I like the new points system in principle but I'm not convinced it's been well applied so far. For the Traeskeron it works well, for the Rextelum less so. Largely that's because the higher maturity Rextelum are out-of-bounds to 99%, or even more, of the EU population. For the Traesks it makes sense that we can 'fast-track' to the final reward by hunting higher maturities, and that's quite feasible for even low/mid hunters. But for Rextelum it's impossible for most, which means that the mission is pretty much indistinguishable from an Iron Challenge. Even for a relatively high-skilled avatar like myself (212 HP, 46 Evader, 85 Hit), killing a Devastator is a struggle using my normal gear.
So I would favour a combination of the new-style mission, and the old-style Iron Challenges, where the new version is more focused on the easier mobs where it makes more sense. Something like Exarosaur, for example, would be a good candidate for the new-style points missions, and would encourage and reward efforts from LA owners to cater for mission hunters (the old Exa Stalker LA used to be very popular but there seems to be no appetite for these now). If you were to introduce a mission for, say , Formicacida, it would be better to keep the old Iron rules.
I will also echo what others have said earlier, that you should expand the Iron/Bronze/more? system which the new maturity-based system would appear to replace, if you were to go with that exclusively. Please add more Bronze challenges and a 3rd stage on top of the most popular Bronze ones (Atrox and Argo I guess).
I know you said you didn't want to go into the rewards, but they are a fundamental part of all of this so they can't be divorced from any sensible discussion. Part of the problem with the Rextelum mission is that the rewards seem very small for the effort required (remembering that most of us can't kill the 15 point mobs or whatever they are), at least until the final stage. Giving 0.1 PED of skill (which iirc is the reward for the first Traeskeron stage) is pitiful, not even 1 point for a lot of people, and personally I'd rather have mission tokens than something so small.
If you really need me to fulfil your box-ticking exercise by addressing your individual points:
1. Award points based on the maturity killed or the old way of 1 kill = 1 point?
Both, with the maturity system being best suited to easier mobs, and the old iron/bronze/etc system best suited to harder mobs.
2. Spreading the skill rewards between the different stages or having it all on the last stage?
The 4 attributes followed by Stamina+skills reward for stage 5 is the best version you have.
3. Possible changes to the amount to kill for each stage and amount of stages. An example could be 100-1000-2000-3000-4000-5000 etc.
Fine as it is, and I also like the variations for event mobs (Eomon, Longtooth etc), though this has been somewhat messed up by creating Eomon as a regular spawning mob. The 5k/10k version for the FOMA missions is rubbish and discourages people from attempting the missions at all.
4. Should the mission state the reward before it's completed?
Not much of an opinion really, I quite like the discovery aspect but I can understand why people would want to know in advance. If anything changes, it should be that the volume differences in final mission skill choices are explained - i.e. on old iron missions we were given a choice of Evade/Rifle/Melee Combat or whatever, but there was no indication that the volumes would differ from one to the other, and that is not ideal.
Also which mobs would you want to be next to get Iron style missions
Bit of a double-edged sword here because having mission-hunters killing a good mob can quickly turn it into a bad mob. Mainly I would like to see something that gives a boost to LA-owners while not forcing people to hunt only on LAs, i.e. mobs like Formicacida, Bristlehog, Exarosaur which are available outside of LAs but with less desirable spawns than those that can be created with DNA.
Some other points to mention while I'm at it:
- I would love to see some kind of mission HoF system so that we can see when people complete the long missions - maybe not for every 100 mob mission or the exploring ones but at least for the 10k kills, and with special mentions for the first people to complete a mission.
- The Bronze Shinkiba system that gives -1 for Young/Mature is horrible, don't ever do that again.
- Don't ever change rewards for old missions! I know there is no indication in your post that this might happen but I think it's worth stating because of the unfairness it would create (especially bearing in mind that this has happened on other planets in the past).
I really hope you pay attention to that because I've put a lot of thought into it and it's taken me a long time to write - it's rare that I write such a long post. I spend 95%+ of my hunting time doing missions nowadays so it's something that's important to me and which I think is a key part of Calypso's (and EU's) development. I know there are many others in the same position and I hope I've captured some of the things they think about this too.
PS Please make some effort to differentiate comments by those who have done substantial amounts of mission-completing from those who log in for 3 hours a week to chat to their friends.