Discussion: Increase Mission Completion Rewards Significantly

[PeregrineFalcon]

On 9/23/2024 at 2:59 PM, Troo said:

Question / Discussion: How much of an increase would it take to entice players to do more regular content?

1) Change it so that characters do not out-level contacts and story arcs. Possibly by having the team exemplared down to the highest level of the mission upon entering the mission. Only once the story arc is complete does one get referred to the next contact(s) in the progression.

2) Maybe even clean the story-arcs up a bit by removing unnecessary hunts and making the missions all progress in the same order so that players with the same contact can progress through the story arc together.

3) Add a small merit reward for completing each story arc.

 

This way players are incentivized to play up through the story arcs until they're done, at which point they will have enough reward merits to almost completely kit out their character with set IOs.

[Force Redux]

10 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

1) Change it so that characters do not out-level contacts and story arcs. Possibly by having the team exemplared down to the highest level of the mission upon entering the mission. Only once the story arc is complete does one get referred to the next contact(s) in the progression.

2) Maybe even clean the story-arcs up a bit by removing unnecessary hunts and making the missions all progress in the same order so that players with the same contact can progress through the story arc together.

3) Add a small merit reward for completing each story arc.

 

This way players are incentivized to play up through the story arcs until they're done, at which point they will have enough reward merits to almost completely kit out their character with set IOs.

 

I love this ❤️❤️❤️

[Luminara]

6 hours ago, Troo said:

And sweet baby beelzebub why does @Luminara even play if they think it's so terrible.

 

[JackMars]

For the record, I rarely farm. I have about 50 50s, all leveled through content most with at least some T4s and IO'd out.

 

So looking at the farming forum, it seems like the inf per minute is around 3 million for someone triple boxing.. For a 5 person team the most recent figure I saw was over 6 million per minute.  Sticking with the triple boxer, at the current rate of exchange, roughly 60k inf per converter, that's the equivalent of getting at least 16 merits per minute of invested time. so a 10 minute arc like Matthew Hashaby would have to reward 160 merits to compete. Of course then this floods the market with converters (or Purples, etc.) and devalues them, so you need to reward people even more. And of course Matthew Hashaby is a fast arc with little travel time. There are lots of arcs that take an hour that reward like 10 - 20 merits. Also factor in AFK farming and I think it's reasonable to conclude that there's no way to make actually just playing the content as rewarding as farming as far as  inf goes.

 

Even if you cut out triple boxing for some reason, it's still over 50 merits for the arc and the flooding of the market with rewards, whether its enhancers or purple sets, is still an issue.

 

As for XP, I have a really bad fire farmer, and I can Level a character on another account  up to 50 in a few hours., better farmers can do it much faster. I don't think the goal is to make the 1- 50 leveling experience take less than 4 hours, and even if it is, players would be spending about 20 minutes in each zone, even if you limited yourself to just a handful of zones; say Atlas, the Hollows, Kings, Croatoa, Steel, Skyway, Faultline IP, Talos FF, Bricks and PI. So players would still be done with the leveling experience without doing more than 1 short arc in each of those zones, and never visiting Perez, Eden, Boomtown, TV, Crey's, the RWZ any of the Shadow Shard, etc.

 

IMO the only way to get people to actually play the story content, if that's the  goal, would be to create something that can ONLY be gotten from completing story arcs. Maybe a new type of enhancement that's clearly superior to  Purples, etc., that can't be traded, sold or gotten in any other way. Maybe more accolades that are tied mission badges or even to souvenirs, maybe a level 50 completing a story through Oro could get incarnate salvage. IDK what the answer is, but I definitely don't think it's realistic to make story arcs give the kinds of rewards farming does.

[tidge]

It's hard to follow some of the alt-radio ramblings, but if CoX required players to "solve puzzles" by moving boxes and flipping levers (a la Half-Life, or gawd help us Myst) I think I'd check out. I'm also not looking for 372 hours of potential dialogue from clicking on every NPC in the game, a la Deus Ex.

[Without_Pause]

I know it goes against the current system, but it would have been nice if you talked to an out leveled contact, they simply let you know their range, and then you played their missions exempted. FTR, I vastly solo with doing story arcs as the content is harder, more engaging, and offers things like unique maps. The only thing more mind-numbing than farms is radio missions which seems to be the overwhelming thing to do on teams outside of TFs. 

[ZemX]

6 minutes ago, Without_Pause said:

The only thing more mind-numbing than farms is radio missions which seems to be the overwhelming thing to do on teams outside of TFs.

 

Two big reasons for that: (1) There's no zone hopping, and (2) The rewards for the rest of the team are the same as running story arcs.

