Friday with Means - March 26th, 2010 - Amnesia...please.

[Mastablasta]

Point out where I said I'm gona quit now or cried like some baby. I expressed my disappointment in; what I feel, was a rather civilized fashion (for these boards at least). It's not my fault trolls like yourself decide to nitpick about every single detail and try to act that just because you're fine with something that it must be alright and everyone else who dares speak a word to the contrary is just some emo whiner.

My impression of how the daily missions would be was that of something I could do instead of something like Inferno or Ely hecks if I had six hours or half an hour that day to play.

My issue now is investment and it's payout. Sure if you consider five minutes of work (which not all daily missions are that short) the reward seems good. But if I want my "significant progress" each day and am willing to put in adequate time to deserve such a reward: why can't I get that too?

Where's the "I have half an hour online and I could just squeeze a mission in there and feel like I really did something that helps my toon out" option? Instead of the "Yay I just did a mission in five minutes now what in the hell am I going to do for the other twenty-five that I'm online when everything else takes longer then that to complete!" option we have now.

Where did I say that I was happy with a tiny reward? I didn't. If there's trolling here, it would be you with your hateful comments and other such things.

You knew from the start that daily missions weren't going to be a replacement for the regular grind in inferno and on hecklers. I really don't see how you could be disappointed about something not being what it was never intended to be. That's where the unconstructive part comes in.

[Means]

Where's the "I have half an hour online and I could just squeeze a mission in there and feel like I really did something that helps my toon out" option? Instead of the "Yay I just did a mission in five minutes now what in the hell am I going to do for the other twenty-five that I'm online when everything else takes longer then that to complete!" option we have now.

Let me start by saying "this is our fault for not explaining this better". There is more than one source of daily missions and more than one kind (not-shared lockout/timer).

1. The "regular" missions.
2. The "Superior" missions (some of these can be done solo)
3. There are "chips" to hand in from the killing of regular monsters in Shadowlands.
4. There are "chips" to hand in from the killing of instance monsters in Shadowlands.
5. There are PvP missions (ie: Battlestations)

These options will end up at a total of tokens + around 25%(+side bonus) of a level (At the lowest rate of reward between 215 and 220) and represent a very significant increase to what could be gained by soloing in the past. I don't imagine you can fit ALL of these into 30 minutes...but completing two or even three of these options are a definite possibility. It is also important to say that this is the very first implementation of these missions at this point and the options will only grow over time. This will never replace the rate of XP/SK you can gain in a hardcore team grinding Inferno Hard missions...but it certainly is much closer than anyone playing casually was able to achieve before. Again...any misunderstandings here are on us.

[drops]

This changes everything. 15-20% of a level is indeed significant.

...of a level (At the lowest rate of reward between 215 and 220)...

Does that mean the reward for a 200-210 or so is greater than 5% of a level per mission?

[Wrangeline]

Let me start by saying "this is our fault for not explaining this better". There is more than one source of daily missions and more than one kind (not-shared lockout/timer).

1. The "regular" missions.
2. The "Superior" missions (some of these can be done solo)
3. There are "chips" to hand in from the killing of regular monsters in Shadowlands.
4. There are "chips" to hand in from the killing of instance monsters in Shadowlands.
5. There are PvP missions (ie: Battlestations)

These options will end up at a total of tokens + around 25%(+side bonus) of a level (At the lowest rate of reward between 215 and 220) and represent a very significant increase to what could be gained by soloing in the past. I don't imagine you can fit ALL of these into 30 minutes...but completing two or even three of these options are a definite possibility. It is also important to say that this is the very first implementation of these missions at this point and the options will only grow over time. This will never replace the rate of XP/SK you can gain in a hardcore team grinding Inferno Hard missions...but it certainly is much closer than anyone playing casually was able to achieve before. Again...any misunderstandings here are on us.

Errr whaaat?

I have been to test from time to time to try out the daily missions and such and I didn't know about 90% of what you just mentioned

I didn't know about the chips or the BS-missions or that there are "normal" and "superior" missions and such.

It sounds awesome.

[Lheann]

Let me start by saying "this is our fault for not explaining this better". There is more than one source of daily missions and more than one kind (not-shared lockout/timer).

1. The "regular" missions.
2. The "Superior" missions (some of these can be done solo)
3. There are "chips" to hand in from the killing of regular monsters in Shadowlands.
4. There are "chips" to hand in from the killing of instance monsters in Shadowlands.
5. There are PvP missions (ie: Battlestations)

1. Sounds good and appears to be what we heard about.
2. Um more info please. If these will require a team then how much play time does it actually take to achieve for the non-soloable ones. Counting them as something that is doable every day and requiring teaming may make them a once per week thing or less. I think this is swiss cheese at best.
3. Oh nice sounding will wait to see it before I comment more.
4. Same as 3.
5. Hahaha. Unless all the PVP missions are in the 150-174 and 211-220 range battle stations this is just funny. Yeah wow, just funny. Can we say you just poured gas on the "Red vs Blue" arguement for battle stations?

