City-Merc Mission NPCs

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13-07-15, 14:37
Morekai

City-Merc Mission NPCs

Yes, I'm sure most won't give a damn about this problem, but I put it here anyway. I am currently doing RES-missions with my CM-toon - or rather I am trying to. In fact i am facing several problems.

1. sometimes a mission requires you to go to a recruitment officer which simply does not exist. Aborting and re-acquiring the mission helps here, but still it is annoying.

2. Much more annoying by far, however, is the fact that someone seems to have had the utterly brilliant idea (warning, Irony crossing) of putting half the recruitment officers not in the CM HQ where you usually do your missions, but in the bloody trading districts of the upper level of military Base. Are you f***in serious? Are you going to take half the human ressource managers from the other factions and put them somewhere in Outzone for sake of equality? Or in the unused jobcenter in Plaza 2?
Result would be much the same: Rendering RES and CST-missions not just boring, but outright unattractive.
Good job.

I really hope that you are going to relocate those recruitment officers to where they are supposed to be for missionrunning: the CM HQ.
13-07-15, 15:06
Drachenpaladin

I'm almost certain this was done for exactly that purpose you stated. To make those missions a PITA so people stop powerlevelining on them.
Either that or pure sadism. Prollyboth.
13-07-15, 17:54
Morekai

Quote:

Originally Posted by Drachenpaladin

I'm almost certain this was done for exactly that purpose you stated. To make those missions a PITA so people stop powerlevelining on them.
Either that or pure sadism. Prollyboth.

Question then is, why only CM? There's only a handful of players on that faction - and most likely none of them is a trader, so this makes no sense. If they wanted it to be a PITA they would have - as I suggested - moved the HR-Managers from the other factions to another backwater place.
16-07-15, 01:08
Trivaldi

I did recently (in the last Titan patch) move some of the Recruitment officers closer to the zone line in MB1 to ease this slightly. However I do feel your pain that this doesn't quite cut the mustard compared to other factions. Drachenpaladin's point is reasonable valid though, in an ideal world it would be a choice of time spent running lump-sum XP missions versus exp from grinding mobs on reasonably equal footing.

Do you see any pattern in the missions where you're asked to visit an none existent RO? Is the NPC you're tasked with speaking too definitely not present?
16-07-15, 15:51
Morekai

as the mission doesn't specify a name of the contact I can't really say. It does happen only rarely though. Most of the time I am sent to the NPCs in the trading districts which sometimes just take ages to spawn..

And you said you moved them closer to the zone line? excuse me, but that is hard to believe as the trading districts are pretty much the furthest away from the zone line as you can get in MB Level 1. You literally need to run all the way in almost to the GR-room, then turn left or right, climb down those bloody ladders and wait for the NPC to spawn.

Why on earth didn't you keep those mission NPCs inside the bloody CM HQ? For literally EVERY other faction the mission relevant NPCs are inside the HQ - even though in case of say PP it still is a lot of running... but there are not four syncs between picking up the mission and completing it. CM HQ is big enough to account for a lot of running - particularly with all those doors. Positioning them in MB 1 is just plain unnecessary and renders the missions unattractive.
There is a simple reason, why players with CM FSM-access are so damn hard to find.. simply because people don't want to be bored to death and beyond by such a ludicrous amount of unnecessary running and syncs. Hence they don't get their faction standing up.
At this rate we could just as well remove the entire mission system. Particularly if you are planning on doing the same pile of nonsense with the other factions..
21-07-15, 00:33
Trivaldi

Quote:

Originally Posted by Morekai

as the mission doesn't specify a name of the contact I can't really say. It does happen only rarely though. Most of the time I am sent to the NPCs in the trading districts which sometimes just take ages to spawn..

Thanks, I'll see if we can take a look.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Morekai

And you said you moved them closer to the zone line? excuse me, but that is hard to believe as the trading districts are pretty much the furthest away from the zone line as you can get in MB Level 1. You literally need to run all the way in almost to the GR-room, then turn left or right, climb down those bloody ladders and wait for the NPC to spawn.

I may be thinking of different City Mercs NPC. I certainly moved some CM NPCs in a recent patch, so they're not quite so far away. Still a bit of a hike though.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Morekai

Why on earth didn't you keep those mission NPCs inside the bloody CM HQ? For literally EVERY other faction the mission relevant NPCs are inside the HQ - even though in case of say PP it still is a lot of running... but there are not four syncs between picking up the mission and completing it. CM HQ is big enough to account for a lot of running - particularly with all those doors. Positioning them in MB 1 is just plain unnecessary and renders the missions unattractive.

There is a simple reason, why players with CM FSM-access are so damn hard to find.. simply because people don't want to be bored to death and beyond by such a ludicrous amount of unnecessary running and syncs. Hence they don't get their faction standing up.
At this rate we could just as well remove the entire mission system. Particularly if you are planning on doing the same pile of nonsense with the other factions..

Thanks for the feedback, maybe we can adjust these further in a future patch. Missions with XP rewards should have a similar time investment to grinding mobs to cater for both play styles but the time invested should be reasonable.
22-07-15, 23:12
Morekai

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trivaldi

[...]
Thanks for the feedback, maybe we can adjust these further in a future patch. Missions with XP rewards should have a similar time investment to grinding mobs to cater for both play styles but the time invested should be reasonable.

You're welcome. But when calculating the amount of annoyance for missions you should also take into consideration the scale of rewards respectively.

