Re: Level requirements for storyline missions

The_Bruceter wrote:

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...

I have 75-ish people on my friends, not including their alts. I come on, wait an hour or two, none of them come on, nor are any of my factionmates on, and the people who are on at the time are from different orgs or are doing something else. It's seriously the worst time of day on Syntax.

M45T3RM1ND wrote:

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.

I think I understand where you're coming from, but here's some of my perspective on this.

Item storage isn't a task that I can address myself--it requires engineering resources that I don't have at my disposal. So no, I couldn't have done that instead.

The missioning system was all right for what it had been doing, but I felt pretty tapped out on it. We have 11 and two-thirds chapters of archived missions that still work the old way, not to mention all the neighborhood missions, and the standard random missions. That's all fine...but not so much for keeping people interested by being able to vary up the gameplay. If your focus was ONLY on getting all the story text and eyeballing all the NPCs, then yes, I screwed that up for you, and I was aware that would be the case going in. However, I still believe that story divorced from varied gameplay doesn't keep a game compelling for most game players.

You can still get most of the story for your main's org without exceptional effort (or such is the intent). Squeezing every secret from every org is going to be more challenging, and, hopefully, more rewarding--if you actually give it a shot and put the effort in it to overcome the tough challenges guarding it.

Anyway, I've said this in several ways now so I won't keep rattling on. I felt that it was fundamentally important to make the game's story challenging on a gameplay level as well as on a plot level. If you don't enjoy the game's combat and so forth, then yes this will be a problem for you, but as a designer I have to work on the gameplay and believe that it can be made fun--otherwise I'd just retire and write a book (which I would be very tempted to do even as it is if I thought I could keep myself housed and fed while doing it!).

MatrixRefugee 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)?

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.

Well, if finding it out was really all you wanted, then the recaps other players have posted, or just talking to other players who've done it, would be enough. This suggests to me that there's also a desire to experience it, rather than just reading it, and then we're back to the question of what is that experience, what does it involve, what's the fun part of it. Story is a large part of it, but I think gameplay needs to be in there as well, and that's one of the keys behind this change.

Oh, and also the story now has many more options in how it's told; to take a simple example, under the old scheme, I couldn't have told the game to have you meet Agent Gray in a skyscraper, which is really his natural habitat, because there aren't enough of those in Richland/Westview (actually I don't think there are any; the Kalt towers look like skyscrapers but have a special "Kalt Chem" classification in our mission system's area selection).

There seem to be three discussions going on in this single thread now:

a) level requirements on story missions

b) soloability of story missions

c) teaming vs soloing

As I've said, the missions are *intended* to be soloable, so the teaming vs soloing argument shouldn't really apply here, and it's getting a little distracting in this thread.

For myself, item b--soloability of story missions--is the item that I need more feedback on to resolve some fragmentary and puzzling comments I've seen here.

I've done all three 11.3.3 missions and the Machine one was harder by far. The Wright Accelerated Programs have very high defense and seem to buff their own resistance sometimes to prevent being able to be debuffed. The Level 55 Agent in the Zion one and the two Level 53 Agents in the Merovingian one were very easily soloable without any consumables needed. I think the Machine one should be scaled back a bit to match the difficulty of the other two.

Rarebit wrote:

M45T3RM1ND wrote:

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.

I think I understand where you're coming from, but here's some of my perspective on this.

Item storage isn't a task that I can address myself--it requires engineering resources that I don't have at my disposal. So no, I couldn't have done that instead.

The missioning system was all right for what it had been doing, but I felt pretty tapped out on it. We have 11 and two-thirds chapters of archived missions that still work the old way, not to mention all the neighborhood missions, and the standard random missions. That's all fine...but not so much for keeping people interested by being able to vary up the gameplay. If your focus was ONLY on getting all the story text and eyeballing all the NPCs, then yes, I screwed that up for you, and I was aware that would be the case going in. However, I still believe that story divorced from varied gameplay doesn't keep a game compelling for most game players.

You can still get most of the story for your main's org without exceptional effort (or such is the intent). Squeezing every secret from every org is going to be more challenging, and, hopefully, more rewarding--if you actually give it a shot and put the effort in it to overcome the tough challenges guarding it.

Anyway, I've said this in several ways now so I won't keep rattling on. I felt that it was fundamentally important to make the game's story challenging on a gameplay level as well as on a plot level. If you don't enjoy the game's combat and so forth, then yes this will be a problem for you, but as a designer I have to work on the gameplay and believe that it can be made fun--otherwise I'd just retire and write a book (which I would be very tempted to do even as it is if I thought I could keep myself housed and fed while doing it!).

The issue is that I can't even finish the crit because I'm too low-level to use the mission ticket. DOING the missions, in and of themselves, isn't the challenge. They were soloable fine. BEING ABLE TO ACCESS THEM is.

Mathalos wrote:

I've done all three 11.3.3 missions and the Machine one was harder by far. The Wright Accelerated Programs have very high defense and seem to buff their own resistance sometimes to prevent being able to be debuffed. The Level 55 Agent in the Zion one and the two Level 53 Agents in the Merovingian one were very easily soloable without any consumables needed. I think the Machine one should be scaled back a bit to match the difficulty of the other two.

And that WAP was level 55... Hm. Yeah, I know I made those things pretty tough--their buffs are probably about the upper end of what I intend to give to story mission NPCs, as is the level of 55--so that may be the toughest thing you'll have to face in one of these types of missions. I think part of my rationale for the tougher Machine challenge there--aside from the story aspect--was that they get precise data on Wright's location out of it, while the other orgs get only general directions. Also I won't deny that knowing our Machinist rosters include some of the wickedest NPC hackers in the game may have had an impact on my thought process.

M45T3RM1ND wrote:

The issue is that I can't even finish the crit because I'm too low-level to use the mission ticket. DOING the missions, in and of themselves, isn't the challenge. They were soloable fine. BEING ABLE TO ACCESS THEM is.

It isn't quite as simple as that, since you wouldn't be able to solo them if you were too low-level, even if they didn't have the access restriction on them--the NPCs would maul you.

By the way, shouting at me is gonna stress the empathy issue you've said I have.

If the hard NPCs were made to scale levels, a Level 50 could just invite a lowbie to team and make all of their missions very easy. If a level of difficulty is going to remain in place, the level restrictions will have to stay.

Rarebit wrote:

Also I won't deny that knowing our Machinist rosters *included* some of the wickedest NPC hackers in the game may have had an impact on my thought process.

*Fixed*

WoW has some wicked Horde now.

Rarebit wrote:

M45T3RM1ND wrote:

The issue is that I can't even finish the crit because I'm too low-level to use the mission ticket. DOING the missions, in and of themselves, isn't the challenge. They were soloable fine. BEING ABLE TO ACCESS THEM is.

It isn't quite as simple as that, since you wouldn't be able to solo them if you were too low-level, even if they didn't have the access restriction on them--the NPCs would maul you.

By the way, shouting at me is gonna stress the empathy issue you've said I have.

Oh, I wasn't trying to shout. Just wanted to accent the key words in the statement.

But what you're saying either way is that there's no way to finish them unless I grind up to 50 and get a team together, yes? Which, in my situation is a fruitless endeavour.

M45T3RM1ND wrote:

But what you're saying either way is that there's no way to finish them unless I grind up to 50 and get a team together, yes? Which, in my situation is a fruitless endeavour.

If you're talking about just finishing the missions for your org, then as you've said yourself, they can be completed solo. You would have to be 50 to do the last of them, yes.

The only part of 11.3 that should pretty much take a team would be taking down Wright. That isn't required for the missions, though, or for nearly all of the gear.

