How long should it take to finish a beacon mission?

[Kim|MindArk]

Let's assume that you're doing a beacon mission with a team of five people appropriately geared and skilled for the beacon. How long would you like for the beacon mission to last?

 

[XeroX2]

hmm I think this should depend on the difficulty and team size... but on average it would be like 45min.

 

[dr3w]

How long should it take to finish a beacon mission?

You mean, development? (smile.jpg)

I think, there must be some "levels" of beacons, from one hour minimum (casuals) to eight (for teh ubahz)

 

[Milesio]

I think 45 minutes is good too, because can take 15 minutes talk about wich ppl loot each level.

 

[AlphaGeek]

IIRC, 45 minutes or so to fight to the command deck, then 10 minutes to loot and evacuate worked pretty well.

Call it an hour total. While tha amount of time was a cakewalk on the lesser beacon missions, it also allowed for training and familiarization of the deck plans and box location with beacon noobs.


AG, participant in the last beacon mission- 17 August 2009. RIP Hadesheim!

 

[Oleg]

It used to take about 45 mins to an hour, and that was good.

Of course it also used to take about 2 hours waiting for the rest of the team to get themselves organised and come to the right place, which was not so good, but there is probably not much you can do about that

 

[Serica]

Used to be something like ...

1hr to get the team together ready to call the ship down *sigh*
20min to kill the mobs on the way up
5min to loot on the way down.

If you only run with people in your own timezone a longer one could be fun, but keeping a full team of players from multi-timezones for long periods is difficult.
Also as I'm assuming there wont be TT's or repair terminals in there, realistically, how long can you continuously maintain a hunting run for ?
(unless ofc, your budget runs to carrying multiple UL amp/weapon/armor sets along with you)

 

[ArieJVW]

Hey Kim,

It should be dependant on a major factor. will it be like the old system, once you die.... you can get back on.
And will be have to run back to the start in a set time collecting suff?

If like the old system 45mins is sufficant. As this was about the timing for the old ones, this removes error for game crash or dissconnect. as last time you dissconnected and you found yourself back on caylpso.

If it is not like the old system and you can have as many cracks at it as you want. then if you will have different time ones it would be good to range from 45 mins to 4 hours. based on your 5 person (skilled for the beacon size).

If you want a time that will be the same for all (based on skill level) I would say 1hour would be perfect.

Regards Inno

 

[Kim|MindArk]

Well as they are right now you have 30 minutes to get to and kill the boss and then 5 minutes for looting boxes.

 

[Joat]

1h would be nice for the normal, and 1½ to 2h for the rare ones...

 

[AlphaGeek]

Well as they are right now you have 30 minutes to get to and kill the boss and then 5 minutes for looting boxes.

Well then the success rate will vary by how many levels there are, whether there are TPs between levels, how many droids & how tough they are, how many boxes there are and how devious you sneaky bastages were when ya hid the boxes, now wouldn't it?


AG

 

[GeorgeSkywalker]

The answer is 42

 

[dargonstar]

It used to take about 45 mins to an hour, and that was good.

Of course it also used to take about 2 hours waiting for the rest of the team to get themselves organised and come to the right place, which was not so good, but there is probably not much you can do about that

back then the signal location was usually far out in the wilds and half the time seemed to be in the middle of a hoard of robots or spiders. i remember waiting 2 hours because team member kept getting killed at the site or on the way to it constantly.
now with vehicles i think gathering people will be much easier.

 

[AlphaGeek]

... i remember waiting 2 hours because team member kept getting killed at the site or on the way to it constantly...

I almost feel bad for a fellow beacon party that had one for the same location as my team. We had called the ship and as we were boarding, greed dots appeared on the edge of radar.

In public chat, we see "Hey, that's our ship!!"

On teamspeak, we hurried through our last minute prep as the green blips rapidly approached. After one final weapons check, we slammed the beacon into the nav console.

As the hatch closed, the last message from the ground was "NOOOOOOO!"

 

[ArieJVW]

30 mins and 5 mins looting is actually quite good.

thinking about it a 1hr beacon + orgnizing time will take half a day to prepare.

Has there been fixes to the loot system so people dont hide the flares down there pants
and is there a way to get the beacon onwer paid for his beacon before loot is split?

Thoughts,
Inno

 

[narfi]

Well as they are right now you have 30 minutes to get to and kill the boss and then 5 minutes for looting boxes.

That is a good time if being run by a well run and experienced team, but you should have 1.5-2x that on the timer for some mistakes to be made without overly frustrating people.
It is a balancing act to make it long enough to be possible with some mistakes, but short enough to be a challenge.

For over all 10minutes prep time, 40 minutes on the mission, and 10 minutes to divy up loot afterwords allows a team to fit it into a 1hr slot which is convenient for planning purposes and can include more people.

The idea of different lengths of beacons is certainly a good idea though.

narfi

 

[Simon God]

The quicker the better, for the fact that the robots you kill on the way carry no loot. Which is messed up on its own, since some people might spend 2 ped to get to the boss sandomeone else might spend 30 ped. Having no loot mobs really brings out the slacker in some!

