10k Missions - Kill Point System

[Naming Policy Violation]

Hi

I spoke to few hunters about why they don't bother with Monria much and here is a reason owners could do something about.

Convert kill system into point system. Let me explain.

On calypso we have a lot of kill 10 000 missions converted to point system, which allows higher level hunters to finish them quicker, by killing highest level mobs. They just don't bother killing 10 000 lvl6 mobs with rather low reward. Let me use Cultist as example.

Level 6 cultist - 6 points
Level 8 cultist - 8 points
Level 34 cultist - 34 points

Kill 10 000 mission requires 60 000 points. So killing lowest level cultist, you still need 10 000 kills, but killing highest possible level, you only need ~2000, which makes it more interesting for high level hunters. Nobody would bother killing 10 000 lvl34 cultist for the reward that is a lot less than killing similar other mobs.

If you check entropedia, you see the system used for Kerberos and many other mobs(I finished 60 000 points in 3-4 days due to killing high levels), same could apply on Monria. Since Monria has 2x 10 000 kills on each mobs, its even worse.

Current system can be easily converted by MA to new. I'm 5000/10000 kills on Yog, so new system I would be 30 000/60 000 points.

If point system would be used, I'm sure it would bring more traffic on the moon, since it would be 1 day job for a high level hunter to finish whatever he wants to finish here and reward would be in line with hunting similar difficulty other mobs.

Regards,

NPV

 

[sluggo]

Good ideas but typically once a mission / reward pair is set up, MA really dislikes changing them. It causes a lot of grief, and is not just an easy change variable A to variable B. Look at what happened when they tried that at Cyrene, several missions faulted out, rendering the game almost unplayable and many people ended up abandoning missions that were already started, the numbering got wonky etc. From what I have heard from others, the rewards for some of the missions is rather small compared to the task at hand as well. Arkadia also has plenty of the killpoint missions as well, Ostelok comes to mind so, yes this is a very popular method of Iron Style mission.

Now that we are talking about this kind of thing, isn't there a VU due to come around fairly soon now? I wonder what Monria has in store for us as updates? Granted I know they won't spill all their secrets but maybe a hint here and there?

sluggo

 

[DarkMoonEnigma]

Now that we are talking about this kind of thing, isn't there a VU due to come around fairly soon now? I wonder what Monria has in store for us as updates? Granted I know they won't spill all their secrets but maybe a hint here and there?

sluggo

We already spilled the beans about the unique pet.

Also, Ant will mostly likely need to respond to this suggestion.

 

[Norian]

Bumping this - why aren't missions point based? This should of been done initially IMO. Sure, it may take some work to convert, but make it happen. People/big hunters won't come to Monria to do these missions for this reason - we don't want to hunt mobs less than 1000 hp.

A comment from the developers would be great, thanks in advance.

 

[DarkMoonEnigma]

I'll direct Ant's attention to your post and let him respond.

 

[Eugenio Anhithe Wilde]

Bumping this - why aren't missions point based? This should of been done initially IMO. Sure, it may take some work to convert, but make it happen. People/big hunters won't come to Monria to do these missions for this reason - we don't want to hunt mobs less than 1000 hp.

A comment from the developers would be great, thanks in advance.

Hey Norian, I'm not sure why they weren't initially implemented as points based but Monria has been around a while and I seem to recall the initial hunting missions were all kill based. I agree though that a points based system would be better and it's been on my to do list since NPV suggested it.

There's lots of things I want to improve on Monria and the missions are one area I want to put some focus into once I've finished the current foundation work we are doing as I feel we can do a lot more in this area not just for big hunters but all hunters and other professions. Part of this work is on graphical optimization, hunting spawns and mobs which I've decided to make sure I get done before I work on the missions.

We have a lot of friends who stop by regularly to Monria and my intention is to give them more content beyond the events and existing missions, it's just taking me time to get things done in the way that I want them.

Ant

 

[Norian]

Hey Norian, I'm not sure why they weren't initially implemented as points based but Monria has been around a while and I seem to recall the initial hunting missions were all kill based. I agree though that a points based system would be better and it's been on my to do list since NPV suggested it.

There's lots of things I want to improve on Monria and the missions are one area I want to put some focus into once I've finished the current foundation work we are doing as I feel we can do a lot more in this area not just for big hunters but all hunters and other professions. Part of this work is on graphical optimization, hunting spawns and mobs which I've decided to make sure I get done before I work on the missions.