Rarebit wrote:

The only part of 11.3 that should pretty much take a team would be taking down Wright.

And now you've spoiled it for me. =^P

But you've also confirmed that I have to grind up to 50 just to do the darn thing, which basically means that it'll be a long time. I hate the idea of having to grind XP just to do what I would prefer to earn XP for. You see the connundrum here?

M45T3RM1ND wrote:

I hate the idea of having to grind XP just to do what I would prefer to earn XP for. You see the connundrum here?

If you mean that you would prefer to earn XP for doing the story missions, then yes, I do see the issue, but avoiding that entirely would mean that I couldn't design challenging story content for our large number of players who play with level 50 characters. So the compromise is that most of it doesn't require being level 50, but the very end part of it does.

Rarebit wrote:

Mathalos wrote:

I've done all three 11.3.3 missions and the Machine one was harder by far. The Wright Accelerated Programs have very high defense and seem to buff their own resistance sometimes to prevent being able to be debuffed. The Level 55 Agent in the Zion one and the two Level 53 Agents in the Merovingian one were very easily soloable without any consumables needed. I think the Machine one should be scaled back a bit to match the difficulty of the other two.

And that WAP was level 55... Hm. Yeah, I know I made those things pretty tough--their buffs are probably about the upper end of what I intend to give to story mission NPCs, as is the level of 55--so that may be the toughest thing you'll have to face in one of these types of missions. I think part of my rationale for the tougher Machine challenge there--aside from the story aspect--was that they get precise data on Wright's location out of it, while the other orgs get only general directions. Also I won't deny that knowing our Machinist rosters include some of the wickedest NPC hackers in the game may have had an impact on my thought process.

Win ;p

Rarebit wrote:

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.

Ignore it, i think you missed my point but its off topic either way so lets not bother. >.>

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.

I'd take it over this, at least that way we all get to personally share the story.

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.

I understand, i completely appreciate just how restraining working on the matrix online might be but short or not your company is a multi-million dollar business. Don't get me wrong i understand your constraints, but lets put it like this my family own a mechanic repair shop. If someone comes to us with a car and pays to get it fixed, but say the part needs welding done to secure it. Do we fit the part as best we can? no we tell the customer one of two things. A: Nothing, they don't need to know details wait for a contract welder to fix it. B: Explain the situation and wait for the welder. Translated to this situation, sort the GUI out asap with a programmer either before you even mention or plan the changes or list as you require. A rather large example but the point is irrevocably the same. And dont reply, i know what you going to say and i know its out of your control but i need somewhere to vent my stress at Sony's blatant disregard for this section of their company. I go as so far as to accuse them of bad management but hey im not the one with the figures. 

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.

Great, its good to see you've noticed and taken it into account previously. But be quick on that note, the longer your waiting the more your putting at risk. Might have been better to sort something as pivotal as the new signposts for the new road layout. :p

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?

NO your missing the point (or atleast my point) here! forget that i have a 50. I am a new player i want to play the story! ... DENIED. *that* is my point rarebit. I have a character on all servers. One of which is denied access to the stuff its because of this i realised hey if i didn't have another character to play i cannot get play the story myself or collect the items. I never used my alts for getting the other side of the story other than live events. Mission wise i didnt care. *now* however we are forced to play the crits to gain any sort of narrative information. But unless your 50 we cant. *Thats* the problem rare. 

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:

Still can do it if he chooses rare can't he?... There is nothing wrong with making it available to him even if its still the same difficulty. I've seen many games that provide high level content if you can get it/to it. Guild wars, city of heros to name a few. THey all give you written warning before that what your about to do is rather stupid... But you *can* if you choose continue. I'll agree the items are a perk and if thats the problem with removing the cap then remove them or make them an optional thing. 

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.

Understandable... but when in over three years has anyone said to you on the forums or in games... Rarebit these overpowering numbers are too much i want simplicity? Not that i've seen? My point being as that of mastermind, why change something that was if at minimum "satisfactory". I've seen one person so far that has apparently genuinely enjoyed the change... Not sure why yet but i'm sure there is reasons.

It saddens me that you tried to mix the updating gameplay and critical missions. I don't care that my "alts" cant access the content, but new players cannot either. The first thing i used to say to a new or potential player was we have live event interactions with real characters from the matrix... Now? We have what you can get everywhere else... and we charge more! 

One thing i'll never understand is that... in what well over 3 years, the price for this game per month has stayed static. Yet we have lost a test server, several developers, content and dynamics. I get more from guild wars and i don't pay buggerall. 

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.

Again, i don't doubt your next installment will be just as fulfilling. Point in hand: the mission still isn't available so what difference does it make to a newbie who cannot access the story. I think i realised why the critical missions suddenly seam so important... because its now all we got. I guess it all boils down to me looking at what we had a looking at what we have and saying... So why am i not as satisfied? I think the answer is what will ultimately determine if the "New approach" is worth it. (and i think in this case it is not going to be the changes as i will have to give in and "It" will become £10)

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.

To quote myself from earlier you have the figures, you therefore know alot more than i do on the topic. Thats said alot of people are simply waiting for they're subscriptions to run out. Nice choice of words but theres why you dont know where they came from... The reasoning behind the consistent numbers would be those returning for the holidays. Christmas MXO style was always a personal favorite, i guess i'm not alone. I can count atleast 5 or 6 old faces that have returned within the past 2-3 weeks

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?

Now, you know I've asked for help and advice on some things. But generally, when I do find other players in game, they are either very low level or Machines. Being a Zion flagged player, it's not surprising that it's hard to find help from the other org players. I also love teamwork, my best memories in this game are from when I was in an active faction and we worked together to accomplish our goals.

I also considered changing my org to join a more active faction -- but for that rep system and not wanting to lose my high rep with no solid assurance I could gain equivalent in another org -- is what stops me there. As much as I would love to jump in game during the day on weekends, too, (when I know there will be a larger player base) my two small children prevent that for the most part. So unless they sleep for a few hours in the afternoon, I can't play any game for a meaningful amount of time until the evening once they are in bed.

Now as far as soloing is concerned -- so far I've only played the first 11.3 mission (again due to time constraints and running the archives). I can easily (as an MA build) handle the 1 to 3 level 51 3 chevron NPCs that come along -- and did so enough to get 11 of the pens (which I figured was the minimum I needed). Once or twice, I've faced near death (when faced with 3 NPCs) but I expect that and prepare for it. When only 1 or 2 of the level 53s spawned, they were a walk over -- the third one upped the challenge. I also barely survived one of the commandos in International (I think it was level 55?), so I know my character build can handle several level 51s but will struggle with anything above 55 -- especially if there is more than one of them (never did get to the boss command by the way).

My real complaint there is that the level 50 item rewards for the crits -- the only ones that appear of real use to my character -- just seem unobtainable. That wouldn't be such a problem if there were slightly lesser comparable level 50 items that could be obtained -- or of course, if I ever luck out to find someone willing to help out when I'm in a position to be able to use that help.

On a side note when I jacked in yesterday all I pretty much saw at Tabor West were people moaning about how they are bored of the missions and don't want to do them =(.

Holy giant wall of text....

I think I'm going to hassle wow's devs using this strategy and ask them why i can't get raid boss loot with my lvl 15 alt...

WoKeN wrote:

Holy giant wall of text....

I think I'm going to hassle wow's devs using this strategy and ask them why i can't get raid boss loot with my lvl 15 alt...

/facepalm.  1)  Apples and oranges.   2)  Not what anyone is asking for.

