TonyV

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If you are on a trial account you CAN NOT sent a /tell to a higher level toon than yourself, UNLESS THEY have you on their friends list as well (and in CoX's case i think Global friend list could/should work as well). This would basically elliminate the /tell spam IMO.

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I think this is a great idea since the spamers use the free trial accounts constantly . This should be the next step taken IMO.

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I disagree. I think this is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I'd rather have the spam than to block people from sending PMs. I don't know if you know about the Taxibots, but a lot of them actually seek out new players and asks them to add the Taxibot to their friends list so that if they have questions or problems, they can contact them for help, and a lot of them do. Unfortunately, given the limitation of the friends list, they can't add everyone they run across to it.

Plus, this is a social game. People should be highly encouraged to talk to others, even at the earliest levels, even on trial accounts. I'd highly recommend against anything that interferes with that, even if it means putting up with the spam problem a bit longer.

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Rather odd is the fact that they're not using something as simple as an .htaccess entry to restrict those from logging in from that IP range, which would solve the problem rather nicely

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.htaccess is a very specific access mechanism. It only blocks web traffic, and only works within the Apache web server. It wouldn't prevent people from playing the game.

If you want to block an IP address from talking to you, you would need to configure it within your firewall, not .htaccess.

Also, you can't just block IP addresses all willy-nilly. A lot of people are using NAT, and blocking one address might be blocking a whole block of machines, some of which might be those of innocent users. Also, most ISPs these days dole out addresses by DHCP, which means that their IP address would likely change with each session. Last, but not least, even if you could do this, the next likely step of the spammers is to log in via a proxy in some other place so you couldn't be detected and blocked based on your physical location.

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It probably doesn't really accomplish anything, but it feels so good.

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I hate to point this out, but two wrongs don't make a right. In this case, you're also violating the terms of service.

Now, on the surface, you might think, "Yeah, right, like a spammer is going to report me." Consider this, though. They know that their account is going to be deleted in pretty short order. If you piss them off enough, why wouldn't they report you just to spite you? I mean, they have nothing to lose because their account is going to be banned anyway. But they do have everything to gain for doing so, in that if your account is banned, well, that's one less vigilante pest they have to deal with on their next throwaway account.

You might also be thinking, "Yeah, but they'd never cancel my account for spamming someone." Don't be so sure. Nowhere in the terms of service does it say "no spamming, unless you're justified." It just says "no spamming." The GMs shouldn't have to make a subjective call over what is and isn't "justified" spam, and frankly, I don't want them to.

So I hate to say it, but I were a GM and someone reported you for spamming, even a spammer, and you really were spamming, I'd ban you too. Not because I don't like you, and not because I wouldn't think you're justified, but because I'd have to in order to maintain consistency and emphasize that no spamming is allowed for any reason, period.

I don't like this change; I much prefer how it was just before, where the minimum number required for a task force was actually the minimum number required for the task force. However, it's still much better than it was before that, with all of the exploiting and soft-loading and crazy gaming of the mechanics was going on.

It just goes to show that, like I said before, you're never going to please all of the people all of the time. That's okay, though, that shouldn't be the goal. The goal is to look out for the long-term health of the game, balancing what the players want now with what effects it will have. So in spite of how I think this change was a bad move, I'm willing to bear with it and see what happens. I hope others will do the same, as I wish they had when the previous change was rolled out.

I do have to comment, though, about the nature of the recipes that you get for completing a task force.

I still think that the original intent of rare recipes was that you wouldn't be able to completely deck out your character with them in short order. I still think that the original intent of them was that they would be highly prized when people got one, and that it would take on average more than a half hour to hour investment of time in order to be guaranteed one. Such is the nature of something that is, by definition, "rare."

With a rare recipe being given out for something that people are regularly doing in a half hour to hour maximum, it has destroyed the notion of rarity. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that the new purple "ultra-rare" recipes have become what rare recipes were originally intended to be. One of the huge differences between the two is that there is no guaranteed way to get a purple recipe. As a direct result, I have yet to see even the crappiest of them on the market for less than 5 million influence, and most of them sell well in the 10- to 20 million influence range.

