Make the number of "completable" missions at least 3xday.

[Judasace]

TBH I think it should be more like 5 or even 10, but the simple fact is that with farming and 2XP no one is going to be using free mission completes to somehow "game" the system. That would be so much more ineffecient than just getting in a decent farm team and staying in it...as it is the mission completion XP is so paltry that people get angry if their farm missions get completed.

 

I don't know if it's the age of the game, the servers, the fact that it's not the original devs running it, but I'm running into just tons and tons of broken missions where glowies don't spawn, NOC don't show up or the mission just fails to complete or give the appropriate awards. The ONLY reason to do missions right now is to experience the content ... which is no fun when you can't finish a mission because a good percentage of them are broken. Almost every mission in the Dark Astoria arcs, for example, has failed in one way or another. Sometimes I've found a workaround, but I've had to use my completes, and  now that I'm out that's it, and in the time I spent on this I could have made probably 4 - 6 vet levels doing farms.

 

Also missions aren't easily numbered or identified and there isn't any convenent way to report a bugged mission. Some of these have been bugged since live, though some are new, but realistically only the hardcore lore enthusiasts are even doing missions and at least one of them is about to just give up.

 

Back when the devs had the idea that people would level by completing missions it made sense to limit the free completions. There are so many faster and better ways to level now that the only thing having a limit on these does is discourage anyone from playing through the game for the story.

[jack_nomind]

I thought I was going to /jranger this but you actually make a pretty good argument.  On Live, there was a staff of paid GMs that could respond to these kinds of problems.  We don't and aren't likely to have that here. 

 

I'm still gonna conditionally say it's a bad idea.  The major issue is cheesing through mission chains for merits.  I can't think of a particularly fair solution that doesn't penalize people who legitimately have a problem on, e.g., mission 9/12 of a chain but doesn't encourage people who want to bypass mission 1/2 on other ones.  Any ideas?

[justicebeliever]

I can't speak either personally or broadly to the availability of the GM's, but I have definitely seen posts, in-game chat, and discord comments by people who have had the GM help them complete a mission.  So they are out there helping out...

 

I was also going to say no to this, just based on the title, but having read the post, I understand the frustration better...I would be fine if the trade off was you could buy mission completes with reward merits (thus sacrificing much of the reward you would otherwise get) so that the "gaming of the system" is taken off the table...

[_NOPE_]

I was also going to say no to this, just based on the title, but having read the post, I understand the frustration better...I would be fine if the trade off was you could buy mission completes with reward merits (thus sacrificing much of the reward you would otherwise get) so that the "gaming of the system" is taken off the table...

 

Yes, something like this. Not given for free, but bought. Hell, make "Mission Completes" an item purchasable in the P2W vendor, seems appropriate.

[Doctor Brainbottle]

how about unlimited skips, but you also skip the xp and merits. Also, skipping a mission should automatically double as reporting the mission as problematic, and get recorded in a database table keyed by whatever internal mission name or number the devs would need to investigate the problem. Then if the devs have some spare time they can fix the top N most frequently skipped missions.

[justicebeliever]

how about unlimited skips, but you also skip the xp and merits. Also, skipping a mission should automatically double as reporting the mission as problematic, and get recorded in a database table keyed by whatever internal mission name or number the devs would need to investigate the problem. Then if the devs have some spare time they can fix the top N most frequently skipped missions.

 

I had a mission that I solo'ed for 2 hrs yesterday.  I was on the very last objected and got D/C. When I went back I auto completed it as part of my 1 per 3 day allotment because I didn't want to go back thru all of that again.  However, having spent the time I would like the XP, but more importantly the reward Merits for finishing the Story Arc (still have one more to go, damn Devouring Earth).  So I would like the existing system kept intact for those who use this beyond sparingly.

 

I do like the idea of being able to just log a "bug mission" in-game so that I don't have to report it separately.

[Doctor Brainbottle]

Okay, how about this for a middle ground: you can skip one mission a day and get the rewards, exactly like it is now. Then, if you want to skip MORE missions in one day, you get a slightly different dialog option for "skip mission and rewards" instead of nothing.

 

In either case, the skipped mission should get automatically recorded.

[Mr. Vee]

The reporting should be optional given that some skips would just be because the mish is a pain or something like justicebeliever described.

 

Would also be nice if the skip/report option worked on ouro arcs. I've not personally had any bugged missions there but if this is as widespread as the OP describes seems like it'd be needed.

[Shinobu]

I run the Black Scorpion arc often just to unlock patron pools, and I always skip the third mission because it's defeat all and I want to move as fast as possible.  I'm hardly the only one that does such a thing.  I don't think the powers that be need an automatically generated report every time I skip a mission in an arc just because it's defeat all.

 

no one is going to be using free mission completes to somehow "game" the system.

 

If I could run, say, a Freakshow Wars arc from Ouroboros and auto-complete all eight missions in five minutes for 55 merits or whatever it is, you know I'd do it.  So would 90% of the server.  ^_^

 

 

[Vanden]

I don't know if it's the age of the game, the servers, the fact that it's not the original devs running it, but I'm running into just tons and tons of broken missions where glowies don't spawn, NOC don't show up or the mission just fails to complete or give the appropriate awards.

 

What missions are you running? I've soloed two characters to 50 and have a handful in the teens-30s, and I can count the number of actually broken missions I've run into on one hand. It almost sounds like you're just giving up too easily, if you really think you'd need 5 autocompletes a day to deal with all the broken missions you encounter.

