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Phedre_D
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Over on the villain side Warron Peace and midnight guard enlightened me on an exploit and a fix in this thread. This is posi's official statement:
| QUOTE | Ok, I have been watching the boards and a lot of people are confused as to why we changed the spawn behavior in Task/Strike Forces to work for a minimum team size.
CoH was never designed to have a "Raid" in the original game. However, we saw a desire for a group of friends to get together and do some hard, lengthy content for good rewards. This is how Task Forces were born. They are the "casual" raid, something you can plan with your buddies that you are going to do on a certain day and for a certain amount of time, but you didn't need 30 or 60 people to pull it off.
That said, TF's (and SF's) have grown into their own. They are no longer the casual raid, but are run by pick up groups and nearly every character wants to get them done during their career. Personally I have no problem with the difference between how they were designed and how they are actually being played.
Where the problem comes in is where players are using our spawning system to reduce the challenge to trivial levels. When you load a map it places spawns on the map appropriate to your team size. If you have a team of 8, you will get huge spawns, if you have a team of 1, you will get a couple minions and the occassional lieutenant. Some of the "back end" spawns may not be spawned as soon as the map is loaded, it's a proximity thing. As you move through the map more and more spawns are loaded. If you ever wondered what the "trigger" for a cut-scene was it was simply "that is when that spawn was created."
Now TFs and SFs were made for the casual group of friends. This means that the group could persist over several game sessions. To do this we made it so that when you logged off, or lost connection, you didn't drop out of the group. Coming back into the game you would find that your character was still on the TF. This way you could run a TF "every Friday night from 8 to 9" and if all the participants agreed, you could progress the TF a little bit every week.
Now when you combine the spawn size system with the "you don't drop from team on logout" system, you have a system that is ripe for abuse. Players can start a TF with a team of 8 (or whatever the minimum number is for that TF), and right before entering every map, have all but one player log off. This single player can then stealth through the map (or simply run through it as a superspeed or high damage mitigating AT), and, when all the spawns have triggered for a team size of 1, tell everyone else they can log in now.
Suddenly the team of (x) is blowing through the map and its tiny spawns, getting the badge and Task Force reward at the end! Is this fair to those players who play the TF without using this trick? Those that have paid in time and debt fighting through the larger size spawns? I didn't think so either.
So we went back to the drawing board. We didn't want to change how TFs worked intrinsicly, but we did want to have a challenge remain. So we looked at minimum team size to start. Since you needed that many players to "commit" to starting the TF in the first place this was an excellent point at which to set the Minimum Spawn Size in the TF maps. So if you ran a TF with a minimum team size of 5 and you had 8 players, you would find that, when all 8 players were on line, you would get 8 person spawns. When one dropped out, it would fall to 7, another would go to 6, but if the team size dropped below 5, it would still spawn as if 5 people were on the map.
Now that said there are probably some "8 person" TFs that do not need to be spawning for 8 people all the time. The Shadow Shard comes to mind, and those will get looked at in a reduction of how many players it takes to start (and therefore how small the spawns will be at a minimum).
I hope this better explains why the change was made. |
Personally I see this as a case where cheaters managed again to spoil things for the normal players. Although I agree that they should fix the exploit, it does mean that if you run a TF with a PUG the change of success is getting very slim.
More often than not a TF team is crumbling along the way. You start with 8 people. Two of them already quit at the first mission, at mission 3 one leaves, at mission 4 another. As it is now you can still finish the TF with the 4 remaining people since the spawns are set for 4 people. But with the new rules it will mean there will always be spawns for 6 or 8 (or whatever the minimum was). That will be completely undoable for a team of 4. Not many players will now be interested in joining a PUG TF anymore, since they will never see the end of it.
I guess we will have to start organizing TF's and fixed times when to play them a bit more here on GameAmp :)
***THIS POST HAS BEEN EDITED***
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| 02/21/08 05:25 |
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Sturmwolf
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Good move!
No more soft loaded TFs.
That spoiled the fun.
Every powergamer used this exploit to get an easy accolade for all the TFs.
That's what happens all the time when people start abusing something.
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| 02/21/08 05:55 |
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Rainah
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It is sad that the spawn system was abused by players, but I am glad that they changed it. I think that this is a good change and it should make it a lot harder for the cheaters to do what they do best lol.
