In the game City of Heroes, players can team up for special missions known as Task Force, where 4-8 players run through an elaborate storyline / series of missions all the way up a Villains chain of command to the Archvillain of that dastardly group.

The advantages of a Task Force are that you rack up incredible amounts of experience and influence: Experience to getting the next Level, Influence needed to buy enhancements and inspirations. You also win enhancements along the way, and if you defeat the Archvillain, you win a Single Origin enhancement (very expensive!) well above the average level of the villains you've faced.

The disadvantages are that the TF can take about four to six hours, maybe half a day; and that people can drop out of a Task Force but cannot be brought in once it starts. A poorly built team could have troubles even getting past the first mission. While early on, very few Task Forces had been successful, as players' abilities improved, Task Force survival and success improved.

With what's known as Issue 3, the creation of Striga Isle and its two Task Forces, a third Task Force was formed on an established map: Calvin Scott in Independence Port. Intrigued by the idea of a new TF, and maybe one not as brutal as Manticore at the same level (30-35), my blaster WittyLibrarian offered to line up a TF Friday evening for his first documented TF.

Task Force Loyalty? Why Do I Get the Feeling Calvin's one of Those Creepy Husband Types?...

Showing up for the Task Force was the usual suspect: El Fuego Fuerte (Controller). He shows up for all of these, even when he's above level. More on that later. Ranma Saotome. (Scrapper) also showed as the regular frontline fighter. Pazahar (Defender) came on board, along with Spirit Warrior (Scrapper). Rounding off the lineup, as we needed six to start, was pick-up Gila (Scrapper), who made the TF scrapper-heavy, but that was okay as long as one of the scrappers could imitate a Tanker for us. :grin:

We had a bit of a problem with the start: I had originally assumed the TF levels went up to 36, but our 36 (Paz) was having trouble. El Fuego was 43, but we gave him an exemplar already. If you've read the other TF diaries, you'll have learned about exemplaring. You'll have also noticed the problems we get with exemplaring. RIGHT, EL? :sigh:

Calvin Scott's Task Force is about his obsessive over-protective behavior towards his wife, the woman possessed by the mind/spirit of Sister Psyche (which is why he's standing so close to her on the map). You'll also notice he's standing about 50 feet away, as per a restraining order I'm certain was put out on the creep. But I digress. Calvin wants his wife back, which means he wants to find a way to purge Sister Psyche from his wife's mind.

First off, we need to hunt down Council agents in a Kings Row base. Off we went. The Council base is one of those underground cavern deals, with narrow passages and confusing stair ramps into everywhere. We ran into the usual goon squads of Wolves and Vampri and Galaxys and Lions and Tigers and Bears and... You'll notice I haven't written a Bastion TF diary. It's pretty much like this first mission, except Bastion repeats it about 9 times and drives you INSANE! Maybe I'll tell you later.

After a rather arduous process, we cleared the map, found the clue we needed to find and hurried back to IP. Once there, we found the second mission involved defeating all the Ritki in THEIR base in Kings Row. Sigh. We rushed back in to Kings Row from IP.

The mission was at the exact same door as the Council one we just finished.

Jokes about the quick resale value of property in Kings Row flew immediately.

We went back in and fought our way through the mobs. This time we had a bit of fun, because we found they had Ritki Monkeys in the house! You ALWAYS have fun with MONKEYS! Yay Monkeys! Oh, there were a handful of Headmen and Boss-type Riktis and evildoers aplenty, but the Ritki Monkeys made up for it and then some. :wicked grin:

The Third Mission for Calvin was to deliver the files we've garnered to a contact in Rebecca Brinell. For a delivery, we need to only send one of us to do it, so Pazahar, if I recall, did the delivering. The rest of us took quick bio breaks and enh sells. You have to be careful in deliveries as ambushes could occur on any of the maps. But it turned out okay and we prepared for the next set of missions from Calvin.

The Fourth mission actually breaks down into a set of street hunts: First take out 10 Crey agents; Second take out 10 Nemesis; Third (and final) take out 10 Circle of Thorns.

We went to Brickstown for the Crey, and found a good set here and there. I used this as a chance to learn the effectiveness of Witty's Lvl32 attack, Nova. The superweapon meant to destroy everything in melee range about me. The good news is it's flashy, and it kills...about one bad guy. The rest are stunned and weakened but able to fight on, while I'm out all my endurance power. Nova right now ain't a good attack. Needs Accuracy, Damage, and more Damage. If it were a ranged attack I'd be okay, but it's melee, not a good attack for Blasters. That's all I got to say about it.