If you really want to stop the unbalanced task force risk vs. reward thing that's going on, I think that there's really only one logical thing to do: Take away the rare recipe reward for task forces. If not for all of them, at least for the ones that so ridiculously easy to complete so quickly.

You guys have the data that you can look at. Figure out how long the average x task force takes to complete. If it's less than two hours, no rare anything needs to be given out for it. If it's two to four hours, give out an uncommon recipe for it. If it's four or more hours, give out a rare recipe for it. Keep the ultra-rares as they are; they're working exactly like they should.

I'm not calling for this to be done immediately, and I'm sure not threatening to leave the game or anything silly like that if you don't. I'm just saying that I think one of the major problems here isn't one of game mechanics, it's with a common perception, one I think is a misperception, that rare recipes are supposed to be relatively easy to get. It's hard to try to put a genie back in its bottle without making people angry in the process, which is why I think we're seeing so much crying in these threads. But I still think that the root cause of these problems--that rare recipes aren't rare, and they're given as a reward for something people have discovered how to do quickly and easily with virtually no risk involved--needs to be addressed at some point.

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I still would like the ability to add/invite new players/teammates to a TF/SF if it goes below the minimum for the TF/SF (if the others have QUIT and not just logged off).

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I don't like this idea. People who haven't had any part in the task force could be brought in right at the end and collect a nice, shiny reward. You might even run into people kicking other players off at the last minute just so they could invite an alt on another account.

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The only redname response I seemed to hear about was on a completely different thread. So yeah I agree that its not good that nothing is being really addressed here. But for the majority of the posters here this change is definitly on the same lines as ED.

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And we all see how devastated City of Heroes was after Enhancement Diversification, right? With the massive drop in subscriptions? Oh wait, that's right, the game is as popular as it has ever been, with servers even shutting down during an event due to the server-wide population cap being reached!

"The sky is falling, the sky is falling!" Um, no, it's not, and it wasn't then, either.

Wow, even more gross exaggeration of how much people hate this change. I'll say it again, the people who have generally been posting in this thread do not represent the player base.

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The discussion here seems to have fallen on deaf ears, and there's nothing more frustrating than that feeling for a large number of paying customers.

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You're kidding, right? Of the 750+ posts so far in this thread, the vast majority of them have been by the same small number of people, myself included. This is anything but a "large number of paying customers."

You know what the "large number of paying customers" think? They don't care!

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100 good experiences don't matter if 1 bad experience causes someone to give up on the game.

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So how many good experiences should a company provide before they're willing to give up an unreasonable customer? Have you ever heard of the old saying, "You can't please all of the people all of the time?"

Crap, man, if "someone might leave the game!!!" is your excuse for justifying the game just sitting on the status quo and allowing exploits to continue, I really don't care if you're happy or not. Maybe they shouldn't roll out Issue 12 when it's ready, because if 100 people like it and 1 person hates it and leaves the game as a result, it's not worth it, right?

You folks who state or imply that people are leaving the game because of this really amuse me. Yeah, there's such a mass exodus happening. Oh, wait, that's right, there's not. Everything you folks have said has been totally bogus in my observations. You've said people aren't running task forces, I see that they are. You've said that people are leaving the game, I see that they're not. You've said task forces are failing en masse, I have yet to fail one since they've made the change. You've said that task forces are miserable experiences, I have yet to run across anyone who hasn't enjoyed them. You've said some form of new massive exploit is happening, I haven't seen it.

And my favorite? Now you've said the developers have "deaf ears," yet they've [u]posted[u] [u]repeatedly[u] [u]about[u] [u]it[u] [u]over[u] [u]and[u] [u]over[u] [u]again[u] [u]ad[u] [u]nauseum[u], and they're still tinkering with how exactly it works. Deaf ears, my [censored]. Just because they don't do exactly what YOU want exactly how YOU want it and when YOU demand doesn't mean they're deaf. It just means that they listen to all players and act according to what they think is in the best long-term interest of the game.

