What's missing/wrong with the missions system?

[Steve Saber]

Some mining missions for us non-hunters would be nice. :P

[HardWrath]

More diversity, complexity, and depth.

The grind missions to kill X amount of a certain mob are great but they get dull and are repetitive. Keep them but add depth to them by educating the player about the history and origins of the mob, its capabilities, or "rumors" about the mob. When applicable, cause the avatar to have to hunt the mob across some or all of its mob spawn locations.

As previously request, bring Robot Beacon Missions back. This should be a priority since they were in the past a favorite. With space obviously the Beacon Missions can be more complex and robust. The team component is part of the reason why Beacons were popular.

Create other missions that require people work together as a team. We should be at a continuous on-going war with the Robots. There should be robot bases of varying difficulty that avatars can infiltrate in groups in order to kill a robot "boss" or destroy a strategic target. A team should really have to strategize in order to complete a mission.

For example, a robot base would have several layers of defense and the robots would have built it in a strategic location such as a mountain range. There would be an exterior border fence with turrets installed at the entrance. They would have surface to air weapons, a radar system, and they would have forward scout positions. Inside the base would be both air and ground troops and attacking the base in the wrong way would result in an undefeatable counter attack by a relentless swarm of the most difficult robots, or death by some kind of defense system.

So the team would have to start by killing and looting the forward scout tower, which usually has low-mid level bots. They would also have to destroy a hardened fixed object in the lookout post itself such as a communication terminal. It would have enough HP (5000 HP) to justify the chance of a decent loot quantity which would usually contain generic stuff like wood, metal, or components, but at lucky times contain an item or global. Destroying the lookout post object is also what would start the mission and then would give each person on the team a map of the robot base.

Of course the destruction of the lookout post wont go unnoticed so the base would automatically deploy a system to prevent any other avatars from entering the area around the base. The team now has 15 minutes to complete the next task, otherwise the base command center will sound the intruder alarm when the lookout post fails to check in.

With the map the team would then need to figure out how to correctly attack the base, eliminate base defense systems in a certain order, and then get inside. Of course the map wouldn’t include instructions on how to destroy the base.

They would then Mind Force teleport to a position (found on the map) outside the main base where the Radar Station is located. Any other method of approach would trigger the base's defensive systems and cause massive troop deployment (spawn) of robot troops. Once the team is at the correct spot they would have to kill the exterior bots, the interior bots, and destroy two hardend objects such as the station's power supply and communication counsel. Doing so would prompt a back up generator to start coming on line which would take 5 minutes.

The team now has 5 minutes to get outside to the poorly defended Backup Generator to destroy and loot it. This would prompt a maintenance team to be sent out which takes 30 minutes to complete repairs. Now the radar is down which allows the team to approach the base entrance.

The team now has 30 minutes to enter the base and destroy a Power Relay Station inside, but first the team has to destroy the two exterior turrets and penetrate the main gate. Since the turrets are impossible to destroy from the ground (range, reload, and damage ability), the team has to spawn VTOLs or Quads, fly to the turrets, and attack from the air. They will need to stay above the turret's range of upward movement. Because of high turret HP the team will need to work together with their aircraft to bombard each of the two turrets since they each have 10K HP. Once the team has destroyed and looted the turrets they can now attack the main gate. The main gate will have high HP as well so the team will need to use their best weapons to destroy and loot it as quickly as possible.

Now the team can enter the base without any resistance and make their way to an internal Power Relay Station but the clock is still ticking. On their short walk to the Power Relay Station, they pass by the surface-to-air weapons that would have destroyed their aircraft had they not taken out the Radar Station first.

Once the team destroys the main counsel in the Power Relay station the power to the base will now be off. This causes lots of drones, droka, warrior etc to appear throughout the base. From here it can be very much like a beacon where the team has to go through the inside of the base, kill everything, kill the boss, etc and then they have time to go open containers of loot or whatever.

