Remastering the Citadel TF

[drdread]

I went through the Citadel TF with a PUG recently, and I remembered how mind-dullingly repetitive it is.  If the devs are looking to remaster a classic task force, this is the task force to redo. It's just the same map and mobs over and over. This isn't to say the Manticore or Numina TFs are perfect, far from it. I just find the Citadel TF is the most lumbersome.

 

I put together a list of things I thought could improve the Citadel TF. They are in the spoiler section below.
 

Spoiler

The story

The plot, in of itself, isn't bad; it's just trapped in a time-capsule of the first few issues of CoH. The Zenith Mech Men are hardly "new" now, but I like the idea of the council using Citadel's stolen technology to upgrade their robots. I think the story should reference more of what is happening in Paragon City, and especially in Striga Island.

 

The maps

There weren't a lot of maps when CoH started. I'm sure the original devs wanted to show off the council tunnel maps. I can see most of the maps using the council tunnels, but we need some variety, particularly on the final mission.

 

The hunt

In the middle of the taskforce, you need to defeat 40 council agents in Independence Port. The problem is, most of the mobs you find are gray and won't provide any XP, it's just a time sink. I suggest replacing it either with a small outdoor mission map, or a mission map with different mobs (like an abandoned council base taken over by the Freakshow).

 

Bulwark

The first Elite Boss of the task force, and it's just a Zenith Warcry. I think it would be cool if Bulwark had some similarity to Citadel, maybe even be an evil twin! _{dum dum!} It would be the prototype that you would have to destroy to avoid more of these upgraded robots.

 

Vandal

The task force's big bad. When you encounter him, he just seems to be hanging out with his council buddies. I think the final encounter should have a bigger impact. Imagine Vandal arguing with Archon Burkholder (who slips away before the heroes arrive) as to which one has a better robotics project. Or maybe Vandal is researching the Well of Furies, or maybe it was all a Nemesis plot.

 

[biostem]

In general, many of the older TFs could use some love - be it by varying the maps, objectives, or by just generally streamlining them.  The problem is that there are also players that like that O.G. feel.  Maybe keep them as-is via Ouroboros, and introduce an updated version, like was done with some other ones...

[Rudra]

34 minutes ago, drdread said:

The story

The plot, in of itself, isn't bad; it's just trapped in a time-capsule of the first few issues of CoH. The Zenith Mech Men are hardly "new" now, but I like the idea of the council using Citadel's stolen technology to upgrade their robots. I think the story should reference more of what is happening in Paragon City, and especially in Striga Island.

When the TF was released at launch of game, the Mech Men were not new. As per the wiki (https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Council/Robots):

Zenith Mech Man

 

Zenith Mech Man

Vandal, the genius behind the Council's technology, created his first robots during the 1940's. He's been improving on them ever since. Now known as the Zenith Mech Men, these tough and deadly machines are 100 times more dangerous than their predecessors of 60 years ago. Modern Mech Men have tough, thick armor, redundant systems that resist damage, and a powerful onboard AI that makes them faster and smarter than most human soldiers.

 

When you are sent after them, they are a vastly upgraded model. They are "new" in that they are a new model of the robots.

 

34 minutes ago, drdread said:

The hunt

In the middle of the taskforce, you need to defeat 40 council agents in Independence Port. The problem is, most of the mobs you find are gray and won't provide any XP, it's just a time sink.

There are players that would say this is a good thing since it means you can steamroll the streestweep and be done quickly.

 

34 minutes ago, drdread said:

I suggest replacing it either with a small outdoor mission map, or a mission map with different mobs (like an abandoned council base taken over by the Freakshow).

Why would the Freakshow have any role in the TF? You are raiding active Council bases. If the Freakshow took the base over, then it is obviously not an active Council base and would likely have had any data you were sent to retrieve wiped or moved to another location. (Edit: Neither would the Freakshow or any other faction have the requisite Council data disc you need to find from the streetsweep.)

 

34 minutes ago, drdread said:

Vandal

The task force's big bad. When you encounter him, he just seems to be hanging out with his council buddies. I think the final encounter should have a bigger impact. Imagine Vandal arguing with Archon Burkholder (who slips away before the heroes arrive) as to which one has a better robotics project. Or maybe Vandal is researching the Well of Furies, or maybe it was all a Nemesis plot.

Vandal is noted as being a roboticist and tinkerer. The Council is not known for being involved in investigating the Well of the Furies. The Council pursues incarnate power by going to Cimerora and dealing with the ancient Nictus there. For that matter, the Well isn't even addressed in the story until later. The earliest SF I know of that references incarnate power sends you after the Flames of Prometheus, not the Well of the Furies. And the Nemesis plot TF about incarnate power is about Pandora's Box, which is a repository of Zeus' power, not the Furies.

 

I'm all for cleaning up the legacy TFs. Some are just overly long with all their filler missions. I would advocate not changing the stories of those TFs though. New TFs can be made to address the things you want to see.

Edited March 22, 2023 by Rudra
Italicization added to mark copied text from wiki.

[biostem]

29 minutes ago, Rudra said:

The Council pursues incarnate power by going to Cimerora and dealing with the ancient Nictus there

That's the 5th Column that do that, not the Council.

[Rudra]

12 minutes ago, biostem said:

That's the 5th Column that do that, not the Council.

My mistake.

[Communistpenguin]

Honestly, just using differnt maps would help alot. Could a outdoor instanced map of part of the council base in boomtown or striga be created and used?

[TheZag]

I find synapse to be just slightly more monotonous than citadel.  Taking a league of 44 people along with a bit of extra coordination to get 8 or more simultaneous babbages is its saving grace though.