Lighthouse has posted a couple of responses to this article. In one of them was a link to a Massively.com article that pretty much refutes the whole "financial disaster" claim that the writer of that article makes in the Korea Times article. It says, "According to what we were able to uncover this very same Korea Times staff writer has earned a reputation for writing sensationalized articles about NCsoft. In the last year he apparently has 'reported' particulars from conferences that he never actually attended."

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Nothing personal, but it's for the good of this thread.

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I'm sorry, is anyone under the impression that this thread is in any way good?

All this thread is is a bunch of people expressing opinions based on their own agendas backed by the opposite of "cold hard data", people complaining about a change that personally inconveniences them, and people expressing some misguided sense of entitlement to experience every single thing in the game by playing only on a casual basis.

Threads like these rarely end well. The main reason I've stayed in it so long is mainly because it the posts in threads like these rarely actually reflect what's going on in the game, and this one is no exception. What you have here is a self-selected group of people who have come here primarily to complain. The people who are happy and the people who don't care typically don't bother posting in a thread like this. Why would they? That's one of the nice things about being happy or not really caring. If nothing happens, you're free to keep right on being happy and/or not caring.

But again, for the benefit of people who normally don't run task forces and/or new players, the views here most emphatically do not represent the majority of the player base. Please don't let it stop you from going and having a ton of fun on the task force(s) of your choice. Run two or three, and decide for yourself whether all of the ZOMG DOOOOOM!!! talk is warranted.

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You say tit-for-tat, I say cold hard data.

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Heh, you have access to the "cold hard data"? Wow, I didn't know the devs gave you such unfettered access to their database. Must be nice.

Oh wait, you're just recounting your own subjective experience? Well, that's all fine and good, except that mine happens to be considerably different from yours. I'm inclined to believe my own two eyes over you. I keep inviting everyone to go in the game and make up their own minds, believing neither you nor me, but you keep seeming to be vehemently opposed to that and posting these comments. Weird.

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(QR)

Just another TF experience to report. A LGTF fell apart due to a domino effect.

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I'll add one to the list too. Last night, Taxibot Belle ran a task force that required eight people from around 11:00pm until a little after 3:00am. No one left, the task force was successful, every seemed pretty happy, and she's been telling me that she's really glad she met some new friends who she hopes to work with again sometime.

She knew two of the people from some of the Hamidon raids. The rest were complete strangers to her. It wasn't exactly a pick-up team, but it's not like they were part of her supergroup or otherwise people she's worked on missions with before. She just happened to be standing around and was asked if she wanted to come.

Do you really think that tit-for-tat task force succeeded/task force failed bickering will really solve anything or convince anyone one way or another?

Okay, I give up. I can't think of anything to say that hasn't already been said. You're not going to change my mind, and I doubt I'm going to change yours. I like it, some people hate it, most people fall in between somewhere or just plain don't care (which is perfectly valid, considering how minor the change is).

All I ask is that anyone who reads this thread to pretty much completely ignore it and judge for yourself how good or bad the change is by going into the game and trying it out. In the end that's the only thing that matters. Be sure to try again in a few weeks, after everything has kind of normalized to the change being out there.

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Kind of like the "play my way, aka the right / real / intended way!" people before this patch went live.

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What gives you the impression that everyone should get to play exactly the way they want to? You know there are power-levelers in this game, should everyone be given the ability to click a button and instantly have a level 50 character? Because, you know, if you deny the power-levelers the right to have instant 50's, you're just insisting that they play the "right" way as you define it.

Or maybe there should be a glowing chest in the middle of Atlas Park that, when you click on it, will pop up a box and ask how much influence you want and just give it to you. Because, you know, making people earn influence is just making them play the "right" way, and you don't want to impose your will on someone else, do you? (And incidentally, that would pretty much extinguish the RMT influence trade also.)

How about this. Give us a power that, when activated, instantly defeats any enemy you're battling, because forcing people to use their other abilities is just making them play the "right" way, and apparently, there is no "right" way, and anyone should be able to do anything they want, right?