We have a lot of friends who stop by regularly to Monria and my intention is to give them more content beyond the events and existing missions, it's just taking me time to get things done in the way that I want them.

Ant

Thanks much for the reply.
I understand workload and priorities for development in regards to your foundation work.
Converting mission from kills to points seems like an easy one to squeeze in though...
I look forward to your updates in the future.
Thanks,
Norian Norian Xx

 

[SachemUrsa]

Point based missions are nice if all you are after is the mission reward.

Also a lot of missions on other planets use the kill based count, which is fine by me as I am more interested in gaining skills from doing things rather than just getting mission rewards.

Heck, I have lots of missions on plants I have not turned in, because I am still gaining skills at a good rate from doing things. When my rate of skill gain drops, then I will start turning in missions.

Let me put it this way, it is all about your style of play, and not everyone is the same.

If I was in development for this game, I would use Point based missions for higher level missions, and kill count for lower level missions, which I think would be a good compromise for varies play styles.

 

[SachemUrsa]

Another point to consider is that the hunting missions on Monria are repeatable, where as most hunting missions on other planets are not.

Also the missions on Monria have a decent reward. If they were point based, the reward would not be inline with the effort to complete, and the reward would have to be lowered to maintain game balance.

As stated "If point system would be used, ... it would be 1 day job for a high level hunter to finish whatever he wants to finish.

The current reward is way to high for 1 days worth of effort.

 

[DarkMoonEnigma]

Interesting discussion ... going to follow this.

You're up Ant.

 

[Netvalar]

I like the point system idea, however lets play devils advocate and look at those missions using points. For game balance we have missions where stage 5 = 12,000 points some where stage 5 = 30,000 I see 1 where stage 5 = 72,000 points. For that to be added to Monria we would be looking at each creature having their own set of point rank set-up. Not a bad thing and as I said I like the idea.

However what is the coding for these missions set up as currently? I don't know but if I initially set up the code I would have 1 set of code for the generic mission ranks and then each MOB mission would refer to that code set as reference. If that were the case then the recoding is a bit more work then a simple transfer from kill ranks to point ranks once you make a separate point system for each Monria MOB.

Now lets say it is a simple process (once you calculate out proper points for each MOB) you can keep the same rewards by making the points higher to achieve. So doing that doesn't mean reducing rewards at all (though it may be worth reducing rewards so as not to have the highest point total in game???????)

 

[Eugenio Anhithe Wilde]

There's some very good points here, no pun intended

One of the reasons I haven't looked at the missions yet is that I wanted to work on the mobs first, for example if we were to change to a points based system before the Yog and Shoggoth changes, the mission would need re balancing afterwards because some mobs got bigger with a wider spread between the maturities from top to bottom. I'm trying to build in a more natural progression from new player to experienced player. I'm thinking of this like a growth ladder I guess. First stage is the mobs, maturities, spawns and locations. This has been a lot of my focus and once we're complete with this I want to work on the missions on top of this.

Another reason is that once we change to a points based system it would be re balanced and that could change the reward, it could work out better if you hunt the higher level mobs and worse for those hunting the lower levels. So even though I think points based missions are important, it might be a case where we end up adding missions rather than alter the ones we have.

I've been doing a lot of work on the missions and understanding what is possible. As to when I can get stuff done this is again down to resource availability and scheduling, there are different skills required for lots of the work from level design, programming, graphical, animation, sound etc so sometimes I need to pivot and implement things in a slightly different order due to scheduling restraints. There's also a logical order I want to implement things in. I hope this is better for us in the long term.

I'm very open to ideas here so feel free to give suggestions and mention mission formats you like. Without going into too much detail my vision with the missions has broadly two pieces to it. One is the storyline that introduces players to our back story and elements of the 'Cthulhu mythos'. The other is missions that help players progress along the 'growth ladder' that I mentioned earlier, to encourage players to hunt at their level and to be challenged to step up a level. So for example skill missions that help a shoggoth hunter progress to become a yog hunter. It's important for me to get the mobs, spawns etc the way I want them before I work on this plan.

I am always reluctant to share too much as there is a huge amount of planning, negotiation, money and time before anything becomes a reality so nothing is ever guaranteed but this perhaps gives you an idea of my thinking.

