Tokens, the once nice feature, but got no reason now

[JimSalabim]

I have asked around, and as far as I've been told, we've done nothing about the availability of missions, or 'nerfed' them in any way, but this is what I learned:

There is a small change with the mission difficulty slider, though you will only notice that at extreme selections: Earlier - only the last pixel on the difficulty slider would give you the 'hell' missions. What we've done is increasing that area to cover more than that lone pixel, as it was often hard to 'hit'. This has shifted the disposition of the difficulties slightly. It does not change the settings in the 'middle area' (approx. 35-65%) in any way.

Anyway - this change only affects where you'll have to put the slider to get your desired selection of missions, not the content and nature of the missions themselves.

Umm, hope that was understandable...

So, what tool should I choose to punish that coder for not telling us?

[Myga]

Originally posted by JimSalabim
I have asked around, and as far as I've been told, we've done nothing about the availability of missions, or 'nerfed' them in any way, but this is what I learned:

There is a small change with the mission difficulty slider, though you will only notice that at extreme selections: Earlier - only the last pixel on the difficulty slider would give you the 'hell' missions. What we've done is increasing that area to cover more than that lone pixel, as it was often hard to 'hit'. This has shifted the disposition of the difficulties slightly. It does not change the settings in the 'middle area' (approx. 35-65%) in any way.

Anyway - this change only affects where you'll have to put the slider to get your desired selection of missions, not the content and nature of the missions themselves.

Umm, hope that was understandable...

So, what tool should I choose to punish that coder for not telling us?

Thats not the issue. Thing is I can no longer roll missions in Clon**** from avalon (but this could be because I am 142). However those who can say that the missions in frisko grainkurt are no longer the grey caves. I hear ppl say same thing about the caves in Aegean. But since I suddenly cant get missions to those places I am only giving 2nd hand info here. The facts are that all other mission types typically has many more rooms and much higher mob density and thus takes alot more time to complete.

Why do all mission have to take so much longer at higher levels? Isnt it enough with the higher mob difficulty?

[____________omegadsl]

I wonder what these are for:

http://antiguardians.org/itemdb.php?cmd=view&id=157484

http://antiguardians.org/itemdb.php?cmd=view&id=157485

-Omegadsl

[JimSalabim]

I answered to this:

Msag: "Nice to see the last patch nerfed the small cave missions. The only efficient way tokens could be earned. Anyone seen anything of the "new way" of earning tokens?"

And my answer was: We have not nerfed "small cave" missions or any other mission type. To my knowledge, "new ways" of earning tokens aren't part of 13.6, but 13.8 (what I meant with "next" patch).

However, bugs have happened before. We'll see in a couple of days if missions have indeed changed after all.

Msag: "Why do all mission have to take so much longer at higher levels?"

Because we want the game to be harder at higher levels. More IP to gain, but harder to level and survive.

Msag: "Isnt it enough with the higher mob difficulty?"

No, at the moment we don't think so. Sorry

[Myga]

Originally posted by JimSalabim

Msag: "Why do all mission have to take so much longer at higher levels?"

Because we want the game to be harder at higher levels. More IP to gain, but harder to level and survive.
...

Thnx for answering, I still got a comment to the above answer tho. The grey cave missions werent "easier" in the sense less risk to die. They just had fewer mobs, less pet pathing problems, and less humanoid mobs so I dont have to sit 3min and wait for debuffs / dots to wear out every 2nd pull. In fact overall maybe the mobs that gave me most risk of dieing was greater anuns with their speed/hp and big aggro range. What could make it exceptionally hard is if you get attacked by 3 of those from neighbouring rooms the second you enter first room. Also the grey caves often had big rooms with 2 - 3 mobs, and that actually takes a little skill to separate those sometimes.

Dont mistake time and difficulty, then we start to get closer to the reason why I quit EQ and started AO in the first place. I'd rather do 2 30min missions which is a challenge skillwise (but not impossible) instead of a 1hour boring mission.

[Tetra]

I know that from the information you have CZ that mission locations havent been "adjusted" officially... but there are alot of things in this patch that were not "officially" changed that are having problems. The same sort of problems happened from time to time in AC as well. I very much urge you to look into the mission locations and layouts that you would get at full bad/money betwen QL110-130ish missions (what I can solo/sorta sometimes do with a friend ) for rewards we can use now) in the code that was on live before 13.6 and what comes after it... everyone I know has noticed something changed with mission locations.. they are just different and te occasional nice zones that were likely to spawn small caves or places like broken shores seem to be either nonexistant or quite a bit more rare.

