Boost outdoor sk in Pen/Inf or adjust missions for mixed factions

[lusthorne]

There are plenty of times during the slower time periods where it is a royal *pain* to get together a mission team in Pen/Inf (not counting issues of rare Pen teams due to huge Inf mish rewards).

More often than not, there are actually enough people looking for xp/sk to make a team, except for one problem: the combination of people would make a mixed clan/omni team, which is automatically no good for SL missions.

When SL missions were first introduced, this was not really a problem, since the SK/hr in outdoor sk was comparable to missions (pre-Inf reward), enabling mixed teams of clan/neut/omni to get SK together outdoors as an alternative to missions.

The problem lies in 2 areas: the faction-focused nature of SL missions, and the large difference in SK/hr attainable. The faction focus of SL missions prevents clan/omni from teaming in SL missions due to the large negative effect on redeemed/unredeemed faction that would result (neutrals obviously being unaffected), and the large difference in SK over time stops people from seeking outdoor SK as an alternative.

Even though outdoor SK is always available as it is now, the large difference in SK over time produces people who wait for ages to make a mission team for that big perceived payoff rather than go outside and at least get *some* SK.

As many predicted when the large Inf mission rewards were put into the game, outdoor leveling died nearly overnight in SL past Adonis (and in additional consequence Pen leveling largely died again as well).

Outdoor SK should either be boosted to be comparable SK/hr to missions again, or SL missions need to be adjusted to allow clan/omni to team together (ideally both). Even RK missions (even though they are sorely underused nowadays) allowed for leveling with mixed teams of opposing factions without any negative effects other than the occasional mob inside a mission that needed to be click-targeted/ctrl-tab'd.

While the forthcoming solo quests might present an alternative leveling method, it should also not be relied upon as the sole alternative source for decent SK.

P.S. On a side note, it would also be nice if Inf missions had their difficulty adjusted so that a hard mission is actually *hard* again, something that got nerfed around the same time the random room generation was added to SL missions to replace the static layouts (although I much preferred the static layout personally ;D).

[Hacre]

Huge bump.

Old Inf Hards, Tiun, 255, Tinos etc separated the men from the boys when it came to good SK/hr. I miss the 2-3 Kuir "room of death" as well.

However if Inf Hards were made properly hard again, the SK gleaned from them would have to be pretty awesome, or Inf Easies heavily nerfed, or none of the new crop of carebear levelers would ever step foot in one. Same goes for the outdoor spots.

Oh and don't forget adding specials back to mobs. Been a long long time since I got nailed with a 5k+ burst from a Cur. Kuirs don't nuke anymore either.

The sweaty nervousness added a certain something whenever you ran into a Kuir was awesome and dropping the damn thing was an accomplishment. It also made Docs a lot more desirable for leveling, where now they're not even needed. It's kinda crappy that everyone wants Docs for end game raids, but no one wants to team them for Inf missions because they're not needed and another Crat/Shade/DDer is more beneficial.

Same goes for leveling NTs and Traders when it comes to needing a calmer. Bump for returning to needing varied toolsets to beat things instead of just DD, DD and more DD.

[meatybtz]

as long as huge HP bars define "hard" and untill Trader Tool Set is of real use thats how it will stay.

The design philosophy is still canted wrong.

DB mobs in Nerteva have HUGE NR. I mean INSANE. So lets use the just make the HP bar smaller and see thats not the whole of it. Watching 220 traders have to try 5/6 times to land one drain on them and still have that drain mean nothing for surviviabillity vs them to realise that funcom has boiled this game down to:

HP/DD/ and for raids Heals.

Almost every other tool kit component is of no use at end game vs mobs.

Consider this a "scaling problem".

At low levels without laddering drains a trade + NT using blinds combo is powerful. By about level 100ish even nanite drains + QU+NT top blind wont stop a mob from landing a hit every time.

So the question is .. why bother with these profs when they have nothing to bring to the table.

NTs are great for PVP but in PVM except kiting their damage is loltastic and the blinds do not add a great deal of effectiveness to a team.

