It's about time to talk about the mission/ClickSaver problem...

[Sean-Roach]

First of all, I don't use ClickSaver, or AOMD, but I'm tempted to load it.

I'd like to see two or three things.

1. An online consolidated auction. Yes this could be at ICC HQ, but I'd put it in three rather politically aligned towns instead. Something with a browse feature, and a minimum bid feature.

2. OR a web-based auction system instead. Basically 'port' ebay right into the AO website. A single command in-game to /sell (insert item by dropping it on the talk-bar) 24 (hours), with purchases made on the web-page getting directed to the players bank. After all, we can already look at (some of) our characters information on the site. We can "log into" the auction sub-site with our player information, and character selection, to shop.

This would work pretty well, I think, as with AO, you CAN alt-tab to other programs, (such as web sites.)

3. An in-game mail system, possibly with postage fees, possibly with postage fees that increase if the mail has to cross political boundries.

P.S. on bullet 2, I mean using AO credits to buy things, NOT RL currency, (in case someone thinks otherwise.)

[mulps1]

i think missions should not give items as a reward but more cash and xp ..then beef up the chest loot and mob loot and there you have it lots of items for shops .......

but you would also need a far better trade set up to make it work as currently it is well....... C***

[Darkbane]

Yep, that would be one solution indeed. This entire issue needs to be revisited by FC.

[mulps1]

hmm hang on a minute...

i'm a fixer ..forget i said that

[___________Villianic]

I'm not gonna do a mission for anything that doesn't interest me, unless it's something that I know I could sell well.

I'll continuously sort thru the missions until I find something I can actually use. Clicksaver does the exact same thing, except a bit faster & doesn't waste my in game time as much.

(especially when i have a problem with my mouse being extremely slow in game (only) no matter what setting its at.)

[xyberviri]

after typeing and eraseing a whole bunch of things, i decided to post just my thoughts on this issue:


The current Mission System Sucks.

-Never get what i want out of it
-Never find anything of use in missions.
-Mission System Sucks

thats all i have to say about that.

[Snuble]

I do use CS. Not using the Buy Agent as I would miss out on a lot of stuff then.

Now, if I could select whatever item I wanted as reward, I would still have to do the mission And I really hope thats what supposed to happen? Normaly it takes 1-2 hours to complete a mission. I would guess thats a nice tradeoff for the item? Or should I have to play 3 days for a lvl 118 Biomech sleeve?

Single player missions have two difficulties:
1) The 3 MOB main room.
2) Not falling asleep when killing your way to mission reward.


Team mission mission are about the same but actually have 4 difficulties
1) The 3 MOB main room.
2) Not falling asleep looking for the Boss room
3) Convincing you team mates to actually kill the Boss (normally all team breaks up now, /o Need help with Boss)
4) Neutralice the Boss room

Removing part 2 from both would be a nice step towards better gameplay. Make the missions smaller! It would in fact keep me from level so fast! At the moment (lvl 105) I level from 2 50% solo missions... It would also remove point 3 from team missions.

Introduce point 4 in solo missions. I would love to hear why thats not possible. It would make the solo missions more interesting. Well, if we could get rid of that point 2...

Add the boss, remove the Item reward from the mission terminals (or change them to Ice cream, chocolate surprises and coffee cups), drop those monster missions, or at least make them as rare as trash king spawns. Add more chests (come on they are fun and add that Boss to solo missions too! Now you only have to make sure things spawn in those chests and on the boss.

[secondkenlon]

. . .will never be implemented, and in fact, probably *couldn't* be, at this point.


We need a semi-automated "stock exchange" of sorts for items. [2]

It should be easily accesible from any bank terminal (including ones in apartments[1]), and show several different pieces of info.

1) What the price would be when selling to a store.

2) What the price would be when buying from a store. (include projected price for QL 126+ items or non-store purchase equip.)

3) Include the present avaliable number of the item in question.

4) Include the present market price of an item. This would be the lowest cost that the item had been listed at by the seller.