 

That's why I think changing (2) up there could change the equation enough to encourage more mission arc teams.  I don't think it would be any dramatic shift or anything but it would help a little and hopefully not be a lot of effort to implement.  

 

14 minutes ago, Without_Pause said:

I know it goes against the current system, but it would have been nice if you talked to an out leveled contact, they simply let you know their range, and then you played their missions exempted.

 

I wonder if the problem here is that the game can only do this in a Task Force mode like it does in flashbacks.  But it would be nice if it could be done outside the flashback system like you say as it would open up that many more mission contacts to be run and nobody would have to worry about outleveling the contact.

[Glacier Peak]

10 hours ago, Luminara said:

You're conflating immersion with engagement.  They aren't the same.  Yes, some of the design elements in story arcs and missions are immersive, but they aren't engaging.  If they were, players would be doing them.

 

Engagement isn't an office map with 17 floors and nothing, not even an NPC, on 9 of those floors.  A FedEx quest that doesn't introduce a player to a new contact or area or enemy or something isn't engagement, it's extension.  If call boxes were supposed to be engaging, they'd do something other than make players crisscross zones for several minutes.  Hunt mission after hunt mission doesn't appear to provide engagement for players, but annoyance.  Enormous outdoor maps with four glowies to find, no direction little purpose beyond keeping the player busy for a few extra minutes hasn't engaged people, it's frustrated them.  All of those doors that lead to empty 12' square rooms in tech labs and offices aren't engagement, they're a delay.

 

If you look at what the engine can and can't do, you can tell that it wasn't built for engagement.  We don't solve puzzles by moving crates around or touching colored panels.  We don't follow trails and find clues.  We aren't fiddling with valves or levers to open and close things.  We don't even have animations linked to click activities like operating a computer or searching a chest, despite those animations being in the game.  All of the engagement that Cryptic created was in combat.  They didn't build engagement into it beyond that.  We're hitting things, or we're staring at progress bars or clicking through text boxes until we can hit things.  We're traveling to the next mission to hit things.  We're slogging through the FedExes and talk-tos and empty rooms to hit things.

 

What Cryptic did was take short stories and try to turn them into novels, but instead of adding sentences and paragraphs, they added monosyllabic grunts and swaths of blank space.  Don't make an arc with 5 missions, split up some of those missions, add a talk-to, add a hunt, add a FedEx, send them to a couple of different zones, make it fifteen missions that way.  Slow the player down.  Drag it out.  Yes, that is wasting time.  And it was deliberate.  It gave them time to work and kept players subbed longer between Issues.

It is obvious to anyone who played the game during the subscription era that much of the content was designed to waste time. If it's not obvious, then those folks probably like waiting in line at the DMV...

[Jacke]

9 hours ago, Luminara said:

Engagement isn't an office map with 17 floors and nothing, not even an NPC, on 9 of those floors.

 

I know those weird office building maps are because they're put together from pieces.  But damn, they're nothing like any office I've ever seen.  We're all so used to that particular craziness we just accept it now.

 

 

9 hours ago, Luminara said:

A FedEx quest that doesn't introduce a player to a new contact or area or enemy or something isn't engagement, it's extension.

 

Oh damn, you just reminded me of something.  Back in the day, if you were going to Kings Row at L5 to go through the original contacts there, you first went to the Hollows and talked to David Wincott, then went to Kings Row.  Else your first contact would give you a mission to go talk to David Wincott in the Hollows.  I know this was added when the Hollows was put into the game for Issue 2, so those FedEx missions were to direct Players to the new Zone.  But that long jaunt back and forth got tiring.  I think they were removed at some time.

 

 

9 hours ago, Luminara said:

What Cryptic did was take short stories and try to turn them into novels, but instead of adding sentences and paragraphs, they added monosyllabic grunts and swaths of blank space.  Don't make an arc with 5 missions, split up some of those missions, add a talk-to, add a hunt, add a FedEx, send them to a couple of different zones, make it fifteen missions that way.  Slow the player down.  Drag it out.  Yes, that is wasting time.  And it was deliberate.  It gave them time to work and kept players subbed longer between Issues.

 

Oh, yeah.  'Course, nowadays MMO time-wasting measures have evolved.  Most now involve convoluted crafting.  I don't quite like how much time in City is spent on crafting, but it's minor compared to what's in other games.

 

 

7 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

1) Change it so that characters do not out-level contacts and story arcs. Possibly by having the team exemplared down to the highest level of the mission upon entering the mission. Only once the story arc is complete does one get referred to the next contact(s) in the progression.