Every end game boss is immune to drains. A traders AC debuffs do not mean anything anymore because players ONLY use weapons with at most a 100 point damage spread which means no change will be visible to damage per shot unless the mob has less than 1000 AC left after AC draining.

There is a complete CLASH of design principles.

Old Designs had HIGH damage weapons with large spreads and for a time AC drains mattered.
New Designs all have high dmage and high min and capped specials where ACs are an irrelevancy.

FCs design pattern consistantly has "obsoleted" the "support" tool set.

Properly ballanced having a trader and an NT should make a mob miss enough that you can get by with trader heals on the tank. That would be design ballance.

In the current system you will always choose the doc.

A ballanced game design would be like the older weapons where high min was always coupled with a low max.
High Max with low min..
etc.
Then you couple that with making everyones tool-set matter and you have game ballance.

I just do not see that EVER happening. So the solution to make traders and NTs valued for leveling would be to give them more DD. Because that is what matters in this game these days.

Ever wonder why I love teaming MPs in INF? Did you know that nano-shutdown prevents the fam from casting his debuffs.. but today we are so powerful that those debuffs are irrelveant. If you updated them to be relveant then you would only hurt the "support" profs even more while only tickling the DD/Uber profs.

[Mekh]

Huge bump.

Old Inf Hards, Tiun, 255, Tinos etc separated the men from the boys when it came to good SK/hr. I miss the 2-3 Kuir "room of death" as well.

However if Inf Hards were made properly hard again, the SK gleaned from them would have to be pretty awesome, or Inf Easies heavily nerfed, or none of the new crop of carebear levelers would ever step foot in one. Same goes for the outdoor spots.

Oh and don't forget adding specials back to mobs. Been a long long time since I got nailed with a 5k+ burst from a Cur. Kuirs don't nuke anymore either.

The sweaty nervousness added a certain something whenever you ran into a Kuir was awesome and dropping the damn thing was an accomplishment. It also made Docs a lot more desirable for leveling, where now they're not even needed. It's kinda crappy that everyone wants Docs for end game raids, but no one wants to team them for Inf missions because they're not needed and another Crat/Shade/DDer is more beneficial.

Same goes for leveling NTs and Traders when it comes to needing a calmer. Bump for returning to needing varied toolsets to beat things instead of just DD, DD and more DD.

This...

Hard hitting mobs with smaller HP bars would go along way...

Anyone remember the "room of death" in clan Inf missions, where when you zoned down you never really knew if it would be a team wipe as result...

I miss those situations.

[Hacre]

Anyone remember the "room of death" in clan Inf missions, where when you zoned down you never really knew if it would be a team wipe as result...

Yes which is why I mentioned it.

A Crat with all evade perks up or an NT under NS2 was the s**t in those teams.

[Sawbones2]

as long as huge HP bars define "hard" and untill Trader Tool Set is of real use thats how it will stay.

The design philosophy is still canted wrong.

DB mobs in Nerteva have HUGE NR. I mean INSANE. So lets use the just make the HP bar smaller and see thats not the whole of it. Watching 220 traders have to try 5/6 times to land one drain on them and still have that drain mean nothing for surviviabillity vs them to realise that funcom has boiled this game down to:

HP/DD/ and for raids Heals.

Almost every other tool kit component is of no use at end game vs mobs..........There is a complete CLASH of design principles.

Old Designs had HIGH damage weapons with large spreads and for a time AC drains mattered.
New Designs all have high dmage and high min and capped specials where ACs are an irrelevancy.

FCs design pattern consistantly has "obsoleted" the "support" tool set.......................A ballanced game design would be like the older weapons where high min was always coupled with a low max. High Max with low min.. etc.

Then you couple that with making everyones tool-set matter and you have game ballance.

This strikes me as really insightful and suggests that there is more to the issue than meets the eye.

Still a bump from me also for the idea of making mixed teams more likely. Different reason though.