5) Should also include a display of what the highest avaliable standing buy order is on a certain item, allowing people who get rare loot to see what the market may bear. . .


Of course, the terminal would have to include search functions and so on, so as to make putting in a buy order easy.

It would also have to include the ability to set a sell price or buy price on an item, so it will be snagged if an item comes avaliable that you can afford.


[1] Yes, I know there are no banks in apartments, but there should be. There should also be either a nano that can be cast in the grid to drop you directly into your apartment (with team version) or a grid exit that will do the same.
Oh, and also an in-apartment Grid Terminal.

[2] This sort of set-up would make the AO economy really *work*, allowing you to take missions, sell the gear to whoever needed it, and buy gear that you need *without* requiring an outside program to help you get your stuff.

[Warlock]

Ok this is what I think

FACT: If FC were 'happy' about CS all of the new stuff in 14.4 wouldnt be boos loot only (which Cos and Cz havent _actually_ said this, they have 'beaten around the bush' enough with player comments on this issue for us to know whats going on.

FACT: All CS does is save me time and clicks. The mission reward would still come up in x number of generations (manual or automatic) and its still going to cost me x credits to generate those missions. The only benefit is I dont get eye strain reading through the descriptions, I dont get RSI clicking on all the icons and I dont cancel my account because AO has turned into a camp-fest just to get that pet heal nano that is actually kinda fundamental to being an Engineer.

FACT: The economy is shot as high level players have vitually unlimited cash and low level has vitually none. The shopping channel and exchange forums only allow only the richest to get the stuff they want making someone richer in the process (dont believe me? check out the prices for the old LLTS). The casual player will lose out all the time but they have as much a right to posessing 'rare' nanos as the hardcore gamer since they both _pay_ the same to play the game (yes it should be 'easier' for the hardcore to get given the difference in playtime, but not impossible to get for the casual gamer).

The problem is that FC make if 'difficult' for the hardcore gamer to get the item, which makes it 'impossible' for the casual gamer to get.

Low drop rates and rare mission rewards (and boss loot only) is no solution to the problem. The casual gamer gets shafted as they dont have the time to repeat the same mission/dungeon over and over until the item drops, and on the few occasions they try it, it will most likely be camped by the hardcore gamer who is _still_ trying to get his item too.

If FC truely want some items to be 'rare' these items should be awarded during _events_ (shock horror) or random quests that pop up every now and then (the quest could be the same, but the NPC who issues it can change, and it wont always be available from any NPC at any one moment in time)

[______________Orchid]

Players having more mney at high levels is totally understandable, what? You think a infant shuld have as much money as his/her parent?

Alot of the suggestions in this topic just make no sense at all.

The main problem with mission terminals is that they are not geared towards the profession of the user asking for a mission.

This is just ridiculous since it's like the year 20,000+ and the mission booth can see what profession you are, since it sometimes will address you by your profession, but it can't give you a mission geared for yor profession?

If a MA goes up to a missin booth, the missions that come up should be geared for his profession and the reward item should be something made specifically for HIM/HER.

The whole randomness to the mission booth is just laziness and impracticality that doesn't wash with the conceptualization of the game as desied by the developers or players.

[_______zeroframerate]

I only use ClickSaver to get missions in areas I like. I don't use it for items or whatnot because I frankly have never really been interested in UberLoot®.

ClickSaver saves me a heck of a lot of time when I'm using it and even when I'm not (demonstrated by the shortness of travel to my mission areas).

Maybe one day I'll start using it when I actually have credits enough to just let it pour through missions to find what I want. I can't imagine when that day will come though.

[Sheffy]

Originally posted by Trendor
Dont you guys get it? hehe

This is a social game. You arnt supposed to get everything your heart desires from a mission! You are supposed to contact others and make purchases/trades. You are using an outside program to get around the intention of the game design. Why not just post what you need on the boards, your guild forum or send some shopping tells?

