Positron Task Force

[Logan Darklighter]

Last night/early this morning, on Justice Server, right at the top of 1:00AM give or take a minute or two, the 3 remaining members of Task Force White Sands completed Positron's Task Force.
After starting on Friday.
This Task Force had more deaths in it than any other I have ever seen.
Highest level of members in the Task Force was 15 (My level 50 exemplered down to do this TF.)
First mission? Vahzilok. At LEVEL 17!!!
And there were a ridiculous number of spawns in that first mission. We started off with 6 people I think, and I swear, the spawns looked like they were for a full 8 person group.
We kited like mad, but still, I think we maxed our debt just on that one mission. That ONE mission I think took like three HOURS!
After a couple of people left the group, leaving us with 4, we did a couple of missions after that on Friday but decided to hang it up and come back to it on Saturday. After the first mission, things seemed to settle down and be more normal. Still slow going though. We got through about another 3rd of the missions on Saturday before a couple of the members begged off due to exhaustion.
We came back on Sunday evening to discover that somehow we were now 3 instead of 4. Nobody, including our 4th member, who logged in at the time agreed upon, knew why she had been dropped. Which REALLY sucked because she was our healer!
We decided to go ahead and try again anyway.
First mission of the evening was another Vahzilok mission with level 17 enemies. I just wanted to punch the screen through the wall at this point. But amazingly, despite some deaths, we'd hit upon some kiting tactics that seemed to mitigate most of the problems. Plus I ferried inspirations back from Pocket D for us to burn through like mad. We got through that one in about an hour and a half.
Then a Circle of Thorns mission, also with level 17 enemies. I was ready to just give up at this point. But we talked it over and tried to brainstorm it and figured out a possible cause of the problem. Two of our remaining three members were exemplered down from higher levels. The current Team Leader was actually level 28. We thought that maybe that was skewing things. So we all logged out of the game in order to reset the mission, came back on and made the level 15 member the Team Leader. Went back into the mission and - lo and behold! Level 15! Still no cakewalk, but MUCH more doable!
From there it was all standard mob bashing. A few more deaths due to lack of healing ability, but generally MUCH faster going. With only 3 of us in the group, the mob spawns were much more reasonable in size.
Anyway, success was finally achieved around 1am Central time. And Lora Doubet has only the Synapse Task Force to do to get the Task Force Commander badge.
Two things I learned about Positron.
One - make SURE your Team leader is not exemplered down from a higher level. It fucks with the level of spawns in a MAJOR way! Get the lowest level person in the group to be the Team Leader!
Only go in with 3-4 people. Larger than that and the Spawn Sizes are INSANE!!
I hope this cautionary tale is of use to someone. I just needed to vent a bit, myself.
-Logan
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"Wake up! Time for SCIENCE!"
-Adam Savage
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[The Hunterminator]

Damn, I was hoping to one day do that TF with Sam but it would seem that, since we are both above level 15, that would be a bad idea.
Oh well, I was looking for an excuse not to do it anyway, people keep complaining about it.

[jpub]

For some reason the first mission in Posi's TF is always the roughest. It's not even a 'learning to play together' thing, it's like they've set up the spawn tables for that first mission to weed out people.--
Christopher Angel, aka JPublic
The Works of Christopher Angel
"Camaraderie, adventure, and steel on steel. The stuff of legend! Right, Boo?"

[The Hunterminator]

Huh? Is it really that bad? I remember that, during our first and only attempt at doing it (we ended up quiting for a variety of reasons, that and it was mostly a practice run) we did that mission without too much trouble.
Mind you, there were two or three team wipes and I had to pretty much order him to, if there were four or more enemies, wait for me to make a battle plan, but we still managed to do it in one hour top.

[Acyl]

The Positron TF is...weird. There's a lot of things wrong with it. Let me see if I can name the major issues.
First, the TF is tough. Enemies are pretty damn brutal for that level. You got Vahzilok with toxic damage, slows, and the zombies resist immobilization. You got CoT ruin mages who make you do the bouncy trampolene. And Clockwork who sleep you. At 10-15, even some scrappers and tanks don't have mez protection...much less everyone else. Now, as you level up, as you get more powers and slots, your ability to deal with tough situations improves. But at those low levels, you...really don't have much to work with. So it sucks.
Second, the TF is loooong. In fact, according to Positron (the developer, not the character), it was actually supposed to be two Task Forces. It sorta got merged into one before game release, so think of it as almost double length. And it makes you travel over three zones. That last bit is a hassle if you've got folks who don't have travel powers yet...very possible, since the range is 10-15.
Third, the TF is boring. It's long and draggy. It doesn't take you into any unique locales. It has no climatic boss battle. No Elite Boss, no Giant Monster, no Archvillain, nothing. Compare that to the Synapse TF, which gives you three major enemies (EB, GM, AV) and a unique map. It's just like...mission, mission, mission, and that's it. There's no sense of having accomplished anything.
So. Yes. It sucks. 's totally counterintuitive, too. You would expect that the first TF in the game shouldn't be so harsh. Well, it wasn't supposed to be. Positron's two task forces were intended to be TF-lite. But as I noted, both TFs got combined into one...the devs claim they couldn't figure out how to make a contact offer two seperate TFs (at launch, presumably the SG mish computer indicates they've solved the problem). I heard that in a thread discussing the problems with the Posi TF...from a post by Posi. One of several, IIRC. So the devs are aware of the problem. But I'm guessing that fixing the TF is fairly low on their priority list.
However, that doesn't mean it can't be done right, or done well, with the right team. Or even the wrong team and good tactics. Everyone understands how, say, a team of all-defenders can be very safe and efficient. But there's a bunch on Virtue that do all-Blaster TFs. I think they did Positron with eight blasters in under three hours. Yes, they admitted they died a fair bit, but... =)
-- Acyl
(who ran Positron back in Issue 2, when TFs were bugged, bugged, bugged...)
-- Acyl

[Render]

The Posi TF is infamous for breaking the spirit of pick-up groups who attempt it. The first time I finished it was with a Tanker. I just kept grinding away after everyone else gave up. It sucked.
The second time I finished, I did my homework and pulled together a TF PUG myself. It mostly went smoothly, though it was still a long grind and we lost one or two people along the way.
Pieces of advice culled from the forums and my experience:
Having someone who can stealth ahead and recall friend is not required, but it is a huge help.
The first few missions in particular are front-loaded... difficult spawns, huge maps. But they aren't 'Defeat All' missions. Stealth to the target and clear the room. This will go a long way toward speeding things up and giving your teammates confidence that they can do this thing.
There's a long, tedious middle section of the TF... which is another place where having a speedy/stealthy person with recall friend can save time. And time is your worst enemy on this one.
If you can get through the first mission or two without things going to hell, you're good to go. If things are going poorly, just drop the TF and start over. Re-invite only promising members of the first effort & recruit. It will save time and grief in the long run.
If someone has to drop or logoff, ask them to do so between missions. Individual TF missions are scaled to the size of the team when you make it the active task or hit the door. If you're halfway through a tough mission and people quit, you're out of luck. If they quit before it goes active, the next mission will be appropriate to the remaining team.
I recommend a team of 4-6 people. That way even if one or two people drop along the way, you should have 2-4 for the final missions, which are not as ridiculous as the first few, but may be hard to solo. More than 6 is just asking for trouble in the first missions.
--Render