 

[helena]

30 min sound fine

but make it possible to open all boxes without having to fly plz.

AND

DONT make the precedent beacon mistake:

= all boxes are shit or all boxes are good

in precedent beacon missions, if u were lucky all boxes opened give 250 ped tt or more, and when beacon was average all boxes was bad.

any boxe open should be a chance to get big

 

[misao]

Well as they are right now you have 30 minutes to get to and kill the boss and then 5 minutes for looting boxes.

So there is a time limit of 30min to kill all the mobs?
*I liked being able to map out and have a plan of attack for looting the boxes. If there's a time limit there won't be enough time to plan things out and loot all the boxes. (Unless you have a big team)

 

[Ludvig|MindArk]

Well as they are right now you have 30 minutes to get to and kill the boss and then 5 minutes for looting boxes.

5 minutes sounds a bit short... tho depends on the amount of boxes and time to open them I guess

Will loot be in team chat as with a regular team hunt?

 

[dargonstar]

Well as they are right now you have 30 minutes to get to and kill the boss and then 5 minutes for looting boxes.

you could introduce them first with no time limit and let us test how easy/hard it is before giving us a time limit to reach boss then a time limit to loot, also if we are slowed down like in the old beacons and you spread the boxes threw the floors again, id say 5 minutes is to short. better to give us time to spare then to give us only enough time to loot half the boxes.

 

[AlphaGeek]

The quicker the better, for the fact that the robots you kill on the way carry no loot. Which is messed up on its own, since some people might spend 2 ped to get to the boss sandomeone else might spend 30 ped. Having no loot mobs really brings out the slacker in some!

Beacons are more about teamwork and trust than anything else on or above Calypso.
If you feel you had issues with teammates, you can always uninvite invite those people that you feel slacked off or held back loot on the next mission.

 

[ArieJVW]

I Assume when you say 30mins to kill mob's this is just a estimate as there is no mob killing time limit. the only real timer is the 5 min looting count down like last time? giving you time to orgnize team to loot what boxes before you take on the boss

Edit: wouldnt want to rush killing the mobs and make misstakes.

Inno

 

[Butch C]

It used to take about 45 mins to an hour, and that was good.

Of course it also used to take about 2 hours waiting for the rest of the team to get themselves organised and come to the right place, which was not so good, but there is probably not much you can do about that

there is... get a new team that one sounds bloody hopeless

 

[Serica]

I Assume when you say 30mins to kill mob's this is just a estimate as there is no mob killing time limit. the only real timer is the 5 min looting count down like last time? giving you time to orgnize team to loot what boxes before you take on the boss

Edit: wouldnt want to rush killing the mobs and make misstakes.

Inno

Uh Inno .. there used to be a time limit on the way up too

We found that out on our very first beacon, where we played about exploring just a little too much on the way up

If you've only run beacons with Omega tho, he's always kept an eye on the time to make sure that never happens again.

 

[Kim|MindArk]

I Assume when you say 30mins to kill mob's this is just a estimate as there is no mob killing time limit. the only real timer is the 5 min looting count down like last time? giving you time to orgnize team to loot what boxes before you take on the boss

Edit: wouldnt want to rush killing the mobs and make misstakes.

Inno

No there is an actual 30 minute limit.

 

[AlphaGeek]

...as there is no mob killing time limit. the only real timer is the 5 min looting count down like last time?...

Actually, around 45 minutes or so, the auto-destruct timer would start regardless of whether the spacecraft commander or the two deputy commanders had been terminated.

 

[dargonstar]

just re watched your teaser.

A quick preview of new robot beacon instances for Entropia Universe: Planet Calypso!

i see a platform with stairs you can go under, i see rooms that have entryways in big open corridors.

give us full run speed and 10 minutes to loot with only 4-5 levels and a 5-6 man team and i can see us being able to lot everything idealy. 5 minutes... with how big this video shows these places to be thats to short.

also i forgot to take into account earlier that on old beacons, it took like 10 seconds to open a box. you will have to either increase the time limit if you do that again or make it so you instantly open and loot a box, no timer on a box.

but this is all speculation since we can't run them yet we can't give you feed back thus the reason i say implement them without time limits first then let us run them and give you feedback, otherwise your going to have people screaming at you that they could not access their loot.

(also please let us loot the robots to. they have gun and ammo, we should be able to loot them.)

PSS. please make it so the robots can't see and shoot threw the walls.

 

[Strash]

Just make sure there is enough time over all to get the boxes Fairly.
We can trust your judgement on that.
i would say 45min over all but if you say 30min is enough time then..... we should attempt it.
but What kind of guns were you using while testing this? and armor? and how many people?

Or did you test this?

 

[Ludvig|MindArk]

No there is an actual 30 minute limit.

Why? That doesn't make sense, only hinders us from training newbies in navigating them and such