Villemar_MxO wrote:

WoKeN wrote:

Holy giant wall of text....

I think I'm going to hassle wow's devs using this strategy and ask them why i can't get raid boss loot with my lvl 15 alt...

/facepalm.  1)  Apples and oranges.   2)  Not what anyone is asking for.

I respect your stance vill... and here is mine.

It's all content,no matter what game..imo the making alts for other orgs crits should not have been allowed in the first place.If it were up to me we would not even be able to have characters in different orgs on one account...and there are games that have it set up that way.

Certain aspects of this game have had us spoiled for a very long time.

Rarebit wrote:

Mathalos wrote:

The Wright Accelerated Programs have very high defense and seem to buff their own resistance sometimes to prevent being able to be debuffed.

Yeah, I know I made those things pretty tough--their buffs are probably about the upper end of what I intend to give to story mission NPCs, as is the level of 55--so that may be the toughest thing you'll have to face in one of these types of missions.

Is Mathalos right about a resistance buff or are the WAPs actually sweeping the debuffs?

Danger_Frog1471 wrote:

Again, i don't doubt your next installment will be just as fulfilling. Point in hand: the mission still isn't available so what difference does it make to a newbie who cannot access the story. I think i realised why the critical missions suddenly seam so important... because its now all we got. I guess it all boils down to me looking at what we had a looking at what we have and saying... So why am i not as satisfied? I think the answer is what will ultimately determine if the "New approach" is worth it.

Nailed it!  Thank you, thank you thank you!

Rare I'm happy to see you've taken on this issue, finally!  I now have a much better understanding of what you're trying to accomplish.  What you are trying to do looks good on paper.  But the devil is in the details.  And never discount the Law of Unintended Consequences.  Rather than go point by point on the many things you've raised which I agree with and strongly disagre with, I want to touch on the big picture here. 

To summarize another thread:

Ballak wrote:

The overall point of this thread, is basically saying this:

MxO probably will still continue on even with the, "Minority" gone/disgruntled, so I'm not saying MxO is going to die. It's just the new way in which we receive "storyline content" no matter how much it is portrayed as "more dev time devoted" it somehow feels like so much less is dedicated on what a lot of us players liked most.

The physical interaction with the storyline.

Prior to 11.3 how would I personally defiine this?  1) Live Events  2) LESIG  3)  Critical missions  4) Ancillary side stuff that gives you a sense of immersion.

Now that 1) is effectively gone for most people, and 2) is definately gone; we are left with 3) and 4) above.

This gets exactly to what Danger Frog said above.  I can live with 1) provided there's some wiggle room down the road.  I understand 1000% daily LE's were completely and utterly unsustainable.  2) didn't effect me that much although that was pretty neat to have.

Leaving us with 3) and 4), heightening their importance as vehicles for delivering dynamic storyline content.  As far as these new crit quests I see it as a means to accomplish two things.  One, access current storyline content.  Two, obtain cool new gear.  I separate the two in my mind.  I came up with this idea way upthread:

Villemar_MxO wrote:

That's my biggest problem with the update by far.

Solution:  Make them dual-purpose critical missions.  If you just want the storyline, then provided you have enough rep (60 sounds fine by me), and you're willing to risk missions instanced Downtown (if that's the case), then you should be able to achieve that goal.  In fact I like the idea of missions instanced downtown, it gives it an added element of danger that's very Matrixy.

If you want the gear, then yeah you can go for them via farming the secondary spawns.  Keep those reward items level based, 30/40/50 whatever.

...To summarize:  Keep the rep requirements.  Instance them wherever you please...in Stratford Campus and Creston Heights if you want.   Keep the level requirements for gear obtained by farming secondary spawns.  No one loses anything at all by eliminating the level caps this way.

If you character meets the requirements and/or is willing to dodge higher level mobs, by all means they should have at it!

And elaborating further based on what you've said and using 11.3 as an example.  BTW I've fooled around with running my Mero 50 with a lvl 2 to see what happend scaling-wise.  So lets use that as an example too. 

Mero 11.3.1:  There are no NPC's just Suit contacts here but I assume if there were they would be scaled at lvl 26.  I step outside and am attacked by lvl 30 Accellerated Suits.  They don't scale below 30....exactly as it should be.  They drop pens.

Mero 11.3.2:  There are NPC's to fight.  Scaled at lvl 26.  I step outside and am attacked by level 40 AWP's.  They don't scale below 40....exactly as it should be.  They drop O-Bits.

Mero 11.3.3  There are NPC's to fight, scaled at lvl 26...but to complete the mission you have to fight 2 lvl 53's.  Mission finished.

So my question is, would it be possible to say compromise for those who only want to access the current storyline, and understand they ain't gonna get any sweet gear out of this?  By 1)  Removing the pen needed and the anti-override thingy to get 11.3.2 and 11.3.3;  and 2)  Scaling the final .3 Big Boss to +3 (x2) or +5 of your level, whatever the case may be?  Is that possible?

(The reason I'm trying to spell this out so crystal clear is because of some naysayers that still continue to conflate accessing storyline content with getting cheap eazy gear.)

But I did want to touch on 4) because there is a lot of potential here.  The best things about Update 64?  RSI masks & new neighborhood contact mission.  I've had a lot of fun farming the masks, honestly.  I've gotten re-aquainted with a lot of the neighborhoods and gangs, especially gang bosses that don't drop any keys so you normally wouldn't have any reason to seek them out.  This gets to immersion in Mega City, which I'm all for.  I'm also a big fan of the new Neighborhood Contact mission.   For the lowbie content and again the immersion factor.  

And no, just because I have two alts that have done every critical mission since probably Chapter 3 yet are now shut off completely from criticals 11.3 and onward, I am not saying there should be more lowbie content as a backhanded way to lobby to get access back for my two alts.  I've actually taken an honest to goodness new player, level 13 atm under my wing.  Last night I asked her, "So, how are you levelling, are you doing standard missions?"   Her:  "Yes."  Me:  Have you done any archive missions yet?"  Her: "What are those??"

You get the idea.  Really if the stated goal is to bring new people in to the storyline, and now current storyline is designed for endgame, how is a new player supposed to get from Point A to Point B without getting bored and leaving after a month?

This is where 4) can help.  New neighborhood contact missions....perfect.  How about new Standard Missions?  New Graduation missions?  (lol those are completely irrelevant now!)  You get the idea.

I'm sorry for the long post but I see what you're trying to do and seeing what we as players want...and what we signed on for in the first place....and am just trying to reconcile the two.

(disregard)

Danger_Frog1471 wrote:

i need somewhere to vent my stress at Sony's blatant disregard for this section of their company.

It's difficult for me to take your proclaimed point of view seriously when you use the forum for that kind of thing.

Danger_Frog1471 wrote:

Great, its good to see you've noticed and taken it into account previously. But be quick on that note, the longer your waiting the more your putting at risk

I'm not sure we're on the same page here, and I can't tell if you're having a bit of joke with me. The things I mentioned (crit location pointed out in cinematic, pop-up text for low levels talking about archives) are already in the game.

Danger_Frog1471 wrote:

NO your missing the point (or atleast my point) here! forget that i have a 50. I am a new player i want to play the story! ... DENIED. *that* is my point rarebit. I have a character on all servers. One of which is denied access to the stuff its because of this i realised hey if i didn't have another character to play i cannot get play the story myself or collect the items. I never used my alts for getting the other side of the story other than live events. Mission wise i didnt care. *now* however we are forced to play the crits to gain any sort of narrative information. But unless your 50 we cant. *Thats* the problem rare. 

