Re: Level requirements for storyline missions

Even as a level 50 EPN operative, my chances of completing every single mission is pretty much slashed, unless I am lucky enough to find a player willing to help out like MindsweepX. Problem is not every single player has connections, nor knows when each server has a "hot jack-in timeslot" because pretty much 90% of us are either in school, college, or have a job. Real life comes first, and I barely have enough time for this game as it is. Right now, I'm jaded enough to cancel my subscription two months from now if this system stays in place permanentlyh. I've been around since the end of Nightfall, and this game is not solo-friendly anymore (don't say "Use facebook/Myspace/etc.". I only see ten lvl 50 Zion/EPN players max if I'm lucky enough, and only have three active faction members whenever I log in, which means my chances of enjoying the content are pretty much nill.).

I wonder if the new archive reward will require your org's 11.3 validation ticket plus the other six standard tokens (3 orgs' 11.1 and 11.2 tokens)?  Thereby continuing this new system's exclusionary nature.

I thought the tokens can't be traded?

Bayamos wrote:

I thought the tokens can't be traded?

Right.  But you can't get other orgs' validation ticket.  So you can get the 6 standard tokens from all orgs, enabling you to see the other two org's missions, but there isn't anything set up for that from 11.3 on.  So unless you have 3 50's in all 3 orgs you're still gonna be S.O.L.....archives notwithstanding.

Well looks like 12.1 will be set in International, starting in Ikeburo.  Removing the "Oh noes your character won't be able handle hi lvl areas!!!" rationale for exclusionary criticals.

I wonder if the new archive reward will require your org's 11.3 validation ticket plus the other six standard tokens (3 orgs' 11.1 and 11.2 tokens)?  Thereby continuing this new system's exclusionary nature.

I was under the impression that the new system was going to mean that the mission collectors will be a permenant fixture in the world, meaning those crits could be played anytime -- thus removing the apparent need to archive them. Is that incorrect?

Well with the current level requirement people will still want to see those missions, even if way after there important.

Plus how else would we get new FX?

I don't know, perhaps they're going to stop giving out effects. I'm probably wrong, it's just the impression I get from the way they now been set up with the farm part of the quest process and all. And let's face it, the archivist list for items to sell is getting a bit full. There will certainly be a point when the limit there is reached. Then how will the archive missions be made available?

Of course, I'd love to see the archive mission system continue, so I hope I am wrong.

And again, no one wants to solo anything

Speak for yourself. There is nothing wrong with soloing if the content allows for it =P. Especially now given the number of players in game at any given point outside of peak US hours.

Chuui wrote:

I don't know, perhaps they're going to stop giving out effects. I'm probably wrong, it's just the impression I get from the way they now been set up with the farm part of the quest process and all. And let's face it, the archivist list for items to sell is getting a bit full. There will certainly be a point when the limit there is reached. Then how will the archive missions be made available?

Of course, I'd love to see the archive mission system continue, so I hope I am wrong.

And again, no one wants to solo anything

Speak for yourself. There is nothing wrong with soloing if the content allows for it =P. Especially now given the number of players in game at any given point outside of peak US hours.

Heh out of context.  The archives especially are one of the best DIY things ingame. 

And Zeac, I hope I'm wrong, but looks to me if you want to experience 11.3.3 from the perspective of any other org your answer is going to be, "Go powergrind another 50, lol."

Villemar_MxO wrote:

Well looks like 12.1 will be set in International, starting in Ikeburo.  Removing the "Oh noes your character won't be able handle hi lvl areas!!!" rationale for exclusionary criticals.

It still doesn't solve the ACTUAL problem of being too low a level to DO the final mission.

M45T3RM1ND wrote:

Villemar_MxO wrote:

Well looks like 12.1 will be set in International, starting in Ikeburo.  Removing the "Oh noes your character won't be able handle hi lvl areas!!!" rationale for exclusionary criticals.

It still doesn't solve the ACTUAL problem of being too low a level to DO the final mission.

Correct!  The thing is, we could easily have our storyline content tripled by removing level restrictions (not rep restrictions or farming requirements!) from this new approach.

Villemar_MxO wrote:

M45T3RM1ND wrote:

Villemar_MxO wrote:

Well looks like 12.1 will be set in International, starting in Ikeburo.  Removing the "Oh noes your character won't be able handle hi lvl areas!!!" rationale for exclusionary criticals.

It still doesn't solve the ACTUAL problem of being too low a level to DO the final mission.

Correct!  The thing is, we could easily have our storyline content tripled by removing level restrictions (not rep restrictions or farming requirements) from this new situation.

But if you have to have a team of 50's just to make it through the final mission, doesn't that amount to the same thing as a level/rep requirement? One is practical while the other is applicable.

ShiXinFeng wrote:

Villemar_MxO wrote:

M45T3RM1ND wrote:

Villemar_MxO wrote:

Well looks like 12.1 will be set in International, starting in Ikeburo.  Removing the "Oh noes your character won't be able handle hi lvl areas!!!" rationale for exclusionary criticals.

It still doesn't solve the ACTUAL problem of being too low a level to DO the final mission.

Correct!  The thing is, we could easily have our storyline content tripled by removing level restrictions (not rep restrictions or farming requirements) from this new situation.

But if you have to have a team of 50's just to make it through the final mission, doesn't that amount to the same thing as a level/rep requirement? One is practical while the other is applicable.

You had mentioned that upthread...I've only been able to do the Merv crits, and in 11.3.3 the Merovingian says, "Meh, I'm washing my hands of this Danielle Wright/BIP business.  Let Zion and the Machines deal thith them."  So, in Zion 11.3.3 is it suggested that the operative kill Wright?  Or is it a requirement for completing Zion's 11.3.3?  The latter would be alarming to say the least. 

I still do think its more than fair and appropriate for a team to be needed to kill Wright to obtain the Decel bits for the 50 wireframe glasses, though.

Cadsuane wrote:

Purely for the record; there are players who have characters affected/excluded the same way who aren't complaining about it. 

Sorry, I've been busy.

I would definately like to see the level requirements removed. I've got a Machinist and a Zionite alt on various servers and I was more than a little dismayed to see this change happen, especially since that would mean having to power-level those alts, and that's something I'm really not a fan of doing with my characters.

I still do think its more than fair and appropriate for a team to be needed to kill Wright to obtain the Decel bits for the 50 wireframe glasses, though.

This is pretty much the only thing I disagree with (and to make it clear, I also think the level requirements were a poor move too). Given the ever dwindling number of players, to then shut off more of the content/awards from those who simply are unable to find others to help them, is just a poor move. An alternate means for farming should be supplied for those who have no choice but to solo - even if it's against NPCs with a far lower drop rate than say the ones in place for the groups to attack.

When most of the content in MxO is perfectly soloable I don't really see the problem of making some things that require a group to complete.

Cadsuane wrote:

When most of the content in MxO is perfectly soloable I don't really see the problem of making some things that require a group to complete.