Of course, if you want to grind through all those levels to get to 50, or earn the influence the hard way, or actually use your other powers to fight enemies, that's okay too, you're free to do so, thus proving that those changes won't affect you at all.

Hopefully by now, you realize how silly it is to justify something with the argument that "x is okay because you can still do it the hard way." There is no particularly "right" way to play, but there sure as hell are wrong ways to play.

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But unless you speak on behalf of the devs, your opinion doesn't necessarily convey the true, intended way of playing.

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I don't have to speak on behalf of the devs, they have spoken on their own behalf. Over in this thread, Positron said, "We saw a desire for a group of friends to get together and do some hard, lengthy content for good rewards." He is 100% correct, and as evidenced by people still running task forces, people do want this content. As it was, nothing like what he is describing was in the game before. Are task forces perfect now? Of course not, what ever is? But they are closer to being what they were designed to be, as the developers themselves have described it in-game and now here in several posts.

I've said this before, but I'll say it again. I don't know what more you want from the devs for them to show you what they have in mind for fask forces. In response to massive exploiting going on (i.e. playing the wrong way), they added a timer, they nerfed the Katie Hannon task force, and now they've rolled out this change and posted messages explicitly describing what they had in mind. The manual, the in-game text, and now the devs' posts here all describe task forces as a series of difficult missions that require a certain number of committed teammates to successfully complete. If you want to continue dismissing that as just my "opinion," I don't know what else can be done to convince you.

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For example, take Manticore's TF. The "varsity team" is Hopkins.

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I wasn't referring to the AV at the end. By "epic," I mean that you're not going to just be facing a few guys hanging around in little tiny groups here and there like you do on missions for two or three heroes. Bad guys are going to be crawling out of the woodwork to come get you. When an ambush comes at you, it's not going to be your standard, "I'll just hold 'em" or "don't worry, the tank will taunt 'em," it will be more like, "holy crap, there's a huge group on its way!"

And again, most task forces don't require teams of this large size, only the ones you reach at the very end of the game. This is how it should be. The further you go in the game, the higher the action--and danger--escalates.

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People like you and I are just too "casual" for task forces anymore. You, me, and anyone else who can't sit still for up to six to ten hours at a time without real life butting in.

I guess we could all follow Tony's advice and start a Task Force with more than the minimum. Never mind that, as anyone who's run a casual pick-up Positron knows, starting an 8-man Positron is a recipe for a different kind of disaster.

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This is totally bogus, and you know it. What happened to all of those nice integers between three and eight? You know, like four, and five, six, and seven?

This past weekend, I ran a Positron task force. We started out with six, two of whom I had never met. Two people (ones I do know) said they would have to leave at some point. At the start of the mission to defeat Rollister, we lost two. It was moderately difficult, but not impossible by any stretch of the imagination. After Rollister, we lost another, but then gained back one person shortly after. By the end, we had gained back one more and were up to five. One of the unknowns dropped out for a mission, but both were there for the vast majority of the time and at the end.

The whole thing took us under five hours. No exploits, no soft-loading, no impossible missions, no sitting still for six to ten hours (or even five hours, since we took a couple of bio breaks), no disasters, and no hard feelings for the person that left or the two that came and went during the task force. It was an extremely casual task force, about as casual as you can get, and everyone had a great time.

The more you post these gross exaggerations, the more credibility you lose, and the more you come off sounding like you're just bitter because you prefer using exploits to actually playing. If that's the case, then being too "casual" has nothing to do with why task forces aren't for you.

You can complain all you want, and it won't make a difference to me. It's not that I'm just that dense, it's because you keep telling me how impossible and difficult it is to do something that I have first-hand knowledge of not being that difficult. It's because you keep telling me how awful everyone thinks this change is when the topic of it hasn't even come up once in-game. It's because you keep predicting all of these awful things that are going to happen that have not come to pass. It's because my own experience is the exact opposite of what you keep describing. It's because you keep building up strawmen (e.g. Positron is really hard with eight, therefore you have to soft-load missions if you have more than three). I'm sorry, but I simply do not believe you.