Last night I made a great nano deal with an Omni (Im clan). I had the boss mob drop nano he really needed and he had 6 nanos he was trying to unload. We met, I took his nanos and passed him the rare drop with some cash. It was a great deal for both and we had a good time haggling. Its all part of the game. Dont try to take it away.

It's great that you have any nano you'll ever need, and all the money you'll ever need. But there are some people (myself included) who are not innundated with credits, and can not take the crap I see on the shopping channel.

"1.5 million credits for Feeble Warbot!"
"4 million credits for Slayerdroid Protector!"

And people pay this! I would much rather use the missioning system which Funcom has given us (however broken it may be) to try and find the nano since I am high enough level now to be able to go get the nanos. By doing this, I save myself a lot of money.

Now the other issue! The mission terminals and the overall interface is the most repulsive and obnoxious aspect of this game. Clicksaver helps ease our sanity, and saves time, allowing us to enjoy the game more and give us more playing time, while also saving us money.

Yes, it's unfortunate that Clicksaver conflicts with your nano selling, but I do not believe for a minute that your business has dropped significantly. I'm sure you still make plenty of money off the lazy people who can't get off their own asses to get a team to go and get a nano. (I used to buy nanos when I was under level 80. Now I'm kicking myself for it) Also, keep in mind most of us don't have the time you have to do that many missions for that many items/nanos. People like convenience. They dislike aggravation and boredom.

More power to you if what you do works for you. Don't hate on other people who do something which works for them. I don't think there is one person on these forums who will agree with you that we should interact with characters instead of trying to get Funcom to fix their assinine mission booth system.

--Tsk

[Kuro]

Missions should never have offered a visible item reward. It's that simple. So long as people can see what item reward the mission would bring, they will do everything in their power to control what that item reward is. Even if nobody had ever been able to create AOMD or Clicksaver, it was inevitable. It's the same thing with camping mobs in static dungeons. The terminals were camped for the exact same reason the static mission mobs are camped: if he sat there long enough, the player knew he'd get what he wanted.

A flat credit reward for doing the mission would have caused less debate over this topic. The biggest problem would then be removing those credits from the general playerbase (though the way I've seen some people fleece newbies around here, I doubt they'd have to put much effort into that). They could further hint at the type of reward that may await, giving people a little control over what they're fighting for. For example, a mission in a nanocrystal manufacturing plant would be a hint that the mobs would carry items related to nanocrystals and their manufacturing. A mission in a high energy weapons facility would mean stuff related to energy weapons. Medical facility = health related stuff, ect.

By giving a credit reward worth taking, they would be supplying people with a controllable amount of credits for buying the stuff they want that someone else might have found in their mission. By hinting at what kind of loot could be found in the mission, people could generally target what they needed by selecting missions that display the right hints (but not the items themselves).

The only time when people should be able to choose what reward they're going to receive (via mechanics or 3rd party apps) is when they have almost no control over the paramaters of the mission. Not the location, mob types, locked doors, and other stuff the current system allows. Most definately not the location (leads to milk runs).

[Darkbane]

Yeah, I'm beginning to think that this element of the mission system is borked. I like the idea of the mission type hinting at the general type of loot/reward. And outdoors, certain types of MOB should drop certain classes of item more often than others. This way you can focus your effort if you do want something specific, without being handed it on a plate.

However, better in-game trade mechanisms would almost certainly be needed before this would work...

[Sean-Roach]

Well, if this were the case, I'd stick to missions that sent me to airfields and automotive assembly lines.

[Darkbane]

LOL

[_____________Siiamak]

I agree with morb mission system SUX S U X XXX ! its funcoms own fault that 3rd part programs r used casue the mission system is so impossible that .... yes well u know what i meen ..

[Snuble]

There is one thing, I'm sure we will miss it in other games when we've played this one to death twice

[Byte]

Whats about if only Guilds can buy ops or houses and open shops.

Thats not so many then, and every one of the Guild can sell items in the shop.

[Starboat]

ya the way the mission terminals work is retarded. i think complete AO is 90%retarded now after all the lame nerfs and junk funcom did