Unless you have a faction that loves to play the game 24/7 without dealing with real life, you're royally screwed. As I mentioned in multiple posts, I was around since Nightfall and had a lot of fun with the game, but the recent set of updates have been consistently leaving a sour taste in my mouth. Right now, the overall interest in the game has been so diminished I only see ten to twelve players on my buddy list tops whenever I jack in. I've already mentioned that I don't have the time commitment to jack in as much as I'd like to considering that I have to worry about real life than wait for 5+ hours or so just to get a reliable partner to help me out, or jack in for only ten minutes before I have to take off for martial arts lessons or work. Forcing group work for critical missions just already pushed me away as it is considering the maximum team size I can only take ranges from two to three teammates from my most active faction members depending on whether or not I can jack in around the same time as them. Hell, doing one standard mission solo as it is forced the whole game to rely on luck rather than my skill.

This is a multiplayer game. 

Besides, if you can scrounge up a couple of mates for a couple of hours, as you say, then you can get anything you like. 

Cadsuane wrote:

This is a multiplayer game. 

Besides, if you can scrounge up a couple of mates for a couple of hours, as you say, then you can get anything you like. 

Regardless of this being a multiplayer game, it doesn't mean someone should be *FORCED* to get a friend to help out on the mission. I jack in only to see how many of the people I know are online. If I see less than ten people on my buddy list in terms of who's in-game or not, it's not worth my time. Getting a reliable level 50 Zion/EPN friendly player is as common as a needle in a haystack, and this is coming from someone that lives in the same time zone as the devs.

Canbus wrote:

Regardless of this being a multiplayer game, it doesn't mean someone should be *FORCED* to get a friend to help out on the mission.

I'm sensing a fundamental flaw in this sentence. 

Besides, if you can scrounge up a couple of mates for a couple of hours, as you say, then you can get anything you like.

Cadsuane wrote:

Canbus wrote:

Regardless of this being a multiplayer game, it doesn't mean someone should be *FORCED* to get a friend to help out on the mission.

I'm sensing a fundamental flaw in this sentence. 

Besides, if you can scrounge up a couple of mates for a couple of hours, as you say, then you can get anything you like.

Easier said than done. My schedule just doesn't allow me to do so period, and by the time I'm able to spend a few hours on the game, my Italian faction members are already sleeping or at work. Things don't help much now that 98% of my friends are gone due to real life. I could just as well cancel my subscription altogether.

When most of the content in MxO is perfectly soloable I don't really see the problem of making some things that require a group to complete.

Most is not all. And why should players such as myself be denied access to some of the content simply because we tend to play at a time of day when there are no other suitable players online?

Cadsuane wrote:

Canbus wrote:

Regardless of this being a multiplayer game, it doesn't mean someone should be *FORCED* to get a friend to help out on the mission.

I'm sensing a fundamental flaw in this sentence. 

Besides, if you can scrounge up a couple of mates for a couple of hours, as you say, then you can get anything you like.

As it stands, to simply access new storyline content only, it is possible for a lvl 50 to solo these new critical quests to get a 11.3.3 Validation ticket.  If that were your only goal.  Are you suggesting that this shouldn't be the case?

If that's what youre saying then its the classic case of adding insult to injury.  Going from 15 critical missions per update to 3, and on top of that making at least the last one un-soloable.  That's insane!

Besides theres already plenty of team-required farming content ingame.  Shadow pills, GM tokens, Kunoichi dolls, Decel bits, Seraphim shoes, Reader earpieces, OD bandos, Agent tie clips, etc. 

The .3 missions are supposed to be soloable, but challenging. People play differently (just talking about solo here), and my guess is that for some people they were really pretty easy, and others found them nigh impossible. It's sort of hard to strike a perfect balance there, but I'd prefer not to make them just generally easy, because that seems like...eh why even throw in enemies at all, I suppose; why not just post mission text instead of actually making a mission and testing it and bug fixing it and so forth? Well because this is a story, but more specifically it's a game that has a story, and you're supposed to play it, which means that it's supposed to have some sort of challenge to overcome.

Of course I could be wrong about the actual difficulty level of those missions. But then again we have people who can solo or nearly solo the much tougher org area sims, so hey. When 12.1 came out I didn't notice many people saying the .3 missions just couldn't be soloed. Were those people all playing in groups? That wasn't my impression, but maybe I misinterpreted what everyone was doing. I hope the rest of you will let me know if I was wrong about this, because currently I don't know any better, and am a bit confused that there are a few people here all these weeks later saying that the missions are just impossible. Are these people not wearing good gear? Not fully loaded? Not carrying consumables for those nasty pinches that may come along? Are they just not used to having to work to win a fight? Or are the missions actually hopeless? I just can't tell from these late comments.

Mm oh and regarding all the level requirement arguing, I suggest waiting for 12.1, because that will give you a lot more ammunition one way or the other. It has three or so other types of things that I was able to do precisely because I knew the target player's minimum level. And I've seen people say that regardless of how tough the enemies are, I shouldn't set a required level, so people could at least try it, but that just isn't something I'm interested in doing; it's the equivalent of selling someone a ticket and being pretty darn sure they're just going to get owned. For side quests and things I don't have much of an issue with that, although I've tried to start putting suggested level/group size in details on items like the Playground toy boxes, but I think for the "main" story stuff it's important to be unmistakably clear about where the difficulty bar is set. I don't want to tell a level 20 player "look! here's the vital mission where you rescue Neo from the cave trolls!" and then force them to run through Industry Square or something to do it; on the other hand, I *do* want to be able to force level 40 or 50 players to run through Industry Square (naked, preferably, but I haven't found a reliable way to enforce that yet).

There are also a lot of people who seem concerned that level requirements are shutting off new players from the story, but these same people also tend to be those who have now found they can't use their lowbie alts to get the story from all three sides. Coincidence? Hm. I haven't seen any actual new players complaining about it, but maybe it could be argued that they just don't know any better, or haven't found the forums yet, or are just figments of our imagination to begin with, or something.

Anyway about the alt thing: I'm glad people are interested enough in the story to want to play it from all three sides at once, but you are extra special people, and not the target the game was designed for from the beginning. The "perfect world" intent is to make the content engaging for a player who is playing *one* of the three mission orgs. If you want to go the extra x2 miles and do it for the other two orgs too, hey, that's great--but I'm not going to dumb down the single-org experience just so that it's super easy for you to play three sides at once.

I'm not surprised that there's some confusion about that, because the mission system's auto-scaling that we've been relying on all this time is really quite lenient--much more lenient than it was ever intended to be, for those who might be wondering; a single three-chevron NPC of the player's level was supposed to be a very difficult fight--hasn't quite worked out that way, but that's the difficulty theory the mission system follows, if I just let it do its own thing.

Now, you could say that there's three or however many years of precedent saying that I shouldn't try to muck with the easiness, or at least not for the stuff involving the main story, but I simply don't agree with either of those statements. The story *is* important, and for that very reason it shouldn't be easy--at least not all of it. It is pretty front-loaded to the easy end, incidentally; the cinematic is the workhorse, and that's pretty easy to beat, and then the .1 mission will tend to have more "story content" than the .2 and .3 missions (or however many .x's there may be), although I will sometimes also (as with Wright in 11.3) save up a special bit of story for the very difficult "extra credit" part at the end, which to me seems only fair for those who could pull it off.

