Missions vs. Patrol

(Edits highlighted in yellow, based on corrections kindly brought forth by other posters. I can be taught! )

(Warning: Free Associating to follow. Just looking for thoughts and comments.)

I love instanced missions. I really do. But I have to say, I miss the days when you'd see heroes street sweeping and patrolling.

If memory serves, some time ago, patrol XP was nerfed to encourage folks to do missions. This was incredibly successful. Now, you hardly ever see anyone street sweeping, and thugs rule the streets. There is also a perception that the game is dead because the players aren't visible on the streets (they're in instanced missions).

EDIT: Correction. Patrol XP was not nerfed. A bonus for completing missions was granted, and debt within missions was halved.

Then, along came AE. With the advent of AE, we had tons of new missions (good or bad), and new reward options. So players had yet another reason to do missions, but there was still no incentive to street sweep. So, between contact missions, radio missions, and AE missions, players see (what I imagine to be) a very tiny fraction of the online population outside of instances at any given time.

I believe that the reason for this is because there's no incentive to patrol aside from badges. In fact, you're penalized for patrolling because you'll earn less XP over time for doing it than you would if you were doing an instanced mission.

My point (and I do have one) is that I think it may be time to rethink the imbalance between non-mission XP and mission incentives. It might, in fact, be a good idea to incentivize patrolling in some way above and beyond badges. Doing so would bolster the perception that the game is not, in fact, dying, simply because more players would be visible (assuming they chose to patrol).

EDIT: The problem, as I see it, is that there is no balance here between missions and patrol; with the nerf still in place, there's really only one viable option and I *believe* that datamining would show a disproportionate (and potentially unintended) amount of XP gained in instanced missions versus XP gained from patrolling. I would hope that the developers would hope for balance here. Even if you took the mission incentives into account, you'd find that the number of kills is completely out of balance. But I am not a dev, and I can provide no statistical evidence for this.

I remember the early days of the game, when lots of heroes were visible in the streets all over a zone. As more heroes were present, more mobs would spawn. These days, many zones (like Steel) feel sparsely populated. It may not be numerically true, but it just feels that way. Traveling through a zone was a lot more fun when you would pass rampaging battles on the side of the street between villains and heroes, and not simply pass ten groups of Outcasts, each of which had a significant chance of deciding that they wanted to know what was in your purse or wallet.

Anyway, thanks for hearing me out.

Firstly, there was no such nerf.
Secondly, you probably shouldn't use the term 'Patrol XP' since that applies to something completely different.

People are encouraged to do instanced missions by two factors:
1) End of mission bonuses.
2) The debt you receive when defeated is HALVED inside instanced missions.

I would suggest they are also encouraged by variety and stories. I find street sweeping boring.

well, what if there were a way to combine the two? a common element of comics is finding something that leads to something else while stopping a crime, what about having missions that are triggered by defeating X amount of X kind of enemy? keep the numbers big, and then once you have that number, one of these people drops a clue that leads you to a mission, which could in turn lead to another, which could in turn lead to another.

another possibility would be dropping either a unique enemy at random onto a map, or having, say, some CoT spawn in an alley of steel canyon, s that their very presence raises questions (just where does that infected in atlas Park come from, anyways???)

this idea could increase street sweeping by giving a plot-reason for doing so. thoughts? if this is responded to positively, I'll repost it to the suggestions and ideas forum.

I agree that a rethink of patrol vs mission rewards would be a good idea. I'd love to see more heroes out on the street again. I certainly like the idea of accessing unique missions (on new maps) or spawning zone events for defeating X number of foes. Or even unique costume pieces based on certain mobs? New costume pieces always seems to motivate people.

Might be worth moving this to the Suggestions board.

What if each zone had set outdoor objectives that granted mission complete bonuses when completed. Everyone in the zone of the correct level range would have the mission (no need to talk to a contact) and progress would be tracked, just like it is with badges. When you complete the mission, you get some sort of xp reward (may or may not be the same as a regular mission reward)

Each objective would be based on the zone and would probably be repeatable. (maybe with the requirements increasing slightly each time) But you would only get progress on the objectives if you get xp for defeating the badguys involved.

Could be defeat x of y (Defeat 40 Lost in Skyway) or even tie it down to a particular area of the zone. Maybe it could be more general, like: Defeat 20 bosses in Steel Canyon. Even better, you could be rewarded for defeating certain spawn types (Stop 25 muggings in Atlas Park, Stop 20 CoT sacrifices in Perez)

Maybe when you character has achieved all objectives in a particular zone, you get a badge. Or the security chief offers you a special mission or somesuch.

Anyway, that would up the xp for street sweeping, as well as giving you goals to aim for.

A "nerf" to outdoor experience has never occurred. In fact, in-door missions don't really have that much higher an experience gain at all. End of mission experience is a boss' worth of experience, if that. The real experience gained from missions comes from enemy defeats. Debt IS a factor, but a very small one. In fact, the myth that people do indoor missions because of some inherent buff to indoor experience vs. outdoor experience is just that - a myth.

People prefer indoor missions because of control, availability and convenience. And with the new difficulty settings, you WILL NOT get people out of missions come hell or high water. The overworld's difficulty just doesn't match what people want to fight.