My experience is a bit different than that of the OP. It isn't that there aren't enough clanners/ommers on lft for a sided team.

It is that many will ONLY join a team with a 220 puller. Some of them are noobie enough that they don't even realize that a 219 mish is virtually the same SK as a 220.

You can lead a horse to the water but you can't make them drink.

How about more SK/mish (same reward multiplier as the 219/220) for non 220/219 mish? that'll get a lot more people to accept team invites.

[lusthorne]

This strikes me as really insightful and suggests that there is more to the issue than meets the eye.

Still a bump from me also for the idea of making mixed teams more likely. Different reason though.

My experience is a bit different than that of the OP. It isn't that there aren't enough clanners/ommers on lft for a sided team.

It is that many will ONLY join a team with a 220 puller. Some of them are noobie enough that they don't even realize that a 219 mish is virtually the same SK as a 220.

You can lead a horse to the water but you can't make them drink.

How about more SK/mish (same reward multiplier as the 219/220) for non 220/219 mish? that'll get a lot more people to accept team invites.

That might help things in the short term in certain times of the day, but then you'll just have the same people waiting on a 219 or 220 instead of just 220, with the same factioned teaming limitations, and no alternatives. When missions first came out in SL, many did missions, many did outdoors. We had options.

Options are a good thing.

The outdoor option is abandoned because so much SK got funneled into the SL missions that no one will bother (any arguments to the idea of at least getting *some* SK rather than waiting around for that mission team would do well to notice that this is what happens RIGHT NOW), and overall leveling gets hit because of the factional nature of the missions.

On a side note, depending on the day/time, it is very possible to look at lft and see enough people for one or 2 fresh teams tops, if factions could be mixed with clan/omni. It just depends how strange your hours are ;D.

[lusthorne]

It's also worth noting that making outdoor areas viable for xp again in pen/inf (particularly inf) would also expose players to other parts of said playfields; you know, all those former leveling areas of inferno for instance that go largely ignored by all but a few dyna hunters now?

[AGPEcko]

Without reading the replies, I can already imagine the flood of comments wanting lower level inf mission's to give out equal rewards (as the higher ones).
Man I love Game Suggestions.

[Hacre]

Without reading the replies, I can already imagine the flood of comments wanting lower level inf mission's to give out equal rewards (as the higher ones).
Man I love Game Suggestions.

Actually, most comments agree that viable outdoor leveling would be for the win.

Reading ftw?

[lostlife]

leave inf missions as they are
add pande missions, you get em from ergo, your mission? kill son of the beast before number 9 sends out a becaun to alert the alien's "beast" that they need reinforcements, and its guardian of the shadow, so every one can join, there will be no "easy" "medium" or "hard" only the "i want the one that requires rubber underpants" difficulty.

[Honorbound]

The biggest problem with the Inf missions is how uneven the SK gain is when you look at the mission as a whole. You get 65-70% of the total SK gained from the mission at the end as the reward, hence the mobs you need to kill to get there are currently regarded only as worthless obstacles on you way to the actual gain.

This had been discussed a few times already, and like on the previous occasions, I still think it would do a lot of good if the end reward was seriously cut back (by 50% or more), and SK from Inf mobs in general would be increased by 50% or more at the same time, regardless if they are in missions or outdoors.
The SK changes should be done in such a way that you'd still get roughly the same amount of SK from a mission, but since most of that SK would now be the result of killing the mobs on the way (say, 70% from mobs and 30% from the reward), hunting outdoors instead would be giving at least a comparable amount of SK as opposed to now, when to get an amount of SK equivalent to a single Inf mission (taking maybe 30-40 mins) outdoors would require about 4-6 hours of killing regular mobs.

And maybe, by making similar reward/regular SK adjustments to Pen mission/outdoors, and maybe even Ado mission/outdoors could at least partially revive those currently dead areas.

[Essessceeaych]

Honorbound's idea would help with research too. It's pretty annoying going into an inf mish as a 220, and having 1/4 of the reward go into research (working on the last level in that line) and the rest is wasted because it caps.