Which reminds me: getting back to the soloable vs group thing, what I shoot for overall is a mix. This is an MMO, and it seems to me there should be some group activities, just hoping for that lucky day when players log in by the truckload; on the other hand, the majority of the things I add are intended to be soloable--but not necessarily easily soloable. And while it sounds like a great solution to say that group things should also be winnable by some optional solo method, despite what you may think that would come close to doubling our dev/test requirements for quest creation--not to mention somewhat defeating the purpose of having group challenges in the first place--so that really isn't an option for us.

I think more along the line of the .3 being soloable... I on my own, cannot solo it, but if I have someone with me, and can keep it in interlock, we can pretty much take it down, thats if all the debuffs go throw properly. Some people may be able to solo it because they understand how the fighting system works better. People like me, all I know is that the pretty purple and red hacks does what needs to be done.. hehe. I've never been really good with the fighting, but Ive gotten better. Ive heard other people that has had trouble soloing it, but I guess it can be done, if you're lucky enough to get all the right moves in.

The merv missions are soloable. 2 lvl 53's at the end. Can be hard but soloable. Never tried soloing the zion set, saw it was 1 lvl 55 and couldn't be bothered so i got 1 extra person with me to help.

As people have been saying, you're a low level, be it an alt or just new, a lvl 50 can always invite you and run through the mishs at your speed.

Rare, i just hope that if we are doing another thing like the last set (getting the bits) mervs ain't dumped at the 2nd rarest frag again. Swap about please  (couldn't belive zions was only bit 1's, i had 25 of them by the time i got enough 3's)

Eh sorry to break it to you but the drop chance was identical for each of those bits.

I don't happen to be doing something like that in 12.1 as far as I recall--having a set where different orgs need different numbers from the set. Actually for the most part in 12.1 the different orgs are each doing different activities, so there will be actual inequalities in difficulty level between the orgs this time, rather than just imaginary ones. ;) Not that I intend for them to be unequal really--I tried to make them roughly equivalent--but the challenges are different and inevitably one will be easier for someone than another.

Rarebit wrote:

The .3 missions are supposed to be soloable, but challenging. People play differently (just talking about solo here), and my guess is that for some people they were really pretty easy, and others found them nigh impossible. It's sort of hard to strike a perfect balance there, but I'd prefer not to make them just generally easy, because that seems like...eh why even throw in enemies at all, I suppose; why not just post mission text instead of actually making a mission and testing it and bug fixing it and so forth? Well because this is a story, but more specifically it's a game that has a story, and you're supposed to play it, which means that it's supposed to have some sort of challenge to overcome.

Of course I could be wrong about the actual difficulty level of those missions. But then again we have people who can solo or nearly solo the much tougher org area sims, so hey. When 12.1 came out I didn't notice many people saying the .3 missions just couldn't be soloed. Were those people all playing in groups? That wasn't my impression, but maybe I misinterpreted what everyone was doing. I hope the rest of you will let me know if I was wrong about this, because currently I don't know any better, and am a bit confused that there are a few people here all these weeks later saying that the missions are just impossible. Are these people not wearing good gear? Not fully loaded? Not carrying consumables for those nasty pinches that may come along? Are they just not used to having to work to win a fight? Or are the missions actually hopeless? I just can't tell from these late comments.

Mm oh and regarding all the level requirement arguing, I suggest waiting for 12.1, because that will give you a lot more ammunition one way or the other. It has three or so other types of things that I was able to do precisely because I knew the target player's minimum level. And I've seen people say that regardless of how tough the enemies are, I shouldn't set a required level, so people could at least try it, but that just isn't something I'm interested in doing; it's the equivalent of selling someone a ticket and being pretty darn sure they're just going to get owned. For side quests and things I don't have much of an issue with that, although I've tried to start putting suggested level/group size in details on items like the Playground toy boxes, but I think for the "main" story stuff it's important to be unmistakably clear about where the difficulty bar is set. I don't want to tell a level 20 player "look! here's the vital mission where you rescue Neo from the cave trolls!" and then force them to run through Industry Square or something to do it; on the other hand, I *do* want to be able to force level 40 or 50 players to run through Industry Square (naked, preferably, but I haven't found a reliable way to enforce that yet).

There are also a lot of people who seem concerned that level requirements are shutting off new players from the story, but these same people also tend to be those who have now found they can't use their lowbie alts to get the story from all three sides. Coincidence? Hm. I haven't seen any actual new players complaining about it, but maybe it could be argued that they just don't know any better, or haven't found the forums yet, or are just figments of our imagination to begin with, or something.

Anyway about the alt thing: I'm glad people are interested enough in the story to want to play it from all three sides at once, but you are extra special people, and not the target the game was designed for from the beginning. The "perfect world" intent is to make the content engaging for a player who is playing *one* of the three mission orgs. If you want to go the extra x2 miles and do it for the other two orgs too, hey, that's great--but I'm not going to dumb down the single-org experience just so that it's super easy for you to play three sides at once.

I'm not surprised that there's some confusion about that, because the mission system's auto-scaling that we've been relying on all this time is really quite lenient--much more lenient than it was ever intended to be, for those who might be wondering; a single three-chevron NPC of the player's level was supposed to be a very difficult fight--hasn't quite worked out that way, but that's the difficulty theory the mission system follows, if I just let it do its own thing.

Now, you could say that there's three or however many years of precedent saying that I shouldn't try to muck with the easiness, or at least not for the stuff involving the main story, but I simply don't agree with either of those statements. The story *is* important, and for that very reason it shouldn't be easy--at least not all of it. It is pretty front-loaded to the easy end, incidentally; the cinematic is the workhorse, and that's pretty easy to beat, and then the .1 mission will tend to have more "story content" than the .2 and .3 missions (or however many .x's there may be), although I will sometimes also (as with Wright in 11.3) save up a special bit of story for the very difficult "extra credit" part at the end, which to me seems only fair for those who could pull it off.

Which reminds me: getting back to the soloable vs group thing, what I shoot for overall is a mix. This is an MMO, and it seems to me there should be some group activities, just hoping for that lucky day when players log in by the truckload; on the other hand, the majority of the things I add are intended to be soloable--but not necessarily easily soloable. And while it sounds like a great solution to say that group things should also be winnable by some optional solo method, despite what you may think that would come close to doubling our dev/test requirements for quest creation--not to mention somewhat defeating the purpose of having group challenges in the first place--so that really isn't an option for us.

Thanks for getting into the conversation, Rare. I've been hoping that you would. But you're basically saying "well, you don't have time to grind your RSI from 41 to 50 because you work 40-60 weeks on night shift, so you're pretty much S.O.L."  And so, with that, I find myself even mre frustrated than before. I've been a dedicated player for 3.5 years. Now, I'm really not sure I wanna stick around. If it wasn't for my love of the story, I'd have very little incentive left to stay as it is. So, what's a player to do?

There is nothing that states these missions cannot be experienced in the convenience of a mission team.  If you do not meet the requirements via level or reputation, team with someone who does.  The only real reason to solo these missions is for the rewards, imho.

Teamwork wins.  Without it, what's the point of an MMO?

NOTE:  If timezones create situations where there are very few on to team with you, then I apologize for what could be considered an inconsiderate opinion above.