[Mikenche]

2. Um more info please. If these will require a team then how much play time does it actually take to achieve for the non-soloable ones. Counting them as something that is doable every day and requiring teaming may make them a once per week thing or less. I think this is swiss cheese at best.

If some of them can be done solo, I'd guess the rest can be done with one or two friends. I think that's reasonable. It's not like they're going to be full raids, requiring tank and heals and whatnot (I hope).

[cbus97]

I don't imagine you can fit ALL of these into 30 minutes...but completing two or even three of these options are a definite possibility.

Thanks for posting -- this is more encouraging.

One more thing, is it possible to trade the token rewards for more SK/XP, if we already have 2500 tokens?

[Mastablasta]

2. Um more info please. If these will require a team then how much play time does it actually take to achieve for the non-soloable ones. Counting them as something that is doable every day and requiring teaming may make them a once per week thing or less. I think this is swiss cheese at best.

Probably something that you can do with one or two friends. How hard can it be? And are you really playing in an environment where you can't find even 1 other person to play with?

5. Hahaha. Unless all the PVP missions are in the 150-174 and 211-220 range battle stations this is just funny. Yeah wow, just funny. Can we say you just poured gas on the "Red vs Blue" arguement for battle stations?

Since they're related to your character when you pull them, why would it matter that there are some in other than those ranges? If you know that there's no BS running at lvl 180, then why would you pull a pvp mission? Could you expand upon why you want to cry about the inclusion of voluntairily accepted pvp missions?

[Kaitlain]

Since you're addressing solo missions, any chance of poking the ancient code of randomly generated RK missions with a long stick and seeing what happens, please?

Specifically:

200+ missions not generating anything but humans / mechdogs [level cap on certain mob types? I once researched this heavily, I'll see if I can find the excel sheet of what the highest mob levels were possible]

200+ missions having exponentially higher HP mobs, but still 9 token reward [i.e. re-do mission reward 201-220, even 18 @ 220 for completion would be nice]

Chars 201+ precluding chars under 200 from gaining mission rewards in RK missions [bug? doesn't seem to be a problem for Inf missions ]

200+ missions not having scaled reward tables [i.e. chest / container loot is "a bit iffy", and sometimes produces only maxed 200 items, sometimes higher QL clusters / imps etc.]

200+ mobs not giving SK. [Ok, fine, no SL xp, but at least it could give LE research XP]

200+ Boss loot tables which are terrible - same goes for SL bosses, who use RK loot tables since forever.

200+ humanoid mobs don't have the loot tables of the ones @ Mercs, but simply sub-200 loot tables that cease to scale [i.e. 200 capped RK loot]



This doesn't seem too problematic, and would instantly give a lot more "solo" content: simply tweaking the tables to include mobs >level 200 would be an instant bandaid. I can guess the reasons for it (aka, when written, 200 was the highest level cap possible? What about dyna bosses that can go higher?) but extending tables so that you could get a level 250 aquuan or whatever would be easy.


p.s. This is coming from someone who has got about 700 tokens past level 201 just from running solo RK missions. Some of us like the "old school" feel of RK missions / mobs!

p.p.s. Finding ancient uber rare phatz is always cool - not just gunships, but things like: These

[cbus97]

Since you're addressing solo missions, any chance of poking the ancient code of randomly generated RK missions with a long stick and seeing what happens, please?

As long as it doesn't break Clicksaver (or offers a suitable "official" replacement).

[Lheann]

Probably something that you can do with one or two friends. How hard can it be? And are you really playing in an environment where you can't find even 1 other person to play with?

Well until it is clarified the position of 1 or 2 friends helping is at best a guess. I want clarification on these. Just because some of the them can be done solo does not in anyway mean that the team required ones are 2 person team doable for all 2 person teams.

Since they're related to your character when you pull them, why would it matter that there are some in other than those ranges? If you know that there's no BS running at lvl 180, then why would you pull a pvp mission? Could you expand upon why you want to cry about the inclusion of voluntairily accepted pvp missions?

Oh I am not crying. I just find it absolutely funny that there are daily missions (20%) of the avialable choices that require a Battle Station to run. In essence they have created missions for two specific battle station ranges. So a player at 139 has 4 missions options for Daily Missions as that Battle Station never runs while the player at 160 has 5 options. Remember this is listed as a category of mission and not a specific mission. It is just funny as we have so many people asking for Red vs Blue BS to make it run more. Now you add this category mission and basicily give those people one more reason why Red v Blue would be a good idea.

[Loucretia]

Thanks for the update Means this does sound a lot better.


As a side note, perhaps the PvP missions might actually encourage some of the BS to run. I would think this would be at least part of the reason for including them. Whether that will work out we will have to wait and see.

[Infinitynova]

Omg Means and all of you developpers, stop working so hard and go and enjoy your lives. From what I'm feeling from all of the friday with means posts it seems to be hell for you physical bodies and mental well being to work like you do. And for what? This is already an amazing game and if people whine and always want more and more content, progress and results, they should revaluate their way of looking at life also...