Again, this change boils down to one extremely simple concept: When a task force contact says that you need a team of at least x people, they really do mean that you need a team of at least x people. Not one less, not two less, not whatever is personally convenient for you less. x people.

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Care to provide numbers to back up your assertions of limited harm? Even more important, care to provide numbers on the impact this has to correct the problem of farming pool C drops? I can answer the second, not damn much.

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No, I can't. I wish I could, but I don't have the numbers. But NCsoft knows what the numbers are, and it's pretty obvious to me that what they were seeing is what brought us to this change. Will it effectively solve the problem they saw? Maybe, maybe not. I guess we'll have to wait and see. I'm willing to give them that chance, are you?

And I hate to state the obvious, but "not damn much" isn't a number.

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There is no AV, so there is no real need for more than 4 people to be on that task force.

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Using this logic, I can think of offhand of only two task forces/trials that should have a requirement for more than two people: Quaterfield's and the Cavern of Transcendence.

The point of a minimum team requirement isn't to tell you how many people you need to accomplish the mechanical tasks of completing a mission. The point is that task forces with a higher team requirement are more epic. The bad guys are sending the varsity team at you, and they're not holding back.

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Now, if I take an AFK to feed him or take care of his bathroom needs, my TF team still has to pick up my mobs, even if I'm not online.

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This is not true, yet it's not the first time I've seen it bandied about.

The team will have to pick up any spawned enemies if you're not online. Otherwise, the team will only have to pick up your enemies if the team size falls below the minimum required for the task force.

If the task force requires five people and you start out with, say, seven, you and one other person can leave without it affecting the rest of the players at all with unspawned enemies. If three of the seven people leave the task force, I'd hardly place the mantle of "bad guy" on your shoulders alone. At that point, it's a collective team failure. (If it's a failure at all--it's entirely possible for four people to successfully complete missions designed for five people, as any team that runs normal missions on Tenacious can tell you.)

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Considering all the other roadblocks to me just having a little fun, it makes me sad. And considering what I've learned about this actually helping out some of those it was supposed to deter, it leaves me a little angry and confused.

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Jeez, could you pour on the pathos just a little bit more? This is the kind of quote that turns me from sympathizing with you to being angry at you. You clearly don't like the change, I get it. But this is one small change that won't affect you on most of the task forces you might join, and task forces are just one small part of the game as a whole (once a month, you claimed). Yet here you are, acting like this is the only thing standing between you and a tiny shred of happiness. All of the other amazing things that are in this game that you do the other 30 days of the month? Well, those don't mean beans I guess.

If you're so unhappy because of your situation at home, then I'm sorry, but that's not my problem. What do you expect? For the game to be custom-tailored specifically for that tiny fraction of people in your situation? For us to cry because only 98% of the game is conducive to playing in your situation instead of a full 100%? Should we just open the doors wide to exploiters so that some other poor guy who's even worse off than you and can only play for 10 minutes a week can know the joys of everything there is to experience in the game?

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I lay this right out at the start if, for some reason, I join a team that doesn't know me well. Honestly, how many of you reading this would want me on your team, knowing this?

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If I have enough people to keep the team going if you leave, I'd be happy to. Just this past weekend, I started a task force up in which not one but two of the people told me ahead of time that they were going to have to leave in the middle. We still would have had an extra person, so I agreed.

We succeeded, everyone had fun, and this change had literally zero impact on our team. So please don't feed me this "I can't do task forces now" line.

Edit: Here's another thing I'm really tired of hearing:

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You are gonna be one of many people dealing with another decision based on a few vs. the masses of customers.

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This change will not affect the "masses of customers" at all. It will only affect the people who run task forces (which, believe it or not, a lot don't). Of those people, it will only affect them while they're running task forces, which for most people, is a very small percentage of their game time. Of that, it will only affect the people who are on teams in which players drop off, which a lot don't. Of that, it will only affect people who start task forces with the exact number of teammates needed to start the task force or who are on teams that have multiple people drop off. And even then, as pointed out, it will only cause failure if the team cannot defeat enemies spawned as if the missions were normal ones set to Tenacious instead of Heroic (which it's not unheard of for mid-to-high-level teams to run missions on Unyielding or Invincible). When all of these factors are accounted for, this is a small percentage of "the masses."