I understand the point and I realized it was a trade-off when I made the decision. However, I have yet to see new players distinctly turned off by the change. You aren't a new player, and it's dangerous to assume that you are correctly interpreting another person's or group's point of view.

A few reasons I felt able to make the change were because a) we have so much previous story now that a new player just catching up by way of the archives will already be pretty high level by the time they've played through all that b) the cinematics are available to everyone and can readily convey the essential "this is where we are" part of the story.

Also, it isn't accurate to say that you have to be 50 to play the new story missions. You only have to be 50 for the last one. They begin at 30. I realize that's still a barrier to entry, but there's no need to confuse the issue by exaggerating the number.

Back to the new player thing, another motivation behind the change as a whole was that in my interactions with new players--sneaking up on people in Uriah, mostly--the vast majority I tested on this point had little to no awareness of the current state of the story, which tells me that a driving need to jump on top of the very latest story segment is not--for most of them--the driving force that's been bringing people into the game. I would have liked it to have been, but I haven't seen that happening by and large.

Expectations will be different for new players who've been brought into the game by vets who've been telling them about the story, events, etc, but those same vets also usually help the new players get established by teaming with them, factioning with them, running them through the lower level content (which for us is relatively plentiful, even aside from the archived story missions), providing them with items, and so forth, all of which will tend to negate or shorten the drive to level 30.

Danger_Frog1471 wrote:

Understandable... but when in over three years has anyone said to you on the forums or in games... Rarebit these overpowering numbers are too much i want simplicity? Not that i've seen? My point being as that of mastermind, why change something that was if at minimum "satisfactory". I've seen one person so far that has apparently genuinely enjoyed the change... Not sure why yet but i'm sure there is reasons.

They haven't, but there'd be no reason to bring it up, because I haven't resorted to overpowering mission NPC spawns very often.

Forum feedback is a tricky beast. When people are happy with what's going on they seem to have better things to do than to spend their time on the forum, whereas when they're unhappy with something, they spend a great deal of their time here talking about it--so the feedback in this medium tends to reflect the negative opinions more than the positive or ambivalent.

Danger_Frog1471 wrote:

It saddens me that you tried to mix the updating gameplay and critical missions. I don't care that my "alts" cant access the content, but new players cannot either. The first thing i used to say to a new or potential player was we have live event interactions with real characters from the matrix... Now? We have what you can get everywhere else... and we charge more!

There are still Live Events, although the new format is not very much appreciated by most veteran events-catching players right now, which isn't hard to understand, since their frequency has been reduced quite a bit.

In the end, the old scheme of daily events failed to reach new players. It was extremely rare for me to be able to interact with actual new players in those events, and I was very disappointed that I wasn't able to make that part of it work. There are many reasons why it didn't work out as I'd hoped, but that's a whole separate topic's worth of discussion, some of which has been touched on elsewhere.

Although fairly often in those rare times I did come upon new players, on their own, they tended to assume I was a regular player, or perhaps some freakish sort of NPC.

Danger_Frog1471 wrote:

And therein lies the problem, atleast we have written confirmation that you acknowledge it. Anyone below 50 is excluded from receiving the full story. Yes there *ARE* work arounds, but as a paying customer not only should it not have to be tolerated but hell i'm getting tired of half-arsedness(tm by kind) from this company it shouldn't be our job to deal with the problems.

You aren't excluded; you have to put in some work to get to the point where you can access/beat that content. Yes, it takes more time and even more skill, but flatly calling it exclusion is a misrepresentation.

We certainly never promised that we'd make the entire story easy for a single person to access, and I don't feel obligated to do so. Enough to interest them, yes, and enough for them to get at if they make the effort for the rewards--and whether or not it is currently enough is under debate here on the forum--but not dishing up the whole thing on a silver platter from the get-go. I do understand that you preferred it that way, and I'm not going to try to argue you into liking the new way better.

Cadsuane wrote:

Rarebit wrote:

Mathalos wrote:

The Wright Accelerated Programs have very high defense and seem to buff their own resistance sometimes to prevent being able to be debuffed.

Yeah, I know I made those things pretty tough--their buffs are probably about the upper end of what I intend to give to story mission NPCs, as is the level of 55--so that may be the toughest thing you'll have to face in one of these types of missions.

Is Mathalos right about a resistance buff or are the WAPs actually sweeping the debuffs?

They have a chance of removing debuffs, sort of similar to a player using an antibiotic.

Rarebit wrote:

Cadsuane wrote:

Is Mathalos right about a resistance buff or are the WAPs actually sweeping the debuffs?

They have a chance of removing debuffs, sort of similar to a player using an antibiotic.

I thought that was the case.  Thanks :)

Villemar_MxO wrote:

Rare I'm happy to see you've taken on this issue, finally! 

Me trying to clear up misunderstandings and misrepresentations here isn't the same thing as me "taking on the issue." Generally I try not to make reactionary changes based on forum ranting, and the more someone rants--by which I mean engaging in spam, exaggeration, griefing, rabble-rousing, and other sorts of chicanery to try to "win" their argument--the less weight I give to their statements. And I have a long memory for that sort of thing.

Villemar_MxO wrote:

So my question is, would it be possible to say compromise for those who only want to access the current storyline, and understand they ain't gonna get any sweet gear out of this?  By 1)  Removing the pen needed and the anti-override thingy to get 11.3.2 and 11.3.3;  and 2)  Scaling the final .3 Big Boss to +3 (x2) or +5 of your level, whatever the case may be?  Is that possible?

1) Making the player engage in some of the intended gameplay experience in order to reap the benefits of the next stage--story or otherwise--is part of the goal.

Additionally, many elements will be tied into the difficulty factor involved in the missions or related quests. In 11.3, as I mentioned earlier today, I was barely able to scratch the surface of what I think I'll be able to do there. I'm going to continue mixing things up as much as I can. The activities in 12.1, for instance, are pretty different from 11.3, at least in terms of utilizing types of gameplay MXO has to offer.

2) Not really. I want Wright to be a fixed, single spawn--a real titan on that Hampton ledge--and that doesn't really allow me to utilize the various means we have of generating scaling NPCs. Implementing reduced versions of her elsewhere (she'd either have to pop up inside a mission area, at who knows where between mission areas, or out of a player-activated "box," probably) would a) reduce the impact of her titanic presence b) require reimplimentation of some of her nasty abilities c) remove much of the meaning of that final "???" story reward for the players who took her down.

Villemar_MxO wrote:

I've actually taken an honest to goodness new player, level 13 atm under my wing.  Last night I asked her, "So, how are you levelling, are you doing standard missions?"   Her:  "Yes."  Me:  Have you done any archive missions yet?"  Her: "What are those??"

If she's level 13 she may have passed the level where the new pop-up about archives now shows up, before it got into Live. It's also quite possible that she didn't read it, forgot about it, or whatever. I haven't hit upon a sure-fire means of guiding players to the archives yet--not one that I can implement myself, I mean. Generally speaking we don't have great mechanisms for guiding players to particular spots in the world. I suppose this is because the original concept was that the world would all be procedural in feel--like a mechanical creation of dull sameness that just goes on and on. Later during development it was realized that that wasn't very compelling, and they started to put in things like the monuments and clubs and "town centers" with vendors near some hardlines, but that's about all that was managed.

Villemar_MxO wrote:

This is where 4) can help.  New neighborhood contact missions....perfect.  How about new Standard Missions?  New Graduation missions?  (lol those are completely irrelevant now!)  You get the idea.