The second wave we went into Crey's Folly for the Nemesis. Nemesis can be found right there near the gateway, up on the rafters. The snipers are annoying as heck, and the Warhulks are a bloody nuisance when they explode. Otherwise we did fine, I don't think anyone died on it.

It was the third wave we got a lot of trouble: The CoT sent an ambush on us. Remember when I said we exemplared El Fuego? He's 43, normally, although he was exemped downt to 34 for the TF. Problem is, the game recognizes his higher level, and sent the ambush mob accordingly. Right at him. Playing at a 34 level. He died in about oh two seconds. The rest of the team tried to circle and help fight, but they quickly ran into problems. El Fuego was revived in due course, while the group argued over whether or not this ambush was for us, since it was so high a level. El Fuego was promptly killed again and that settled the issue. I used Recall Friend to get the body and the survivors to the safety of the Tram, where El Fuego was revived in relative comfort. After that, we headed to Talos and to the northern isles to finish off easy CoT kills.

After the tenth CoT, we apparently recovered a tome and had it delivered to Azuria in Atlas Park for analysis. This time Gila went, and I don't think he had much trouble while we waited. Once delivered, Calvin ranted some more about getting his wife back to normal, while I wanted to smack the guy and tell him his hottie wife looked GREAT in spandex, so why bother? He finally sent us to Brickstown to face off against Circles led by Tyrkis. Circle of Thorns. WittyLibrarian's arch fiends, his nemeses (not Nemesis proper, mind you), the tome takers and scroll thieves, the ones with overdue books. FIGHT THEM! BREAK THEIR LIBRARY CARDS! THE ALA COMMANDS IT!

I got sloppy, I admit it. With problems to lag time, especially with Spirit Warrior caught between doors, I got impatient at the entranceway to the CoT Temple and began blasting away. I figured Spirit would show up as the battle began and aid us in the struggle. I quickly found out how bad the dust on the floor tastes. A retreat was ordered and the remainder of the team exited out. Spirit Warrior took another two minutes of hovering between dimensions before disappearing.

Remember El Fuego, that he was exemplared to play the TF? He was exemplared to Spirit Warrior. Remember the last two, three, maybe five TFs that El Fuego was exemplared to? Yes, he got kicked again. It's not sadism on our part so much as it is machoistic on his part. More on him later.

I revived in due course, and about a minute later Spirit Warrior reappeared. We marshalled our forces and soldiered on against a very tight and powerful set of Circles. This was the nastiest fighting in the TF yet, with the CoT Mages throwing out Holds and Stuns all over the place. It took time, but we worked our way out of that mess and found the temple room in the back, the one built like a profane church, where Tyrkis and his coven awaited.

Blast scrape boom. :grin: Tyrkis was finished and his minions scattered to the seven winds (four winds is SOOO 2-dimensional, ya?).

A new mission comes up quickly: Take those books to Azuria. Gila again went as the deliverer. The rest of us stopped and paused at the Bricks tram, where El Fuego was waiting, dejected and ejected. We talked, we apologized, I saluted. But El, if you're reading this: Please, for your own sanity, stop exemplaring. It's not doing you any good. You keep getting kicked from the TFs, my man. It's the Main Dog, trying to tell you something. Yes, I know you enjoy Task Forcing, but seriously, you can't be having fun when you get screwed over by the exemplar curse. I'm sorry, El Fuego. I really am. If I form another Task Force and you show up looking to exemplar, I'm going to have to decline the offer. You're a good player, El Fuego, and Controllers are great for teaming. But the exemplar, man. I DON'T TRUST EXEMPLARING FOR TASK FORCES. It ain't healthy.

After that, we traveled to IP, me to get another contact, and the others looking to sell enh. We were getting close to the end of the Task Force and we needed to clear space for the SO prize. This was where we got the ambush, another set of CoT, this time leveled to 34, our current highest player (Spirit). There was some damage done, but we gathered near the IP Science Store and laid the smackdown on those evil bibliothieves! DIE, CoT! DIE!

I went back to Calvin once the delivery was made, and Calvin seemed gleeful, that a 'cure' of sorts was available to 'save his wife' (oh, please. Buy her roses and beg her forgiveness, you creep!). Calvin had something pop up on the radar, so we needed to go check on it: Go to Kings Row. Stop Punkadelic and his cronies.

Now we were running into our fourth (actually fifth) bad guy of the TF: Freakshow. I mentioned on our TFs that I prefer one set of bad guys on a TF, not a medley. It was good we had a stretch against CoT, but now this was getting sad. At least the maps were mostly connected to IP (Kings and Bricks), except for the delivery runs. Anyway, we hurried into a warehouse and found ourselves surrounded by plush teddy bears special-ordered by the Council for booby-trapping their radar stations. Shaking our heads, we hurried back out and went to the warehouse next to it. There was Punk. Hate it when we get a wrong address, don't we?