In all honesty missions are occasionally so large that they expire before a group can finish them. Size of a mission really has nothing to do with the difficulty just frustration factor. The most difficult mobs in no particular order are.

• anun <insert type> birds
• Mantis <insert type> insects
• Avian wingmen
• Enforcers and the human mobs with 2hb sticks or 1hb maces (these are seriously bugged, an orange one is more difficult and deadly than a deep red almost anything else, please fix the exp or something on them... the rest are just mean but reasonable... these are IMO broken)
• Bileswarm's

Things that are not difficult and will force me to eventually leave the game from boredom or frustration.

• 3 dark orange or red of the above mobs in a mission for something I can use now (my ql slider jumps 20-30+ levels at a time... this right there is unreasonable since nano's are +/-10... it should be possible to jump in 5-10 level steps... I want more options than uselessly green, orange-dark red, various shades of full group uber.)
• Spending more than 2 hours in a mission and being nowhere near finished with it... that's not difficult, it's boring.
• Please put a save terminal somewhere in the artery vallies, almost every time i've been grouped there the group disolves after the first couple hourly saves or when someone dies and loses the last few hours of work that was unsaved. there are a good number of outposts there and several could support it seeing as I know of at least one place you can safely camp mission terminals there. Nearly anyone going there can fly so even placing it on a rooftop would work.

There really and truely is a difference between difficulty and tedium, I left AC because of the simple fact that high level advancement as tedium.

[____________Ejeckted]

seriously guys,
the higher level missions are out of control.

most players just dont have 3+ hours to invest in a single sitting.

you have to remember that it's not just
'X' mobs divided by 'Y' time to kill each mob + travel time . .
there is also a variable of 'W' number of deaths
+ 'Q' time spent waiting for items to be reclaimed
+ rez fx to wear off + travel time back to the mission . .

once you've spent 1hour+ clearing a mission
you're really committed and you still have no
idea if the mission is almost complete or if a whole
new maze still awaits you somewhere in there . .
it gets really frustrating.

It sucks to invest all that time,
run out of RL time or have RL interrupt,
and then the mission just expires.

everyone is telling you high-level missions are just too big
for the amount of time most of us have to play.
listen to us, please.

the only people who can do these missions
are the sneakers/blitzers/mez-ers . .
anyone playing professions who have to actually fight each mob
would have to be unemployed to have that much time on thier hands.

[JimSalabim]

Okay: "Boredom" is one part of your - and our - problem, the other is lack of alternatives to missions if you want to solo for, say, only 30 minutes at higher levels...

- Boredom can be cured by more variation. We have some ideas down the drain.. I mean up our sleeves that should help this somewhat. If the mission is more entertaining it might also feel less bad to be leaving it without having found the reward, yes? Presently we haven't had any proper reality check on those ideas, so I can't mention them to you - one feather turing into 5 hens and all that. (Or is it chickens?)

Hopefully team missions (in their future shape), will be a popular alternative to soloing missions. We have some plans for encouraging outdoors group activites more too, and we hope to be able to introduce those changes somewhere between patches 14.0 and 15.0.

- I will mention it to the other designers if we should perhaps shorten the time required (size of dungeons) for high level missions, at least discuss if we have enough alternatives for "casual players" at those levels.

- And: Terminals in the Artery Valleys - I'll ask if that's something we want to place out there. I guess there's a gameplay or story reason for them not being present there today.

[Tetra]

Originally posted by JimSalabim
Okay: "Boredom" is one part of your - and our - problem, the other is lack of alternatives to missions if you want to solo for, say, only 30 minutes at higher levels...

Even if the reward was just a handful of creds and real low chance of a token for mission reward or something to check a box for missions in the current zone it would be nice to just slack off for a change while waiting for some people to get together/online or if you just have a little bit of time (which was why BS missions being somewhat easy to find was nice, you knew that a BS mission was near the grid and you could kill a few mobs before work)

- Boredom can be cured by more variation. We have some ideas down the drain..

The smaller missions are quite honestly the most interesting ones, I actually went and got a friend so he could see one once when I found one of those giant notum mining drills like on display in clon**** in one of them.