The standard missions aren't something I was involved in, so it would require ramp-up time for me to get a good handle on them. Even now though I know for certain that that system is too large, and too specific, for me to revamp in a great way, and I don't feel confident in being able to revolutionize it simply by adding new randomly chosen phases, either, because they'd just get blended up into the standard pudding. The standard mission system is a scheme of generating "random" content, and as a result, anything you get out of it is going to feel generic to a significant and unavoidable degree. I prefer to try to work on things that I'm confident I can at least make stand out one way or the other.

Graduation missions aren't something I was involved with either, but they're quite a bit simpler. I haven't been inspired to try to do much with them because they come up relative to nothing aside from you ticking over a reputation number in the database, so it's hard to make them relevant as anything other than a "Hey! Who's Mr./Ms. Awesome? You are, you crazy mongoose!" affair. HCFrog of course was trying to work out org-based abilities to distribute through them, but that was fraught with a myriad of other difficulties (again, another topic). I could do something similar to the level-scaling org archive clothing items as rewards for those missions, but there are two problems with something like that in this case: a) they aren't really repeatable, so players who've already hit them would be left out--unless we tried some sort of vast scheme of forwarding the items to players in the org who've bypassed that rep point, but our chances of success doing something like that are what I would rate as very low, and b) they rely on the reputation system, which has its own issues. So that's another ball of string I'm not too keen on tangling with, although it's slightly more doable than messing with the standard mission system. I certainly agree that they *should* have more of an impact.

It is my intent to work on neighborhood missions, gradually. I *think* I'll be able to get to the point of adding a mission and reward to a single neighborhood per update on a semi-regular basis--like 11.3, which added one in Tabor--in addition to the regular content I'm committed to--I might have tried that with this next update, for instance, but I had to do the Winter Holiday instead. Hm also coming up here I have to take some time to poke into MXO on Vista, since I've ***finally*** managed to wrassle up a Vista testing system of my own (and I have no idea how long that will take me to look at or if I'll be able to get any positive changes out of it, but it's really gotta be tried).

Rarebit wrote:

Hm also coming up here I have to take some time to poke into MXO on Vista, since I've ***finally*** managed to wrassle up a Vista testing system of my own (and I have no idea how long that will take me to look at or if I'll be able to get any positive changes out of it, but it's really gotta be tried).

I love you.

what?

Rarebit wrote:

Villemar_MxO wrote:

Rare I'm happy to see you've taken on this issue, finally! 

Me trying to clear up misunderstandings and misrepresentations here isn't the same thing as me "taking on the issue." Generally I try not to make reactionary changes based on forum ranting, and the more someone rants--by which I mean engaging in spam, exaggeration, griefing, rabble-rousing, and other sorts of chicanery to try to "win" their argument--the less weight I give to their statements. And I have a long memory for that sort of thing.

I hope you aren't putting me in that catagory...I've tried to be as civil and diplomatic as possible, and if I've been a little obsessive about this particular issue its only because I really love this game and want it to succeed, and have tried to be very cognizent about not slipping into dev bashing or anything remotely close to that.  My point was just that I'm happy you shed some light on this subject, I cetainly understand more of what your trying to get at, and I'm even more curious to check out 12.1 now.

Villemar_MxO wrote:

So my question is, would it be possible to say compromise for those who only want to access the current storyline, and understand they ain't gonna get any sweet gear out of this?  By 1)  Removing the pen needed and the anti-override thingy to get 11.3.2 and 11.3.3;  and 2)  Scaling the final .3 Big Boss to +3 (x2) or +5 of your level, whatever the case may be?  Is that possible?

1) Making the player engage in some of the intended gameplay experience in order to reap the benefits of the next stage--story or otherwise--is part of the goal.

Additionally, many elements will be tied into the difficulty factor involved in the missions or related quests. In 11.3, as I mentioned earlier today, I was barely able to scratch the surface of what I think I'll be able to do there. I'm going to continue mixing things up as much as I can. The activities in 12.1, for instance, are pretty different from 11.3, at least in terms of utilizing types of gameplay MXO has to offer.

2) Not really. I want Wright to be a fixed, single spawn--a real titan on that Hampton ledge--and that doesn't really allow me to utilize the various means we have of generating scaling NPCs. Implementing reduced versions of her elsewhere (she'd either have to pop up inside a mission area, at who knows where between mission areas, or out of a player-activated "box," probably) would a) reduce the impact of her titanic presence b) require reimplimentation of some of her nasty abilities c) remove much of the meaning of that final "???" story reward for the players who took her down.

Oh yeah I get the Wright business.  I was talking more about the final 11.3.3 NPC's...in my Merovingian mission it was the two lvl 53's.   But I assume its not possible...say in any mission in general, wheras on "hard" the NPC's will scale at +1, whether it would be possible to scale an NPC at +3, or +5 for that matter.

Villemar_MxO wrote:

I've actually taken an honest to goodness new player, level 13 atm under my wing.  Last night I asked her, "So, how are you levelling, are you doing standard missions?"   Her:  "Yes."  Me:  Have you done any archive missions yet?"  Her: "What are those??"

If she's level 13 she may have passed the level where the new pop-up about archives now shows up, before it got into Live. It's also quite possible that she didn't read it, forgot about it, or whatever. I haven't hit upon a sure-fire means of guiding players to the archives yet--not one that I can implement myself, I mean. Generally speaking we don't have great mechanisms for guiding players to particular spots in the world. I suppose this is because the original concept was that the world would all be procedural in feel--like a mechanical creation of dull sameness that just goes on and on. Later during development it was realized that that wasn't very compelling, and they started to put in things like the monuments and clubs and "town centers" with vendors near some hardlines, but that's about all that was managed.

Villemar_MxO wrote:

This is where 4) can help.  New neighborhood contact missions....perfect.  How about new Standard Missions?  New Graduation missions?  (lol those are completely irrelevant now!)  You get the idea.

The standard missions aren't something I was involved in, so it would require ramp-up time for me to get a good handle on them. Even now though I know for certain that that system is too large, and too specific, for me to revamp in a great way, and I don't feel confident in being able to revolutionize it simply by adding new randomly chosen phases, either, because they'd just get blended up into the standard pudding. The standard mission system is a scheme of generating "random" content, and as a result, anything you get out of it is going to feel generic to a significant and unavoidable degree. I prefer to try to work on things that I'm confident I can at least make stand out one way or the other.

Graduation missions aren't something I was involved with either, but they're quite a bit simpler. I haven't been inspired to try to do much with them because they come up relative to nothing aside from you ticking over a reputation number in the database, so it's hard to make them relevant as anything other than a "Hey! Who's Mr./Ms. Awesome? You are, you crazy mongoose!" affair. HCFrog of course was trying to work out org-based abilities to distribute through them, but that was fraught with a myriad of other difficulties (again, another topic). I could do something similar to the level-scaling org archive clothing items as rewards for those missions, but there are two problems with something like that in this case: a) they aren't really repeatable, so players who've already hit them would be left out--unless we tried some sort of vast scheme of forwarding the items to players in the org who've bypassed that rep point, but our chances of success doing something like that are what I would rate as very low, and b) they rely on the reputation system, which has its own issues. So that's another ball of string I'm not too keen on tangling with, although it's slightly more doable than messing with the standard mission system. I certainly agree that they *should* have more of an impact.

It is my intent to work on neighborhood missions, gradually. I *think* I'll be able to get to the point of adding a mission and reward to a single neighborhood per update on a semi-regular basis--like 11.3, which added one in Tabor--in addition to the regular content I'm committed to--I might have tried that with this next update, for instance, but I had to do the Winter Holiday instead. Hm also coming up here I have to take some time to poke into MXO on Vista, since I've ***finally*** managed to wrassle up a Vista testing system of my own (and I have no idea how long that will take me to look at or if I'll be able to get any positive changes out of it, but it's really gotta be tried).