 

[SachemUrsa]

There's some very good points here, no pun intended

Another reason is that once we change to a points based system it would be re balanced and that could change the reward, it could work out better if you hunt the higher level mobs and worse for those hunting the lower levels. So even though I think points based missions are important, it might be a case where we end up adding missions rather than alter the ones we have.

I like what you said here. As a swunter I hunt lower level mobs I can sweat solo, so yes a point based mission would hurt my play style.

The best way to accommodate all players and play styles would be to add missions instead of changing the ones we have.

 

[Zarnia Foxtrot]

Hi Ant and SachemUrsa. I know you dont want to let the cat out of the bag Ant about future changes on Monria..it would take the fun out of the experience to do that. I do know that for sweaters on Monria, the hp of the yogs has been a problem since loot 2.0 for newer players who at times need to sweat solo. It has been mentioned that they can only do lvl 2 scrubs and that with another player or two. So, I don't know if you were planning to lower the hp of the scrubs or scrapers so they can be sweated more easily or not but I thought I would mention it so you could consider it.

 

[SachemUrsa]

Hi Zarnia

I understand your point, when I was newer I had a hard time soloing Lv2 Yogs, I am Lv11 evader now and can solo them without a problem.

Still having trouble soloing high Lv Shoggs however, which have more HP and sweat than they used too I think.

Anyway, point is, there is overlap in difficulty solo sweating Shoggs and Yogs, which is fine with me, I don't see a problem with the current HP of Lv 2 Yogs.

But that is the view of a solo sweater with decent evade, I don't group sweat ever, so I can't comment on what it is like from the view of someone who group sweats a lot, and is only forced to solo sweat from time to time.

 

[Eugenio Anhithe Wilde]

Hey Princess and SachemUrsa,

The Shoggoth and Yogs have been re balanced, for example some Shoggoths are a bit tougher. The thinking behind it was that I felt there wasn't enough spread between the mob maturities (some were just to similar to feel different hunting). We've effectively widened the HP and stats between the mobs with an overlap between the mob types. What I'm hoping to achieve is that a new player would start out on low level shogs and move up the levels. By the time they are able to hunt the higher level mobs they are ready to hunt the lower level Yogs and so on.

So what I want is for it to be a bit simpler for a newer player because if they die too much they should drop down a level. Also the low level drops of weapons gives a sense of achievement and to encourage using more appropriate weapons and discourage overkill (buying a big gun in the shop and insta-killing shoggoths for example).

I would also like to see players teaming up to take on the higher level mobs, like the bigger shogs for example.

On the sweating side, I would like to encourage the kind of sweating that SchemaUrsa uses, swunting at an appropriate level because hunting at your level is important especially for new players as the game can get expensive quick and there's also a lot to learn. Swunting at the very least can subsidize hunting and at a level like shoggoth this can be very cheap.

I'm not quite finished with all this but this is the thinking behind it. I wouldn't rule out having a lower HP Yog but we also need to make sure there is a reason to hunt shoggoths and a bit of a challenge to step up to Yogs so players are appropriately skilled etc with a feeling of achievement when they do.

 

[SachemUrsa]

Eugenio Anhithe Wilde,

I enjoyed your post, and to me it seems you balanced the mobs exactly as you wanted.

By the time I could sweat Mid level Shoggoths without healing, I could also sweat the lowest level Yogs. At the same time, while I could hunt the named Shoggoths solo, a team would be helpful, as they are still a challenge.

Shoggoths low damage and rapid attack speed also makes them excellent for raising evade skills

 

[Zarnia Foxtrot]

Good points. To go with the flow here, would it work to have a Shoggath sweating area with turret somewhere outside and separate from the DSEC area so they can be turreted if the newer players are low on ammo?. In curiosity, it went to sweat the shogs in the shog pit over the hill from the DSEC..I'm at at lvl 15 sweat gatherer currently. They did sweat out very quickly and I had no problem with taking them to the turret. For a newer player, they may not make it back going up and down the hill back to the DSEC turret depending on their skill level. Shoggath are low level at the shog pit..all lvl 2 but I can remember when they would kick my backend under 2 attacks when I first got started. So, maybe just a turret somewhere in main crater that isn't at the DSEC and near a group of shoggath would work too.

 

[Norian]

Any update on repeatable converting to points based? Ark does it pretty well...

Lots of PEDs ready to shoot...

 

[DarkMoonEnigma]

I'll direct Ant's attention to your post ... he's eyeball-deep in development for our next release, but I'm sure he will respond to your post the first chance he gets.