I mean up our sleeves that should help this somewhat. If the mission is more entertaining it might also feel less bad to be leaving it without having found the reward, yes?

it's not really that the current mission is any different than the next one will be, it's just that after the 5th time of being pretty sure you cleared it and running around looking for the item you just had to miss somewhere your spirit is effectively broken when you find yet another full sized maze of rooms you missed. You don't roll another mission... you go watch a movie.

- I will mention it to the other designers if we should perhaps shorten the time required (size of dungeons) for high level missions, at least discuss if we have enough alternatives for "casual players" at those levels.

Please... please... consider looking at the mission size at higher levels, they become ungodly large.

- And: Terminals in the Artery Valleys - I'll ask if that's something we want to place out there. I guess there's a gameplay or story reason for them not being present there today.

I'm almost positive it's called outpost 10-3 when you fly over it. There is a bit more detailed slightly taller version of an engineers first bot there called Marvin that talks about diodes his aching diodes standing in front of a building, off to his right are a set of either omni or neutral mission terminals (i got one of my infuses from it:-) surely a terminal could easily be implanted beside them? I could find coords there sometime but i've been up far too long and am about to go to sleep heh.

[____________Merengue]

Originally posted by Nanogater
1000 tokens = 1000 hrs mission time + 500 hrs getting to and from + 500 hrs other stuff (shopping, mission boots etc) = 2000 hrs, play 6 hrs a day and it will take 333,33 days to copmlete. A normal working year has 280 working days...and there you stop for lunch and social chatting with fellow employees...

1000+ terminations at lvl6 = insanity. I dont consider this an exploit, no one should. If you belive it to be, try it yourself. But make sure your health insurance cover phsyciatric disorders.

(Excuse my spelling and wording, strangely enough so is not all ppl on this planet born in the USofA)

Nanogater

Why do all that when you can just buy your 1000 tokens at http://www.aoexchange.com ?

*note I have nothing to do with this site. I just think it's sick how exploitable the game is.

[mulps1]

hey Drabin seems like we're in agreement, we have ip caps so why not have token caps to stop token farming.
My big concern over this though is that the token system will not be overhauled at the same time to make it more accesible to people to achieve. But it shouldn't be too easy, just because it is there doesn't mean everyone should be able to do it without any thought going into their characters design etc..
I would also like to see class specific bonuses in there as well maybe a nano you get or some such to make it really interesting or maybe places/facilities etc that can only be used if you have acheived a certain token lvl etc.
If they have to be such an important part of the game and so time consuming the benefits should reflect this.

i hope the servers are up soon as reading forums isn't the same as kicking omni butt

good hunting folks

[Isgrimnur]

Pretty interesting discussion...


I would like to see the following: in grey caves have it so there are at least 5 mobs. Right now at 50% setting they are usually green instead of yellow, this ruins my chance at getting a token.

Also make it so you don't have to kill 80%+ to get a token. I hate missing an area and picking up item when I thought I cleared the mission, just to see no token...hmm hour plus wasted there.

FC you should know 90% of ppl who are doing missions want item/cash and TOKEN. I can get xp in a group a million times faster.

I want the whole thing fixed...it is SOOO boring if you have multiple chars and want at least the 120 board to get those chars those boards.


Also like the idea of picking the type of reward...boards should be more geared to professions. that NPing is useless to a lot of classes...the run is ok, so is comp lit, also making more than 1 kind of board, from 400 to 1000 is just dumb, 600tokens for a bonus that won't mean much, cause I will be at lvl 200 if i ever do manage to get 1k without cheating....

more boards between 400 and 1000. I would like to see 400 board have some skill bonuses too, why not just 1 skill? Like the person can pick 1 combat skill, after all i earned this from combat didnt I?

[assassimon]

Give everyone in team a token, but only if they are within "xp range" with the one that picked the mission (the last part to eliminate so not a low lvl pick missions and the high lvls just join to get token)

This is very fair and it wouls never matter who picked the mission.

[JimSalabim]

I had a loose talk with the other designers, where I brought up the problems with large missions. We didn't decide for anything (other than what we're already planning), but one change that you should see take effect in not too long is a longer time limit on high level missions. They will no longer have only a 1 day limit, but several days, perhaps a week.

This should help the casual players a little, and it also makes it possible for "bored" players to take a break from the mission, to come back later instead.

Interesting idea about the "alternative" token boards.

[Morpheo]

YO. a reply for mr Salabim.


U got to take the tokenboard up to reconsideration.