Great news about the possibility of adding more Neighborhood Contacts.  Like I said I love anything that immerses you more in Mega City.  I'm one of those nerds that actually did every single Neighborhood Contact mission.  And yeah absolutely I agree that rep points should stand for something! 

Rarebit wrote:

Danger_Frog1471 wrote:

It saddens me that you tried to mix the updating gameplay and critical missions. I don't care that my "alts" cant access the content, but new players cannot either. The first thing i used to say to a new or potential player was we have live event interactions with real characters from the matrix... Now? We have what you can get everywhere else... and we charge more!

There are still Live Events, although the new format is not very much appreciated by most veteran events-catching players right now, which isn't hard to understand, since their frequency has been reduced quite a bit.

In the end, the old scheme of daily events failed to reach new players. It was extremely rare for me to be able to interact with actual new players in those events, and I was very disappointed that I wasn't able to make that part of it work. There are many reasons why it didn't work out as I'd hoped, but that's a whole separate topic's worth of discussion, some of which has been touched on elsewhere.

Although fairly often in those rare times I did come upon new players, on their own, they tended to assume I was a regular player, or perhaps some freakish sort of NPC.

You do realize the problem with making current events level-exclusive and attempting to provide current live events to low level players, right?

Essentially, they'll have no idea what's going on. Unless you pop up at Uriah and browse the marketplace as Rose or something, and quite franklky, that's dumb as hell and no one wants to show up to that. Sorry to burst your bubble.

The other thing is, the majority of your playerbase are not new. Or, if they are, they will only know about live events because of veteran players, who would likely then lead them to said event.  Now, well, it's anyone's guess. But if you weren't reaching them then, I highly doubt you're reaching them now more than then.

Rarebit wrote:

Forum feedback is a tricky beast. When people are happy with what's going on they seem to have better things to do than to spend their time on the forum, whereas when they're unhappy with something, they spend a great deal of their time here talking about it--so the feedback in this medium tends to reflect the negative opinions more than the positive or ambivalent.

You bring up a very good point here, Rare, and I would also like to thank you for at least attempting to wade into all of this in the last couple of days.

As you state above, the feedback on something like a message board (or feedback anywhere, really) tends to reflect more of the negative than the positive.. and when one's time is otherwise occupied it's tough to find time to post negative commentary.  Maybe the fact that there is so much negativity as of late can be used as a yardstick, if nothing else, of the fact that MxO's forum using playerbase sees enough negative to warrant posting about it and now have enough free time on their hands to spend posting.

Villemar_MxO wrote:

Danger_Frog1471 wrote:

Again, i don't doubt your next installment will be just as fulfilling. Point in hand: the mission still isn't available so what difference does it make to a newbie who cannot access the story. I think i realised why the critical missions suddenly seam so important... because its now all we got. I guess it all boils down to me looking at what we had a looking at what we have and saying... So why am i not as satisfied? I think the answer is what will ultimately determine if the "New approach" is worth it.

Nailed it!  Thank you, thank you thank you!

Rare I'm happy to see you've taken on this issue, finally!  I now have a much better understanding of what you're trying to accomplish.  What you are trying to do looks good on paper.  But the devil is in the details.  And never discount the Law of Unintended Consequences.  Rather than go point by point on the many things you've raised which I agree with and strongly disagre with, I want to touch on the big picture here. 

To summarize another thread:

Ballak wrote:

The overall point of this thread, is basically saying this:

MxO probably will still continue on even with the, "Minority" gone/disgruntled, so I'm not saying MxO is going to die. It's just the new way in which we receive "storyline content" no matter how much it is portrayed as "more dev time devoted" it somehow feels like so much less is dedicated on what a lot of us players liked most.

The physical interaction with the storyline.

Prior to 11.3 how would I personally defiine this?  1) Live Events  2) LESIG  3)  Critical missions  4) Ancillary side stuff that gives you a sense of immersion.

Now that 1) is effectively gone for most people, and 2) is definately gone; we are left with 3) and 4) above.

This gets exactly to what Danger Frog said above.  I can live with 1) provided there's some wiggle room down the road.  I understand 1000% daily LE's were completely and utterly unsustainable.  2) didn't effect me that much although that was pretty neat to have.

Leaving us with 3) and 4), heightening their importance as vehicles for delivering dynamic storyline content.  As far as these new crit quests I see it as a means to accomplish two things.  One, access current storyline content.  Two, obtain cool new gear.  I separate the two in my mind.  I came up with this idea way upthread:

Villemar_MxO wrote:

That's my biggest problem with the update by far.

Solution:  Make them dual-purpose critical missions.  If you just want the storyline, then provided you have enough rep (60 sounds fine by me), and you're willing to risk missions instanced Downtown (if that's the case), then you should be able to achieve that goal.  In fact I like the idea of missions instanced downtown, it gives it an added element of danger that's very Matrixy.

If you want the gear, then yeah you can go for them via farming the secondary spawns.  Keep those reward items level based, 30/40/50 whatever.

...To summarize:  Keep the rep requirements.  Instance them wherever you please...in Stratford Campus and Creston Heights if you want.   Keep the level requirements for gear obtained by farming secondary spawns.  No one loses anything at all by eliminating the level caps this way.

If you character meets the requirements and/or is willing to dodge higher level mobs, by all means they should have at it!

And elaborating further based on what you've said and using 11.3 as an example.  BTW I've fooled around with running my Mero 50 with a lvl 2 to see what happend scaling-wise.  So lets use that as an example too. 

Mero 11.3.1:  There are no NPC's just Suit contacts here but I assume if there were they would be scaled at lvl 26.  I step outside and am attacked by lvl 30 Accellerated Suits.  They don't scale below 30....exactly as it should be.  They drop pens.

Mero 11.3.2:  There are NPC's to fight.  Scaled at lvl 26.  I step outside and am attacked by level 40 AWP's.  They don't scale below 40....exactly as it should be.  They drop O-Bits.

Mero 11.3.3  There are NPC's to fight, scaled at lvl 26...but to complete the mission you have to fight 2 lvl 53's.  Mission finished.

So my question is, would it be possible to say compromise for those who only want to access the current storyline, and understand they ain't gonna get any sweet gear out of this?  By 1)  Removing the pen needed and the anti-override thingy to get 11.3.2 and 11.3.3;  and 2)  Scaling the final .3 Big Boss to +3 (x2) or +5 of your level, whatever the case may be?  Is that possible?

(The reason I'm trying to spell this out so crystal clear is because of some naysayers that still continue to conflate accessing storyline content with getting cheap eazy gear.)

But I did want to touch on 4) because there is a lot of potential here.  The best things about Update 64?  RSI masks & new neighborhood contact mission.  I've had a lot of fun farming the masks, honestly.  I've gotten re-aquainted with a lot of the neighborhoods and gangs, especially gang bosses that don't drop any keys so you normally wouldn't have any reason to seek them out.  This gets to immersion in Mega City, which I'm all for.  I'm also a big fan of the new Neighborhood Contact mission.   For the lowbie content and again the immersion factor.  

And no, just because I have two alts that have done every critical mission since probably Chapter 3 yet are now shut off completely from criticals 11.3 and onward, I am not saying there should be more lowbie content as a backhanded way to lobby to get access back for my two alts.  I've actually taken an honest to goodness new player, level 13 atm under my wing.  Last night I asked her, "So, how are you levelling, are you doing standard missions?"   Her:  "Yes."  Me:  Have you done any archive missions yet?"  Her: "What are those??"