Garu wrote:

There is nothing that states these missions cannot be experienced in the convenience of a mission team.  If you do not meet the requirements via level or reputation, team with someone who does.  The only real reason to solo these missions is for the rewards, imho.

Teamwork wins.  Without it, what's the point of an MMO?

NOTE:  If timezones create situations where there are very few on to team with you, then I apologize for what could be considered an inconsiderate opinion above.

Not time zones. Work schedule. I work night shift, so my shift is from 11:30p - 8:00a, then any time I have for gaming is from 9:00a to noon, est. You see my predicament, yes?

Rarebit wrote:

Eh sorry to break it to you but the drop chance was identical for each of those bits.

I don't happen to be doing something like that in 12.1 as far as I recall--having a set where different orgs need different numbers from the set. Actually for the most part in 12.1 the different orgs are each doing different activities, so there will be actual inequalities in difficulty level between the orgs this time, rather than just imaginary ones. Not that I intend for them to be unequal really--I tried to make them roughly equivalent--but the challenges are different and inevitably one will be easier for someone than another.

Ah, i thought it went bit 1 most common - 4 being rarest. Just cause the way i had farmed for them, i had like 20 odd 1's, stack of 2's, 14 3's and 10 4's. Must have been just my luck he he

Like the sounds of it being a bit diff, per org aswell. Intresting

First of all excuse my bluntness i'm tired of arguing how rediculous level restricting the main story content is... Lets not even start talking about the method behind them, its not after what this threads about.

Rarebit wrote:

The .3 missions are supposed to be soloable, but challenging. People play differently (just talking about solo here), and my guess is that for some people they were really pretty easy, and others found them nigh impossible. It's sort of hard to strike a perfect balance there, but I'd prefer not to make them just generally easy, because that seems like...eh why even throw in enemies at all, I suppose; why not just post mission text instead of actually making a mission and testing it and bug fixing it and so forth? Well because this is a story, but more specifically it's a game that has a story, and you're supposed to play it, which means that it's supposed to have some sort of challenge to overcome.

Its the main important story... but at the moment who cares if your not 50 go cry to someone else to do it.

Of course I could be wrong about the actual difficulty level of those missions. But then again we have people who can solo or nearly solo the much tougher org area sims, so hey. When 12.1 came out I didn't notice many people saying the .3 missions just couldn't be soloed. Were those people all playing in groups? That wasn't my impression, but maybe I misinterpreted what everyone was doing. I hope the rest of you will let me know if I was wrong about this, because currently I don't know any better, and am a bit confused that there are a few people here all these weeks later saying that the missions are just impossible. Are these people not wearing good gear? Not fully loaded? Not carrying consumables for those nasty pinches that may come along? Are they just not used to having to work to win a fight? Or are the missions actually hopeless? I just can't tell from these late comments.

No i wasnt even aware it was soloable, Hell i've bearly even touched the .3 missions because i'm bored with grinding the first few missions for items... yay.

Mm oh and regarding all the level requirement arguing, I suggest waiting for 12.1, because that will give you a lot more ammunition one way or the other. It has three or so other types of things that I was able to do precisely because I knew the target player's minimum level. And I've seen people say that regardless of how tough the enemies are, I shouldn't set a required level, so people could at least try it, but that just isn't something I'm interested in doing; it's the equivalent of selling someone a ticket and being pretty darn sure they're just going to get owned.

I don't care how tough the story is, i always thought level dictated how developed your character was not how much of the story you could access. Tell me... In the Death of the destroyer did they restrict the ability to get a flint gun to fight against the level 50 Assassin to newbs? Nope everyone got the mish' everyone completed them and everyone got one. Granted the gun did static damage but it still included everyone.

For side quests and things I don't have much of an issue with that, although I've tried to start putting suggested level/group size in details on items like the Playground toy boxes, but I think for the "main" story stuff it's important to be unmistakably clear about where the difficulty bar is set. I don't want to tell a level 20 player "look! here's the vital mission where you rescue Neo from the cave trolls!" and then force them to run through Industry Square or something to do it; on the other hand, I *do* want to be able to force level 40 or 50 players to run through Industry Square (naked, preferably, but I haven't found a reliable way to enforce that yet).

I completely understand, but this is where on the mission description you have a big bold red line saying "Critical mission: This mission contains a difficult set of tasks not to be trailed by the wiry". If something is important does it really have to be difficult... Ok maybe it does, but Does difficult have to mean level 50+ NO. Hell no. And i think thats where this fails.

There are also a lot of people who seem concerned that level requirements are shutting off new players from the story, but these same people also tend to be those who have now found they can't use their lowbie alts to get the story from all three sides. Coincidence? Hm. I haven't seen any actual new players complaining about it, but maybe it could be argued that they just don't know any better, or haven't found the forums yet, or are just figments of our imagination to begin with, or something.

Where was the critical missions before? In everyones mission system GUI. Where are they now?... As far as newbies are aware without direction the only missions you can do are the static boring ones you get stuck with... Great incentive, making it look real good. Hell even the archives are hidden without much signature. Thats why no newbies have complained they don't even know they exist. You shouldn't have to hunt for the story-line either it should be easy to see (thats a whole other kettle...)

I'm sorry but to stereotype everyone as upset alt users is darn right ignorant. Do you honestly believe that nearly every low level is a level 50 alt? I don't think so, and to see a comment like that has really diminished my opinion of how you regard this game. Even if thats not how you implied that, i'd sure as hell not like to think thats the way you look at it.

Edit: I went and asked a few new players who are coming close to 30 did they know anything about the critical mission system and how to use it.. I got replies of sorry cant help you there and To quote another: "don't you just get enough rep and you get one now and then.." When i explained what the system was like he had this to say:

Him: "So now you have to go downtown to get crits? I'm going to get the access codes.."

Me: "You cant they all now have a level requirement aswell."

Him: " "

Just one of many...

Anyway about the alt thing: I'm glad people are interested enough in the story to want to play it from all three sides at once, but you are extra special people, and not the target the game was designed for from the beginning. The "perfect world" intent is to make the content engaging for a player who is playing *one* of the three mission orgs. If you want to go the extra x2 miles and do it for the other two orgs too, hey, that's great--but I'm not going to dumb down the single-org experience just so that it's super easy for you to play three sides at once.

Good don't expect you to dumb down the experience... But erm... what experience are we talking about... We cant access it remember?

I'm not surprised that there's some confusion about that, because the mission system's auto-scaling that we've been relying on all this time is really quite lenient--much more lenient than it was ever intended to be, for those who might be wondering; a single three-chevron NPC of the player's level was supposed to be a very difficult fight--hasn't quite worked out that way, but that's the difficulty theory the mission system follows, if I just let it do its own thing.

We've already seen you compensate for its lack of challenge, I did a critical mission earlier merovingian 7. something with a few parts first part contained 11 enemies second contained half that. (Majority of which where 2 chevron) These work around's are enough... 

Now, you could say that there's three or however many years of precedent saying that I shouldn't try to muck with the easiness, or at least not for the stuff involving the main story, but I simply don't agree with either of those statements. The story *is* important, and for that very reason it shouldn't be easy--at least not all of it. It is pretty front-loaded to the easy end, incidentally; the cinematic is the workhorse, and that's pretty easy to beat, and then the .1 mission will tend to have more "story content" than the .2 and .3 missions (or however many .x's there may be), although I will sometimes also (as with Wright in 11.3) save up a special bit of story for the very difficult "extra credit" part at the end, which to me seems only fair for those who could pull it off.