Let me give you an example:

A regular CST or RES mission on TL 150 is pretty much as tough as it gets with missions. Completing one such mission takes between two and five minutes depending on luck with construction or research. The reward for doing so is 1600 XP and somewhere between 15 and 30k credits. BUT you also need to take into consideration that those missions also consume ludicrous amounts of lube, which negates roughly 50-70% of the reward - again depending on luck with constructing or researching. (also keep in mind that through failed construction and research attempts you actually LOSE xp!)

If I now compare this to grinding mobs in the high-level range merely for XP I suggest to go by the mobs in regant as they are high level and are not hunted for other reasons such as rareparts. Killing one of those with a weapon of appropriate TL takes somewhere between 30 seconds and two minutes depending on the level of the mob. still you do get significantly more XP for your two main attributes - somewhere in the 10-20k range if my memory serves. and you still get several thousand credits on top of that.

Now let us compare the numbers:
Missions: 5x1600 XP = 8000XP / 15k cr (CST) - lube = say 6000 cr / Time: 2-5 minutes
Mob-grinding: 10-20k XP / roughly 3000 cr per mob / Time: 0,5 - 2 minutes.

Now let us look at the XP and credit ratio based on the worst case each for an equal period of time - in this instance: 10 minutes.
in the worst case scenario you get two missions done, whereas a grinder can kill five mobs.
In numbers this means:
Missions: 2x 8000 xp = 16000 xp / 2x 6000 cr = 12000 cr
Grinding: 5x 10-20k xp = 50-100k xp / 5x 3000 cr = 15000 cr

As you can see the mere grinding is more efficient than doing missions. And you are still thinking about making missions more time-consuming to allegedly make it equal to grinding? Excuse me, but that joke is going over my head. if anything it is the missions that need to be boosted. Right now they are just plain boring and once people have FSM access they more often than not don't run missions any more as there are much more convenient ways to earn money. For example grinding mobs and selling some of the looted junk.
23-07-15, 08:12
Dasore

damn what a wall of text, but as i read through it i also thought, what a waste of time. But still i think its worth to write some things about what you are complaining:

1. you fail every 4-6 cube, use an outpost if you want to research high level stuff

2. 1 cube consumes 85 lube, so even if you fail every 4th you only need 340 for 1 mission. Bought by a barter that are 5531 nc. 30k-5531 isnt enough profit for 4-5 minutes work?

3. you dont have to fight for you life to get those xp and money. Also any level of player can run missions, but not grind a grim chaser.

4. 1,6k xp on stats you usually dont any xp on when you are grinding.

5. you get the lost xp for failing a process back when you succed the next one

6. you get sl up to 100

7. you will barely get killed running missions or standing at an outpost for researching

8. you dont have to pay for repairs or implanting when dying

The xp and money ratio compared grinding or doing missions is pretty good atm in my opinion. Grinding has to give more xp/money cause of the reasons above. The sl should get a bit of a rework so you get at least 1 point per mission.

Talking about none is running those missions after fsm is the biggest and best joke i have heard in 2015. You can start those missions only if you already have fsm access (90 symp), probably the most none grinding money is made of tl 150 cubes atm cause everyone is running them to get around 1 mill profit in 30 mins when bought of some trader.
23-07-15, 14:34
Morekai

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dasore

damn what a wall of text, but as i read through it i also thought, what a waste of time. But still i think its worth to write some things about what you are complaining:

1. you fail every 4-6 cube, use an outpost if you want to research high level stuff

IF I could use outposts without getting shot and IF those outposts happen to be open for use that might be an option. Unfortunately more often than not this is not the case, because most clans who claim outposts lock them down or because mobs and PVPers are looking for easy trader kills.

Quote:

2. 1 cube consumes 85 lube, so even if you fail every 4th you only need 340 for 1 mission. Bought by a barter that are 5531 nc. 30k-5531 isnt enough profit for 4-5 minutes work?

You do have a point there, but then you don't need another player for grinding either, right? Which is why I am calculating this stuff without barter for sake of comparison.

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3. you dont have to fight for you life to get those xp and money. Also any level of player can run missions, but not grind a grim chaser.

I agree to the latter part of your sentence, but the first part of it is wrong as far as using outposts is concerned. See #1.

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4. 1,6k xp on stats you usually dont any xp on when you are grinding.

3x 1,6k - yes. Still considerably less than what is gained from grinding overall.

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5. you get the lost xp for failing a process back when you succed the next one

From success you get more xp than what you lost, but that is it. you don't get the lost xp back in addition to the xp gained from success.

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6. you get sl up to 100

And the purpose of that being? That it is harder to hack my belt that contains a single datacube? What an advantage...

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7. you will barely get killed running missions or standing at an outpost for researching

Wrong. There is good reason, why I no longer use outposts for trading jobs.

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8. you dont have to pay for repairs or implanting when dying

Erm...WHAT? If i get shot by some trigger-happy PvPer I positively do have costs for repairs and implanting - just as everyone else does.

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The xp and money ratio compared grinding or doing missions is pretty good atm in my opinion. Grinding has to give more xp/money cause of the reasons above. The sl should get a bit of a rework so you get at least 1 point per mission.

I am not saying that missions should award every bit as much money and xp as grinding. my point is that misssions should not be made even less attractive than they are already.

Quote:

Talking about none is running those missions after fsm is the biggest and best joke i have heard in 2015. You can start those missions only if you already have fsm access (90 symp), probably the most none grinding money is made of tl 150 cubes atm cause everyone is running them to get around 1 mill profit in 30 mins when bought of some trader.

I am a trader myself, thank you. I am well aware of that. However, I said nothing about merely turning in missions prepared by someone else, right? I was referring to doing all of the mission yourself - including the time- and ressource-consuming part of researching in the first place.