I have not done many TF bc of the length of time it requires. I hope to change that here in the short future though.
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| 02/21/08 06:31 |
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Nasali
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This really bummed me out because DM & I usually run as a duo, and we were able to duo all the task forces for the accolade by having people fill to help us start them but not have to commit to run it with us. The times we had people that wanted to hang around for a few missions was fine with us, but by the end we were still able to duo them.
I hope this isn't the way things will be moving with CoX, my major issue with other MMORPGs is that they 'force' you to team to accomplish things.
I guess just like the chain letters I get in my email, I'm gonna have bad luck forever and die a horrible death just because I don't know enough people hehe
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| 02/21/08 06:34 |
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Phedre_D
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| QUOTE | This really bummed me out because DM & I usually run as a duo, and we were able to duo all the task forces for the accolade by having people fill to help us start them but not have to commit to run it with us. The times we had people that wanted to hang around for a few missions was fine with us, but by the end we were still able to duo them.
I hope this isn't the way things will be moving with CoX, my major issue with other MMORPGs is that they 'force' you to team to accomplish things.
I guess just like the chain letters I get in my email, I'm gonna have bad luck forever and die a horrible death just because I don't know enough people hehe |
Yep, that is my worry too. You HAVE TO get a lot of people together and stay together now. I think it means TF's will become really hard to complete now. Thanks cheaters!
Nasali, I love your chain letter analogy. It is indeed the same. It looks like we are doomed now! Oh, the horror. I better go buy some chocolate now.
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| 02/21/08 06:45 |
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Phase_of_Echoes
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All they are doing is insuring that there remains a challenge in the game. Yet again people like Nasali are paying for what others have exploited. Rainah and I have tried to Duo a few TF, but have not had the time to dedicate ourselves to one.
I agree it will be more difficult to complete the TF this way.
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| 02/21/08 07:13 |
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Donovan Wolf
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| RE: The end of PUG TF\'s? |
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In a related story I just used got used yesterday. I was running a new char for me a spine/willpower scrapper with a friend of mine in steel canyon when someone was broadcasting for the posi TF (oh the irony lol) and mentioned that his team fell apart. Well anyways me and my teammate continued on our way and about 20 min later, the same guy broad casted that he was looking for members for "regular missions."
Well I was definatly interested in trying this build out with larger groups so me and my friend joined his team. 3 min later after he gets 7 people instead of setting a mis he sets the posi TF. This was something neither me nor my friend asked for. After making my opinion known, me and my friend promptly quit the TF, but not before 3 others who were in the same fix left. I grumbled a few things, but then my friend started laughing. I asked him what was so funny after being used by a couple jerks to start a posi TF for themselves. He then notified me about the new fix to the TF's and that even though those guys got their TF, it will remain fixed for 7, so he hopes they get their debt badges as they wont be able to get through it. Heh funny stuff.
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| 02/21/08 08:17 |
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lani
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Sigh.
All this because people want accolades that give them a further little edge to reduce the challenge, accolades that stand for "I have overcome such and so challenges", but without actually taking the risks and making the effort. Big Achievement, not.
And I thought using the Mentor/Sidekick system to lower the Group's average level a few levels, then un-SK inside the last mission was a cheat. Soft Loading is even more lame. Glad it's gone. Not glad it hurts honest players, and not glad that it will take the 'sploiters a lot less time to find another way to exploit the system than it takes the honest ones to adjust to the new situation.
Ironic isn't it, how people who always cry about challenges and take pride in being 'the best' tend to spend so much time and effort finding out ways to minimize the challenge by exploits rather than meeting them head on? Equally ironic how developers (of any game) always react by either taking away the challenges or creating interdependencies that hurt those who don't cheat/exploit more than those who do.
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| 02/21/08 08:35 |
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RonJ73
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This is definitely disappointing.
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| 02/21/08 08:56 |
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dougnukem
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Meh, there's worse things to lose sleep over than this. People are always complaining about challenge, well now you got some, in the form of larger spawns, when you want to solo, duo, or whatever, a TF. I learned this, earlier this week, when I tried to double box the Cap SF with my brute and Therm Corr. Couldn't get past Infernal, but part of that was do to poor planning as well. But the bar definately has been raised, challenge wise.
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| 02/21/08 09:24 |
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