2) Maybe even clean the story-arcs up a bit by removing unnecessary hunts and making the missions all progress in the same order so that players with the same contact can progress through the story arc together.

3) Add a small merit reward for completing each story arc.

 

This way players are incentivized to play up through the story arcs until they're done, at which point they will have enough reward merits to almost completely kit out their character with set IOs.

 

Wasn't that first point already implemented?  If a Toon had a mission from before the change, it wasn't changed.  But that's supposed to be better now.  If it's not, it really needs fixing.

 

 

[Luminara]

2 minutes ago, Jacke said:

Oh damn, you just reminded me of something.  Back in the day, if you were going to Kings Row at L5 to go through the original contacts there, you first went to the Hollows and talked to David Wincott, then went to Kings Row.  Else your first contact would give you a mission to go talk to David Wincott in the Hollows.  I know this was added when the Hollows was put into the game for Issue 2, so those FedEx missions were to direct Players to the new Zone.  But that long jaunt back and forth got tiring.  I think they were removed at some time.

 

I'm referring to the "Yo, Lumi, do me a solid and run this CD over to Jake Montoya while I look at porn on my phone" type of FedExes crammed into so many story arcs.  Like this.  First thing the contact does is FedEx you, and then later in the arc, it FedExes you twice in a row.  And these contacts, you either already knew, would've been introduced to later anyway, or couldn't use because they were an opposing origin, so the FedExes weren't serving any purpose other than to stretch out the time it takes to complete the arc.

 

There's a difference between "Go talk to Guy in Zone, he'll give you some work and and an intro to someone else", and "Do this thing so the arc takes another 5 minutes".

[Ukase]

On 9/24/2024 at 1:17 AM, MoonSheep said:

hmm, i’m not sure whether it‘s the lack of rewards putting people off or not knowing which mission arcs are the exciting ones - plus it’s easier to form a TF as there’s a handy list of them and you can LFG to the contact.

You're probably on to something here. 

If the game had various contacts listed in the same category as SSA, perhaps the newer players would more easily find them. 

[Without_Pause]

2 hours ago, ZemX said:

Two big reasons for that: (1) There's no zone hopping, and (2) The rewards for the rest of the team are the same as running story arcs.

3. Mission length. People can hop in and out quickly. Sure, I solo on a higher diff setting and thus missions will take longer, but I don't think it is unreasonable to say a radio mission can be blown through in 5-10 minutes. I have soloed content missions which took 30-45 minutes easily. The second to last mission in Johnny Sonata's arc has so many waves of ambushes. So freaking many and the bosses rez. You get at most 3 waves of ambushes in a radio mission.  

 

For my boredom factor, radio missions all use the same template for the map instances to where I feel like I could complete some of them blind. I've literally looked down a hallway and went, "I know what the rest of that looks like."

Edited September 25 by Without_Pause

[PeregrineFalcon]

2 hours ago, Jacke said:

Wasn't that first point already implemented?  If a Toon had a mission from before the change, it wasn't changed.  But that's supposed to be better now.  If it's not, it really needs fixing.

No. Yes.

[Jacke]

Oh, I almost forgot.  If you're doing traditional contacts and hit Level 7, you will be given missions to go into Perez Park.  Most of these missions will be suicide to attempt, even with some stealth.  By about Level 10, should be safe enough.  But that the original mission structure sent brand new Level 7's into Perez Park is just mean.

[ZemX]

30 minutes ago, Jacke said:

Oh, I almost forgot.  If you're doing traditional contacts and hit Level 7, you will be given missions to go into Perez Park.

 

I probably haven't run any of the original Atlas mission arcs since Live.  If I'm doing anything at that level besides DFB... it's Habashy and Twinshot.

[Without_Pause]

Habashy, DFB, Hollows, Posi. That's my typical pathway. I remember doing Perez Park back on Live. Just navigating that forest was a mess. 

[shortguy on indom]

• LIKED THE OP's SHARK TANK PRESENTATION... A+
• BUT THE FALCON'S SOLUTION SOLVES ALL THAT WITHOUT THE 'REWARD CREEP' WHICH IS RUINNG THE GAME IMHO.
• PLAY ON!

[Ukase]

My usual path is Habashy, Sondra Costel, Aaron Thiery, and the hollows contacts. Unlike most folks, I speed through Frostfire. If I don't, I outlevel Julius. 

Then it's off to Faultline. I can generally get to Striga and start Peebles, then finish the Faultline arcs, then go back to striga. 

 

Fitting Croatoa in is fairly easy at that point. Then it's off to Bricks or whereever until 35, then off to rwz. 

[Neiska]

I care more about the enjoyment, the team getting along, and how much bs is in the mission/arc than the reward. If I want rewards, I can get much more my way on my own.