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No Tony, you are the one who keeps ignoring the point. It is unfair to the people who are willing to commit the time and effort it takes to run a TF to the end by penalizing them for the actions of another player.

A player should never be penalized for the actions of another player.

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This is a team-oriented game. As such, you are almost always impacted by the actions of other players. Even if you're standing around outside minding your own business, someone can pull enemies to you. If you're on a team in normal missions, someone can slack off. Or they can be great. Your experience is constantly at the mercy of other people in this game.

I know how frustrating it is to have a task force fail because too many people drop out. But you know what? It's not the end of the world. Even on failed task forces, I have typically come out with a lot more experience, a lot more influence and/or prestige, and even maybe a character or two added to my friends list.

Do I sit around and cry about how awful it is that we weren't able to complete the task force? Sure, for a few minutes, such is the nature of disappointment. Then I go on and do something else. Shortly after, I'm completely okay, because I know that this is the nature of task forces. You will sometimes fail. It will sometimes be because of other people. Life goes on. This is a relatively rare occurrence, most of them succeed.

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I'm so sorry to hear you're having this dreadful problem, TonyV. Luckily, I found some advice that might be of use. It's such good advice you'll almost think you must've written it yourself!

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find better teammates. I've done it, it's easy, and you can do it too.

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I have some mighty fine teammates, people I've known for a long time and have played with a lot, who I run task forces with on a regular basis. This change hasn't affected us at all.

However, these exploits have affected the game as a whole in a negative way. I know it, Positron knows it, and people posting here know it and aren't willing to admit it because it negatively impacts their ability to farm.

And "find better teammates" unfortunately doesn't help the new players much. It certainly doesn't help the great pick-up groups I used to be able to get for task forces.

Look, I just don't know how much clearer the developers can make it. Exploiters unmercifully gamed the Katie Hannon task force, and they put a timer on it. That didn't work, so they changed it again. Then the soft-loading exploit became rampant, so now they've nerfed that. Lighthouse explicitly said that these task forces are a team-based activity, the manual says that it's a dangerous series of missions that require commitment, and every task force contact tells you up front how many team members you'll need. Would a brick upside the head help? I mean seriously, what will it take for people to get it through their thick skulls what task forces were designed for and what they're meant to be?

But by all means, go ahead, don't listen to me. Exploit it for all it's worth. You're going to anyway, and as I said above, every time you do, you're emphasizing with crystal clarity the exploit that need to be tackled next. My only regret is that you're seriously damaging the spirit of the game in the process, but hey, it's worth it for that rare recipe that you can sell on the market for 300 influence, right?

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People keep calling those who disapprove of this change the vocal minority. When does the minority become the majority, because every single person I know in real life, and nearly every person I know in game, disapproves of this change as it was implemented.

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That's totally bogus. I have yet to run across a single person on a task force that has a problem with it at all. I'm sure they're out there, they're probably the ones who keep broadcasting "LF speed Katie" in the global channels, but as you can imagine, I diligently avoid those teams.

The only people I've seen complain vehemently about the change have been right here in this thread and literally nowhere else.

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I think if its happening not on your team you should mind your own business and contact your teams accordingly. Tell folks at the beginning that you plan to grind through every mission of a 15 mission task force so they can stay or go if they don't have the time for an 8 hour positron task force for example

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I agree. Unfortunately, though, there's a "default" that, if it doesn't come up, everyone assumes. Before rare recipes were given as rewards, everyone knew that the default was that a team will be working on missions as they are designed, and this "speed" crap wasn't a problem. Sure, some teams would do goofy things like see how fast they could finish a task force, but it was the exception, and they would make sure to let everyone know about it ahead of time.

Since rare recipes are given out for completion now, though, attitudes have shifted and about the only people who run task forces now are farmers on "speed" runs. It was genuinely hard to get on an "honest" task force because even those who wanted to work on them usually got recruited into the "speed" runs. The default had shifted to using exploits to finishing task forces.