The Freakshow are deadly as melee fighters to a blaster, but scrappers had a blast (heh, punning away here). Then we found Punkadelic and made him apologize for his cameo appearances in trashy 80s post-apocalypse sci-fi movies.

By this time, Calvin trusted us with his phone number (the same one Sister Psyche has call-blocked, I'd bet), so I called it in, and upset for some reason (another court order for counseling), Calvin wanted us to take out the frustration on 30 Freakshow. About 10 Freaks obliged by showing up on an ambush, so we circled the streets, targeted our foes, and made mincemeat of them. A debate arose over the best place to hunt Freaks, with myself originally thinking Terra Volta was close enough, but with the others suggesting heading to Brickstown and places around the tram station there. They turned out to be right: it was quicker to get at and the mobs of bads were available for smackdowns. It was also good because Calvin calls up about Sister Psyche's new 'boyfriend' Malaise: Calvin's seen the roses Malaise had sent to Psyche for Valentine's Day and had gotten monstrously jealous (Calvin, from what Numina's whispering, sent Psyche a Best Buy gift certificate). Calvin wants us to beat up Malaise and his snickering cronies. And Malaise was hiding here in Bricks.

Hiding was a good word for it. Flying out to the spot where the door should be, we find it's a concrete parking spot: no door seen. There was a good chance this was a doorway UNDER the parking lot, but we couldn't see the slope downward to grant us access below. Finally, a narrow, almost hard to see ramp was spotted leading down, and this took us to a boulder doorway to a cave mission. Here we go...

This was a good cave, the wide Troll cave, with room to maneuver and room to see. Not those nasty narrow CoT caves you get in the early levels. Only problem were the hills, where the mobs hide behind. We had one more problem with a freezed player (Spirit Warrior again, damn Mapserver and those damn doors...). We waited for the reset and the return, and once back to full strength, we charged in.

Boom!

Ka-Pow!

AIIIEEE!

It got bloody, very bloody. I died early and quick when a mad mob of Freak tanks charged over the hill. Paz died once too. The scrappers got beaten down hard but their melee survival skills kicked in. From there we worked the tunnels until we got to the big cavern at the end of these Troll tunnels, the big place where you usually find the bad guy: and here he was, Archvillain to jealous husbands, MALAISE! Yeah, that dinky purple guy in the photo. The one that DOESN'T look like a braceface. Him.

We beat him up.

Mission complete.

We exited the map, celebratory, gleeful, uncertain as to what Calvin will ask for next. Needing a clear, safe photo for the closing salute, we traveled back to the tram roof, and mindful of the hovering PL'ers nearby, angled the group about for a clear photoshoot of us saluting. Yay us!

Then I called in, and found out that Calvin was getting dragged back into court for more restraining orders to keep him away from Sister Psyche. Dudes, I know there's a prison in Paragon, the Big Zigg, but seriously, where's the Arkham Asylum loony bin? Seriously...?

As for the Task Force itself, my review: meandering is a word for it. Not so much going between three maps most often than not (outside of deliveries), but going between 4 to 5 bad guy groups instead of sticking to one major opponent. It got to feel like the bad guy was really Calvin Scott all along, which is why I kept ragging on him regarding this write-up. There's also: 1) no badge, and 2) no badge, the same problem with the Moonfire TF. Needs to be fixed, because some people (me, me, me! And El Fuego apparently) play these TFs for the shiny badges. Badges Badges Badges Mushroom Mushroom. Snake! No wait...

UPDATE: As it turned out, the Calvin Scott TF was a special event, and had been eliminated by Issue 4. Meaning that any evidence of having run this TF doesn't exist in-game anymore. This diary could well be the only evidence that this had ever happened. Wait. Did it?
UPDATE REGARDING EXEMPLARING: As it will be mentioned in other diaries, the Exemplar problems with TFs were fixed with a radical AutoExemp feature to Task Forces. Anyone above the max level allowed for the TF will now be simply exemplared down to that max level (say, a Level 50 exemping down to 35 to run this TF). The exemped player no longer has to rely on a teammate for the exemp; if the exemped player is Mapserved out, logging back to the TF is now possible; and if needed, the autoexemped player can SideKick (SK) a lower level player in the TF in case the villains all scale to the max level. The AutoExemp feature made TFs easier to play, easier to find teammates, and enjoyable to run. Thank you Game Devs.

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