You get the idea.  Really if the stated goal is to bring new people in to the storyline, and now current storyline is designed for endgame, how is a new player supposed to get from Point A to Point B without getting bored and leaving after a month?

This is where 4) can help.  New neighborhood contact missions....perfect.  How about new Standard Missions?  New Graduation missions?  (lol those are completely irrelevant now!)  You get the idea.

I'm sorry for the long post but I see what you're trying to do and seeing what we as players want...and what we signed on for in the first place....and am just trying to reconcile the two.

Quoted to demonstrate full cohesion of opinion.

Rarebit wrote:

It is my intent to work on neighborhood missions, gradually. I *think* I'll be able to get to the point of adding a mission and reward to a single neighborhood per update on a semi-regular basis--like 11.3, which added one in Tabor--in addition to the regular content I'm committed to--I might have tried that with this next update, for instance, but I had to do the Winter Holiday instead.

   Sorry for going off topic, but I was curious if you had any problems (gameplay, personal, or otherwise) with somehow making the neighborhood contact missions replayable.  It's one of the few examples of content in this game that can't be replayed.  Sure, it's old content, but there are people who haven't done some of these missions for years (myself included).

   It would also help people refresh their memories, which would be helpful if there were new neighborhood contact missions that referenced older ones.  Like the new Chessman mission you added, which is a continuation of the one before it.  I hadn't done that older mission in a long time, but I do remember that it was about the chess set that was described in the new mission.

Neoteny wrote:

You do realize the problem with making current events level-exclusive and attempting to provide current live events to low level players, right?

Essentially, they'll have no idea what's going on.

That isn't much different from how it's been already. They may have more of an idea because of the cinematic, and possibly because of the org meetings (where I did run into a few new players, and at least one of them had a pretty good question, which was nice, if not statistically significant). Also, a side effect of not having daily events and weekly missions, is that the story is going to be less scattered and more concentrated, and probably easier to follow as a result.

Neoteny wrote:

Unless you pop up at Uriah and browse the marketplace as Rose or something, and quite franklky, that's dumb as hell and no one wants to show up to that. Sorry to burst your bubble.

Haven't you heard? The next Agent Smith is a bubbly, somewhat insecure, rather stereotyped teenage girl armed with daddy's credit card.

Me, me, me.

Speaking of a new credit card, Rarebit, this is Sunday, shouldn't you be out Christmas-shopping or something?

Rarebit wrote:

Haven't you heard? The next Agent Smith is a bubbly, somewhat insecure, rather stereotyped teenage girl armed with daddy's credit card.

Me, me, me.

Okay, that was actually pretty funny.

If i fall into an of those catagories please dont misunderstand my intention. I don't mean to cause problems and in the heat of the moment it can sometimes take a wrong turn, so advanced apologies. Although what you just said was... ultimately you dont care. Yes its maybe not what you intented but reading that it says to us no matter how we put it ( and i've tried throughout this to be polite and straightforward) You wont ever change it.

Also, ranting? personally speaking i wouldn't call what either of us have been doing ranting so i'll assume we where not included otherwise i'd like to be pointed in the direction of said post(s) thanks (:

Rarebit wrote:

Danger_Frog1471 wrote:

i need somewhere to vent my stress at Sony's blatant disregard for this section of their company.

It's difficult for me to take your proclaimed point of view seriously when you use the forum for that kind of thing.

Its an opinion i've gathered over the years, or more an impression. You cannot fault me for having that, expressing it once or twice which i have over the years does not in *any* way represent how i use this forum. So don't assume i do, I guess it wasn't the post appropriate time nor person to express it too eh? :p >.<

Danger_Frog1471 wrote:

Great, its good to see you've noticed and taken it into account previously. But be quick on that note, the longer your waiting the more your putting at risk

I'm not sure we're on the same page here, and I can't tell if you're having a bit of joke with me. The things I mentioned (crit location pointed out in cinematic, pop-up text for low levels talking about archives) are already in the game.

Oh no i was actually being serious not sardonic. i wasn't aware the popups where included and i knew the cinematics already had the locations.

Danger_Frog1471 wrote:

NO your missing the point (or atleast my point) here! forget that i have a 50. I am a new player i want to play the story! ... DENIED. *that* is my point rarebit. I have a character on all servers. One of which is denied access to the stuff its because of this i realised hey if i didn't have another character to play i cannot get play the story myself or collect the items. I never used my alts for getting the other side of the story other than live events. Mission wise i didnt care. *now* however we are forced to play the crits to gain any sort of narrative information. But unless your 50 we cant. *Thats* the problem rare. 

I understand the point and I realized it was a trade-off when I made the decision. However, I have yet to see new players distinctly turned off by the change. You aren't a new player, and it's dangerous to assume that you are correctly interpreting another person's or group's point of view.

I proved this by asking players that where new and could access the content... i quoted one and if you really want the proof i'll get screenshots. It's not just an assumption but a thought which lead to an investigation on my part.

A few reasons I felt able to make the change were because a) we have so much previous story now that a new player just catching up by way of the archives will already be pretty high level by the time they've played through all that b) the cinematics are available to everyone and can readily convey the essential "this is where we are" part of the story.

Ok first good stable reason to why this change was made. Agreed that its a better way to be able to catch up.

Also, it isn't accurate to say that you have to be 50 to play the new story missions. You only have to be 50 for the last one. They begin at 30. I realize that's still a barrier to entry, but there's no need to confuse the issue by exaggerating the number.

We can play the first mission of every set, that i concur but we cant personally attain the full story without being 50. That is a fact which you've admitted before.

Back to the new player thing, another motivation behind the change as a whole was that in my interactions with new players--sneaking up on people in Uriah, mostly--the vast majority I tested on this point had little to no awareness of the current state of the story, which tells me that a driving need to jump on top of the very latest story segment is not--for most of them--the driving force that's been bringing people into the game. I would have liked it to have been, but I haven't seen that happening by and large.

How can you gather that just because they're unaware of the current affairs (being new and all remember too) reflects how much they do or will enjoy the content as currently is laid out. Thats like walking into a new large chain store and being asked do you know where the frozen isle is, then assuming because they do not know they don't like frozen food. Am i wrong? If i enter a new store/game i look around i walk see what i like don't like and proceed from that. Sure it's "vets" that point them in the direction of the live events etc but i've never in all my years of helping newbs out herd someone say after i introduced them to live events... So i don't care wheres the cool new items!

Lets briefly return to your theory of high level content should always have a restriction... THe live events didnt. Sure they where in downtown and nearly always involved a level 50+ character and probably PVP. I also remember taking two new players to an event in centre park if i remember it correctly and letting them interact/experience the events. Both of which enjoyed it thoroughly. My point being.. should this do too?

Expectations will be different for new players who've been brought into the game by vets who've been telling them about the story, events, etc, but those same vets also usually help the new players get established by teaming with them, factioning with them, running them through the lower level content (which for us is relatively plentiful, even aside from the archived story missions), providing them with items, and so forth, all of which will tend to negate or shorten the drive to level 30.

Wouldn't go as so far as to say negate but i'll agree vets help shorted the distance. Although i don't see it as an excuse/justification to initiate the restriction.

Danger_Frog1471 wrote:

Understandable... but when in over three years has anyone said to you on the forums or in games... Rarebit these overpowering numbers are too much i want simplicity? Not that i've seen? My point being as that of mastermind, why change something that was if at minimum "satisfactory". I've seen one person so far that has apparently genuinely enjoyed the change... Not sure why yet but i'm sure there is reasons.