I have a suggestion that I think would solve the problem too, though I'm sure that the people posting in this thread wouldn't like it very much. They should completely eliminate recipes as rewards for undertaking task forces. They should only be given as drops, and only when an individual is undertaking something that is moderately difficult. I'm not going to expound on how that could be determined right now in the interest of not posting a book, but obviously, completing task forces don't measure up to that standard.

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Well, it's happened. Didn't take long. First time getting cussed out for leaving a TF early. Guess I'll stick to Fast Katie from here on out.

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Keep it up. Every comment like this just makes me more right and is a dare to the developers to change something else to make it more inconvenient for players like you. Comments like this do more to sway their opinion than anything I could possibly think or say.

I am curious, though. You obviously know how inconvenient it is for your team when you bail on a task force, and how they tend to last for a few hours. Why did you leave it? If you knew you were going to have to leave, why did you even start it? Did you let your team know ahead of time, or are you just one of these "i gtg" people?

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Tony, the point is the manual -- even the updated version -- contains a lot of inaccurate and outdated info. The updated version only covers up to Issue 4. what does it say about ED or Inventions or dozens of other things? Nothing.

The manual is not a good authority on the game any longer because CoH/V, like any MMO, evolves. Address the game as it is, not as the manual professes it to be prior to it even shipping.

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I'm sorry, but a lot of people seem to have this notion that just because an exploit is popular, it's part of some kind of evolutionary process and shouldn't be fixed. I have zero sympathy for that attitude. The task forces were not working as designed. They took an important step in fixing it.

Okay, in the game as it was, people had exploited soft-loading task forces so badly that getting a rare recipe was meaningless. I've mentioned this before, that whenever I got a rare recipe, the first thing that went through my head was, "Damn, I wish I had gotten a common IO so that I could get something for it at the store." This is obviously not working as intended.

In the game as it was, you had stupid [censored] happening like people getting mad at you if you actually wanted to complete the missions of a task force as they were designed instead of playing along with the hokey "okay, everyone log out now" crap that people were pulling. I've actually been kicked from two task forces specifically for this reason, and I make it clear up front on every one I lead that it's not a "speed" anything.

In the game as it was, you had one or two people running the bulk of the task force, and eight people collecting the reward for it.

In the game as it was, it wasn't unusual for one or two people to complete what is supposed to be one of the highest-level teaming aspects of the game in half and hour with maybe just one other person. It was a mockery of what task forces were designed to be.

In the game as it was, hardly anyone ever ran some of the higher-level task forces because it was always only speed Katie, speed Katie, speed Katie.

Some of these things still aren't fixed yet, and hopefully, they're working on them to shore them up further. Personally, I think that we'll have a few more changes come down the pipeline that I'm sure will really have everyone screaming before this is all over, and I couldn't be happier. The people who have been exploiting task forces in this manner are not operating with the best long-term interest of this game at heart, and while I like the idea of a game that will appeal to all people, these exploits have got to stop.

Lighthouse said:
[ QUOTE ]
Such missions have always been intended to be group activities, hence the reason for the minimum group size requirement to start them. We feel that the group size requirements are certainly not onerous and that the need for grouping is a good dynamic in a social environment like City of Heroes. We want to continue to offer good rewards based on a group accomplishment through such missions and maintaining that requirement is the reason for this change.

[/ QUOTE ]
This is about as clear as can be regarding what they had in mind for task forces. When they say, "you need eight people for this task force," they actually mean you need eight people for that task force. If you want to try it with fewer, knock yourself out, but you're going to be taking on missions that were designed for eight people. Complain all you want, but this is exactly as it is intended to be.

As I keep saying over and over ad nauseum but the vocal minority here keeps ignoring, if you cannot invest the time and effort into completing such a task force, this content is not for you. No one ever promised you that you would be able to accomplish every single thing in the game without putting some time and effort into it.