Oh I agree that you can muck with the system regrding missions but changing the method by which the missions are attained is the problem... make them harder to get... hell make the reputation higher. Level requirements are an unnecessary block. I haven't read one convincing argument yet to clarify why it's *Needed* so badly.

The problem i think is that you tried to amalgamate two things and failed. A Quest system, with the critical mission system. Granted i may have one character that i can fully attain these items... But the reason im annoyed is because i have characters across servers, so i'm pretty much like a new player to MXO. So to find after leveling to 30/40 that i cant properly view the story myself without help is a let down. Its not a bit of wonder we lost so many people when we did. I'll take your word for it Rare. I trust you but so far your losing it, you've lost it with others your slowly losing the grip and i'm bloody trying my hardest to understand why. Prove me wrong and save this debacle.

Danger_Frog1471 wrote:

First of all excuse my bluntness i'm tired of arguing how rediculous level restricting the main story content is... Lets not even start talking about the method behind them, its not after what this threads about.

Rarebit wrote:

The .3 missions are supposed to be soloable, but challenging. People play differently (just talking about solo here), and my guess is that for some people they were really pretty easy, and others found them nigh impossible. It's sort of hard to strike a perfect balance there, but I'd prefer not to make them just generally easy, because that seems like...eh why even throw in enemies at all, I suppose; why not just post mission text instead of actually making a mission and testing it and bug fixing it and so forth? Well because this is a story, but more specifically it's a game that has a story, and you're supposed to play it, which means that it's supposed to have some sort of challenge to overcome.

Its the main important story... but at the moment who cares if your not 50 go cry to someone else to do it.

Of course I could be wrong about the actual difficulty level of those missions. But then again we have people who can solo or nearly solo the much tougher org area sims, so hey. When 12.1 came out I didn't notice many people saying the .3 missions just couldn't be soloed. Were those people all playing in groups? That wasn't my impression, but maybe I misinterpreted what everyone was doing. I hope the rest of you will let me know if I was wrong about this, because currently I don't know any better, and am a bit confused that there are a few people here all these weeks later saying that the missions are just impossible. Are these people not wearing good gear? Not fully loaded? Not carrying consumables for those nasty pinches that may come along? Are they just not used to having to work to win a fight? Or are the missions actually hopeless? I just can't tell from these late comments.

No i wasnt even aware it was soloable, Hell i've bearly even touched the .3 missions because i'm bored with grinding the first few missions for items... yay.

Mm oh and regarding all the level requirement arguing, I suggest waiting for 12.1, because that will give you a lot more ammunition one way or the other. It has three or so other types of things that I was able to do precisely because I knew the target player's minimum level. And I've seen people say that regardless of how tough the enemies are, I shouldn't set a required level, so people could at least try it, but that just isn't something I'm interested in doing; it's the equivalent of selling someone a ticket and being pretty darn sure they're just going to get owned.

I don't care how tough the story is, i always thought level dictated how developed your character was not how much of the story you could access. Tell me... In the Death of the destroyer did they restrict the ability to get a flint gun to fight against the level 50 Assassin to newbs? Nope everyone got the mish' everyone completed them and everyone got one. Granted the gun did static damage but it still included everyone.

For side quests and things I don't have much of an issue with that, although I've tried to start putting suggested level/group size in details on items like the Playground toy boxes, but I think for the "main" story stuff it's important to be unmistakably clear about where the difficulty bar is set. I don't want to tell a level 20 player "look! here's the vital mission where you rescue Neo from the cave trolls!" and then force them to run through Industry Square or something to do it; on the other hand, I *do* want to be able to force level 40 or 50 players to run through Industry Square (naked, preferably, but I haven't found a reliable way to enforce that yet).

I completely understand, but this is where on the mission description you have a big bold red line saying "Critical mission: This mission contains a difficult set of tasks not to be trailed by the wiry". If something is important does it really have to be difficult... Ok maybe it does, but Does difficult have to mean level 50+ NO. Hell no. And i think thats where this fails.

There are also a lot of people who seem concerned that level requirements are shutting off new players from the story, but these same people also tend to be those who have now found they can't use their lowbie alts to get the story from all three sides. Coincidence? Hm. I haven't seen any actual new players complaining about it, but maybe it could be argued that they just don't know any better, or haven't found the forums yet, or are just figments of our imagination to begin with, or something.

Where was the critical missions before? In everyones mission system GUI. Where are they now?... As far as newbies are aware without direction the only missions you can do are the static boring ones you get stuck with... Great incentive, making it look real good. Hell even the archives are hidden without much signature. Thats why no newbies have complained they don't even know they exist. You shouldn't have to hunt for the story-line either it should be easy to see (thats a whole other kettle...)

I'm sorry but to stereotype everyone as upset alt users is darn right ignorant. Do you honestly believe that nearly every low level is a level 50 alt? I don't think so, and to see a comment like that has really diminished my opinion of how you regard this game. Even if thats not how you implied that, i'd sure as hell not like to think thats the way you look at it.

Edit: I went and asked a few new players who are coming close to 30 did they know anything about the critical mission system and how to use it.. I got replies of sorry cant help you there and To quote another: "don't you just get enough rep and you get one now and then.." When i explained what the system was like he had this to say:

Him: "So now you have to go downtown to get crits? I'm going to get the access codes.."

Me: "You cant they all now have a level requirement aswell."

Him: " "

Just one of many...

Anyway about the alt thing: I'm glad people are interested enough in the story to want to play it from all three sides at once, but you are extra special people, and not the target the game was designed for from the beginning. The "perfect world" intent is to make the content engaging for a player who is playing *one* of the three mission orgs. If you want to go the extra x2 miles and do it for the other two orgs too, hey, that's great--but I'm not going to dumb down the single-org experience just so that it's super easy for you to play three sides at once.

Good don't expect you to dumb down the experience... But erm... what experience are we talking about... We cant access it remember?

I'm not surprised that there's some confusion about that, because the mission system's auto-scaling that we've been relying on all this time is really quite lenient--much more lenient than it was ever intended to be, for those who might be wondering; a single three-chevron NPC of the player's level was supposed to be a very difficult fight--hasn't quite worked out that way, but that's the difficulty theory the mission system follows, if I just let it do its own thing.

We've already seen you compensate for its lack of challenge, I did a critical mission earlier merovingian 7. something with a few parts first part contained 11 enemies second contained half that. (Majority of which where 2 chevron) These work around's are enough... 

Now, you could say that there's three or however many years of precedent saying that I shouldn't try to muck with the easiness, or at least not for the stuff involving the main story, but I simply don't agree with either of those statements. The story *is* important, and for that very reason it shouldn't be easy--at least not all of it. It is pretty front-loaded to the easy end, incidentally; the cinematic is the workhorse, and that's pretty easy to beat, and then the .1 mission will tend to have more "story content" than the .2 and .3 missions (or however many .x's there may be), although I will sometimes also (as with Wright in 11.3) save up a special bit of story for the very difficult "extra credit" part at the end, which to me seems only fair for those who could pull it off.