They haven't, but there'd be no reason to bring it up, because I haven't resorted to overpowering mission NPC spawns very often.

Forum feedback is a tricky beast. When people are happy with what's going on they seem to have better things to do than to spend their time on the forum, whereas when they're unhappy with something, they spend a great deal of their time here talking about it--so the feedback in this medium tends to reflect the negative opinions more than the positive or ambivalent.

Ok point taken, i don't disagree but i havent just been reading the forums and making these opinions (although the one i expressed there wasn't the most accurate. The forums rarely see good points but add one or two numbers onto that and you have in game numbers as well. But lets face it the majority that are still here and haven't spoken about it are mainly in three groups: Undecided, prefer it and don't know about or care about them in the first place. as far as i can tell from speaking to many people the majority are  either undecided/holding out or dont care. That in itself isn't a good thing.. And i'm personally in that group. That said considering your firm stance on this reflected in the initial quote i guess after christmas i'll be canceling just like the others that are waiting.

Danger_Frog1471 wrote:

It saddens me that you tried to mix the updating gameplay and critical missions. I don't care that my "alts" cant access the content, but new players cannot either. The first thing i used to say to a new or potential player was we have live event interactions with real characters from the matrix... Now? We have what you can get everywhere else... and we charge more!

There are still Live Events, although the new format is not very much appreciated by most veteran events-catching players right now, which isn't hard to understand, since their frequency has been reduced quite a bit.

Rarebit i said before, i don't care if i dont get to them... I've only attented about 12 or 13 personally in three or so years. Still thought it stood as a concrete and enjoyable experience for those that did and even to read later. It give people a sense of real life (mxo that is) continuation. This is repetitive... Static... and less interactive. Even if it was an illusion it give the effect of continuing narrative. These don't and as i said i think therein lies the problems people find.. They're unsatisfied.

In the end, the old scheme of daily events failed to reach new players. It was extremely rare for me to be able to interact with actual new players in those events, and I was very disappointed that I wasn't able to make that part of it work. There are many reasons why it didn't work out as I'd hoped, but that's a whole separate topic's worth of discussion, some of which has been touched on elsewhere.

But thats not a reason to remove it! you can hep guide players to live events and improve the availability to them, all without having to remove them and change the method of deliverance.

Although fairly often in those rare times I did come upon new players, on their own, they tended to assume I was a regular player, or perhaps some freakish sort of NPC.

Lol well i've seen that before in event recaps >.< But that said it comes to to not knowing... i still dont see this as a basis to change everything else because they're unaware :s

Danger_Frog1471 wrote:

And therein lies the problem, atleast we have written confirmation that you acknowledge it. Anyone below 50 is excluded from receiving the full story. Yes there *ARE* work arounds, but as a paying customer not only should it not have to be tolerated but hell i'm getting tired of half-arsedness(tm by kind) from this company it shouldn't be our job to deal with the problems.

You aren't excluded; you have to put in some work to get to the point where you can access/beat that content. Yes, it takes more time and even more skill, but flatly calling it exclusion is a misrepresentation.

We certainly never promised that we'd make the entire story easy for a single person to access, and I don't feel obligated to do so. Enough to interest them, yes, and enough for them to get at if they make the effort for the rewards--and whether or not it is currently enough is under debate here on the forum--but not dishing up the whole thing on a silver platter from the get-go. I do understand that you preferred it that way, and I'm not going to try to argue you into liking the new way better.

One last question then while we're here.. Is that a personal choice? Because (and as you've stated before) It sounds to me like that was an opinion. One which i wouldn't expect to hear from the likes of the large scale company that you belong too (i refer to i shouldn't have to cater to everyone). Don't take this as a personal attack, and its not up for discussion... its things like this that made and still make me give up on the owners of this game taking notice. Yea, sure, i don't know the way it goes... and i can't but my gawd someone's not doing the right things to promote the best idea of what is.

Edit: not a necessary comment so i'll remove it... I'd like to see my subscription to the end thanks 

I guess then rarebit you can officially ignore me, i've got all i need to hear. You wont change it, your only here to correct what we don't see but apparently i'm missing the whole book never mind chapter.  I still incredibly respect you as a person, for all the work you've put into this game. Blood sweat and tears. No doubt i'll be back to see how things are going till the end but no, i don't think i can hold out much longer. It's lost all its uniqueness in my opinion and i can find cheaper more satisfying content elsewhere. 

Much well deserved love,

Kind

Well I'm not gonna pursue this topic anymore.  It is what it is.  There's no point in worrying about things I have no control over. 

Villemar_MxO wrote:

Well I'm not gonna pursue this topic anymore.  It is what it is.  There's no point in worrying about things I have no control over. 

That's a crappy attitude to have. Just the fact that Rarebit came and got in and joined the discussion with us shows that we made a HUGE difference.

I think the way it is, is alright (not perfect, but alright). Just make sure to speak to lowbies about storyline stuff and ask if they wanna run the mish, not hard to do and makes it still a challenge to us (without the lowbie that is.)

If you removed the level requirement, the lowbie would need to face lvl 55's. They'd just complain, why give us content that we aren't even close to be able to do.

The_Bruceter wrote:

I think the way it is, is alright (not perfect, but alright). Just make sure to speak to lowbies about storyline stuff and ask if they wanna run the mish, not hard to do and makes it still a challenge to us (without the lowbie that is.)

If you removed the level requirement, the lowbie would need to face lvl 55's. They'd just complain, why give us content that we aren't even close to be able to do.

I'd have to disagree there bruce i've give a few examples of content that is available to everyone but only complete-able by the top end of a game. People don't complain in either of those situations, they try once maybe twice if there persistent and seek to achieve a state when they can. I personally have tagged along on the new guild wars elite M.O.X missions which put you against max level mobs constantly spawning (on a level 13/14 character, i leveled half way through :p). I died several times but i had one hell of a good time attempting it and actually succeeded once. 

It brings me to the reason or the intent of the combat revision, It allowed for (in laymans terms) Less missing, more hitting, but less damage by low levels. So what i mean by this is with a good team of 40's the level 55/53's in .3's could be completed. But currently we're not allowed to. Its why i started the discussion, the pro's in this situation don't outweigh the con's. I was asking to be proved wrong but so far i haven't seen any good reasons bar one. :/

M45T3RM1ND wrote:

Villemar_MxO wrote:

Well I'm not gonna pursue this topic anymore.  It is what it is.  There's no point in worrying about things I have no control over. 

That's a crappy attitude to have. Just the fact that Rarebit came and got in and joined the discussion with us shows that we made a HUGE difference.

Well that was very good and helpful, at this point speaking for me personally, I feel I'd just be running around in circles.  Plus, I don't want to be looked upon as a serial complainer (not that I feel I am), so keeping on with this in my opinion would be counterproductive.  Speaking for myself only, again.  I'm happy Rare did address some of these issues on this thread.  That doesn't mean I still agree mostly with these changes.  I just worry about the the game dwindling population wise.  But where does worrying get you?  Nowhere.  Its out of my hands.  And I don't mean to come off as passive-aggressive, I just don't see the point in worrying about something I have no control over.  Also, we just had the first of the new crit system, so we have the next installment this Thursday plus the Holiday Event.  So I'm genuinely curious to check it out.  And on top of that the Holidays aren't representative of the population count because we have a lot of vets checking back in coming home for break, etc.  So I guess the real test will come in January or so, and we'll see what the population starts to look like look like then.

I'm glad you started this thread, and I hope we hear feedback from other players, ones that don't normally post here!