Again....

Why does the 1000 board add to nano programing and concealment. ?????????????????

This will only be an advantage to NT´s , Engis, Mp´s and the concealment mostly for agents..

Again i ask why should some prof´s have better reward by getting that board than other... ?

Boards should only give adds to skills that all prof´s can use..

A second solution could be individual adds, depending on prof, but since u dont decide what "path" a cha will take this might be lesser an advantage than simply give adds that all prof´s can use....

Please give me a comment on this...

cya.

[Provisioner]

Originally posted by JimSalabim
I had a loose talk with the other designers, where I brought up the problems with large missions. We didn't decide for anything (other than what we're already planning), but one change that you should see take effect in not too long is a longer time limit on high level missions. They will no longer have only a 1 day limit, but several days, perhaps a week.

This should help the casual players a little, and it also makes it possible for "bored" players to take a break from the mission, to come back later instead.

Interesting idea about the "alternative" token boards.

While multi-day missions would be nice, I still see the problem of the dungeons resetting.

Picture it: The casual player takes a one-week mission to recover an item. He enters the first room, kills the three mobs (after zoning 28 times), and realizes it's time for dinner and logs out. He returns an our later to see that those three frienly mobs in the main room are there waiting for him once again. He kills them all (only 25 zones this time), logs to go to bed, and realizes that he'll never finish this mission...Ever...

Provisioner

[Provisioner]

Originally posted by Provisioner


While multi-day missions would be nice, I still see the problem of the dungeons resetting.

Picture it: The casual player takes a one-week mission to recover an item. He enters the first room, kills the three mobs (after zoning 28 times), and realizes it's time for dinner and logs out. He returns an our later to see that those three frienly mobs in the main room are there waiting for him once again. He kills them all (only 25 zones this time), logs to go to bed, and realizes that he'll never finish this mission...Ever...

Provisioner

Oh yes, and the map resets every time, as well. Ugh!!!

Provisioner

[__________Lucid Flow]

Originally posted by JimSalabim
I had a loose talk with the other designers, where I brought up the problems with large missions. We didn't decide for anything (other than what we're already planning), but one change that you should see take effect in not too long is a longer time limit on high level missions. They will no longer have only a 1 day limit, but several days, perhaps a week.

This should help the casual players a little, and it also makes it possible for "bored" players to take a break from the mission, to come back later instead.

Interesting idea about the "alternative" token boards.

Uh, Jim. That's a moot point. Nobody has EVER complained about mission time limit. Firstly, nobody cares about the time limit simply because 24 hours is enough time. Secondly because you can extend the time limit on your mission just by setting your clock back AFTER you take the missions.

How EXACTLY does that help casual players? I seem to wonder what goes through the Dev teams heads at times. The complaint here is that tokens are impossible to get because missions are much too big, and you give us a bigger TIME LIMIT?

Let me ask you. When it takes 3 hours for a team of 2 people to complete a mission full of oranges, what does it matter if you tack on an extra 24 hour time limit to do it? Why bother? The problem is casual gamers don't HAVE 3 hours to do 1 mission, not that they need more time to DO it.

The Dev team is a joke. Instead of coming up with completely RANDOM "solutions" to problems, actually listen to what has been said and make missions smaller.

Make team missions work. And if you bork them I swear.... If team missions turn out to be another "Steps of Madness" which is a level 100 dungeon, not 35-45, I swear we will riot. Team missions should have something different to them, but they shouldn't have yellows with 5x as much HP as yellows in a solo mission but give the same exp.

Once team missions are in place, make all solo missions smaller. Remove key duplicators if you want. The only downside is you can't ask somebody for help in your mission anymore for that perfect item you wanted but.... it would solve the token grip. It would make outdoor hunting obsolete though.

I want to see OUTDOOR missions, but hey that's just a random thought.

[Zerosignal]

Originally posted by JimSalabim


Msag: "Why do all mission have to take so much longer at higher levels?"

Because we want the game to be harder at higher levels. More IP to gain, but harder to level and survive.

Msag: "Isnt it enough with the higher mob difficulty?"

No, at the moment we don't think so. Sorry

perhaps you should ask OSI why they introduced the "Power Hour"



Not everyone has the time to play for the length that is required for these missions....

[____________Ejeckted]

it really shouldnt take more than 1hour of playtime to obtain
one single 'standard' (non-special) item. . by any method.