bug that caused the lag wound up being something else, but the removal of the power had become overlooked and remained unavailable to the Romans up until last year. Now...the powers were poorly represented. The "Energized Shield" actually was the "Phalanx Fighting" as in, its actual effects gave the Foe extra defense for each ally near them. This is the power that was removed by mistake post-sunset. As for the Energized Shield description, it was copy/paste from the player power and does not describe what the actual power did at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

That is really interesting. I do remember the mobs shrugging off mezz some of the time, didn't realize it was specifically due to a toggle aura they have.

[Uun]

18 hours ago, Lazarillo said:

I do have one beef with the gameplay, and that's the lack of use for control powers in most of it.  Controllers, at least, have their debuffs, but I usually feel kinda anemic if I bring a Dominator on it.

I don't feel that way at all. With domination up you can control most of the mobs (except the EBs) in one shot if you get it off before the bosses can use Shout of Command. Phalanx Fighting doesn't protect against fear or confuse. Also, Earth has a ton of autohit -def.

[Ukase]

20 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

This is a counterpart to a recent thread about the Mothership Raid. I'd like to talk about the ITF and why it is one the best dungeons in an MMO. While there are some things about it that detract, overall I think its design is a runaway success.

 

To me, this dungeon hits several specific key marks:

 

• It encourages and allows every member of the team to participate
• It is not likely to be carried by a single player
• It respects the player's time by breaking the action into 4 purposeful missions, with no filler content
• It provides rewards to make it worth the effort
• It pits players against a variety of planned encounter types, including some all-boss and all epic boss spawns that create key "moments" that reward different build types
• It equally rewards AoE and single target damage
• It's approachable enough that even players who have never done it can probably follow the team and mostly understand what to do
• It is loaded with enemies who are dangerous in just the right way. Enemies have -Defense and very little mezz. Also there is some variety in enemy protection against mezz, which rewards using debuffs like -ToHit and Slow

 

 

I could expand on this but I think you're getting the point. IMO the ITF *is* City of Heroes. I'd love to see more content designed using it as a template, and not just for CoX. It stands out to me among MMO content as a high achievement.

I think I'm gonna hurl. I hate ITF. 

[arcane]

6 minutes ago, Ukase said:

I think I'm gonna hurl. I hate fun.

Fixed 😢