Oh I agree that you can muck with the system regrding missions but changing the method by which the missions are attained is the problem... make them harder to get... hell make the reputation higher. Level requirements are an unnecessary block. I haven't read one convincing argument yet to clarify why it's *Needed* so badly.

The problem i think is that you tried to amalgamate two things and failed. A Quest system, with the critical mission system. Granted i may have one character that i can fully attain these items... But the reason im annoyed is because i have characters across servers, so i'm pretty much like a new player to MXO. So to find after leveling to 30/40 that i cant properly view the story myself without help is a let down. Its not a bit of wonder we lost so many people when we did. I'll take your word for it Rare. I trust you but so far your losing it, you've lost it with others your slowly losing the grip and i'm bloody trying my hardest to understand why. Prove me wrong and save this debacle.

(*applause*)

In order to point new players in the right direction (Other than the fact that it is clearly pointed out in the cinematic) maybe make a waypoint indicator you can activate in our mission vendor list thing (whatever it is called) Maybe do the same for archivists to get the pointed at the archives before they know where to look.

Rarebit wrote:

Or are the missions actually hopeless? I just can't tell from these late comments.

I readily admit that I'm not the most adept at the combat system, but I haven't been able to even come close to soloing the 55s.  I've been able to get past them fairly easily with just myself and one other player though.  I would say that's just about right in terms of difficulty if you're looking for something that generally isn't meant to be solo'd but are keeping the population of MxO in mind.

Mm oh and regarding all the level requirement arguing, I suggest waiting for 12.1, because that will give you a lot more ammunition one way or the other. It has three or so other types of things that I was able to do precisely because I knew the target player's minimum level. And I've seen people say that regardless of how tough the enemies are, I shouldn't set a required level, so people could at least try it, but that just isn't something I'm interested in doing; it's the equivalent of selling someone a ticket and being pretty darn sure they're just going to get owned.

Possibly, but even if they get the mission ticket and have to abort because it's just to tough for them it's not a total loss.  First, they do get to experience some of the mission.  Second, they get an idea of what it will take for them to advance.  Think back to Neo in the movies.  In game terms, as a low level he was being told to run from the Agents but that when he was ready (IOW, at a high enough experience level) he wouldn't have to.  This didn't mean that Neo, and other standard operatives, were somehow arbitrarily kept away from ever running into Agents, it just meant that no matter how they tried they wouldn't be able to beat them.

There are also a lot of people who seem concerned that level requirements are shutting off new players from the story, but these same people also tend to be those who have now found they can't use their lowbie alts to get the story from all three sides. Coincidence?

I'm very concerned about the level restriction being in place and all of my active characters are Machinists. *shrug*

Personally, Rarebit's seeming lack of compassion toward the concerns of the playerbase are very offputting. Maybe NCsoft has just spoiled me rotten, because they take ALL player input into consiedration on the City of Heroes team. Maybe it's time to cut down on my MMO expendature.

Danger_Frog1471 wrote:

No i wasnt even aware it was soloable, Hell i've bearly even touched the .3 missions because i'm bored with grinding the first few missions for items... yay.

It's good to know you're interested in the items, but you can always leave those for later and try going through the first time for the story. That will leave you with some additional items that you can use later as you go for the collector rewards.

Also, repeating missions to get the spawns with the drops isn't a technique that I'm going to use all the time. It worked pretty well in the Valkyrja quest according to the feedback I saw at that time, and I was up against a tough deadline for 11.3 that didn't leave me time to experiment with other techniques, so I went with that one.

Danger_Frog1471 wrote:

I don't care how tough the story is, i always thought level dictated how developed your character was not how much of the story you could access. Tell me... In the Death of the destroyer did they restrict the ability to get a flint gun to fight against the level 50 Assassin to newbs? Nope everyone got the mish' everyone completed them and everyone got one. Granted the gun did static damage but it still included everyone.

You've picked pretty much the single example of us doing something like that. Sure I think it was a good idea, but I don't think it makes sense to invent a new level-scaling Achilles heel for every enemy in the game--and I intend to make use of as many enemies are available to me for these story quests.

Danger_Frog1471 wrote:

Where was the critical missions before? In everyones mission system GUI. Where are they now?... As far as newbies are aware without direction the only missions you can do are the static boring ones you get stuck with... Great incentive, making it look real good. Hell even the archives are hidden without much signature. Thats why no newbies have complained they don't even know they exist. You shouldn't have to hunt for the story-line either it should be easy to see (thats a whole other kettle...)

It is another kettle indeed. Our tutorial/UI stuff is baffling for new players, and this has been a big problem we've had in player retention. Unfortunately, changes in this game's UI almost always require a programmer rather than a mere designer such as myself, and programmer time for things other than quick critical tweaks has been severely limited for the past several years--except for the data node stuff, which was an awesome surprise (at least to me) but not something that appears to want to happen again.

EDIT: I suppose I can mention that the new cinematics show the collector locations very clearly for each new subchapter, and that I recently added in pop-up text for new players (it's when they reach a certain level early on--don't remember exactly which) that tells them about the archives. Those are the types of UI I can change myself. So yeah, it is a risk to make content that doesn't run through some of the obvious UI devices like the mission window, but if I stuck myself to those I wouldn't be able to make what I think is more enjoyable content.

Danger_Frog1471 wrote:

I'm sorry but to stereotype everyone as upset alt users is darn right ignorant. Do you honestly believe that nearly every low level is a level 50 alt? I don't think so, and to see a comment like that has really diminished my opinion of how you regard this game. Even if thats not how you implied that, i'd sure as hell not like to think thats the way you look at it.

I didn't, I was referring to the several people who've been doing a large share of the forum complaining about the level requirements. From your comments (in my last quote from you below) about your sub-50 players on other servers and wanting to get the other parts of the story it sounds like you're another of the players who's been used to playing that way, so using yourself as an example, my comment may not have been all that off-base, hm?

Danger_Frog1471 wrote:

Edit: I went and asked a few new players who are coming close to 30 did they know anything about the critical mission system and how to use it.. I got replies of sorry cant help you there and To quote another: "don't you just get enough rep and you get one now and then.." When i explained what the system was like he had this to say:

Him: "So now you have to go downtown to get crits? I'm going to get the access codes.."

Me: "You cant they all now have a level requirement aswell."

Him: " "

Just one of many...

The alternative there (were just the level requirement removed) would have been him rushing Downtown, putting in time to get the node, perhaps while doing some running from the high level street gangs in Downtown, getting the node, getting the mission ticket(s), and very shortly getting owned by NPCs six ways from Sunday. So to make them available to him and similarly situated players I'd have to go back to the old system of fairly generic Richland/Westview missions. Which brings us to the next point:

Danger_Frog1471 wrote:

We've already seen you compensate for its lack of challenge, I did a critical mission earlier merovingian 7. something with a few parts first part contained 11 enemies second contained half that. (Majority of which where 2 chevron) These work around's are enough... 