Originally, people hunted outside because indoor missions didn't let them take on +10 enemies. The purple patch put an end to that, yet indoor missions would still only provide even con enemies, and people wanted to fight +2 and more. Then the difficulty settings kicked in, people could go to Invincible and fight the enemies they wanted to fight on demand. That ended any need to fight outside at all. Originally, the outside game offered high levels and large spawns, but at the cost of having to look for them and their being of unpredictable composition and enemy group. Inside a mission, you can pick what enemies you want to fight and, with the new difficulty settings, how many of what level and what composition you want to oppose. You can, in a sense, fight EXACTLY what you want in EXACTLY the way you want to fight it. You can't do that outside.

People run indoor missions out of sheer convenience. Until difficulty settings start affecting the overworld (and they won't), you're not going to be able to lure people outside in the streets again, even with large rewards. The staggering inconvenience of simple hunting as opposed to indoor missions, coupled with the problem of spawncamping which fuelled the drive to improve indoor missions to begin with, just won't let you do that in any way that won't be gamebreaking. For instance, I enjoy playing at -1x3 with no bosses. I used to hunt outdoors with my Scrappers because I couldn't get that in missions, but I couldn't do it with my Blasters because spawns of this size always held two bosses. Now I CAN do it, because I can boost spawn sizes, but turn off bosses. In effect, I face a severe penalty for hunting outside because real bosses are too dangerous. I haven't built for them, and I don't want to fight them.

Events, as well, won't get people out, either. Rikti invasions get people out occasionally, because they're rare, but once they start happening every day, people stop coming very quickly. Just the outdoor experience isn't going to get people out, either, as my outdoor experience is from games where I'm constantly competing with people for spawns and mission objectives. Damn Champions Online for making me queue up for 15 minutes just to rescue one guy that kept being rescued by late comers!

But I'm somewhat biassed. I hated outdoor hunting with a passion back in the day when it was popular, and I have not missed it one iota since then. In fact, it bugs me greatly when I get an outdoor hunt mission, because I know I'll spend bloody ages looking for enemies of the right level and still end up grinding greys anyway, because I don't feel like wasting my time flying around for nothing. And I'll probably get killed, because the only spawns my level will have two bosses, four lieutenants and a dozen minions in them.

Indoor missions are convenience. Rewards and gimmicks will not trump that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

There are other advantages to door missions as well: pool B recipe drops, merits for story arcs, and the bonus drops certain day jobs give you for completing a mission.

Any extra info for fighting on the street would be inflationary, which I don't think is what the game needs right now. I don't see any harm in cutting debt in half, so it doesn't matter where you're defeated. I don't think many people notice or care about the difference, but that would make it more equitable.

I think it would be fun if, once in a while, you'd see a few police cars rush down the street, sirens blaring. If you followed them, they'd be outside a shop, forming a perimeter and yelling "Come out with your hands up!" You could go in, find a small store map full of bad guys, and defeat them. Of course, you'd need to worry about the spawn camping issues other games have.

The problem with all of these ideas is that people would get bored pretty quickly if there isn't an ongoing reward. That's the problem with all these zone events where the only reward is a badge. Once you have the badge, there's no reason to do it again unless it's really super-fun. You need to find a way to provide some special reward without leading people to just endlessly farm and exploit whatever it is to the exclusion of all other content.

It's been suggested multiple times, by myself and others, that the Security Chiefs be reconceived as open contacts for zone hunts.

Without going into too much detail, they could be a bit like Meg Mason, but offering zone hunts for xp AND mish bonus.

Just tossing my hat in here to say I agree it's a bit bleak nowadays when you look around and don't see a single hero in any direction.
I'd be up for anything to revitalize the street sweeping just as long as it wasn't unbalancing.
The revamped security chiefs sounds promising and I also like the idea of defeating a certain number of mob X unlocking a new mission.

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Considering that Hunt missions are by far my least favorite type of missions and I often just auto-complete them, I'm not sure I want street-sweeping back.

I am pretty much entirely with Samuel on that one, so I'm not gonna repeat what he says. I'm not gonna oppose the idea of havingSecurity Chiefs handing out hunt missions, either, but honestly? If people wanna repeat the same completely generic content, they'll be doing radio missions before they'll do a series of hunt missions.

I appreciate that you want a heroic feel, but I'm not sure jumping into a dumpster or back-alley while entire gangs follow you, upon which your team-mates will unveal their trap and shoot'em in the back was the pinnacle of heroism to begin with.

an easy way to encourage street sweeping is add in some kind of zone event that is caused after enough of X was killed

for example caleb the GM in nerva only spawns when enough nerva daemons are killed

now if they did something like this for existing GMs and such (like babbage spawning in whatever zone your in after enough clockwork are killed, ect)

Unless I'm misremembering, wasn't the whole bit about half debt in missions implemented with the EXPLICITLY STATED GOAL of getting people off the streets? (To reduce zone lag.)

Server hardware has improved since then.
But I believe that another reason was "Hey, we're writing story arcs for a reason, why don't you actually run them instead of grinding the streets all day?"
(Yeah, lol @ early blueside content, but that's another topic altogether.)