Soft Loading

What is soft loading?

Soft loading is a way to make Task Forces in City of Heroes and strike forces in City of Villains a great deal easier by fooling the server into thinking only one team member is online; this is done by having all but one person on the team log off while the remaining person enters the mission.

The procedure can be used for any instanced, or "door", mission in a task/strike force, and will cause all bosses (except specifically coded-in ones like elite bosses or some named bosses) to disappear, as well as most of the minions.

Soft loading will not decrease the level of the enemies, nor will it make the end battle with the Archvillain any easier; it will only allow the team to speed through "clear all" missions by decimating the total amount of enemies.

Some task forces can be cleared in under 90 minutes if all missions are soft loaded successfully.

Procedure

1. Everyone except one team member (one with some form of Invisibility or Stealth if the mission has several floors) logs out of CoH for around 5 minutes. Stalkers are great for this.

2. The lone member visits every floor in the mission before the others log on.

This is very important. The server checks the size of the team every time a new floor is visited for the first time. So, if the other members log on too soon, the second floor on up will spawn the full amount of enemies.

3. The other members log in, now that the mission is explored, and the mission can be cleared in a much shorter time.

UPDATE

Recent patches to the game servers will prevent Soft Loading during Task Forces. There is still some debate about the final rules that will be in place. The short version is that the enemy spawns will at least contain the number of foes proportional to the number of Task Force members, whether those members are logged in or not. There may be another lower limit, keep an eye on the Training Room boards.