As a designer, it seems to me that there are only so many times I can make up for the difficulty issue by throwing a mob of NPCs at the player before it starts to get old/ridiculous; it also very much favors AOE-type loadouts--or at any rate, loadouts designed to counter multiple enemies at once--over others. It isn't appropriate to have a large number of NPCs in some story situations, and, furthermore, the more NPCs a mission phase has to spawn, the fewer parts of the city it can use--the International District in particular has relatively few mission areas with rooms that support large numbers of mission spawns.

Danger_Frog1471 wrote:

Oh I agree that you can muck with the system regrding missions but changing the method by which the missions are attained is the problem... make them harder to get... hell make the reputation higher. Level requirements are an unnecessary block. I haven't read one convincing argument yet to clarify why it's *Needed* so badly.

Remember that I said 12.1 will have new illustrations of what level requirements allow me to do in terms of coming up with different ways to run the story adventure. I don't want to go into them now because that would be somewhat spoilerish, and also just reading about it won't give you the same idea as actually trying it out once that release is Live.

EDIT: Oh, I forgot to respond to your point about using reputation instead of level. Two things: first, our reputation system is far more unreliable than our character level system when it gets up into the higher numbers, and second, high rep wouldn't mean squat to that level 55 NPC.

Danger_Frog1471 wrote:

The problem i think is that you tried to amalgamate two things and failed. A Quest system, with the critical mission system. Granted i may have one character that i can fully attain these items... But the reason im annoyed is because i have characters across servers, so i'm pretty much like a new player to MXO. So to find after leveling to 30/40 that i cant properly view the story myself without help is a let down. Its not a bit of wonder we lost so many people when we did. I'll take your word for it Rare. I trust you but so far your losing it, you've lost it with others your slowly losing the grip and i'm bloody trying my hardest to understand why. Prove me wrong and save this debacle.

Combined concurrent user numbers that I see logged in across all three servers have not shown a significant drop since 11.3 went Live. In my casual checking of these numbers I generally only compare peak hours, so it's possible that I'm missing something at other times of day, but a true population drop would tend to affect all time periods. That's not to say that I can predict future population changes, but at any rate at the moment our jacked-in population has continued more or less along our usual no-we-still-don't-have-our-free-trial-yet-darnit lines of the past few years.

It's possible that an unexpected population boost of some kind made up for a loss to keep us level, but I haven't heard that we've received an unusual influx of new players recently that would account for something like that. Over the past year or so there's also been a trend of population shifting from Recursion to Syntax that has tended to skew perception of overall population, although I didn't get the impression that that was what you were reacting to here, at least not primarily.

Rarebit wrote:

Combined concurrent user numbers that I see logged in across all three servers have not shown a significant drop since 11.3 went Live. In my casual checking of these numbers I generally only compare peak hours, so it's possible that I'm missing something at other times of day, but a true population drop would tend to affect all time periods. That's not to say that I can predict future population changes, but at any rate at the moment our jacked-in population has continued more or less along our usual no-we-still-don't-have-our-free-trial-yet-darnit lines of the past few years.

It's possible that an unexpected population boost of some kind made up for a loss to keep us level, but I haven't heard that we've received an unusual influx of new players recently that would account for something like that. Over the past year or so there's also been a trend of population shifting from Recursion to Syntax that has tended to skew perception of overall population, although I didn't get the impression that that was what you were reacting to here, at least not primarily.

Bolding mine: I think that says it all, and much as I hate to do this, I'm begging you along with everyone else: Please, remove the level restrictions on the crit missions.

M45T3RM1ND wrote:

Personally, Rarebit's seeming lack of compassion toward the concerns of the playerbase are very offputting. Maybe NCsoft has just spoiled me rotten, because they take ALL player input into consiedration on the City of Heroes team. Maybe it's time to cut down on my MMO expendature.

Considering all players is what I'm trying to get better at; the trick for me is not getting fooled into thinking that forum posts represent all players. The forum is by far the most direct form of feedback I'm able to gather, but I have to remember that it isn't necessarily representative of all of our players, and is very prone to reactionary outbreaks and drama--people trying to sway public opinion or color my own impressions.

Also, I'm aware that I don't properly sugar-coat my replies; I'm just a developer, rather than someone skilled in telling people what they want to hear. If we had a larger staff on this project they probably wouldn't let me jump in and make posts like this whenever I have the urge to say something.

Shinryu wrote:

I'm very concerned about the level restriction being in place and all of my active characters are Machinists. *shrug*

Given that, what's the concern for you? Is it the worry that this will turn other people off on the story, or is it something else that hasn't been brought up yet?

MatrixRefugee wrote:

and much as I hate to do this, I'm begging you along with everyone else: Please, remove the level restrictions on the crit missions.

So you can get beat up by high level NPCs, or were you thinking of another change as well (like reverting to the more generic gameplay of using only level-scaled NPCs [EDIT:] in generic mission areas in only Richland/Westview neighborhoods)?

Rarebit wrote:

MatrixRefugee wrote:

and much as I hate to do this, I'm begging you along with everyone else: Please, remove the level restrictions on the crit missions.

So you can get beat up by high level NPCs, or were you thinking of another change as well (like reverting to the more generic gameplay of using only level-scaled NPCs [EDIT:] in generic mission areas in only Richland/Westview neighborhoods)?

Easily solved, a lvl 50 runs the mission with the lowbies at their own speed. I honestly don't know why everyone keeps saying, remove the level restriction. Its not a difficult work about. We've had to do worse things to work with problems.

All i can say is, i'm not wanting the missions made easier so that lowbies can do them. Most of the general population is lvl 50 anyways.

Anyone says they want to run the mish or wonder about them. Invite them and show, thats what i'v been doing (makes the spawns easier aswell.)

Thanks for your posts Rarebit.  While I'm still not convinced the New Approach is a good move overall, I can at least say that your view and position regarding the subjects you mentioned seems to be about as fair and accurate as possible. 

Rarebit wrote:

M45T3RM1ND wrote:

Personally, Rarebit's seeming lack of compassion toward the concerns of the playerbase are very offputting. Maybe NCsoft has just spoiled me rotten, because they take ALL player input into consiedration on the City of Heroes team. Maybe it's time to cut down on my MMO expendature.

Considering all players is what I'm trying to get better at; the trick for me is not getting fooled into thinking that forum posts represent all players. The forum is by far the most direct form of feedback I'm able to gather, but I have to remember that it isn't necessarily representative of all of our players, and is very prone to reactionary outbreaks and drama--people trying to sway public opinion or color my own impressions.

Also, I'm aware that I don't properly sugar-coat my replies; I'm just a developer, rather than someone skilled in telling people what they want to hear. If we had a larger staff on this project they probably wouldn't let me jump in and make posts like this whenever I have the urge to say something.

Well, the issue here is that an update I was excited about when reading your post about how you were planning to run the new model has turned into a big drawback for me, and I really prefer the old style of calling in to Tyndall/Flood/Grey for the missions.  And I'm obviously not the only one here who feels the way I do about the new system. It was a novel idea, but definitely munsoned the game up for me. New Crit Day was the highlight of my week. Now, I'm kinda stuck without.