[ QUOTE ]
While you're reading the manual, remember to brush up on essential game facts, like not being able to use Temp Invulnerability and (self-rooting) Unyielding at the same time, the maximum level cap of 40, and Eden, the most dangerous zone in the whole game so zomg take a team.

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Funny, in the latest version of the manual, neither Temporary Invulnerability nor Unyielding are mentioned. The level cap is clearly stated several times as being 50. And the Eden zone is not mentioned at all. How about you pointing out the page number where it says that stuff? Or have you even read the manual? It sounds like you haven't in several years.

Here's what it has said about task forces from the very beginning, and continues to say about them to this day:

[ QUOTE ]
A task force is a team up of powerful Heroes that comes together to undertake a long series of dangerous assignments, which usually culminates in a battle with one of the city’s Arch Villains. Task force missions require a great deal of commitment, and are very risky, but the reward for success is proportionate to the risk.

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Which part of "long series of dangerous assignments" and "require a great deal of commitment" did you not understand? For the life of me, I don't know how I'm missing the "task forces should take 30 minutes to an hour and be easily accomplished by even the most casual of player."

What a bunch of whiners I've seen in this thread. You know what the funny thing is? In-game, I don't see anyone complaining like this. I still see a steady stream of task forces being run all the time, and I've run a couple myself without any complaints or incidents. In spite of the doom and gloom predicted by a vocal minority of farmers and exploiters, the game continues to survive and thrive and everyone else seems all the happier. That's just got to hurt to be so wrong.

[ QUOTE ]
Smaller spawns on the Dr. Q TF because one defender logged and the other had a family emergency is not an exploit by any definition.

[/ QUOTE ]
Oh, how silly of me! When I read, "you need 8 members on your team," for some really weird reason, I took that to mean that if you have a team of six, things would start getting difficult. I missed the part of the task force description where it says, "but if you drop down to six, that's okay too." So if six is okay, how about four? Two? Are you one of those folks who think that all task forces should be soloable? Where do you draw the line where you say, "Okay, it says you need eight people, and enough is enough." Are you one of these people who insist that since casual players play the game, every single friggin' thing must appeal to the lowest common denominator? One of the people who ironically accuse others of trying to force their playstyle on others?

And let me ask you this. If you're really so concerned about people's family emergencies, why are you concerned about not being able to complete a task force? I mean, as a human being, with a family emergency in progress, shouldn't you be more than happy to not worry so much about the task force? Because come on, man. There's a FAMILY EMERGENCY! I'm going to have to call shenanigans on you of this tired old "family emergency" excuse that keeps being bandied about. Like I said, if people are bailing out on your task forces, find better teammates. I've done it, it's easy, and you can do it too. Very rarely do I not successfully complete a task force.

Man up, Nancy, and get on with your City of Heroes life already. (Or don't, but can I have your stuff?) All of your misery is only bringing yourself down. The rest of us are still having a hell of a good time with this game.

I watched Taxibot Belle run a Positron task force just yesterday. It took just under five hours, and everyone seemed to enjoy it just fine.

[ QUOTE ]
no more groups of 3-4 casual players...

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*sigh...* Task Forces are not "casual" activities. Read the manual for a description of what they're supposed to be.

Or in tl;dr metaphor-speak: If you're having trouble finishing task forces as they were originally designed to work, look for better teammates. Don't ask for exploits to be reintroduced to the game.

[ QUOTE ]
Badge! Badge! Badge!
Come on guys! join in!

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No thanks. There's already one can of worms being opened with charging for costumes and emotes. If they threw in a badge with it, it would open up a whole new can of worms with accusations of trying to extort money from badge hunters.

IMHO, given that they're going to charge for something, this is exactly the right way to have done it. Maybe throw in some kind of prestige power, but certainly not a badge. I didn't like the RMT for the VIP badges, and I wouldn't like it if they did it again.

As for the event itself, I'm looking forward to it. I'll be there.

Happy Birthday, Catwhoorg!

My name is John Jacob Jingleheimerschmidt. I thought it was a rather unique name, but as it turns out, it seems like that name is everyone else's name, too.