Seriously great job, but the more I read about what you all have to go through in your day to day activities, the more it makes me want to quit so you can actually start being happy and enjoying your lives instead of being sick and stressed out all the time because of us.

[Tazalanche]

Can we say you just poured gas on the "Red vs Blue" arguement for battle stations?

That still needs to be done in order to get the other battlestations going, plus get the 150-174 & 210+ going more often. While they're at it, they should make at least 2 more battlestation maps & have each of the maps come up randomly.

[Alternity]

lolwut? No. Questsystems like in world of failures and age of bonan is what killed their teaming.

No, we want more "play when you feel like it" content like alien raids, missions and daily quick missions, instead of horrible quest chains where everyone and their grandmother is on a different step, so you can't team up for a reasonable benefit. If you want that kind of pve crap, go play a single-player-online game like the two I mentioned earlier.

Let's not forget some proper raidzones or large scale bosses, the instancing of Pande was needed because the raid itself got saturated by the way bots worked.

I think people, hell I hope people have more confidence in their own abilities to preform at raids now.
However instancing removed one of the best aspects of AO raiding, the DD wars.
They can easily be reinstated for new raidzones tho, make a Pande type zone and upon reaching the final boss say only team 1 of your RI is able to enter the boss instance.
To ****e it up the remaining raidforce can be given objectives that need to be done to keep team 1 alive.

Open it up for multiple RIs so that we have situations where we can have 2-4 KTs figthing the boss, and let the remaining force have to pull together to keep the KTs alive.
The RI that wins gains access to the boss instance, while the others get warped out.

My 50 cent on that



Viz

[SoapTarder]

...200+ Boss loot tables which are terrible - same goes for SL bosses, who use RK loot tables since forever....

every time I see kin of tarasque on a boss I cry a little inside when i see three of them on one boss I puke in my mouth.

[Traderjill]

Let me start by saying "this is our fault for not explaining this better". There is more than one source of daily missions and more than one kind (not-shared lockout/timer).

1. The "regular" missions.
2. The "Superior" missions (some of these can be done solo)
3. There are "chips" to hand in from the killing of regular monsters in Shadowlands.
4. There are "chips" to hand in from the killing of instance monsters in Shadowlands.
5. There are PvP missions (ie: Battlestations)

Not to be on a soap box.. but this gets back to what a couple of us have said in this thread about not knowing what to test, on test... but moving on

With this bit of knowledge, I went back to test and farmed a DOJA chip off of an inferno mob...

DOJA chip:
- It took me about 20 min to farm the chip on my 220 doc.. but I admit she's not exactly in a doc dmg setup on Test.
- I received 44,996sk (capped level 10 research) TWICE
- I received 18 tokens

I did a daily quest:
- It took me about 5 minutes
- I received 44,996 sk (capped level 10 research)
- I received 18 tokens

Superior/Elite Quests (what I got as a 220):
- Not quickie quests at all as they require you to do 'stuff' in either APF, DB1/2 or tag all of the dread bosses for the opposite side. There is one that seems like it could be fairly quick and that's the prisoners quest which is tied in with the existing Warden quests. (Maybe the Dread Boss thing could be fast as well but what is the likelihood of finding them all up?)
- Did Prisoners quest to kill Dangerous Prisoner, took about 10-12min (including travel time)
- Recieved 44,996sk (capped level 10 research)
- Received 18 tokens
- Did this in a team just to be social (it is soloable IMO). All 3 of us rolled the same prisoner and all got mish update.
- Side comment: Gives some additional incentive for people to come help out with APF or DB runs (sk+tokens when the daily mission is completed).

Battlestation Quests:
- Still being tested, we did one today but I think an adjustment may have to be made to reward so won't bother commenting.
- Seems to have the potential to get BS jumped off at various levels (just my opinion)


So in 35-40 min I did 3 daily missions and got 4 capped hits to my level 10 research (~180k sk) and 54 tokens.. no complaints here on the 220 rewards. It'll at least alleviate the need for me to randomly do inferno missions on 220 chars and I'll be able to get tokens in a less mind-numbing and swift manner. Thumbs up for that!

It seems like the rewards are more than adequate, to me. Then again, comparing leveling today to leveling 5-6 years ago and I wasn't really all that annoyed with it in the first place.

[Reacon]

A bit off topic, but when will there ever be transfers from RK2 to RK1? I have quite a few high levels there, but RK2 is basically dead.

[Saetos]

... Are you guys ever planning on looking over PVP mechanics at low levels? Lotta interesting issues I'd like to talk to y'all about.

Still looking for a word on this.

[Isamin]

Thanks for posting -- this is more encouraging.

One more thing, is it possible to trade the token rewards for more SK/XP, if we already have 2500 tokens?

Or if we have no use for tokens (you know...Neutrals...you can say it...)