 

Not saying they can’t be adjusted, it’s just not a priority for me. If my focus is on getting resources, I’d just rather do it alone.

[Teklord]

On 9/25/2024 at 6:15 AM, Jacke said:

 

I know those weird office building maps are because they're put together from pieces.  But damn, they're nothing like any office I've ever seen.  We're all so used to that particular craziness we just accept it now.

 

I made a joke in a mission with one that these are hospital layouts with wings. Hospitals, especially university hospitals are some of the hardest to navigate buildings in the US.

[ZemX]

18 hours ago, shortguy on indom said:

BUT THE FALCON'S SOLUTION SOLVES ALL THAT WITHOUT THE 'REWARD CREEP' WHICH IS RUINNG THE GAME IMHO.

 

Just as "power creep" implies increasing power, I'd say "rewards creep" implies a reward that is greater than what is currently available.  While we're suggesting increasing rewards for mission arcs, I don't think anyone is suggesting making those rewards any greater than rewards already available for other activities.  This is more akin to power proliferation than power creep, in other words.  The point of it is also the same.  To encourage more diversity in content played.  Not to make things easier or faster than methods already available.

 

30 minutes ago, Neiska said:

Not saying they can’t be adjusted, it’s just not a priority for me. If my focus is on getting resources, I’d just rather do it alone.

 

I'm sure that describes a lot of people... just not most people.  Not from what I've observed.  At least just watching LFG channel, what you see most advertised is the stuff that seems to provide the most rewards.   The rewards don't matter as much to me either but if setting out a little bit more candy attracts more people to team with, I'm for it.

[Apogee]

20 hours ago, Ukase said:

My usual path is Habashy, Sondra Costel, Aaron Thiery, and the hollows contacts. Unlike most folks, I speed through Frostfire. If I don't, I outlevel Julius. 

Then it's off to Faultline. I can generally get to Striga and start Peebles, then finish the Faultline arcs, then go back to striga. 

 

Fitting Croatoa in is fairly easy at that point. Then it's off to Bricks or whereever until 35, then off to rwz. 

 

I think they upped the level that Hollows contacts top out at.

[Apogee]

Like Ukase, I generally do Habashy, Costel, Thiery, but add in Twinshot and then do the Skulls arc in Kings.  By the time I finish Shining Stars I am ready for Faultline then Striga, then Croatoa.  I started doing Marchand's arc now to get into the 40's.  I do Hollows via Ouro mostly.

[Shin Magmus]

     Unfortunately, the overall playerbase will keep doing the same things they are doing regardless of changes to rewards.  People will do content that is easy to play and easy to join, and avoid content that takes more thought or effort.  People will also default to what is familiar to them regardless of reward output.

 

- Example 1: MSRs give 33% of the reward merits they used to pre-nerf and are painfully slow and repetitive besides.  The time-to-reward ratio is objectively higher on a bunch of random TFs when speedran, and only the most extreme outliers of reward efficiency (TinPex) achieve similar or higher popularity.

 

- Example 2: Aeon SF gives a random reward table with one of the most lucrative items in the entire game, as well as having fundamentally very profitable consistent reward when ran on Advanced Mode.  Yet ASF is extremely underplayed, with very few speed ASFs ever being ran, and most people not engaging with the content at all (filling a ASF as the one leading is so fucking slow).  The content is "new", "different", and "requires more effort" than the lowest-common-denominator stuff that is more popular.

Edited September 27 by Shin Magmus

[ivanhedgehog]

On 9/27/2024 at 12:09 AM, Shin Magmus said:

     Unfortunately, the overall playerbase will keep doing the same things they are doing regardless of changes to rewards.  People will do content that is easy to play and easy to join, and avoid content that takes more thought or effort.  People will also default to what is familiar to them regardless of reward output.

 

- Example 1: MSRs give 33% of the reward merits they used to pre-nerf and are painfully slow and repetitive besides.  The time-to-reward ratio is objectively higher on a bunch of random TFs when speedran, and only the most extreme outliers of reward efficiency (TinPex) achieve similar or higher popularity.

 

- Example 2: Aeon SF gives a random reward table with one of the most lucrative items in the entire game, as well as having fundamentally very profitable consistent reward when ran on Advanced Mode.  Yet ASF is extremely underplayed, with very few speed ASFs ever being ran, and most people not engaging with the content at all (filling a ASF as the one leading is so fucking slow).  The content is "new", "different", and "requires more effort" than the lowest-common-denominator stuff that is more popular.

I dont find ASF fun. It is a game, Katie hannon doesnt reward much at all, but its fun.