[Xen]

I'd like a few hundred kills in each of my open missions since I wasn't online to get thousands of free kills due to that bug/EXPLOIT which apparently is not going to be fixed.

[Grrrrr]

ive finished feff iron and bronze,est iron,atrox iron and bronze,very close to finishing sumima iron
i like the grindingaspect,i really dont care about storytelling at all..id wish you guys made more silver and gold missions ,lots of hardcore hunters have finished the bronze missions

i know for me the missions made me grind 10 hours a day again,they reinspired me to hunt,
skillrewards are great but make the endmission on an mob(goldmission) reward some sort of item

What he said

[fluske]

a flaw in the current missions is that hunters that finish the mission first get punished

i was the first hunter to finish feff bronze and esto iron,and i was in the dark regarding the skill tt rewards

whenwe get the 3 choices for the rewards it should not only state which kind of skill but also the tt worth

for instance,i will finish the sumima mission in about 2 days..
it is known that the rewards are athletics(135 ped tt),supportweapon (100 ped tt) and diagnosis(no information about how much tt reward yet)

now,id like to choose diagnosis,but if my reward is ..say 60-70 tt diagnosis i would have much rather choosen the athletics reward

so in principle...by not specifying the reward the hunters that finish the missions first(and thus the most loyal hunters) are worse off then the people that wait till all the information about the rewards have been posted

[Kpeters]

Kim, I'm glad you're asking about this.

There's a number of issues with the missions on Gateway for new Calypso players, which could use some work - particularly since the change to the mining equipment.

If you have an opportunity to do so, we'd appreciate you taking a look at the Calypso Guides forum on planetcalypsoforum.com.

Regards, Serica

Oh don't even get me started with that. Those missions need A LOT more attention on the mission itself and the text shown to the newbies. Very confusing.

[narfi]

I would like to see some missons run by MA and not planet partners which would tie each of the planets and space together.

"The Hitchhikers Guide To Entropia"

or something like that, not just missions to go to special locations on each planet and space, but unique activities 'grinding' and adventure and social.

narfi

[fishface]

I think that there could be a lot done to improve the missions. When missions were first implemented, it was said to be in response to a lot of players having asked for missions. However, I think that MA misinterpreted this. The reason that many of the players wanted missions was that in certain other games, missions are used as a way to farm money. You go do the mission, you get a reward. you do it again, you get more reward. Then they use it to build up a bankroll.
So when people kept asking for missions, they were really asking for a way to make money. Now I see people coming into the game and ask: well if there's no ped value to the rewards, why do them?
The underlying concept of the mission system was poor to start with.

However, since MA did develop a mission system, they should make use of it. One of the biggest problems now is that you have to go all over the map to collect the missions, and that's a PITA. I would like to see a central mission broker, some organization to the different iron missions, some mining missions, some better story line missions, some missions that involve some level of having to think to finish the mission, some missions where you need to collect different items, some where your decisions in the mission affect further missions. some unique rewards, etc

It would also be good if some of the missions could give unique clothing, MF chips, diplomas, guns, etc, and even make it so that there are 200 different types of reward items, and when you finish the mission it gives a random one to you. Maybe make that the way that new MF chips are introduced to the game. Imagination is the key. The sky is the limit.

[KikkiJikki]

It's kinda dumb to give fragments as a mission reward. "thanks for completing this mission, here's a pile of useless stuff that you have too much of already"

Also I tried getting to that link Serice shared but got a permissions error. Also tried to search for it within PCF without any luck. perhaps I am missing something there.

Regards,
KikkiJikki

[Serica]

It's kinda dumb to give fragments as a mission reward. "thanks for completing this mission, here's a pile of useless stuff that you have too much of already"

Also I tried getting to that link Serice shared but got a permissions error. Also tried to search for it within PCF without any luck. perhaps I am missing something there.

Regards,
KikkiJikki

It's a link to the private Calypso Guides sub-forum on planetcalypsoforum.com. Kim can arrange access to it through 711.