 

If any changes are to be made,  be sure and place the originals in ouro.

 

Edited March 23, 2023 by TheZag

[srmalloy]

5 hours ago, drdread said:

If the devs are looking to remaster a classic task force, this is the task force to redo.

As an entity that should appreciate efficiency, Citadel certainly fails to show it in his TF, jumping back and forth between IP and Talos just to force travel time. A minimal rework would be to take all the missions, divide them into a first and second half, and put all the first half in IP and all the second half in Talos. Or even, if the travel is so gorram important, share the mission locations out among IP, Talos, Steel, and Boomtown so that it's not just alternating zones.

[Arc-Mage]

10 hours ago, srmalloy said:

As an entity that should appreciate efficiency, Citadel certainly fails to show it in his TF, jumping back and forth between IP and Talos just to force travel time. A minimal rework would be to take all the missions, divide them into a first and second half, and put all the first half in IP and all the second half in Talos. Or even, if the travel is so gorram important, share the mission locations out among IP, Talos, Steel, and Boomtown so that it's not just alternating zones.

Forcing travel was a thing back then. Hide your lack of content by stretching out the experience. It made it feel like there was more to do than there really was. 
 

Today not so much.

[lemming]

Just to mention this was broached last year by Voltor, so a mix of the two ideas might work.

 

[Voltor]

15 hours ago, TheZag said:

I find synapse to be just slightly more monotonous than citadel.  Taking a league of 44 people along with a bit of extra coordination to get 8 or more simultaneous babbages is its saving grace though.

 

If any changes are to be made,  be sure and place the originals in ouro.

 

 

I was working on a revised Synapse TF in the AE.  AE has some limitations so some of my ideas can't seem to be implemented but it would be 10 missions, revised story line, a lot less defeat alls.   Had to shelve the project due to IRL, will resume it later

[kelika2]

18 hours ago, TheZag said:

I find synapse to be just slightly more monotonous than citadel.

synapes is just pure city of heroes at its finest.  classic wading through a sea of enemies.  The changes I would do to this are remove the patrols, move EBs to the final mission, drop the first two skyway missions and slap a Monster version of Babbage in the 3way room and lastly add the rescues to the final mission, one at random giving you the temp hold power

 

Citadel is worse, if its not the narrow caves with really spread out enemies its the mission placement.  going to the corners of IP its the islands north of talos just isnt fun even if you are built for travel.

and relying this heavily on TT and MT is starting to feel like a detriment to game design as a whole.

 

And to me, task forces have always been the main source of exp, back in 2004 and now.  Numina only has 3 or 4 missions that have exp.  Those random hunts just stop what we as humans consider "fun" stops in its tracks.  Even playing since may 2019 i think only one of my alts has TF commander mostly because of those two TFs.

[Sakura Tenshi]

Not that I disagree with you, especially since Citadel feels like it’d be an easier one to revamp, but I would prefer we start with the Synapse TF. It’s even longer. More repetitive because Clockwork only have so many different attacks, and to make it worse: they are almost all end draining at a low level where end management is difficult.

 

edit: my own proposal for revamping the Citadel TFs story would probably be something along the lines of tying it into the Praetorian stuff and have him be working making new frames for Nightstar and Siege. That being said, I also know people are tired of praetorian stuff or at least were back on live and so we could just stick with the original plot of using Citadel’s plans.

 

next, both on a story front and for enemy diversity, we could have the Council having raided groups like Sky Raiders, Crey, and Arachnos for new robotics tech.

 

Lastly, while we might have difficulty making whole new models for the new mech men prototypes, we could maybe at least give them some new powers.

Edited March 24, 2023 by Sakura Tenshi

[Voltor]

I'm also of the opinion that the Numina TF needs a look.  Take away say the street sweeps with lowbies like the skulls,  and add a door mission in their place then give us the higher level street sweeps.

[FupDup]

For Numina, I'd be fine with the sweeps if they were no longer zone-specific. We would be able to pick whichever zones we wanted to kill the villains, which would allow for some optimization/streamlining since most of them spawn in multiple different zones. 

[srmalloy]

3 hours ago, FupDup said:

since most of them spawn in multiple different zones

Most notably Vahzilok, which don't spawn in anywhere the same numbers in Faultline as they did prior to the zone revamp (and still do in Echo:Faultline). It would break the 'defeating well-known opponents' thing that the hunts in the Numina TF are supposed to evoke, but just changing 'Vahzilok' to 'Arachnos' for that step would make it less tedious.

[Chi]

Bring back the prisons . 

[gameboy1234]

I'd like to see both Synapse and Cit get the Posi treatment.  Break them into two parts, and add some more interesting maps and gameplay elements.  (The comment about Synapse being "CoH at its finest" isn't wrong.  A couple of large warehouse maps which are absolutely chock full of -1 clockwork would work for "wade into a sea of enemies" -- the early factory maps would be great for this).  Replacing the street sweeping entirely would be my preference, maybe replace it with a double map, fight some Council above ground and then enter a base on the same map and fight some more, kind of like a safeguard map.

[honoroit]

i suffered micronaps a few days back on back to back synapses.  you kind of realize youve been standing still all at once.  good times.

 

49 minutes ago, gameboy1234 said:

I'd like to see both Synapse and Cit get the Posi treatment.  Break them into two parts, and add some more interesting maps and gameplay elements.

 

yes pls.

 

or babbage waves. in defense of the clockwork king... 1, 2, then 4 babbages!  good luck. in the instance. would mess with soloers tho. maybe a glowy red button your (not) supposed to press!