You don't need to "sugar-coat" replies, no. But a little empathy wouldn't hurt. I realize you're trying to breathe new life into a game that, let's face it, SoE couldn't give a crap about (and never wanted to begin with), and I support that readily. But you tried to fix the one aspect of MxO that wasn't broken, and now that's broken too. There are things you could've done (for example, item storage, which is something EVERYONE has asked for for the 3.5 years I've been on MxO) that would've gone a long way to getting MxO where it needed to be. The missioning system was fine. Now it's not.

The_Bruceter wrote:

Rarebit wrote:

MatrixRefugee wrote:

and much as I hate to do this, I'm begging you along with everyone else: Please, remove the level restrictions on the crit missions.

So you can get beat up by high level NPCs, or were you thinking of another change as well (like reverting to the more generic gameplay of using only level-scaled NPCs [EDIT:] in generic mission areas in only Richland/Westview neighborhoods)?

Easily solved, a lvl 50 runs the mission with the lowbies at their own speed. I honestly don't know why everyone keeps saying, remove the level restriction. Its not a difficult work about. We've had to do worse things to work with problems.

All i can say is, i'm not wanting the missions made easier so that lowbies can do them. Most of the general population is lvl 50 anyways.

Anyone says they want to run the mish or wonder about them. Invite them and show, thats what i'v been doing (makes the spawns easier aswell.)

And, again, those of us who don't get to be in-game during populated hours get the short end of the stick with that approach, so I guess the needs of the few are irrelevant.

Rarebit wrote:

MatrixRefugee wrote:

and much as I hate to do this, I'm begging you along with everyone else: Please, remove the level restrictions on the crit missions.

So you can get beat up by high level NPCs, or were you thinking of another change as well (like reverting to the more generic gameplay of using only level-scaled NPCs [EDIT:] in generic mission areas in only Richland/Westview neighborhoods)?

I've got alts in other orgs, and between working at my job and housework I really don't have the time to power-level them to get the crits. I doubt I'm the only player in this situation, so it's a shame to leave us all high and dry and not be able to find out the rest of the story.

Rarebit wrote:

MatrixRefugee wrote:

and much as I hate to do this, I'm begging you along with everyone else: Please, remove the level restrictions on the crit missions.

So you can get beat up by high level NPCs, or were you thinking of another change as well (like reverting to the more generic gameplay of using only level-scaled NPCs [EDIT:] in generic mission areas in only Richland/Westview neighborhoods)?

This reminds me that level-scaled NPCs are an interesting design topic in themselves. It always seemed curious to me the way ours have been set up; for instance, you'll face different Exile types as you level up--from one type of lupines or blood-drinkers through Nightmares and Succubi and eventually end up at high blood-drinkers almost exclusively, or something like that--but aside from possibly one or two special attacks (hm, I should have used the Machine NPCs as an example, since they change RSI as level increases but don't even have different special moves...but they're so incredibly generic as a result that I can't remember them well enough to describe in an example--oops, now I'm rambling), they all have exactly the same stats and share maybe two or three generalized ability loadouts, and fighting one type will be the same experience as fighting another.

Is that...cool? Or has that been dull? It's seemed dull to me, so I've been trying to do more and more customization with the NPCs by giving different types of the new NPCs different stats (modifying things like movement speed, and the four resistances, defences, accuracies, and damages) and starting to throw in a new NPC ability here or there that should make a difference in how you fight them. I'm talking about the more recent NPC additions here, such as the floating override programs, the Accelerated NPCs, SSR guards (not too different, but they did have slightly tweaked stats and loadout combinations), Kunoichi, Sati's Sleepwalkers, Valkyrja, and hm well, a couple you'll see in 12.1 I guess.

I was going to include the Headless in that, but they're a better example of the problems with trying to rely on a level scale that covers from 1-50; players very quickly found out that normal NPC stats simply don't scale equivalently with player ability over the character level range, so until I did a hack job on the higher level Headless to boost their stats in successive stages as level increases, past the lowest character levels you could just (against the TOC or EULA or whatever, mind you) stay there AFK with a sim and not have to worry at all about being killed by the level-scaled NPCs who kept spawning.

It could be pointed out that well I could just make modifications like the Headless ones standard to make level-scaling difficulty challenging and just go that way for new NPCs in the story quests, but the Headless change is very rough: if you watch carefully while levelling against it you'll notice it really isn't very balanced, and it's jagged as you go up--their stats will jump suddenly when they reach certain levels. But even that very rough scaling (which had to be added after their release to stop the AFK exploit: "will this be damaging enough to kill an AFK player's sim? No? MORE DAMAGE! Hm okay, on to the next level") took a good deal of time to hash out, so it isn't something I consider myself able to do well or on a regular basis; it also addresses only one of the many considerations of using scaled vs fixed level enemies.

EDIT: There are other problems too just in how difficulty scales with NPC/character level, for instance when I try to give them unique abilities. The Valkyrja have their Couplers that double their stat boosts for a limited time, but I'm pretty sure boosts like that blow out the difficulty curve at low levels, and would completely own lowbies, which is an example of why I haven't done much in the way of custom abilities for NPCs designed to be found by low level players. For the Kunoichi I experimented a little with how far I could compensate for something like that, so I made separate "Shuriken" abilities for each of the higher level Kunoichi NPCs, each tweaked with slightly different numbers. I think that worked out mostly okay, but it was very time consuming and not something our ability system takes kindly to; the design there was also much more relaxed in terms of balance than it would be for mission/quest NPCs normally, because those very high level Kunoichi are all sort of extra-credit / just for fun (ie they don't yield a compensatingly stat-balanced item, just the outrageously pink gi, funky throwing stars, and a very challenging increasing test of your combat abilities), so I didn't have to be concerned about them being too difficult for beat with the outlay of effort that I typically feel I can ask of players.

I'm curious, how many of the 'bad timing' crowd have actually asked for someone to help them out?

I'm happy to assist people on Syntax, I'm not in America, I can spend quite a while in game most days and my Sundays are completely free. 

Or is it that you feel teamwork in an MMO is somehow wrong?

Edit: Typo.

M45T3RM1ND wrote:

The_Bruceter wrote:

Rarebit wrote:

MatrixRefugee wrote:

and much as I hate to do this, I'm begging you along with everyone else: Please, remove the level restrictions on the crit missions.

So you can get beat up by high level NPCs, or were you thinking of another change as well (like reverting to the more generic gameplay of using only level-scaled NPCs [EDIT:] in generic mission areas in only Richland/Westview neighborhoods)?

Easily solved, a lvl 50 runs the mission with the lowbies at their own speed. I honestly don't know why everyone keeps saying, remove the level restriction. Its not a difficult work about. We've had to do worse things to work with problems.

All i can say is, i'm not wanting the missions made easier so that lowbies can do them. Most of the general population is lvl 50 anyways.

Anyone says they want to run the mish or wonder about them. Invite them and show, thats what i'v been doing (makes the spawns easier aswell.)

And, again, those of us who don't get to be in-game during populated hours get the short end of the stick with that approach, so I guess the needs of the few are irrelevant.

Look, at quiet times, you are not the only char in the server. Go about and talk to people, ask if they want to help you out.

I'm from vector, live in uk so yeah i know about quiet times and what its like. I think i can only count 1 time when i'v been the only person online. Start adding people that you think are ok and would maybe help. On vector, when its quiet, its farming time. Even reds help...