Making TFs Fun

Hi:

By now there is hardly a TF in Hero side, that I have not completed at least a dozen times, mainly because I want the merits so I can buy the recipes that I really want at the level I really want.

Note: I am talking about TFs, not SFs. While SFs may have their problems, I don't do them enough to be able to give justice to comment on their strength or weaknesses. It is likely that a number of suggestions to alleviate issues with TFs may apply to SFs as well, but please don't use SFs as a comparison to improve or not TFs.

After a few runs, the first thing that strikes me is the maddening repetitiveness with the task force. All to often, we fight the exact mob type, in the exact map, but in a different zone. At times, some TFs seems to just maliciously send you in a touring spree, having you go from out of the way zones to other out of the way zones and to points at the farthest point you would enter that zone in.

So I am establishing this thread, for a means for players to suggest to developers ways to re-look at TFs, and make them more fun, not more tedius.

To start the thread I have a few suggestions:

1. I love story lines. I really like to from mission to mission acquiring clues and eventually getting to the big bad meanie. But you developers have to make the missions and its content make sense. For example, go Investigate Council in IP. Cool, I get to infiltrate a council base and get my first clue towards the evil master mind. What is the mission in reality, defeat every council in the cave. That does not hit me as elegant, its brutal and simply does not make sense. What are you trying to convey to me, that the information I need is in one of the guys inside the cave, and I have the most perfect bad luck, for the guy with the information will always be the last guy? Don't get me wrong, kill all missions can make sense, such as defeat all virus infected mobs to prevent the disease from spreading, gee I would feel heroic after that.

2. Make objectives reasonable, such as defeat Boss and guards. This can be actually a very elegant type of mission, surgical strike like feel. Normally, when you take out an organization's head, the organization normally falls apart and ceases to operate. Thus it makes sense, to have "surgical" like missions. But what happens when we get mission? We get to kill the boss, and the spawn that was with the boss, but then we have to defeat all the other spawns in the room; but wait the room is enourmous with multiple floors, closets, hallways, service rooms; at the end you feel like you killed the majority of the mobs in the scenario; so much for the surgical, special forces like feel. I recommend that defeat boss and guards, be limited to the boss and two or three mobs that spawns with the boss.

3. Tedius versus fun, if you are going to have us look for computers to get data, large maps make sense. Also I recommend to truly be random on the location of the glowies, not the rule of always in last room, many of us simply skip all the maps, run thru elevators till last floor; thus giving up a lot of excitement. If you give us a kill all, give us small maps, and clean maps which minimizes the mob stuck in a crack, inside a box, stuck in duct work, and what not. Lets not turn "kill alls" in to agonizingly boring cave crawls; and then when we think you are done, you can't finish because some hidden and not moving mob is somewhere in the huge map; the feeling when this occurs is very bad to say the least.

4. Hunts, do we really needs this activities? I know, Numina is one great hunt...But for level 50s who alll they want is merits, do we really need the tourist class tour of the game?

Well those are my 4 suggestions, I am sure you all may have otehr suggestions to help TFs be less tedius, and really more fun.

Hugs

Stormy

Some of the older TFs could really use some streamlining.

The signature TFs are the ones that spring to mind here. Positron is the worst offender by far. Do we really need to defeat THAT many CoT, Vahz, and Clockwork to get the idea that they are interested in the dam? You really can make that point in the space of 4 missions: 1) Fight Vahz and find out they are interested in the dam 2) Fight Clocks and find out they are interested in the dam 3) Fight CoT and find out they are interested in the dam 4) Save the dam.

A little filler isn't always a bad thing, but do we really need 12 missions worth of filler? Especially seeing as how a lot of them are redundant.

A lot of the newer TFs don't have that filler problem. They are maybe 5 or 6 missions long, and they get to the point rather quickly.

If you want to extend the length of a TF, make it fewer, but longer missions. make them less susceptible to being gamed and run super fast.

Perhaps random length missions. Say, an information gathering mission where one mob on the map has the information you are looking for, but there is no indication which mob it is, or where on the map it is. You could finish it in the first fight, or you could kill the majority of the mobs there before you find what you're looking for. And if that mob's spawn point were truly random it would be nearly impossible to get efficient at running that mission.

Or maybe a black ops type snatch and grab mission where stealth is required. Have the contact issue a temp stealth that lasts the duration of the mission so you don't find yourself unable to complete it because you don't have a stealth power. You have to sneak in to get to a specified point past patrols, defeat a few bodyguards who will sound an alarm when defeated, and then fight your way past a few ambushes to get out. If you fail at stealthing through it, the objective flees and you fail the mission. Could even make it the first mission of a TF that you HAVE to complete to continue, if you fail the TF automatically disbands. Using stealth in CoH is not difficult, so it shouldn't be a big deal for it to be required here. The precedent has even been set in one of the RWZ missions.

There's my ideas. Those would add some dynamics to TFs that are sorely lacking currently.

I think they've learned a lot on how to make TFs more fun (or at least less tedious) over the last few years. But they've always had the attitude that it was better to do new content than to revisit old stuff. That's understandable, as they have a business to run and it's easier to sell "new!" than "less sucky!"

Posi's comments on the videotaped Comicon panel were encouraging. He said they were going to be revisiting lowbie content. That's a big departure from years past. Hopefully as they continue the process they'll also look at the older TFs too.