Suggestions for fixing team awards on Arc Missions
By
AmazingMOO,
Posted on: 2011-07-19 23:44 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
I always wanted to be able to introduce my contacts to my teammates. That way we could co-op the missions and all get the ending experience and reward merits.
The only problem I see with the merits/mission reward is that it could end up being way more than the arc's reward (I'm looking at you Praetorian arcs).
Should this have been in the Suggestion forum?
Quote:
Another problem is that blueside contacts from before i6 or so give out arcs and missions in a very weird manner.|
Originally Posted by Golden_Avariel
I always wanted to be able to introduce my contacts to my teammates. That way we could co-op the missions and all get the ending experience and reward merits.
The only problem I see with the merits/mission reward is that it could end up being way more than the arc's reward (I'm looking at you Praetorian arcs). Should this have been in the Suggestion forum? |
In Steel Canyon, you could have Contact A or Contact B give Story Arc 1. If someone had Mission 1 of Story Arc 1 from Contact A, and another player had Mission 1 of Story Arc 1 from Contact B, if they completed them at the same time on the same team, one player would not get completion credit, as they came from different contacts.
In some cases, notable Stephanie Peebles on Striga Isle, she gives out the same arc, but jumbles the missions up at a certain point.
Even in City of Villains there is this issue, for example Mongoose can give out random missions that make it difficult to sync up characters levelling through the (IMO superior) 'mini'-arcs that CoV uses.
And this continues from beyond that point in time as well.
Detective A and Detective B give Safeguard Mission 1 to Character ? and !, respectively. They're teamed, complete it, one will not have their mission completed because they came from two separate contacts.
Of course, story-wise, there is another issue with the early CoH arc writing that persists from 1-50, with only a few having seem some revision.
The style of the storytelling is much difference. Some arcs lack character and tone because they come from several different contacts. They're padded with annoying missions like zone kill X of Y's, and Outdoor Map Kill Alls. Some missions seem just tacked on to make the slog longer rather than expand story. Some use basic maps over and over again.
These are all things that really need to be seen to. You can repaint the game/cafe all you want, but if it's serving large chunks of the same old stale menu, people are going to stick to the bits they like or find another place to eat.
Want to make story arcs more appealing to the team environment? The problem isn't with the rewards, it's with the convenience:
1) Make ALL the mission dialog, text, & clues available to ALL members of the team. I mainly solo story arcs for this reason; it's the only way I can actually follow the story.Reward incentives are nice, but making Story Arcs more convenient would likely have a much more far-reaching effect and make the game better for it. Adding rewards just creates a whole new set of problems with the 'F' word.
2) Make SIMUL arcs ALL follow the same mission chain. Currently 2 players with the same contact, running the same arc, will often get different missions along the way, negating the SIMUL completion ability.
3) Make Story Arc missions spawn in the same zone you call/contact from. The convenience-factor of Tips (mostly) keeping you in whatever zone you choose to call it in from makes them superior to Story Arcs in numerous ways.
4) Don't allow Story Arcs to "go grey." If you have a level-capped Story Arc and you outlevel it, it should use the auto-exemp feature to keep everything from being grey to you.
Craft your inventions in AE!!
Play "Crafter's Cafe" - Arc #487283. A 1 mission, NON-COMBAT AE arc with workable invention tables!
Quote:
This is something that breaks my heart, especially on TFs. The leader tends to get text that the rest of the players don't, even if they're obsessively watching the mission cues and clues.| 1) Make ALL the mission dialog, text, & clues available to ALL members of the team. I mainly solo story arcs for this reason; it's the only way I can actually follow the story. |
Quote:
| 2) Make SIMUL arcs ALL follow the same mission chain. Currently 2 players with the same contact, running the same arc, will often get different missions along the way, negating the SIMUL completion ability. |
Quote:
| 3) Make Story Arc missions spawn in the same zone you call/contact from. The convenience-factor of Tips (mostly) keeping you in whatever zone you choose to call it in from makes them superior to Story Arcs in numerous ways. |
However, even the tip missions do this. 'Explosions in Peregrine', for example, will let you fight in the same zone you take the tip in, while 'Save the People of the Rogue Isles' will always, always take you to IP.
Quote:
| 4) Don't allow Story Arcs to "go grey." If you have a level-capped Story Arc and you outlevel it, it should use the auto-exemp feature to keep everything from being grey to you. |
Quote:
| Reward incentives are nice, but making Story Arcs more convenient would likely have a much more far-reaching effect and make the game better for it. Adding rewards just creates a whole new set of problems with the 'F' word. |
You are right Zortel. I've brought all those points up in the past too but was in a hurry and my suggestion is only part of the solution. The ability to co-op the same mission from two different contacts (especially detectives) and making sure that all story arcs always give their missions in the same order are also important parts of this.
I'd go so far as to phase-out the duplicate contacts hero-side and then make sure they always give their missions out in order - badges, stories, randoms.
Backfire, I assume you'd only be auto-exemplared to the contact's upper level on selection of the mission. Even so I could see lots of folks complaining about it unless it was optional.
Right now, the most profitable thing a non-50 team can do outside of taskforces is alignment tips missions. That's great. I love alignment missions. There's a problem, however, in that there are relatively few of them. They get repetitive QUICKLY. Also, it means that players are getting the most award from doing a miniscule fraction of the game's content over and over again. That's bad. I won't say the 'F' word, but repeating content means that the game gets stale and older faster than it needs to.
There have been a few suggestions for making arc missions more rewarding, especially to team members other than the mission holder. However, none of these have ever really been implemented by the devs. Accordingly, it's VASTLY more profitable to solo your own arc missions than it is to team with another player since you get reward merits at the end that other players do not get.
Let's talk about what can be done to make arc missions more attractive to teams. Since the most obvious solution... allowing players to share in merit rewards at the end of an arc has been suggested many times and not acted upon, let's assume that it is, for some reason, unworkable and concentrate on different solution.
My suggestions:
1. Award reward merits at the end of missions based on map size.
We already know that maps are flagged as 'short', 'medium', and 'long'. Use this data to award extra merits to all players who team on an arc mission.
When a team, rather than a solo player finishes a mission, award the players 1 reward merit for a small map, 2 reward merits for a medium map, and 3 reward merits for a large map.
Make this award have a timeout on it... 20 minutes or so, or whatever number is necessary to discourage same mission farming. This way both the team leader gets a bonus of award merits for finishing an arc, he's encourage to have teammates join him, and they have good incentive, in the same basic ballpark as Morality awards, for joining arc mission teams, even if they're not able to complete the whole arc.
2. Award alignment credit for completing 'Villain' or 'Hero' marked missions.
Arc missions are usually marked for which alignment they're supposed to fall for, in a way that predates the current tip alignment system. However, if a player completes a villainous mission with a team, allow him to apply a tick of 'Villainy' on his alignment meter so that he can continue to build credit to the thrice-weekly morality mission. You could even go so far as to award 'partial' ticks so that, say, 2 regular arc missions would grant the same alignment shift as 1 tip alignment missions.
3. Up the rate of after-mission recipe awards so that with more people on the team, players are much more likely to get a 'Silver' class recipe.
Allow a small chance of 'Gold recipes' to drop in this roll as well... again only when a mission is completed by a team.
Right now, I think it's a 1 in 8 chance for a silver class recipe. I'd suggest dropping that to 1in6 for 2 players, 1 in 4 for 3 players, 1 in 3 for 4 players, and then 1 in 2 for any larger teams.
I'm certain that you guys have lots more suggestions, some of them even more easily workable than these. Share?