Outdoor Hunting Forgotten?
After all the waiting for the outdoor camp patch, it came and was forgotten within a few days of its release? LOL, what did you think would happen, that people would give up going to a well known area, with somewhat predictable loot, exp and difficulty to explore the wilds for hours, searching for unknown danger and items? Yep, that happened for a couple of days and when people saw the loot was nothing special everyone went right back to BS power leveling like they had been without skipping a beat. Even if the boss dropped the same loot as team mission bosses it is still too much hassle to go and camp because it is quicker to get to city missions and there wont be another possible group contesting the spoils after the leader is killed.
Players ARE going to do what makes their characters the most efficient and will more often than not take the least path of resistance to achieve that. Please don’t give up on the outdoor camp idea; it was a good attempt but needs extra punch to get the players attention and keep it. I remember how much damned fun it was to make the run out to an outdoor spot that someone had discovered and spread the word about. Back in the day, the only time you were doing a mission was to either earn money for upgrades or blitzing to get the upgrade items themselves. Its funny how we have some 100th level characters who don’t know half of the locations within their own faction lands.
What about the following:
1. Make a third loot table separate from normal and team bosses. This would be a great way to introduce all the spiffy new items that are being played with on the test server right now. Thus, you will have an active search for these camps to secure the new loot.
2. Make the location of these boss camps attainable thru missions. The best way to discover a camp is to receive a mission to it. Like most other people who abandoned the search for outdoor camps, I had no real desire to search the entirety of the world without knowing the difficulty/ease of the mobs, what loot the boss could possibly drop, etc. It was no where near as efficient as a mission or static dungeon. Also, before the flames begin about being non-adventurous and not wanting to work for my rewards, I know I am not alone in feeling disinterested with the way outdoor camps were handled due to the fact that there hasn’t been one call to assemble an outside group since the day the patch was released.
In the agent forum I posted an idea about having special mission booths available in the headquarters of each faction that gave missions to agents with the coordinates to outside camps and their bosses. Not only would this identify the boss camp and give the player a rough indication of the level of difficulty they are to face, but it will also increase the value of having agents along doing some Intel gathering, as opposed to being back up buffers and marksmen. Perhaps the loot table contents for this type of boss would be posted in the mission briefing as opposed to the random drop of indoor mission team loot.
3. New loot tables need to be comparable in value and or function to existing loot, not totally superior or inferior. Why would you organize a team to go hunt down a boss who dropped items you could get in a solo mission (I say this because I saw nothing of any positive posts from outdoor camp hunters). For example, instead of dropping in a rifle superior to the current assault rifle of choice that does energy damage, introduce one with very similar statistics that does projectile or cold damage. With two loot tables superior to what can be found in solo missions, both indoor and outdoor missions will be just as efficient in equipping the player with desirable gear, with the only real advantage to city based activities being ease of travel.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but the changes mentioned above would be more than enough incentive to assemble/joint teams setting out for a little outdoor hunting. Yes, I know that the designers are probably knee deep in getting content done for the upcoming game packs but please don’t give up on trying to bring back the excitement of outdoor hunting. It’s a shame that all the work went into that beautiful landscape and it never gets seen by the average player.
\m/