 

how about unlimited skips, but you also skip the xp and merits. Also, skipping a mission should automatically double as reporting the mission as problematic, and get recorded in a database table keyed by whatever internal mission name or number the devs would need to investigate the problem. Then if the devs have some spare time they can fix the top N most frequently skipped missions.

 

Okay, how about this for a middle ground: you can skip one mission a day and get the rewards, exactly like it is now. Then, if you want to skip MORE missions in one day, you get a slightly different dialog option for "skip mission and rewards" instead of nothing.

 

In either case, the skipped mission should get automatically recorded.

 

This was brought up by the original devs as something that they couldn't really do. It could break a lot of things if missions didn't give rewards when being completed; for example, the Vahzilok Wasting Disease is removed by a mission completion bonus. If that mission didn't give you its rewards when you completed it, you'd be stuck with the Wasting Disease forever.

[Neowulf]

I've run into missions that ran fine solo and half the times I ran it with groups, but just randomly bugged out. Usually something to do with a key enemy not spawning. Or likely spawning outside mission geometry.

 

So making it 2-3 daily skips would be a good idea to me. Enough to get through glitches before you lose all your sanity, but without enabling abuse.

[SwitchFade]

I would be in favor of a slight bump up.

 

2x is reasonable, as I often have situations where I want to kill a mission. Perhaps with it limiting rewards? Not usable on reward merit missions?

 

Because Dev time is limited, I would relegate this to low priority, though.

[Oneirohero]

As someone who used Auto-completes for missions with extremely hard EBs (Especially ones with stupidly high regen I cannot solo) and times when bosses don't spawn on the map thus making it uncompletable. I think only one time I felt like I needed to use another auto-complete sooner than three days apart.

 

But in support of the idea, I'd go with maybe 2 auto-completes every three days. The reset is the same as live but one extra skip should eliminate all but the egregious uses of the auto-complete function. Or at the very least START with 2 auto-completes every three days and see how people fare, perhaps that's all that's needed or perhaps it's not. But we can afford to do incremental changes instead of bumping it to 5 and 10 auto-completes like OP suggested.

 

Don't forget, even if you auto-complete a mission and get no rewards, Reward merits at the end of arcs are arguably more valuable than mere INF. So Merits would have to be removed as well with a no-reward auto-complete and I don't think ANYBODY wants that!

[justicebeliever]

Reason for the current behavior:  Allow people who are just stuck or annoyed with a mission to bypass it once every 3 days

 

Rationale for the change:  I just want to enjoy the story arcs and I can't sometimes for whatever reason because of a mission, and 3 days isn't enough

 

Concern for the change:  People might use it to complete missions to get the rewards faster (Reward Merits)

 

Proposal:  Allow bonus mission skips by purchasing them with Reward Merits...Neutralizes the reason people might abuse it while enabling the behavior for the OP's rationale

 

Seems like (hahahahahahaha) it would be pretty simple to enable a new product from the Merit Vendor, and that would just adjust the days since the last mission skip to todays date + 3 days, allowing you to skip it with the current code...So you would only be able to buy them one at a time...

[jack_nomind]

Seems like (hahahahahahaha) it would be pretty simple to

 

Shhh!  Don't let Philotic Knight hear you!

 

Uh, that being said -- I like the idea of a purchasable skip.  How do we balance it against the range of merit rewards?  Anything that I can think of that disincentivizes cheesing seems... expensive.  The rough average for merits per door is a little south of 5, but there are some outliers even there, without working out exactly which arcs are already super-fast but with one random defeat-all or AV that gunks them up.  I expect that even at 10 merits per skip, it's going to be efficient for someone.

[justicebeliever]

Uh, that being said -- I like the idea of a purchasable skip.  How do we balance it against the range of merit rewards?  Anything that I can think of that disincentivizes cheesing seems... expensive.  The rough average for merits per door is a little south of 5, but there are some outliers even there, without working out exactly which arcs are already super-fast but with one random defeat-all or AV that gunks them up.  I expect that even at 10 merits per skip, it's going to be efficient for someone.

 

I had 2 thoughts

 

1.) The cost would ideally (but clearly it is more technically difficult) scale up as your level increases.  The Merits are based on the length of time it takes to play the arc, and most of the arcs get longer as you go more and more in game.

2.) Or put a lvl min on the purchase, because it seems that this is more of an issue late game...

[Judasace]

I'd be more than fine with purchasing skips for merits or whatever currency at the P2W vendor.

[Chuckers]

I wouldn't mind the cool down being reduced to 1 day. If I have a problem mission, and I've used my skip, I can always do something else with my character for one night before coming back to the story arc.

[leese]

One skip per day seems entirely reasonable to me.

[WanderingAries]

Okay, how about this for a middle ground: you can skip one mission a day and get the rewards, exactly like it is now. Then, if you want to skip MORE missions in one day, you get a slightly different dialog option for "skip mission and rewards" instead of nothing.

 

In either case, the skipped mission should get automatically recorded.

 

This, you can skip the first one and get the basic xp. Anything more can be abused, so for those who are just wanted to end the arc, let it be available, but you don't get anything reward wise beyond completion (no badges, inf, xp, etc).

[Primantis]

One skip per day seems entirely reasonable to me.

 

 

To me this sounds like a reasonable compromise.

 

 

If someone were to try and cheese an arc for Merits, it would still take them roughly a week depending on the length. Which is a long time to wait for a handful of merits. So the return isn't really worth worrying about. Especially in this game's climate.